4 July 2013
So I finished
registering for papers (classes). Here you had to show your student visa and
pick up a course approval form. You then bring that form to the different
advisers and have them sign it saying you can take. So of course it’s me so I
had problems getting classes. I was told I need to take a political science
class here so I can fulfill a bacc. Core category which was offered at the same
time as the food science paper I was going to take. I had a timetable clash at
the beginning but I thought I had taken care of all of the timetable clashes
before I left but managed to still have a clash. I talked to the food science
adviser and she looked at the papers and said that she would not approve the
clash. Sometimes clashes are approved because it is a tutorial (recitation) time
that clashes and a person can go to a different tutorial. So I had to talk to
the politics adviser who told me that all of the 100-level papers would clash
so I would need to take a 200 one. I got all of this figured out but it took
about an hour and a half to do. So I finally got registered for all of my
papers. I am taking statistics, controversial classic literature, New Zealand
foreign policy, and consumer food attitudes. I am going to try to take the
paper on traditional Maori dancing but we’ll see if that happens.
I went around 9 am
to get all of this done hoping that people would choose to sleep in and do this
in the afternoon. I was wrong. There were really long lines for most areas. The
longest ones I saw were math/stats and Maori studies. I went with my flat mate
that afternoon so she could get here course approval done and there were no
lines for any of them.
We also got our
student ID cards. Here they get a new one each year that has the year printed
on it so they cannot pass the old one off to someone else.
Because it was the
4th of July the Americans that were here wanted to celebrate and all
the other people were down for a party. There was a small one in our complex
where I got to meet a lot of the people that live around me. We tried to make
it as American as possible with hot dogs and burgers but because it’s winter
here a lot of us went into a flat and hung out. The sun also goes down pretty
early here so we are always shocked by how early it is when we look at the
time. We will think that it is around 9 pm when it is actually about 7:30 pm.
I was able to meet
a lot of the other people who live in the complex. There are quite a few
Americans here and many kiwis. But that’s because the kiwi hosts have their friends
over.
A few nights later
I was talking with a Kiwi and he asked me why the 4th of July was a
big holiday for us Americans. He knew it was something about Independence but
not much so I explained to him what it was. He then asked how Lincoln was
connected to it because he knew Lincoln was associated with a war. Thanks APUSH
for helping me out J
5 July 2013
The international
office here arranged a train ride for all new international students to go on.
We all met at the train station and rode the train through the Taieri Gorge. I
got to meet a lot more international students on the train. Most of them were
from the States but there were a few I met from Europe. The train took the same
route back to the station so it was kind of boring on the way back. I met some
people who had a deck of cards so we played Egyptian rat screw for a while. The
way out there was very pretty and we got to see a lot of countryside that is
not accessible by car. Here are some pictures from that:
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| Train going around curve... |
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| Gorge |
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| Weird patch where no plants grow. |
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| Where the train turned around. |
6 July 2013
Ash,
one of my kiwi hosts, drove three of us to Tunnel Beach and then around parts
of Dunedin. The whole driving on the other side of the road thing is very
confusing as a pedestrian and as a passenger in a car. When I walk places, I always
look the wrong way for traffic and usually look each direction multiple times
even though I know the road is one way. Being a passenger is much more
terrifying because I think that the driver is going turning into on-coming
traffic. Round-abouts are also terrifying because they go the opposite way than
the States. I usually just stop looking at the road when we are about to drive
one because I just get confused.
Tunnel Beach was
created because some guy wanted his kids to have their own private beach so he
carved a tunnel through the rocks to the beach. The tide was high when we went
so we were not able to go on the beach, just the rocks around it. The walk back
up was killer. It is a really steep gravel path that did not really have any
flat parts so it was climbing up a cliff the entire time.
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| Path down to Tunnel Beach |
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| Tunnel to the beach. |
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| View from the beach |
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