Kawai Purapura

When Simon left, I had to get away from Hamilton for a while. I had a two-week holiday in between semesters, and Shelby, one of my best childhood friends just moved to New Zealand about a month ago, and lives in Albany just outside of Auckland at Kawai Purapura.

Kawai Purapura is home to community living and a retreat, so it was the perfect place for me to get away. The place was surrounded by nature, and really reminded me of growing up in Volcano and Glenwood.

There were so many different trails to explore, and little hidden gems along the way including some hidden cabins, spots to view glow worms at night, and trails that lead to The Glade or the orchard.

Here's a video of me going on the stream walk.

On the night I arrived, it was rainy and continued to rain though the next day, but for the rest of my stay at Kawai Purapura, it was nothing but blue skies and sunshine. Not too shabby for the middle of winter! 

One of my favorite things while I was at KP was all of the flowers that were in bloom, which I took the liberty of decorating my hair with. I dunno who loved them more, me or the monarch butterflies that were everywhere, another reminder of home =)

And best of all... they had kitties!!! And lots of them. This is Marley, just chilling on the couch in the common area.

I had a lot of fun getting to spend some good quality time with Shelby (something we hadn't done in almost 8 years) and taking a breather before the new semester at Waikato began. Thank you to everyone at Kawai Purapura for allowing me to share your beautiful home.

Simon

I wasn't gonna do this, but I feel like withholding this part of my life would be giving a dishonest account of my experiences abroad, so... here's the truth.

I broke the cardinal rule of studying abroad and landed myself in a relationship with an impending expiration date.

Simon and I were both international students living in the same student housing at the Uni, so as soon as I got to New Zealand, we were in the same crowd, meeting the same people, and going out to the same places as friends.

Here we are on O-week at the foam party, the first night we went out together with the gang from Cottage 16, where we later spent a lot of our time hanging out with good friends and formulating The Whiskey Club

This is us celebrating St. Patricks Day and Cino De Mayo at Orchard Park.

On my birthday weekend, he was there to help celebrate the best birthday I've had in 25 years!

We did a lot of travelling together, starting with our trip to Rotorua, renting an RV with the rest of the gang in the South Island, Auckland, Waitomo caves, Raglan, and our last trip together to Hobbiton.

We got to see so much of New Zealand together, and our relationship grew stronger and stronger every day.

Unfortunately, Simon was only studying at Waikato for one semester, and had a job and school to get back to in Norway. He moved about as far away from me as possible, but we still keep in touch often. I miss him very much, but I hope that one day soon, we will get to see each other again <3

The Shire - Hobbiton, New Zealand

In the last week before they were leaving back to Norway, Marte, Kristian, Simon, and I rented a car and booked a tour of the Lord of the Rings, Hobbiton set.

First of all, before we get into the real story, you should know that since I am the only one in the group who is 25, I ended up being the driver. Now don't get me wrong, I love driving and I'm generally a pretty good driver, when I'm on the RIGHT side of the road!

My first experience driving manual in the right side of a car, on the left side of the road, at night in the city was... well... it wasn't exactly pretty. Shifting with the left hand, and signaling with the right, drifting too far to the left, not knowing exactly where I was going, or who had the right of way, and the roundabouts... ugh! It wasn't the most comfortable I've ever been in my life, let's just leave it at that. On the plus side, we all made it safe through my driving experience.

Now back to the Shire...

At first, I was a little bit turned off by the fact that you had to pay $66 for a guided tour, and that you couldn't just go on the set to take a few pictures yourself. I actually expected there to be just a few little hobbit holes here and there, and I heard from another friend who had gone earlier in the semester that it wasn't all THAT special. Nevertheless, I had to go for myself one way or another, especially since I had friends from home that were very VERY adamant on me going to the Shire.

When we got there, we had to park at the visitor center and boarded a bus that took us into the actual site of the set. As soon as the Shire was in view, I was shocked at just how much like the movie the set looked. Being a performing arts student, I was expecting that filming tricks made up a lot of the magic of the Shire, but it was really a magical place all on its own! I wanted to live there! It was soooo beautiful, I can only imagine how much more incredible the place must have looked during the summer when all the crops were in bloom, and with all the props.

Here's Pickles the resident cat of Hobbiton. She lives in the Shire full time and gets fed by all the workers. They keep her food in this hobbit hole.













At the end of the tour they fed some of the lambs (I like to call them baby sheep) with bottles of milk, and they even came up to you and ate grass from your hand. It was the cutest!

Here we are in front of Bilbo Baggins' house! This was our last trip together after spending the whole semester discovering New Zealand. I really love these guys and I miss them so much. I guess my next adventure with this group will have to be in Norway =P Until then, I've got another semester at Waikato, and more adventures in Aotearoa.

