Feb 18: Homesteading, buying things, new neighbors, sore stomachs.

I had arrived at the residence hall the day after it opened up to students moving in for the first semester. I didn’t see anyone in the dorms besides the front desk clerks. I didn’t anticipate meeting too many people, so I spent that first and second day shopping for my new cinderblock pad.

 

New Market to the left of me, K’ Road to the right…:

 

I headed across the street to a smoothie place to see if I could get directions to the closest place that would sell me a surge protector. I would have asked the front desk people, but as English isn’t their first language, it’s a little difficult to understand them. Met a nineteen year old kid who directed me to The Warehouse, New Zealand’s equivalent to Walmart or Target.

 

I don’t really understand why, but it seems most Kiwis I meet are pretty into The Warehouse. Ryan, Tash, and this guy all swore by it, saying you can find anything you want and it’s always super cheap. Which it is. It’s just a pain in the ass to find anything, and like Walmart or Target, most of the items are under stocked or stocked next to items that they shouldn’t be. For example, I wouldn’t think to stock the packaged cookies and candy next to the bleach and laundry soap. I know everything is in it’s own package and has it’s own seal, but it’s just one of those strong consumer preferences.

 

I made three trips there and back, buying a laundry basket, coffee maker, fly swatter, thumbtacks, tape, pencils, pencil holders, etc. passing the Auckland Domain and getting to know the New Market area pretty well in the process. The Auckland Domain is a very big, very green lawn at the back of which sits a big museum. It’s big enough to play three cricket games and a rugby match at once, and there’s an old-fashioned stadium and bleachers set up opposite the Museum as well.

 

New Market is a high-end fashion district, with lots of stores and a mall. The only thing that makes this mall worth mentioning is that on the second floor, in the farthest section, is the grocery store (which is called “Foodtown,” which I find hilarious.) Procured some essential food items, i.e. fruit, sandwich fixin’s and cereal.

 

To the right (east) side of my dorm is the Grafton bridge and then downtown Auckland. The bridge spans over an old, ancient graveyard and then turns into the Karangahape (or K’, as lots of people around here call it) Rd. The University of Auckland campus is about a twenty-minute walk south from here, but it (and the New Market as well) are easily accessible from the Link bus route. 

 

Dormmates and Randoms:

 

“Random,” btdubbs, is Kiwi slang for strangers, i.e. “a random person,” or “random people.” It’s a pretty popular term, and I quite like it, and since my life feels pretty influenced by them, I think that’s how I’ll refer to this expanding group of unrelated people who keep changing my life on an hourly basis.

 

I also met up with a friend of Tash’s, Aaron, a photographer who lives in Auckland. He and his girlfriend Sofia hung out with me after returning my shoes (which I’d left at Tash’s house, and she’d asked him to deliver them to me in Auckland). We got dinner and they took me to a Jazz festival later on in the evening at the other end of Auckland. A whole park and three blocks of restaurants were closed off to traffic as heaps, HEAPS of people milled around listening to various jazz band’s set up around town. It was what I had imagined the Busker’s festival in Christchurch to be like: stalls of musicians, bands, playing blues, bluegrass, swing, reggae, and straight up jazz standards up and down the street. Old people dancing, young high school kids crawling all over the place, street vendors…it was nuts. Literally thousands of people. Dad, you shoulda seen it.

 

Sometime during my third day of dorm living, I shared an elevator with a first-year named Cory, a guy who made it point to say that even though he spoke with an American midwest accent, his parents were both Kiwi’s and he himself was a New Zealand citizen and had multiple family members all over the Auckland area. He’s a nice kid, and invited me and another foreign exchange student (Brahim from France) to his aunt’s house for dinner and a BBQ. He reminds me a lot of Richard, one of my best friends from Dallas. We bought memberships to the gym, which I believe will ultimately prove itself to be a wise investment. But not until after my abdominal muscles heal and cease to feel like Wolverine from the X-Men has gone to town on them with his shiny claws. Oh my God, I will never go that long without exercising ever again. It just hurts too much. 

 

I spent some time figuring out the bus system, which is relatively easy. I had feared the worse after hearing a lot of Kiwis complain about how confusing it is, but it’s really not that bad once you understand several things. Auckland is very small, in terms of it’s size and population (only 1.5 million people, and that’s more than a quarter of all of New Zealand.) Instead of having one public transportation service run by the city, as would be the case in America, there’s several bus companies servicing different areas. These companies all have their own routes. The Link bus, for example, is the bus line which route my dorm is closest to. That’s good for me, because the Link circuit goes to most of the places I want to go; the university, the grocery store, and the shopping district. Most bus stops even have electronic bulletin boards indicating how long it is until the next bu arrives.

 

In Other News:

 

-       Tash invited me back down to Hamilton for the weekend and I may have to take her up on it.

-       Finally heard back from Karolina, who is well and safe and looking for work in Picton.

-       Have talked to Matt several times, who’s been considerate enough to repost all those pictures I posted on Facebook to a more accessible site; will have more on that later.

-       I’m also posting more photos of my dorm and pic’s from the festival on FB. I have a feeling the one or two-sentence anecdotes and descriptions below the pictures are going to be more interesting than today’s blog entry.

 

Goodnight, guys.

Love, Em.