Off to Auckland.

I am leaving tomorrow (I finally managed to get something together) to go to Auckland to visit Henry. I will not be back until late Saturday night, just in time for a final hurrah before classes start. I would update more but I need to get to bed in order to catch my flight tomorrow. The past few days have been amazingly chill and I've really started to get to know people and on a much better level than just running around the city like crazy. I've found a really great friend in Stephen and have met two other guys, Chris and John, who are equally interesting and fun to be around. Also, even though I thought Stafford had started this little clique of Americans, it more seems like a mutual ground of people trying to meet others and see the island. I've hung out with and talked with the most wide range of people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and nationalities within the past few days, it's mindblowing. The other night I cooked burritos for a group of friends (Stephen, Chris, Brian, and Scott) and we all talked about the comparison of New Zealand culture and the states (and also cultures within the different regions of the states) because we were fortunate enough to get the view point of Scott who is a kiwi.
Anyway. I would love to write more, because I have done so much in such a few couple of days, but I need to go to bed.
Here are a few pictures of my trip to the Oriental beach (where I got super sunburned, again) and Mt.Victoria (beautiful). The last picture is a picture of Wellington from atop Mt.Victoria.

Carnival Time

Carnival flags

Huge crowd

Cool Float

Rugby

Here is my promised post. Much has happened over the past few days and I will try and recount with as much accuracy as possible.

I left off around the day I went bowling, which was Wednesday. Bowling was fun, however I'm terrible at it so I lost miserably. After bowling we went to Stephens flat and hung out there for the rest of the night.

Thursday was orientation. We had to wake up early in order to get to orientation by 9. I managed to get the ball rolling and went with my german flatmate Merina. Orientation was horribly dull and I felt like most of what they said was very generic stuff I've heard when I first went to college as a freshman. It was all about seeking help if you need it, remembering everyone is different, and such. The nice thing was that we got to finally see all the other international students and meet some new people. There was an overwhelming amount of Americans, about 3/4 of the room. Then there were a lot of germans, canadians, french, and a spattering of different asian groups. I spent the majority of my time with the people I knew already but when they had us go out for lunch break I got to meet a lot of the other people. Everyone seemed really eager to talk and make friends, as I think is expected, but it made for a lot of good conversation. Later that evening the University had a planned get together at a bar, the Mayan. I didn't really meet anyone new while I was there because I mostly stuck with the people I knew, but Stephen managed to rally together a huge group of people to go down to the pier for an outdoor concert. We had literally 20 people following us as we walked down. The concert turned out to be over when we arrived, but we sat outside by the water talking with everyone that had come down. It was here that I met some cool people. Josh and Lenny are two canadians that happened to be camp friends for a long time and somehow both ended up going to the same Uni without knowing it. Then there was John from San Fransisco, Becky from Rhode Island, and several others I don't feel like listing right now.
I spent a good chunk of the night after we left the pier talking with Josh, Lenny and John while trying to find Stephen who constantly runs off.
Friday was enrollment. WHAT A PROCESS. They made it out to sound like kind of a long process, but nothing could have prepared me for what I did on Friday. First I waited in a long long line just to get my classes approved. I sat for over an hour in this line until someone finally decided that my classes could be approved by a science department head instead of an arts and humanities, and I got to cut the line. Then I went with several other people over to the insurance and visa checking line. Fortunately in this setting I met a bunch of different people while waiting and we talked the entire time. I think I was in there for about an hour. Then, with my new group of friends, we went to the worst and final line. It was for the final approval and official documentation of our enrollment. The line was formed in a narrow hallway that snaked around a corner and looped back over itself because the hall wasn't long enough for the amount of people waiting. It was here that I met the most people and had the most interesting time despite waiting there for 3 HOURS. The way it worked was that because it looped back over on itself, we were constantly meeting new people as the line moved forward and as new people were added on. I aquaited it to speed dating. It created a really good bond between the international students and now it seems where ever we go everyone is really friendly and willing to hang out with the most random groups.
After that horrible process I went to a rugby game with several people. It was the Wellington Hurricanes v. the Highlanders. It was misty and rainy but we had a really good time. This beer company, Tui, was sponsoring the event and had these girls wandering around handing stuff out. We got free ponchos and t-shirts for cheering on the Hurricanes on top of our chairs or showing them some talent. One guy next to us preformed the Haka, which was really cool.
The rugby game was super exciting especially because towards the end the Hurricanes were losing, but managed to score twice in the last 10 minutes right in front of us. Really awesome. We were screaming and jumping out of our seats.
After the rugby game we went with a large group, including the canadians I had met earlier and several other people we ran into at the game, to a bar that was giving out free drinks to people who had a rugby ticket. I only stayed there for a little because I had to get ready for my south island trip.
HOWEVER. For some odd reason my flights were never booked. I don't really feel like explaining the whole process of what I did and how I tried to fix this, but in the end I just gave up and had to give up my chance for a cool vacation to the south island.
But, all was not lost because instead I got to go to the Cuba St. Carnvial which is a carnival that only happens every two years. So I was really lucky.

