Finishing Up College With A Bang-Crossing The Pacific, Meeting The Kiwis

So this is basically Kat's Adventures Part Two (that's kind of a lie because I've had many adventures since South America, but no trip long enough worth blogging about; so this is the second long adventure; I promise, I'll finish the Argentina blog at some point-I have some posts started for it, just need to finish them, but let me catch up on the present first). I do recognize that my "year" off ended a year and a half ago, but it's too much time to start a new blog (I'm a little slow with creative titles and catchy descriptions), and I already have my hands full with catching up on my past 11 days in New Zealand. Despite the discrepancy with my description of this blog, I hope you enjoy following me along on my final semester of college (and hopefully beyond into the final hours of my internship) which I will enjoy in New Zealand. I promise not too bore you with the school work aspect (unless it's something super interesting).

Orientation Week with Australearn

Day 1: Wednesday June 29th, 2011

After about maybe 30 hours of traveling (if you count the 11 hours I got to enjoy in LA international airport) I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand 2 days after I left (so weird, a day of my life just disappeared). Upon arrival we were driven up to the top of the tallest mountain in Auckland (by one of the funniest coach bus drivers I've ever met, though it turns out just about every Kiwi is like this), Mount Eden (196 metres, a dormant volcano with a beautiful grassy crater 50 metres deep). There we got to look upon the super city of Auckland with its scattering of hills that are dormant/extinct volcanoes, and the Pacific Ocean.

Tyme and Paul, our Australearn guides and native Kiwis (I believe they both have some Maori blood) gave us lovely intros to the laid back (sometimes sarcastic) humour of the Kiwis. I should warn you now, I'm becoming tempted to move to New Zealand, just because of its people (the landscape is a big factor too of course, but I'm just adding to the top 5 list of reasons). Hopefully I'll be able to convey this to you throughout these following posts. Maybe I'll start a post just for Kiwi humour.

After admiring the vista, we headed down to check into the hotel, have our first session led by Paul to give us a run down about Kiwis, their weird English (ex: Scarfies=colleges students), and some other important things to know that I wont bore you with. We had the afternoon free and I went with some Australearners to Auckland's museum. It was immense, large four floor building with just about anything you can-the geological history of New Zealand (they actually had an earth quake simulator that demonstrated how things might go if a volcano blew up in Auckland-talk about blunt and so reassuring), Maori history/culture, the colonist history, girl/boy scouts of the past century, the wars NZ has been a part of, and so much more.

After two hours of exploring the museum and getting lost we made our meandering way back to the hotel with a stop at the police station to assist us in finding the hotel. We then had dinner at an Italian restaurant where I had a salmon pizza (it was local meat), which is ingenious idea by the way. I then struggled to stay awake until 9:00 before crashing (this was my challenge for the next 3 nights).