A Post Punctuated with Pictures

Tonight:
Alec wears a skirt.
Alec can’t find The Ring.
Alec builds a house.
…and I make a Top Gear reference in my blog introduction to avoid the continuing trend of apologizing for how long it’s been since I’ve posted! (Apologies…)


The Abel Tasman trip breakdown:

Friday
Waking up at the crack of nothingness, I headed downtown from my flat, pack on my back and camera at the ready. Our first leg of the trip was to take the Interislander Ferry from Wellington to Picton, which is on the south island. It was early in the morning, and, having not eaten breakfast, we were all feeling a bit peckish by the time we had all gotten on the boat. Rumor had it that the first hour would be smooth, the second wavy, and the third smooth. I’ve been on a few boats in my time, and waves were never a problem, so I boldly explored the levels of the ship with some friends, finishing at the top deck
and continuing on to the cafeteria. By this time we were on to the second hour of the trip, and waves were showing, 2 meter swells making the whole ship swayyyyyyyyyyy. I didn’t lose any food on this journey, but I certainly did not finish my scrambled eggs.
My only option was to stumble back to the stable part of the ship, huddle up in a corner, and try to fall asleep to some music. Oh yeah, and the three hour bus ride through winding mountain roads was fun too. Blergh.

But that’s not the point! The point is that we ended up at The Barn just outside of Abel Tasman national park.

The Barn is a backpackers (hostel) that contained enough beds for all fifteen of us (give or take), and a delightful living space and fireplace for charades. We spent an hour or so exploring the surrounding area and beach until it got too dark to see. Being on the ocean, this beach had tides, but tides unlike any I have seen before. Instead of going up 10-15 feet- sorry, 3-4 meters, it stretched for at least a kilometer. It started as a flat beach and then, over the course of that great distance, slowwwwwly, ever so slowly, turned into the ocean. There was no distinct shoreline, and the only way I can describe walking towards the ocean is the feeling of approaching a huge body of water that feels as though it is on top of you and will rush over and envelop you at any second. Luckily it didn’t, and I made it back for a game of that charades and a good night sleep.


Saturday
When was the last time YOU hiked at a chipper pace for 7 hours? I thought so… A boat took us from The Barn up the coast to the beginning of our hike. On the way, we passed Split Apple Rock and some seals!
Seeing seals on NatGeo and in the zoo is a much different experience than seeing them on the rocks on the shores of New Zealand, let me tell you. They also sound cool as. (Yes, I intentionally inserted NZ slang in there in the hopes that one day it will become natural).

Our hike led us along the steep coastline. The trees along the path would every once and a while provide a clearing through which we could see some amazing views. (That's Ben. He goes to Northwestern too!)
Some highlights were the rickety bridge and the houses. The houses are built on property that was owned before Abel Tasman National Park became a national park in the first place. Since then, no additional property has been made available for building, thus the values of the existing ones have skyrocketed into the millions. The surrounding landscape prompts the question: “People… people LIVE here?”
Eventually we made it back to The Barn with moments of daylight to spare; collapsing in bed in fits of spontaneous exhaustion.


Sunday
I have kayaked at home around lake Calhoun, but of course, this is New Zealand, and it was the ocean. We were layered up in waterproof jackets, kayaking skirts (woot), and lifejackets to keep us warm, dry, and floating (respectively), and set off south down the coast. We passed Split Apple rock again, got to see the seals closer this time, and played some cool kayak games. These particular 2-person kayaks had rudders that the rear-seating person would steer with pedals. That was me! It’s the closest to driving that I’ve come since getting here, and I miss it. One of the games we played was for the person steering to close their eyes while the front person shouts instructions to them in a race to a set finish line. It’s a miracle I emerged without bruises…

We kayaked for about 3 hours before it was time to head home. I was ready for the ferry this time, though, and a kind friend (Ben) leant me a Dramamine pill to calm me through the 5 meter swells on the way back to Wellington.

