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.