Last Week of Summer

Orientation #2 (Monday July 14)

The second and final orientation was the start of my first full week in Auckland. It was also the last week of summer break, or winter break? We were looking to do a lot of fun stuff this week and hopefully go travel; but, we had to get through the last orientation and the business lunch on Wednesday before we could leave. The orientation on Monday was only half the day, from 9 AM to 1 PM. This was the business school orientation so it consisted of all first semester business students at AUT, not just international. The world cup final was the same day at 7 in the morning so we missed the final minutes of the match. The student union was full of all the students watching the game but half left to go to orientation and the other half stayed and watched, mainly the Germans stayed. The orientation started off with an hour of speeches from the business deans and president. It was interesting but at the same time very boring. They updated us on the final score, which was nice because there was no way I was watching the game on my phone during their entertaining speech. After the speeches, we broke up into smaller groups and took a tour of the university. The small groups were awesome because we got to meet other people and Kiwi’s. I mainly talked to this guy with a Yankee’s hat on. I thought he was American but he was a Kiwi that is a huge cricket player. Cricket is a big sport in New Zealand, next to rugby. It is also extremely boring to watch. This guy (I forgot his name) was playing cricket for a league team and traveled the world playing in European countries and other countries. He even trained in America for a little, that’s where he got the Yankee hat. The orientation was very frustrating because the leaders assumed we were first semester students. Of course I got stuck with Robbie in my group, not that that’s a bad thing, but we are both third semester students. The leader would say, “This is the bookstore. It is where you buy your books.” We got talked down to the whole time, which was fine because they didn’t know. We wanted to leave but we had to stay for the free Barbeque! We were so excited for this free lunch because we were expecting some sweet tea and ribs. Boy were we let down. First, people in New Zealand have no clue what sweet tea is. I told a group of people that it is pretty much tea with a lot of sugar and they all laughed and yelled, “Land of the free.” The barbeque was a small bowl of macaroni and cheese. It was not very good so we went back to the dorms after and ate an actual lunch. The orientation had an optional session we could have gone to but we decided to leave. The session was a three hour smart learn session, where they tell you how to study. We felt that we were well prepared on studying because the system is similar to UNF. We were also looking forward to planning our trip for the rest of the week so we headed back to WSA.

The Raglan Adventure (Mon. July 14- Wed. July 16)

After the orientation, we had the rest of the Monday free to ourselves. In the lobby of WSA we saw Matthias with a small suitcase. He said he met someone at church on Sunday and they offered to take him surfing. Robbie freaked out saying he was jealous because he is the surfer and Matthias has never even surfed before. We told him to have fun and headed to our room to make a lunch. About 30 minutes later Robbie gets a call from Matthias. Matthias had talked to his friend and they agreed that they had space for one more person and new Robbie would want to go. Robbie, being a nice person, immediately thought of me once he hung up. He didn’t want to leave me behind but I looked up a bus while he was on the phone and there was one leaving in the morning. I told him this is why he came to New Zealand and that he needed to go and I would meet up with them in the morning. In 20 minutes Robbie was packed and ready to go to Raglan. I went down to help him with his stuff and to meet Vincent, the guy that offered to take them. When we went down we saw they had just thrown their stuff into the car, so Robbie told me to go upstairs and pack. In 20 minutes I was packed and we squeezed in the car. We went from eating lunch to squished in a tiny car with two surfboards, four guys, and having no clue where we were really going or for how long. The stuff that we brought were the essentials mixed with water gear and ski gear. It took about three hours to get to Raglan and I completely lost feeling in my right leg because I was pretty much sitting on Robbie’s lap. We talked the whole car ride and it was awesome to get out of the city and see the countryside. This was our first time seeing the hills of New Zealand, and all the sheep! Vincent was a super nice guy and was a teacher that was on holiday. He was around 28 years old and moved to New Zealand 10 years ago from China. Vincent’s plans were to go to Raglan to surf and head to the mountains to Ski, but it all depended on how much fun he was having wherever he ended up. We arrived to Raglan and pulled off to a lake to find a backpackers to stay for the night. After sitting by the lake for two minutes, Matthias said, “Is that the backpacker’s right there?” He pointed right down the street and sure enough that was the backpackers. It was about a 50 yard walk to it and we were checked in and had a pace to stay for the night. It was incredibly lucky but we soon realized the town was just that small. Vincent and Robbie asked them about the surf and they told us where we needed to go. It was around 4:50 so they had 40 minutes, or so, until the sunset. We jumped into the car and were off to the beach. Vincent and Robbie rushed to get their wet suites on and jumped into the water, after climbing over rocks to get to the water. The waves were massive and the view was breathtaking. I could have sat there all day looking at the view, watching the surfers, and relaxing. After their surf sessions, we headed back to backpackers to make dinner and relax. This backpackers was about as amazing as the view. They had a sauna, hot tub, and a living room area. There was no Wi-Fi because they wanted everyone to interact and be off of their phones, although they did have two desktops to talk to family and friends. We made dinner and met some amazing people. There was a guy from England that decided to travel through New Zealand before he started University. Everyone at the backpackers were from all over the world and were all there to surf. People from Scotland, England, Japan, Canada, and Germany. This is where we met our soon to be good friend, Andrew Leonard. He was from Canada and we talked to him for hours. It was awesome to meet all these people and get out of the city.

