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!