Hello! How is everyone? Well if you're not going to talk, I'll just continue with the story! After spending the night at our friend Bridget's place in Auckland, we booked an overnight bus South and spent the day wandering around the city. We went up Sky Tower, which is a somewhat obnoxious needle-like tower in the center of the Auckland skyline. They've got a revolving restaurant that rotates 360 degrees every hour, and we had lunch up there. It actually took some getting used to, and after eating we were ready to stop rotating. We walked around some neat shops and caught our bus in the evening.

The next day and night we spent in the city of Palmerston North, which a few hours from the Southern tip of the North island. There we stayed with our friend Marcus from orientation, who was studying there. The highlight of this stop was the town legend, "the naked pie guy". In NZ, a pie isn't generally a dessert dish, but a smaller pastry filled with meat or vegetables that you eat as a meal or a snack. We went into his shop, where an elderly man was operating the register just wearing a pair of shorts. Lauren asked him if he actually got naked, to which the man simply dropped his shorts. This was the source of much laughter while we ate our pies.

From Palmerston North we went to Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand, and is the closest point to the South Island on the North Island. We waited forever for a bus to the university, where our friends (from orientation) April and Julia were going to school for the semester. We passed the New Zealand Parliament building, dubbed "the beehive". It really does look something like a beehive, but I suppose thats also some sort of crack on the politicians, who everyone makes fun of here (nothing new there) . We had a relaxing evening with Julia and April, during which we watched the extended version of the Lord of The Rings III over quesadillas and wine. By the way, there is tons of Asian food here, but not much Mexican. Thai and Chinese are especially big, due to the large amount of immigration from these countries.

From Wellington, we took the three hour Ferry across Cook Straight to Picton, which is near the North tip of the South Island. The ferry was really cool. It was a giant cruise ship, and one could wander around, go outside, or even visit a movie theater. Approaching the South Island, dolphins were all around the boat. We docked, and caught a bus for the 6 hour trip to Christchurch. The first thing I noticed looking out the bus window was that the South Island seemed a lot dryer than the North. While the North was typically rolling green hills, here I saw a lot of long brown grass. There were also a lot more sheep. For those who haven't heard, there are something like 10 times as many sheep as there are humans in New Zealand.

We finally made it to Christchurch, and checked into our new home of Ilam Village flats, just off campus at the University of Canterbury. Everyone gets their own room, and six flat mates share a kitchen and bathroom. In my flat are three Americans and three Kiwis, three guys and three girls. About half of the people in Ilam Village are Americans. This makes meeting new people easy, but a lot of the Americans are hanging out together in big groups, which makes it difficult to make friends with people from New Zealand or elsewhere. There are also alot of students from Canada, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and China living here. The RA's have been hosting a bunch of events to encourage people to get to know each other. Some of them have been pretty lame (for example "speed-meeting"), but people are getting to know each other on their own anyways.

Well, I think I'm about ready to quit typing again. Next time I'll talk some more about Christchurch, as well as some of the things I've done around town and in the area. Classes start the day after tomorrow, so that should be quite interesting. Bye!

Kia Ora,

Hey everyone! I'm starting this blog to document my travels and studies in the "land of the long white cloud" - New Zealand. I've been in the country for about two weeks now and there's already tons to tell about. I've got a bunch more pictures, which you can see at http://picasaweb.google.com/ltgoff . I'll embed a few of the important ones for if you are feeling lazy. Basically for this first entry is summarize what I've been up to since landing and offer some of my thoughts and impressions of it all. OK, sweet.

So I landed into New Zealand in Auckland, which is the largest and most populated city in the country. New Zealand consists of two main islands, which go by the ingenious names of "the North Island" and "the South Island". Auckland is in the North Island. I came to New Zealand through a program, and my first four days I spent with a group of 12 other Americans as an orientation program. I was to be picked up at the Auckland airport by our two guides: Sara and Aaron, who were Kiwi and American, respectively. They were not there when I came through customs and "biosecurity", so my first adventure was to figure out how to use a New Zealand payphone. I had no coins, so I had to carry all of my bags into this tiny little shop and buy some tic-tacs to get change. Finally I got in touch with Sara, and they said they were just a bit late. I waited outside and was picked up by the group about 20 minutes later. We had this nice bus that was big enough for about 3 times as many people as we had. I met the group and we had a two hour or so ride to the small city of Rotorua, which is towards the center of the island.

Rotorua is a very geologically active place with lots of geysers, and as a consequence clouds of steam float about and a sulpherous smell permeates the place. It smells sorta like the whole place just farted, but I actually grew to like the scent. We checked into our hotel, which was very nice. The next three days we spent in the Rotorua area, getting a taste of some mild New Zealand extreme sports. Amoung the things we did were swing from a giant swing, go luging down a mountain, white-water rafting, and "black-water" rafting, which is through a cave. We also went to a traditional Maori "Hangi", which consists of a meal and a demonstration of Maori music and dancing. The Maori are the indegenous people of New Zealand, who migrated to the country about a thousand years ago from other Polynesian islands. The British arrived about 250 years ago, and colonized the country. The country is still occupied by both ethnicities. The British emerged with political and economic dominance, and the Maori are in a sense somewhat of a lower-class. More on that later however.

