Tuesday, July 10th

On the second day of classes.  Officially 4 days here in New Zealand.  While although they do speak english here it is seemingly quite different from our US english.  I'm learning new phrases and words for things all of the time.  For instance here in new zealand jelly means jello and jam means jelly, mail boxes are called letter boxes but pronounced litter boxes and the list seemingly goes on and on.  I must say I fit in with new zealand culture a little bit better than some of my international student counterparts.  Life here is well to say frankly...laid back, which is awesome.  Most everyone is overly friendly and knows how to have a good time...sometimes too much so but thats for another post.  I am still getting aquatinted with driving on the left side of the road.  However more difficult it would seem are adapting my everyday motor skills in terms of walking to this phenomenon.  While in the states we walk on the right side down hallways, through doors, upstairs, on and off the bus, up and down escalators....here it is exactly the opposite.  I've had quite a few close calls of almost running into people because of this but I am slowly getting used to it.  Its just funny sometimes because I feel almost dumb if that makes sense. It is very hard to change these habits, harder than it may ever seem at first actually.  Also for all you rugby players back in the states, come to New Zealand.  Out of my small Uni here ("University", more NZ jargon) there are 4 rugby teams.  Additionally in downtown Christchurch there are at least 50 pitches in the park.  It is definitely engrained in the culture! Downtown Christchurch however has been decimated by the earthquake.  I went down on sunday to retrieve a cell phone and a metro card (bus pass).  Central downtown at the epicenter it looks as if the city has been carpet bombed.  It is completely fenced off and tower cranes and countless construction equipment can be seen destroying and rebuilding buildings.  The city is working around this devastating event and the surrounding towns of Christchurch have flourished.  Also there is a mall in downtown called the container mall and is in fact completely made out of shipping containers which have been modified to have windows and been transformed into coffee shops, clothing stores, technology stores, etc...  All my professors go by there first name and are very layer back.  School is slightly different down here, they seem to have grades down to a bare minimum consisting only of tests, assignment and projects.  The term is only 12 weeks long and fairly fast paced.  I'm hopefully going skiing this weekend with a kid from france.  The Mountains are absolutely majestic and seem to shoot up effortlessly into the ski thousands upon thousands of feet.  They are completely snow capped and have been having an awesome winter in terms of snowfall here on the south Island.

Until next time Cheers!