Scarfie Life

It's been a bit since I last posted, but as the title suggests, I haven't been up to too much...just living life as a scarfie, which is a university student. Basically all that means is I've been saving money as best I can - especially on food, poorly on alcohol, going to classes, studying and checking out on-campus clubs. I've actually joined the Otago University Tramping Club and gone to several of their meetings.

It's a pretty well-organised bunch - fairly similar to OTL (if you're lucky, or unlucky as the case may be, you can see me on the front page 'jumping off a cliff' at Big Sur during Spring Break 2006) - who run trips every weekend, have a good gear room and a lot of good outdoorsy-type leaders. I get a ton of emails from the mailing list (like OTL), too. There are differences though. First, I think OTL is fortunate to be either way more subsidised than OUTC, or costs are just much higher here. I'm not sure which one it is, but I do know it cost me $30 to join the club, and trips here run for a lot more than at Claremont. At the same time, it seems like there are a lot more club meetings - two per week, plus Happy Hour at The Cook on Tuesdays, Jazz Night at The Robbie Burns on Thursdays, and a weekly walk every Wednesday night.

Anyway, I'm going to be going on my first tramping trip this weekend, to Mt. Aspiring National Park, in the Southern Alps. I picked quite a good first one, albeit an unorthodox 'tramp.' It's called Bushball 2007, and it's part of a 30 year tradition of going to the beautiful views of Aspiring Hut for what is basically a formal party out in the bush. I won't waste any more space on the particulars, but suffice it to say it should be spectacular; expect a post recapping it next week.
On Saturday we finally had our long-delayed bus trip to the Otago Peninsula, put on for the international students at the uni. It's ironic that the last trip was canceled due to poor weather - it had snowed the night before it was scheduled - because the weather couldn't have been much better this time. At times it was quite nice - temperatures in the mid-40s and calm, but when we were at the beach, searching out seals and yellow-eyed penguins, the rain, and wind especially, could really kick up. We did find some nice moments though; you can see me at the albatross colony with Annie, Laura and KC, from left to right. They had some pretty cool exposures of basalt flows down the cliff too, and since I can't help myself, I might as well throw in a picture in hopes that some budding geologist will find it as cool as Andrew and I did. We also went to the Glenfalloch Woodland Garden; above is a panorama taken from there. Looking across the Otago Harbour, you can see Dunedin off in the distance on the left.

In other news, I lined up early, before going on the peninsula trip, to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. KC and I were really surprised to trek into The Warehouse, where we had reserved our copies, and find that at 9:30 am - 1.5 hours before release - we were 7th in line for the book! We'd thought we'd be lucky to be close enough to get the book and run off to catch our buses for the trip, but we actually were able to grab our books and get out of the store by 11:08 am. Of course, we proceeded to hurry back to our flat and do a mini-photo shoot of us with our books. Why? Well I guess a simultaneous, worldwide release isn't really worldwide. As bookstores in Britain opened at 12:01 am, 21 July, at 11:01 am New Zealand stores did the same. In the New York, though, it was only 7 pm on the 20th. Naturally, KC had to take advantage. Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and without spoiling it for those who haven't read it yet, I think that it did a really good job wrapping things up.


Also, for those wanting more pictures of my exploits here in NZ, I haven't really decided if I'll open up my Facebook albums for the public to view, or if I'll throw up an album or two on Picasa web albums or something like that. Obviously I have a lot more pictures than the ones I've put up on this blog, and as you can see from how many cameras Andrew here has (I hope no one thinks they're all his), everyone has a ton, so I may try to get some of my friends' pics too, just so they might see the light of day. Until next time, I can only recommend you to my new favorite website of the moment...I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? Be sure to hit 'random.' Brilliant.

1st Week of Class = Done

So I've just begun my second week of classes at Otago, and I'm still getting used to some of the differences. The classes I'm taking are Maori Society, Human Geography (both are intro level) and Metamorphism, which is an intermediate course.