SO. Saturday I went early with Stephen to the carnvial. We wandered around, checking out the different stands and got some delicious food. This weird girl that niether of us like very much ended up following us around all day. Fortunately we met up with other people who cancelled out the weirdness of this girl. We spent the whole day just wandering up and down the streets. A lot of our time was spent sprawled out on patches of grass or sitting in the middle of the street eating carnival food. By 4 I was not only exhausted but extremely sunburned, so we decided to take a break and meet up later for the parade.
The parade was CRAZY. I was with Stephen, John, Lenny, and Josh the majority fo the time, although we were with others who got lost in the craziness of it all. We wanted to get a good view of the parade but had arrived too late to get a spot by the sidelines. Instead I think we spent the entire parade climbing a lot of random stuff to try and get a good spot. We climbed foodstands, street signs, building, fences, you name it. A lot of times we'd only get to be on top for a few short minutes until we were told to get off, but we finally found a really good spot on a fence. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad that even though I couldn't see the whole parade, I had a fun time trying to.
After the parade ended, the crowd literally went wild heading to bars. Everything was so packed and crazy we ended up just hanging out in a small park where a concert was being played. A bunch of people were dancing and we ended up playing in a fountain. My night ended with me being kindly escorted home by the boys because I no longer had my lady friends (Morgan and Shannon) to walk home with me.

Regardless to say, I've been having a lot of fun. And I'm going to try and get together some sort of trip to make up for my lost south island trip.

A quick note

So I haven't written in a while but I promise I will soon. I've been super busy doing lots of different things from registering for classes to figuring out a flight booking crisis (they never booked my flights). So I am no longer heading to the south island and instead went to a carnival today. Morgan and Shannon got to go to the south island so I spent the whole day with boys, which is funny to me since all I do is hang out with girls at back home. It was refreshing and I think that I now am starting to develop a clique of people.

Right now my flat has a lot of other people in it and it's really irritating me because I'm super sunburned and I'm super tired. I have about two hours to relax before my friends and I are meeting up again and seeing a parade and going out. I just want to cook my dinner and take a shower and a nap, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Sunburned

It's only been two days here. I arrived Monday afternoon, and it's only Wednesday afternoon and I feel like I've been here forever. Wellington is wonderful city. There is art everywhere, interactive sculptures and fountains everywhere. The landscape is stunning and everywhere you go you see lush green mountains or the ocean. The city is incredibly clean and "green" with all it's cable cars, metros, and taxis running on environmental friendly energy. Even their usage of power and water is limited, all the plugs have switches for when you want electricity to flow and the toilets have two different flushes - you decide how much water you're going to use for your flush. Also, since it's small almost everything is easy accessible by walking. The only area where it gets difficult happens to be right in my neck of the woods, where everything is a steep uphill climb.

I always feel like there are things I want to say about the city but when I actually sit down I can never remember what I wanted to say. I'm having a wonderful time and it's hard to imagine leaving a place so beautiful as this.

