Kia Ora

Man that was a lot of traveling. I made it here to New Zealand! I flew out of Phili on Tuesday, 2pm to Los Angeles where my connecting flight to Auckland was. It took me a while to find the right gate since it was in another terminal, but I knew I'd found it when I got there. There were tons of college students hanging out at the gate, all getting to know each other and obviously excited to get down to New Zealand or Australia.

Our flight took off at 7pm, and though it took us about 13 hours to get to Auckland, we arrived at about 5:45am... on Thursday. The time difference did seem a little weird on the first day, but it really wasn't too bad, especially since I'd slept a pretty good amount on the plane. Our flight was a group flight with mostly kids going to various schools in New Zealand or Australia through our program, AustraLearn. I did, though, sit next to a girl who had just graduated college and was going to Wellington to visit a friend... instead of getting a job.

Anyway, after getting to the airport in Auckland, we all got our bags and went through customs and waited by several busses for everyone to arrive. I hung out there talking to people until about 6:45, which is about when we finally left for Rotorua. We made a couple of food/bathroom stops on the way, but got to our hostel in just a few hours. In all there were 3 busfulls of students... 2 who are going to UOtago, and 1 going to UAuckland. We all, though, through AustraLearn, got to Rotorua for a fun orientation weekend at our hostel, Kiwi Paka, in Rotorua.

Once at Kiwi Paka, we all threw down our bags and went straight for a lunch that they had provided for us. After that we loaded back onto the bus to go to an informational session on New Zealand at a place called PolyTech. After about 2 hours of this, we headed back to Kiwi Paka where my bus got to be the first to learn the 'Haka,' which is a traditional Maori war dance. It was definitely a lot of fun... I got to act as our "chief," and we all put on the traditional Maori dress and performed it in two competing groups. Ours was without a doubt the better...

After scrubbing off the face-paint, I went on a walk with a few people to check out the local hot springs and boiling mud. They were pretty interesting, but smelled terrible, like sulfur. I came back here before them so that I could (finally) shower before having dinner with everyone. Some people stayed out after dinner to drink at the bar at the hostel, but apparently almost everyone was in bed by about 10:30 anyway beacuse of all the exhaustion. I'm just now starting to get over my cold that I had when we got here, so I decided to get right to bed last night. It wasn't too hard for me to nod off, especially since I was one of the lucky ones who somehow got his own room at the hostel.

I woke up this morning at about 7:15 to go and eat breakfast, and afterward went back to PolyTech for our last info session. After that, we all got bussed to a live sheep show... which is actually much more entertaining than it sounds. We saw 19 different breed of sheep, and got to pet them all and even watch a man sheer one. A sheep-herding dog did some funny tricks with them also. I was even picked to go on stage with a few others to feed a baby lamb.

We came back to Kiwi Paka for lunch this afternoon, and then quickly were taken to our next activity. We were able to choose between a hike, luging, or zorbing. I knew without a doubt that I had to try zorbing, since Rotorua is the only place in New Zealand (and one of the only in the world) where you can do it. Zorbing, in simple terms, is rolling down a hill in a huge water-filled rubber ball. Awesome. I'm defintely glad that I chose to do it, and will hopefully be able to try out luging some other time while I'm here.

We just got back from that a little while ago, and have a few free hours before heading off to a 'hangi,' which is a traditional Maori feast. And all this before I've even gotten down to the university yet...