The Awesomeness Known as Chartwell

As I'm walking home, sipping my Wendy's (not the burger joint) spearmint thickshake, I finally decide that this is a topic interesting enough to be posted about.

Anyway, disregarding the above phrase, you probably were thinking perhaps something along the lines of "Andy doesn't seem to have much to do other than go to school and play games at home it seems, he hasn't really talked about much else...", right? Well it's true that I haven't been talking much about what stuff I can do in daily life here, since playing paintball is a rare occasion. But as for the idea that there's absolutely nothing to do around here...

Heh, why would I make this post if I wasn't going to talk about one of the best things I have available here?

Anyway, just a mere 15 minutes walking or 5 minutes biking from my house here in Hamilton, there's a large shopping center known as Westfield Chartwell. Now since Westfield is just another annoying huge corporation, like AMC with movies, everyone just calls the place Chartwell. There's the mall itself, then there's the many things directly next to it. There's a library, gas station, like 10 other types of stores, including an office supply store, butchery, asian grocery store and...Curves? I thought that was only in America...But disregarding that pause, the best part would definitely be the inside of Chartwell. These photos won't be too good for describing because the place is big, but it's better than nothing...

There are a large amount of shops, as well as a full grocery store on the first floor, and a quite good food court on the second floor. The restaurants or other food booths that they have up there are... McDonalds, Subway, Pronto Pasts(never heard of it), some Thai place, Starbucks, this citrus shake or something place, and my 2 favorites: Umi Sushi and the Gelatopia. Why are those my favorites? let's see here... The gelatopia has really good gelato with quite a few different flavors, and a small cup of it which is still a nice size costs the equivalent of around, say...2 american dollars. But the best place is Umi. They always have fresh sushi out every day, and you pick out what you want with tongs, put it in a little plastic container, pay, and enjoy. The various types of sushi cost anything from 1.30-1.90 NZ, which is...say...80-1.20 american or something...I'm probably quite wrong, I'm terrible with exchange rates. Still, it costs a little more per piece than what you'd maybe find at Sakura or any other japanese place in America, but the quality and SIZE of the sushi makes up for it. Take a look...

You probably can't get a very good comparison of size, but I'll see if I can make it clearer... The 2 salmon and 1 prawn sushi I'd say are about the length of your thumb, and width and thickness of 2 of your fingers stacked on top of the other. Compared to sushi you may find at other places, that is GIANT. And it's really good sushi too, not just something really cheap. The rice is very flavorful, they don't overdo the wasabi in my opinion, and the salmon/prawns taste really good too. But that's not the biggest of the sushi...Those 2 rolls, let's see here...Make a circle with your thumb and middle finger...The size of the circle with the border being the OUTSIDE edge of your fingers is probably the best size comparison for those. Now THAT is some big sushi rolls, I can't even eat one of them all at the same time, and I never thought that would happen with sushi.

Next up on the list, is the Starbucks. I've only been there once, but it's very similar to the ones you see back home. The only thing is, they don't have peppermint syrup....I guess the next time I'll have a Venti-iced-mocha-4x vanilla-2x peppermint will be when I get back home, hehehe. Oh, and I never talked about this before, but the chocolate things here, like the chocolate muffin and chocolate Frappucino that I had yesterday, are not as sweet as chocolate in the US. It's a touch less sweet, and you taste a touch more of the plain chocolate flavor, though it's not like the flavor of dark chocolate...It's hard to describe.

The entire area has a lot of shops that I'm interested in...They've got a smaller asian grocery store inside, EB games, a bookstore, movie store, though not as many clothing places than the amount you would see in a US mall...Yeah, there's actually quite a bit to do there. My final thing I'd like to say is that I'm glad the Wendy's here has spearmint shakes, because those taste really good. Actually, my younger host sister works there currently, and I got a photo just for the heck of it...

Annalise, my host sister, is on the right. I got this shot right before Chartwell closed for the night. This is the Wendy's that is the ice cream/smoothie/shake place. It's quite good, and as I said, they have spearmint shakes. AWESOME.

