I arrived in Christchurch on the 28th of June after a 26-hour flight. The University of Canterbury has a free pickup service for international students, so there was a taxi driver waiting for me when I got to the airport.
My first confusion/culture shock/whatever-you-wanna-call-it moment happened when I went for the passenger door, and realized that there was a steering wheel there. Oops. Right. They drive on the wrong side of the road.
My apartment is quite nice, at least for what I was expecting. I have my own room, fluffy blankets and pillows, and I share a kitchen and living room with four other people. We have no oven, but the microwave can act as one if I absolutely need to use an oven (and I probably won’t).
I’ve met 3 of my flatmates so far. Two of them are identical twins named Pat and Mike. They’re Kiwis from the north island, and I think I can finally tell them apart after all this time. They helped me out quite a bit at first, telling me where to go to buy a cell phone, how to buy a bus pass, etc. My other flatmate arrived a little bit after me, her name is Kristina and she’s from Austria. I have come to learn that Austrians speak German – but Germans are to Austrians as Americans are to Canadians. As are Aussies to Kiwis. Please take note 😉
All my flatmates are, I’m happy to say, perfectly okay with me singing as I do dishes. (and anything else, really)
The international services at the uni (see me using kiwi slang already >.<) organized a few events for the international students right at the start, so that everyone could get together and meet each other. The first such event was a bonfire with free food, music, and poi dancing.
Photo courtesy of Jürgen Brandstetter
Photo courtesy of Sheila Wesa
The second event was called “Maori Experience,” where they cooked a hangi for us. A hangi is (was) the Maori way of cooking. Since they had no ovens, they would dig a hole, heat up a bunch of rocks, and bury the food with the hot rocks underneath. Several hours later the food would be ready and they would dig it back up again. So they did that for us, and we got to experience a Maori-style meal.
Afterwards, the Maori group danced the Haka for us, which was a sight to see.
If you don’t know what the Haka is, just read the first paragraph here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka
It was pretty impressive. I would be scared if I was the opposing group.
Those two events were pretty much how I got to meet people. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of Americans studying abroad here. They are by far the largest group of international students. Some of the other nationalities I’ve met are: French, German, Malaysian, Welsh, Danish, Chinese, and a few countries I can’t remember the names of. I’ve also met a few other Canadians, all from UBC.
The first hiking adventure I got was the last Sunday before school started. A few other international students and I decided to go to the Port Hills to do some tramping (kiwi slang for hiking). Christchurch is generally a very flat city, pretty much like Edmonton. Actually I think Edmonton has more hills than the Canterbury plains do, just because of the river. But, Christchurch is surrounded by mountains. The Port Hills, for example, are just a half-hour busride from the middle of town.
We took the bus towards these hills, our destination being an area called Victoria Park. After a short hike we came to the top of a mountain and we could see all of Christchurch laid out before us, with the Southern Alps to the North and the ocean to the East.
When we were at the absolute top and looked South, we could see Lyttelton Harbour.
Photo courtesy of Will Rynearson
Group photo! From left to right, the people in this photo are Will (USA), Heiko (Germany), moi, Andy (Austria), Gabe (USA), Carmen (Germany), and my flatmate Kristina (Austria).
After tramping the whole day, we decided to do a group dinner. We decided on pizza, since it’s pretty easy. Most of the group also live in the Ilam Apartments, so we had to go to Heiko’s place off campus since he has an oven.
The pizza was delicious, but kinda sweet. We all wondered why, until afterwards when we were cleaning up and we realized that we had put ketchup on our pizza in lieu of tomato sauce…
I mean, we’d all been told that kiwis call ketchup “tomato sauce,” and that it can be confusing, but none of us even thought about it when someone put a can of “tomato sauce” into the cart.
Who puts ketchup in cans anyway?
Well it doesn’t matter, it actually tasted pretty good, and we ate 5 pizzas among 6 people.
Photo courtesy of Carmen Widera
This being my first adventure, and what I came to New Zealand for, I was a super happy camper after that trip.
New Zealand Travel 