A student life in NZ

It has been too long since my last confession. I don’t have the excuse of being on many outrageous adventures, all I can say is that I have settled into the normal student life. Therefore, procrastination is my life!

I have yet to leave Wellington since my return from the Northern road trip, and I am just itching to see more of this country. My time has mostly been passed getting to know people in my hall, hanging out with international students, playing soccer, trying to organize kitesurfing lessons, going to class, and of course, partying.

While I was a bit nervous about living with people 4-5 years my junior, things have been going really well on my floor. In an attempt to get everyone closer, a few of the girls on my floor decided to create a family tree (where each person on the floor is a member). Fortunately I was given the role of ‘big brother’ (I was dreading being a grandpa). So I now have a mum, dad, grandma, 7 sisters, a brother, a stray cat, a drunken aunt, and a wife. Safa (my new bride), moved onto our floor after the first week and happens to be in her 3rd year. With too many sisters, our mum decided to marry us before we even met. We generally all get together for drinks on the weekend, eat meals together, and sit around chatting in our common room.

One floor below, there are a bunch of rambunctious kiwis. I can easily equate some of these guys to the small town Canadian boys who get to university and can just out-drink everyone. I spend a fair bit of time one floor down with the boys. There is a lack of males on my floor (not that I would ever complain about that), so it’s nice to go down and learn the ins-and-outs of cricket and rugby, while teaching them about hockey and all it’s glory! It’s definitely nice to mix it up every once and a while. Plus, these guys have all offered their homes to me during our Easter break, so I’m really looking forward to them showing me the real kiwi experience. All-in-all, things in my hall are going really well!

Soccer is taking up a decent amount of time, but I am enjoying every minute of it. I solidified my spot on the 1st team with a shutout in a pre-season game last Sunday. We’ve got two more exhibition games this week, and the regular season starts on April 4th. Guillermo (our Argentinean coach) is great, but is forcing the quick play of Latin American football on our team. It’s so fast, and really works on quick plays starting at the back, so my play is improving rather quickly. There’s also a former keeper who used to play on the team years ago, who is out coaching and training me. The guys on the team are great; really friendly and outgoing. Needless to say, I’m really enjoying playing soccer.

Kitesurfing has not being going as well as I would have liked. I have so far had one lesson, and 6 cancelled due to poor conditions. Two of those lessons were cancelled after I had been out in the water already. Just as I was learning to body drag (where the kite just pulls you along in the water) the wind picked up, and therefore so did I. I was very lucky that my instructor was hanging tightly to my harness as we were both lifted about 6 feet out of the water (had he let go, I was told I would have been slingshot nearly 20 feet in the air). We crashed back down in the water, and called it a day. We called it a day after that, and I’m headed out on Thursday morning (early) this week to try and finally get some nice weather. The possibility of me seriously getting into the sport is looking slim over here due to the distance I need to travel for a good location, the costs, and the fact that the weather is slowly turning to shit here. Winter in Wellington consists of heavy wind, rain, and fairly mild temperatures (3-10 degrees – which isn’t awful, though being in the water makes it just a tad bit colder).

Lenny and I have also been seeing a lot of each other. We now have a class together, Conflict Analysis in International Politics. Basically, we sit there and talk sports all class. It’s a second year class, and we’ve spent the first 3 weeks on Realism and Liberalism (which we’ve both been learning about for the last 3 years). It’s a joke. Naturally, we’ve also been up to some fun and mischief over the last few weeks. We’ve managed a couple of wonderful dinners with some international students, providing a break from our hall meals (they’ve been progressively worse), and kiwis. Lenny and I (along with two others) managed to fabricate bracelets to sneak into Homegrown. This enormous music festival (featuring exclusively NZ music), had tickets going for $90 a piece, and not knowing any of the groups left us with very little incentive to shell out that kind of cash. But thanks to Lenny’s work on ‘paint’, we printed tickets off a computer and walked in without incident! The music was pretty good – though I would not have paid for tickets. With tons of people surrounding us, it was an exuberant atmosphere.

With all that Lenny and I have been hearing about Israel Apartheid Week back on Canadian and American university campuses, we’ve been feeling a bit useless here. There is very little talk of that on campus here in Wellington. However, on separate occasions we both noticed an enormous sign draped off the side of a house near an on-ramp to the highway which stated “Israel and USA get out of Palestine”. This obviously upset us both, and we felt a nighttime sting operation was in order. We snuck into the yard of this house, cut a couple of ropes holding the sign up made a stealthy exit. We’ve yet to see the sign back up, and we’ll be sure to keep these operations ongoing as needed!

Overall, the student life in NZ is very similar to anywhere else in the world. My classes are going well (other classes are: Holocaust and Genocide; and History of NZ – a Settler society), though I’ve yet to really get any work done. It is starting to bother me that the weather back home (Halifax, Ottawa, or GP) will soon be nicer than it is here. My goal of 8 months of endless summer will most definitely not be realized – though I’m sure I won’t get any sympathy from anyone back home.