Well, I guess there's nothing more for me to say about Chartwell. Thanks for reading, and...um...I'm terrible with closing lines, hehehe... Ja....bye then!

The College Calamity

Well, many of you have been asking how school has been for me, and I guess I'm finally obliged to talk about it, since I've been in for about 2 weeks! So, where to start...

School here is extremely different from Allderdice back at home, and trust me that's a good thing =D. First, I walk to school, which starts at.....*drum roll*...8:40 AM!!! Take that Allderdice, who forces us to be there at 7:30! I usually start walking at 8:00 though even though it only takes me like 15 minutes to get there. The school day is also different. I only have 5 classes a day, which are all an hour long (with the exception of Wednesdays, which because of a teacher meeting the periods are slightly shortened), and I take 6 classes total, missing 1 class per day (or 2 on Wednesdays, because I have study hall for some reason). And now for my favorite parts, which I will use pictures to illustrate...

Yep, Fairfield College allows you to go OUTSIDE!!! Actually, it's quite required, since various classes are in different buildings. I've got 3 classes in the C block, and classes in F, B, and Y blocks. I get just about NO HOMEWORK WHATSOEVER!!! This is in the middle of the year, and I only have one project to do that the first part is due in 2 weeks! W00t! Another thing good is that we have 2 LUNCHES which are both 30 minutes, and we have them outside! The 2 lunches are for everyone, so I can eat part of my lunch in the morning and part right before my last class, solving my constant hunger problem at Allderdice =D.

So, seeing all this, you're probably wondering, "Why did Andy title this 'The College Calamity'?" Well, coming in in the middle of the year, actually close to the end of term 3, means that I don't know a whole lot if any of what they learned. And there are currently exams going on, which I have taken just about all of. This is where the calamity comes in. I'm sure I epically failed the physics exam, and I didn't do too well on most of the others, except for maybe Spanish and English. And, if I don't take the final forms of these exams, I might have to repeat the 11th grade... the biggest calamity of all. But the year is young, so I can still have time to figure out stuff!

Other than that, Fairfield College is awesome! And...that's all I have to say about that. Thanks for reading!

Rally Time!

Hey, in the past weekend, I've been helping out for 3 days at the New Zealand World Rally! No, it's not some giant protest...It's a race that takes place over 3 days, with 16 stages of dirt roads all over the north island! I helped out at the Mystery Creek Events Centre, where 3 of the stages took place, one per day. Most of the time I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND because I was working with the RATS (Rally and Track Services), by... standing at a crosswalk with Cameron for a total of 10 freaking hours!!! But I did get to look at the various things around the rally area. The Mystery Creek Events Centre had a giant room filled with the main WRC (World Rally Championship) teams such as Ford Abu Dhabi, Citroen, and Suzuki. Next is the merchandise area, carrying various types of racing jackets, two small cafes, a bunch of cars, and the area where people were filming live for the media. However, there were a few good things at the rally, two in particular:
The Takiyama University is a team that isn't part of the WRC and usually doesn't do very well, but they have something that many people like to see. It's called the Ghost Service. I only took around 2 minutes of video since the entire thing would be a half an hour, and we were also called back to our posts soon after.

The link to the video since it won't seem to upload is here.

The next good thing that I saw at the rally site were the remote controlled cars. While it may seem like something that wouldn't be very interesting, these things ran on internal combustion engines using gasoline! This allowed them to get some pretty good jumps, like in the video I took...

Yeah, it was rainy, so it wasn't perfect... but still. The main other thing that was good about the rally was seeing the final stage of the rally at Mystery Creek, where I got to see...

Yeah, I've never seen a car jump before, so, yeah. I thought it was pretty awesome. Anyway, after I finally finish this school week, I'll post about that too.

One Heck of a first day...

Well, I've made it! I'm finally here in New Zealand! But before I actually get into the interesting things like my family, you have to read about how I went through a giant sequence of orientations while in LA! But don't worry, it won't be too long, hehehe...

