So after all that travel it was finally time to settle down: starting at 8:45 sharp on Monday orientation began with an International Student breakfast hosted by the Study Abroad Student Society (SASS) in the quad. Unfortunately, I planned my entrance a little late and ended up getting there just after the food ran out. I did meet some amazing people though while waiting to be taken to the next location! (What I didn't find out until later was many of them are also in my residence hall, so that's been pretty fantastic). Harrison is from Edinburgh and studies English Literature. He's also been here a semester already and was using this orientation to meet new people after everyone he met last year had left. There's also Peter and Alexander from Denmark, Katharina and Antonia from Germany, and Camille from Belgium. Finally they moved us to Hood Plaza in front of the business school so we could all socialize with people in our specific colleges within the university before sitting down for lectures. All in all it was pretty okay, lots of awkward ice breakers but they did provide cookies and apple cider after so maybe it was worth it.
After that we sat through probably five or six hours of orientation material on what to do and not do in Auckland with a small break for lunch at the Student center. The day ended with a scavenger hunt and activities around campus which might have been a bit better...if we were at all familiar with campus up to that point. Maybe other groups were but ours was certainly not and our end score reflected that somewhat. Finally, close to 7 pm a group of us decided we probably needed groceries and went off in search of a "Countdown" supermarket. I am sad to say that the one two hills over I visited with my parents and sister last week is in fact the closest one and the walk back was pretty brutal. I did get a good selection of things though and haven't needed to go back yet this week. I'd call that a win for a first solo grocery trip!
Tuesday I did my own thing for most of the day which turned into exploring the area around Queen Street, right down the hill. It started as a search for the closest Magic shop where I'm hoping to do a Dominaria pre-release in April...and found it right along Albert Park. Then I kind of just wandered stopping wherever seemed interesting. I saw a Japanese bargain shop, multiple Chatimes (a bubble tea chain that has locations in Boston), a massive cinema, and two arcades. Queen Street is definitely an area I'll be frequenting. Dinner on my own consisted of Fried Eggs which came out...decently...on some extremely burnt toast. After being treated to pre-prepared tortellini the night before it was certainly a downgrade in taste but we'll get there.
On Wednesday I had my School of Science faculty orientation. There was an amazing Maori ceremony to top it off, welcoming us all to the school and learning some of the traditional rituals associated with introduction but from there things kind of went downhill. Turns out, this was the orientation for incoming freshman straight out of High School and while some of the material was relatively interesting, I did not really need multiple speeches on time management and how I'm in the big leagues now. The Computer Science specific lecture fared no better focusing on why I should study Computer Science at all.
The wasn't a total loss though, after two nights of cooking for myself I finally caught a break in the form of a movie night hosted by SASS watching Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a fantastic movie from New Zealand about a boy and his adoptive guardian surviving in the wilderness. It's also a comedy. I went with a bunch of the friends I had made on Monday and it was a blast! The provided Pizza Hut also helped.
I didn't do much yesterday either besides a few trips into campus to buy some electronic equipment and NZ laptop chargers. Since I only have the one converter and power strip I'm trying to minimize the need for it as much as possible.
With classes starting next week I'll probably reduce posts to really interesting stories or fun activities and less like weekly updates but we'll see how that goes. Today my parents get back into Auckland too so I've spent the morning scouring for restaurants. In the end I think I found a couple, but now I'm also very hungry...
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