Macklemore and More

Here are some interesting things I’ve learned about New Zealand:

1. The first people did not arrive on the island until around 1300 CE. I learned this in my New Zealand in Global Context class and I found it shocking. 1300 CE! So many things had been invented by then, so much art had been created, and so many empires had risen and fallen, before the Polynesians got in their boats and ventured way, way south. The country is so small it’s almost a miracle they found it at all. My professor for that class is named Lyndon, and he is completely against the class using anything other than his first name. On the first day he wore sneakers, ripped jean shorts, a tee shirt, and white sunglasses in his long blond hair. In other words, he was the epitome of “chill.” He gave us his cell phone number so we could shoot him a text like “Bro, I need an extension” (his 100% serious example). This made me laugh because I imagined asking a professor from Middlebury, or any college really, for an extension through text message addressing him as bro. I guess this is how you experience culture shock in New Zealand.

2. There is only one large cable (Dan: It must be as large as a bus!) that brings Internet to the country. Thus, it is unbelievably expensive, 10GB for about $40.

3.  There are no girls in Beer Club. I know this because I tired to join.

4. People do not go to concerts early. The group that I went with got the Macklemore concert that was for the University of Canterbury Orientation Week (also called O Week) an hour early and expected to have to line up around the block. Instead, we were the only ones there.

First ones in line so excited!

The security guards weren’t even there until 20 minutes before the doors opened. Those eager beaver Americans!

5. Macklemore is AMAZING in concert. It was the highlight of my week. If you don’t know who he is, check him out because he is super talented and great and I want to be his friend. Thrift Shop is his most famous song right now, but I also like this one and this one. But before the main event we had to endure two opening acts. The opening act to the real opening act was one of the most…ah…interesting displays of music I have ever seen. They were a rap group from Wellington(?), who dressed up like they were homeless(?), or painters(?), or from Star Wars(?).

 Obi Wan Kenobi rapper

The reason for all the question marks is because I had absolutely no idea what they said either during their songs or when they talked in between. Every face in the crowd was equally bewildered with the yelling and dancing, which consisted of falling down on the stage or draping themselves over speakers and kicking into the air. It was two thirds torture, one third entertaining.

The other music group, Home Brew, was clearly better known because that is when the pushing began. Since we had gotten to the concert so early (see above picture), we were also right at the front of the stadium, which would have never happen in a million years at a concert in the States so we were all determined to stay there.

The Stadium from the back.

 We were very close to the stage.

Unfortunately, my resolve to be that close to my new friend crush (real crush), Macklemore, faded as the pushing from the back became increasingly aggressive. I was standing looking up at Home Brew when I was suddenly shoved forward. After about the sixth time of a push, the pressure stopped receding and got stronger and stronger. I had flashes of panic, thinking “I can breathe!” when I definitely could breathe, and “I’m going to be trampled!” when I stood solidly on the ground. It kept getting worse and worse until it felt like I was in a washing machine being tossed this way and that, so I decided I’d had enough! I slithered and shoved my way to the back of the crowd where there was plenty of space to move and not get strangers' sweat all over you. My friends stayed at the front, but I thought I’d rather watch the concert alone than having crazed students pushing me around. Luckily, I stumbled on a friend, Megan, who had also lost the group she came with. 

In the end, this concert became a study in good things some to those who wait. Since Megan hates crowds, we walked all the way around the crush of people in the middle of the stadium to the far right, where there was still space at the front and a pretty good view.

Even though we were not in the middle, we could see everything.

I high fived the guy in the striped suit who is featured in Thrift Shop; he’s standing on the right of the stage.

And Macklemore moved around a lot so he often stood right in front of us.

Macklemore is as good live as he is on his CD, speaking so clearly I understood every word he said, rapped, and sang. He was a great performer, and seemed genuinely thrilled that he at his first concert ever in New Zealand. I was very glad to be a part of it too.

6. It is hard to get classes straightened out. But once they are all straightened out, I will definitely give a run down of the rest of my courses

7. It’s gonna snow again in Boston. Enjoy your wintery weekend!

Creative Christchurch

To start this post, I want to write a quick ode recognizing the bravery of some of my fellow passengers on my flight from San Francisco to Auckland. First, to the parents who brought their one month old baby on the 14 hour flight. Next to the couple that let their small son and daughter ear four bags of M&Ms while we waited at the gate. Third, to all the women who wore tight skinny jeans. And finally, to the flight attendants who wore their little hats at jaunty angles for most of the ride. To all of you courageous souls I raise my glass. Cheers.
The weirdest part of that entire trip was losing Tuesday. I left San Fran at 7:30 pm, we flew for a while and the early morning hours of Tuesday momentarily appeared, then POOF! It was actually early on Wednesday. I feel a little upset about this - luckily I will gain it back on the way home. But I hope all your Tuesdays were exciting and amazing things happened.

