Wanaka Pictures

Queenstown Trip Pictures

Trip to see penguins.

Pictures… Finally

Ready to go.

Orientation

My flat!

Stream outside my flat.

A Huge First Post

Currency
The smallest currency is a ten cent coin, so everything is rounded up or down accordingly. There is no $9.99, it’s $10 even. The other coins are a 20 cent coin, a 50 cent, a dollar and a two dollar coin. The smallest bill is a 5 dollar note. This means that you usually have a fair amount of change in your pocket, which I hate. The nice thing about buying stuff in NZ is that tax is built into everything, the price on the tag is the total price you pay. There is also no tipping.

Course Selection
Well I am all signed up for classes! Although the process is long, convoluted, and more than a little foolish, I survived the long lines and frantic rushing around. Because I am a double major (Economics and Political Science) and a Philosophy Minor, I can’t afford to take any classes with a distinctly New Zealand outlook, as I was hoping to do. As it is I will have to take a heavier course load next year for studying abroad. My four classes are:

-Metaphysical Questions (for my Philosophy Minor)
-Labour (NZ Spelling) Economics (for my Economics Major)
-International Relations- Peace Keeping (for my Poli Sci Major)
-Theories of Justice (for my Poli Sci Major)

All the classes look interesting and I made my schedule so I wouldn’t have any classes on Friday. Hopefully this will allow me to get away more. I am most excited about my International Relations class, which focuses on the role of UN Peace Keeping missions. Knowing New Zealand has a liberal leanings, I was expecting this class to be pro-UN. In the little I have learned about it, the class is taught by an Afghani who used to be part of the UN in some capacity, apparently he isn’t to fond of the UN and much of the class addresses its short comings. It should be interesting.

Random Observation Three
Many of the SUVs and utes (pickups) have snorkels for driving in deep water. It makes them look pretty cool. I want a Toyota Hilux Surf- look it up.

Did you know?
There are 14 sheep for every person in New Zealand. At some point in the 80’s this was as high as 60 sheep per person (or so I am told). The beef market as been strong, so many farmers have switched from sheep to cattle.

Tramping in Wanaka
My budget hurting after the Queenstown trip, I was hesitant when some friends decided to head to Wanaka. Remembering the old expression “you can borrow money but you can’t borrow time,” I decided to do it. Although 20 something people were going, I hooked up with 4 other people who wanted to go hiking and camping (termed “tramping” by the Kiwis). A few of my friends had just bought a car (a popular thing for study abroad students to do), so we loaded up the crummy old Subaru and headed to Wanaka. We got there around dinner, so we had some grub and looked around the city/town. Set on Lake Wanaka and surrounded by big mountains, it is another beautiful city (or what passes for a city in NZ). Although it is a popular tourist spot, it doesn’t feel as commercialized as Queenstown. I loved it after 5 minutes.

Eager to get settled for the night, we headed to a local camping ground. We hiked in a very short ways in the dark, and set up camp. Dan R., Dan A., Skyler and I slept outside, while Kristen had the 4 person tent to herself. The stars where indescribably spectacular, the last time I had seen such a heavenly display was in Bermuda. Its funny how stars seem to inspire deep conversation. We chatted, counted shooting stars, and then nodded off, warm and content in our sleeping bags. The next morning we headed back into town to decided where to camp for the next night. Eager for a workout, we decided on Mount Roy, the tallest mountain in the vicinity. Almost a vertical mile up, the route was a 5.75 mile series of zig-zags to the top. I offered to carry the 4 person tent to the summit, along with my regular pack. Full with plenty of water and food, sleeping pad, tent, sleeping bag, and the miscellaneous camping necessities, my pack was 55+ lbs. We started climbing at about 10, and it was clear that I should have brought my hiking boots and not my working boots. The work boots were rubbing me terribly; I knew I was going to have blisters. Heavily laden, we plodded upwards, the views improving with every step. It was about 80 degrees out, with no cloud cover. I quickly sweat away my sun tan lotion, and now have some color to show for it. When we finally made it to the top, I was greeted with the most beautiful natural sight I have ever seen. I consider myself pretty well traveled for my age, having seen the Rockies of Colorado, the Arizona desert, the Mountains of Artic Alaska, the tropical hills of Jamaica, and the rolling country of the United Kingdom, among other places. Although each was beautiful, all fall short compared to the fantastic glacier, mountain, lake, and farmland scenery visible from the summit of Mt. Roy. Words fail to describe it, as will my pictures, but it will give you an idea.