I've just spent the majority of my day basking in the sun. Lars and I went and bought a phone for me and then together we met up with Stephen, Morgan and two other Americans to take the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens.
Today was perfect. It was sunny and warm, but cool enough that I was wearing pants and ended up wearing a jacket walking home. We wandered around for a couple of hours through a maze of paths through beautiful woods and flowers. My favorite part was this huge rose garden. I spent the majority of my time with Stephen walking through the paths and smelling each flower and saying which one we liked the best. We also went through the green house taking LOADS of pictures.
Afterwards we took the cable car back down. Lars had to go figure some issues out with his phone so Morgan, Stephen and I went down to the ocean to check out the pier and beach area. We ended up walking along the board walk for a long time. There were all these people, mostly high schoolers, jumping off the pier and swimming. It made me jealous of their lives because their after school activity was playing in the ocean with their best mates. We laid out on the grass for a long time and then went and bought sushi and had a small picnic on a grassy field.
Afterwards we all realized we had gotten sunburned (the ozone layer is really thin around New Zealand) and that we all felt a little sticky and gross from walking around all day. We headed back and in about an hour we're going to cook some dinner, go bowling, and then Stephen is having a house warming party at his flat hosted by his flatmates to welcome him to their home.
I can't imagine school starting because this feels like vacation, but we have orientation tomorrow and then sign up for classes on Friday. I feel like my perspective of the city will change drastically once I start to become more familiar with it and also gain more friends.
I'll post pictures very soon.

Making Friends...

Last night I went out with Morgan and several other American students. We got dinner at this walk in kebab place, which was delicious. We then went to see this guy Stephen's flat which was located near Cuba St. After that Stephan brought us over to this hostel he stayed at before he found his flat where he had become good friends with a guy who worked there named Vince, a Swedish hippy living in New Zealand. We arrived prepared with lots of wine and beer and joined a wooden outdoor patio table already filled with 8 other people. The people there were from a variety of places. One was a local Kiwi, two were a married couple from America that had been travelling the world for a year, one was a local teacher, another was a Chilean who was trying to learn English, and the last two were architects trying to become professors at Vic, a Norwegian woman and her British husband. We spent the whole night talking and swapping stories.
At around one, the group I had arrived with decided to leave. As we were walking the long, long trek back to Stafford House we had to pass a bunch of bars. One bar, El Horne, was going crazy. There were people standing on tables, dancing and singing to "Sweet Caroline," of all songs. So we decided we had to join in. The bar was an add mixture of people, mostly locals and then a group of Argentinians. We didn't even drink at the bar but spent a good hour dancing there. They played all these really hokey American songs and everyone from New Zealand knew the lyrics and none of the Americans did. Also, the way the men would dance with the women was by actually dancing, not just the typical US club way of just sort of dancing on you. I was twirled and spun around by several different guys. However, whether it was Jetlag finally talking or from too much dancing, around two I became extremely tired and managed to get my friend Lars and Shannon to walk home with me.

Today I am planning on going to the Botanical Gardens, which is either a short hike up a steep hill or a trolly ride up, with my friend Lars.

Hello from down under!

Here is my first official post and written account of my time spent in New Zealand.

