On classes, earthquakes, and chocolate….

I have finished my first week of classes at Otago. I think, if anything, I have culture shock from being at a large university rather than from being in a different country –although the fact that the entire university student population is of legal drinking age certainly affects the creation of norms and traditions. (I don’t think my kiwihost can conceive of what it would be like to go to college without copious amounts of beer on hand.)

Classes are much, much larger than I am used to. Rather than cut off enrollment, they just move the lecture to a bigger room and add more tutorial sections. Needless to say the classroom dynamic is rather different when there are more people in the auditorium than in your entire college graduating class (In one of my classes, there is something like 470 students!) Lectures aren’t run on a MWF or TTh cycle and are almost certainly held in different locations throughout the week - something which seriously trips me up. I may have definitely had to get up and leave a class after the professor showed up and I realized I hadn’t checked to see if the location had changed. My favorite academic jargon for the week: ‘the tuts are fortnightly’ (small group discussions meet every other week)

I switched classes because the assessment in Human Geography would have been frustratingly easy. There are several hundred people in that class so I figure that if I continue attending the lectures they won’t notice. At any rate, It will be good motivation to drag myself from under my warm covers in the morning. I am now taking Anthropology of Contemporary Issues – a course about globalization – instead.

I am excited to get back into the academic swing of things – the first reading for Geography of the S. Pacific, about how photography changed the way people thought about travel, was wonderfully full of new ideas about space and time and history. The first substantive Environmental Politics lecture involved a description of the 70s survivalists (using exponential population theories to predict catastrophic resource disasters), the Promethean response (the view that technology could handle the environmental crisis) and discussion about how the same division informs current arguments about the environment.

And I am back to being overwhelmed at how incredibly lucky I am to have the luxury of sitting around thinking big thoughts. God, I hope someday I can give back to world enough to even slightly deserve this.


Since last writing I:
1) visited Larnach Castle - the only castle in NZ (and contemporaneous to the Alexander Ramsey House)


2) explored around Dunedin (the farmer’s market, First Church of Otago, the Octagon, the Botanical Garden)
3) explored the university (trying to figure out where my classes were - OUSA, Castle Lecture Theatre, the Archway, the Quad)
4) joined the Tramping Club and Campus Greens
5) didn’t feel the 7.8 earthquake centered only 300 km from Dunedin :(
6) toured a chocolate factory and watched 30,000 Jaffa chocolate balls getting thrown down the steepest road in the world




7) had the rugby match between Australia and New Zealand interrupted by seven guys tied to a keg of beer
8) went tramping on Flagstaff

Greetings from Dunedin

A quick list of interesting things I did during the program introduction this past week –
1) went caving at Waitomo (abseiled 60 meters, admired some damn fine speleothems (aka. cave formations), and ziplined across a cavern with all lights off),
2) ate kumara and lamb,
3) went for a walk in a very unique redwood forest,



4) learned the words and actions for the haka, and
5)was made uncomfortable by the romaticization and simplification of Maori creation myths at an “authentic” hangi feast at the Tamaki Village. Other parts though were amazing - the traditional songs and the atmosphere of the meal. Very not sure how I feel about that evening. How does tourism affect the preservation and presentation of Maori culture?

The New Zealand countryside on the North Island reminds me of a lot of things all at once. If you don’t look too closely at the trees, they seem vaguely the shape and thickness of Northern Minnesotan forests. But if you look slightly closer you realize that the underbrush includes a plant with leaves like a palm tree and that none of the trees look completely “right” It also looks like the Scottish countryside with patches of pasture and sheep, except that in that part of NZ there are more cows than sheep making it feel a bit like rural MN, except that the cows and pastures are set on very hilly topography and ridges. When you put this together with the driving on the left side of the road and the jet lag, it is surprisingly disconcerting.

After the Australearn orientation, we flew to Christchurch, then Dunedin. In contrast to the Auckland international airport which featured cute beagle airport security dogs smelling for fresh fruit and meats and a small army of people opening luggage to check any camping equipment for dirt, the Rotorua airport had no security. Having never flown domestically in any country besides the US, it was pretty weird.

We were greeted in Dunedin by one of the people working for the International Student office and brought directly to our flats. My current home away from home is a lot bigger than I expected. I share the third floor with two girls: a music major from Denmark and an economics major from Germany. Each of us has our own room and we share a bathroom. Below us is a floor of boys – two american boys and one kiwi fellow. On the ground floor, there is the kitchen, laundry, and living room. My flatmates are generally nice though we have yet to have a meeting to discuss cleaning tasks, groceries, etc. I am not sure I can distinguish Dave from the friends he always has over….

I registered for classes today – a process made absolutely mental by the number of students and lack of electronic registration. Lots of standing in queues. The timing of many of the classes I wanted to take conflicted. Right now I am enrolled in Human Geography, Geography of the South Pacific, Environmental Politics, and Maori Society…but I might try to switch things up during the first week.

Mostly, I’m still getting settled in. There are heaps of little connections to your surrounding community that you forget about until you move somewhere new and suddenly formerly familiar activities take twice as long to do. Acquiring public library cards, opening a bank account, finding the nearest and cheapest grocery store, buying shampoo and bulky warm $4 sweatshirts from second-hand shops, etc Exciting mundane little things.

Tomorrow I am going taking the Taieri Gorge Train into the foothills surrounding the Otago Peninsula.

Random tip (offered by a lady at the bank): when the sidewalk is particularly icy, wear socks over your shoes.

Currently excited about: the possibility of playing in a gamelan ensemble, learning how to find south based on the available constellations, the Dunedin botanical gardens, the geology museum, the Cadbury chocolate festival, classes starting up.


My snail mail address is:
16/783 Great King St.
Dunedin, New Zealand 9016

The mailbox is not especially protected from the elements so I don’t recommend sending anything valuable.

My Otago email account is: kerme352[at]student.otago.ac.nz
But again, I still check my old email address as well.

Expectations

And...I'm already behind on the whole posting thing. I have been in New Zealand for two days now but limited access to internet has prevented me from putting anything up. So here, retroactively is something I wrote the night before my flight:

I leave tomorrow for New Zealand. I am pretty anxious which is silly since I am going to an English speaking country to study at a university (which has many support systems established for people in my situation) and will be traveling and living with other international students. I have never, however, claimed to be even vaguely courageous in this regard. I look forward to being there, getting set up, and starting classes so that there aren’t so many unknowns to worry about.

After four years of undergraduate work, you become accustomed to the academic system you’re in and confident in your ability to handle the expectations of classes be it a 3000-level geology or 4000-level philosophy course. It is incredibly cool that I get an opportunity now, at the end of the traditional time allotted to the massive soul-search which is college, to put it all into question again. Three cheers for the chance to experience a different style of teaching/learning!

Things I look forward to:
Mountains (and all of the associated geology), greenstone, tramping (hiking), earthquakes, New Zealand slang , exploring Dunedin and the Otago peninsula, candy shaped like babies, odd and delicious flavors of ice-cream, unfamiliar stars, registering for classes (with so many amazing choices it would be very hard to have a disappointing schedule), geography classes!!, gut-wrenching realizations about my own assumptions and identity

But enough speculation. I’ll write when I actually have some concrete experiences to share.