Note that this post was written a while ago, and I’m unfortunately only just
August 1st, 2018
Experiences from my First Month abroad.
It’s truly amazing how time flies! I really can’t believe that I’ve already been here in New Zealand for a month. It has most definitely been a whirlwind, from my first few days spent in my abroad program’s orientation in Queenstown, to the first weeks getting acquainted with Dunedin, to the many different trips and experiences I’ve already been on, I haven’t really had time to look back on it all until now.
I suppose the best place to start is my arrival. After about 30 hours of travel from Orlando to LA to Auckland, I got to spend the next 3 hours going through customs and biosecurity after disembarking. This was one of the most thorough inspection I’ve gone through in my travels. Since I was bringing in hiking boots and camping gear, I was moved from line to line to eventually end up with a biosecurity agent inspecting all of this gear before I was allowed to enter the country. All told, this took up about 2 hours and 45 minutes of my 3-hour layover in Auckland. This led to a rather ungraceful mad dash to make my connection to Queenstown. Thankfully, this was the closest to anything really going wrong on my whole trip thus far.
Queenstown itself was absolutely beautiful. It is a smaller ski town located in the center of the South Island of New Zealand that’s been growing in popularity year after year. I’ve included a couple of pictures from that first day in this post. This day was spent recovering and resting, as well as meeting the 40 or so other students who were part of this TEAN (The Education Abroad Network) orientation.
The next morning, we were off very early for a bus tour of Fiordland National Park, a couple hours’ drive north of Queenstown, as well as a cruise through Milford Sound, which was one of the most beautiful parts of the country I’ve seen so far. Once again, I’ve included a few pictures from this part of orientation as well.
The next few days were spent in Queenstown as well, where we had a mixture of various seminars and activities to get us used to the differences in New Zealand’s culture, as well as to prepare us for the academic differences to expect at the various universities we were all headed to, with 25 of the 40 of us headed to the University of Otago, and the rest split pretty evenly amongst schools in Auckland, Christchurch, and Wellington.
Once this orientation week was over, those of us headed to the University of Otago took a bus to Dunedin and began our move-in process. The next week was spent in orientations and getting to know the people around us, partially through hikes and activities put on by TEAN, including a group hike to a place on the Otago peninsula known as Sand Fly Point, which was beautiful but a very intense hike up and down sandy hills. Here is where I became good friends with the 6-person group that I have spent much of my time here in Dunedin so far with. We have been to a bunch of different events with each other, including a Rugby Game, a Kendrick Lamar Concert, as well as a couple other hikes, with my favorite being a hike to Tunnel Beach. I’ve included several photos from these events as well.
It’s crazy how much I’ve done already and can’t wait to do more. We’ve been staying pretty local since we’ve got here, but have plans to explore more of the South Island as a whole in the coming weeks and months. I look forward to reporting back again soon on all the new things I’ve seen and done!
