Fire.

This country, as a whole, seems to have an inordinate fear of fires, or Arsonphobia as it's more commonly referred to. Seriously, I've been to random bathrooms in fast-food joints, and on the wall there will be an escape plan in the event of a fry fire or something like that. Back in the states, as soon as one passes high school, fire drills are as dead as a Twinkie before Rosie O'Donnel. Unlike here in New Zealand, where they make fire drills a competition. Honestly, there was an unannounced competition between dorms for which dorm could evacuate the fastest during a fire drill. Yeah. And the "assembly point" posters are, strangely enough, Everywhere. I swear that, if I were to look, they'd have one posted outside of the community pool. I don't know if fire's just a bigger threat here, or because they're so complacent in this island that they have to search for spectres. I really can't tell which.

On a completely unrelated note, I leave this Saturday for the mid-semester break. Ben and I are going to the South Island for about two weeks, and I'm startin' to get jazzed. Theoretically we have a rental car lined up and everything! Note I say, "theoretically," because in my experience renting a car is never easy, and the fact that we're both under the age of 21 should make it even more of a hassle. Anyways, if posts are not often forthcoming in the following week or two, it's because I'm not entirely sure how good the internet is going to be where I'm going, so I apologize in advance.

I leave you with a picture of Andrea in front of another one of the funny Kiwi posters that they obviously didn't think through before writing them on a wall: