Adventure 5: Can you still see? Kind of… Then don’t turn the lights on.

February 15^th- Feb. 20^th

Becoming domesticated is going to take a bit more time and effort than expected.  Since we have to pay for power as we go, it’s become a sort of game to see how long we can go without turning any lights on or charging any of our technology or appliances.  As a result, we normally sit around the kitchen table (usually playing cards of some sort) until after 8, when we realize that we can no longer see the numbers on the cards and someone gives in and turns on the kitchen light.  Ford’s sister, Tanya, is living in Dunedin right now and has a running joke that whenever she comes over it’s to find us sitting in the kitchen in the dark…pretty true.  We also have to pay for internet, and only get a certain number of GB per month, so we’re all trying to figure out tricky ways to save, like going across the street to the student union to charge our computers and use the internet or taking showers at the gym to save on water and energy usage.  It’s a lesson in conservation, we’ll see how well we learn!

Another learning experience has been shopping for groceries.  Today (the 20^th) is the first day that we have not gone to the grocery store for something, and we made a pact that we cannot go today, no matter what we think we might need, so that there will at least have been one day out of the week that we haven’t made the 10-15 minute walk there and carried sometimes rather heavy bags back.  We’re trying to plan our meals about a week in advance and starting to get stocked up on some of the basic cooking needs, but none of us have much experience in cooking for a group so we’re learning as we go!  Food is quite a bit more expensive here, especially meat.  Chicken breasts were on sale for $15 per kilogram, normally over $20…yikes.  Fortunately, canned chicken is not as scary as it sounds J  So far we’ve done pretty well using a couple of recipe books that Leslie and I brought and have successfully made homemade macaroni and cheese, lasagna, crepes, stir fry, tacos, and lots of pasta varieties!  There is a great farmer’s market every Saturday morning so we went yesterday and bought some fresh produce that seems better and is cheaper than at the grocery store.  There was a really great variety of fruits and vegetables, so we’re trying to stay healthy J

On a different note, Amanda and I explored some of the botanic gardens today, which are only about a 10 minute walk from our house and are HUGE and absolutely beautiful!  There is a duck pond and the information center provides free food, so we of course had to take advantage of that and were quickly surrounded by a flock of hungry and rather pushy ducks.  Unfortunately, some of them did not distinguish very well between their food and my shoes, so my toes got a little nibbling…I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was accidental.  The gardens are more like miniature ecosystems all put together and plopped down in the middle of the city.  We explored the rose gardens, Mediterranean, South African, and rhododendron sections before deciding to take a little side trail that eventually led us back to the street level.  It’s really neat because the gardens are built going up the hillside on different levels, so as you climb they transition into different regions and there are a multitude of different ways you can take to get to the same place, it’s definitely a place that I will have to explore more in the future, and looks like a great study spot as well!

Ash, our Kiwi host, is a leader in a group called StudentLife, which is affiliated with the same group as Campus Crusades in the US, so he took us to a late service with him last night which was held not in one of the beautiful old churches, but in a Bowling Club building!  We haven’t quite figured out what exactly bowling is, yet, but our best guess is some relative of cricket or Bocce ball…investigation to be continued.  It was a nice little service, with lots of students, both Kiwis and new internationals, like ourselves, so we got to meet a bunch of new people and it sounds like there will be a lot of activities in the future which will be great for getting to know people and exploring an area which has been slightly lacking in my life in recent years.  Plus, they have free dinners on Thursdays and occasional BBQ’s, which will be a nice respite from cooking all the time J  Speaking of free stuff, O’week (Orientation Week) officially starts tomorrow, so lots of activities and deals and hopefully lots more stories to tell soon!