Yesterday (or, Thank God for Sarah Horton)

So yesterday I wheeled all my crap through the frigid rain to a substantial looking flat that I'm to be living in for the next 16 weeks. Naturally, I knocked on the door. No one answered. This anticlimactic little twist was yet another in a long line of things that haven't quite turned out the way I was imagining them in my head. Thankfully, though, I had a key, which I used to let myself in. My room is on the first floor. It's huge (like the size of two or three bedrooms in Eugene houses) and came furnished with all my basic necessities. There is, however, no central heating, so I have to make do with an obnoxiously loud space heater that sits next to my bed 24/7.

After unpacking, a guy named Toby from Vermont showed up and introduced himself. He then promptly left for the farmer's market without inviting me, so I just sat on my bed and tried not to think about the fact that this was only day three of 4.5 months in a crummy little country with frigid weather and absolutely no people my age who seemed to be interested in making friends. In an attempt to right the profoundly unjust situation I'd mentally cornered myself into, I put on my jacket and resolved to find the farmer's market regardless. I made it about three blocks before the rain and the wind became so fierce that I gave up and turned around. It wasn't a good afternoon. 

So to make a long story short I finally ended up walking downtown, where I bought a case of beer which I was determined to distribute to some new friends by the end of the day. Of course, I had to lug the fucking box all the way across town again, during which time I discovered two other much closer liquor stores. When I returned it was like 2:30 and my Kiwi host Liz was finally up and about. People sleep in late here. We talked in the living room for a while, and then Toby showed up again with three other Americans. They all seemed about as scared, desperate, and cold as I was, so I gave them beer in exchange for a place in their group. We walked around to all their flats (by which point the sun had set, at like 5:45), found a place called McDuff's that fills two liter bottles with beer for $6.70, and at one point sat around an emormous wooden table in a house with one working lightbulb in our snowjackets, watching each other's breath issue from frozen mouths as we talked about the incredible summers we were all missing back home. 

I ended up making it to a cool house party with a ton of other exchange students, but I still can't shake this terrible feeling of homesickness (again, tell my parents nothing). My one consoling fact rests in the thought that a day from now Sarah Horton, high school friend and cohort in all things crazy, will be here to share this "incredible new zealand adventure" (just keep repeating it, AJ) with me. That's it for now. Take it easy.