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.