My new home is superb.

Here is a picture as promised, it is from the first day of orientation: me with the city of Auckland behind me! We hiked up on to this bluff and had an amazing view of Auckland and the surrounding area.

The internet here so far has been TERRIBLE, so that’s why I have hardly been posting! So I am currently in the library using their reliable internet to update you on my life.

I arrived here in Dunedin on Saturday, Feb 20, and I don’t actually start class until Monday, March 1, so basically this is the equivalent of the University of Michigan’s Welcome Week, which we don’t have at Denison. I’ve been walking the streets and the campus and being my usual directionally challenged self, but I pretty much only travel in groups so I never get lost because I am always with people that know their way around (Don’t worry parents!). But at the same time I personally have no clue where anything actually is, cause I never have to pay attention…I’m workin on it.

Dunedin is a beautiful place, it is very hilly and is surrounded by gorgeous rolling hills that I want to hike sometime soon. There is so much to do and see! Yesterday was my birthday and it was a most lovely day. I woke up and my flatmate Sammy made me some banana pancakes (but of course not nearly as good as your buckwheat pancakes dad) and I put large amounts of peanut butter and nutella on them. It was a superb birthday breakfast. Then me and a few of my Arcadia friends decided to walk to the beach! It was quite an undertaking because the beach is a solid 4 miles away…..it took us about an hour and a half to get there one way, but it was a fun walk. By the time I returned I came home to a flat full of people cooking me my very own pasta birthday feast! I have been here only a week but I have met some of the nicest people. They also made me a huge and delicious chocolate cake. Oh, and also on my birthday I went to the liquor store! And bought my very own bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to try! It was really exciting to be able to legally do that.

Then last night there was a toga party that someone was hosting at their flat that most of the international students were planning to go to, so I put on my sheet-toga and went out to partake. Well…apparently there’s a tradition in Otago to have a toga party for the freshmen, and that was also going on last night. And part of the tradition is for upperclassman to throw eggs at freshman as they walk by in the streets. So, as I walked to the party with my group of international friends, none of us freshmen, we got eggs thrown at us! We tried to yell that no, we were just Americans and Canadians and so forth, but that didn’t help our case. New Zealand is wild…. Both nature and people-wise!

Tomorrow is the clubs and societies fair, so I am going to check it out and try new things! Yahoo! More to come later, hopefully the internet will work in my flat one someday soon.