Anyway, the day after I made that long post I had to get up at 4:45 AM to take care of some annoying business known as flying to Los Angeles at 8:00 in the morning. On the way there I went through about half of a 60-pack of gum in my boredom. After getting in LA I heard from dad that there was another AFSer who was on my flight, but I had no idea she was there. I didn't meet any AFSers before I finally made my way to the Hacienda Hotel. Once there, I had to kill 4 hours since my flight came in at 10 and we had to meet at the hotel at 2. To add insult to injury, AFS didn't allow me to use the hotel pool, and I had to wait for at least 2 other people to arrive to even leave the hotel (in case of injury, one to call for help and one to run back to the hotel). But I eventually got some lunch, had some Starbucks (grande iced mocha 2x vanilla 1x peppermint ftw) and started the lengthy series of orientations. There were 19 people going to Japan for a semester, as well as 3 other New Zealand exchangees, 2 for a semester and 1 other for a year. There was also one person going to Hong Kong for a year, and a guy going to Tasmania for a community service semester. We sat in a room that we were told was on the second floor but ended up being on the first floor. So we sat through a bunch of orientations, had dinner...all that good stuff. The next day, we had a breakfast that gave an entire new meaning to "give us today our daily bread", as it was composed COMPLETELY of pastries and croissants. Afterwards, the Japan students left, leaving 6 people to eat lunch, spend an hour and 15 minutes finding the beach, only to be there for a half-hour and having to come back with all speed.


2 store visits for food later, we are in the airport. We've said goodbye to the AFS helper leading us through the orientations, and we find ourselves waiting for 2 hours to finally get onto the plane for our 14 hour flight to Auckland. While we wait, some snapshots are made just so I can show you guys the 4 of us waiting at LAX.














The left picture is Cory, who doesn't like being put in pictures, so his was a picture I took by
surprise. In the right picture, from left to right, is Adam, Sarah, and me. Cory and I are the ones going for a year, and Sarah and Adam are the semester students.


So we get onto our Qantas plane, and it is awesome! The plane had TV and movies on demand absolutely free, and the meals weren't half bad for an airplane. Throughout the flight, I just couldn't sleep, so I watched Family Guy and The Simpsons a lot. Skip forward about 14 hours...

I arrive in Auckland. I make my way through customs with the other 3 suprisingly fast. There we find an AFS volunteer waiting for us. I get myself an iced chocolate at a coffee shop, and after my 3 friends leave, I get a ride hired by the volunteer to my house in Hamilton. Now, it's 5:00 in the morning in Hamilton, and I have an entire day ahead of me. I meet the members of the Kelly family: Paul, the father; Rosemary, the mother; Deb, the 23-year-old daughter heading to America in 4 weeks; Cameron, the just-turned-21-year-old son; and Annalise, the 14-year-old daughter. Since it's Cameron's birthday, I help out a bit with cleaning up a few things, as well as slicing up a pumpkin with some difficulty. Cameron and I play Soul Calibur 4 on his Xbox 360 while we wait for his friends to arrive...

Fast-forward, everyone's here. After everyone arrives, me, Cameron, Paul, and cameron's friends all go to Hamilton Paintball to...well, play paintball. It's my first time, and I'm quite nervous. It turns out to be quite fun, however, as we go through like 6 different variations. My team wins by a few points, and surprisingly I'm left with no welts whatsoever, even though my left hand seemed to be struck by over half of the shots that hit me. Also I learn that I am way too trigger-happy, as at one point I go through 100 paintballs in about 3 minutes during a game on a speedball (designed for fast games) field. After the game, we all come back and clean ourselves up a bit before dinner. Dinner is roast lamb, potatoes, carrots, and garlic bread. Cameron's friends and I go through the potatoes and bread faster than a California wildfire, and we all talk about various things including the olympics, American politics, and things like that. Next up is the dessert. We have brandy snaps filled with whipped cream (They just taste sweet, not like brandy), neopolitan and strawberry ice cream, and marshmallows. I fill myself up, which turns out to be a bad idea since there was the cake left. It was a chocolate mud cake, and unfortunately I was too full and tired to have any. After that, I finally get the luxury of getting to sleep after having a GIANT day. But it was fun, and that's all that matters. Now, coming up is the new idea of going to school in New Zealand...