Among the differences:

• You only take 3 classes per semester - and university is only 3 years here! In fact, I've heard one kiwi girl comment about how she's jealous of the American system, with its breadth of study requirements, because you're forced to focus almost immediately upon getting to university here.
• A class is actually called a paper, and a course is known here as your major.
• Classes don't meet as often - only one of my classes has 3 hours of lecture per week (which is the norm in the States).
• My two intro-level classes have 200+ students each in lecture, so to get more 'small-class interaction,' they each have tutorials, which are 15 or fewer students from the class who usually meet once a week with a tutorial leader (a grad student) to go over class material.
• Grading is COMPLETELY different. Final exams make up from 50% to 70% of your grade. Holy crap. I feel lucky that I have two that are only 50%, with essays and tutorial participation making up the rest of the grade.
• Kiwis are apparently really anal about citing your sources and how you make your bibliography - every department has its own style guide for how you have to cite material in papers, and you get heavily penalized if you don't follow it.

That said, I say that in a few weeks I'll be into the swing of things - although it remains to be seen how I'll do when I have to write essays again; I haven't really had to write an expository essay since freshman year. Yipes. The classes themselves are pretty good. Geography's a lot like a mix of sociology and economics, and right now we're learning about development in Southeast Asia, just to give you an idea of what we've been learning so far. Maori Society is interesting so far (we're learning about creation) and finally, my metamorphism class looks like it will be a lot like the petrology course I took last semester - and it uses the same book! Glad I lugged that stupid thing over with me, since it actually paid off.

Anyway, the weekend was pretty good. It started off with an all-day Harry Potter movie marathon - we watched all four movies on DVD. On Saturday, me and some other Butler kids went for a hike up Mt. Cargill, which is the tallest hill near Dunedin. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to walk all the way there and (pretty much) all the way back, which ended up being around 12 km (7.5 miles for you Yankees). It was a fun walk though, except for the part where it was raining on the trail and the top was shrouded in cloud. Obviously the pictures weren't too spectacular... That night was the All Blacks rugby game, against the South Africa Springboks. We got to The Cook with the game tied 6-all, then the All Blacks proceeded to beat up the bloody Springboks, winning 33-6. Then on Sunday we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie. What could be better?

Pride of the South

We had our Butler catch-up dinner Thursday night, which included a little sightseeing tour around the city and a tour of the historic Speight's Brewery - the 'Pride of the South.'

The first stop on the bus tour was at the top of Signal Hill, just north of the city.
Looking out to the left and across the center is the Otago Peninsula, just across the Otago Harbour. Over the peninsula is the Pacific Ocean. The city itself is in the right-center of the photo. After this stop, we drove out and around the city in the hills, getting a few more nice views as it got dark.

Next up was the Speight's Brewery. It's pretty old - it's been in the same building since 1876. It's what they call a 'gravity brewery,' so they take all the raw materials to the top floor and they get processed more and more as they move down, until you get the finished product at the bottom. One of the cool things about the brewery is that they only make one beer at a time, starting a batch at 2 am and finishing it in one day. The next time, they can make one of their other 5 beers.

Of course, the best part of the tour was the sampling. We went into a room on the ground floor (which would be the 1st floor in the States) and basically formed a loop circling around a small bar with 6 taps - one for each of the beers that Speight's produces. And as long as a DVD of Speight's played in the background on the TVs, we were free to refill to our hearts' desire. So in the span of just a couple weeks, I've learned how wine and beer are both made, and how to appreciate them. Life is good, eh?

Even better, after the tour, we got free food! At the same time I signed up for a couple trips that Butler is doing for the students on their program here, so in August we'll take the Taieri Gorge Railway to Central Otago (Dunedin is in the eastern part of the Otago region), where we'll do some mountain biking and also play the most exciting sport known to man, curling! In September I'll be going to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park for a weekend cruise and kayaking, so that just may be the best thing ever.

