Two things you might want to know about coming to the University of Otago.

Following are just two of the things that can confound study abroad students coming to the University of Otago

What ever season it is where you are in the US, it is the opposite season in New Zealand.

This may seem obvious, if you have studied any astronomy, or understand that the earth has two hemispheres and the US is in the northern hemisphere and New Zealand is in the southern, there by opposite.  This summer / winter swap was, however, a shock to quite a few of the exchange students.  Even though, I “knew” it was going to be winter when comming for Second Semester, and planned according with long underwear, wool socks, and winter jackets, it still took me almost a month to get acclimated to it,  some thing to do with going from it being 90 +/- 5 degree Fahrenheit in Oregon, to 34 +/- 7 degrees in Dunedin.

 Here is a link to the Otago Campus Weather Station. It has a webcam of the "Clock Tower", building, which is the main administrative building, including housing the International Studies office.

Dunedin is on the 45.51 parallel south, which is about the equivalent of Cannon Beach Oregon, St Cloud Minnesota, or Petit de Grat Island Nova Scotia Canada on 45.5 parallel north.  Dunedin is also on the coast, which means winters are cold and windy, but fortunately not very rainy.

The apartments, called Flats, are not centrally heated, which was a real shock to the Scandinavians I live with. They thought it quite barberic.

 Above is our flats. This is not typical of most of the University housing, but a newly built complex which holds mostly grad-students and visiting lectures.  I think I got put here cause I'm older and like my quite.

In reality, it's not cold enough for long enough to really merit centeral heat.  There are generally some electric space heaters in each flat, provided by University housing, if you live in one of their flats.  Otherwise, you may need to buy one when you get here. They are not terribly expensive, about the equivillent of a night on the town and can be bought all over town, including the grocery stores.

This is more typical student housing.

2.      University of Otago schedules

Class do not operate on as standard a schedule same time, same place each session.  Class locations are assigned after everyone signs up for the class in order to accommodate everyone who wants to attend the paper, which is the term used for a class. Below is my schedule, as you can see it is all over the place.

In addition to classes being scheduled all over the place, the exam schedule is not set until about a month into the semester, and can take place any time over a four week period.

Why is this important?

Because until you know when the exams are scheduled, you won't know when you can leave Dunedin to see all there is to see in the rest of New Zealand.  Or as one of my neighbors had happen, they bought their return ticket before the end of the exam period and then had an exam scheduled after they were supposed to leave.  So they got to change their ticket.  Exams are a very formal process here, and your flight out is not a valid reason to get to take the exam early.