View out of my window in the plane on the ride from Auckland to Christchurch. The land went from flat...

...to extremely mountainous.

Since I got here, it's been a crazy whirlwind of trying to figure out what my classes are, where all the campus buildings are, how to get food, how to ride the bus, and more. While all of this has been extremely overwhelming, the worst part of my time here has been crossing the road. The University of Canterbury campus is split in half by the very busy Ilam Road that has exactly zero crosswalks. Attending school in Middlebury, Vermont for three years has completely ruined my ability to cross streets. There, cars will screech to a halt to stop if a pedestrian even glances at a crosswalk. Here, I stand at the edge of Ilam Road and edge my way out into the street to see past the parked cars. Then, I look for cars the wrong way, remind myself I'm looking the wrong way because the stearing wheel is on the other side of the car than in the US, take a deep breath and sprint across the street. Phew! I've survived the trauma of another crossing between my dorm and class buildings! And that, my friends, is true bravery.
My dorm is called Connon. Although most of the international students here live together in apartments, a sceries of unfortunate events left me in a freshman, and it is definitely a freshman dorm. My room is a tiny single with a closet, desk, and bed. I find new chips of paint on my chair from where it flaked off the desk. While this room is, ahem, not the best, it does have a huge window, and sunshine pours across my bed and desk in the afternoon.

The view from my window. Not bad, huh?

Instead of rehashing all the small stressful details of being new in a new place, I'll tell you about my more fun day yesterday. In the morning Dan, Serena (who both go to Midd with me), Camille (a girl from the Frontiers program Dan and Serena were on), and I went to The Eco Store, which is a massive thrift store filled with mugs, plates, couches, ovens, broken VCRs, kids toys, cricket bats, and the rest of the usual crap that I look at and know if I were super crafty something amazing could come out of that yellow and pink folding chair that has a stain shaped like a dragon on the seat.

This is one small portion of The Eco showing the assortment of toys and vases.

A theater of mismatched chairs facing the ovens and washing machines.

I got two mugs for $1 ($1 NZ = about $.88 US). One has a mouse holding a bunch of flowers, the other has a dodo bird on it surrounded by the words "Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust." In other words, I now have two killer cups.

In the afternoon, Dan and I decided to explore the campus to get our bearings and understand how the buildings were laid out. But once we reached the edge of campus, we decided to keep going to the Botanic Gardens and the center of the city. Since Dan has lived in Christchurch before, he, thank god, understands the layout of the city and directed up to the Gardens. There, found the Rose Garden by following our noses to the luscious blooms.

Entrance to the rose garden.

Stopping to smell the roses.

This was my favorite color of the roses we saw. It was so bright it almost hummed.

There were also plants in the shapes of animals throughout the Garden, such as penguins and Dan-shaped.

We then went to the Container Mall, which is the best part of the city I've seen so far. It is in a part of Christchurch that's being rebuilt from the 2011 earthquake, and man, these Kiwis are innovative.

The stores at the Container Mall.

As you can see, the stores are made out of large shipping containers with the corrugated metal sides removed and replaced with glass.

I love how they stacked other brightly painted shipping containers on top of the stores to highlight that they were repurposing these ugly metal boxes into something useful. But reminders of the earthquake are never far away. At the edge of the Container Mall there was a fence through which we could easily see a half destroyed building.

The fence has clear plastic viewing panels at the top so everyone can see what still must be done.

I really love the way the city is using a tragedy as an opportunity to add more art and color to the buildings and the streets. We ended our wonderful time in the city with a spicy bratwurst sitting on a colorful bench in the sun.

I love sausages!

Those of you coming to visit me, the Container Mall is on the list of destinations we're definitely going to hit. Speaking of destinations, Dan and I currently looking at warm places to go during our April three week break. We're thinking Fiji, Tonga, Bali, Samoa, or maybe Australia. If you know of any good places for us to go, I'd love to hear about it. Happy Saturday everyone!

