Ew, I'm a blogger now.

I thought I'd open this up with an informative post. So here's what you need to study abroad.

1. Patience.

Yep.

Man, signing up for classes at the University of Auckland was such a pain in the ass. I think it's like that for any big school. It's you versus this PHP thingy - fill out Form A3124567 and then yada yada. In any case, I got some pretty neat classes. But it took me at least 15 hours of scrounging through their catalog, making sure nothing conflicts, and haggling with both ends to accept my transcripts.

a. Control Systems - in the ME dept (I'm screwed)
b. Ethics of Biotechnology - hopefully I can get IE credit for it
c. History of New Zealand - I figured it was a good idea
d. Ethnic minorities in New Zealand - THIS should be sweet.

Packing is another story. You want to be as minimalist as possible. I've got 90% of my clothes in one suitcase, and extra crap (like a comb - who needs a comb?) in another smaller bag. And I'll be carrying my laptop over there. Can't live without this crap. With laundry done about once a week, I should have more than enough clothes in that one suitcase to last me 18 weeks in New Zealand. Maybe. We'll see.

I still need to open a bank account there, and a cell would be nice too. That's another thing - a lot of US phones use Qualcomm's CDMA encoding, but the rest of the world uses AT&T's GSM. I'd better not bore you with all the details, but to the point - my phone won't work. Ack. Maybe I'll get a prepaid phone thing. I have calling cards, so the States are okay. I don't feel like calling those chumps anyways - I'll email or something instead.

Okay, this is way too much to write. I'm done. I should mention though, if no one gives a damn, I'll stop posting, because I'm doing this to keep other people updated, not myself. After all, I already know what I've been up to - I don't need to hear myself repeat it a bunch of times. ;]

- N