687 Cumberland St.

So here are some photos of my flat. Here's a picture of it from the outside, and I'd say it's a pretty accurate picture, except maybe the hills in the background shouldn't be quite as green. No worries, though.

On the inside, there are four bedrooms, two on either side of the hall as you walk in. My room's pretty good sized, definitely bigger than my room at school last year (or freshman year, for that matter). In fact, my room is about 192 square feet, according to the handy tape measure left in my room by whoever lived here last semester. I got a double-sized bed (everyone has them here), a desk, dresser and closet. Oh, and a space heater. Essential stuff. Of course I don't have my precious posters with me here, so I brought my Vermont calendar and tore out the pages and put them on the wall. Just above my bed, on the right, are pictures of Hartford and Hartland. Nice.

Also in the flat are two bathrooms (one shower) and the best part, a big living room/kitchen. The living room has a bunch of seating (great for movies and stuff).

The funny part about the flat (which is about 80 years old, apparently) is that it was once retrofitted to be handicap accessible, so in addition to ramps in and out, the kitchen counter is lower than most in order to allow wheelchair-bound people to get to the oven and sick. Ironically, the counter is too low, so wheelchairs can't even fit. The other oddity is one bathroom, which actually has the flat's second shower - the bathroom is the shower. The whole thing is tiled, there's a drain in the floor, and it has a removable shower head. Naturally, the shower isn't functional. Instead of water going down the drain in the end of the room, it goes all the way across and under the door to the hallway. Genius post-grad engineering students, apparently. Who cares though, it's home sweet home!

And for inquiring minds, that's my mailing address. The addresses are simple here, but if you're mailing overseas (I'm not begging, just informing) try:
Ryan Frazer
687 Cumberland St.
Dunedin
New Zealand

Cadbury Chocolate Carnival

Beautiful day for a chocolate festival, eh? I think it got as warm as 45 degrees today, and it may not have even gotten to freezing last night. I could get used to this. Anyway, the shot above is from about halfway up Baldwin Street, which, I'll mention again, is the steepest street in the world. At its steepest, for every 2.86 feet you walk horizontally, you'll go up by a foot. That's a 19° slope (35% grade). Here's one way to get an idea for it:

That's more or less the steepness of the street. It feels way steeper than it looks in these pictures, though. There was a pretty big crowd there, too. And who wouldn't want to be out on a day like this to see 20,000 Jaffa candies bounce and roll down the street? Down at the bottom of the street there, they had some vendors, but strangely no Cadbury vendors. Now if you were to have a chocolate festival, and particularly an event which promotes a particular candy, wouldn't you want to capitalize on the cravings that all the spectators are getting from watching the festivities? Sad times for me.

Anyway, you could donate $2 to charity in order to have your own Jaffa ball in the 'race.' Each ball had a little numbered piece of paper attached, and I guess that whoever owned the ball that made it to the bottom first would win some sort of prize. Having a ball make it to the bottom, however, is not as easy a task as one would assume. This isn't exactly the smoothest of streets (how often would you want to resurface something as steep as this?), so there are plenty of treacherous cracks and bumps that made the Jaffas bounce into the fence (and spectators). There were a lot of dead soldiers, too. And little kids ate them. Gross (apparently dead soldiers taste like chocolaty orange). If you want to see a crappy video I shot of the whole spectacle, go here. Don't worry, it's only sideways at the beginning.

The festival isn't only the Jaffa race; it actually goes for a whole week. Unfortunately a lot of it is paid stuff, but it's all kinda cool. On Saturday the festival kicked off with a free street concert thing at the Octagon with a chocolate fountain (Death by Chocolate, anyone?) and music and best of all, heat. It was pretty great, and below you can see St. Paul's Cathedral on the left and the Dunedin Municipal Chambers on the right. Until next time...

Dunedin, finally

That's not at all to say I just got to Dunedin. I've been here for nearly a week, in fact. No, I'm just getting my act together and (hopefully) accurately summing up my time here so far.

