Double rainbow!

As I washed heaps of dishes, I looked out the kitchen window to see a DOUBLE RAINBOW! Here is a picture, although you can't really see the second rainbow.

On Friday morning I made my way back to Baldwin Street with Grace, Fredric, and Sophie to watch the Jaffa race. Jaffa's are round chocolates that are covered in a reddish orange-flavored shell. Think of it as a spherical orange flavored M&M. For the race, 50,000 Jaffa's were rolled down the steepest street in the world. They came as two races, first the red Jaffa's and then the purple Jaffa's. Throughout the entire time I kept on thinking about the confetti at New Years in Times Square, mostly because after the red race, people with neon orange "Jaffa Race" vests came to sweep the candies away before the purple Jaffa's came rolling down. The Jaffa Race also concluded Cadbury's Chocolate Carnival, and although I did not participate in many of their activities (and also because snow thwarted a bunch of the activities) I was given a lot of free chocolate this week. Free chocolate is always appreciated.

If you look closely, you'll see a stripe of red. Those are the Jaffa's racing down the street.

To continue on the track of chocolate and other edible noms, my whole wheat apple pumpkin cake has been devoured by a bunch of people. My almond cheesecake, which I made in Food Science lab, came in handy Thursday night when we had girls night.

Almond Cheesecake!

Food made during the first lab.

Girl's night was great. We started at my flat where we all ate carrots and celery with hummus, chips (like the American type, not French fries), cake, and some other things. We then went to Metro to dance. All in all, it was a great night and we had heaps of fun. It reminded me of the Mawr.

A cool car I spotted on my walk to the farmers market

As usual, Saturday morning rolled around and I moseyed to the farmers market. I picked up my usual veggies and came upon sheep shaped pasta. As you may predict, I bought them. After grocery shopping, eating a sugar crepe, and running some errands, I returned home to finally cook something with my fresh new food. I made some chicken and carrot soup and some potato salad.

Sheep pasta!

Some people came over later Saturday night to hang out but it was generally a quiet and relaxing night. We made a new friend tonight, a cat that Kat found outside. I'm unsure if we've named her at this point but we did give her some tuna. I'm sure i'll be writing more about this cat now since it is bound to come back for more tuna. But that is alright because she is awfully cute.

It is now Sunday morning, and I have just woken up to another cloudless sky. Today would have been a great day for a hike, though I have come down with the common cold and my bed seems to be the most suitable place at the moment. Leftover chicken soup will be consumed, and homework will get done. 

This is a shortie

For the second time in the last 24 hours, my class was cancelled, but I did not find out until I got to the door and read a "class cancelled because of weather" sign. Therefore, I am now sitting outside of the library with basically nothing to do for another hour. It has been brought to my attention that my blog posts are really long, and after re-reading them I realize that they are, so I apologize. This ones a shortie. :)

I would go inside the library and find a book, but I have my Up&Go with me, so I don't think I can bring that in. Up&Go is this drink that i've discovered here, and it's basically chocolate Gatorade. It sounds gross but it tastes great. I have also discovered Tim Tams. They are delightful chocolate cookies with chocolate in between and covered in chocolate. I could not think of a better description. My kiwihost Kinga taught us how to eat Tim Tams by biting opposite corners of the cookie and using it as a straw to drink hot coffee. The coffee makes the cookie soft and melts the chocolate bar in the middle and you end up with a fudgie chocolate mound. Ingenious.

Yesterday was another baking experiment night. I've merged into my let's-just-bake-things-without-a-recipe phase. I made whole wheat pumpkin apple cake and it actually turned out rather successful. I have a picture, but I am in the library with my little PC so none of the pictures are actually with me. Enough about food though, I will describe to you what is happening around me.

A man with a broken thumb just left, while another man just announced that he was going to go get a hash brown. Basically, other than that it's just a lot of people walking around. The number of people in flip flops, shorts and t-shirt still surprise me. Also, Dunedin doesn't seem to salt when it snows, probably because it rarely ever snows. But I basically walked a mile on large patches of black ice to get to my cancelled class. While I was trying not fall, there were people on bikes and skate boards going to class. This is the most epic July ever.