After Rotorua, we headed back to Auckland. We stopped at a McDonalds, and this is probably the first time I've eaten in a McDonalds in a few years. Its quite a bit different than the ones in the states - and the food is actually a little better - but I still hate to see them all over the place. Particularly in the cities, there are alot of American fast food franchises in New zealand: Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Dunkin Donuts - just to name a few. It makes me sad. Anyways, in Auckland we stayed in Auckland Central Backpackers, which is a massive budjet backpackers hostel. They do not clean the sheets, and the bar in the basement goes all night and can be heard from at least the 3rd floor. In Auckland we wandered around and went to the beach, and ended our orientation program with an evening cruise in the harbor. The group got along very well and we all got pretty close in just four days. Unfortunately, we are all spread across the country. Five of us (including the three that came from UMD) are at the university (they call it just "uni" here) in the city of Christchurch. We have stuck together because we're good friends now, but are trying not to let it get in the way of meeting Kiwis and people from around the world. Nobody came all the way to New Zealand just to hang out with a bunch of Americans.

After orientation ended, the three of us from Maryland decided to travel up to the Bay of Islands in the Northern part of the North Island before going down to Christchurch, which is in the South Island. The group was me, Aaron Frank, and Lauren Nielson - who all work at the ORC. The Bay of Islands is a beautiful blue bay filled with hundreds of little islands, as the name might suggest. The bus ride up there took most of an afternoon, and the first night we just cooked some dinner and spent the night at a hostel in the town of Paihia. We all seemed to like the idea of paddling out to one of the islands and camping for the night, so in the morning we went to a Kayak rental shop to inquire about taking one overnight. The man working there told us that it was too windy to kayak that day, but that he knew of a great 6 hour hike at Cape Brett. They call hiking "tramping" here, so I might slip in and out of using the word "hike". To get to the trailhead, we had to first cross the Bay to the town of Russell, and then find a way up 45 minutes of windy road to the Maori willage of Rawhiti. By the time we made it to Russell, it was late, so we spent the night there at a hostel. It was really more of a homestay, and the owner Janet was very nice and gave us suggestions about our hike. She recommeded that we hitch a ride to Rawhiti rather than charter a van and pay alot of money. Hitchiking is still widely practiced in New Zealand, and outside of Auckland it is said to be very safe. In the rural areas, you'll likely either find a ride from a farmer or other travellers.

In the morning we headed out to the road with all of our stuff for three days, and got a ride for the first few kilometers from Janet's neighbor. This was the first time any of us had hitchiked, so at first we sort of nervously put out our thumbs in a way that was not very visible. We also didn't realize that you have to stand somewhere where a car can actually stop if you want to get a ride. After having about 20 cars pass with no luck, we finally got a ride from a guy named Matt Pascoe. He was formerly a graphic design artist in Auckland, but changed gears and moved up north in order to be outside. Now he works as a caretaker for very wealthy properties up in the hills in the area. Foreigners buy these giant homes, use helecopters to get in and out, and only even live there for a few short stretches of time in a year. Matt had to drop us off and get to work, and we spent a good 45 minutes waiting at the next bend in the road for a car to pass. Finally a black land-rover came, and pulled over. We shouted in delight and started running towards the vehicle, at which point the woman in the passenger seat motioned that they had not pulled over to pick us up but to make a phone call. We were shocked and dissapointed, especially because the whole backseat and trunk where empty. After they left, we got picked up by a Maori man with a dog and a pickup truck, who took us to pretty close to the trailhead. We walked the rest of the way.

The hike started off very nice, moving from a sort of grassland into very thick jungle as we climbed. The jungle was so dense we couldn't even see each other most of the time. The trail was thin and windy, and without a good map somehow we got off course. We eventually arrived at an old whaling station which was about an hour and half from the trail we needed to be on. We stopped on the beach and had lunch, and while Lauren and I initially wanted to just head back and call it a success, Aaron talked us into going the rest of the way. At that point it would have been only an hour back to the road. The tramp ended up taking forever, and we didn't arrive until about 8:30 as it was getting dark. If we had been any later, we would have had to camp on the trail, because the last section had cliffs falling down on either side of the trail. The hike was beautiful. Off of the main peninsula we were on, smaller ones branched off into the Pacific like little fingers - with gorgeous cliffs falling down to the water. Exhausted, we finally made it to the hut at the very end of the cape. The first thing we see when we walk in to the hut is the couple from the empty Land Rover that wouldn't pick us up! They recognized us immediately, and felt so bad that in the morning they offered us a lift back to Auckland.

The couple headed out early the next morning to make the hike back, but we were not ready to start walking again. We discussed it for a while, and decided we would book a boat ride back from the Cape to Rawhiti in order to beat them back to their car. We were able to call a water taxi by cell phone, but he had to pick us up very soon in order to do it. We ended up packing up in a hurry and running a large portion of the two hour hike back to Deep Water Cove, where he was able to pick us up. On the way down to Auckland, the couple was very talkative and we spent a long time talking about American politics. Not surpisingly, they were baffled how we could have re-elected George W, were pissed about the war in Iraq, and wondered why we didn't care about the environment. We started talking about New Zealand politics, and they let us know their opinion of Maori, which was quite low. They were under the impression that the Maori were a very lazy people, and were exploiting New Zealand's large social welfare program. Apparently one can make a decent living off of government support here if they are unemployed, and so oftentimes one generation after another will simply choose not to work. There is a legitimate complaint to be made here, of course, because in any society one should be expected to put a reasonable effort into the survival of themselves and others. However, the over-generalizations made by this couple bordered on just flat out racist. We didn't want to make them angry, because they were our ride to Auckland, so I just asked more questions rather than voice any pointed opposition to what they were saying. They ended up driving us right to the flat of our friend Bridget (from orientation) in Auckland, where we spent the night.

Well, thats all I feel like writing right now, so hopefully that will keep you reading for a while. There's alot more thats happened up to now, and hopefully I can catch up in the next couple of days. Cheers!