Kapa Haka

My absolute favorite class that I got to take this semester was Kapa Haka. This was exactly the kind of cultural exchange I was looking for coming to New Zealand, and it was right up my alley in terms of performing arts. When I first got to class I was a little bit shell shocked as I quickly realized that half of the class was taught in Māori! I think sometimes the teacher didn't even realize when she was speaking in Māori and when she wasn't. I could pick out a few words here and there, but for the most part I was completely lost! Right off the bat, I was feeling pretty intimidated about being in the class, and as it was listed on the Waikato website as a recommendation, I thought there would be a majority of international students in the class, but I ended up being only one of maybe three in the class. It was also refreshing that the majority of the class was Māori because I knew that I would be getting some really good culture from the other students as well.

On the first day of class, I was also thrown for a loop when we were expected to learn what I thought was an entire haka, but later found out was just the first five or so versus of a longer haka. Oh boy! What did I just sign up for? As the weeks went by, we learned more of the first haka, and already started on another. Normally, this fast pace would be no problem for me, but since everything was in a language that I didn't understand, and the class only met once a week, you can imagine that it was a bit stressful to learn everything on my own. I started recording sound clips of our classes so that I could practice at home, and ended up spending hours plugged into my iPhone doing hakas as I walked to class or in my room. Every now and then I would give my roommates the forewarning that if they heard any weird chanting, it was probably just me practicing.

The semester went by so fast, and once we got back from Easter break, we had to learn a new haka every class in preparation for the set we would be performing at the end of the semester. I probably should have spent more time rehearsing on my own than I did, but in the end it all worked out and I was able to learn most of the lyrics to all of the songs that we performed. One funny thing was that I ended up volunteering for a solo in the first song we performed, but no one told me until about three days before performance that I had been pronouncing my Ts wrong the whole time, so I essentially had to relearn all of my words with the correct pronunciation in only three days, but I was thankful that she corrected me, otherwise I would have never known, and I would have made an ass out of myself on stage.

Anyway, here is the end of semester performance in full. Enjoy.

Hamilton Gardens

Why I didn't go here in the summer? I have no idea!

One of the American girls studying here (Jenn) got a surprise visit from her mom, so naturally she wanted to do the tourist thing, and I had nothing better to do that day, so I tagged along with my roommate Betty.

The Hamilton Gardens are really quite beautiful even in the winter, and free to the public! Unfortunately many of the flowers were not in bloom, but this place was way more than I expected it to be. The architecture alone was just beautiful, and there were so many different themed gardens, which I also did not expect.

Here's me and Betty on our way to the first Garden.

The Renaissance Garden was by far my most favorite! Such a dreamy courtyard!

This was the Chinese Scholar Garden...

Us girls were in a posey mood.

Outside of the Maori Garden was a tree LOADED with cocoons and caterpillars! I saw just one at first, but after taking another look, I realized that there were more caterpillars on this tree than flowers!

This was the Japanese Garden...

The picture was taken from a cute little tea house and there was a zen rock garden on the opposite side of the pond.

The Indian Garden was the only one almost fully in bloom and had a beautiful palace-like building.

We would have liked to check out more of the Gardens, but the sun was going down fast, and it was getting cold. There is a Fantasy Garden, which we really wanted to check out, but it was closed for construction. Good thing the gardens are close by, and I can come back again in the spring and see it in its full glory.

Waitomo Caves

On May 19th, a big group of us living in Orchard Park travelled to the Waitomo Caves to go black water rafting (tubing) and see the glow worms. It was an amazing experience and one of the most exciting adventures I had ever taken in my life.

We started off with a glow worm tour that took us into the caves and reminded me a lot of the Thurston lava tubes in the Volcanoes National Park back home. These cave were huge though, and in some places had water running through them. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos in the caves, but when we got to the areas where the lights were out it was a magnificent view. It was as if you were looking up at the stars. I even found myself forgetting that they were actually glow worms as I attempted to look for recognizable constellations. Our tour (which was more intended for young audiences - the guide was talking to elementary school students and had us sing twinkle twinkle) ended with a boat ride through the dark, which totally made me feel like I was in The Phantom of the Opera. I even sang a bit of the title song in the dark, it was fun.

After the tour we got ready to go black water rafting!

They had us change into wet suits that they provided, but were SOAKING WET from the groups that went before us. The suits were so cold and heavy, and so hard to get on, and they stayed that way throughout the hour and a half tour. Once we were suited up, they drove us up to the entrance site and the training area where we practices eeling up (I think that's what they called it) and jumping backwards into the water to prep for the short waterfalls that we would be jumping backwards off of in the dark cave.

That's us eeling up.

Once we were in the cave it was just amazing! A bit scary at times, not knowing if you were going to lose your footing, but the caves were so beautiful, with just the right amount of extreme adventuring for my not so sensation-seeking personality. In the end we turned off our head lamps and had to find our way out of the cave in the dark by following the water. This was definitely one of my favorite adventures in New Zealand so far!

Auckland, Meh... Father Ted's, THE BEST!

