Kia Ora,

My name is Zofia and I’m a third-year law student currently on my year abroad in New Zealand studying at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. I have officially been in New Zealand for about two months, I have finished the first half of my semester here and I’m currently on my mid-semester break (which is arguably the best concept we should definitely have back at UoN!).

However, before I start telling you about my time in New Zealand, I thought I would recount how I got here, which was a whole adventure in itself!

My journey started at London Gatwick early in the morning with a flight out to Athens, Greece. I stayed in Athens for three days which gave me enough time to explore the city. This was a real teaser for what my summer could have looked like with warm weather and good food instead of the cold, wet New Zealand winter that I eventually arrived to.

From Athens I flew to Singapore, which took roughly 11 hours. Singapore airport was incredibly impressive, especially seeing the rain vortex. Singapore was probably my favourite destination out of all the stops. I loved seeing the colourful buildings in Little India, the Sultan Mosque and the whole city was super clean and felt very safe.

On my second day in Singapore, I went out to the Gardens by the Bay which for me was an absolute must-see place as I’d previously done an art project in secondary school on the sculptures. Seeing the sculptures in real life was so surreal and I highly recommend paying to walk the skyway. I then went to the bay and walked around the central business district and ended the day with a walk around Chinatown.

Finally, before I knew it, I was on my final flight to Christchurch. The flight itself is only 3 hours long. I had managed to come this far across the world without a single delayed flight, but this, one, final, flight just kept getting delayed! Nonetheless we finally took off and the views from the plane when we were landing were incredible and made me all the more excited to arrive at my new home for the year!

Overall, despite taking an incredibly long route to get to NZ, I highly recommend breaking up your journey. By stopping in each place for a few days, allowed me to, not only discover new destinations, but it also helped with my jetlag as I was incrementally adjusting to the time difference instead of being thrown into the 11-hour difference.

The university itself is incredibly helpful in making sure you are well equipped with information about living here and made the arrival incredibly easy and smooth. Once I had landed, I had a shuttle waiting for me at the airport organised by the university to take me to my new home. The shuttle was picking up multiple students at the same time as me therefore I was already able to talk to people in the same position as me and felt a lot more comfortable. One of the girls that got picked up with me was from Uni of Sheffield so we started talking right away!

My first two months have flown by! I settled in pretty quicky. I am staying in Sonoda the university accommodation which happens to be filled with mostly international students as well. The hall is for second years and above, therefore the majority of the people living here who are not international exchanges are either masters or PhD students. The hall organises some really good events, that are well worth going to, which further enabled everyone to socialise and make new friends as well as discover the surrounding area. For example, there were many socials that involved food like cupcake decorating or tea afternoons as well as an organised bus trip around Christchurch.

I arrived a week before the term and lectures officially started as this was reserved for international induction. Upon arrival, you will have to go to in person enrolment and attend further introduction events organised by the university which involved a scavenger hunt around campus and more standard informative sessions about registering with UC health and setting up your IT account. One of my favourite things was going to get my new uni student ID printed as it really made me feel like an official UC student! I cannot lie that at the beginning everything seems quite daunting and unfamiliar. I thought I would struggle to use the Learn website as they don’t use Moodle. Although it took me about a week to find where echo lecture recordings were located (you have to click on a super small, not very obvious, tab), if you take things one step at a time and ask lots of questions it is all manageable! Everyone is super friendly and will try to help you as best as they can!

In fact, there are still things that come up that I need to get sorted for example my laptop won’t connect to the UC Wi-Fi, so I will need to take a trip to see the IT department. The main point is that there will be things that come up all the time that you may be unsure about how to deal with, but the best thing is just ask someone even if the matter seems small or silly.

Although Christchurch is known as the most British city outside of Britain, there are still a few things that have taken a bit of getting used to.

Some things I have learnt so far include:

• Te Reo Māori is an official NZ language. All the announcements at airports and train stations etc. will be made in both English and Māori. I am really excited to continue learning more of the language!
• New Zealanders refer to all sweets as lollies not just lollipops, even Haribo’s are lollies here!
• NZ winter is not Australian, Sunshine Coast winter… it is COLD.
• Even though it is winter, and temperatures are as low as 4 degrees during the day, all the boys still only wear shorts and Birkenstocks.
• Fruits and vegetables out of season are incredibly expensive!! I was shocked when I came to pay for my food shop and my 3 tomatoes came to $12 (£6!)
• Public transport between cities basically does not exist. The best ways to get around are either flying or renting a car.
• Kiwi birds are nocturnal and your chances of seeing one roaming around are very slim!

I’m sure I still have a lot to learn yet!

I will leave it at this for today as I get ready to fly to Wellington and Auckland in the next two weeks. Thank you for reading and hopefully see you next time!