The next morning Robbie and Andrew left very early to go surf and everyone else was planning on going surfing at high tide, around noon. You could rent a surfboard and wet suite for $30 or just a surfboard for $25. I had my brother’s wet suite so I just rented the board. While we were waiting to go surf, Matthias and I were walking around the small city. There were cool Raglan Surf Shops and an amazing café. They had the best coffee and I really want to go back and get a bag of it before we leave. We ran into Robbie and Andrew at a surf shop and we talk to them for a little but left to go surf. They strapped five surf boards to the roof of a small hatchback and let us drive the car to go surf. We went to the beach which was the easier spot and good for learning how to surf. It was awesome to go to the black sand beaches and surf for hours. Around 3:30 we headed back to the backpackers.

Matthias and I were worried about heading back. There was the lunch on Wednesday that we RSVP’d to and we felt like we needed to go. Robbie was out surfing so we tried to plan our way back. We really didn’t want to leave Raglan because it was such an amazing place. Once Robbie returned, we walked to the bus station and bought a bus ticket from Hamilton (about 45 minutes away from Raglan) to Auckland. It was for Wednesday morning and would put us back in Auckland a couple of hours before our lunch. The people at the backpackers told us how easy it was to hitchhike in the north island and told us to do that. Matthias decided to go with that plan so he didn’t buy a bus ticket. Robbie and I didn’t feel comfortable with that so we stuck with the safe route. All we needed was to find a way out of Raglan and to Hamilton. We knew that Andrew had a car and was leaving out of Auckland to Fiji this Sunday. We told him he could stay at our place in Auckland for a couple of nights in exchange for a ride to Hamilton. He was more than happy to do that and within a couple of hours we were in Hamilton. We went to the backpackers there and Robbie and I decided we didn’t want to pay the money to stay there, so we asked for the closest campsite. They gave us directions and it was a decent walk to the campsite. Andrew was going to take Matthias to the road that led him to Auckland so he could hitchhike and we all parted ways. Robbie and I walked for about an hour and half to find this campsite. We got to the place that the guy told us to go to and it was a park not a campsite. We were completely lost but a guy that was running by stopped and told us where we needed to go. After walking for 2 hours we had finally found the campsite that was about 30 minutes from where we started. It was tons of fun and didn’t make us mad at all. By the time we had arrived to the campground, the office was closed. There was a sign saying you could ring the doorbell until 9 to check in and the time was 9:09. No one came to answer so we had no clue what to do. The only options we had was to either go back to the backpackers and pay $20 a person or go into the campsite and pitch our tent. We decided to go with the second option and camped at the campsite for free! Probably illegal but if they wanted their money they should have answered. Within 20 minutes we were in the tent and got a text from Matthias saying he had arrived at WSA safe in sound. Boy were we jealous because we freezed our butts off. We woke up at 5:30 to make it to the bus station on time for our bus at 7. There was ice one the tent so it was easy to say it was a freezing, rough night. While we were waiting for the bus we met a very nice Maori. He was the first Maori we had talked to that wasn’t affiliated with AUT. Soon after, we were on the bus and heading back to Auckland. I slept the whole ride back so it felt like a two minute drive. It was an amazing adventure and Raglan is one of my favorite places so far in New Zealand. The views were beautiful, the coffee was amazing, the surf was even better, and we met some of the nicest people.

