The Biggest Challenges of Study Abroad: Meeting Kiwis and Keeping within a Budget

May 23, 2017

A lot of my friends when I first got to New Zealand were born and raised in New Zealand. I met them generally through my residence hall, which is 60% kiwis. Our hall was really great in hosting events that integrated the residents together. Even with having a large kiwi presence, there are a lot of Americans living in the building. It’s hard not to get sucked into the communities that are dominated by Americans, since they share a lot of the same experiences. It’s fun to make kiwi friends to get a new perspective and feel like you’re in a new place. I met a lot of my other kiwi friends through joining clubs on campus. I’m really active in Fossil Free UoA, which is part of the divestment movement (we have Divest NU at Northeastern). We get a lot of opportunities to bond at weekly meetings, rallies, weekly tabling, and other social events that the club hosts. I would highly recommend getting involved in extracurricular activities while abroad. At the University of Auckland, some clubs don’t meet weekly they just host events. These are great one-off events to meet others but it’s more difficult to form friendships as an international student since they aren’t as consistent. For example, the tramping club has hiking trips offered almost continuously which is great but most of the time you don’t see the people you’ve met again. As I head towards the end of my time in New Zealand, it gets harder to think of leaving all the friends I’ve made here.
The other difficult aspect of only being in New Zealand for 4 months is creating any sort of budget. A lot of the time, purchases are made in the mindset of “Well, you’re only here once”, which becomes dangerous. I would recommend coming with a lot more money than you think you’d spend. Some things, like bungee jumping, are very expensive but you can build that into a budget since you know you want to do it. The harder things to account for are small things, like going to fish and chips places all the time or going to restaurants because it is the only chance you have to try certain things. I ate out a lot when I first got here to try the “local cuisine”. I have since had to curb myself to cook at home because it was getting so expensive. But there are certain things you have to try, such as Ferg Burger, because their burgers been ranked the Best Burger in the World and only located in Queenstown. A great thing about New Zealand is the conversion rate. It’s about 0.70 NZD to 1 USD, which helps a little when it pops up on your credit card bill as a little lower than what shows up at the cash register.

Lauren Azzola

As a fourth year Environmental Science student from Connecticut, I have found myself needing a change of pace from New England. Seeking adventure elsewhere, I have decided to travel to the other side of the world for a semester! For Semester One (New Zealand's fall semester), I will be taking as many environmental classes as I can cram in, traveling all across the north and south islands and trying as many new things as possible. I've lived in the northeastern U.S. my entire life and held a deep passion for environmental protection for almost as long. New Zealand has 80% of their electricity and almost half of all their energy needs met by renewables. As the politics involving the environment change in my home country, I hope to observe the cultural and political differences that surround sustainability abroad.