Thanks for reading! Oh yeah, and Will?

The Night Before...

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Harold R. McAlindon
While other people have made the path of the exchange program, it is not the most traveled one, and the way I came upon this exchange is quite unique when combined with the kind of person I am and my life here in Pittsburgh before this happened.

As I sit here in my dad's chair typing this since my laptop is packed, I'm thinking about a lot of things. People have asked me as this next day got nearer, "Are you ready?". While the first answer might be "yes", what makes one truly ready? How can you be ready for a completely different country? Does researching every aspect really make one "ready"? The culture could be similar or completely different. I have to get used to a new currency, and I'm still worrying about if my bank card will allow me to get NZ dollars. I have no idea how the people will react to me, whether Maori or Pakeha. I don't know how I'll like my new family (And the 3 month thing has been resolved, it's a standard thing just to make sure you are ready for hosting a student for longer), or how they'll like me. There are so many things that I don't know about, it's hard to say if I'm really "ready". But maybe not being totally ready is quite good, since then I get to experience new things. It's kind of like choosing to play a video game using a strategy guide or not. You can either be prepared for everything that comes at you and know expertly how to deal with it, or perhaps you will take each plot twist as it comes, and enjoy figuring out each new aspect that you learn. Personally, I didn't do a ton of research, as I like finding out the cultural twists and turns as they come, and also if I had looked it up and it happened to be wrong, I would have a harder time adjusting.

Another thing I am thinking about is that people are saying I will change throughout this program. While everyone's saying that the change is good, some things still worry me. Will I not like things that I used to like, or find newfound enemies in old friends? That is the one true thing I am afraid of throughout this journey, with the exception of contracting some deadly disease or being badly or mortally wounded in some way. As I am in New Zealand, will I pick up things that I would not want to pick up? Will I find out that what I think about my own self-control and conscience won't be enough to resist certain things? There are just so many things that I'm worrying about that I probably shouldn't have to. This experience is totally new, and I'm hoping that it will turn out to be a fantastic one, with only a small amount of problems.

One final thing I'm thinking about is school. I'm going to be hopping in in the middle of the second semester, and I have no idea what will happen relating to my grades, or my home GPA. I've heard that I might have to take summer school or redo a year. Personally, that's the one thing at home that I'm scared about the most. I wouldn't mind taking summer school, but most of my friends are in higher grades or in the same grade as me. If I have to redo a year, I won't have nearly as much contact with them during the school days as I did before, and another year of school just wouldn't be too fun for me in general.

Well it's time that I finally went to sleep for the last time in my hometown for a long time. I'd like to thank everyone who is reading this, and ask them to keep following my adventures as I go into this completely different world. I'd also like to thank my family for helping make this possible as well as helping me along to reach this new path, and also I'd like to thank my friends who have supported me on my way to New Zealand. Even though some of them may have not wanted me to go, they still stayed with me anyway with my friends who agreed, and that is why they are all true friends of mine.

Now in the words of journalist Edward R. Murrow:
"Good Night, and Good Luck."

I've gotten a family, but something seems strange...

That's right! I've got a family! It's a family of 5 named the Kellys! I've got 2 parents named Paul and Rosemary, as well as 3 siblings, a younger sister named Annalise, an older brother Cameron, and an older sister Deborah! This means that I'M HEADING TO NEW ZEALAND!!! Although, something doesn't seem quite right... on the form that they sent me about the family, they said the Kellys would host me for 3 months... so after those 3, what happens to the other 9 that my parents paid for? Both parents are wondering about this, and I'm hoping we get an answer soon...

Extremely long flights....hmmm

NEWS!!! I've finally managed to find out about my flight from Los Angeles to New Zealand!....and it's a freaking 6800 MILES ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN!!! Wow, that's close to 3 times as long as my flight from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles! Looks like I've got some thinking about what time-killers to bring on the flight....hmmmm, this should be quite interesting. I doubt 5 books will last the entire 9000 miles...but also, this new info must mean I'll be getting a family soon, I hope... But hey, I've gotta find out sometime, right?