Adventureland

Friday, there was a costume party at this pub near the campus that is the official Uni pub called the Hillcrest Tavern. I wasn’t planning to go because I didn’t really have a costume (everyone from Student Village had to dress up as something that starts with “s,” the other halls had “c” for College Hall, “b” for Bryant Hall and “p” for Orchard Park) but Kristin and Erin, the other American girl in my block, convinced me. So I put on my punkest duds and went as a “singer.” They said that they’d come to my door at 8:00 PM so that we could all walk over together but at about 8:30 Chia knocked on my door so I convinced him to go. I knocked on Kristin’s door but she wasn’t there so I just walked over with Chia.

It was crazy. The costumes that people came up with were just nuts. Some notables: one guy from StudVille (that’s Student Village’s nickname) went as a suitcase wearing a suitcase with the arm, leg and head holes just cut out of it. Another StudVillean went as “sexually confused” wearing this weird tight white outfit and rubbing himself on both guys and girls.

  “Sexually Confused”

Kristin and Erin were a scuba diver and a swordswoman. A bunch of girls from the top floor went as “security guards.” A girl from College Hall wore a yellow box with back spots and went as a “cheese.” My RA, Nathan, (I kind of have two RAs, Julia and Nathan, but Nathan is the official one because he lives on my floor) was dressed as Darth Vader but he fell under the category of “star wars.”

  “Beer”

A bunch of Bryant Hall guys went as “beer” with boxes over their heads and a bunch guys from College Hall went as “condoms” and “cross dressers.” Orchard Park had a lot of “pirates” and “personal trainers.” There were about three guys dressed as KKK members which I thought was severely uncool, plus they were wrong, it’s not “Clansmen” but “Klansmen.”

 The girls from Block 5

Anyway, we got there and met this Chinese girl Alice, who is also in our block and then we met Julia and we all danced together. Then we hung out for a bit with Kristin and Erin and later danced with this Kiwi girl, Alex, who’s also in our block. It was a blast dancing with all these people in costume.

  Chia, Julia, me and Kristin

We left at about 11:30 PM (the whole thing ended at 12:00 and lots of people went to town afterwards) and walked back to the campus. Along the road, there were these guys just sitting on couches outside their flats and drinking and some yelled to us across the street. You know, something like “How’s it going?” and I yelled back and so they knew I was American so they yelled “Are you from Texas, everything’s bigger in Texas!” So I yelled that I’m from Rhode Island, like Family Guy and then two of them ran across the street to come talk with us as we walked. They were really drunk but very friendly. Then we got to StudVille and that was the end of the night. 

Saturday afternoon we had an Inter-Hall Competition where each block was a team and we competed in all these fun events like tug of war and throwing water balloons and running with wheelbarrows. That’s where I met Pablo, a Colombian-Kiwi, who had just moved into my block. He was super nice and we talked all the way down to the sports field. It’s interesting to find a South American here because New Zealand is really very much a part of the Asia-Pacific, not just in location but also in culture and sensibility. Bock five (my block) had so many volunteers that it was split into two teams (one to represent the conspicuously absent block 6) so I ended up on the smaller one with Cheng, this Kiwi of Korean descent, Chia, Shaung, Taylor, a guy from Ohio, and one of the Senior RAs, Tama who’s Maori.

  Go Block 5!

We had so much fun and we only lost two out of eleven events. And that was only because Cheng had to leave early because he had Kendo practice and Tama was called away for a bit, right when we had to do tug of war. It was great fun and I got really into it with lots of hall spirit and especially block spirit (block 5: the blockiest of all the blocks that ever blocked!).

   The team. The guy in the hat in the center is Nathan, the RA.

Sunday, there wasn’t really much to do, everything was closed. Gee couldn’t believe that the bank was closed – he said that in Shanghai, everything is 24hrs. After dinner, I called Nick for a while and then Gee, Chia and I hung out in my room, talking about all sorts of stuff. I found out that Gee had been in the Chinese Army and that he’s really good at kung fu (he can do push ups with just three fingers and break stuff with his bare hands!).

 Three finger push ups

And that in China, it doesn’t matter if you have a girlfriend or whatever, if your parents say you have to marry this person you have no choice. They said that one of their friends who is in New Zealand too and is only 20, his mother said that he has to get married to this girl that he doesn’t even like when he gets back to China. We also talked about the Tibet issue and Gee said that he thinks that the Dali Lama only wants power and that he should be assassinated. I was quite shocked because I think the Dali Lama is a really nice, peaceful, grandfatherly type of person who only wants freedom for his country. It was interesting to get another perspective. Although I disagree, I have to say that I don’t really know all that much about the history of that conflict. I also found out that the Chinese claim Genghis Khan as their own, not Mongolian like we say in the US. I tried to teach them some Polish words and found out that they can’t trill their r’s either, it must be a European thing.       

Tags: Hamilton, New Zealand

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