Another trip that Arcadia planned for us was a recent excursion to the Weta Cave. Weta Workshop is based in the Miramar suburb of Wellington. They’re most known for their digital effects, miniature, model, costume, weapon, and landscape design for Avatar, District 9, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of the Lord of the Rings movies, the upcoming Tin Tin, and many more. For “copyright and security reasons”, we could not go into any of the studio spaces themselves, but they did have a model/souvenir shop containing some original works from the movies. I proceeded to nerd out until it was time for the viewing of a specially made behind-the-scenes video when I, well, proceeded to nerd out some more. The movie was narrated by Richard Taylor (10 points to anyone besides dad who knows who that is), and I was proud/ashamed to know 90% of the other people in the video by sight and name for their work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I will have to go back again.


School has been going very well and all my classes remain quite interesting. I recently finished my first design project in one of the architecture papers I’m in. I designed a beach bach (“cabin” is the Minnesota-speak) for a sight near Wellington on Pukarua Bay. The design presentation went fairly well, with criticisms coming with compliments. Overall, I’m very happy with how far the design came in only four short weeks, and I’m excited to continue on to the next one!


Today is Monday, which means that it is less than a week until mid-trimester break. I will be travelling down to the south Island with five others to explore. We’ll be near Queenstown, traveling to the nearby Greenstone/Caples trail in Fiordland. A four day hike leads to a day at the coastline and a glacier hike a few days after. This will leave a few days afterward to catch up in Wellington and (fingers crossed), write about it before school continues on September 5th. After that, only 5 weeks of class remain, and exam month after. Where did the time go?

Words, words, words…
can’t be bothered = meh/ not right now / too lazy too / don’t want to / it’s too much work / etc,
backpackers = hostel
lakeside cabin = bach “pronounced “batch”

p.s.- it snowed today. You'd think the world was ending. I took a view photos, and here's a link to A VIDEO SOMEONE MADE of snow falling in Wellington. What if they did that in Minnesota? That'd be a lot of cheesy soundtrack to find... http://vimeo.com/27709878

Soon, soon....

Hello! Due to a rather intense deadline tomorrow (Monday) and a related one this coming Friday for completion of my beach house design, my blog is bare and I apologize for the silence. I look forward to writing all about the beach house project, the Abel Tasman National Park trip a week ago, and my plans for the quickly approaching mid-semester break!

Also, four hours from now marks the moment when I will have officially been in NZ for a MONTH since my July 1st landing. Hardly seems like a week...

Cheers!
-Alec

---Have YOU ever Tim-Tam-Slammed?---

Long time no blog to all. I wanted to get through the first week of classes before I could convince myself that I would survive them and be able to write again. Turns out I could!
(side note, I just completed another week of class since writing this intro, sooo that makes two weeks down. Woot!)

I have three papers, totaling 60 credits. 30 of those credits are in one Architectural Design Integration course. The first major project is to design a beach house near Wellington. There is a real site (that I’ve visited) and a real client who wants to know if building on the site is possible for their budget or even practical at all. There’s a pretty substantial brief outlining the expectations of both the client and the professor. In two weeks, I should have a completely designed house fully analyzed for lighting, heating, acoustics, and aerodynamics. Needless to say it’s slightly overwhelming, but with four hour small-session tutorials twice a week, I don’t feel like I’m left hanging in the dark behind a couple hundred other students who’ve specialized in design a year longer than myself. The below photos are from the site. One faces the site (it's left of the bridge and right of the shack), while the other is the view from the site itself.



The second course tags along to the first, providing four short projects about analyzing the lighting, acoustics, heating, and aerodynamics of a building so that we can apply the techniques to our beach house design and future projects as well.

The final paper is an introduction to music technology: microphones, pre-amps, editing software, etc. Obviously I already have a little experience in the area, but I’m really looking forward to learning it a bit more formally.

