February 29th, 2008 New Zealand update

Hey all! I’m about half-way through my New Zealand trip, and I think it’s about time for an update on my adventures here. Overall, so far so good. The summer weather here has been quite spectacular, with almost no rain and temps in the low to mid 20s (C). That’s mid 70s for all you non-metric folk. The city is about the same size as Toyama City, with about 370,000 people. There is a HUGE park in the center of town- I heard it’s the third largest central-city park in the world. I’ve throughly enjoyed running and walking around there. I’m staying in a nice one-bedroom apartment very near to the school where our students are studying at. Besides a few design flaws, I’m very happy with it. Best thing of all is the washer and drier! I can clean all my clothes in a jiffy, which is quite a change from my life in Toyama, where we hang-dry everything, and it sometimes takes days before I can wear certain items.

My daily routine is to wake up at 7:20am, take a shower, and have breakfast while checking out the morning news and weather (it’s so nice to be able to understand what’s on the TV!). I meet my colleague Mr. Kawahata (who’s staying in an apartment above me) at 8:20, then we walk together through a small park to King’s Education. It’s only a five minute stroll, so I really appreciate the location of our hotel apartments. Once there, we sit in the entrance lobby and greet our students as they come in. All of them are staying with host families around town and bus to school. Once we’re sure everyone has arrived, we hang out in the teacher’s lounge for the rest of the morning. This is my free Internet access time, so I keep busy with email, catching up on the news, and getting some research done (I’ve been working on an article for publication). Free wireless Internet is very rare here; Fortunately the local public library has it, so after lunch with Mr. Kawahata (we alway eat out at one of the many many excellent restaurants nearby), I head off to continue whatever project I’m on. At six Mr. Kawahata and I go jogging along the Avon River near our hotel. After that, it’s dinner time, so we either go out or stay in, depending on our mood.

That’s basically it, but you know, each day is unique, so there is always something new to see and do. A few things I’ve been able to do have been to visit the local museums, go running in the super gorgeous botanical garden park, attend choral services at the Christchurch Cathedral (which is Anglican), and go to a Catholic Cathedral for Sunday mass. Last weekend, in fact, I went to my first ever (?) mass held in Latin. That was very interesting, but I realized I like the “new” style better! [Mom or dad- did you ever take me to a Latin mass when I was a child?] I’ve realized that my thing to give up for lent is not to “give up” anything at all, but to attend church more! That feels more positive to me, and I’ve greatly enjoyed this opportunity to attend services with amazing location, music, and ENGLISH!

During the week days I’ve also accompanied our students on pre-planned field trips. The first of these was a city tour around Christchurch. I whipped up the following video clip, which I posted on a new website I created for our trip. Check it out- you won’t see me until the very very end, but you can get an idea of what the city is like and an idea of what I’m doing down here. I’m currently working on more videos, so I’ll post those when their done.

So, that’s it for now. I’ll be here until March 9th.

UPDATE: (4/5/08) I’ve reposted the video clip below to a bigger and clearer version. Check it out!

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