Living.

So, everybody knows that I'm living in on-campus accommodation, but not everybody knows what that actually entails. Massey University is situated about 10-15 minutes away from Palmerston North City Center. I can take free bus rides to get there, so groceries and the assorted bric-a-brac required to survive are easily attainable.

In massey university there are three main sets of dorms, the Courts, Moginie Village, and Atawhai village.

Atawhai village is by far the least convenient of the three accomodations to get to, you're basically required to take a bus to get to and from home. On the other hand, the accomodation is effectively self-catered apartments, so the people there are allowed to be a little more independant than the rest of us.

The Courts are in the middle of campus, easy to reach, two floor dorms with large, singular rooms. Ben lives in Miro hall, one of these, and so I've been able to get a peek inside. They're fashionably furnished, roomy, and smell of fresh spring. Unlike . . .

Moginie Village, which feels as if one lives in a prision. The rooms are small, whitewashed brick, giving off all the delightful atmosphere of the state correctional facility. The one perk is that the particular Dorm that I'm staying in, Walter Dyer, is perhaps the largest on campus. The upshoot of this is that I meet insane numbers of people from across the campus on a daily basis. Unlike the Courts, Walter Dyer is situated atop a lone hill some (amittedly very) small distance from the rest of campus which is gotten to by a series of inclines, stairs, and the Mugger tunnel.

Rooms in all of the aforementioned dorms are singular, without roomates. I've had no small number of discussions with Kiwis about how a person could possible share a room for the whole year. I have to adimit it, they have a point.

The first half of my room.

The second half of my humble abode.

I call this the "muggers tunnel" for reasons obvious and plentiful.

Te Matatini!

So, for the last four days in Palmerston North, there's been a little competition/festival event called Te Matatini going on. Now, of course everybody knows what that means, but just to make sure that you guys know that I know, I'll talk about it now.

Teams come from across the nation to compete in what's known as a Kapa Haka:

Kapa: To stand in a row or rank

Haka: To dance (The dance of tanerore; the quivering of sun on a hot day)

Basically, areas field teams of about 30 people, 15 male, 15 female, and they get up on this extremely ornate stage, and sing songs and dance dances. The songs range from beautiful my-true-love-awaits-me-on-a-distant-shore sorts of songs to animalistic songs in which 300 pound

Maori men slap their chests raw and carve claw marks into their stomachs. It was really, really awesome to see, and, yes, I do have many pictures for you all. But first, if you want to know more about Kapa Haka's here's two quick links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapa_haka

and the official site for the competition I saw: http://www.tematatini.org.nz/what_is.html

I also had this really awesome idea . . . I took videos of the Kapa Haka, and it would be cool if you guys could see them. And then I remembered youtube. Currently it's decided that it hates me, and isn't letting me upload videos, but if it ever changes its mind, I'll make sure to tell you. In the meantime, a picture is worth a thousand words, eh?

Needless to say, these dances are impressive, disturbing, and intimidating - all at the same time.

Interstingly enough, before any All Blacks (NZ rugby team) game, they begin by doing a Haka. After having seen these in action, it makes perfect sense; not only are they intimidating as hell, they give you a charge like nothing else.

During more than one dance I wondered which gender was the more intimidating.

I think I finally decided on a fifty-fifty split.

This team had nothing on underneath their little grass skirts. "How does Brandt know that little detail?" You may very well ask. "Why," I would reply, "because at the end of one of their dances they lifted their little grass skirts, grabbed their respective penises, and waved them threatiningly at the audince." Trust me, I only wish I were kidding.

Oh, yeah, and the grass only goes around the front side of their bodies. Use your imagination.

There you go, the Kapa Haka, in picture form. If you ever get the chance to go and see one, I recommend that you do so, it's highly worth it.

That's it for today, Butko out.

Drunks . . .

There are those that claim that the national pastime of New Zealand is Rugby, some may even claim that it is Horticulture, but I stand before you today to tell you that it is none of those things. Rather, I would claim that drinking is the National Past-time of this 4 Million strong Nation. Here is my proof: Only a percentage of the population participates in Rugby of any sort, and while a larger percentage participates in Horticulture of some sort, Everybody drinks.

So, last night, we decided to make it to town on a Friday night; something I had not yet done on this island. Let me just say: I'm not sure if the city asexually reproduces and then heads to the bars, or if they're all too hungover from the last week that they can only make it out of their houses exactly one week after the party, but I swear the population of Palmerston North swelled to at least double what I've seen before.