Anyways, I am really excited for my first ceramics class tonight! I have not been on a wheel since Westover so I don't think excited even begins to describe how I feel right now. I'm even almost excited to walk across all that black ice in the dark. Anyways, off to class now.

Penguins and snow and a wee bit of naked rugby

I woke up this morning to find this....

It's a mixture of hail and snow, if you can't tell...

Now that I am snuggled up in my fleece jacket with a cup of hot tea and some avocado on toast, I am ready to tell you about my adventures of this past week. I begin by saying, Harry Potter is over. Let me take you back to last Saturday, when my morning started with a noon showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. It was my first time at the movie theatre in New Zealand and my first time I ate ice cream in this country. The combination of movie plus delicious vanilla and raspberry ice cream was epic. To make things even better, my friend Grace, her two friends and I went out for sushi afterwards. The place we went to is called Savoury Japan, and the food there is delicious and cheap. That is something you don't hear me say often, since everything here is so expensive, but Savoury Japan sushi was well priced and tasty. I had a salmon avocado roll and a salmon avocado rice ball. I am as much a salmon enthusiast as an avocado enthusiast and the combination is grand. I did not realize exactly how much food I was getting and could not finish the rice ball, but I ate all the fish and avocado that was inside. While we are on the topic of sushi, I would also like to point out that much of the sushi here is made with chicken. Kat, the kiwihost in flat 5 (I am in 3) told us earlier that sushi was made with chicken because there isn't much fish around. I found this statement a little odd because New Zealand is an island surrounded entirely by ocean and only ocean. But after some thought, we realized that the right fishes probably don't live around here. Anyways, I have stuck to my salmon avocado combination since it is the same price as the ones with chicken. 

The next day, after stopping by the farmers market, Tucker, Sophie, Fredric, Grace and I went to Tunnel Beach. Tucker, Fredric, and Grace are flat mates and they live in flat 5 with Kat. Sophie is one of Julia's flat mates and lives on Leith Street, which is quite close to us, less than 10 minutes away. We took an early bus out to Corstorphine and walked the rest of the way to the beach. On the way, we stopped at a horse farm and fed the horses some grass that we pulled from the ground. Since the horses were a bit far away, Tucker and I whistled and waved grass and a carrot to beckon them. They came, we fed them grass, but not the carrot as it was Sophie's snack. 

As we continued to walk we also saw cows, sheep, and llamas. We finally reached a path that would lead us down to the beach. The path weaved through the hills that were laden with yellow flowers. The water was almost underneath you and you could see the waves splash onto the rocks. The path was not very steep, but was very muddy. Wearing jeans and my Converses was not my brightest idea, and I slipped many times on the way down (and on the way back up).

Some sheep we saw. They saw us walk towards them so they started to run, so we got a bunch of butts

The beginning of the path

After slippin n' slidin for about 25 minutes, we reached Tunnel Beach. Upon arrival we had to climb down a dark wet tunnel to reach the sandy part of the beach. On the other end of the tunnel there were a bunch of slippery and mossy rocks. My jeans and Converses were not helping me, but I managed to make it to the sandy part without getting too mossy. The beach itself is surround by huge rock structures and cliffs, putting the beach in the shade. The tide was relatively high when we arrived so there was a lot of running from the waves.

One of the rock structures/cliffs

Me and Fredric on the big rock

After a few hours, we were on our way back. As usual, the weather changed and it began to rain. That night was our first flat dinner where Kinga and I made burgers. We had a pretty quiet night in, ate dinner, and watched Shawshank Redemption.

Monday and Tuesday were relatively quiet nights here at The Lofts (my flats name). Monday night was my usual baking experiment night where I made carrot cake. I would say that the cake was pretty successful despite the middle being under cooked and the top being burnt. Tuesday night we watched Toy Story 3 and I managed to not cry. And on Wednesday night there was an Under the Sea themed party, where most people were not dressed up, except for the few fishes and lobsters that walked in. I also went to the grocery store and found this:

I kid you not. I miss Trader Joe's

Anyways, I went on the Speight's Brewery tour on Thursday with Julia and my flat mate Jose. The tour was about an hour and a half, and our guide told us about the history and current workings of Speight's. He also showed us some silly videos that were basically men riding horses and drinking beer. The Speight's Brewery is still working today, in their original building, which is about a 35 minute walk from campus. 

