O-Week

It's so hard to keep up with this, especially with this week being O-Week. The 'o' kind of ambiguously stands for Otago and/or Orientation... it's basically a week of non-stop partying. I've been having so much fun this week it's amazing. The first few days that I was in Dunedin it was kind of rainy and chilly, but that didn't stop any of the festivities from occurring at all.

In the beginning of the week I registered for classes, which was a weirdly different process from what it is in the US. I had to have classes approved my professors in each department of each class, and actually get them to sign off on them in person. That was a confusing ordeal that none of us really understood, but we got it done eventually. Classes here are actually called 'papers', and I'm taking 4 of them: Hinduism and Buddhism, Music Technology I, Maori Society, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I'm pretty sure that I only have class Mon/Tues/Thurs, but I won't know for sure until tomorrow. I did that and then got my ID, and spent the next day or two really getting to know Dunedin, walking around and all that. It's really insane how so many of us AustraLearn kids there are that all know each other... we run into people everywhere. Between that and just meeting people as we've been here, I feel like I know someone everywhere I go already, and I've been here for less than a week.

Tuesday there was a toga parade for the 'freshers' (freshman), where they all dress up in togas and march down Great King Street (where I live) while the upperclassmen all proceed to pelt them with eggs. I only caught the end of it, but it was pretty great to see. Another apparent tradition of O-Week is couch burning, which is obviously frowned upon by the town but definitely still happens. Some friends and I actually participated last night... it was great, we don't really have much garbage left in our house after that... haha.

Yesterday was Cook-a-Thon, which seemed similar to Halloween. It's another part of O-Week, but all the students dress up in crazy costumes and head out to a bar nearby campus called Captain Cook's Tavern... starting when doors open there at 10am. Most kids even wake up earlier than that to start drinking, and I was actually woken up by our neighbors drinking and being loud at about 6:30. Lots of people had matching costumes, and a friend Chris and I went to an op shop and put together pretty cheap doctor's costumes... lab coats, rubber gloves, and dust masks. We didn't keep them on all day, but last night turned out to be a great night once we burnt a couch and got out to a couple bars... 'The Baa' and the 'Monkey Bar'.

Today was a great day all around. I woke up relatively early to get down to the Clubs and Societies buliding for the expo that they were having there to sign up for different things. I signed up for a ton: Volleyball, Squash, Handball, Ultimate Frisbee, and was told about a recreational Rugby team. We'll see what I stick with, but there are just so many opportunities of things to do here that I can't pass up anything. I got some coffee with friends and some lunch, and then we went our separate ways to get changed to go to the beach... today was the first warm and sunny day since we'd been there.

We put on our 'togs' (bathing suits) and 'jandals' (sandals) and amassed a pretty good crowd to find the bus to get to St. Clair's beach, which was only about a 15 minute busride. It turned out that we were definitely not the only AustraLearn(+company) folks who had the idea, and it just turned out to be one big party on the beach with everyone we knew. Almost everyone brought alcohol, and we had a great time there all day playing frisbee and jumping in the freezing cold water. Finally heading back, I made some pasta with a girl who lives in a flat next door to mine. I hung out and starting drinking and jumping around different flats before heading out with a few to the Monkey Bar for an International Students night there. We ended up getting there after they had started letting Kiwis in also, but still ran into tons of people from AustraLearn. I was there for a while before walking toward one of our friend's flats that was having a party, but we got sidetracked talking to some Kiwis and watching another couch burning. They turned out to be some really awesome kids who I'll hopefully and probably run into another time. I headed back here almost at the same time as my flatmate Steve, and we made some quesadillas and heading up to bed.

I'll have to try to actually update this more frequently so that I can actually remember everything that I've done, but it's tough with so much going on! That plus my internet only half-working because we're mooching it off of a neighbor, haha. Anyway, I'll be back on here soon...