New Zealand VS USA: New Opinions!

Now that I have lived in New Zealand for 3.5 months, I thought I'd do another post comparing the two countries.

First of all, FOOD. I'm sorry but New Zealand food is awful. New Zealand is one of the top 3 most obese countries in the world, and it all makes sense. All restaurants serve fried fish, meat pies, and pastries. I have yet to find somewhere that sells a chicken caesar salad! The dining hall I know is just a university thing, but it's pretty bad. Meat and potatoes EVERY DAY. Like seriously everyday they have rice, some sort of potato, and some kind of meat. Sometimes they don't even know what kind of meat it is...all in all, there's a reason I've gained 10lbs since moving here.

Secondly is fashion. My school is a farm school, so it's not typical, but it's what I have to go on. The boys like to wear rugby shorts AKA short shorts, long wooly hiking socks, and jandals AKA flip flops/sandals. They often wear collared shirts on top, and there;s something about blue and white stripes! Hahaha :) Also bucket hats are a big things. Or sometime when it's cold they wear their short shorts with a giant sweater and gumboots AKA rainboots. They REALLY like their short shorts (stubbies). Girls are pretty similar to USA, but where we would wear yoga pants they wear pants that look like basketball warmups. Those people in movies with the snap sweatpants that look kind of wind/water resistant, yeah those. And it's normal. Also when they dress up they like to wear these white disco era platform sandals and boots. And makeup here costs $23984723984 so they usually only wear makeup when they go out!

Thirdly is FARMS ARE EVERYWHERE AND EVERYONE IS FROM A FARM. People are shocked to hear I live in a "farm town" where no one runs productive dairy/cattle farms. Their idea of a farm is a sheep/dairy/cattle/deer farm where they own 1,000 animals or something. Farms are not places where people own 5 cows, 2 horses, and some chickens. So that's a bit different. Also they know what the teacher is saying when she talks about tailing, culling, milk sheds, and velvet. It took me forever to figure that all out. By the way, tailing is chopping off a lamb's tail, culling is killing, milk sheds are where you milk cows, and velvet is the stuff covering deer antlers that they chops off the antlers for and send to Korea.

Fourthly is everything costs an arm and a limb. Grocery bills (and I go 1-2 times a week) are usually $50-$80 for ONE person. A pack of 12 strips of bacon costs at least $10, and that's sale price. A slushy at the movies is $7, gas is 3x what it is back home, and a university sweatshirt (usually $30, right?) is $100. It's absolutely nuts.

Fifthly people here love Obama. I don't know why, but they think he's great. They know more about American politics then I do!!

Sixth no one is religious. There's a tiny percent of people who Christian, that being split pretty evenly between Anglican, Catholic, and Baptist. There's not a Mormon, Jew, Jehovah's Witness, or Buddhist in sight. And the people that are Christian follow a double standard where they pray then take a shot.

Seventhly people here are smashed 95% of the time. People are drunk by 9pm probably 5 days a week, at least. My R.A. told me he spent $10,000 on booze his freshman year...like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

Eighthly college means high school, high school means high school, and university means college. And it's first years, not freshmen, second years, not sophomores, etc. They just like to make everything confusing.

FINALLY, they like to use random vocabulary that makes no sense. A yarn means to have a talk, they add "as" to the end of statements (sweet as, it's cold as, I'm drunk as, etc.), and biscuit means most baked goods. It's quite confusing :)

Overall I've had a fantastic time here studying abroad, I would LOVE to come back and travel, but I don't think I need to live here. The people are great, but seeing as I'm a non drunk Christian who enjoys a variety of food aside from just meat, I don't think I'd fit in ;)

Room Tour!

So I've gotten a couple requests for a picture blog about where I live, so here it is! My hall is called Centennial, and it consists of five buildings. I live in building 5 which happens to be the building with laundry and a common room! Each building has two floors, and a total of four wings, though one of the wings on my building is dedicated to laundry/common room, not actual rooms.

The outside of my building, my camera couldn't capture much from closer up.

My wing is the upper right one! Camera couldn't capture the left wings.

The straight on view when you open up our pod door, bathroom is a door directly to the right, kitchen is that door on the left, and everything carpeted is rooms (there's 6). Oh, and that door at the end is a broom closet.

Our bathroom (one toilet, two sinks, two showers)

Our airplane sized toilet room

One of the showers

View of the kitchen from the doorway

Our cooking area

It gets full when six people have to share it...

Each of us has a shelf (mine is the very full third row down)

The right side of my room

The view of my tiny room from the doorway

My bed/wall

My closet

My bookshelves and towel rack

Looking out into the hallway from inside my room

My super messy desk

Well that's my building! I would do a campus tour, but that would take a LONG time and probably wouldn't do it much justice! I hope you guys enjoyed my messy little building tour, I hope it makes sense haha.

Random Update: Walked into town yesterday for the farmer's market where I bought some homemade bread and fudge, then took the bus into the city with Lisa, Robert, and Peter (Germany, Pennsylvania, German), and we did a little shopping then went and saw the Averngers 2: Age of Ultron which was really fun! We got AWESOME seats and instead of paying $20 to see it on the "Extremescreen" we got to see it for $12, still not sure why. But it was really fun. Today I basically was a hermit and did homework/watched YouTube videos, and made homemade rice pudding and homemade applesauce! Unfortunately I doubled the recipe for rice pudding, because I had enough ingredients to do so, and now I have a ton of rice pudding. I also used a lot of apples for the applesauce, so now I have a lot of that too, and our fridge is already packed. Oh well! Also, I tried sarsparilla soda for the first time, it's the closest thing New Zealand has to rootbeer. It's pretty good, similar to rootbeer but a little bit off. In other news, our wine is ALMOST done fermenting! It should be done tomorrow and the next day. To tell when it's finished, we measure sugar levels (because the yeast converts the sugar into alcohol), and we're almost to -1, which is what we're aiming for. -1 is a dry wine style, and we also chucked some oak chips in to make it more interesting. AND GREAT NEWS! My wine prof can give us letters that lets us take our wine through customs even though I'll only be 20! HOORAY NOW MY FAMILY CAN TRY IT! Hopefully it doesn't taste horrible.

Well that's it from me! Got a few big projects coming up, so wish me luck :) Only four weeks left of lecture, then three weeks for exams, then I'm home. It's been one wild ride :)