The Bush Ball

I got to go backpacking last weekend!

If you know anything about me you know that I love hiking. Here they call day hiking a Bush Walk and backpacking Tramping, and from here on out I will use those terms.

I joined the Massey University Alpine Club this week, and I am very excited about it. The Alpine Club has activities almost every weekend, and sometimes multiple activities each weekend.

Their first event of the year was called the Bush Ball. It was a relatively easy tramp in the Tararua Mountain Range, in the Southeast of the Island (I am on the North Island if you didn’t know). This event was more of a getting to know people sort of event. The tramp itself was only 7km (about 4 miles) and took perhaps two hours. Although it was a fairly easy tramp, the forest was still gorgeous. It is just as green if not greener than the forests of the Pacific North West in the winter, and greener than most parts of the US country ever get. Along with the normal undergrowth of ferns there are also much more exotic plants. Here are some images of the wilderness:

I was able to buy a tramping pack at a bargain store for a very good price, and I am very glad that I got some new light hiking boots before I left. With my boots and pack, I felt like I could take on the whole empire myself.

One cool thing about New Zealand is that on tramping trails, instead of just having campsites, they actually have empty huts set up. It costs $5 a night to stay in a hut and it is an awesome idea because you can hike all day and then have a roof over your head while still being in the wilderness. The hut we stayed at had firewood (though you were supposed to chop as much as you use and add it to the pile), a wood stove, space for about 20 people to sleep with mattresses, and even had a hug water tank outside that collected rain water that fell onto the hut. As far as tramping goes, I am totally convinced that huts are an awesome idea. They especially use them here in New Zealand because it rains so often. Take note Washington.

But once we got to the hut then the real fun began. It was kind of a beginning of the year party, and everyone had packed in formal attire. When the sun went down at 6:00 in the evening we broke out our nice clothes and had a party. We even carried in an MP3 player, speakers, and a battery. It was a pretty sweet deal to have such an event in the middle of the wilderness. I really wanted some random hiker to happen to stumble upon our little gathering. Here are some pics:

I’m excited for doing a lot more with this alpine club this semester.

Anyway take care everyone, and greetings from New Zealand. Also, my skype name is andrewjohnson27 so feel free to skype me whenever I am on.

Edit: I found a much easier way to adjust photo sizes. Huzzah!

How my doing is going

I am going to split up this entry into two parts, one about how my life is going here in Palmy, and the other about the awesome Bush Ball tramp I just got back from.

So how am I? Well, I would tell the average person that I’m doing great. But that isn’t necessarily how my “doing is going” as Judy Peterson would say, and I definitely cannot tell you how I am doing in a single syllable.

It’s true that I am having the time of my life here. I just got back from a sweet backpacking trip. Two nights before that I got to see the movie "Inception" on launch day—Inception is AWESOME by the way, if your mind has not been sufficiently blown in the last couple years, get to a theater and go watch it NOW. Earlier in the week I got to see a ridiculous New Zealand horror-spoof movie called “Black Sheep” where genetically altered sheep turn into monsters that start killing everyone. I’ve gotten plenty of time to hang out with people and have fun. So here I am on the other side of the world, experiencing a foreign culture, meeting interesting people, and doing interesting stuff.

But that isn’t the whole story. I’m sure when I look back in the future I won’t remember how stressed I have been all the time trying to coordinate and prepare for different activities. I spent a lot of time last week running around trying to get signed up for the Alpine Club tramp, getting tramping gear, and just coordinating hanging out with people. On my mind I also have to balance doing class work and the usual chores of living on your own. I have to make sure I have a free afternoon each week to take the bus into town to buy food, and I have to do my laundry more than a day in advance of when I need it because there is no dryer here, only drying racks.

I live up in a place called Atawhai Village which is about a ten minute walk from campus. It’s a beautiful flat to live in (I know I promised a blog post about my living space, and I still will post that sometime here), but it’s also a bit removed from campus, and at times it can be difficult to connect with anyone else who is down on campus. If you are a North Parker, think of Atawhai as much better version of Park North. Perhaps the epitome this disconnect was last weekend when I checked my facebook on Saturday morning and found that everyone I normally hang out with had an update about going down to wellington. I would have very much enjoyed a trip to Wellington but no one thought to leave any space in the car for me, and so I had nothing to do but stay home all weekend. I went for a bike ride in the rain. I have always been the sort of person who gets stressed about social interactions, especially in new social situations.

