The first week of classes was a huge culture shock for me coming from a small liberal arts college of less than 2,000 students when my first lecture had over 300 people in a room bigger than the Busch Auditorium at Rollins. I knew immediately that I would have a little trouble getting used to the new learning environment, but it didn’t worry me too much. The good thing about most of my classes is that there are tutorials as well, which is just another class meeting time with only around 20 people in it and an older student as the instructor. These sessions give the students an opportunity to have a more personal interaction with an instructor to ask questions. Outside of classes, the social life has calmed down a bit since the first week when no one had any work to do. I attended my first Highlanders’ rugby game, which is the local professional team in Otago. It was an amazing atmosphere, similar to that of an NFL game. I grew up watching rugby because my parents were big fans of the sport so being in a country where rugby is one of the most popular sports was a dream come true. A weekly tradition at University of Otago is the Wednesday nights at the on-campus bar Rehab where they have a deal, $4 pints of the locally brewed beer Speights. We went to our first “Pint Night” and had a lot of fun listening to the live bands and meeting new people.