A definite highlight of the week (and I’m sorry that you can’t go a step without hearing about it) was the Harry Potter premier! The midnight showing was sold out, but I managed to get tickets with some friends to the 3am showing at the Embassy Theatre, which we all know as the place that premiered the Lord of the Rings movies. They did a whole getup inside with posters of the Hogwarts Houses and were also selling Butterbeer, Hagrid’s rock cakes, and pumpkin pasties. We split the cost and tried them all. Each was a great success, though I preferred the pumpkin pasties. I had altogether too much fun, grabbed a couple hours of sleep, and made it on time to my 9am class.
And if any of you think that I scandalously went to the final premier not dressed in character, think again. Notice the "jacket unbuttoned over hoodie" look that I share with the one and only Hermione Granger. Jealous?


Another highlight was a bike around the bays that I did with the Arcadia group. We started in the heart of Wellington and followed the coast south past the airport down until we could see the south island.
It was beautiful, but WINDY. 65 mph gusts kind of windy. Incidentally, we looked at a wind measurement chart of Wellington vs. Chicago in one of my architecture papers, and Wellington literally blows Chicago away. Biking one direction, this was an advantage. Biking the other way.... well, not so much.


Yes, these are $30 sticky notes. School supplies are 'spensive.


Today I learned a lot about tea. One of my flat mates works in a tea shop in town and brought back a few different kinds to analyze “for work”. The tea culture is HUGE here (hi Shannon!), and I intentionally didn’t say “down here”, because it seems that Kiwis don’t appreciate the association of being “down under”. Australia and New Zealand are friendly, but everyone here knows that New Zealand is better, as are their teas. Duh.

Other than that, I’m really looking forward to this weekend, when I’ll be journeying with the Arcadia study abroad group to Abel Tasman National Park. We’ll be hiking, kayaking, and swimming (depending on weather?) and taking obnoxious amounts of pictures at this very northern part of the southern island. Now, if only the 95 degree weather from Minnesota could replace the 50’s weather here for a day or two at the beach….

Realizing I’ve missed quite a few slang of the days/posts/weeks/etc, so here are six (sorry if I repeat)
How you going? -“how you doing” doesn’t seem to exist
Boot = trunk of a car
trousers = pants
pants = underwear
she’ll be right = it’ll be ok

And in a league of it’s own: “sweet as”. Replace “sweet” with a lot of different words and it works. Cool as, hungry as, tall as. “Aww man that bloke was fine as, but I just couldn’t be bothered.” Kiwis are too cool to finish their similes! It's like whatever you're talking about is "sweet as" anything you could possibly imagine ever! And then use it casually. Got it? Good.

Living Large

When visiting a new place, the focus always seems to be on the differences. The reaction will be “ooo that’s so DIFFERENT from home!” My strategy thus far has been, for lack of a better, less overused phrase, to embrace them. To give you an idea, I shall list them off:

1. Heading North means getting warmer.
2. 30 degrees is warm.
3. July is winter.
4. Prices have tax included and tipping isn’t really a thing, so for example, $14 for a meal with all that included plus the exchange rate would be advertised as $9 in the US.
5. Internet plans are monitored by GB use and are not “unlimited” as most home plans are in the US.
6. Drinking tap water… actually that’s still cool, it even tastes like Bloomington water.
7. Walk on the left on sidewalks and stairs
8. Don’t use the peace sign palm inwards
9. Looking outside is much more interesting
10. Walking outside is much more interesting
11. Thinking about being outside is much more interesting
12. Holy crap look outside isn’t it so much more interesting!
13. I’m going outside, hold that whole “differences” thought...

A Picture Perfect Place

*DISCLAIMER* This post is fairly long, even after I tried to keep things short. The four orientation days were packed with events and travelling, and would have been spread between different blog posts, had I had internet access. If you’re up for it, hunker down with a hot chocolate (or lemonade rather, it’s summer there, right?) and read on.

