Honestly, I can’t remember too many of the details from April 2004 until finishing my first year at The University of Auckland in November of 2004. In a broad sense, I mostly think most about the friends I met in Auckland including Albo, Camilla, Graham, Jack, Jesse, Jo, Kai, Lara, Lucy, Matt, Onur, Rook, Sam, Susan, Trang, and Yunmi. No, I didn’t just name every person in the small country of New Zealand, I really do consider these peeps my friends;)

I’d like to give a special shout out to my filmmaking Turkish mate Onur. He moved into my dorm, O’Rorke Hall, around April ‘04 and I was lucky enough to get him as my neighbour. At different times throughout the year, I think we both struggled with adapting to Kiwi culture, and it was nice to have someone so close by going through the same thing, but in a totally different way. More than anyone else, Onur taught me to loosen up a bit and really enjoy myself – he’s like the inner voice of partying in my head. We certainly put those skills to use many times in 2004, and I look forward to working and partying with him again in 2007!

So you might be thinking that I just went to New Zealand to party all the time. Honestly, that’s not totally off base. I certainly did get my stuff done - uni, research work, and some market research work with a local adventure sport company - but I spent a lot of my time enjoying the more social aspects of life in Auckland. One of the reasons I wanted to move to Auckland from Cincinnati was the impression I had from traveling to NZ in 2001 that it would be a much better environment for me to have a good time, and I was absolutely right about that. There are a couple of logistical reasons for this is - urban atmosphere, lower drinking age, venues open ’til the early hours of the morning - but I think the primary reason is how, in my humble opinion, Kiwis are more likely and quicker to be socially open to people they don’t know compared to people I have personally encountered in the United States (feel free to disagree with me in the comments.) Yes, this is a huge generalization to make, but it’s held true for me over the years that Americans I’ve encountered, while being wonderful people, generally have their social “guard up” much longer than other cultures. Along with regulatory reasons, this detracts from the elusive “street spirit” I look for when going out. Some people like it that way, which is fine, but I’m certainly not one them.

This is the first of nine posts recapping events between April 2004 and November 2006. Click here for the overview.