settled in

I’m so happy and privileged to be here.

Again the flight was grueling. I don’t sleep well on planes, so I got about 2 hours sleep within 48 hours. I got in Taupo about noon on Sunday and went to bed at 9:30pm to get accustomed to the 19 hour time change as quickly as possible.

When I got picked up from the airport by my host mother, Kristine, I tried to get into the drivers seat because they drive on the left in New Zealand. I always find it so surprising how such subtle little differences can throw me off a bit. I knew very little about my homestay before coming, so I was both surprised and very glad to meet another student teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota that is staying in the same house with me. Her name is Mikki and we have already gotten to know so much about each other! With my host mother, Mikki, and myself we have quickly become a family of 3.

Once I got my suitcase in my room, ate lunch, and after a shower, we immediately went to the beach. It is so bright here. As in UV. During their summer, NZ has some of the strongest UV rays in the world. I was sweating like no other because I went from 15 Fahrenheit temperatures to 85 Fahrenheit; along with the metabolism adjustment of no sleep and a drastic time change. Luckily, like Lake Superior, the lake is very chilly and great to cool off in. The lake is also wonderful for swimming because the water is crystal clear. It’s a dream.

Then, immediately after the beach we came home and Kristine had some visitors over from Hamilton, New Zealand. So during this social gather I just gorged on wine, cheese and crackers. Ok not just that. I sat in the circle and listened to try to understand what they were saying. And, already the accent sounds very normal to me.

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Kristine is a social butterfly. I’m an introvert and anyone I’ve ever lived with (parents, fiance, roommate) has also been more of an introvert as well. So it’s definitely a different environment for me (again, in a good way). Taupo is a city of about 30,000 and every time we go out she bumps into someone she knows and talks to them for anywhere between 5 minutes to half an hour. Even while I’m writing this Kristine is on the phone talking to some friends and she has been talking to them for an hour already. Ope, she just switched to a phone call with another person.

At first I could hardly understand what my host mother was saying because of the strong accent and different terminology. A garage is a “garret,” a swim suit is a “bather,” along with so many others. I’ve learned that virtually all people from Taupo also have a lisp along with their accent.

Kristine is a grandmother of 9, but she looks like she’s hardly aged.

She also has lovely background music that’s almost always playing on the household stereo.

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After eating a late dinner at 8pm I was finally able to unpack my organize my room before a very deep sleep.

Then I naturally woke up around 6:30am. I woke up and in my head I had to remind myself that I was in NZ because everything had been such a whirlwind the previous 48 hours.

My room is small and the whole house is in general but we spend most of our waking hours outside. My room leads directly to a patio. Kristine doesn’t have a dining room table because we have at all of our meals on the patio or in the backyard. I love the outdoors, so I’m thriving here because we have done virtually everything outdoors.

My first full day, after breakfast, we spent our morning and afternoon with a married couple that Kristine is friends with from the UK. We first went to a coffee shop, where the seating was picnic tables on the beach. Then, we went for a long walk on the lakewalk before a late lunch picnic on the beach.

After that, we went shopping. I bought a SIM card for my phone, where I’m getting 15GB per month for the price equivalent of what I pay for my 1/2GB plan in the U.S. I also bought a big hat because both teachers and students are required to wear hats during recess to teach children to be “sun smart.”

After that, we went to the beach for a really long time to swim, read, and sunbathe. Within a nearly 24 hour time frame, I had been to the beach 3 times.

I haven’t hardly had a chance to breathe until just now when writing this, which is great because I feel like I’ve been able to adjust very quickly. Just like that, it’s already past 10 pm and I need to go to bed. My orientation day at school starts tomorrow!