Another interesting thing to note is the weather. It is probably the least of my problems, but it still isn’t easy to get used to winter. It is overcast, rainy, and windy most days (low 50s usually), rather like winter in Seattle, so I’m kind of glad I have experienced plenty of Seattle winters. Also, it gets dark by 6:00 at night. On clear nights it is pretty awesome because I can see the milky way from my front porch by 7:00 in the evening. Other times though, being dark is not so cool. To be fair, I think I am fairly used to the weather. Whenever I hear about anyone from the States doing some outdoor activities right now it does seem a little odd that they would go do stuff at this time of year.

So anyway, there you have about 500 words on how I am actually doing. It’s tough to adjust here, but it’s also incredible.

First week of classes

It’s been almost a week since my last blog update, and in that time I have completed my first week of classes. Since the semester is now going on will not have as much time to work on my blog, but I will definitely try and post at least once per week.

So classes. Papers. I understand now why the classes are called papers now. I went to a building called the Printery and wrote down my paper numbers, and they handed me a stack of documents 1-2 inches thick for each class I had. The documents are course materials. They are also in addition to textbooks, although only two of my papers actually require me to buy a textbook. I guess I saved $100 or more from that.

The papers themselves are structured a bit differently from normal classes I’ve taken back in the States. Papers might meet two or three hours a week for lectures, and then have an hour of discussion time later called tutorial. The times for these lectures and tutorials seem to be chosen at random and follow no specific rhyme or reason. I had to do a bunch of work at the beginning of the week to move my schedule around and change some courses just to get everything to fit without having class times clash with one another.

To illustrate this point, here is my schedule:

Monday: 9-11 Philosophy lecture

Tuesday: 9-10 Math lecture, 1-2 Philosophy tutorial

Wednesday: 2-4 Maori lecture, 4-5 Math lecture

Thursday: 10-11 Maori tutorial, 11-12 Math lecture, 2-5 Physics lab

Friday: 9-10 Math lecture, 3-4 Math tutorial

Confusing enough? And don’t even begin to think that classes would be in the same room twice in a row, because that would just be silly.

The papers themselves seem to be more independent. In the first week the professors pretty much told us when every assignment is due. My math and science classes have maybe six assignments in the semester, and my more fluffy philosophy and Maori studies classes only have two assignments each. To be fair, the philosophy and Maori studies papers are first year papers which I am taking so that I am not bogged down with too many third year courses to enjoy New Zealand as well. That said, the two essays for philosophy are only about 1000 words each, which seems ridiculously easy. It’s good that the class discussions sound quite interesting.

The one physics paper that I am taking is an advanced experimental course, and I will get to perform experiments that North Park could never afford. Just yesterday I spent the afternoon trapping charged drops of oil between two plates of a capacitor in the famous Millikan Oil Drop experiment where physicists were first able to determine the charge on an electron. I seemed like a bit of a newbie at doing experiments because I haven’t done them since my first year in college, and out of all my classes, this physics class seems the most daunting to me.

The math class I am taking is Applied Linear Algebra (basically working with matrices). It’s the next level up from Linear Algebra, which was probably my least favorite math class in college. So why am I taking the next level of it? Because the first level didn’t make too much sense to me. And already I can tell that this paper will be incredibly beneficial. We spent the first week solely going through rigorous mathematical definitions of vectors, vector spaces, matrices, and linear transformations. It was actually pretty cool.

In other news, I got a bike today. Green Bike Trust for the win! (Too bad I have to spell my internet slang out because my only registered followers are people who wouldn’t know what rofl means. *hint hint lurkers*) But my bike. It’s pretty sweet. I’ll get a pic of it up soon. Unfortunately they didn’t offer any road bike rentals, which would have suited my needs much better, but I’m happy with the mountain bike I have for the rest of the semester. I had to buy a helmet as well and make a trip into town to buy a bike lock for it. If the weather is nice tomorrow (which it was today) then I will probably take the bike for a ride up or down the river. I looked up distances and it looks like I’m about 25 miles from the ocean. After a bit of training I’m going to have to bike out to the beach sometime.

