Kia Ora to Aotearoa: JYA in New Zealand
It all started with a monster in my corridor.
It was a little after 11:00 pm, and I had just arrived for the very first time at my flat on Leith Street in Dunedin, New Zealand. My JYA program – Butler’s Institute For Study Abroad – had spent the last few hours wrapping up their orientation and stuffing us all full of pizza. And just like that, we were sent off into the city on our own, to become students of New Zealand.
The flat was pitch black and freezing. I would come to find that students of the University of Otago in Dunedin are nicknamed ‘scarfies’ for a reason: Kiwis don’t necessarily share America’s passion for centralized heating. In a matter of days I had transitioned from a blazing, humid Kentucky summer to a southern hemisphere winter, and I was realizing that I would certainly need some time (and multiple sleeping bags) to adjust. I fumbled for a light switch in my room and looked excitedly around at the bare, white walls (silently thanking myself for packing some pictures to tape up). A surge of excitement pulsed through me: this would be my home for the next five months! The possibilities seemed endless.
Just as I was laboriously shoving my two large suitcases under my bed, I heard a creak from the dark and narrow hallway. I froze. I became that dreaded girl in the horror movies who should run away but in stead stands perfectly, agonizingly still as the deranged ax-murderer creeps around the house. A rectangle of light appeared on the corridor wall as the door adjacent to my room opened. A huge shadow obscured the light. I couldn’t even scream as a gigantic pond monster seemingly made his way towards me. Was this to be my fate? Without even so much as a chance to look around my new home in the daylight? Then, suddenly, it spoke…
“Hey, I didn’t know anyone else had gotten here! I’m Ally!” I sighed with relief and rushed forward to hug my brand new flat mate. The bubbly Australian before me, mercifully, held little resemblance to anything dangerous or demonic. I didn’t know it yet, but over the next five months, Ally and my two other flat mates (Joe from England and Robbie from America), along with countless other international and Kiwi students, would become my fellow travelers and newfound family (us below).
As Ally helped me make my bed, we giddily discussed our likes, dislikes, and hometowns. We found we had a mutual respect for writing and a not-so-mutual respect for Vegemite (ew). I felt the butterflies of freshman year all over again. But this time, instead of being twelve hours away from Kentucky at Vassar, I was on a tiny peninsula of a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, soon to attend the most geographically southern university in the world. And I knew I was right where I wanted to be.