Right here, just so you know, is the Dunedin Railway Station. For some reason I left this picture out of the last post, so here it is. I told you, gingerbread house. And in case you didn't know, Dunedin is the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh.

We got into Dunedin last Tuesday, and surprise surprise, it was raining! This tends to be a common theme here. That, and the cold. Now historically, the cold and I don't disagree. I, of course, grew up in a cold place - I would wear a sweatshirt to school in 20 degree weather. This wasn't merely because I wasn't outside much then, it was because when I was inside, I could expect to be reasonably warm.

This isn't how things work in New Zealand. No, this must be the only country in the world that doesn't have central heating in its homes, but also experiences cold winters. It's not often in the States that you walk into your house wearing your winter clothes and don't immediately take them off once you step foot inside. I can't say I'm surprised that the first person to climb Mt. Everest was a Kiwi.

At this point, I probably sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not really. I'm just trying to convey a feeling - that while it's cold outside, inside you feel colder, to the bone. That's all. You kinda get used to it. It's why space heaters were invented. That, electric blankets and polypropylene. It's amazing stuff, and they have it in the States too, but it's become something of a fashion statement here. It's not surprising, either, because stepping foot outside without long underwear and a polypro top is crazy. For an idea of the weather around here, it's usually been sunny and in the low 40s during the day, and in the mid 20s at night. I'm actually quite cozy in bed, but getting up in the morning is hell.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea though - my warmth indoors is a small sacrifice to pay for the awesomeness of being here. My Kiwi host, Simon, is totally cool and definitely has the Kiwi sense of humor that I had been told about before coming here. Not only is he funny, but he also happens to have this place wired for high-speed internet, along with a tv and stereo - quite a luxury in student flats. The flat itself has four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a big common room/kitchen area. The big room heats up nicely with the heater we have, so we spend most of our time in there. Pictures to come later.

My other flatmates are Ingrid and KC. Ingrid is from the Czech Republic, from a little town called Mikulov, which is in the southeast of the country, near Austria. She actually brought us some brochures (in English, thankfully) showing her town, which is really pretty. She goes to university in Prague.

KC, amazingly, is actually from Hanover, NH. Who would have thought that one of the people I'd flat with would live 15 minutes from me at home? She goes to Davidson, in North Carolina. She didn't come here through my study abroad program (Butler) but though Arcadia instead. Anyway, pretty awesome coincidence. We all share food and cooking duties when we can, and the other day we even had a group dinner at our flat with 10 or so friends from our study abroad programs. Tacos = great for group feeding.

So as I had figured out before from the map of Dunedin, our flat is right next to campus, and I'm no more than a 3 minute walk to any of my classes. The library (and therefore complete warmth) is a minute away. I'm a minute from the Otago Museum, 3 minutes from the nearest ATM, the post office and Poppa's Pizza, and 3 minutes from the nearest bar, The Captain Cook Tavern (or 'the Cook' as students call it). It's great for rugby matches. I'm in a pretty excellent location, since I know other kids who would have to tack on at least 10 minutes to all of those times from where they're living. The supermarket is about 4 blocks away, and the Octagon is a 10 minute walk. The best part of the city, though, is George St., which is full of shops, cafes, takeaways (takeout) and other cool student-oriented things. In case you're really bored (clearly I was) you can check this out. You can walk everywhere in the city really easily (as long as you're appropriately dressed, I suppose). Completely unrelated above, that's another picture of the harbor (from my walk in the last post - ironically not a place you would want to walk to).