Camping at the summit is illegal, so we continued on until we were in a legal camping area, and set up. There could hardly be a prettier area to camp. My four friends would sleep in the tent and I would sleep outside. I found a deep depression, and set up my sleeping bag there. It would keep me out of the wind, but would likely be a very dewy spot. We ate dinner and watched one incredible sunset, and hit the sack, whipped from the days hike. I zipped myself fully into my mummy bag, then used a fleece jacket I had to seal off the opening of the bag where your head comes out. Fully cocooned up I was nice and warm, and slept like a baby- as usual.

Morning came and we were, as expected, pretty sore from the hike up. We packed up, enjoyed the unreal scenery one last time, and headed down. Going down a mountain is better than going up, but not by much. When you are going down, you are always holding back your weight, which wants to go down faster than your legs will allow. It was another good workout, and once again gave me a few blisters. Back at the car, we drove to one of the beaches on Lake Wanaka and dove in, happy to clean the stink off ourselves. The low point of the trip was the drive home- Skyler drove back and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t one of the worst drivers I have ever been in a car with. His first time driving in NZ, and he is consistently speeding 20 km above the speed limit and passing cars at the worst possible time. There were too many close calls. We pulled back into Dunedin to find a different city- finally the students are back from summer break in substantial numbers. The fun will soon begin.

A Trip to Queenstown
Having settled nicely into my flat, explored Dunedin, and gotten closer with the Americans I came over with, I decided it was really time to take my first trip. Big Sam (6’5” and 350 lbs) and I headed to Queenstown on a bus, with no plans. We got there at 9pm and found all the hostels and cheap places were booked solid. So, after checking 10ish places we gave up and settled on a relatively expensive motel. Next day we woke up early, got a cheaper room for the following night and explored Queenstown. It is a small tourist city, a strange cross between poor backpackers stopover and wealthy tourist destination. Most people love it, but it didn’t really do anything for me. It was far too touristy and commercialized, as well as being expensive. I was hoping to go bungee jumping or sky diving, but Big Sam wasn’t interested, we stuck together and did whitewater rafting instead. The rafting was far too tame, very different from what the booking literature said it would be. Overall Queenstown was an expensive mistake for me, had I been with more people or gotten to do some other activities it may have been better. At least I got to see more of the gorgeous NZ Countryside.

I have a Staph Infection
I had a rash. I thought it would go away. I went to the Doctors yesterday. I have a bad staff infection and am on antibiotics for ten days. It looks absolutely nasty.

Being Disconnected
When people study abroad, they usually get a cheap pay-as-you-go cellphone. All of my friends have them, but I am still cell less. It is fantastic! I have no watch. And internet only when I go to the library. I am totally and utterly disconnected and I love it. I wander wherever, never have any set plans, and do what I want. Excellent.

Strange Drinking Game
Just heard this one: the game is called Possum. Easily the funniest drinking game I have ever heard of. Everyone who wants to play climbs a tree in the same area. Each player has a 12 pack of beer. You can only leave the tree once you have finished all 12 beers. First one down wins. Dangerous? Yes. Hysterical and ridiculous? Yes.

That should give you an idea how crazy it is here.

Random Observation Two
The sausage here is no good. Someone needs to teach them about Sweet Italian Sausage. Sausage is, by definition, the scrap meat of an animal, ground up, and put in a casing. Why eat this if you don’t add any spices or flavor to it?

First few days of Dunedin
A week here and maybe the best way to sum up this place is what I have heard most of my American traveling partners say, “this place is freaking crazy.” Because so many things are bouncing around in my head right now, this will be a random sort of entry.

The city itself is fantastic, located in a flat area, it is surrounded by beautiful rolling hills with a multitude of farms. It is a tiny city, it may not even classify as a city in the states. There are no tall buildings, and it is pretty spread out. The buildings are cute, but many are a run down. With 100,000 residents and a bit more than 20,000 students, it is no surprise that the University of Otago dominates the city. University buildings are scattered everywhere, although there is a fantastically beautiful central campus.

