Highly Suspicious

I finally have internet in my room! It felt so good to skype my mom yesterday and be able to talk to some of my friends.

Tuessday I went to a cardio kickboxing class with Rachel, Ann, Spencer, and Hillary, which was actually pretty fun. After dinner, my Kiwi host and flatmate Nick had organized an international student meet and greet, so we went to that and met a lot of awesome people. During the party Nick played this really weird song called "Highly Suspicious" that has become our flat's unofficial song because it is so strange, catchy, and hilarious, so the six of us got really into it.

Yesterday we had a "mandatory" three hour international student meeting, which I went to but regret doing so. Although one cool thing was the mayor of Dunedin is apparently also an opera singer, so he sang to us. After setting up a bank account, I decided to go for a run, where I ran into many "Cook-a-thoners." The Wednesday of orientation week a popular bar named Captain Cook's Tavern hold's a ridiculous event in which students go stand outside from 10 am on drinking and dressed in costumes (two guys in our program went dressed in dresses.) So while I was running the streets were full of these kids, and I would get random high fives from people dressed as Barney, guys dressed as old ladies ran next to me for about 50 meters, and a girl dressedl ike she was taking a bath fake scrubbed me with her brush. It was so bizarre and hilarious.

Later on Andrew and I went to find a Catholic Church to go to mass for Ash Wednesday. People in New Zealand aren't very religious, but we found a church but it said that the mass was in the Dunedin hospital chapel, so we went there. It was weird going to church in another country. Some things were different like the Lord's Prayer, but something that was cool was at the part where the priest says things to pray for and everyone says "Lord hear our prayer," he let people speak out and say things they wanted us to pray for. One of the New Zealand women said, "For the people of America, so that they will follow their new leader." It's weird how into Obama the Kiwis are. I've been asked so many times who I voted for, and everyone talks about how great he is. However, in New Zealand politics he would be considered a conservative candidate.

After flat dinner, I went over Andrews with some other kids from the program, and we hung out and played Catchphrase. Now I've just eaten the best blueberry muffin of my life, and am about go to surfing!