Business Exchange Lunch (Wed. July 16)

After an amazing trip to Raglan, we were going to be very bummed if this lunch wasn’t worth cutting our trip short. The lunch was at the Sky Tower and we really didn’t have very much information. We met everyone at the lobby and they were all the business even exchange students. Also, AUT students that have done the even exchange program were at the lunch. We met a girl that was at UNF for a semester and talked to her for some time. It was funny to talk to people that have done what we are doing but gone to our home university. We followed Roger to the elevator and went to the third floor to a buffet (already better than the “Barbeque”). It wasn’t the restaurant at the top of the sky tower but in the sky city place. We had assigned seats so I was sitting next to two people from Denmark, a Tongan (AUT student), and a Kiwi (AUT). The Kiwi was an older lady that went to San Diego for her even exchange program. It was so nice to talk and meet all these people. They gave us a worksheet with a bunch of questions we had to fill out to get conversations going. We talked so much that I left disappointed that I didn’t take full advantage of the all-you-can-eat buffet. The food was very good and had some Kiwi foods and dessert there for us to eat. The business school definitely took care of us at the lunch and it was worth the trip back from Raglan. It was very nice to talk to Kiwis that know what we are going through. They gave us tips about Auckland and told us the good places to eat and fun things to do. It was a great experience and was a good way to start of my time here in Auckland and with AUT.

Final Days of Summer (Thursday to Sunday, July 17-20)

After the lunch on Wednesday we were dead tired and needed to catch up from the crazy past couple of days. Andrew was coming on Friday afternoon so we planned on staying in Auckland and visiting the places we haven’t been. We didn’t do anything but relax and watched an episode of New Zealand Cops Wednesday night. On Thursday, we went to the famous One Tree Hill. This is fairly far from where we are located in Auckland. At 3:00 we headed off to tackle One Tree Hill. It was a two hour walk and we arrived just in time for the sunset. On the walk up to the top we ran into some cows that didn’t want to be petted. The view at the top was absolutely amazing. Although Robbie’s video is amazing, it doesn’t show justice of the view. It is one of the best spots to see the city of Auckland. It is far enough and high enough to where you can see everything. When the sun sets it can get cold fast, especially on the top of a large hill. Also, there was no one tree on top of the hill which was kind of disappointing. From what I have heard, I think they took the old tree down and are debating on what tree to put on top of the one hill. On the way back we decided it was too far to walk and wanted to take the bus. We obviously haven’t gotten the public transportation thing down yet. On what should have been a 20 minute bus ride, it took us two hours. On top of taking the wrong bus and it going in the opposite direction, we missed our stop and the bus went to the next stop which was about a 20 minute walk back to WSA. It was a fun trip and good way to pass the time. Friday was a lazy day. Robbie and I went to a coffee shop and got a flat white. This coffee shop has ended up being our favorite place to go in Auckland. It is right off of queen street and tucked into a building. There are books and magazines everywhere and different board games you can play. We usually relax on the couch at this café and it is the one spot in Auckland that can seem to slow the busy city down. Friday at 5:00 we had a WSA meeting in the lobby. They introduced themselves and fed us pizza. After the meeting we called Andrew to see where he was at. When Andrew finally made it to WSA he told us that everyone from Raglan was in Auckland that night and leaving in the morning. We went out to meet them all and went bar hopping. It was the first time going out into town at Auckland and it was expensive. At the first bar (I was the only one I.D.’ed, thanks mom) the beers were $8. The only good part is that you don’t have to tip. After that beer I didn’t buy one at the next two bars. Besides the prices, it was a fun first night out into town and it was fun to hang out with all the people we met in Raglan one last time. On Saturday, Robbie and Andrew went to Piha beach to go surf. The rest of the weekend went pretty smooth. We just relaxed and enjoyed the last couple of days. We went to Mad Mex for dinner on Saturday and it was like Chipotle, just not as good. Andrew left Auckland on Sunday to go to Fiji for ten days and then go back to Canada. It was fun hanging out with him and getting to know him. We have met so many people in New Zealand and the first week and a half was a blast. I have already learned so much and I am ready to learn so much more for the next couple of months.