As I said earlier, this place is nuts. The students so obviously dominate the city it is unreal. There are bars and clubs EVERYWHERE. How serious are they about their drinking? A church closed down, so it what to do? Turn it into a huge club. The morgue moves to a new location, what to do? Turn it into a huge underground club. There is an octagon in the center of the city, that is the hub of activity. There is at least one bar or club on every side of the octagon. You can walk around and drink a beer, or be intoxicated in public. It is actually hard to get in trouble here. It is almost like the students have a free pass to do whatever they want, just because they are in “uni”(short for university). Although the students are wild and out of control, the city LOVES them. Boston could take a few lessons…

The campus has a free right to protest, so on Thursdays at 4:20 many students gather in front of the deans office and smoke marijuana, as a form of “protest”. Last year Campus Watch (aka campus security) called the police when they found a few kids smoking weed at a party. The kids were arrested, which caused a huge uprising against the Campus Watch. Campus Watch issued an apology to the student body. I can’t imagine anything like this happening at BC.

My flat is on a very quiet street close to campus. It is spacious, with my single bedroom probably twice as big as the one I had at BC. I will have two other flatmates, but they aren’t here yet. The flats for all the international students are very nice, but I have heard horror stories about the regular students flats: rooms carved out of the soil in basements with dirt walls, rat infestations, all sorts of nasty things. Perhaps the greatest thing about my flat: it runs parallel to a beautiful stream. If there were no trees in the way, I could cast my fly rod from my front door. I haven’t really fished it yet, but I have seen one 18” trout and other foot long trout in one of the pools. Totally wild trout, I should ad. I’m pumped

Random Observation One
There is an obscene amount of bad haircuts here. Mullets and rattails abound. This could be why the women like American men so much.

Orientation One
For our Butler Orientation we would stay at the Shakespeare YMCA lodge in Auckland. The lodge is located in sheep country on a beautiful hill overlooking picture perfect blue water. Standing in the driveway of the lodge and looking inland, New Zealand looked like the rolling farm country characteristic of so many places. Looking towards the water, New Zealand appeared to be a tropical paradise. Auckland is spread out, and the multitude of clay shingled houses that the cover the hillside, makes New Zealand appear almost Mediterranean. Although just a bit into my trip, it appears to me that although NZ is only 2 small islands, the islands appear to be a mash up of other places from around the world, as there are a variety of different geographical features: tropical, farm country, Mediterranean village, medium size cities, jungle, hostile mountains, and everything in between.

The orientation at the Lodge was great fun. Having come from 2 feet of snow and temps in the teens, the 80 degree and sunny weather was pure bliss. We became fast friends on the white sand beaches, which are a 5 minute walk from the lodge. The beach was stunning: about a half mile long, cliffs to the right and left, in a protected bay, the water clear and strikingly blue, with never more than 30 people on the whole beach at a time.
We kayaked, swam, coasteered, had a orienteering competition (which my hunting and general outdoor skills helped out in) and played cricket and rugby. Fun was punctuated by briefings about the island, the people, the school, and everything in between. Most of the informational meetings were boring, but necessary.

The Butler orientation would end at a Maere (pronounced Ma-rye), or a traditional Maori (native people of NZ) meeting place. Although the Maori have integrated with the white culture and spread out a great deal they still have a tribal centers with meetinghouses and “homebases” if you will. Many of these are tourist locations, but we were told we weren’t going to a tourist one, ours would be an authentic visit. The visit would be very formal to start with. We were to gather, women surrounded by men, outside the gate until invited in by an elder woman, the invitation offered in a song like way. Once we entered, we would sit outside and be welcomed by an elder man in the Maori tongue. Then 2 male members of our group would speak, followed by Richard, our Maori host/aid. As a group we would sing a Maori song we had learned after each of the speakers, to affirm what they had said. In the briefing before our visit, aimed at teaching us about the Maori, the women of the group were asked to nominate two male speakers. The male speakers were to have shown “mana” and “kaha” or strength, pride and balls, as it was put to us. I was nominated to be one of the speakers. In any case, after being given “great honor” of speaking for the group, I found out I had to deliver the first part of my speech in Maori. The problem is I suck at languages. Its almost laughable how bad I am. I practiced quite a bit, and I don’t think I butchered their language too badly. The second part of my speech was in English and basically introduced us and why we came here, what we were going to be doing in NZ, etc. The formal part was wrapped up with a hongi. The hongi is similar to our handshake, only it involves the forehead and nose of two individuals being pressed together. We lined up, Maoris and Butler Students, and hongied. After this was done, we were invited into one of the large dining halls they have for tribal reunions, for dinner. The meats: chicken, pork and beef, were cooked in canvas sacks underground. The sacks of meat were placed on a grate and covered in burlap sack, above red hot iron scraps. The iron was heated in an open flame until it gets red hot throughout, then it is placed in a hole with the grate and meat over it. The whole set up is then buried and left for 2+ hours. The food was excellent, with my favorite part being some sort of traditional seafood cream soup. I had 5 servings of the stuff, it was that good. After dinner we basically hung out on the grounds, chatted with some of the Maoris and played with their kids. Some of us slept in the meeting hall, others outside. I slept outside, it was beautiful and I had a great nights rest.

