Settling In

Current location: Wellington, New Zealand. What a beautiful city! But before I get to that, I will start at the beginning...
I left the good ole United States on January 7th. En route, I stopped in Salt Lake City to meet up with Jonathan before he goes off on his mission to Brazil for two years. It was a splendid visit: I got to see Jonathan, snow, and eat at Carl's Jr. Then, I flew to LAX before going onto Auckland. I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to a certain Steph, an Australian who was at the Passion Conference in Atlanta that I had been at in the week preceding my departure. Needless to say, we hit it off a while and had some great conversation. She gave me some good advice about NZ and AU (as I will henceforth refer to New Zealand and Australia for brevity's sake), and I may go visit her and her fiance in Melbourne when I head to Sydney later on. Anyways, we arrived in Auckland at 5:30 am on January 9th NZ time. NZ is very concerned with what comes into the country, so we had to go through "biosecurity," and my tent was tested in a lab for foreign contamination. I cleared, and we then boarded a flight to Wellington at 8:30. I sat next to a rather large Samoan man and inquired after his condition. He had quite the accent.
At this point, I was still feeling pretty okay, having slept a couple hours on the way across the ocean. We bussed up to Victoria University (which is where we are staying; I will refer to it as VUW), specifically Weir House, where our dorms are. It is up on a hill located next to a park and just below the Wellington Botanical Gardens. There are some beautiful vistas nearby, and I will post pictures soon. Most of the first day or two consisted of settling in and acclimating to our locale. It is a gorgeous city; a lot of green space and very safe. We managed to locate a restaurant for lunch the first day, and the owner engaged us in some classic NZ hospitality. So far, I have walked down to the coast, over to a beach, and to "The Warehouse," which is the closest that they have to a Walmart (I only bought chocolate milk there). We then had some orientations about VUW and Wellington. I went to sleep early those first days.
Class! I forgot that I have class on this seemingly carefree vacation. I have two classes while I am in NZ and two when I am in AU. I am taking PST 4176 Environmental Ethics and INTA 4040 Environmental Politics. Both are exceedingly interesting, and I like my professors very much. It is causing me to think a lot; being an engineering major, I have been used to math and science for a while, and now I am shifting back into reading and writing (scary!). We are focusing a lot on climate change and other global issues and policy making, so it will be extremely applicable for my field. I have class from 8 to 11:15 every morning, so then I have the full afternoon ahead of me. So far, I have used it to either do my work, leaving the evenings free, or gone exploring on pretty days.
Weather. It is much warmer than GA, but not too hot! It has ranged from 55 to 75, depending on whether it has rained and how much. I've been wearing my jacket a bit, but it is still rather pleasant.
Food: we have a meal plan at VUW from Monday through Thursday. The head chef is Indian, so we have had a lot of fried rice and curries, but it is all mostly good, except for the desserts, which have been rather disappointing aside from the chocolate cake last night.
I am looking for somewhere to volunteer perhaps while I am in Wellington. I passed by a Compassion House & Soup Kitchen the other day, so I might go explore that soon.
I think that is enough for now. That brings us up to speed, and I will record some of my more specific observations in the posts to come.
Cheers,
Tomas