Living the Kiwi Life

Well, I'm all settled in to my flat in Dunedin, New Zealand! I arrived just over a week ago after a 6 hour flight, a 14 hour flight, and a 2 hour flight. I am living in a flat owned by the University of Otago with two Kiwi hosts, ZQ from Singapore, and Michael and Tabor from the States as well. Our flat is great and is in a complex with 5 other international student flats, so we do a lot of complex events. Each flat has 6 bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, and living room, so I have been cooking 3 meals a day on my own! Feels like pretty grown up stuff!

Uni started on Monday, and it is SO much different than St. Lawrence or any University in the states. As I was signing up for classes, I had a timetable clash where I had two classes at the same time. The advice a professor gave me was "Well, go to one class one week, and the other class the next week." Basically, going to class is optional. And after signing up for classes here, APR seems like the best program in the world. Not many kids go to lectures, especially in large classes like my education class that has 300 students and is podcast online (so going to lecture really isn't necessary to get all of the info). But don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm going to all my classes like a good American student!

In the ten days I have been here, we have done a lot of socializing and meeting other international students as well as Kiwis. We also went on a train ride to the Taieri Gorge which was so beautiful and great to see some parts of the South Island that you can't see from the roads.

The lay of the land is really interesting here, so many rolling hills of grass and then sharp and large rock formations sticking up out of no where! Then you can always look north/west and see some part of the Southern Alps or other mountain ranges. Dunedin, the city I am living in, is on the southern part of the South Island, so right now we are in the middle of winter. The city is very hilly, so there are lots of mountains in every direction, but the city lies on the Pacific Ocean as well. It's really quite beautiful here!

I also took a nice long (10+) mile hike up Flagstaff with Graham last weekend! It was a beautiful day with no clouds at all, so we took advantage of it and spent the whole day outside! From the top, we had a beautiful view of the ocean as well as mountains in the other directions. 

The third picture is us with Dunedin and the Pacific Ocean in the background! It's really so beautiful here, I love it!

I will continue updating this with exciting and beautiful adventures and pictures! Miss you all back home!!