Windy Wellington and Rotary Connections!

So, keeping up with a blog is a hard thing to do...especially when getting internet in your apartment is more of a saga than a simple housekeeping item.  More on that to come, potentially.

The last time we talked, I had just settled into my flat with some great flatmates.  The same remains true today.  It's been about a month since I moved in and things have only gotten better.  The guys are hilarious and they are definitely making this experience an even better one...not that it could have been bad to begin with.  Since my last post, there have been some cool things happening!  I'm well under way with my assignments for both of my classes and I am sure that some of you reading this are probably tired of me asking you to review my paper!  They definitely don't coddle you in graduate level courses...no Centre-style paper conferences, that's for sure.  I am adapting to it, however, and I -think- that this first paper will be a decent one.  Maybe not A+ material...but I can live with a little less...a -little- less.

I've now been to Wellington!  All of the Rotary Scholars in New Zealand met for a weekend of training and goal-setting in Wellington a few weeks ago and it was a great time!  We got to meet other Rotarians, socialize with fellow scholars, and had a wonderful time in sunny Wellington weather.  Wellington is a great, albeit windy, place to be and I would highly recommend it to anyone coming to New Zealand.  Part of what we did at this conference, aside from some great socializing, was set the goal for our group project.  Let me break it down for you: we are biking the entire length of New Zealand to raise money for childhood disease research and are involving youth in various cities all along the way.  HOW COOL!?  More to come on this, we are still working out all the details!


On another note, I've started giving my speeches for the Rotary Clubs in and around Dunedin.  Try talking about yourself for 20 minutes to a room full of people...it's actually kind of hard.  Nevertheless, got to share some stories about my family and friends and made a few personal plugs with "things I like to do"...you know...just in case some Rotarians want to give me some good direction on how to go about it...or when they might be going skiing, or ATVing, etc. :)  I've made two presentations thus far, one to Dunedin South (my host club) and the other to the St. Kilda Sunrise Club.  Sunrise...yes.  For Dunedin South the meeting was around lunchtime and things were all good.  For the "Sunrise" club, however, I had to be at the venue at 7am...which called for a 6am wake up call on my part...EXHAUSTING.  However, both clubs were full of great people and I am thankful that they are willing to let me come and talk about myself for quite a long time...proof that Rotarians are, indeed, the nicest people on the face of the planet.

Some other cools things have happened and they are veterinary related, which is a plus!  I met with Dr. John Schofield, a Rotarian, this past Friday and the Animal Welfare Office.  He is the Director of the department and assists in protocols for ethical treatment of animals, assists in developing research models, and a whole host of other things.  Well, I was only expecting a "chat" as that is what we agreed to in our e-mail correspondence.  Oops.  I showed up in jeans and flip-flops, which are chat appropriate in New Zealand.  Upon getting there, however, I was informed that "$h1T had hit the fan!".  Instead of asking me to reschedule, however, John let me follow around and assist!  We first set off to conduct a rat necropsy.  To make a long story short, the rat had died in the course of an experiment and John was trying to find out why.  It was pretty cool to see him go through all the physiology of the rat to try and determine a cause of death.  I've seen some cat and dog necropsies at Heartland, but this was a new animal for the count!  The next stage of our journey, however, was a little more intense.  John was helping a researcher with a certain "technique" and he invited me to come along.  This "technique" involved using a saw to open up the skull of both a sheep and a red deer (the researcher needed the brains).  Yea...intense.  I was the guy opening the deer skull...hard work for sure.

Just to wrap up some veterinary experience, Dr. Colin Mackintosh, another Rotarian, invited me to come out to a research farm where he works.  The research facility is located near Dunedin and is called Invermay.  What an interesting field of work!  He is involved with looking at why certain deer lineages are more/less susceptible to paratuberculosis than others.  This guy is one smart cookie, he has developed like 3 vaccines...and is asked to speak all over the world.  In addition to hearing about his research, I got to watch how they artificially inseminate deer.  Let's just say that some deer were happier than others...

All in all, I cannot begin to describe the generosity I am feeling down here from the Rotarians.  They are a fantastic network of people and I am really grateful that I ended up in the Ambassadorial Scholar program.  I am convinced that there is no other program in the world that can provide the network, the support, and the resources that Rotary is able to provide.  Service above self is their motto and I am certainly able to see that in action.

