Arrival

Catherine and I made it through customs without much trouble. I told them I had hiking books and they thoroughly inspected them to make sure I wasn't bringing any microbes into the country. I can deeply respect that policy after reading about what had happened to Australia with their frog problems.

We walked out with our luggage and saw a group gathering. I met with Stephanie and Daryl from Globalinks and they registered me into the program ,took my luggage and gave me a phone card which I used to call JoAnn and Big D back home. Next I saw a huge line at the phone store and grabbed a SIM card for my phone and got my NZ number. By then I needed a coffee and had my first Kiwi exchange with a barista and order a flat black coffee. I had read in my tour guide menu that you order coffee differently in the Zeal so I tried my best to not act like a tourist and got my coffee. After that I saw everyone beginning to grab their stuff and head for outside. I saw heaps (Kiwi lingo for a lot) of people wearing jeans and decided to change in the bathroom. When I left the bathroom, I saw that everyone, like all 70 people were gone from the airport. I looked outside and just saw a few people waiting for buses and no sign of any Americans. I did a quick circle around the airport in a panic and found Stephanie and gave me directions to the bus. I barely understood what she said through her New Zealand accent and headed in the opposite direction. I was not being a very good geography major.

When I turned around I saw a grinning dude about middle aged who asked if I was lost and I said "yeah I have no idea what I'm doing in this country." He said cool and I told him I was headed to Wellington to which he replied "Ohhhh Windy Wellington eh?" I said um yeah probably. Now eventually you find out that for some reason Kiwi's absolutely love talking about how god damn windy Wellington is. I must have heard 15 people call Wellington windy on that first day. I was just so confused but they always said it with a smile which was even more confusing because I would think a windy city would be frustrating to go to. I eventually came to the conclusion that Kiwis just had fond memories of Wellington and liked to add the windy part as a lead up to it or that I was in for some gale force winds and was about to be laughed at by the locals as I struggled to walk down the street.

This guy Daryl had an interesting life story from what I could tell. Later I would learn that he's certified in just about every single adrenaline activity you could imagine, knew an unbelievable amount of kiwi history with an insider kind of point of view. Daryl was indeed the man.

I got on the bus and headed towards some dudes who seemed like some level headed bros. Wyatt introduced himself next to him was Pete and I think Andy but I'm not 100% because he didn't have a Gopro like the rest of us Gopro bros and who I reintroduced myself to at breakfast the next day not realizing it was the same dude. But either way we were all getting annoyed at how long we had to wait for some students to join us who had missed their flight. I was a little confused when the Kiwi bus driver/ tour guide started talking with an extremely laid back attitude and the occasional cuss word but you soon pick up that that's the culture here and that seemed pretty badass to me. Our bus started moving and we discovered that 3 of us had Gopro cameras and how good of an idea it was to have one in New Zealand.

We got to the President hotel in Auckland and dropped our bags off in what appeared to be the hotel dungeon then left for a quick orientation at a university down the street. As we were walking we were kind of annoyed at the weather, the huge hill gradient, the way cars seemed to almost hit you every time you crossed the street and industrial like atmosphere but the city seemed like a very unique place. Our hotel was across the street from the giant SkyTower and a random bungy swing thing just hanging out in the middle of a city but was out of order that day. 

Auckland: where you can get in a quick bungy during lunch breaks - Photo credit: Google Earth

We got to the university, talked a bit about lingo, history, and elected our chief, Connor, for the Maori culture day. Then we ate some subway and played a history picture game and learned that Cameron was very enthusiastic about bungee jumping. After that we headed back to the hotel and awkwardly waited to see what random stranger we would be roommates with that night. My roommate was Horticulture Sean who is the most laid back, easy going LA dude I've ever met. We unpacked a bit and went out to check out the Auckland scene. We walked around for a bit then headed down to the waterfront and grabbed a beer and talked to a cute bartender who gave us the low down on what to expect in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

  

Auckland

Wellington

Christchurch

We got back, met up with everyone then headed out to get food poisoning at a pizza place. We all got our own pizzas made with some kind of strange dairy product that made most of us sick. Never-the-less I sat with almost all of the girls who were going to Victoria and they all seemed like a fun bunch. After the food poisoning we decided to poison our livers and grabbed some absurdly expensive alcohol at the packie headed up to someones room to pregame. That's where I met Wyatt's frat bro Shay and his brother Connor who were all from Ohio and a couple of the greatest people on the planet. A few other people came up and we decided to head out to check out the bar scene in Auckland.

So by this point, some of you may be saying "what the hell why am I not mention more in Dennis's awesome blog?" to which I say Im sorry but my memory is not that great after two weeks and you should have been louder or done something funny/crazy for me to remember and I apologize. Some others might be wondering "Holy shit. Is Dennis going to tell the world what I said/did that night?" and the answer to that is no Scotty, I will not. I think I'm a pretty good judge of things and I've always tried to keep drama levels down and on another note I'd prefer good Karma over bad if I can help it. So no worries readers. I'll do my best to keep most situations as anonymous as possible. If anyone from my program actually does read this blog and wants me to remove something from my posts, don't hesitate to FB message me or gmail me asap. Cheers bros!

-Dennis