The Beginning

Introduction

Hey family and friends! I finally forced myself to sit down and write about my trip in New Zealand and everything I have done the past two weeks. I plan on writing about everything and anything so I will break it up into sections so you guys can pick and choose what you want to read since I have so much to talk about.

Arrival (Wednesday July 9^th)

I had a 13 hour layover in LA and a 12.5 hour flight with Air New Zealand. I was up since 4:00 eastern when I left from Orlando so I was prepared to sleep most of the flight to Auckland. Air New Zealand was awesome. I haven’t flown enough to really know what a nice flight is and a bad flight is, but it definitely exceeded my expectations. I sat next to a police officer that was flying to visit family and an older lady kiwi that was flying home to Christchurch. The seats were comfortable and they had the touch screens on the back of the headrest in front of you. They had plenty of choices of movies and music to choose from. As soon as I put Captain America on I was asleep. I woke up for dinner, of course, and the police officer made fun of me for not ordering a beer. “I figured you would be all over that.” After dinner I went back to sleep and woke up for breakfast then we landed. Robbie’s flight was 45 minutes after mine and we stupidly forgot to talk about where we were going to meet each other. I got my bags and continued to go through customs. They didn’t give you a choice of where to go so it made it pretty easy to get out of the airport. Customs was fairly easy and the people were friendly. I told them I had boots and they checked them for dirt and that was all I needed to show them. They do a good job of scaring you with signs that say “claim it or trash it” and showing that they will fine you $400 for trying to sneak anything in. It went quickly because I had no time to think because I was praying I would be able to find Robbie and that one of the dogs weren’t going to attack me for bringing trail mix through. Luckily as soon as I finished going through customs, Robbie had beaten me and was standing there waiting for me. We walked out into the crappy and cold weather and went to the Air Bus. We got a ticket for $16 dollars and waited 10 minutes for the bus to come. It was around 7:00 AM, 50 degrees, and 25 mph wind with rain on and off. While we were on the bus, Robbie and I tried to figure out which bus stop we were supposed to get off at from the little map. We needed to get off at the second stop and if the bus took a left we were screwed. So we waited and after the first stop the bus took a left. We were screwed. I guess the bus didn’t stop at the first stop because no one needed to get off and we missed that part. We sighed, said crap, and got off on the next stop. The next stop happened to be Queen Street, which is the busiest street in Auckland. I had two 50 lb. suitcases and two backpacks. Robbie had a 50 lb. suitcase, a 50 lb. surfboard, and a 50 lb. backpack on. The best part is that our dorms is on a giant hill about half a mile away with the weather the same way as at the airport, if not worse. We made the trek up to the dorms dodging people with oodles of fun. We got our key and everything from the lady at the front desk and went to the 12^th floor to our flat. We got our bed packages and dropped everything off and went to get food. We were both starving and had no clue where to get food so we decided on subway. It was pretty bad so we went back to the room and showered and went to bed. We didn’t do too much when we arrived besides trying to find dinner and wifi. We went to burger king for dinner and got connected with wifi at the public library and let the family know we made it. Robbie and I were dead tired and went to bed around 8.