Getting more sorted out… and sheep herding

So not only do I have friends now, I seem to have an entire new friend circle. We are going to hang out and watch a movie tonight. If I have learned anything so far on this trip it has been from my experience of needing to be secure and carry on even when I am somewhere foreign and don’t know anyone. It is good to be past that phase however.

I got a new phone yesterday. It was the cheapest one I could buy, but that’s fine. It is also a lot cheaper for me to text than to call someone, and so I will probably end up texting more often than I usually do. One girl was saying found some cheap plan with unlimited texting and no minutes, and I must be getting old because now I am marveling at how times have changed.

I have also been able to get a more food for the past couple days. They sell frozen meat pies at the grocery store for pretty cheap, and I think that will become a staple of my diet here.

Near the end of the international student orientation a couple days ago they let us get out and go do something interesting, they took us to a sheep farm. Sheep farms are very prevalent in New Zealand, and Massey University owns something like 15,000 sheep. So they took us out to one of their farms, and we got to watch the sheep dogs herd the sheep around the paddock and the field. It was actually pretty cool. Here are some pictures:

This is the guy who was showing us the farm. I guess this is how you hold sheep when you shear them.

You can see one of the dogs in the background. It was a special New Zealand breed that barks really loudly. I have a video on the camera of the dog jumping onto the sheep and running over the top of them barking at them.

And finally here is another dog in the field. This dog is known for giving sheep an evil stare.

I have friends!

I’m not all alone.

Orientation for international students started today and I got to meet a lot of people here who were in similar situations as myself. There were a lot of us here from the US, and there must have been well over a hundred international students in total. The biggest nationality represented was China, with about half of all international students being Chinese.

I spent the day saying “Hi, what’s your name?” “Where are you from?” and “What are you studying” and then answering those questions as well. In doing so I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Among my experiences today I made friends with British guy who was also named Andrew and also a physics major. I sat next to a girl from Colorado during the orientation lecture, and when I told her that the university I go to is run by my church denomination she invited me to a bible study here that she was somehow connected with. Sweet.

Everyone I met here couldn’t wait to get out on the weekends to go do all of the outdoor activities New Zealand is so famous for. Honestly, when I decided I wanted to go to New Zealand I had no idea just how outdoorsy the country is. I knew it had beautiful mountains, but I never knew how outdoor oriented life here is. Throughout the semester I am going to have opportunities to go snowboarding, hiking, white-water rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping, biking, mountain biking, and some sport where you roll down hills in a giant ball. I’ll have to look into that last one.

Tomorrow we have another day of orientation and we get to go out to a farm and then into town. Sounds interesting.

Getting my feet on the ground

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day and a half at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on the July 6th through July 7th.


When we last left off our gallant hero was all alone in an unknown world, and pretty down and out about it. But he, that is I, picked myself up and walked into town. My Massey ID also functions as a bus pass, but I did not have the bus schedule because it was locked up with the rest of my stuff. Buses only run about every 40 minutes so instead I just started walking down the road. It took about 45 minutes to walk to downtown Palmy and all the while I was trying to reorient my mind to believe the cars were on the correct side of the road and that I should pass pedestrians coming at me on the sidewalk on the left.

I finally got to the grocery store where I bought some very basic food, because I had forgotten to check if we had a microwave or toaster, and I did not know if the pots in the house were for anyone’s use, or just for whoever owned them. So I bought a loaf of bread, butter, a few cup-o-noodles, and some soda. It was a bargain too, all for under $7 American ($10 NZD). Pak-n-Save seems to be the place to go for food.

I caught a bus home and dropped the food off. By that time the rest of my luggage had arrived at my house. That night, armed with one fresh bus schedule, I made my way into town again so that I could eat dinner at the Burger King there. I deserved it. Over the afternoon and evening I began feeling a lot better.

I accepted that I have no friends here yet. There’s no need for that to bring me down. I have a warm room to myself, food, beautiful forests around me, and nothing pressing that needs to be done at the moment. Campus orientation doesn’t begin until Thursday and so before that it is extremely difficult to find anyone to even talk to. And that doesn’t bother me anymore. Really.

