Just a Little Filler

Alex will get to the rest of Easter break, but for now here's something to tide you over.

Alex at the Moeraki Boulders

15 May 2007

Ok, Ok, I know.  I kind of lost some steam writing about my Easter break trip.  I’ve been putting it off lately, and because it’s taken so long I’ve been keeping that as my excuse for not writing anything new.  However, I’m moving on.  I will get back and finish my account of the south island camping trip, but for now I’m just going to shoot down some of the more recent happenings in my life.

           Actually, I think that’s kind of boring.  Recently my life has been school on the weekdays, putting off writing my blog, and sleeping all day during the weekends.  How about this- I realize that my past blogs haven’t really gotten the real feel of Dunedin yet.  I’ll just try to put into words the things that took some getting used to when I first arrived, but now I’ve come to expect.  Such as; Bell peppers are known as ‘Capsicum’.  Let’s continue.

            Many of these examples will be pretty quick, but bear with me.  There might be something interesting in here somewhere.

To start off, cars have the right of way here.  If you get hit by a car, it’s most likely your fault, even if the driver “accidentally” aimed for you.  I haven’t been hit yet, but there have been a few close calls… every day I’ve been here.  The one thing that is the same here in Dunedin as with the States, pedestrians and drivers both hate each other something fierce.

Ooh! Here’s a good one: Drive on the left side of the road.  Of course, that’s what everyone first notices when they get here, and at first I didn’t give it any mind.  I don’t think it’s any worse than the right side, just different.  However, the first time I took Baby Blue out for a spin, I pulled into the right lane, out of habit.  Luckily I was on a dead end, so there weren’t any cars heading toward me.  However, some guy on a bicycle was heading right for me.  I couldn’t figure out why on Earth he was in my lane, until he passed by my open window and whispered… “Remember!”   Ack!  I swerved into the correct lane and haven’t had a righty/lefty mixup ever since.

Toilets have buttons instead of knobs. Kinda cool. Not really though.

Pizzas come in one size- large.  Which back home would be maybe a medium. Seriously, serving sizes are miniscule here.  A batch of cookies in the states is what, two dozen cookies?  Here you make a batch of 8 cookies. 8 cookies!  I could eat that as an appetizer to a real dessert- another 16 cookies.  Also, cookies are biscuits here.  So when an American starts talking about biscuits, from biscuits and gravy, Kiwis have no idea what that is.  And how do you describe biscuits?  Try it.  It’s impossible! “A flaky bread roll-thing” is the best description any kiwi could receive.

You don’t tip anybody.  This isn’t that hard, seeing as how every student here is broke.  And come to think of it this isn’t that much different for me in the states, either. Go figure.

No one owns a Nintendo Wii.  You have no idea how incredibly hard this is for me.

You don’t get ketchup at restaurants, you get toMAHto sauce.  You have to buy ketchup from the supermarket.  I eat ketchup like it’s my job, so any time I have to ask for a tasteless, runny, fake-ketchup substitute to put on my french fries I die a little on the inside.

So those were just a couple of the completely superficial, but incredibly important differences between Dunedin and back home.  I’ll write about the rest of Easter break soon, and keep you informed on the best (cheapest) way to camp on the New Zealand countryside.