A Good Day

Sports Thought: Looks like the Ags should be in the tournament! They beat ranked Mizzou this weekend for their fifth or sixth straight, which should easily take them in as like an 8 or 9 seed. Good enough.
New Zealand is cool because: The most popular (as far as I can tell) cookie/biscuit is this thing called a Tim Tam. Basically it's two wafer-y chocolate cookies, with chocolate frosting in between them, and then dipped in chocolate. They're amazing. I was talking about them with a bunch of other international students, and every one of us had identical experiences where someone had recommended Tim Tams, we had bought them at the grocery, and then proceeded to eat an entire box alone in one day. They're that good. My flatmate Brittany and I are slowly trying all the other varieties. Currently we've got black forest, which is good, but nowhere near Time Tam classic.
New Zealand is lame because: I JUST WANT TO BUY SOME LIMES. Seriously. At one grocery store, limes come in packages of three for $3.60. That's $1.80 American. 60 cents a lime. That is not okay. And these ones are really ugly. Another grocery I went to had key limes (read: super small) for $17 a kilo! Not acceptable.
Food Find: I got a "bacon buttie" at the farmer's market, which is mostly just a bacon sandwich. They took a huge pile of (American) bacon, chopped it up, and put it on white bread with grilled onions, mustard, relish, and ketchup (actually tomato sauce ((they called it t-sauce)) which is close but not the same thing). I knew the sandwich was going to be good because there was about a twenty minute line to get them (the only other places that had comparable lines were selling super cheap blackberries). It was awesome, and just as heart attack inducing as you think it is.

Saturday I had an excellent day. I got up early and made it to the farmer's market, which happens every Saturday morning in the parking lot of the train station. The train station is this huge, ornate building that looks a little like a castle, so needless to say it's a great setting for a market. It was composed of about half people who had grown produce in Central Otago and then brought it here to sell and half people who had made some sort of good (baked things, candles, organic beer, various sausages and bacons). The primary goal of going to the market was to get limes, baby spinach, and jalapenos (only got the last) and the secondary goal was to not spend all the money in my wallet (barely accomplished). I got lots of plums and cherries, plus a plum pie and a great loaf of sourdough from this nice woman who baked it all from scratch. After learning how overpriced supermarket tofu is, I'm going to go back this weekend and get some homemade tofu from this little Asian woman who was selling it.
While I was at the market, I ran into my friend Ellen, who goes to school with me (although I didn't know her until I got here). She invited me to the beach with her and her roommate that afternoon, and it was such a phenomenal day that I couldn't pass it up. While we were waiting for the bus out to St. Clair's beach, we met these two British guys who are backpacking across the world before they start college, and they joined our group. Mostly we just relaxed on the beach, briefly went into the water (my feet were numb right as I stepped into it), and made fun of how each other said words. The funniest thing to me was that it was almost a bizarro beach: there were people playing touch rugby (rather than football) and one impromptu game of beach cricket (versus baseball).
That evening was the Highlanders versus Crusaders match, one of the more highy anticipated rugby games in the South Island. In a nutshell, the Super 14 is the main pro rugby league, and it represents Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. The Kiwis have five pro teams, and two of them are based in the South Island (rather than have specific cities associated with each team, they just have regions, and as a result play home games in a variety of locations). The Highlanders are Dunedin's team, representing the Otago region (and Southland). The Crusaders are the other South Island team, representing Tasman and Canterbury. As a result, this game gets pretty pumped up, especially in a college town where kids love to drink and watch sports. What struck me most was how reasonably priced everything was; tickets at most were $20 US, with souvenirs selling for about market value, and beer an unheard of $2.50. The game itself was pretty slow (it ended up being the lowest scoring game in Super 14 history, 6-0), but we went with an American who played rugby in college, so I got a pretty detailed rundown of how everything works.

Alive and wet

Weather: It's been raining for four days straight here. My weather widget says it'll stop tomorrow, so we'll see. I can't think of a time when I've experienced rain of this constancy before in my life. What's worse is it's not even hard--a downpour or what have you--it's mostly just a light drizzle that never ends. I get the impression that not only is this typical, basically any type of weather can be expected at any time. What??
New Zealand is cool because: Basically any food can come in pie form. Currently in my fridge I've got chicken and veg, bacon and egg, and the mysteriously named "potato top."
New Zealand is weird because: Internet is all over the place. Actually, as an econ student, I guess I should marvel at the fact that it's pay as you go for bandwidth i.e. you use more gigs you pay more, but mostly it sucks because I'm the kind of person who would use more, and don't get penalized for that in the States.
Shaq says: "I hate leprekons lol."

Well I am alive, contrary to my amount of blogging. I finally got to Dunedin on Wednesday, and since then it's been a lot of stop and go as far as my activities. I've had to do all your basic moving into a new place things (a couple shopping trips for food staples, plus the Wal-Mart equivalent for towels, toiletries, etc) plus all your moving to a new country things (setting up a bank, getting a phone), plus all your starting a new semester things (campus tour, registering for classes, taking care of all my fees) so things have been pretty hectic, although not the most exciting. I'm living in a flat with five others, four of whom are American and one native Kiwi. The roommates are nice enough to be around, but probably people I won't see much of once school gets into full swing. Campus is about two blocks in one direction, the gym about two blocks in the other, and the main drag (George street) is about a ten minute walk, so can't complain about the location at all. The flat itself doesn't have any heating or cooling system, which will take some getting used to, but my room did come equipped with a pretty industrious space heater. The TV gets about seven channels, all of which mostly just show American or British shows (at night) or Rachel Ray and infomericals (during the day). School doesn't start until next week, but registration for classes ends tomorrow, so I guess all the students should be on or around campus by that time. I'm sure there are other interesting things going on, but they aren't coming to mind. I've been told I'll finally have internet access in the flat tonight (I've been using the library), and hopefully I can keep up to date a lot better as a result.