These have nothing to do with New Zealand.

These are just things I find on the internet.

Cute animal pictures

This was sent out on a club listserv at Canterbury. Kiwi humo(u)r is my favo(u)rite.

Literary Mixtape

Good Music

And for good measure, here's a picture of where I was this past weekend (which I will blog about later when I'm not lazy.)

Here's a picture of the sunrise out of my window this morning
to convince my parents that I actually woke up in time for my 8 am.

Not much has changed since my last post, except now classes have finally started. It doesn't exactly feel like it though, since yesterday I only had class 1-3, and today I had one at 8-9 and my next one doesn't start til 4, so I've kind of just been wasting my internet data usage on American tv shows.

Random tidbits I've noticed in the past week or so of living here:
-Kiwis love alcohol. Like they looooove alcohol. I thought the States had a drinking culture until I came here and saw how severely wrong I was.
-It's physically impossible to eat unhealthily on a consistent basis here. Believe me, I've tried.
-I have probably replaced my Dr Pepper addiction with one to coffee (specifically, lattes). Yum. This may prove to be an expensive habit, but so probably is my DP one and I still survive.. right?
-Kiwis know as much/more than I do about American culture sometimes. Except they get the randomest selection of shows on their 4 main channels. (Satellite TV exists, but is extremely extremely uncommon.) Like Lifetime/BBC/ABC shows will all show back-to-back on the same network. I can't figure out the selection process at all. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my free time without Toddlers & Tiaras and Say Yes to the Dress and all the other TLC shows that filled my winter break. #firstworldproblems amirite?
-Having to monitor my internet usage has shown me just how much time I spend unnecessarily on the computer. Eek. The problem being that without much TV to watch, I'm kind of at a loss of what to do while my friends are in class/asleep/generally unresponsive. I can only go to the gym so often.
-Chch *never* stops breezing. Even if it's 75 and sunny, I feel chilly. So not what I'm used to with summertime weather.

Try this. It's amazing.

-Wine is the cheapest thing to drink in New Zealand since it's the only domestic product pretty much, but I'm not really a huge fan of bitter things. (Un)luckily (for my wallet), I've discovered the pleasures of pink moscato and haven't looked back. $7.99/bottle? I'll take 3. ...True story, there's 3 bottles in my fridge right now.
-There's no sales tax here and their $1 & $2 denominations are in coins and there's no pennies. I don't know if I think this is silly or wonderful. Both maybe.
-Also I'm loving the exchange rate, because it's in my favor -- if I spend $65 NZD, it's less than $55 USD, which gives me a whole extra $10 USD more than I expect to have in my bank account. And if you know me, you know that I don't often get pleasant surprises on my bank statements. Mostly just shame and fees.
--This also means that the All Blacks jersey I'm lusting after is only $84 USD!! Way more affordable. ..right? (hinthint my-birthday-is-in-two-months hinthint)

Here's what it looks like, in case you forgot.
And here's where you can buy it! So convenient! I rock.
(Size medium, por favor.)

--Also also, in NZ they say Adidas "a-di-dus" (where the "a" is as in "apple"), as opposed to the American "uh-dee-duz". I can't figure out why, phonetically it doesn't make sense to me.
-Facebook is 137% more boring when you're never on at the same time as other people. And/or if you're trying to celebrate Mardi Gras when it's still Tuesday in the States. ...just an example off the top of my head....
-T9 is not a technology that needs to make a reappearance. I miss a full keyboard. And not having to delete my text inbox 4 times a day.

This is my phone. It has an FM tuner and one game called
"SpaceBall" which is like Snake but stupider. Technology!

I have yet to do any exploring of NZ, but my friends and I are (hopefully) planning a trip to Kaikora this weekend, which is about 2.5 hours north of Christchurch. I've heard it's beautiful. Yay traveling!

Kia ora faithful blog readers (and by that I mean my parents). Besos!

Kia ora!

Question mark?

