the long awaited return

I'm back! I apologize for my week long hiatus, i know my loyal followers were eagerly awaiting another brilliant entry and I let you down. I was a bit bogged down writing a history paper and studying for my exam this past friday, both of which turned out okay (at least I think so we'll see what the people grading those assignments have to say about that pretty soon.) and i just finished up my rough draft for a sociology paper that is due in a couple of days so I'm feeling somewhat accomplished. I have to hand it in and then I have another exam this coming thursday and then I will have attained freedom for the following three weeks. Although I plan on trying to get a head start on a paper that's due shortly after the end of that break (we'll see how that goes, I feel like I'm being a little idealistic in the assumption that I'll actually do work over break.)

Anyway not much has gone on in the past few weeks. I've spent times hanging out with friends, gone out on a few select nights, but spent most of the time doing things academic related. It's been weird to work on academic related things once again (this past week was the first time I actually had anything due this semester). I feel like I'm starting to get back into the swing of things, which is a good thing. A few friends and I went to a small local brewery last week in Christchurch. We got an interesting tour of the process of brewing beer and got to try different kinds of beer that they brew at the end. It was a fun time and actually gave me a newfound respect for the process of beer brewing. I don't think college students really appreciate beer for the effort that goes into making it as much as the alcohol it contains, but it was really cool to hear someone talk about the technique and thought that goes into creating different types of beer. I think that was the only real noteworthy adventure of the past week. Ultimate frisbee is coming to an end this week (although there is one more match the week after assuming that enough people show up to play since it's after the break starts.) It's been fun to play on a team again, I can't say I'm the best ultimate frisbee player that ever lived, but it's a good way to spend a Monday night after a long day of classes.

Well since I don't have much of an update in terms of actual events in the past few weeks I might as well give another update on the going ons of my inner thoughts regarding study abroad and life. Also I should probably stop with these introduction sentences and just write what I'm going to write (you probably just wasted approximately ten seconds of your life reading those past two sentences that really hold no valid content). Sorry about that :-). I've come to realize that I'm slow to adjust to situations. I probably should have realized that after it took me over a year to get settled in and actually enjoy college, but this experience somewhat reaffirms that sentiment. After going off to Boston initially I found that I missed everything about going to high school and growing up in a small town. Everything I had appreciated, under-appreciated, not appreciated at all came to the forefront of my mind and I spent months trying to reconcile these feelings with how I was going to deal with this entirely new environment. Eventually I realized that the two situation are entirely different and can really in no be compared. Once I realized that I found that I really could enjoy myself, and what do you know I actually love going to school in Boston now and all that it entails, but it took me awhile to get there.

I've found that this is a bit of the same situation except I don't think I'll be here long enough to really fall in love with New Zealand. Don't get me wrong I am fully enjoying myself and am having a good time, but people would say before I left "oh you'll have the time of your life!" and now when I talk to people the first thing they'll say is "how's New Zealand I bet you're having the time of your life!" To be honest, I really dislike the term "time of your life". As I realized when I went from high school to college, you can't compare these experiences. The only way to truly enjoy where you are during your short existence here on earth is to take every day for its potential to hold new and novel experiences. No one can every legitimately say "I had the time of my life" because there's really no point where you can definitively know that. You can call me out as a literalist if you want, but literal or not, it's still true.

Anyway I feel like I haven't done a whole lot over the past few months. Probably because it takes me so long to settle in. Hopefully the upcoming break will force me to go out and travel and get some new experiences under my belt. The problem is I'm content with just hanging out with friends and getting to know people better or spending time by myself walking around listening to music. I think I just value human interaction and self-reflection more than seeing sights and traveling. I think that the study abroad experience kind of forces you to travel, it's an expectation (not that that's a bad thing it's just the way it is) because I know when I get home people will ask me all about my experiences and where I went and what were the coolest things I saw were. There's an expectation to have stories about sightseeing and tourist-y things because if I respond to that question by saying I met some really awesome people and didn't travel much the conversation pretty much ends there. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there's so much expectation and pressure placed on experiences like this that it's almost pre-defined before you step on the plane. Universities advertise the experience in a certain way and students go abroad with that ideology in their minds and experience everything that they're "supposed" to experience. Thus when they come back they have all the right stories and anecdotes to prove that they really did go abroad for a semester. I'm guessing I'm probably in the minority in this belief and most people would say that I'm not making the most of the potential this experience holds for me, but again this an entirely personal thing.

