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.