A lot of kegs

The guide showed us the different barrels that were used in the earlier days and how they were made. The lengthy process included wood being scooped out from the inside. He mentioned that the workers back in the day would get a size 1 barrel of beer every so often (per day or per week?) while they worked and they could take it home if they did not finish drinking it. They found out years later that the workers would dig out more wood from the inside of their barrels so that more beer could be stored. It is estimated that each worker got about a half gallon more per barrel because of this. 

After about an hour, they took us to a room where we got to sample the beer. I am not a fan of beer, but the different types I tried were not terrible. They had run out of apple cider and Julia and I were rather bummed, so after the tour we went next door to try some. Julia and I shared a cup, and of course, the apple cider one tasted better than the other five we tried during tour. I was also not carded, which was surprising, as I typically look like i'm 15. 

After our apple cider endeavor, we returned to Julia's flat, only after introducing her to Savoury Japan's rice balls on the way. We sat at her flat for a while, and waited for her flatmate Victoria to come home so we could go out. We went in search of a dance party, but soon realized that Dunedin night life does not begin at 10pm. We dwaddled a bit, went into mostly empty bars (because it was only 10pm) and eventually ended up at one where there was live music by these boys who looked like they were in high school. It was pretty decent and we stayed until a bit past 11, and by that time, there were a few people dancing at what I believe is called, Metro. Metro is an interesting place. The entrance has torches, you walk in and it looks kind of like a restaurant/bar hybrid that shows TV shows about fishing and sharks. We went downstairs and there were some other people and more dance-able music. 

Friday was another exciting day that started with my food science class (my favorite, so far) and then a naked rugby game. Naked rugby is exactly what it sounds like. One team was entirely naked, the other team wore towels and blue and orange flower leis. The game seemed to go well but I couldn't really follow what was going on and don't know which team won. It sort of seemed like a bunch of naked people running around and falling into piles for an hour. A naked player did manage to run into me, and another into this woman's tripod who was standing next to me. Here is the toweled team doing the Haka, a traditional Maori dance. I would show you pictures of the opposing team and the game in action, but I can't for obvious reasons. 

After my naked rugby experience, I walked into town to go see the Chinese Gardens. The garden is near the Octagon, the center of town, and was designed to be a late Ming/ early Qing Dynasty scholar's garden. Here are some pictures:

Later that night, a group of us went to watch the All Blacks (New Zealand's rugby team) play Fiji. New Zealand won, 60 to 14. Rugby is really big here, and they start really early. I often see little boys, probably no more than 8 or 9 years old practicing on the nearby field. Anyways, it was a good game, and I could follow it more easily because there was an actual field, and a score board. A lot of people went out after the game, but I headed back to my flat to do some laundry and to get some sleep because I was waking up early the next morning to see the penguins. 

That brings me to the penguins. Our original plan was to catch a bus at 8:50 in the morning, go to Larnach Castle and then walk to the Penguin Place. Turns out, at 8:50 in the morning, that the bus does not go to Larnach Castle, but could drop us off at the bottom of a 4km ice hill. Furthermore, the walk from Larnach Castle to the Penguin Place is about 3.5 hours. But, despite this major hiccup of ours, our day turned out quiet well. Here is what happened in our successful second attempt. 

At around 9:00AM Malori, Grace, and I went to iSite, the Dunedin visiting center, and booked a tour for the penguin place. The tour wasn't until 2:15 so we had quite a bit of time to spare. We went to the farmers market for breakfast. I originally wanted a crepe but the crepe truck wasn't there, so I settled on a bacon buttie. We also met a really cool Maori guitarist. I also found out some really cool facts from this woman who sells eggs. I learned that eggs are actually supposed to keep longer when they are not refrigerated. Also that the egg shells absorb flavors in the fridge so if you have a peeled onion in the fridge with the eggs then the eggs will soak in the onion flavors. I also learned that tomatoes and kiwi fruits also should not be refrigerated. After the farmers market we went to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. We did some arts and crafts and submitted our final pieces to an art competition. I decorated a kea bird picture. We then looked at the art exhibits. You can read about the exhibits here. Afterwards, we went to see St. Paul's Cathedral, which is right next door. 