Flat-finding, mate-meeting, and culture-creeping…

I want to start off with a quick back-story for those of you in NZ who may be a little unfamiliar with my home base.  I went to a very small college in a small town in the relatively small state of Kentucky, population 4,314,113 (as of July 2009).  Centre College is a school of about 1,200 undergrads in Danville, a town of about 14,000.  For those of you back home who may not know too much about NZ, I currently go to the University of Otago.  Otago is a university of about 19,000 undergrads in Dunedin, a city of about 120,000.  New Zealand itself has a population of about 3,000,000.  So…I am currently in a country with a population that is about 10% of America’s population, about 25% smaller than my home state, in a city whose population is about half of my hometown (Lexington, KY), and at a university that is about 16 times the size of my undergrad institution.  Did I mention that a lot of what I am studying in public health is related to populations and statistics? J

I mention these numbers only to give a frame of reference for my mindset at the beginning of trying to find a flat with great flatmates (aka an apartment with good roommates).  At Centre, I would say that about 95% of students live on-campus in college-owned/operated housing.  Additionally, most of the students on campus eat in one central dining facility.  At Otago, however, the residence halls that we are familiar with back in the States are usually only filled with freshers (aka first-years, aka freshmen).  The facilities are called “colleges”.  Some of my friends here in Dunedin tell me that there is essentially no difference between these colleges and that they do have inter-college competitions…so just like Harry Potter in my mind, right?  Eh, not quite…but closer that what we’ve got back home!  After spending your first year in one of the colleges, you will usually go out on your own and look for your own flat/flatmates!  Seeing as I was an older student, and a postgrad no less, I was determined to find my own flat…part of the true Dunedin experience.

The Thursday after my arrival in NZ, February 17th, I went in to town with Claire to spend a day at Uni.  The goal was to get myself sorted with the International office and to check in on some flats.  After doing a little bit of hunting for flats that were listed with the University’s Accommodation Office, I decided to head over to a “Speed Flatting” event.  The idea?  Get to know the person across from you in appx. 2 minutes and decide whether or not you think you could live with them.  You could then either offer to join up in finding a place with them or, if they already had a place, beg them to let you join their flat.  Cool idea!  I met some people that I would have been fine to live with as well as some people that I don’t think should live with anyone else…at all…in any setting.  Anyways, met this cool Kiwi dude who had a place of his own up on Maori Hill and after the session he drove me up to look at the place.  What a sight!  It was in a great neighborhood and the place was amazing!  It even had an awesome backyard!  I told him that I’d love to live with him and that I was just starting my search but that it’d be great if he could keep me informed of the status of the flat.  He seemed keen, so we drove back into town and he dropped me off at Uni.  I spent a little more time around Uni, just finding my way around before Claire and I headed home.  To make a long story short, I eventually found out from the guy that two women had told him they were wanting to flat at the place and that he said they could take the place.  I can’t blame him, he had two rooms for rent and he had 2 women in front of him saying they’d take it on the spot.  Good on him!  Can’t lie though, I was a little bummed…the place was really great.

Fast forward a few days, past the Relay for Life, and I was back in the hunt!  Having had a little bit of “neighborhood background” provided by my fantastic host family, Claire and Barry, I set out on my own for a day filled with random encounters with strangers to see if they would let me move in and spend a year with ‘em.  The whole thing sounded pretty strange to me, but like I said…I was determined!  My first “appointment” was in the Northeast Valley at 9AM on Pentland St.  I arrived quite early, so naturally I waited around outside and out-of-view like a true awkward, international student.  When I felt it was no longer “too early” to arrive, around 8:55AM, I knocked on my door with my cool sunglasses on and both hands on my backpack in case I needed to use it as a weapon.  A rather nice young guy answered the door and ushered me in to have a look at the place!  To make a long story short, it was pretty decent and was definitely a good way to start out the day!  The only real drawbacks were that it would probably be about a 25 minute walk to the University every day and that one of the roommates wasn’t there for me to do a quick “creeper eval”.  I left, politely, and told the guy that I would get back to him by the end of the day and that I had a few more places left to check out for the day.

My next viewing was at 1PM in Opoho.  Opoho is pretty close to the Northeast Valley, but I decided to go back to Uni for a bit to check out and see if there were some more flats around town that I hadn’t seen on “trademe.co.nz” (aka Kiwi e-Bay and/or Craigslist).  I found two places that I wanted to check out and I e-mailed each of the contacts for the two flats, expressing my interest as a “fit, 22 year old, blue-eyed, American with nice calf muscles and a rather cute smile”.  Kidding!  I did e-mail them though, hoping to hear back as to whether their flat was still available or not.  Running out of time until my next appointment, I set off back uptown to see what the next place had in store.  To make a long story short, after walking up a long, steep hill…I got to the flat and was just really let down.  You know that feeling when you know that you won’t get along with someone on a pretty fundamental level?  Yea, well, that was the feeling that I got when I met the guys in this flat.  They weren’t bad people or anything, just not people that I could enjoy living with for the next few years.  I had neglected to see that they listed “video game skills” as a “ideal flatmate trait”.  Oops.  I gave them the same spiel that I gave the first guy and told them that I had a few more places to look at and that I would get back to them at the end of the day.  Only, this time, it was a half-lie.  I didn’t really have any more scheduled appointments, but I did plan on e-mailing them! 