Over the next day I was able to get a NZ bank account set up, get my blog set up, and get into town again to buy some more essentials and a little more food. There is in fact both a microwave and toaster in my house, but I am still unsure on whose pots are here.

Well, now I am all caught up on my blog. Orientation begins tomorrow and then I’m sure activities will pick up. For the rest of the night I have simple, sweet free-time and I will use it to read my book. Will Dresdin be able to find out who killed Tommy Tomm before the White council catches up with him? I just don’t know.

Finally, since I know I have such a rabid fanbase, here’s a preview of just a few things which I will be making blog entries about in the days to come:

-My house (looks a bit like a log cabin from the inside)
-My commute (a walk through the forest and up a big hill)
-The weather (just the kind of wind and rain I like)
-And much, much more!

Down a bit

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day and a half at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on July 6th.


The 6th was my first day here in New Zealand, and I guess it’s not all sunshine and magical adventures*. Especially the sunshine part, it’s been cloudy and drizzly ever since I got here.

Anyway, as my title says, I was feeling down a bit (I can’t wait until I get caught up on blog entries and can stop using the past tense). The weeks before my departure and then my travel and my arrival in New Zealand have been an emotional rollercoaster. My friend Holly, who is also studying abroad next semester, had a great blog post about the rollercoaster feeling of it all. You can find her blog by clicking on my profile, and checking under blogs I follow.

My arrival in New Zealand read a bit like one of those fortunately/unfortunately children’s stories:

Fortunately I was going to New Zealand. Unfortunately I was travelling alone. Fortunately I met someone to travel with on the way there. Unfortunately after Auckland I never saw her again. Fortunately I met another girl on the flight from Auckland to Palmerston North who was also student from the US also going to Massey. Unfortunately I was not sure if anyone would be waiting at the airport to pick us up. Fortunately there was a woman there, and she took us back to campus, gave us our IDs, and took us to the accommodation office. Unfortunately Massey did not have my room ready because they did not realize I was going to be arriving that day. Fortunately they would be able to have my room ready by the afternoon. Unfortunately, I had nothing to do until then. Fortunately they could keep my stuff at their office and then when the woman who had given me a ride to campus from the airport was free in later on she would be able to drive my stuff up to my house. Unfortunately I still had nothing to until the afternoon and I was jet lagged. Fortunately that jet lag was manageable and I still had my book. I was able to find a café in the library to read in until I could get into my room. Unfortunately, when I got to my room none of my stuff was with me so I could not take a shower or even change my clothes. Fortunately one of my roommates was already there. Unfortunately he had a very strong Chinese accent and was very hard to understand, and after greeting me he seemed not at all interested in talking to me. He quickly retreated to his room and it sounded like his girlfriend was there with him.

So there I was sitting in my bare room, in need of a shower and new clothes, without anyone to talk to or even a working phone to contact all of my zero contacts here, and with gray skies and rainy weather outside, I was definitely at the low point of the roller coaster

This is the point in the blog where the credits scroll and it says “to be continued.”


*: The magical adventures may or may not be real, I haven’t been able to tell yet.

Air New Zealand is amazing!

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on July 4th-6th (the 5th didn’t exist for me)

My flight to New Zealand is easily the best long flight I’ve been on. It was a thirteen hour ride from San Francisco to Auckland. They moved me from where I was to a window seat on the other side of the plane because the woman I would have been sitting next to had a baby. Then on the other side of the plane the seat next to me was vacant. More room for me.

Then there is the on board entertainment. There is a TV on the seat in front of you, and the screen must have been about 6’’x4 ½’’. Then at your side was a remote, and instead of just having several channels, they had a menu. Movies, television, music, and flight information. There were somewhere between 50-80 movies to choose from and a whole lot of music to listen to if you had forgotten your iPod. I ended up watching District 9 and How to Train Your Dragon, and for some reason found myself listening to AC/DC. Maybe I should buy some AC/DC. I can honestly say that I would rather take a 13 hour flight on Air New Zealand than an 8 hour flight on United.

But perhaps the best part was as soon as I boarded the plane, it hit me really hard that I was actually going to New Zealand. I was freakin going to New Zealand! I mean, I had known it, but it still hadn’t quite hit me. The last few days had been an emotional rollercoaster, and I was pretty sure that the next few would prove the same, but from the beginning of that flight I was extremely excited about everything.