Malori and I with our bacon butties

Inside the gallery 

St. Paul's Cathedral

After St. Paul's Cathedral we decided to go to a cafe before heading back to iSite for our tour. We found the Black Dog Cafe where they made beautiful and delicious hot chocolate. 

And then, as we were sipping our drinks, the All Blacks walk in. It was about lunch time and they were going to eat and play cards. I got them to sign my brown paper bag, since I had nothing else with me. We also took a picture with them. This was super nice, especially since I went to meet them on Tuesday, waited in line for an hour and when I finally got to the door they stopped letting people in. I have now officially met some of the All Blacks and watched a game.

From there we went back to iSite to catch our bus for our tour. We first stopped at Larnach Castle for about 15 minutes. We couldn't go in but we went around and saw the grounds. To read more about Larnach Castle, click here. 

From there, we drove to the Penguin place, a reserve for the yellow eyed penguin. The reserve is near a sheep farm and on a private beach, so people are not able to access the beach. The yellow eyed penguin is the second rarest penguin in the world and also one of the most endangered. They are a little over two feet tall and live only on the east coast of the south island and two little islands farther south. They do not have yellow eyes or stripes when they are born because they get them by eating a certain type of fish.

Because the penguins are very shy and because we could not access the beach, we had to look at them from a trench. The trenches were long tunnels that had different view points, which were little wooden boxes with slits so we could see out. We saw only three penguins that day, though only about forty are estimated to live on the beach. 

A home for a blue penguin.

Monty

This little fellas name is Monty. He had gotten lost when he was really young and had been starving. The reserve took him in and fed him until he was let out a little while ago. One can tell that he is still less than a year old because he has no yellow around his head. They usually begin to develop their yellow feathers after their first molt. His flippers are out because he was over heating and it helps them cool down. It was not warm though, it was just warm for the penguins. I was freezing in the trench. 

I don't know if this on has a name but we saw him swim up from the water and waddle to the hills. We were underneath a little wooden bridge in the trenches and heard him walk over us. 

Sunset at the penguin reserve

We got home at around 7:00PM and I made dinner, which was pasta with onions and broccoli. All together it has been a great week. I am also happy to say that my class chaos has now been resolved! My final class schedule is Chinese 4, Information Structure and Networks, Food and Cultural Perspectives (which I have been calling food science), and Maori Society. I am super excited for my food science lab this Wednesday because my assignment is to make almond cheesecake! I will keep you posted on how that turns out. But before I go, I will update you on the weather again. It is still hailing and snowing. It is actually quite exciting. 

Pineapple lumps, light switches, and judder bars

It is about bed time here, and i'm sitting in my bed waiting for my room to warm up. Heating the room is a daily pre-bed time routine, as well as a pre-wake up routine. I will turn on my little space heater and then sit bundled in my bed until it gets really warm. Then I turn the heater off because running it through the night would become too expensive, snuggle up in my covers and sleep until my alarm clock rings, unless I wake up because of the cold. Then, when my alarm clock rings, I turn the heater back on, snooze, and by the time I actually wake up, my room is nice and warm again. This is a comfortable energy efficient way of living, I think.

A week of classes has gone by, and to think about it, it wasn't that bad. The campus is much bigger than I thought it would be, mostly because I think of Bryn Mawr as a campus and Otago is.... well... many times bigger. My farthest class currently takes me about 20 or 25 minutes to walk to, and my closest is about 10-12. The campus is beautiful, despite its size, and much of it reminds me of Bryn Mawr. There is a bridge with a lantern above it (I don't have a picture yet), and the Archway looks much like the Pems.

One side of the Archway

The other side of the Archway

Also, there is a river that runs through the campus and one can often see ducks and seagulls meandering about. Actually, the river is where I first encountered a pair of paradise ducks. Paradise ducks are indigenous to New Zealand and they live in pairs. They are shaped like ducks, but their plumage is different. I was walking back from class one day and spotted them. As I was avidly taking pictures, a passerby explained that Paradise ducks have mates for life, and always stay together. They are quite pretty, and very monogamous. They seem like a lovely couple, and I often see them around the river near the clock tower.

The clock tower

Part of the river

Paradise ducks!

