Week one at Waikato

After spending the night in Auckland, my AustraLearn group boarded a bus to Rotorua where we continued our immersion into New Zealand culture. It was an amazing time, and I'm definitely going to talk about it more, but for now I'll fill you in on how I'm doing at the moment.

Nearly a week has past since I moved into my dorm here at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, and I think it's finally starting to feel like home. My dorm, Student Village, is broken up into 10 blocks. I live in Block 7 (the smallest one) with 5 other students. My room puts Juniata singles to shame- I can't believe how spacious it is! At first I thought I would not like living alone, but it's actually quite nice not having to worry about whether my computer light will disrupt my roommates' sleeping schedules. Don't get me wrong- I really miss having my Juniata roommates Christa and Laura around. These past few weeks have truly been freshman year all over again in terms of not knowing anyone and making new friends. So far, my overall impression is that Kiwis (New Zealanders) are the some of the nicest people on Earth. I went to the bathroom the other day, and on my way back to my room a girl in my block gave me an agenda book and wall calendar. A few days before that, a Waikato employee showed up at my door with a laundry basket. This same women gave me and three other girls a ride home from the Warehouse (NZ's version of Wal-Mart) on our first day here. We had never met her before, but she knew that we were living in the Waikato dorms somehow.The campus itself, like the rest of the country, is beautiful. It is much bigger than Juniata's, but I can still walk from one end of campus to the other in under 20 minutes. My "papers," or course,s include Environmental and Nature Resource Economics, Monetary and Macroeconomics, Politics and the Media, and Differential Equations. Two of my professors are Kiwi, while the other two are British and Irish.
So far, the only "culture shock" I've experienced involves dining hall food. Although I've enjoyed some meals, most of them have me craving Sodexho. Every couple of days I go to Momento, an on-campus cafe, for lunch. It's expensive, but worth it. Somehow a delicious meal (a bacon, egg and cheese bap, a spicy chicken burrito, etc.) has the power to make things seem a whole lot better.

It still seems crazy to me that I'm here. So much has changed in the past few years. At my high school graduation, I would never have dreamed that two years later, I'd be getting ready to fly to New Zealand on my own. Those close to me know that I have frequently questioned my decision to attend Juniata College, particularly after changing my major during my freshman year, but maybe it is where I was supposed to end up? I doubt I would be in New Zealand now if I had chosen differently.