First day of class

Hello again! Since the last time I updated I have

a) Gone to the beach
b) Properly unpacked
c) Attended my first lecture (Greek Mythology)
d) Found bubble tea and yummy food places!

We went to the beach on Saturday (the 26th) with a big group of international students and one girl from New Zealand. It was about an hour away, at Wanganui, here's a map for those of you who are interested:

Cool right? It was a pretty dismal day when we got there but eventually it heated up and the sun came out. First we went to a farmer's market where a lot of us got super delicious crepes and then sampled free goat cheese and other stuff. I didn't take any pictures of that, which is a shame, as a lot of the food here is really delicious. Then we went to this lookout point where we could see the whole city. Pictures!

First we went through this elevator that was built into the hill, Lonely Planet said we should go, and we were not too keen on walking up all of those stairs. There's a little dude I saw on the way to the elevator, weird, right?

 This is us as we went into the elevator. That's Tifah closes to me and Michelle getting excited.

 Once we had made it down the creepy echo-y hallway.

 Yay elevator!

 Me inside the elevator. It was far less sketchy than we were expecting.

 That's the war memorial lookout thing that we climbed up. Almost 200 stairs I think.

 Lookout of the town and the river.

 Once we made it to the beach! Eventually it was a bit sunnier. The cliffs are made of clay, so they fall down pretty easily. A nice Kiwi told us that and that the tide was coming in so we should move before we had to swim back. Nice guy.

 My feet in the ocean.

 This was before the guy told us it was a bad idea to wander along the beach.

 Once the sun came out!

 Classic me shot, thumbs up and squinty.

 Then we went to this reserve place, apparently they had kiwis but they're nocturnal so it didn't really matter. They had fences and stuff around the property to keep out predators.

 The house that's on the property. It's from 1906.

 Pretty flowers were everywhere, we decided to go for a walk along the grounds rather than stay in the garden area.

 Tree hugging, another classic.

 Cows! Moo! They were really cute and kind of afraid of us. Pity.

After all of this we went back into town to get food. We didn't eat here, but I was shocked to see another Magic Wok existed. Shout out to the 865 for sure. 

Just got back from my math and history class. Math went as expected, I should probably review some so I don't look like a complete fool tomorrow if he asks us questions, but whatever. Aside from math, most of my classes seem pretty easy, just two essays each and a final. Final exams here count for 60% of our grade, so that's kind of stressful. It's been a pretty calm day otherwise.