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...