The Maori story is an interesting one. About 30 years ago, Maori culture was almost extinct. The many Maori in the country were fast forgetting their historical ways and customs in their attempts to “westernize”. Since then there has been a huge turnaround. The Maori are perhaps the greatest example of the success of a native people. The whites of NZ have the utmost respect for the Maori people and there has been huge attempts to create a bicultural society. Many signs appear in English and Maori, few people speak Maori, but it is done out of respect and a desire to hold on to the native culture.

Flights
The flight over was uneventful and not nearly as bad as I had expected. I had three flights and almost 24 hours of total traveling time. Flight one was Boston to Atlanta, two was Atlanta to Los Angles with the final leg carrying me to NZ. I felt like I won the lottery in that I got an emergency exit row seat for all 3 flights! At 6’4” flying is never fun, but it was certainly tolerable. I met the other Butler students in LA. And although, I hate that awkward “whats your name, where are you from, what school do you go to, what are you studying, what do you want to do” small talk that inevitably occurs, I was excited in that it seemed like a good group. Most everyone seemed to have picked NZ because of its beauty and outdoorsy focus.

After a 13 hour flight over the Pacific, we landed in Auckland. Oddly, because we crossed the International Date Line, February 1, 2009 never existed for me. Local time was around 7:00 AM when we finally cleared customs and made it outside. Although we were exhausted, the Butler leaders planned on keeping us going the whole day to aid our time zone adjustment.

Pre-Trip Problem
So on the Monday before the Saturday I was scheduled to leave it was discovered my Passport and the included visa was missing. Talk about an “o sh*t” moment. Where it went is anyone’s guess. It was on the kitchen counter, and my parents talked about making a copy of it. In any case, it was absolutely GONE, and there was only 4 days before I left. Tuesday morning found my Dad and I venturing into Boston to the passport office. A short 6 hours later, and I had a new passport in hand. I then overnighted my passport to the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC to get my visa. Long, horrible story short, I got my passport and visa back, in about 48 hours after the saga started. Close call.

Why New Zealand?
Every time I told someone I was going to study in New Zealand I was asked why New Zealand? People really only knew it as “that place where Lord Of the Rings was filmed.” Most people probably couldn’t find it on a map. So, allow me to list a few of the many reasons I picked New Zealand as my study abroad location:
-Outdoor Mecca: tons of big game hunting (free), and 20 lb trout. Heaven. As well as being a great place to hike and camp.
-Incredibly beautiful country. As previously mentioned, Lord of the Rings was filmed here, as well as The Last Samurai.
-Great people- The kiwis are known to be incredibly nice people and a helluva lot of fun to hang out with.
-Insane school- Much more on this to come.

You will notice that, much to my parents chagrin, I didn’t list “the educational experience,” as a reason. I have worked my ass of these past few years- I want a break! (Sorry Mom and Dad…)

Background
After hearing about so many peoples study abroad experience, and some encouragement from my sister and parents, I decided I would leave my beloved BC for some far off land. I decided I wanted to spend my semester in NZ. The problem was Boston College never established a connection with any schools in New Zealand, so I would have to do an external program. This means that I am basically withdrawn from BC for the semester. The grades I get in NZ don’t factor into my GPA but I can get credits for the classes I take, if BC officials think the class is up to their standards.

The good thing about going abroad through an external program is that I got to avoid another BC rip off. At some point you have probably heard me rant about how BC makes sure it squeezes every penny out of its student. If you study abroad through an internal BC program, you continue to pay BC tuition, and they pocket the difference. For example: you want to study at Cape Town University in South Africa. The academic costs are around $1500 a semester, with housing probably around that as well. Because Cape Town is a BC approved internal program, you pay the $20,000ish BC tuition for the semester, and BC takes the difference. So, by studying through an external school, my parents would save some money.

The school I settled on was the University of Otago, in Dunedin on the South Island. My BC study abroad advisor visited the school and loved it. She told me a story about how when she was in a meeting while visiting the school everyone in the meeting heard an incredible commotion outside. They ran to the balcony only to find a reenactment of a battle from Braveheart with around 700 students, going on outside on a campus field. I picked the school knowing little about it, but the more I heard, the more I liked.