Fun in New Zealand, I mean Weston

Whoever said to order salad on a first date was stupid. Not that I'm on a first date, but I am in the San Francisco Airport messily eating a delicious salad (California = Lots of avocados in even an airport salad YUM).

Since I'm traveling alone and wanted a break from looking at screens before my 14 hour flight to Auckland on which I foresee having LOTS of screen time with the last of the fourth season of Friday Night Lights to watch (still not done with it, Jenna and Jordan don't be disappointed with me), I had time with only my thoughts. So I started analyzing the way I eat salad. I've decided the only right way to eat a salad is to get every different ingredient in every bite, hence I constantly have bits of mesclun sticking out of my mouth and smears of goat cheese across my lip. In conclusion, no salad for Kiri when I'm trying to be all smooth and cool and not disgusting. 

The important part of this story, though, is that I'm not in Boston anymore! After spending about 14 hours on hold with United Airlines and Air New Zealand, and rescheduling my flights six times, my mother, a.k.a Superwoman, finally got me on my way. For all of you not in New England, there was a blizzard on Friday, the day I was supposed to leave, through Saturday leaving us with about 2.5 feet of snow in Weston. Although being on the phone for years and years was a drag, the snow was great. On Friday, my mom and I made a sweet snowman.

And the snow kept falling throughout the night, so he was almost buried on Saturday.

Ollie, Mike and Megan came over Saturday night and we got a couple fancy cheese courses a la Daddy/Peter/PB. Mike brought over salted caramel brownies, which I happened to also make earlier that day. This is the danger of being friends with another smitten kitchen fan - as everyone who likes to cook or eat or read wonderful descriptions of food should be.

Sunday was a day of flips and romping in the pillowy drifts.

Ad for a ski resort

Ollie flips

Megan flips

Mike flips

Kiri flops

And the Most Epic Picture of the Day 

They aren't fighting; Ollie is attempting to flip Megan across his back and she's trying to land on her feet. I think we all know how that turned out.

Anywho, there will not be any snow pictures for a while I hope (New Zealand winter starts Juneish I think), so I wanted to show these off while we're all in winter mode. 

For real this time, my next post will be from Christchurch. Yes it will, gosh darn it!

On my way to NZ! Oh wait...

I'm stressed. Not because I am not on the flight I'm supposed to be on because New England decided to give me the middle finger in the form of a two day blizzard. Not because I can't get a flight out until Sunday, arriving in Christchurch on Tuesday, one hour before International Student Orientation starts. But I am stressed because setting up a blog is HARD. To all of you who have set up a blog before, my goodness I have more respect for you. The number of options is both great and terrible. I can change the font of the title of the blog, the blog post, the blog post title, the links. I can also mess with the font size, background color, format of the blog, and more and more and more. I'm using all I ever learned at InScribe about matching fonts (I worked there for a couple summers creating sample invitations on new stationary designs. It is imperative that the fonts work together, one fancy, one straightforward, but not too straightforward because it should all be fun and light and effortless, etc.). Only choosing the title font was easy because it looks crazy similar to my actual handwriting, right?

I actually wasn't going to have a blog for my New Zealand travels, but I made the mistake of showing my mother (and most of my family) that my roommate/grand traveller/better communicator, Anna, has a fantastic blog for her time in Cameroon. The conversation went like this:
Carola, shouting down from her office upstairs - "Kiri, Anna's blog is great! Are you going to have a blog?"
Silence.
Me, sitting at the dining room table - "...No."
"Because Char has one and she can show you how to do it."
"She could."
"So will you have a blog?"
Silence.
"...Yes"
Hence, here I sit writing this blog, and here you sit wondering when I'll actually get to the point.

Here's the point - I'm going to be studying (read: "studying") at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ for their academic year, February to November. I WILL be back for thanksgiving. Char, my wonderful cousin who also has a blog everyone should read, told me that sharing pictures is much easier on a blog than over email or anything. And since one of the main reasons why I'm going to New Zealand is because it is so freakin beautiful, I want to have lots of good pics to share. I am also going because I hear nothing but great things about the Kiwis (New Zealanders) themselves, super friendly people, super sexy accents (I hope that's not offensive?). So I hope this blog doesn't become too rambling and ridiculous. Hopefully my next post will be from my dorm room at UC.

Why I'm not going anywhere.

Also! If you have a better title, tell me. I'm usually good at cheesy titles but I was drawing a blank this morning.