So six of us went to town. Unfortunately, one of us (J.) forgot his passport/any sort of picture identificaton whatsoever at home. Now, I'm not really a huge drinker, or a drinker at all, and this town was pretty crazy, and I felt bad making him take a taxi back to campus on his own, so I volunteered to return to campus with him. Erika volunteered for the same for most of, if not all, of the same reasons. So we returned to campus, expecting a quiet place, 'cuz obviously everybody was in town getting drunk anyways, right?

Wrong. The common room for my dorm comfortably holds about fifteen-twentyish people, a number that was exceeded last night. So I spent the next hour or so making friends with drunk Kiwi's, and the chances that they even remember my name today is quite slim. Still, it was kinda fun, oh, and they waxed one guys eyebrows off. I get the biggest kick trying to picture what he thought this morning when he looked in the mirror.

Random picture of the day: In what sense do they mean the word assemble? Like legos?

The Farm.

So, a couple of days ago the international office took the international kids to three farms. Now, in New Zealand agriculture is an important industry; they claim to export 40% of the world's dairy products. So, needless to say, they were quite proud of their farms.

In fact, they did something that I've never heard of: They raise deer. Interstingly, some of the deer had a strange looking device in their sides, and, being the obnoxious American that I am, I asked about it. After a brief pause in which he collected his thoughts, the man giving the presentation supplied an explanation. He said that the device in their sides was used to measure methane emissions from the animal, and in so doing, they could tell the extent to which the animal was contributing to the GreenHouse effect. This was important solely because they fed each animal different combinations of grasses and wheats, so they could tell which food would be the most enviornmentally friendly. Yep. Welcome to Hippie land.

Next they took us to a Dairy Farm, where we saw the cows get loaded into special milking machienes. The guy giving the presentation then shot some milk at the crowd, the girls screamed, and all was right in the world.

I even got a picture of Nick's soul mate:

Lastly, they took us to a sheep farm, where I saw a grown man shear a sheep:

I gotta tell you, that sheep took it like a man.

To answer questions: I'm great, and, Yes, I have run into Ben, and I went into town today with him so that he can have a cell phone (which he now does) so that I can run into him whenever I want to.

Back in High School, Mrs. Vaughn had a little theory; each one of us has a name cup, and we can only retain a finite number of names before it overflows. Well, my cup overfloweth. I've met somewhere between 8 and 80 people, and I have retained approximately 4 of their names. It's awesome. About the layout of the campus: it's relatively small. I can walk from my dorm (which is a little way off-campus) to the opposite end of Massey in under ten minutes. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view of things) the campus is a healthy distance away from town, so to get to town, you have to take one of their free busses. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Unless you try to go to town on a Sunday, the day I arrived.

The country of New Zealand becomes Itallian on Sundays.

For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that the county flips its respective on/off switch, and shuts down. After about 4:00 in the evening there is absolutely nothing to do. Bars shut down, Busses stop running, and a miniture apocalypse dots the landscape. It's like some creepy modern day terminator without the genocidal machienes.

Here's your picture of the day:

It's the main street of campus before the flocks of Kiwis arrive.

Ha!

Today I finally went through the proper channels, I had to do some things I'm not very proud of, such as accepting favors from Nigerian Princes, to figure out how to get onto the internet from my own, personal room. Thus, I can finally update this little 'ol blog with pictures. Hooray
On that note, here's a couple of 'em:

I took this picture (and the following) just after taking off from Auckland international Airport. I thought the patchwork landscape was rather pretty, hence the picture.

This mountain is all alone in the middle of a grass-plain, and, interestingly enough, there's a lake on the very top that you can see if you look very carefully. Where's Waldo?

Within two minutes in the airplane we went from sweeping grassplane to this: a bunch of hills that look like hell to hike over. I hope to find out for myself soon.

That's it for today,

Butko out.

I Have Arrived!

When I left my house yesterday (or was it the day before, I never know when I travel) I set the timer of my watch for kicks and giggles just to see how long it took me to get from my front door in Verdi to my front door in Palmerston North. Approximately 30 hours. Think about what one could do in 30 hours: read an entire novel, write an entire novel (romance), solve world hunger and learn to play the piano. Unfortunately I was in an airplane, and was thus unable to learn to play the piano. Anyways, I'm here; safe and sound. My dorm is reminiscient of a penitentiary, but the people are nice as can be, and everything's going pretty well. I've been good, and taken about 30 or so pictures, but since I took out the power to my entire floor the first day that I was here, I'm a little titchy about using my laptop. As soon as I've got all that figured out, I'll post lots of happy pictures for the inquisitive among you.

My First Post

This is really just to see if this works, no other reason, really.

But you have to admit, Black Mage is Awesome.