When the All Blacks Come to Town...

This past week/weekend was filled with so much fun and craziness!  Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal with class and homework, although the weather was far from normal!  I thought North Carolina weather acted a little bi-polar, but Dunedin weather is just insane.  Monday I walked to campus in a short sleeve shirt with blue skies and no clouds in sight, but within the same hour it went from perfectly clear to a massive hail storm!  And then cleared up an hour later.  Tuesday was a repeat with SO MUCH HAIL and then back to spring weather!!!  There was literally rain, snow, hail, sleet, and sunshine all in one day.  It was also my first snow in Dunedin! Yay!  Four seasons in one day!  But enough about the weather…

Wednesday I went to class in the morning and then went to the gym and played badminton with Nathan and Erin.  And according to Nathan, apparently I say the word badminton wrong, because he says I sound like I say “mitton” on the end of it!  But he plays a good amount so I had him teach me the rules to a simple game.  After a few embarrassing moments of completely missing the birdie (I haven’t played since middle school probably), I got the hang of it and the game was even tied when our court time ended!  I also went to a BYO that evening to say goodbye to Elena, Marvin’s friend from Germany, who came to visit for a couple weeks.  We went to Indian Spice and I shared some delicious chicken spinach curry with Erin.  After dinner, we went to town for Irish night again and just hung out for a while listening to the music!

Thursday was pretty normal with class and some homework and then we went to a friend’s birthday party in the evening.  Friday we walked to George Street to look for game day attire and I bought an All Blacks shirt.  We also stopped by the Otago Museum on our way back to the flats.  We spent about 2 hours wandering through the exhibits and learning about anything from Polynesian and Maori culture and history to the native species of New Zealand.  It was really interesting and I may go back sometime to explore some more!  But the best part was the Butterfly exhibit!  There is an area within the museum where a small rainforest has been created and there are hundreds of butterflies!  They were so beautiful and we even were able to touch and play with them!  There were also a kid’s science exploring area with cool things like optical illusions, bubble making, and electricity tricks.  This area was probably intended for ten year olds, but we spent as much time here as the rest of the museum!  It was so fun acting goofy and playing with all the experiments.  After the museum, I went for a run and then some friends and I watched “The Proposal” that evening! 

And now saturday!!! In the morning, I went to the farmer’s market to get breakfast and some apples for the week.  I love going there when I am in town and supporting the local farmers of New Zealand!  Afterwards, I went back to my flat and took a short power nap until Olivia and her friends arrived!  Olivia is my friend from UNC who is studying in Christchurch (about 4 hours from Dunedin) for the semester.  They eventually found my flat and once they were settled in, I showed them around the university and town.  We walked up to George Street to look at shirts/All Blacks paraphernalia.  We realized there was a promotion in the store where if you spent $25 on All Blacks items, you received a free poster with your purchase.  So when Olivia went to pay, I asked the guy if that was just for the day, since I had been there the previous day, and he said yes and sorry that he could not give me a poster.  But when he went to the storage area to grab Olivia’s poster, he came back with 2!  How sweet!  Kiwis are awesome!  Afterwards, we grabbed some Starbucks coffee (first time I had some Starbucks in NZ), but when I went to order my usual iced coffee, the lady had no clue what I was talking about!  Apparently iced coffee is only an American thing?  So I just ended up with a latte.  Afterwards, I pointed Olivia and her friends Mac, Mai, and Erica towards the Cadbury Chocolate Factory for their tour and then headed home to get ready.

Not only was it a big weekend because Olivia was in town, but the All Blacks, the NZ rugby team, were also in town for their big match against South Africa!  I bought my ticket within the first couple weeks of being in the country and had been looking forward to the game for quite some time!  Before the big game started, I had 20 or so of my friends over to my flat for some “tailgating” (for lack of a better word).  We ordered ten pizzas and had some pre-drinks and just hung out while we talked about how excited we were!  And after a minor issue with ordering pizza from the South Dunedin Dominos rather than the North Dunedin (thanks Werner for driving us there!), the party was great!  I even let Werner eat some pizza even though he was wearing a South Africa shirt!  We also painted our faces!  And after much deliberation about how I should paint my face, I figured, well, I am only going to one game so “go big or go home, right?”  So half my face was black and the other half was white!  I looked ridiculously awesome and intimidating!  Everybody that I paint up with at UNC would be proud J

Eventually, we headed to the stadium, which was so exciting seeing everybody come together for the event.  Otago doesn’t really have sports teams so there is no “game day” atmosphere or school spirit like there is at UNC.  Once inside we found our seats and chuckled about how we were literally sitting in the middle of older people with our faces painted and looking crazy!  Who cares though!  The Hakka was awesome!  It’s the Maori ritual war cry and dance, but the All Blacks players also perform it before the game to intimidate their opponents!  The game was so exciting and I even looked up some rules beforehand so I mostly understood everything that was going on.  And rugby makes football look so wimpy.  The players are tackling each other with no pads whatsoever!  And, the All Blacks won, which is a huge deal because South Africa is a big rival!!!  So we left the game super happy and excited.  Once back to my flat, we washed off our face paint and got dressed for town.  Olivia and her friends were excited for me to show them some Dunedin nightlife!  Town was so crazy!  Everywhere was so crowded with not only students, but tourists and people of all ages.  It was fun seeing everybody there, but it also meant longer waits to get into places.  We found a couple places to dance though and had a good time!

The next day, we woke up pretty early and I took Olivia and her friends to get takeaway breakfast pancakes from Capers.  It was super warm and sunny outside so we ate them on campus, enjoyed the blooming trees and flowers, and then walked to Baldwin Street to show them the steepest street in the world!  After they left, I took a nap for most of the day (very minimal sleep the night before) and then worked on some homework in the evening.  It was so great to see Olivia though and meet her friends, and I had a blast being their tour guide and showing them my home!

Hope everybody else at my other home is doing great!  Missing the start of fall weather!

P.S.  I thought I would share some random things about NZ!

Trash is not called trash, it’s called rubbish.

There is no penny, only 10 cent coins, so when you pay, you just round up or down.

Style is much more European with darker clothes.

Ground meet is called mince.

Fries are called chips.

McDonald’s is called Mackers.

Cookies are called biscuits.

Takeout is takeaway.

Dinner can be referred to as tea.

The floor that you walk in on is the ground floor and the second floor is labeled the first (This confused me when I was trying to find my classes at first).

NZ recognizes the queen, but has a prime minister.

There are two main political parties: the Labour and National (both are pretty liberal compared to America’s standards).

Police don’t carry guns (they have a much lower number of gun incidents…I like this).

Flip flops are called jandals.

Petrol (gas) is sold in liters.

A convenience store is called a dairy (very few are 24 hours).

Up turns a light switch off.

NZ was the first country to grant women the right to vote!