As this post is not incredibly long yet, I might as well write a bit about how New Zealand is different from the US. Here is a small list that i've developed so far:

• Candies are called "lollies" and so far I've had Pineapple Lumps and Buzz Bars. Pineapple lumps are chewy pineapple taffy like stuff covered in chocolate. Buzz Bars are marshmallows and layer of caramel covered in chocolate.
• Kiwi's often use the word "wee", which I am quite fond of. "Look there at those two wee houses."
• Speed bumps are called judder bars.
• Cookies are called biscuits, and I think biscuits are called buns. Chips are called crisps and fries are called chips.
• The light switches are backwards, so you flip up to turn off and down to turn on. Every power outlet also has a switch next to it to turn the electricity on or off. By switching the switch off at an outlet helps save energy.
• New Zealand bills do not rip. I was afraid to try until many Kiwi's confirmed it. You can try really hard but they won't rip. Don't try scissors though because you can still cut through them.
• The eggs are not refrigerated. New Zealand supermarkets are much like those in the US, but I can never find the eggs because I go look for them in the cold section.
• I think the whole "toilets-flush-the-other-way" thing is a myth. My toilet just goes FLOOOSH in no particular direction.
• You don't need to tip at restaurants and such. It is not common but you are allowed to if you want to. 
• Tax is included in everything, which is nice because you pay what you see on the tag. Except almost everything is more expensive to begin with. Though, wine is pretty cheap, and pretty decent, but anything else (imported hard stuff) is reeaally expensive.
• There are no pennies or nickels. Everything is rounded. Sometimes I forget that coins can be up to $2. 
• Most people (students?) line dry their clothing. Drying is expensive. Our flat rule is one dry cycle per person per week, which is actually really nice. I just did laundry today, and about half of my stuff got dried in the dryer and the other half is on the drying racks right now.

So just a bit more about life in Dunedin before I head to bed. I am enjoying Dunedin quite a lot. It is the second largest city after Auckland. Though, I wouldn't compare Dunedin to NYC or Boston, because they are very different. There are about 125,000 people in Dunedin but about 22,000 of them are students. So if you can imagine, every summer there are 22,000 fewer people in the city. Anyways, i've gone out a few times, explored parts of the city, including the beaches that I mentioned in he previous post. On Tuesday (the second day of clases), there was the Castle Street keg party, which I briefly walked through to get to my flat. Just a vague summary of it, to spare you the details, people get dressed up and drink a lot. As for an idea of the costumes, there were pink cows, lumberjacks, and others. Feel free to use your imagination because whatever you think of was probably there. Anyways,  ta-ta for now...

They are asleep... which I will be too, momentarily. 

And so the weather can't make up its mind, but nor can I

I woke up this morning to cloudy gray skies but quickly became distracted by Facebook, as I do many mornings. It was 9:25 and I had planned to leave my flat at 9:20 to get to my 10 o'clock class, but instead of racing out the door, I made toast with avocado on it. Thanks to my awesome kiwihost, Kinga, I am now fully addicted to avocado on toast. With my toast in hand, I left to go look for my food science class. I have learned to leave really early for things, because there is no Bryn Mawr time and the number of times I have gotten lost is starting to become embarrassing. It took me 28 minutes to find my class this morning, not to mention the 5 people I stopped to ask for directions. I had even found the building the day before but still managed to not be able to navigate to it a day later. This campus is quite big but I am determined to learn it by next week. I will keep you guys updated.

While I was walking to food science (with my avocado and toast) it began to rain and my Converses got wet and my feet froze for the rest of the day. I walked into class at 10:01AM except I managed to miss enough information that the person next to me had to fill me in. Again, there is no Bryn Mawr time here. In fact, professors have started classes so promptly in the last two days that I think I should prepare to arrive 10 minutes early just in case. I plan on leaving for class incredibly early tomorrow. I also ran out of avocado.

Anyways, I walked out of my food science class an hour later and headed to the gym to sign up for art classes. It was still raining when I arrived at the gym but after signing up for a ceramics class and a kiln fired glass class the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Not only had the sun come out, but there were no clouds in the sky and the sun was so bright that I could not see where I was going since the ground was still wet and everything shined. I went to my Maori Society class, with my still wet shoes, but was generally happy that the sun had finally come out. Directly after Maori Society, I had computer science lab, conveniently in the building next door. Also, a little side note about my classes and their locations. My computer science class meets 4 times a week in 4 different locations. It is the same with food science, except food science meets 3 times a week. Anyways, once I was in lab, the clouds set back in, and all of a sudden it was snowing. SNOWING! But by the time I left lab at 3pm, it was sunny again, with no clouds in the sky. I got home, and  within a few minutes, it was raining! So when people say Dunedin can have all four seasons in a day, they really meant it.