It's so typical of a study abroad blogger to apologize for taking longer than expected, and as someone who regularly posts pictures as my group's unofficial historian, I've always found it to be silly -- of course you have time to update your blog! It doesn't take long! ...Now I understand what they mean. Especially since the longer I go without writing this, the more I have to write and thusly the longer it'll take to do, so I have been avoiding it as much as unable to write it. I finally have some free time though, so here's my (hopefully extensive enough) recap of my past week. I apologize for the length, but it's been awhile.

The day was finally here! My countdown clock on my phone reached 0 at midnight Monday night, and the excitement just bubbled up. Everything was finally so real. After a mother-daughter date at the nail spa and a slight scare with my trusty Rainbow sandals, I had my last Whataburger (and consequently, Dr Pepper) for a solid 5 months. Of all of the tear-jerking things of the day, that was probably #1. Kidding. Maybe. Anyways, after being dropped off at DFW by my parentals, I safely made it to LAX with about 5 hours before my international flight. As the terminal where Air NZ was situated in LAX isn't exactly the biggest of places, IFSA-Butler students found each other, and also started a game of "do you think that person is coming with us or not" with pretty much any 20something that walked past. We got pretty good at it. Eventually it was time to board the biggest plane I have ever seen in my life and probably will ever see (save my return flight home, which I assume will be on a similarly-situated aircraft). I wish I had taken a picture of it. After the best airplane safety video I've ever watched...

This literally happened.

...we finally were in the air. Thanks to James' thoughtful pre-flight gift of two NyQuil, I had a wonderfully easy trip as I was asleep for a solid 10 hours. We landed on a beautifully sunny day (it's summer here), and drove straight to the YMCA-operated Shakespear Park. (No, I didn't spell that wrong; it was the name of the family that used to own the land before it became a national park.) From then on, I could not stop taking landscape pictures.

I wasn't joking about the landscapes.

Also, sheep.

And there's literally tens more where those came from. Orientation at Shakespear Park is a big blur of physical activities -- hiking, kayaking, archery, rock climbing, the usual things that granola people like. 

An accurate itinerary for every day of orientation.
(Kai = Maori for food)

They also fed us the most food of all time, except all of it was extremely healthy and grass-fed and super organicky so I obviously ate little of it. But not to fear, we honestly ate 6 times a day, so I am not withering away to nothing just yet. The last night of IFSA orientation, we spent the night at a Maori marae (muh-rye), where we learned about the history and culture of NZ's indigenous peoples. At the gift shop of said location, we discovered an English-to-Maori translation guidebook that provided hours of endless entertainment, and has also inspired me to do a Maori word/phrase of the day on this blog, time permitting.


On Sunday, us Chch'ers (Chch is the shorthand version of Christchurch, FYI) bid our tearful goodbyes to our IFSA Auckland counterparts and finally boarded our last piece of public transportation towards our final destination. It is not nearly as sunny here as Auckland was -- it's currently 50's and rainy, which is depressing, given that it's supposed to be the middle of their summer. That being said, our flats are actually extremely nice, and I was super excited just to be able to sit and not be orientated for awhile. Once I got unpacked, we headed over to the apartment complex's common room and immediately made some Kiwi friends that have been extremely useful in navigating the pitfalls that is the regionalized differences of the English language. Their sayings are weird as. But I am one step further towards my goal of being able to imitate a Kiwi accent before I leave in June, so that's good.


Yesterday, I bought groceries. Today was the international orientation, and tomorrow is registration. I would expound on these three days, but nothing else significant comes to mind. I'm just looking forwards to getting into a routine finally after all this anticipation, but that will have to wait til Monday. For now, I have a school-sponsored toga party to look forward to on Friday, and who-knows-what in between.


And finally, I am officially in love with the All Blacks rugby team here so if anyone wants to buy me a jersey/send me the $150 for my birthday that would be great okay thanks bye.

Maori phrase of the day: 

Kei te nui te ahua o taku nono i roto i tenei? (Does my bum look big in this?)

So close.

But yet so far.