{"id":873,"date":"2013-12-11T16:45:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T21:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/?p=873"},"modified":"2013-12-11T16:45:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T21:45:29","slug":"kia-ora-to-aotearoa-jya-in-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/?p=873","title":{"rendered":"Kia Ora to Aotearoa: JYA in New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all started with a monster in my corridor.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 My JYA program \u2013 Butler\u2019s Institute For Study Abroad \u2013 had spent the last few hours wrapping up their orientation and stuffing us all full of pizza.\u00a0 And just like that, we were sent off into the city on our own, to become students of New Zealand.<\/p>\n

The flat was pitch black and freezing.\u00a0 I would come to find that students of the University of Otago in Dunedin are nicknamed \u2018scarfies\u2019 for a reason: Kiwis don\u2019t necessarily share America\u2019s passion for centralized heating.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 A surge of excitement pulsed through me: this would be my home for the next five months!\u00a0 The possibilities seemed endless.<\/p>\n

Just as I was laboriously shoving my two large suitcases under my bed, I heard a creak from the dark and narrow hallway.\u00a0 I froze.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A rectangle of light appeared on the corridor wall as the door adjacent to my room opened.\u00a0 A huge shadow obscured the light.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even scream as a gigantic pond monster seemingly made his way towards me.\u00a0 Was this to be my fate?\u00a0 Without even so much as a chance to look around my new home in the daylight?\u00a0 Then, suddenly, it spoke\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, I didn\u2019t know anyone else had gotten here! I\u2019m Ally!\u201d\u00a0 I sighed with relief and rushed forward to hug my brand new flat mate.\u00a0 The bubbly Australian before me, mercifully, held little resemblance to anything dangerous or demonic.\u00a0 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).<\/p>\n

As Ally helped me make my bed, we giddily discussed our likes, dislikes, and hometowns.\u00a0 We found we had a mutual respect for writing and a not-so-mutual respect for Vegemite (ew).\u00a0 I felt the butterflies of freshman year all over again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And I knew I was right where I wanted to be.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 My JYA program \u2013 Butler\u2019s Institute For Study Abroad \u2013 had spent the last few hours wrapping up their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2026,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/admissions\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}