On to some information about my classes. At this point i've been to each of my classes once, so this is a perfect time for first reactions. On Monday morning, after going to the gym at the crack of dawn, I headed over to my computational modelling class. There are ten people in my class, eight of which are men. My professor showed us some videos of walking robots, and told us that our first assignment was to create a rimless wheel that would walk on a slope. I became increasingly concerned about the class as Mike, our professor went on to write equations on the board and talk about physics. Apparently, I'm supposed to have a year of college calculus and physics, differential equations, and a background in MATLAB,  hence I cannot make up my mind about whether to stay or to go to another class that Deepak (my major adviser at Bryn Mawr) had chosen. The topics seem really interesting in this class that i'm in, though, i'm really not prepared.

After computer science, I went to Chinese. This class also shocked me, for three reasons. 1.) It only meets once a week for two hours. 2.) I placed into Chinese 4. And 3.) Class started and my professor basically asked us a read an excerpt  from a book. Now you may think an excerpt from a book isn't anything at all, and when it is in English, it really isn't. But I really wasn't ready to be reading Chinese literature. BUT! the good thing is, i'm determined to read that book because I feel like it would really help with my I-can't-read-but-I-can-speak-Chinese phenomenon. Anyways, Monday was quite the day of shocking classes and getting lost one too many times. I returned to my flat and ate avocado on toast.

Earlier today (Tuesday) I began my day of many seasons with the food science class, which I believe I will enjoy greatly. We watched a video of how food developed and such and labs will be begin next week where we will cook food. I will also get to wear a lab coat! Following food science I had Maori Society, which is my biggest class. There are 4 people in my Chinese class, 10 in computational modelling, 30 in food science, and 564 in Maori Society. Maori Society is composed of mostly internationals students, many on study abroad/exchange, like me, and for the entire 50 minute lecture, the professor basically repeated "Do your work, come to class, hand things in, do not plagiarize, check the syllabus, do the readings, PLEASE." I think I will enjoy Maori Society a lot too, once we actually start learning things other than to do our work. I had CS lab after that, which was two hours of figuring out MATLAB and coding, and watching the snow outside. I was going to go buy avocados after lab but is was so cold I just went home. Alas, no avocado and toast tomorrow morning.

Anyways, I baked some rainbow cookies earlier, and watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice with Kinga and her dad. I also met two of my flat mates today, Jos is from Mexico, and David is from Oregon. My last flat mate Mike will be arriving next week. More about the big happy family later on, once I've met and gotten to know everyone. I should probably go to bed now. I only have one class tomorrow because food science lab doesn't begin until next week. Good time to go to the grocery store for avocados.

Week 1 Adventures

Kia Ora Friends! Kia ora means "Hello!" in Maori. I have now been in New Zealand for a little over a week and am finally settled into my room and getting used to the cold. I now only use two blankets and go to bed in one layer of clothing, as opposed to sleeping with my thermals, winter coat, two blankets and my sleeping bag, which I did for the first three days. As promised, here are some pictures. I will begin with my room, and then venture outside throughout this post.

Here is my double bed and balcony. There is another window to the right of my bed.

The other side of my room, taken from the balcony.

Onwards to more adventurous things i've done since the last post. Last Sunday, Julia and I went looking for the grocery store. On the way we found the Dunedin Botanic Gardens and stopped to take a look. We realized later on that the walk through the botanic gardens seems to be a shorter route to the super market than walking alongside it, which is nice because I have now taken a few walks through the garden to see the pretty flowers and ducks.

Flowers from the Botanic Garden. I remind you yet again it is winter here, but nevertheless,  blooming flowers. 

The garden was great. There is a pond where little kids could feed the ducks and other people took leisurely strolls. On the other side of the garden we found what seems to be the other side of town. The supermarket called New World is right across the street and we went in to buy some groceries for the week. One of the first things we saw were yams, but these are not the yams that I usually see in the US. Here is a picture.

