G’day from Auckland, NZ! Yes I have been here for 5 days and have not managed to contribute a blog post as of yet. It’s been SO HECTIC since we arrived. By the way, our “arrival” consisted of us getting picked up in a van from the airport and left on a street corner! I’m not joking! The woman from our program back at Wheaton didn’t send us any information about our living situation or even the name of the building we were going to be staying in, so we were pretty much clueless and on our own. We walked into the building we were directed to, proceeded to wake up the orientation leader/residential advisor people who had been out til 4 a.m. (this was about 8 a.m.), and found our way into our new living spaces.
I’m living in a flat with 4 other girls. It’s extremely reminiscent of the suite I lived in at Wheaton, although a lot nicer and more “grown up.” Upon entering, you are in a long hallway, which holds each of our single bedrooms. At the end of this hallway is an open living room/dining table that enters into the kitchen on the right. We have one and a half baths (the second bath has a toilet and shower but no sink), couches, tables, oven range and microwave (no oven! What the heck!). It’s great and I already feel like I’m living like a grown up by buying and cooking my own food (although so far I haven’t really gotten past the pasta and salad mark, I plan on learning to cook while I’m here).
I have four roommates, as I said. They are from Tennessee, Minnesota, Malibu (California), and New Jersey. All of us are studying abroad here for a semester. It’s kind of nice to come home to a group of girls who speaks (more or less) like me (Minnesotan has an amazing accent though!), and not to have to try to decipher the Kiwi jargon. By the way, in New Zealand, there are kiwi fruits, Kiwi birds (the national bird), and also New Zealanders are called Kiwis. The people of Polynesian descent who originally settled the island are the Maori. I had my first lesson on how to pronounce Maori words today at a session I went to called “Living in Auckland.” They taught us a lot of Kiwi slang terms and answered a lot of questions we had about the city we’re living in.
So, Auckland itself! It is a city with 1.4 million people (of 4ish million total population of Auckland), but it definitely doesn’t feel like an American “big” city. Although cars of course drive through it, the driving atmosphere is much different. I still don’t think I’ve heard a horn honk, and no one is yelling and screaming (although the cars do drive somewhat recklessly). We are living about three blocks from Queen Street, the heart of Auckland city. We’re walking distance from food, an IMAX theatre, shopping, internet cafes (thank goodness!), and of course bars, pubs, and clubs!
It has been an amazing experience so far. Auckland is a clean city with a much lower crime rate than large cities in the states, although we are definitely still living in the heart of a large city. My 7th story room overlooks other tall city buildings, but on one side through the buildings is a view of the harbor, and on the other side through the buildings is a great view of the beautiful sunset each night.
We haven’t started classes yet, although I did attend an Orientation for International students on Monday, and a 6-hour Orientation for Dance majors today. I was pretty worried about the dance orientation because I am not a dance major but am hoping to take the same classes that they would take. We had an orientation through the different buildings and an introduction to the different classes that the first-year students would be taking (I’m taking two or three of them, but the dance majors will be taking all 4 of the same classes as each other). It was great to finally meet some Kiwi students! Most of the girls I met today were 18, although I really liked hanging out with the postgrad student named Winita who I believe is around 22. At the end of the day we took a class with a famous (in New Zealand) ballroom dance teacher, who taught us basic samba steps. I was surprised to find that I was one of the better dancers in the room. I guess dance is a lot bigger in the U.S., but I wasn’t expecting to be one of the better dancers in an audition-only program at the best University in NZ!
The Kiwi girls helped me order at Subway (Green peppers are called “Capsicum,” and people will look at you strangely if you say you do not want “peppers” on your sub!). They also made me try L&P soda which is like a cross between ginger ale and citrus. It was great! Very light… kind of reminded me of Squirt, from Hawaii. The food here is pretty good, because of the very large Asian population here there is great Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian food. I’ve had a lot of Japanese food because I know what it is from spending time in Little Tokyo in L.A., but haven’t branched out all that much just yet. I have been feeling randomly light-headed (maybe my body thinks I’m upside-down!), so I’ve been trying to stay with foods that are familiar for now.
I’m about to take a shower and finally do some laundry and decorate my room. It’s been so hectic lately that I haven’t had time to do any of this. Most of my free time has been spent doing errands like grocery shopping or spending a few hours each day at the internet café trying to keep up with emails and talk to my family and friends on Skype. I got a call today letting me know that I just have to call in tomorrow to set up a password and I’ll finally have the internet in my room! Thank goodness!
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