This trip has really just felt like another semester so far, a bit of a different setting and different people to meet, but when it comes down to it, I don't feel the need or desire to cram a whole slew of drastic and different things into a five month period. Most people probably do, and maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I think it's best to not worry about what other people expect or want you to get out of study abroad (or any experience in life for that matter) and to do just what comes naturally and enjoy yourself. This is not meant to be a bitter entry by any means (it might sound a little harsh and dramatic, but really it's not meant that way). I'm having a good time over here so no worries about that. The last thing I'd want to do is have someone come away from this entry thinking I'm bitter and upset half a world a way because that is certainly not the case. To be honest I like it here (I don't yet love it, perhaps that'll happen before I leave, perhaps not) and I do miss home, but so would anyone who has amazing friends and family and is half a world away from them for almost five months. I hope all is well with everyone reading this and with any luck I'll be back in a weeks time to give you another update. Oh, and if the next time I talk to you you accidentally say the phrase "time of your life" I promise I won't freak out. I'm not thaaaaat dramatic. :-)

and now for something different

Aloha everyone. This entry is a bit of a departure from my previous endeavors into the blogging world so if you're only curious as to my day to day activities then feel free to skip over this entry and wait for my next update on my New Zealand adventures. For everyone else I offer a break from routine and a grounded entry into the workings of my mind (I know, I know, sooo fascinating).

I've come to realize, through various nights out on with friends sharing conversations of no great importance as well as spending late nights/early mornings out on the balcony with nothing but myself, my iPod, and a carefully crafted playlist that there is so much of the study abroad experience that goes unspoken about. Aspects that people don't bother to question or look into. The personal growth and expansion that happens from being more alone and separated from home than ever before. I don't mean home in the purely physical sense either, I refer to home in the abstract sense of more than a building/town/location/etc. I mean the home where you feel comfortable with yourself and who you've established yourself to be. where everyone that surrounds you knows you for all your past experiences, achievements, and mistakes. These months away allow a person to reinvent themselves however they choose, to act in ways outside of the personal characteristics and habits that home has established. This time is not just a break from American culture to see a new place in a foreign land, it's a time to break away from yourself in a sense (that may sound "deep" and esoteric, but it's not meant to be and I think that most people get the general gist of what I'm talking about if not the whole thing).

I've been over here for over a month and i can honestly say that I'm not the same person I was when I left. I suppose that type of change is to be expected, but until you actually experience it for yourself, it seems relatively abstract and unattainable. Going off to college initially offered a similar sense of space and separation, but not like this (not to this degree anyway). Being away has given me an increased amount of perspective. I can look back on home and realize the things that I cannot go without, the things that I truly value in life, and the aspects that truly matter to me most. On the other hand it's also allowed me to view the aspects of life i feel I'd be better off without. Being so far away (approximately halfway around the world) physically and mentally allows for this in a way that I really hadn't anticipated. This includes things both external and internal to my life. I've seen aspects of myself and others that are both admirable and shameful (which is a harsher word than i would like to use, but it's late over here and I'd rather not bust out my thesaurus to find a more appropriate word). I think this has really set in over the past few weeks and honestly it's an odd feeling, but also a very liberating sense of self.

To be able to completely reinvent myself if I so choose is a very odd place to find myself in (although I wouldn't go to that extreme because I happen to quite enjoy the person I've come to be over the past 21 years). Again i think the reason that you don't really hear about these aspects of study abroad is that it's so hard to convey (I hope I'm doing a somewhat suitable job in this blog entry, but this may or may not be the case in actuality). Upon talking with people back home the questions asked are largely the obvious ones that I would ask to someone else who was studying abroad like what I've been up to, how do I like classes, what's the culture like, how am I adjusting, etc. (and I suspect that the questions asked upon my return will be largely be the same). Thus, I'm taking this blog entry as a place to delve a bit deeper into the personal growth of my time halfway around the world.

After growing up in a small town and having a very close, tight-knit group of friends in Boston it's a very foreign experience to be surrounded people that know so very little about me. I suppose that's part of the appeal of this journey too though. a lot of people get a bit caught up in their college experience a few years in and desperately need a breath of fresh air. While this is not the exact case for me i can definitely see how people come back from their time abroad with an altered outlook than when they departed. again, I don't think I've drastically changed or anything, so for those of you who liked me the way i was there should be no worries and for those who disliked me i guess you're just out of luck :-).

that's pretty much all I've got to say as of now. I didn't have a whole lot in the way of updates on classes, travel, and whatnot so I pretty much just wrote this entry about what was on my mind in one fell swoop. Thus, I apologize if it's a bit repetitive or incoherent at times (it's also a bit late so my stream of conscious thought is not as sharp as it might have been at an earlier hour). Hope all is well with everyone reading this!

another week (or so) another post

So I promised pictures for this blog entry, unfortunately for you the best I can do at this time is to post pictures of my flat (which I meant to do initially, but never did). I was planning on going out to take pictures of the campus on Sunday, but I was feeling particularly lazy and ended up just lounging around for most of that day. I hope to get pictures of the campus this upcoming weekend (I'm choosing not to do it during the week because I feel quite awkward being the kid walking around in between classes taking pictures of buildings that students see everyday) so maybe I'll finally get motivated to do that. There isn't a whole lot to update on this week so I'll do my best to keep this interesting.