Here are some goodies about Kiwis and Dunedin life; hopefully I can remember most of them:

• 'sweet as' = awesome
• everyone says 'no worries' and 'mate,' 'righto' is also popular
  
• not only do cars drive on the left (which I'm sure will get me killed as a pedestrian), but people walk on the left side of sidewalks (footpaths, they call them) and stairs - I've gotten some funny looks going on the 'wrong' side
• everyone seems to use ATMs here (they're everywhere, as are banks) but no one ever pays with cash - they use their EFTPOS (Electronic Fund Transfer - Point Of Sale) cards for everything, even at bars
• you'd think that not having pennies would eliminate change, but of course they have dollar and two dollar coins, and they're no Sacagawea's - these things are used everywhere because there aren't dollar bills either
  
• almost all of the SUVs here have an extra side view mirror near the front corner of the hood (they don't call it a hood, it's a bonnet) - apparently they tow a lot of things here

I'm sure I'll come up with more quirks and differences as time goes on, so be on the lookout. Anyway, look for pictures of my flat, as well as some cool stuff from the amazing Cadbury Chocolate Carnival - tomorrow they roll candy down the steepest street in the world.

So I Lied.

I didn't actually go to the Otago Peninsula on Friday. Sad, I know. I hope you can all forgive me. My flatmate, KC, and I made the easy one block walk (compared to the 10-15 minutes other students had to make from their flats) to the middle of campus where we were supposed to meet to catch the buses, and it turned out the trip was canceled. Why, you might ask? I think that the picture below may explain some things...So yeah, it's goddamn cold here, you may have guessed. I know that most of you are probably in the dark about what the weather is like down here, so briefly I'll let you know that it's about 28 degrees right now (1 a.m.), which is -2 for all you Kiwis out there. I'll get around to a post about my moving into my flat and Dunedin soon-ish, hopefully by Monday, but for now I think a description of my day is sufficient. Hopefully my infamous storytelling will improve.

Anyway, lacking a plan of what to do or a place to go or food to eat (we all thought we would be gone from noon to 7, and get a free BBQ somewhere in between - only a few of us brought sandwiches), some of my friends decided to go on a trek and find their way to the water anyway. Forget the buses, we have feet, right? Well off we went, and before we knew it our group of international students was at least 20 strong, and I'm sure most of them didn't even know us or where we were leading them. Just for the glamor of it, here's the Clocktower Building; it's probably the most iconic part of the Uni. Don't be fooled, though. Luckily there are some cars in this picture for scale, but in almost everything published by Otago, the tower is made out to be 100 feet tall or something, which it clearly is not.

So our little jaunt obviously wasn't planned, meaning we didn't have much of an idea of where to go other than generally southeast. In fact, we went due south, and as you can see if you head south of the campus (basically from the green arrow on the map in a post down below) you'll end up in the lovely industrial section of Dunedin. At one point, a couple of us stopped at a corner store in the shipping yards to ask for directions on how to get to the water, and the woman replied, 'Well it's a good thing you have them long legs, you're sure as hell gonna need them!' There were some other clever Kiwi comments about the apparent busload-size of our group, too.

After about a half-hour of walking from campus (and several a cappella renditions of such classics as 'The Final Countdown,' 'Juke Box Hero' and 'Come Sail Away') we finally saw the water, and my was it beautiful. Of course in the civilized world, you can't just have waterfront that isn't being exploited for tourist dollars, and we found a little walkway with benches and a pub along the waterfront.

We whittled our numbers down to about 7 after hobos and fishermen killed and/or ate the others) and we weren't even that cold since it was the middle of the day and we had been walking so much. It's a great way to keep warm. Anyway, it was actually pretty nice there. Seeing the snow on the surrounding hills was great (bizarre in July though).

On the way back to the campus, we walked by another landmark in Dunedin, the Dunedin Railway Station. It looks like a gingerbread house, of sorts (I'll admit I stole that characterization from the Wikipedia article) and has some great gardens outside. Maybe I'll go in one day...

So I'll probably be checking back in by Monday about my move in and the Kiwi life in general. Definitely some interesting quirks here. And since I can't get the song (or what I associate with the song) out of my head, I have to do this...sweet as, mate.