DAY ZERO – June 29th

On the flight over from LA, one of those fairly obvious thoughts struck me that, at the time, seemed to be a life-changing personal discovery. I have travelled to many different places before, including places where English isn't spoken. What makes this trip scarier than those? Two reasons: First, this isn't "vacation". This is living and studying. If I don't like the place I'm at, it's not "it'll be fine we're going back in a week anyway", it's "deal with it, kiddo, 'cause you're LIVING HERE for five months. Second, I'm not going somewhere where I'm with family, or friends, or acquaintances. I'm with complete strangers for orientation, after which most of those will go away and I will be with complete strangers at Victoria University (affectionately known as "Vic") all over again.

Other than that the twelve hour flight from LAX to Auckland was rather uneventful. I sat next to a very kind lady who I believe was Scottish and who for the longest time thought I was English (SCORE!).


DAY ONE! – July 1st (where’d the 30th go?)
At Auckland airport, the whole group of 49 Americans that were studying through Arcadia University met up, and the name learning game began! From the Auckland airport we traveled by coach to the hotel. Our “coach captain”, Ben, hated it when we called it a “bus” or called him a “bus driver”. Kind of like the difference between boats and ships I suppose…

We dropped our things off in our rooms at the Kiwi International Hotel on Queen Street, and began our tour of the city of Auckland. With 4 million people, Auckland is a pretty large city, but it’s open, clean, and I never felt crowded in. When you come to NZ, visit Auckland.

We made our way down to the waterfront and I purchased my first mince and cheese pie. I will miss pies when I get back to the US, I can sense it already. Hunks of steaming hot meat and cheese contained in a savory pastry… whoever developed it deserves a Nobel Peace prize for making Alec happy, ‘cause when Alec’s hungry, ain’t no one happy.

From the waterfront we travelled to Cheltenham Beach for a different view of the harbor. Besides the unbelievable sight of hills, city, and sea, I had a conversation with another student that started as “so Alec, who’s your favorite architect?” and I knew I was in a perfect world.

We finished the day with pizza and learning kiwi slang from my Arcadia guide, Alex, and collapsed into bed, staying awake till…. ok it was like 7:50pm, but it definitely seemed later and I slept for 12 hours, killing all jetlag.

If anyone is interested in a subtle joke about beekeepers, let me know the next time I see you in person or on skype.

*slang of the day* - hiking = “tramping”

DAY TWO!!

We left Auckland towards Rotorua, stopping via Matamata for a lunch stop.

Matamata is renamed Hobbiton for its proximity to nearby filming of The Shire for The Lord of the Rings and the upcoming Hobbit film. We were only there a short time and weren’t able to see any filming sites, but the town itself was very peaceful. I was a horribly obvious tourist, taking pictures in a mockup of a hobbit hole, next to a statue of Gollum, grinning inexplicably, and silently counting the number of times I would have been able to use the phrase “Mordor, Gandalf, is it left or right?”. It was seven.




Next stop was an Agroshow right outside of Rotorua. For every person in New Zealand there are 10 sheep, and sheep are such an important part of the NZ economy, it was only right that we learn about them. We were shown 21 different types of sheep, how to shear one in less than 5 minutes, and the sheep dogs used to herd them. It was quite impressive.

We then made a quick stop at Rainbow Springs, which houses many animals and plants native to New Zealand, and saw trout, kiwi birds, and tuatara. Kiwi birds are the national bird of NZ and are famous for looking strange and being evolutionarily inexplicable. Tuatara are reptiles known for surviving from the times of the dinosaurs and for living for up to 200 years, sometimes more.

Finally we checked into the Sudina Hotel in Rotorua, where we would stay for two nights. Dinner was out in the town, and afterward we relaxed in the Polynesian Spa, which was composed of many different hot sulfur spring pools, each at different temperatures. It made my skin soft, and my eyes rather droopy, and I fell asleep quite quickly.