At this point, I was a feeling a little defeated.  I had just looked at two flats and just wasn’t getting a feeling that either of them could work.  The first one was definitely a possibility, but I just wasn’t sure about the walk every day.  Also, I am looking to really get involved with Kiwi culture and the mood up in the Valley is pretty subdued.  Nevertheless, I set off back to Uni to check my e-mail in hopes of getting a response from the people I had contacted earlier in the day.  On the way there, however, I saw that people were going in and out of a flat and that they didn’t appear to live there.  I decided, “What the heck?  I’ll just pretend like I was someone who got in touch with them earlier to see if I could check out the flat and we’ll be all good!”  I did just that!  The flat was right on George St., the main road in Dunedin, and was in a block of good-looking townhomes.  The walk was right, the outward look was right, now…how about the inside and how about the people?  Well, the guy I talked to was dressed up to show the flat…weird vibe #1.  Weird vibe #2?  The place smelled like a dead cat had been resurrected and was walking around, stretching out the rigor.  Add a “not so nice” interior to my two, potentially misguided, weird vibes…and this place just wasn’t going to work, either.  ::Sigh::  I continued my voyage back to Uni, praying for e-mail responses for the duration of my journey.

When I finally found an available computer unit in the library, I raced to my inbox.  What a lovely sight: Inbox (1)!  OK, so I obviously didn’t get a response from both…but one good flat with a few good flatmates is all it would take!  I clicked on the e-mail and got that feeling when you’ve just opened up bad news, but you keep searching the e-mail for good news in hopes that your eyes are just playing tricks on you.  No such luck, all I got was a “soz mate, flat az jus been takn. Cheerz.”  How impersonal!? Couldn’t this person tell that I was a really suave, easy-going guy who is just looking for some good people?  Didn’t they know that they were leaving me with approximately ZERO options?  What a depressing moment that was!

Right when I was just about to feel overly sorry for myself, I received one more e-mail!  The flat was still available and I could come have at 6PM!   Details: “In the CBD (Central Business District), 10 min. walk to Uni, 3 reliable and mature guys”.  Sounded fine to me!  I had told Claire that I would meet her back at her office around 5PM and it was about 4:45PM at present, so I headed over to the Commerce building to see if she could take me to the flat on our way back to Macandrew.  Being as awesome as she is, she said it would be “no problem!”   We arrived at the flat around 6PM and the flat mates were at the bottom of the apartment complex, waiting to take me up and show me around.  In short, I am pretty sure that I came across pretty weird in our first meeting because I was just so happy to find a place where they guys were people I could see myself being friends with in a place that wasn’t a haven for previously dead animals.  While that is all fine and dandy, I may have come across a bit “goofy”.  All the same, the place was at the top of the apartment complex and was a 2-story apartment with a really good “student vibe”.  It was spacious, well-lit, got good sun during the daytime (important for the winter months as Central Heating/Air is a luxury scarce to be seen here in Dunedin), and, again, the people seemed really great.  Having learned my lesson with the Maori Hill place, I told them that I would take it and could start paying rent immediately.  They said they’d already shown the place to some other people and told them that they’d have first choice.  I told them I’d have no problem getting in a bidding war and they said they would definitely be “in touch”.  I thought for sure I had done myself in and that I had just come across as a VIP member “nerd herd” member.  I said thanks and headed back down the stairs and Claire and I set off back for Macandrew, fully expecting another let-down. 

Well, I must have done something right because the guys told the other people the place was taken and then informed me that the place was mine if I wanted it.  They weren’t even going to take advantage of my eagerness and ask me to pay more than the asking price!  RELIEF!  After a long-day of flathunting and some awkward situations, because I am, at times, an awkward individual,  I had found a flat!  What’s more is that I’d found a flat with GREAT people.  Seriously, I’ve been with the guys for a little over a week now and I like each of them individually and I like the group as a whole.  They are hilarious, remind me of friends back home, and are all Kiwis.  Not only will I have some mates that can fill me in on the culture, but I’ll get to spend some time with people who I genuinely respect and get along with.  At the end of it all, I am really glad that I found my own flat and got it on my own merit.  More to come on living with 3 Kiwi guys, starting classes, and eating deep-friend chocolate in blogs entries yet to come…I promise!