 

Day 2 Check-In and Groceries (Thursday July 10)

When we woke up at 7 AM we decided to get coffee at Gloria Jeans under the sky tower before checking in with the business school. After coffee, we headed to the AUT business tower and went to floor 10 to the dean’s office. We were waiting to meet with Deborah and met our first friend. Her name was Oda from Norway. We found out that her name is easy to spell but hard to pronounce. The way you are saying it is wrong… trust me…there is no correct way to say it. Oda was also waiting to check-in for the even exchange program. We met with Deborah and she made copies of our passport and insurance information. We set an appointment with Roger, the dean of International Students, and off we went. While walking back with Oda, we asked her where she went to get groceries. She pointed down Symonds Street and told us to take a left. We had no clue what she really said after that so we kept walking straight down Symonds Street. It was a nice steady decline, so why follow the directions when you’re having a nice walk? We knew there was a Countdown somewhere where we were walking so we asked a couple of people where it was and we finally made it. Luckily for us the walk back with groceries was only a steady incline for about a mile-ish. We went back to the room and finished unpacking. We went downstairs to the first floor because there was something going on. Of course we missed that something but we met a lot of people. We met a girl from Finland (still have no clue how to pronounce or spell her name), a guy JC from Denmark, Steve from Sand Diego, and Ana from San Diego. We talked to them and it was cool meeting new people. We left to go explore and went to Albert Park. Albert Park is the place in Robbie’s video that is like New York City’s Central Park. It is a fairly small park with cool large trees. After that, the WSA (Wellesley Student Apartments, our dorms) has a shuttle bus that the RA will drive to take you places. Robbie called it a taxi service in his video. It was the RA, his friend, Robbie, Matthias, and myself going to the north shore to pick up some north shore campus students to make a grocery store run. Two grocery trips in one day!! Score! Matthias is from Germany and has become one of our good friends. This grocery store was called Pak-n-save. It is probably one of the cheaper grocery stores especially because it is away from the city, and it is a lot bigger. Grocery shopping is one of the most difficult tasks to do, along with figuring out public transportation. Everything is in the metric system. Robbie bought 300 grams of ham thinking it would last him a week and he made two sandwiches with it. Every grocery store entrance has these little bar things about knee high that you have to go through like you’re going into a theme park. We have shopped with the same brand items our whole life and now have to try to figure out which brands are good and bad. You have no clue what is the good brand and what is the bad brand. I bought the cheaper ramen noodles and Robbie bought the more expensive one. My ramen was absolutely terrible. I didn’t even know you could screw up ramen, all it is is cardboard with a lot of salt and water. Grocery shopping has gotten easy now that we are getting the hang of it. We are slowly adjusting to the different brand names and different names for things. Kellogg cereal change the cereal names here. Rice Krispies is called Rice Pebbles and still have snap, crackle, and pop on the box. We are starting to get the hang of grocery shopping and mainly sticking to pasta and Pb&js.

Orientation #1 (Friday July 11)

