It's Ain't All Tea and Crumpets in Kiwiland

Wow. I'm already neglecting my blog duties. I wanted to do this every three days and I think I've accomplished that once so far. Well, whatever. I'm also going to make these posts shorter because less is happening now that we've been here for two weeks. No pictures either, because I suck. So here's the news in brief:

8 September: Monday started the week off on a down note as our early morning viewing of a nearby apartment was an utter disappointment. We're coming to expect that now, though. High prices and low quality don't go together well. After giving up on that place (which had two terrified cats in a bedroom. Poor things!) we went to the public library and signed up for cards. They are a bit more strict here about those things, but we got them all the same. They have good resources here and even the school recommends using the public libraries for some types of material. The rest of the day was spent writing for my book and getting my initial thesis proposal done.

9 September: We didn't have much planned for Tuesday until the afternoon so the morning was spent writing and researching, like most of my free time these days. At 2:30, we visited an apartment north of the Uni. It was quite honestly the nicest one we've seen yet, but its lack of features, its old Victorian adornments, and its single-paned glass still didn't quite work for us. It also was on the absolute top end of our price range. We agonised over it for the next three days, but finally decided to try for something better. Despite its positive features, it still was just an old log cabin compared to the stuff available even on the lower end in the United States.

10 September: So, yeah, we got a car today. It is a 1996 Subaru Legacy Grand Wagon. It's certainly not a pretty car and we got loads of random junk with it that the girl couldn't take with her, but it works well enough. I got the opportunity to drive first and, let me tell you, driving on the left side of the road is a strange journey. So many things are switched around. Fortunately, the gas and brake pedals do not get switched in the process. After we dropped her off at her place far out in the countryside, Kara decided that we had to visit Niko pronto. The only problem: we were almost out of petrol. It took us most of the way to the Cattery to find a petrol station but we finally found one. Petrol prices: $106 to fill up. Yeah. Take that California gas prices! Oh, and the exchange rate hardly makes it any better. We visited Niko and he mostly ignored. He appears to like to eat grass. Dumb cat. We stopped back at the homestay to have lunch then went out again to visit an apartment. Kara had to drive this time and, boy, was that a journey...DOWN THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD! Yeah, she botched it, but she got better later on. I wouldn't let her switch drivers, though. The apartment was another Victorian shanty and we moved on to greener pastures. On the way back, we got insurance for the car (which is not required here) and then stopped by the Pak 'n' Save for some food. A stop at Wendy's for ice cream also was nice.

11 September: On Thursday we went to the library for our postgraduate orientation. This is an unessential seminar that helps us get acquainted with some of the resources on campus. It wasn't overly interesting but we did discover that we have specific librarians for our subjects. Mine was the guy that told us about it, so I attacked him with a few questions during our Morning Tea. Afterwards, we checked out the small Postgraduate Village on the outskirts of campus and met an interesting sociology honours students named Brian with whom we discussed economics, government policies, and other random things. He was definitely an adult student but he was quite interesting and had a lot of information. We went to the History building after that to get the keys to our desk and we met the head administrative assistant, Judy. Kara got on with her very well. At our desks, I discovered that my key only locked the bottom drawers. Yeah, that's not going to get fixed any time soon but I don't really care. I'm not planning on using the drawers that much. The rest of the day was spent working on my book and reading for my program.

12 September: Today was a bit of a blur, to be honest. We met a lot of people. And I mean A LOT. At least for us. We went to what was called the Postgrad Morning Tea which is held once a month. The first thing we noticed was that at least 2/3 of the students were international. Even the two people we chatted with at the end with perfect New Zealand accents were technically Canadian (with Kiwi parents, though) and Guatemalan. As we expected, most people already know other people, so we are starting fresh. Unfortunately, the Arts are poorly represented in the Postgrad circles with Engineering majors far outpacing everyone else. After Tea, we went and actually studied on site for a while at our desks in the Locke building. We were planning to go to a house showing at 3:00 but Kara got a call an hour earlier with them calling it off, so we decided to scamper home for lunch. It was a bit of a drag, but it gave us time to watch an episode of Hell on Wheels and for me to write another article for my book. Still on track! Oh yeah!

Observations

• Everything is about tea here even though nobody drinks tea. Breakfast is called Morning Tea while dinner is called Evening Tea. A late lunch is called Afternoon Tea. But when they say "tea" they mean "food". Yeah, it's mostly about the food.