Kia Ora = Hello

Hey all, apologies for the long break in posts, but getting my act together has taken a bit of time here. I suppose it would be best to start at the beginning and go from there, so here goes:

To start off, I had the best flight over here from LAX. Waiting in the airport sucked, although as time wore on I had a lot of fun meeting other kids in my program (Butler) and in another program (Arcardia) which happened to have the same flight to Auckland. Air New Zealand is sweet airline, and even though the flight was 13 hours(!) it was probably the best I've ever had. They served us two meals (I was so tired at first that I passed out through the first one) and had free in-flight entertainment, so I got to watch Blades of Glory and other movies not even out of theaters yet.

After we got off the flight at lovely 6:30 in the morning, Auckland time, we went through Customs (not a hassle) and were whisked off into a couple vans to go to Shakespear Regional Park (yes, that's the right spelling, you crazy English majors) YMCA Lodge. As you can see below, the weather was stunning:In fact, despite the rainy, wet, damp coldness of it all, the landscape and the park were really beautiful and looked a lot like Ireland (I think). The shot above is from the porch of the YMCA Shakespear lodge, which is where some sheep farmer (surprise surprise) lived 100 years ago. I suppose you could think of it as a Kiwi version of the Billings Farm and Museum.

So here are some facts for those interested about our stay at the lodge: there are 21 kids in my program, from all over the country, but most of them are based in the northeast. We ate five times a day (like the hobbits?) because of morning and afternoon tea, so I'm pretty much addicted at this point. We did a ton of different activities - staying active is he best way to get over jet lag - that included but were not limited to:

• kai
  
• orienteering
• cricket
• kai
  
• rock climbing
  
• wine tasting at the Villa Maria Estate - pretty cool, because now I can look sophisticated when drinking wine (and maybe even act sophisticated too).
  
• rugby - we played the touch variety. It was a lot of fun and in explaining it, learned that the Kiwi impression of American football is: 'A bloke runs five yards, gets tackled by a bunch of linebackers, a bunch of officials blow their whistles, you sit on the bench for five minutes, they have a replay, cut to a Budweiser commercial, come back and line up for the next play'
• sea kayaking over the shipwreck of the SS Wainui (it was sunk on purpose, no dead bodies)
• kai
  
• hot thermal springs at Waiwera Resort - they smelled like sulfur and weren't 'natural', but there were hot waterslides and there was a nice pub across the street
• an overnight visit to the Te Puea Marae - this is the sort of meeting house/village for a particular tribe of Maori people who live in the Auckland area. The Maori did a traditional welcoming ceremony for us, which included being charged at by half-naked, tongue-waving, staff-toting men, a peace offering, and speeches made by two tribe leaders (I was one, haha) to the Maori. We even sang two songs, one in Maori and an American one - America the Beautiful. After that, they taught us the haka, which is probably most well-known to outsiders as something performed by the All Blacks, New Zealand's national rugby union team. It's awesome.
• kai. In case you didn't know (you probably didn't) kai is a Maori word for food that gets used fairly often here. I love it. We eat a lot of it, too.

Anyway, yeah, we did a lot of stuff. And amazingly, the weather cooperated when we wanted it to:I wish I had taken more pictures, but it was hard because I didn't want to kill my camera from the rain. Our program coordinators took a lot though, and (eventually) we'll get those. Anyway, I'd love to write about my move into Dunedin, but I'll have to do that tomorrow - the Uni (as they call it) is taking the international students on a trip to the Otago Peninsula today, home of many seals and yellow-eyed penguins. Dunedin's awesome, is pretty much all you need to know. And yes, my flat and flatmates are all cool too, so no worries.

Finally, in case you're wondering, I'm 16 hours ahead of the east coast and 19 ahead of the west. Easy way to figure out the time here: subtract 8 hours (or 5 if you're on the west coast) from your time, then pretty much that's the time here, only it's tomorrow. Crazy, I know.

Kia Ora

Hey everyone, just wanted to quickly check in here from my temporary accomodations. I spent the last 4 or 5 days up on the North Island near Auckland, and just got down here to Dunedin yesterday. Once I get a chance later today or tomorrow, I'll fill you all in on what I've been up to. Basically, it's pretty awesome.