My First “Flat”

It’s true, I officially have a New Zealand address :) I’m so glad I decided to wait until I arrived here to choose a flat. Pictures don’t do justice a lot of times, and also I was able to judge distance to the uni, downtown, etc. (Note: New Zealanders refer to the university, the campus, and classes as “uni.”)

It turned out that speed-flatting wasn’t what I thought it would be. I was under the impression that a shuttle/taxi was going to take us around to flats that had a vacant room. In actuality, it was designed so that people looking for a flat could meet people looking for a flatmate, but not actually view the flat itself then and there. Unfortunately, when I went on Wednesday, the only people that were there were also looking for a flat. So there wasn’t a whole lot we could do for each other. We just walked around and introduced ourselves, with the idea being that we would find someone to hunt for a flat with. By the end of the allotted time, there were 4 of us left chatting, so we decided to walk around and look at some of the flats on the list. We  looked at about 3 or 4 before we found our lovely new home.

Our flat is a little bit of a walk from uni (about 20-25 min), so we were a little iffy about it while walking there. It’s also up a hill, which isn’t particularly ideal (although it does provide a beautiful view of the rest of the city). But as soon as we walked in, we fell in love with the place. It’s about as fully furnished as you could possibly imagine (which was probably the most important consideration for me). Each of the 4 bedrooms has a queen size bed, as well as a desk and/or wardrobe and/or bookshelf and/or extreme closet space. The kitchen is huge and comes with a dishwasher, stove, oven, microwave, toaster, cookbooks, and every utensil/dish/bowl you could ever need. There is a large dining room/lounge with a table, chairs, couches, and a sewing machine. There’s a cute little foyer area too with a huge bookcase/cabinet thing. The only downside is that there’s only one bathroom (but that is also large).

We also have a washing machine but no dryer. But most people actually don’t use dryers in NZ; they all hang their clothes to dry outside. They’re pretty big on energy conservation here. I usually hang like half my clothes to dry anyway so this won’t really be an adjustment. Plus we have a back porch with an awning over it, so we can hang our clothes under there to make sure they actually dry. We also have another table, more chairs, and couch on our back porch, so we can eat dinner out there while the weather’s still nice. We have a garage too, and only one of us has a car so it’s perfect. There’s also 4 bikes in the garage (2 are currently functional), so that provides an alternative to always walking. Also the bus stop is less than 5 minutes away, so it’s actually a great location. Our front yard is a hill, so you can’t do a whole lot on the lawn (which is small anyway). Directly behind our house is a giant rock formation-esque wall, and above that is the “jungle” (just what we’re calling it). There’s some fruit trees and such up there among the foliage. It’s pretty dense and would be quite scary at night, so we’ve decided we’re going to film a horror movie back there.

“We” consists of 4 of us, as you could guess from the number of bedrooms. There’s me, a girl from Dunedin (Ella), a guy from a town just south of Auckland (Tim), and a guy from India (Manu). Ella is in her 2nd year at OU, Tim's in his 4th, and Manu is getting a postgrad diploma. Tim, Manu, and I met at speed-flatting on Wednesday. We were originally going to live with someone else we met that day, but he wasn’t keen on the distance from uni. So we went back to speed-flatting the next day to find a 4th flatmate and met Ella. When we were looking for a 4th on Thursday, people kept asking the 3 of us “how did you guys meet?” And we’d say, “um yesterday…here…haha.” We all got on so well from the beginning that I guess it seemed like we’d all known each other a bit longer. I’m not always the best at gauging others on their first impressions, but I think this will work out quite well.

Also we’ve decided to take turns cooking dinner every night, so I can get some practice at being an adult. At CMU I was the queen of frozen dinners/spaghettios/easy mac, so we’ll see how I fare here. Manu says he doesn’t really know a lot of NZ/American dishes, so I think we will be having Indian food every 4th night. Apparently he knows how to make 12 different cheese curries, so I’m looking forward to his culinary delights. Ella doesn’t eat meat (and Manu doesn’t eat beef or pork), so hopefully I’ll get to learn some good vegetarian dishes. Tim and I plan to fry up a ridiculous amount of bacon every Sunday morning, so we’ve got all the bases covered. It should be a good year.

Coming soon: update on thesis plans. I’m moving into the flat today, but I don’t think we’ll have internet for at least a few days. So it may be awhile, but I’ll try to be quick!