Also, since I wrote this more than a day after I had landed, I can confirm that the jet lag is not bad at all. The big change is that I am 5 hours behind (and a day ahead), as well having gotten very little sleep the night before. The flight seemed to kick my internal clock out of whack, a bit like digital clock after a power outage. My internal clock was asking to be reset. When I told my body that it was morning, it seemed to be able to accept that. I was able to stay up until 11 o'clock that night without too much trouble. The jet lag flying to Europe is much worse in my opinion.

Thanks Dannie

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on the afternoon of July 4th.


I am dedicating this entry to a girl I met named Dannie. I stepped onto my first flight out of SEATAC in the afternoon on the Fourth of July full of expectation and excitement but also a bit of fear. I found my seat in the very last row of the plane. Then this girl came up and took the seat right next to mine. When she was seated she turned to me and asked, “So where are you going?”

“Well,” I responded, taking a little pause there to savor the fact that I was travelling VERY far over the next twenty-something hours, “I am actually on my way to New Zealand.” And to my surprise she responded “Oh, so am I.”

We exchanged names (I even remember someone’s name for a change!) and info about our trips, and I learned that she was Dannie, the WSU student who was going to be spending a semester studying in Christchurch. We talked for the rest of the flight, and then stuck together when we got to San Francisco. We both had the same four and a half hour layover there.

I gave my parents a call from the San Francisco airport, which was the last time I would be able to use my phone in the USA, and when I did I realized just how fortunate I was not to be sitting in that airport alone. I am about the most introverted person you will meet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate company. And as everyone else, I appreciate having someone who understands exactly what I am going through. One of my biggest fears about this trip was that I was not going to make any good friends and I would be all alone. Yet here I was, not even a quarter of the way to New Zealand, and I had already made a friend who was going through the exact same thing I was.

So here’s to you Dannie.

Afterward: Dannie and I were seated in different parts of the plane on the flight to Auckland, and we talked a little once we landed, but then were split up during customs. I doubt I will ever see her again.

First Post!

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order.

The first post will be a little about me. Who I am, what I am doing on such a ridiculous trip, and what you can expect from me.

I grew up as the only child in a quiet household. When I was younger I especially appreciated two things, learning and Star Wars. Now, I still like learning and Star Wars, but I also like, in no particular order: The Cosmos (not just the Carl Sagan documentary, but the actual cosmos), mountains, the ocean, backpacking, any decent scifi movies/shows/books, a good bit of fantasy, computer games, alpine lakes and meadows, snowboarding, parkour, physics, staying up late, sleeping in, and Jesus. One friend has described me as “poetic, in an odd, nerdy sort of way.”

So here I am in New Zealand. I am at Massey University in a city called Palmerston North, which is on the southern end of the north island. I am here for a lot of reasons, but there are perhaps two which stand out the most. First, I wanted to get away. I do not have anything that I need run away from, nor was there anywhere specific that I need to run to, but it is important to me that I must spend time far away from everything that I know. Only then can some parts of my identity truly grow. That reason is also, to some extent, why I chose to go to school out in Chicago rather than back in Seattle.

The other biggest reason that I am here in New Zealand is that I believe understanding our world is important. I have grown up in the United States and I see things from a US perspective. My perspective was greatly widened when I visited Guatemala for two weeks in high school and lived among the people, not as a tourist. Since that trip I have known that my prospective on the world was incomplete, and that I have learn about the world from somewhere outside the States. Now I am spending four months on the other side of the globe, and I am excited to see what I learn and how I grow.

Finally, what you are doing right now is reading my blog. This log of my journey is as much for my sake as it is for yours. I am ever thankful of the fact that I am blessed with so many people who care about me, and part of this blog is me giving back to you all of you. You want to hear what interesting stories have happened to me, and want to know what I am doing out there… here. This blog is also for me as well. Beyond being a way to organize my thoughts I am keeping the blog to have a record of my trip for myself. I could keep a journal you say, but then I remind you that I am not especially fond of writing by hand and I can barely read my own handwriting. In this blog I will be sharing my experiences and thoughts as I spend a semester here in New Zealand

So there you have it. You can probably expect some updates of my travel out here and the first day pretty soon seeing as they have already happened at the time of writing this.