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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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Well I certainly appreciate registering for classes a bit more at Wheaton! It's an all-day affair here; everything is hard copies, long lines, and NOBODY knows what's going on, including the people who are in charge. I guess that's a running theme here. Just to have my classes approved (that were theorectically already approved before I left), have my visa checked, and my insurance checked took more than 4 hours. Plus, there was a glitch in the system and some class times were changed and I need to find new class because of time conflicts. I am NOT looking forward to trying to register for that next week.
But everything else is great! Ella is still cooking here, which is fun since I have a cooking buddy, and everyone in my block is still just getting to know each other. We learned pretty quickly that Kiwis are all pretty laid back and they LOVE to go out--every night....and not until 11:30-12:30 (which is actually after the busses stop running). In order to skip the long lines at clubs downtown, Ella and a bunch of our new friends (from everywhere: Malaysia, England, the States, NZ) decided to check out nightlife in downtown Christchurch about 4 hours earlier, and we were very pleasantly surpised that there are no cover charges anywhere! To go dancing in the States is usually about $15, but dancing here is free, so Ella and I were beyond excited!
There's just been a lot of getting used to things so far. Kiwis aren't big on wearing shoes, and people walk around barefoot everywhere--I mean everywhere: restaurants, buses, the bank, the grocery store, class. And it's weird because people are really big into smashing glass bottles, and they aren't careful about it either. Some guy smashed one about 10 feet away from me the other night and my legs have a few battle wounds to prove it since I was only wearing a toga (it was the first night of orientation week, I swear!). The accents are a little hard to get used to; they're not British accents at all, and some people have much thicker ones than others. And Kiwis LOVE to mumble so it makes it even harder! There are a few words that threw me off for a while, and Ella, Glen (a Kiwi), and I have had a few laughs exchanging words for different things. Most of it is British vocab; a flashlight is a torch, a grocery cart is a carriage, friends are mates. The most confusing one was that classes are called papers, so Ella and I were REALLY confused with that one for a while. (How many papers am I taking?? What?) That's pretty much all I can think of for now. All the Americans basically just do a lot of "What??" during conversation, but the Kiwis are really really nice and love explaining things. We usually all have a good laugh about just about everything.
Almost everyone is my block (4 flats) is American except for Greg, Glen, and Emerald, who are Kiwis, Amar who's from Malaysia, and Nish who's from England. My flat has pretty much turned into the hangout flat for the whole block, so it's really nice having people wandering in all the time since we keep the door propped as long as at least one person is home. We've been having a blast exchanging recipes and just getting to know one another. And since Greg and Glen both have cars, we're all getting super psyched about planning trips and getting out of the city. It's going to be awesome!!
previous travel blog entry
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