Yams? I guess so. 

As we walked through the market, I realized that some foods are rather expensive, especially things that are not in season, which I suppose is reasonable since they are not as readily available. But they are still wickedly expensive. For example, tomatoes are something like NZD$17 for a kilo, and peppers, are about NZD$16 for a kilo. And you may be thinking, "Why would you need a kilo of peppers?" and the answer is I don't, but buying one pepper is like $4.50. I picked out some of the cheaper veggies, including spinach, and potatoes (are they a vegetable?), and a little thing of broccoli. In general, I've been eating a lot of spinach and potatoes. We then wandered to the dry foods section, where I realized that cereals have different names! I took a bunch of pictures but i'll just show you Rice Krispies since it takes a long time to upload pictures.

Anyways, we collected our groceries and after paying for them, we sat outside and ate lunch. I had a farmers quiche and Julia had a quiche like thing with pumpkin and feta. I've noticed that pumpkins are pretty big here. They were in my quiche too. Very yummy, and perhaps in season.

Next we decided to climb Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. We thought it was nearby, but it wasn't really. But we went anyways, and then climbed the steepest street in the world with our groceries. What a workout! There were even stairs on the way. 

This is approximately half way up Baldwin Street. Notice the Truffula Tree.  I'm not sure what they are actually called but they remind me of The Lorax. 

Finally, we made it to the top, with all of our groceries, and sat on the bench to rest for a few minutes and to look at the hills and mountains. They were beautifully green and speckled with sheep. The sun was beginning to set and we decided that we should head on home. One thing about Dunedin weather is that you can literally have all four seasons in one day. In my one week here, I have experienced days were it would be warm and sunny enough to not wear a jacket, and within the hour be caught in rain, and be incredibly cold and wet, and then an hour later have the sun be out again. It is quite crazy, and has taught me to always bring a jacket and umbrella. On our way home though, we stopped by a playground, to go on the swings. I also managed to fall off the back of the swing. There was also a zip line at the playground, which made me and Julia wonder what playground regulations are in New Zealand because zip lines are awesome, but you don't usually find them in playgrounds in the US. However, we were both too tall to go on this one. That night, we got home, made dinner and basically just chilled for the rest of the night. Kind of literally as it was really cold inside. 

On Monday, I ran some errands and found the Octagon, the center of town. The train station is there, and supposedly it is the second most photographed building in the southern hemisphere. I took some pictures of it. 

The station continues to both the right and the left but I couldn't walk farther back without crossing the street.  Next time I go i'll try to get a better shot of it, perhaps the entire building. 

At the Octagon I found the movie theatre, which are called cinemas here. This is where I found out that all four midnight showings of Harry Potter are sold out. I had hopes of watching it a day earlier than everyone in the US. Oh well. That day, Julia and I also went to Friendly Khmer Satay Noodle House where I had some delicious peanut noodles. This is also where we tried New Zealand soda. I had Ginger Beer, and Julia and L&P. Basically Ginger Beer tastes like Ginger Ale with lemon, and L&P tastes like my Ginger Beer with even more lemon. That night a group of ten of us went to this Indian Restaurant where they have $10 Curries on Monday nights. It was fun being with everyone and enjoying good food. We actually were there talking for so long that they needed to close and very nicely and slowly pushed us out of their store.

Tuesday was the beginning of orientation and basically we just took a campus tour. Other than that, I just  went around town. On Wednesday we were welcomed by a group of people from the university including the mayor of Dunedin. There were many introductions, and panel type things about the school. Then there was this "Introduce yourself" type thing where the orientation facilitators would call out a country and everyone from that country would stand up. Usually there were two or three people that stood up for each country. Sometimes for bigger countries there were ten to fifteen. And they they called America and quite literally 60% of the room stood up. We were in one of the lecture halls that hold hundreds of people, in case you were wondering what 60% was like. Anyways, then the Public Safety of the university and people from the police department came to speak to us. One of the the things I remember most from the police officer is, "I want to remind you that setting a couch on fire is illegal. You will be charged for arson. Also, if you happen to see a couch on fire, do not feel the need to jump over it."

