Lord of the Rings Tour Album
Suffice to say that Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings movies are a huge part of the culture here. The films caused New Zealand tourism to quadruple, and provided various boosts to the economy; apparently something like 300,000 New Zealanders were involved in the making of the Lord of the Rings. Our tour guide (who herself had small involvement as one of the orc voices) pointed out that almost anyone you ask in New Zealand either has been, or knows someone who was involved in the making of the films to some degree. I was a little disappointed that all the sets were all taken down, but a lot of the places we visited were still incredibly beautiful and I was glad to get the chance to see them.
Other than that, I've got a few pictures of things I did over the last week, including a picture a friend took of Nikki and I during my 21st birthday:
Here's a photo of the food my RA flatmate Will prepared for our flat BBQ. It was all very tasty, although we had to eat leftover meat for quite a few days after that:
I also went on a Kai Cruise with my study abroad program peers ("kai" meaning "food" in Maori - I'm becoming convinced that pretty much everything we do here revolves around food):
Other than that, I've begun my second week of classes, spent time with my friends from the study abroad program, and begun making travel plans for the upcoming Easter Break. I'm also fond of walking around the city, along the coastline, and in the surrounding mountains, which have a lot of random gorgeous trails through the woods. The unique plant life here makes for very lush and green forests that remind me a lot of Hawaii.
I'm getting along very well with my flatmates (the American and the kiwi), and have found that living with two men (as opposed to all women at Scripps College) is not quite as different as I'd expected. They can cook much better than I can, and are no messier than I am, and are both very friendly, fun and laid back guys. I've kept my cooking to the very basics. Besides microwaving and mixing already-made things, the most advanced this I've done is made pasta. Yeah, not very impressive... but I'm considering branching out! I'm just a little worried about finances. Money slips out of your fingers really easily here, and I can't afford to be too experimental with my food, especially if I risk buying a lot of ingredients only to make something inedible (knowing myself, this is probable). Alternatives include: cooking with my flatmates (which I've done a few times) and cooking with friends (which I've also done, and it really helps when we pool our funds together). Anyhow, enough about food, I'm getting hungry! It's kai time!
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