Classes have continued to go well. I have a few papers and midterms coming up in about two and a half weeks. It's kind of crazy to think that I have a chunk of work to do in the next few weeks and then I have a three week break. I haven't really figured out what I'm going to do for that big chunk of time, but I hope to get a chance to do quite a bit of traveling because I'm finding it a bit hard to get motivated to plan out the logistic of weekend trips. Maybe this extended break will give me a kick in the pants to get things worked out and to make travel arrangements. Two of my flatmates went to Queenstown this past weekend with some friends to bungie jump and go jetboating (although I'm still not entirely sure what that is). I was contemplating going, but I was pretty run down by the end of last week and figured I'd lay low rather than go on a trip and come back sick. However, those two did recently acquire a car so that'll make it easier to go on trips around the country.
I mentioned last week (I think) about joining clubs and contemplating joining the tramping (hiking) club. Well I looked through their little pamphlet and decided that it was a bit too intense for me, the fact that I owned none of the equipment necessary to go on the majority of their hikes was a bit of an indicator. A few of my friends went on the introductory hike this past weekend, which was supposed to be "easy" and said it was more intense than they expected and they're people who actually hike (unlike myself). Thus, I think I'll just have to plan on going on small day hikes with a few friends in the upcoming weeks rather than the extreme mountain sprinting hikes that the tramping club will be going on. I have, however, been going to ultimate frisbee for the past two weeks. The club meets on monday nights for about an hour and a half to play. Last week was just an introduction to the rules and techniques, which was helpful because I've never actually played in a semi-competitive nature. I brought along two of my flatmates, Zach and Scott, and they ended up enjoying it enough to join the league so that was cool. Anyway yesterday was the first game and my team played Zach's. Unfortunately we lost by one point giving him the prestigious right of gloating. The other club I joined was the commerce society called UCom. They're having a big kickoff BBQ this friday as well as a pajama (interestingly spelled pyjama here) party the night before. I'm planning on going to both events (if I'm lucky I can score a fabulous pair of footy pajamas before then) and I think most of my flatmates will go too so that'll be a fun way to end the week.
Other than going to class the majority of the academic work I have as of now is reading, which I need to catch up on since I got my textbooks a little late. It seems pretty manageable, but I also should probably start research for some of the papers I need to write in the next few weeks. I've found that the motivation for procrastination is much stronger here than it is back home. Combine this with my long hiatus from school work and it's not the best combination. No worries though, I'm sure I'll be able to stay on top of my work I always seem to manage that. There may be more distractions here in terms of new things to do, but at least they only have around six TV channels. Premium cable is really not that common here, I mean we have it in the village's rec room, but our flat only has basic cable (which is really fine by me, I never watched that much TV in Boston anyway). It's just a bit odd because cable, internet, and cell phones are treated so differently here than in the states. I pay for my internet access here and, rather than pay monthly rates, I pay by the gigabyte, I'm still not entirely sure how that works, but it's a very odd system. Most people get cell phone plans with a large amount of texts because calling is still somewhat pricey even with a plan (this is probably because there are only two major cell phone service providers). It's very different than being at home where I'm always connected to the internet and calling/texting/etc. on my cell phone. It's been interesting to see the difference in the way technology is used here as opposed to how it's used back home.
That's pretty much all I have to update on for right now. Sorry if this entry seems a little scatterbrained. I just woke up from a nap and feel a bit out of it, hopefully the whole thing is somewhat coherent. With any luck I'll have a more lively and interesting entry to post next time full with amazing photos of campus and other events, but you'll just have to wait and see.

First Week of Classes: Done!

So after my lengthy hiatus from classroom learning I ventured back into the world of academia this past Monday. Luckily it was a smooth transition back into the process of learning. My four classes are Environmental Economics, Game Theory, Social Movements & Change, and Religion & Violence. All of my professor seem to be very down to earth and insightful, which is definitely a good thing. It's hard to tell which courses will be difficult, interesting, etc. in the first week especially since classes only meet for a total of two hours a week for lectures (some classes have tutorials which account for additional class time). Most of what was covered this past week was introductory aspects of the course like going over syllabi and whatnot. My class size ranges from about 20 to 80 and most of them are strongly focused on lectures with a bit of discussion thrown in. Hopefully the portion of the classes dedicated to discussion will increase as the semester progresses and people become more comfortable interacting in class.

