haere mai! welcome!

So the last couple days have whirled by, and it's all a bit foggy because of sleep deprivation. But they have been fantastic, nonetheless. The city is really amazing, it's so beautiful. It's got sort of a California feel because there's green everywhere you look, there's coastline, and everywhere you walk seems to require hauling up a ridiculously steep hill. Seriously, these hills are going to take some intense getting used to, but at least my ass is going to be killer when I get home. Yes.
Even the architecture looks much like San Francisco, the homes are designed quite similarly. So as I walk around I start to feel like I'm in the States but just some crazy beautiful north western part of it, and then I see a bird. The birds here are what make me remember how far away I am. They're all so interesting and exotic looking.
This morning (after falling asleep at 8 last night) I woke up at 6 thanks to jetlag. I made some Dunkin' Donuts coffee that I'm glad my mom threw in my suitcase last minute, and went out onto our back porch where the sun was rising and there were all these small fascinating birds. This is what one of them looked like. He kept fanning out his tail and closing it so it's like this big flashing light in the trees. This the view from our porch at sunrise. It's very cold in the morning, but it was so serene.

I had a strange dream last night that I was hanging out with friends in Austin and someone said,"Hey Maggie I thought you left for New Zealand yesterday. What are you doing here?"
and I said, "Oh I don't know" and I woke up and I had no idea where I was until I realized that I had, in fact, gone to New Zealand the previous day.

Today was orientation for international students so I met people from Ethiopia, Germany, Finland, and all over. That was really fun because they discussed cultural differences to know about, and apparently the verb "to root" is a slang term for "to have sex with" and so saying that you "root for ____ sport team" is an awkward thing to say and should be avoided.
The coolest part of it all, though, was a bus tour around Wellington, they took us around town and then up to the top of Mount Victoria right outside of the city where I had to following stunning view of this beautiful city.

Tonight I am having dinner with my neighbors (basically a street full of houses containing American exchange students) and then I'm going to brave the cold to join David (a kiwi i met in Austin) and his friends at a bar for some quiz game they're doing. Should be fun and I'm excited to hang out with some locals.