There was an all-day orientation for the international students (study abroad and even exchange). Even exchange is what I am doing, and it means that Robbie and I are at AUT and two students from AUT are in Jacksonville at UNF. We don’t pay study abroad fees or any other fees, rather we continue to pay tuition at UNF for the semester. Study abroad students are students that have gone through some time of third party company and have to pay additional fees and can take whatever classes they want and try to have them transfer over as credits. I am only allowed to take business classes, which is why I have to go through the business deans. There were tons of students from all over the world. I was expecting maybe 30 to 50 students but there was easily 100 to 150 students of graduate and undergraduate studies. We met in the kind of student union area where they gave us cookies and water (at nine AM) and proceeded to take us to a lecture hall. For a couple of hours we sat there listening to a bunch of different speeches. The international office came and talked to us about a bunch of different things and the Maori culture. Also, the police officers came and talked to us to go over all of the laws and how things work here in NZ. The police officers don’t carry guns here. After all the speeches we went to lunch, which was a small sub with really tough bread and a cup of French fies (kinda disappointing but hey it was free). This is where we met Zach who was studying abroad from Auburn. He was a really cool guy and we hope to travel with him. Especially because he is always posting photos of him at a glacier and doing all these crazy things that we want to do. I honestly don’t even think he goes to AUT because he obviously isn’t going to class. After lunch we had a meeting with Roger. It was a small group of Robbie, Steve (San Diego), Oda, and myself. He went over everything that we needed to worry about. He showed us a campus map, the public transportation, and everything we needed to know. He is a really goofy guy, to the point that you can’t help but just laugh with him or at him. He gets overly excited even at the smallest things. The meeting with Roger was very helpful and it was nice to go over everything face to face, especially because we have been talking with Roger for months over email. The orientation and meeting was very boring and we had the rest of the weekend to ourselves!

Our First Weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun/ July 11, 12, 13)

Robbie and I had a lot of catching up to do. We had crazy jet lag and were going to sleep at 8 every night and would wake up at 6. And it was a struggle to sleep till six. All we did for the weekend was small chores and explored. We would put our backpacks on and just walked. We would see a cool place and would try to walk to it. I felt like we saw almost all of Auckland in our first weekend. On the afternoon of Friday, after our orientation, we walked to the Auckland Domain. It had some big trees and went straight up for a long time before we got to the top. On the top of it was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. I didn’t even know New Zealand was in a war. This had a pretty amazing view of Auckland, the harbor, and Mount Eden. We walked into the entrance of the War Museum but didn’t pay to go in but plan on doing it eventually. Robbie says he doesn’t like to walk the same way back, so we exited the back way and walked a long distance through Newmarket and Parnell to make it back to WSA. They were cool little towns that would be fun to get lunch in and walk around for the day. On Saturday, we walked all the way down Queen Street to see the harbor side. It had an awesome fish market and was definitely the fishing and sail boat scene. All the pictures I posted was pretty much what we did all day. We just walked around the harbor and downtown Auckland. This was where I touched my first Pacific Ocean water. That night our roommate Wii (I spelled that wrong) took us to a Vietnamese restaurant. His buddy Hough (I spelled it the American way) went with us and I was definitely nervous. Wii pretty much told us what we were going to eat and I had no clue what it was. It was a steam boat that was $60 that we all split. The steam boat was like the Melting Pot with real food and chop sticks. It was actually really good and I was happy we went. They brought us out the soup on the burners and we would dump in the food that they brought us. There were plates of beef, fish, shrimp, and some greens. You would let them cook in the boiling broth and put it over noodles. Wii made fun of us for peeling the shrimp, so of course we had to eat it with the shell. We compared cultures and had some good laughs. I will talk more about Wii later and how he is. Sunday was our lazy day. I was close to being over with jet lag so I just wanted to sleep in as late as possible. I slept till about 10 and stayed in bed till 11. Robbie was gone so I talked to the family at the AUT library. Come to find out later, Robbie had gone walking in the morning and ended up walking to Mount Eden. It was definitely a lazy day and it was nice to not do too much. The sun finally came out for the first time since we were in New Zealand. The weather was really nice so I asked Robbie if he would want to go back to Mount Eden to watch the sunset. It was around 4:30 and the sunrise was at 5:20 so we booked it to Mount Eden. Of course it was all uphill, which was a blast. The trek there was a good one though. We saw a different side of Auckland and pretty views. When we finally made it up Mount Eden we had 10-20 minutes to spare. The view was by far one of the best. You could see everything from Eden Park (the rugby stadium) to the War Museum. Mount Eden had a giant crater in it. You aren’t allowed to go down it because it is considered sacred. We watched the sunset and tried to stay for the so-called “Super” Moon. It got freezing cold very fast so we decided to head back before we could see it. I think later that night Wii took us to the Warehouse. No mom and dad this isn’t a place where they smoke weed. This is Auckland’s Walmart. They have everything and anything for fairly cheap. Robbie and I found a phone for $9 and it was one of the cheaper brands. We bought it and “topped up” for 20 dollars. Topping up is a term everyone uses that pretty much means a credit. We activated the phone and bought the $9 plan that give us plenty of minutes and texts for the month. The brand is called 2 degree, woo! Also, earlier in the weekend we got our AtHop cards. This is the card for the transportation all around Auckland. We get a student discount which is nice and the inner link is free for us. The inner link goes up and down Queen Street. We topped up our cards and try not to use it too much. There is also the city link, outer link, and ferry’s that you can us the athop card. We stayed up as late as possible and met our final roommate Josh.