*slang of the day* - sketchy or questionable = “grotty”

DAY THREE!!!
Rotorua smells terrible. I’m not gonna lie. It is very geothermally active, and thus has a lot of sulfur mixing with air to make sulfur smells. HOWEVER, this can be easily overlooked by simply taking in the awesome scenery.



After a beautiful tour through Waiotapu Geothermal Wonderland and a viewing of the Lady Knox Geyser (which doesn’t go on its own, but rather is “forced” to go off with essentially a small piece of soap), we returned to the hotel for a group picture and then off to ZORBING!

Zorbing is an amazing process of being stuck into a giant bouncy plastic rubber ball with three other people and a bucket of water and rolled down a hill. Having a hard time visualizing? Try youtube. It definitely got the adrenaline running in a way only hamster ball simulation can do it.

To round off the evening, we visited the Tamaki Maori Village experience. It is kind of a touristy-look at Maori culture, but I enjoyed it a lot and it was very informative, and it ended with a spectacular feast.

*slang of the day* - appetizer (in the US) = “entrée (NZ)”
bonus! entrée (in the US) = main (in NZ)

DAY FOUR!!!!
I learned today that being an extra in the Hobbit may be as simple as showing up and being in the right place at the right time. Hopefully more on that later.

Flew from Rotorua to Wellington. No security, just a door out to the tarmac and up the stairs onto the propeller plane. Loved it.



Mr Toad’s wild ride brought me to Everton Hall, and I got a chance to move into my new flat and explore Wellington with the rest of my Arcadia group. The above image is the view from my flat :) By today (day five), I’ve got a local pre-pay phone, a new EFTPOS card is on its way, I’ve enrolled for all of my classes, I’m all unpacked, and I’m ready to start shopping for food!

So there it is! I’ll be taking an architecture design integration paper along with a human environmental science paper and finally a live music design paper. Two of my four flat mates have moved in, Alan, from England, and Phoebe, from New Zealand, and everything is settling down for classes to start on Monday the 11th.

*slang of the day* - courses or classes = “papers”

Keep it cool.
Alec

p.s. - Soooo it took me a long time to write that and not so long to read it. If you thought this wasn't nearly long enough for you and that my disclaimer is quite silly, I can certainly try to answer any questions you have. Cheers!

Whoah Wellington

A brief post here, as I sit in a cafe in Wellington, again having to make a distinct effort to obtain wireless internet. Just wanted to send out the message that I am here safely, settling into my flat, and loving every moment. Soon I'll have internet of my own and will be much easier to reach. Until then, I look forward to writing all about the whirlwind that was the last 4 days of orientation and sharing some pictures as well.

Keep it cool.

T-Minus Two (hours)

An introduction: "Taking the Tiki Tour" is slang in New Zealand for taking the scenic route, a fact I will make sure to check as soon as I get there, so as to legitimize any cleverness I pretend to possess in naming things. Traveling 8,000 miles to go to school in a country that holds some of the most stunning landscapes in the entire world certainly seems rather scenic .

AHHHHHHHHHHHH. 8,000 miles, really? Picking up my flight itinerary last night I stopped dead in my tracks and it hit me that yes, I am just about to spend the next 5 months of my life in a place from which google maps can't calculate a route home.

The reason for doing a blog about the experience? My sister did it. Not gonna lie.

I will spend the next 5 months studying at the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. I will be studying architecture and music, depending on how class enrollment finalizes in the next week.

This first post is also a test to see if I am able to use this "blog" technology, an interesting thing to discover sitting at a Burger King in LAX whilst hanging on by a thread to free Air France Lounge wifi. So far so good.

So welcome to my tour. I depart today in two hours on Air NZ flight #5 and will arrive 13 hours (yes, THIRTEEN hours) later. The next you hear from me I will have flown into Auckland en route to the final destination of Wellington, trying to convince new Kiwi friends that I did not travel to their country JUST because I saw the Lord of the Rings. Just kinda.

Until then, back to burgers and guidebooks!

Alec

->an inspirational and relevant poem to kick off the trip

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J R R Tolkien