Orientation and Things I Learned in my First Week

My first Monday and Tuesday were spent at orientation which was actually quite enjoyable and entertaining even though it started at 9am both mornings. We were provided with breakfast and a delicious lunch. I continued to meet lots of really cool people, most from the U.S. and actually met some people who knew some of my acquaintances at Geneseo and possibly knew some of my friends at other schools in the Northeast...who would have thought I'd encounter so many small world experiences in NZ. I discovered that Kiwis are quite humorous and very entertaining to listen to. For example, the police officer who spoke to us was really chill, sarcastic, and basically mocking the police system which was pretty hilarious. On the first day we were sent on a scavenger hunt to get to know our way around campus which is beautiful by the way. The Avon river (more like big stream) runs right through campus which is very pretty and there's lots of trees and nice landscaping on campus. i was actually surprised at the size of the campus, it's quite compact for having 20,000 students, I can walk to all my class within 10-12 minutes and its mostly just walking from my flat to campus. So yeah orientation was quite painless and I spent the rest of my week getting settled in, meeting more people, and exploring the area.

Here's some things I learned in my first week of being in New Zealand:

• Kiwis love their bbq and by bbq i mean a sausage on a slice of bread with"tomato sauce" a different form of ketchup...i think i ate a free sausage everyday for lunch for the first week on campus
• You can almost always pay in exact change. Tax is included in the shelf price so whatever an item is marked as is what you pay and almost everything is in nice round numbers and if a price is uneven they round up or down. Coins are 10, 20, 50 cents, 1 dollar, and 2 dollars and bills start at 5...the money system here is such a beautiful thing-I LOVE IT
• Lemonade means Sprite, not real lemonade...it took me until 2 days ago to hunt down some real lemonade which was a miracle. Unfortunately I drank nearly all of it which is going to require another trip to Pak N Sav (a newer bigger, better, cheaper grocery store that we have to take the bus too)
• K-12 is required to wear uniforms. It's so weird to see tons of kids dressed in different school uniforms all over the city and on the public bus system once school is out.
• Eggs aren't refrigerated but dog food is, very strange
• Paper is longer here which means longer essays, darn
• Prostitution was recently made legal
• Drinking in public is legal and perfectly acceptable except for in some restricted zones like the city center
• There's a hole in the Ozone above New Zealand (learned this the hard way with a little burn, and lots of peeling which is weird b/c i never peel)
• Nutrition information is recorded in ENERGY with units of kJ (kilojoules) as opposed to calories...makes me feel so much better about consuming energy rather than calories
• They have nearly every flavor of chips available Ex: chicken, lamb and mint
• CADBURY IS HUGE!!!!! MY FAVORITE CHOCOLATE...I'M IN HEAVEN! Also Whittaker's the famous chocolate company is a NZ company...chocolate is great here!
• Iced coffee has ice cream in it! Kiwis love ice cream