A week at 'Uni'

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It's been quite a start that began with me as a dirty, homeless, hungry, naive, and distressed United States Citizen, but has upgraded me to the status of a clean, fully fed, slightly more educated, temporary daughter of one of the Universities librarians and her husband, from New Zealand.
For those of you who have not gotten the story, my travel and arrival days in short, consisted of: no sleep due to loud 16 year old Americans sitting behind me (that were traveling to Australia to drink, none the less), no entertainment due to having the only broken video machinery on the entire plane, lost luggage on arrival, a lost ride to Hamilton due to Quantas mis-informing them I had not made my flight, discovering less than acceptable living arrangements on arrival to Hamilton, and finding that contents in the one suitcase they managed not to lose, had exploded.
But destiny stepped in. Needing to walk away from the 'dirty hole' I was living in, and the exlpoded shampoo, I wandered in to the library (the only thing open at the University on Sunday) and found Helen de Barry, a librarian that took pity on my situation and decided to take me home with her.
So for the last 10 days I have been living in a true New Zealand home.

As far as the University and Hamilton...the campus is small but picturesque. The town is not as much, but I have yet to truly check it out. Class is intensive but just right for me, and of course, there are a plethora of opportunities to travel to nearby 'tourist wonders'. I head to Taupo this weekend which is on the south eastern side of the North Island. If you know where it is, "good on you".

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Photos

'Pop'
Do i even need to suggest it...um...hobbit? Pop is quite the man, but you can't tell him so because he never wears his hearing aid. Our 'yelling' conversations even make the cats nervous. This is his favorite pose.

Helen and I
We are standing under a Rimu tree. They hang beautifully but are quite prickly. The variety of trees in New Zealand is tremendous.

New Zealand Landscape
My first birds eye view of the valley I live in.

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

We love NZ
I'm glad these people adopted you. Sounds like your travel was far less than one should expect.