Getting to New Zealand required a total time of roughly 30 hours in transit. I took 4 flights, hopping from Newark to DC, DC to LAX, LAX to Sydney, and finally Sydney to Wellington. The first leg of my trip went by pretty quickly and painlessly. However, in LAX my flight was delayed because the airplane had not arrived and once it did arrive it required maintenance and fueling. I sat with the rest of the weary travellers waiting to board for over an hour. Once I did get on the plane I found that not only was I stuck in the middle seat, but between an overly talkative 16yr old and a sick Aussie. Although I did manage to sleep a good amount, it was rather uncomfortable without having an armrest to myself and when I was awake I had quite the awkward time trying to go to the bathroom with the poor sick Aussie sleeping so much. My travelling woes did not end here, for once the plane began it's final descent, due to the delay, I had only 30 minutes to make my connecting flight to Wellington and I was in the way back of an enormous 747. I managed to rally together a bunch of other people who needed to make the same flight and we pushed our way to the front. Luckily there was a United Airlines person waiting for us at the exit and she ran us through security and all the way to our gate.
Among the group of people running from the Sydney plane there were 2 other people heading to Victoria and also a local kiwi who was stunned that I was american because apparently I do not have a strong american accent. Of the two Vic students, one of the happened to be from New York and living in the same building as me. With this added bit of relief of having someone to travel with, Air New Zealand, the end of my travels, was one of the best flights I've ever had. I managed to get a window seat with no one sitting next to me. And not only were the seats cushy and comfortable but I had a wide range of things to watch from a latest season of Top Gear to recent blockbuster hits such as Disney's Enchanted. Further, the food was some of the best airline food I've ever had. Although it was nothing gormet, the sandwich I was served was not soggy and cold but warm and tasty.
In Maori New Zealand is named Aotearoa which is commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. Appropriately, as we approached New Zealand I got a wave of excitement and tried to catch a glimpse of the country I was to call home for the next 4 months but the entire time all I saw was dense white clouds. However, as we got closer, clouds gave way to a misty view of rich green mountains and houses clustered around the lowlands and bays.
Once we landed I went through an extremely complex procedure of customs. First I had my documents checked out and passed through to baggage claim. New Zealand has a strict policy on bringing outside animal products or anything that might contaminate their richy diverse flora and fauna so, at baggage claim they had dogs sniffing people's luggage to check for food and the like. Then, I had to declare anything that was an animal product or a biohazard for New Zealand. This came in the form of a pair of hiking boots I brought. I had to pull them out of my luggage and then they kindly scrubbed them clean for me. So with my have a rather clean pair of hiking boots, I then had to get my bags scanned once more until I was finally allowed to leave.
I found a friend in the guy who was on my flight heading to the same building as me. His name was Cory and we spent the whole time talking in customs and also in the car with the Vic representatives that came to pick us up. Driving from the airport to Stafford, our building was really beautiful. We drove along the coast, sailing boats and all the outskirt suburban houses. The city itself is very small, but beautiful because it is surrounded by a national park.
My building, called Stafford House, is located up a steep hill. My roommate, Laura, told me that hill was created by a fault line which is why Stafford House is up significantly higher than the lower lying bay areas. I live in apartment number 67, on the 6th floor of the building. The apartment has three rooms, a large common area, and a large bathroom. The common room has a stove, fridge, dish washer and clothing washing machine, cabinets, a table with three chairs, a couch and a nice rug floor. I have two flatmates although only one of them, Laura, is here right now because she is an RA. My room is large in relation to the amount of stuff I have. If I was at Mt.Holyoke I would call it small, but right now it seems huge because I have nothing in it.
When I arrive Laura and her friend Lauren immediately started excitedly talking to me about Wellington. They insisted on taking me to this place called The Warehouse, which is equivalent to a Target or Wallmart, to get bedding and other supplies. We walked there in the rain and I got a chance to see the city.
We took a green taxi (ecofriendly and also literally green) back to the building and Laura cooked me dinner. Then I met up with Morgan Miller, a fellow Montclair High School graduate who happened to be in the same building as me. I was actually really glad I decided to meet up with her because it gave me a chance to meet several other students and gave me a reason to go out. The other people we were with were from a program Morgan was apart of called Australearn. They were all really cool and nice and together we all went to check out the bar scene even though it was a Monday night.
Walking through Wellington at night gave me a clear picture of what the city is like as whole. It was very quiet and also extremely clean. I noticed more than I had during the day, the fresh air and overall neatness of the city.
We walked down to the main social hub of Wellington which is located on Cuba St. and Courtenay Place. We went to a bar called Kitty O'Shea's and drank some beers and talked. We ended up making friends with a large group of British boys on holiday. We spent the whole night talking and playing a sneaky drinking game called "god save the queen." It was a good night and also a good insight to what to expect around the bar scene.

Because of my insistence of staying awake late, I have magically oriented myself to the time zone quite painlessly. I woke up around 10am to a bright, sunny, cloudless sky. I took a shower and then went to the foodmarket with Laura and her friend Lauren. I bought a ton of food that should hopefully last me for quite a long time. Laura and her friend advised her on the local brands and also the cheaper brands.
The trip to the store gave me a very good look at how beautiful Wellington can be. Everything is so green and crisp looking. We walked by parlament and saw the business district of the city. I got to be touristy and snapped a few pictures which I'll upload soon. The trees and other local vegetation is very exotic and different looking and I can understand their anxieties of foreigners contaminating any of them.

After our trip to the market I ate some lunch and then Laura helped me set up my internet and I have been here now typing up this extremely long blog post. Soon I will go and meet up with Morgan again and hopefully we'll go down to the beach or explore the city some more. I'm thankful I have someone to do that with. I'll try to update frequently so that long posts like this aren't a normal thing.

And I'll post pictures soon.