End of Orientation / Arrival in Dunedin

So the next night at our hostel, ours and the Blue group went to Maori Village for a 'hangi,' which is a traditional Maori meal. The presentation at the village was much more than that though... we actually watched them perform several ancient customs and songs, which were all very interesting to see. The food was great, and all of the meat is prepared in a fire pit in the ground covered with logs and leaves. It was in all a pretty relaxing night hanging around the pit outside until we left the village. Later that night, everyone drank at the bar at Kiwi Paka like the night before, but I actually stayed out for a while this time. When most of the group left to go to a bar downtown, me and a couple of other kids instead went to explore Rotorua ourselves. We ended up getting pretty lost, but had a good time exploring and ended up back at the hostel by about 2am.

Yesterday, though, was definitely the best day of orientation. We woke up pretty early to leave for our caving trip at Waitomo, which was definitely one of the most fun and unique things I've done in my life. There were a few options of what type of caving we could do, and I ended up getting the 'tubing' one. We actually were only tubing for a few minutes of it, but that wasn't even the highlight of the trip. We arrived there and took a van to a site to gear up in wet suits/boots/helmets, and with a group of about 15 of us, we all hiked down to the cave. We climbed in and started trekking through the flowing water in the cave. Not very far into the cave we were already able to see the world-famous (largely due to Planet Earth..) glow worms, which were incredible. With all of our helmet lights turned off, they looked like tons of bright stars across the pitch black cave.

In the cave we had to hike over many obstacles and sharp rocks, walk through water up to our chests, crawl through extremely narrow passages, and even swim through parts that were deep enough that we couldn't reach the bottom. At one point we grabbed some inner-tubes and chained together to float down the water with all of our lights turned off, staring at the amazing glow worms in silence. Somewhere in the middle of the trek, our guides stopped and served us some hot sugary lemon drink along with a candy bar to keep our blood pumping through the cold water. All in all, it was an insanely awesome trip.

We had a great lunch in Waitomo at a second Kiwi Paka site and took a group photo before bussing back to our own hostel. We had a free afternoon to hang out there, which is spent in the pool that is heated by the geothermal springs with a bunch of others from our group. We had dinner there and hung out at the pool drinking there for a while, before heading out to a bar/club downtown with almost everyone to celebrate our last night of orientation. The Lava Bar was a lot of fun, especially since our AustraLearn group took over the dance floor and had a great time with each other before parting to our seperate universities.

I woke up early again today to have breakfast and make it to our last info session at PolyTech before getting over to the airport in Rotorua. There wasn't a long wait there until we boarded our small prop plane to Wellington, where we transferred to Dunedin. I hadn't necessarily expected it, but Diane (my au pair from when I was very young) was waiting for me at the airport with her kids. It was great to see her there and finally meet Maddi and Jess, but it was a short visit. I'll without a doubt be able to get up to Wellington at another time while I'm here, though.

After finally landing in Dunedin, we found all of our luggage and were divided into groups to board the vans based on where our flats were in relation to each other. The vans actually dropped us off right at our flats which was very convenient, and we were able to get all settled. I'm now living in a flat with four other students, two of which were both in the AustraLearn program with me. Steve and Caroline are both from the AustraLearn program, while Rachel is a student here from Illonois, and Sara is here for the semester from Norway. They're all great, and I'm definitely going to have a good time here this semester.

We didn't do much other than get all settled in our flat here tonight, other than picking up a few groceries and beer. We hung out and said hi to some other kids we knew living in flats near ours, drinking and listening to music. I really should get to bed now, though, as we have an orientation actually from Otago at 1oam on campus. I'm ready to get those classes picked out...