Thursday was class registration. And let me begin by saying that I have this new found appreciation for Virtual Bryn Mawr. Registration at Otago includes going to this building with your course form and finding the department of the course to sign off on it. To be honest, my first three classes were simple enough, but finding the signature for my computer science class was a little harder. At the computer science table, I was told that the department was split, so I actually needed to go to the Computational Modelling/Statistics/Math department. After being in line again, that department said that they could not sign off on it because they were not the professors for that class and told me to go to the science building down the street to find the professor. At that building, I found out that the person I was looking for was not in that morning and was not my professor anyways, and I was told to go find this other person in the Zoology department who would not be in until after 11:30AM. So I dwaddled around for a little bit until 11:30 and headed over to the zoololgy building where I found my professor to finally sign off on my last course. In general, I am signed up for a computer science course that is taught by a computer science professor that has an office in the Zoology building. I'm glad I got that signature and I even bonded with the gecko in the Zoology building. After getting all of my courses signed off, I was able to get my ID card, which I have to say, is much more colorful than the Bryn Mawr one, which is not the point, but I can now enter many more buildings! That night the university set up this get together thing at 10 Bar, a local bar in the Octagon. There was a lot of dancing and good music, and tasty snacks, though I was really just dancing.

Friday was the Taieri Gorge train trip. This was a trip from the Dunedin Train Station (the pretty building in the picture above) and took us out of the city to see the country side. Briefly after leaving the city, the conductor announced, "We are now leaving civilization." The views were beautiful and reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. We travelled through narrow tunnels and skinny bridges. They allowed us to stand on the outside of the train, where I took pictures of basically everything I saw. I even have pictures of cows, horses, llamas, alpacas, and of course a lot of sheep. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Upon returning from the train trip, there was a barbecue ready for lunch. The food was quite good, and the vegetarian option included a pumpkin spinach burger. I'm not a vegetarian, but i'm quite a fan of pumpkin. After lunch, Julia, Sophie, one of Julia's flat mates from England, and I went to the Chinese Gardens. Since it had started drizzling, we decided to come back on a sunny day since it costs $6 to get in.

Yesterday (Saturday) I began my morning early, waking up at 7:30AM to go to the farmers market, which is right by the train station near the Octagon. The farmers market is amazing. Everyone is really nice, and there were many free samples. I tried New Zealand honey, hazelnuts, and different types of cheeses. The people selling hazelnuts were really nice and talked to us for about 20 minutes. Kinga, my kiwihost, introduced me to bacon butties, which are these sandwiches made with bacon, relish, onion, mustard and ketchup. It was quite delicious. There were also sweet and savory crepes amongst other foods. There was produce that was cheaper than what you would find at a supermarket, and a lot of it was organic. I bought some apples and pears, and some pumpkin. I also bought some Moroccan sausages.

Produce at the farmers market. 

Bacon Butties!

After a few stops and errands on the way, Julia, Sophie, and I raced home to change, put my sausages in the fridge and run back to the Octagon to catch the bus to the beach. I went to the beach with my neighbors, Tucker, Fredric, and Grace, and Julia's flatmates, Sophie and Victoria. Tucker's friend Chris also came along. The sand at the beach was very fine and the water was clean and crisp. A few of us, me included, went in the water, which was incredibly cold, though after about five minutes you couldn't feel anything anyways. We walked along the beach, and saw people surfing and wondered how they had not frozen yet. We met a very friendly yellow lab that followed us for a while before returning to his owner. We walked from St. Kilda's beach to St. Clairs beach.

From left to right: me, Sophie, Julia

Beach! It was sunny when we arrived, but then got really cloudy, and then sunny again for a while before it rained and froze all of us. 

The amount of sand I had to pour out of my shoe after leaving the beach. 

Notice Public Toilets and the South Pole. Both important places. 

It was sunny again! 

There was a hiking trail off the side of the beach. This is right before it rained again. Oh the weather. 

Anyways, after coming home mostly wet from the beach. (Side note, the sun came out as I entered my flat...) I made dinner, which was veggie and sausage strata. Thank you to Meegan who taught me how to make it. Anyways, it is about dinner time again, so I should go make something, and then tomorrow is my first day of classes! Current plan is to leave incredibly early, to go find the building and classroom. There is so much more I want to write about, though, I feel like this post is already quite long...