Aloha from Aotearoa! This is my blog so that I can show all of you about my stay here in this land. If I write in Hawaiian, I will leave a translation so you can understand. I will try to also write in Māori when I can. Here is my first blog!
I flew out of Honolulu on June 30, 2010 at 11:15pm on Air New Zealand. This is the first time I am flying out of the Hawaiian Islands/Country. My flight was 9 hours, that is long! We each had our own tv screen and control. So for 9 hours, I watched movies such as Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, played games and slept. Dinner was served and it was pretty good, chicken pasta. It was hard to sleep on the plane. We landed in Auckland about 7:00am. Remember the time difference, Aotearoa (New Zealand) is about 22 hours ahead of Hawaiʻi time. So we landed, Auckland Airport is really huge and nice. Had to go through several checkpoints. Finally got to the pick up area and I was with my friend, Leo, who is also on this exchange with me at the University of Waikato. We tried to look for the guy with our names, we didn't see him, so we went outside! It was cold! I cold see my breath! Anyways we went outside and walked around for about 10 minutes looking for the cold, when we went back in, we finally saw our names. We passed the guy. Checked him with him and loaded our luggage in the mini-shuttle van. We had to wait for other students that were flying in. Ate breakfast at McDonalds, but they didn't have Portuguese Sausage!!! WAT?! Haha I decided to eat pancakes and a small orange juice. We waited for couple hours more, by then I was bored and tired. Loaded their luggages and were off to Hamilton. They drive on the wrong side of the road! Nah it's weird to see people driving on the left side and to see the oncoming car driving on the right. The ride was about 2-3 hours, because we had to drop off people at their housing area. Some places remind me of home, the houses look pretty big and mansion looking.
We finally arrived at The University of Waikato. We were dropped of at our housing called College Hall. The campus is huge! It's also nice and spacious. Checked into my hall, I have a room all to myself. I'm located in College Hall C in what they call "the basement", because I had to walk downstairs. So I have a bed, 2 desk areas, a big cabinet, a heater and couple shelfs on the wall. After I checked in, went to eat lunch. Had a small sandwich and pasta. Got to meet some of the local people here, they are pretty much the RA's, because everyone is on a 2 week holiday before the 2nd semester (B Semester) starts. It is pretty awesome talking to them because of their accent. Me and Leo walked around the campus to get a little familiar and to see if we can enroll in our papers (classes) and get our student ID. Couldn't, so we have to wait till next week. We went to a Bennet's Bookstore to buy a internet card, it's weird because we had to pay by the GB. We walked down to "The Warehouse" which is like Kmart/Walmart. Had to buy some stuff. Long walk, well it felt like it. Headed back and waited couple hours till dinner which was around 5pm (7pm HI time). I ate "fish & chips"! Was pretty good, but I've been told that they serve that every Friday night. Just like every Thursday night is steak night at UHM dorms!
Anyways rushed back to my room so that I could skype my ʻohana back home, because my phone has no service. So, I gotta go and buy a phone here. Skype'd with my ʻohana for about 4 hours. Got tired and I didn't unpack yet. But I went sleep!
For pictures checkout my Facebook!
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