My first few days here...

So, I have been in the land of Kiwi for 3 days now, and it hasn’t ben too crazy. I haven’t done too much since arriving as I wanted to settle in to the schedule. My first day here, I went on a tour of campus and met many people. I have to confess, I fear I will have some difficulty with many of the names as I was pretty out of it at the time. That evening we wnet down to the Irish pub for a couple beers to keep me up late. Friday, I watched TV and took a walk down to the city centre to have a look around. Suprisingly, Kmart is much the same as home, just with different styles and brand names… layout is very similar. Kmart was in the downtown mall, same stores but different names than home.

While taking a look around, I was cornered by one of the middle of the aisle sales kiosk employees, who was quite shocked by the accent and told me that they were both from Israel and invited me to Shabbat dinner. I am still astounded by the kindness of people here. Yesterday I walked around town a bit again and picked up a newspaper to start looking for apartments. Unfortunately, I need internet and/or a phone number to get anywhere, so when I am on campus, I will look. I may not even end up staying at the hostel – 13 days is the same as 3 weeks, due to differences in long- and short-term rates, so I may avoid it altogether if I can find a place sooner. I need to get a phone soon, so I can be in touch with people here, most likely texting mostly. I need to get an idea of who is on what network here since it still makes a difference in New Zealand- different prices to call and text different networks and landlines. Apparently, some people have a phone on each network to take advantage of all the deals and keep costs down.

I have been watching a bit of tv and reading my Culture Shock book and its pretty sad that I had to come all the way to New Zealand to get the Simpsons on TV! They have quite a bit of American TV here, though it is a bit behind… I still need to see if I can get my shows from home. I have to be careful of spoilers though, since Entertainment Tonight is on here for the current US shows that won’t be shown here for months. Like what happened in Grey’s Anatomy premiere! So, with these ramblings, I am gonna finish up with this note (written on Sunday to be cut and pasted whenever I have internet)… hope you all are well. I am gonna find a place to live and a car this week, I hope… wish me luck.