My Norwegian friends wanted to go to Auckland to celebrate their national day (May 17th) with all the other Norwegian kids studying abroad in NZ. I had been meaning to hit the big city at some point, so I thought it would be a good time to go. The event was for Norwegians and their friends, but I wasn't too keen on the idea of being that one awkward brown girl stuck in a room full of people that would be speaking a language that I cannot understand. So naturally, I enlisted my Danish friend Niels to join us and keep me company while the other folks got their Norway on. Who better to avoid a room full of Norwegians celebrating their freedom from Denmark?

In total, there were five of us going on the trip, but two of the boys had a group project they were working on, so they could only go for one day, while the other three of us stayed for two nights. Niels, my roommate Marte, and I left for Auckland bright and early on Wed, May 16th via bus and when we got to the city, it was rainy and cold... not a good way to start. Not quite ready for the weather to get us down, we walked to our hostel to drop off our luggage (it was still to early to check in) and got ready to do some shopping.

I was surprised by how small the city actually was. It only took us half the day before we had walked up and down the entire main strip, and there wasn't very much shopping to be done either. But we did find a random asian flea market type thing, where I saw this awesome stuffed animal, but sadly could not bring it home with me since I knew I wouldn't have room for it when I fly back to the States.

We decided that it was time to go back to find a bar to chill at for a bit. We walked back up from the harbor in the direction of our hostel and only passed by one bar! It wasn't quite the pub type that we were looking for, but we thought we might as well give it a shot as it didn't look like we'd be finding much else. I ordered a Guiness, and was horribly disappointed to find that my beer tasted rather skunky, yuck!

After only on drink, we were over it and decided to check in to our hostel. When we got there and checked in, we had to get our bags from the storage closet, which was behind another courtesy desk. The guy at the main desk told us to wait there and he'd be over to unlock the storage for us. We waited at the desk (which was literally just around the corner) for about 15 minutes and the guy still hadn't come by, so Marte went back to the main desk to ask if anyone was coming. When she came back she said that the guy was just sitting there eating a bag of chips and when she asked about our luggage he told her that he forgot. We finally got our bags and took our stuff up to our 6-person room, which already had two guys in it, and another person's luggage claiming the three bottom bunks. Not wanting to spend the evening in a room with strangers, we decided to go out for dinner and a movie.

We ended up going to Burger King and then finding whatever random movie was playing at the soonest hour, just to kill some time. The movie we ended up watching was Dark Shadows... most random movie ever, but outside there was a little movie set for a photo op.

If you don't see this movie, you're not missing anything. Sorry Tim Burton.

After the movie, we didn't feel quite like going back to the hostel, so we tried to find another bar, fingers crossed it would be a pub. We decided to ask the front desk for a recommendation, and found our old friend the chip guy still on shift. Marte approached the desk and asked if she could ask a question to which the guy replied "no." Thinking it was just some playful banter, she waited for the joke to end, but he continued to ignore her and began a conversation with the other guy behind the desk before returning his attention to the paying customer. We asked for a bar recommendation, preferably a pub or a dive, to which he feigned ignorance before pointing us to the club just downstairs. We had enough of the guy, so we decided to find something ourselves.

We got downstairs and turned the corner past the club, and found another club on the other side. The bouncer asked us for our ID, but I asked him if he knew of a pub nearby. Turns out, there was an Irish pub just around the corner.

When we got to Father Ted's it was like an oasis the the middle of a terrible desert. A wet and rainy concrete jungle of a desert that is. As soon as we got inside, it was packed, but we were able to find three seats at the bar. All the bartenders were actually from Ireland and spoke with the most awesome accents, and there was even a live band playing Irish folk music! It was the best atmosphere ever! Especially after the kind of day I had been having. Niels and I decided that we were gonna spend the entire day the next day at Father Ted's while the rest were celebrating their national day, starting with a proper Irish breakfast.

When we finally left the bar and returned to the hostel, we went straight to our room. The other guys were already sleeping, so we tried to keep quiet while we got ready for bed. As we were getting our stuff together, Marte pointed out to me that there was already a person asleep in the bed that I was just about to climb into! I didn't even notice. There were already four people sleeping in the room, and only two beds left!

Niels went down to the front desk to complain and was told that there was only supposed to be one other person in that room and that they would send security to deal with the problem. We waited in the hallway outside of the room for 15 minutes and no one came to aid us, so we went back downstairs to the front desk. The guy told us that security would come by in 5 minutes, but we told him we had already waited 15 minutes the last time he said they would only be 5. Finally, they offered to put us up in another room. After a less than glamourous day, we definitely intended to spend the day in the only pleasant place that Aukland had to offer (in my opinion).

I was half joking when I made the suggestion, but we ended up doing just that =) We even got to Father Ted's before the doors were opened and saw the same bartender from the night before finishing up his shift. Breakfast was AWESOME! And I even dared to try some black pudding, but just a nibble =P

And of course, don't forget the Guiness!