WSA and Roommates

The best part about WSA is that it is on top of a giant hill that I get to walk up every day! It is gated in and has two towers. The first floor has the pool table, lounge area, basketball hoop in courtyard, and a full sized kitchen. We go up the elevator to the 12^th floor, out of 14, to our flat. It has a kitchen area with a microwave and stove top. It comes fully furnished, which was very nice. We didn’t have to worry about getting anything for our apartment besides toilet paper! It has forks, knives, bowls and everything. I have four other roommates. The guy in the first room is Runway like at the airport. That is actually how he introduced himself. He is into computer game so he is pretty much in his room the whole time and I may see him once a day if I’m lucky. He has been in the same clothes since we first met him and Robbie said he heard him shower one time. Kind of a strange dude but hey he has a rice cooker. Oh yeah, he is from china and has been here a couple semesters already. Oh and his rice cooker is in all Chinese so we haven’t used it yet but he said he would help. The next room is Robbie. Robbie is a grand ole guy. We are one of the few exchange students that knew each other before we came here. There are some people from the same schools, like San Diego State University, but they didn’t know each other before they got here. We actually requested not to live together so we could meet more people but somehow we ended up in the same flat. The next room is mine and then Wii’s is next to mine. Wii is from Vietnam where the city population is bigger than the size of New Zealand. He is a tiny guy who also has his own rice cooker. He likes to hang out with us a lot more and stays out of his room most of the day. He hasn’t seen too much outside of Auckland and has been here for 3 years (his final year). He really likes America and wanted to study there but it didn’t work out. He reads a lot of stuff about the U.S. on reddit so he knows what we are talking about most of the time. His accent is pretty strong so it is funny when he makes jokes about white girls and starbucks and a bunch of other things. He has taught us a couple of different Vietnamese words that I don’t really remember anymore. The final room at the end of the hall is Josh. Josh is from the south island near Christchurch. He is our Kiwi friend that we ask tons of questions. He is very helpful and it is nice to have a Kiwi roommate. He calls dinner “Tea”. So he will ask, “Are you making Tea?” and I usually reply, “No I’m making spaghetti.” He is kind of a sports fan so it is fun to ask him questions. Right now his favorite rugby team is in the finals for the Super Rugby League. I think the Super Rugby League is between New Zealand, South Africa, and Australian teams. He has been a huge help and is our Kiwi Guide. Matthias lives on the 8^th floor so he comes up a lot to hang out with us. The living situation is pretty nice so far and it doesn’t seem like we will have any problems. One thing that does stink it that Josh was the only one here from last semester in this flat. So the other four guys left some food and other junk that we need to get rid of. They didn’t do any room cleaning or anything since this is the second semester and they were only on a holiday break/winter break. It should be a fun semester in the flat but I don’t plan on being in my room too much!