Unfortunately due to an issue of transferring credit from University of Canterbury back to Northeastern I will have to change my Religion & Violence course out with Modern World History. I'm have not been a huge fan of history courses in the past, but I realized after reading over the course description that much of contemporary history is really interesting to me I just don't know a whole lot about it. Hopefully there won't be anymore requirement issues with my classes and that history class will be interesting (it meets tomorrow so I should have a general idea of what the course is about after lectures). It was slightly frustrating to have to deal with switching out courses, but I'm sure it'll all end up fine and while I enjoyed the first few lectures of Religion & Violence it wasn't exactly what I had imagined the class to be when I first signed up for it a few weeks ago.

My overall first impressions of classes are that they aren't a whole lot different from classes at Northeastern, obviously the student demographic is different. I hope that this difference will become more pronounced as discussion and interaction between students takes place over the course of the semester. Aside from that though the professors and the way the lectures are set-up is very similar to how it is back in Boston. One other difference I noticed was that professors enforce the use of the campus library and actual physical books as sources rather than the internet more than they do back home. This might be due to the fact that most of the classes I took back home assigned papers that required minimal sources and citation, but even so professors here seem to make it more of a requirement (and not an option) to use literary sources over the internet. This is all fine by me, I just hope I remember how to hold a large hardcover text from the library, it's been oh so long.

For a large portion of this past week they had tents sent up on a few of the quads representing student clubs for people to walk around a peruse. I went around with a few friends and managed to sign up for the ultimate frisbee club and the commerce society. The latter of the two is mainly a social club that has parties and barbecues, so I figured it'd be a good way to meet some new people. The ultimate frisbee club meets tomorrow to go over basic skills and rules so I'm dragging all my flatmates along to see if I can convince any of them to join up as well. The league meets every week on monday nights and seeing as how my body has been desperately lacking anything resembling physical exercise for awhile I figured it would be a good way to stay in shape. I also looked at a hiking and cricket club (those are two separate clubs, although a combination of those two could be kind of interesting). I'm planning on going to a hiking (or as the New Zealanders call it, tramping) club meeting first before deciding whether or not to join. I figure I'll be able to gauge how intense it is from the meeting because I enjoy going on casual hikes, but I would hardly consider myself a veteran hiker. We'll see what happens with the cricket club, I was trying to find a club that was very open to beginners, but I'm not sure if that exists here. The people and information at the booths seemed to indicate that the clubs weren't entirely beginning friendly, but I plan on keeping my eyes and ears open about it (I think I'd be a damn good cricket player once I got the hang of it).

Aside from classes and clubs day I spent a lot of time lounging around this past week, letting my body get used getting up early for classes (this involved a fair amount of napping). Luckily my schedule isn't super demanding, I only have two days of early classes and no friday classes (aside from a bi-weekly tutorial for environmental economics). It was probably good that I rested up this week though because I'm pretty sure all my flatmates were sick this week. Some illnesses lasted longer than others, but I managed to avoid coming down with anything (which may be the first time in history that's ever happened to me seeing as how I'm always getting sick).

This past weekend I went to a rugby game with some friends, which was fun. I can't say I followed the entire game, but it was fun to see how much fans get into and try to work out the rules. After the game we went out into the city and went to a decent number of bars. The first of which was a sports bar where everyone was watching the last bit of the cricket match that was on. New Zealand ended up winning so everyone there was very pumped (I did my best to act like a thrilled native, but I don't think I quite pulled it off, my accent still needs a bit of work). However I guess the big nights to go out here are mainly Thursday and Saturday. There were a decent number of people out at the bars, but they weren't packed by any means. Oh well, I guess that just means I'll have to go out into the city centre again this coming weekend (I know, I know, I lead such a tough life).

It rained straight through Saturday and everyone in our flat pretty much laid around for the day, which was fine by me because I love lazy days. We were going to go out to a flat warming party for someone who is friends with my flatmate Zach, but the weather was awful and the party had already died down by the time we were ready to head out. It was fun to just stay in the flat with all the roomies and hang out though. I've started to realize that what I've really enjoyed about the experience so far is just meeting all the new people. Talking and hanging out with people is what I really enjoy the most whether it be here or back home. The first questions people usually ask you after a trip are along the lines of where'd you travel to and what'd you see? While I'm still interested in traveling and seeing the country I think people oftentimes overlook the social piece of study abroad and put a lot of emphasis on the touristic aspects or maybe it's just that the social interactions are so hard to convey to people who weren't on the trip that others just don't ask about them. Regardless of the reason I've started to realize that the social part of this experience will likely be a much more prominent part than I had originally thought when I was first writing my pre-departure entry.

Also along the lines of social interactions I'd just like to say to my friends and family that I miss you all and it's been very weird to be this far away from everything that's going on back home. It's definitely a very odd feeling and I'll have to get used to it, but I'm constantly thinking about you guys and gals. If you're reading that and haven't talked to me recently then let's chat and catch up. It always helps to hear from voices back home (or from home voices that are currently abroad as well). That's about all I have to update you with for now (again sorry for the lack of pictures I swear I'll start carrying my camera around more soon).