From take-off through week one

TOUCH DOWN!
I have arrived! and more importantly, I have slept. After 25 hours of travelling, I ended up staying awake for an entire day here, finally crashing into bed at midnight - 38 hours is plenty of wakefullness for me. Also, for those of you wondering how my Monday the 13th of February was, it lasted four hours. That ol' international dateline took care of it for me. If you are in the midwest and you want to know what time it is here, just subtract five hours and add one day - I am 19 hours ahead of you. (A self-portrait in front of the Clocktower Building, built in 1878)

SETTLING IN...
I am all moved in to my flat here and have three great flatmates - Anjali from Philadelphia and India, Matt from Tennessee, and Jessie from Virginia and Philadelphia. Jessie grew up in Philly and Anjali goes to school there. Anjali goes to Bryn Mawr in Philadelphia, and is a biology major. Matt attends Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and is a biology/ecology/neuroscience major. Jessie, I believe, is majoring in business management at Richmond in Virginia. We all arrived in the last couple days and have been getting to know one-another and all of the other international students living around us. We were lucky enough to get flat in Cumberland Court - a collection of 26 flats with four people each that comprise about a square block of the city. Our flat is the upper level of an older home, with 15ft ceilings and a gorgeous yard. We each get our own room, fully furnished, so there was little left for us to do but unpack! (From left to right: Anjali, Matt, Jessie, and on the bottom, yours truly)

OUT ON THE TOWN
On my first night here I met a girl named Mariah from the Seattle area, and she and I and Anjali went to a Turkish restaurant in town where we gorged ourselves on falafel, hummus, pita and veggies. Much of my time thus far has been spent tooling around the city, expanding my mental map of the campus and the city - it is quite the place! Nestled at the innermost bend of Otago harbour, Dunedin City fills the lowland and is surrounded by great hills. One of Dunedin's claims to fame is Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world! Not one for biking up or rollerblading down...We also hit up a local bar, the Ra Bar a couple nights ago, and I got to sample some of the local brew. Speight's Brewery is in town, and they are touted in NZ as the "Pride of the South." The Old Dark variety was tasty. (The picture here is a common sight in Dunedin. Many people also likely take pride in their ability to build their homes and yards straight up the sides of these hills.)

COOKIE ADVENTURES
There is a type of NZ and Aussie cookie called a Tim Tam. The Tim Tam is a cookie with two chocolate wafers as its core, which are separated by a layer of chocolate, all of which are covered in another layer of chocolate. A favorite pastime of New Zealanders is to bite off each end of their Tim Tam and use it as a straw (akin to sucking soda through a piece of licorice). When the Tim Tam straw is used to suck up hot cocoa, the cookie gets warm and the chocolate begins to melt, just as the porous wafers quickly disintegrate, and you have to shove the whole chocolatey mess in to your mouth before the cookie falls into the drink! This is appropriately called a Tim Tam Slam, and I had my fair share. (Nobody could slam a Tim Tam and look as good as the woman in this picture. She is a fake. The Tim Tam Slam will only make you sexy by first making you sloppy.)

Well, I leave you with that! Until my next post...

Cheers,
Danno