A tale of naked, foamy foes
It should come as no surprise that going on an exchange throws you out of your comfort zone. Especially when you head to one of the most liberal, free loving places on the planet: Berkeley, California. There you’ll discover stuff like “almond milk,” cooperative housing and realise there are way more vegans than you thought. But beside those natural curiosities, you’ll also end up in some pretty weird situations. Let me walk you through one of mine.I lived in a house of 125, a beautiful mess by the name of Casa Zimbabwe. There lived a hot tub and at the hot tub was a habit of nudity. One particular weekend, the house had a party called “Day Rave.” The California sun was out and the hot tub was pumping. To honour the occasion, bubble bath had even been added, coating the buoyant breasts and genitalia of those within. I made the classic mistake of getting within someone’s line of sight and before long I had nine naked, foamy foes chanting for me to strip down and get in the tub. I don’t know about you, but I’d never been in that kind of situation before. Suffice to say I had no idea how to react. Should I expose my wiener to the world or should I join Mitt Romney on team conservative? So I took a deep breath, stood up straight and I said: “fuck that.” I just couldn’t break free from that comfort-zone barrier we call clothing.
But the story doesn’t quite end there. You see, even though I turned down the chance to get naked with a bunch of my housemates, the experience stirred something in me. Come the end of the semester, I ran stark naked through the library in front of hundreds of on-lookers. So if there’s anything to take away from this great parable, it’s this: get naked and get in the hot tub. And if you can’t, find a way to break that discomfort when the next opportunity comes calling. After all, no one likes the conservatives.
Sam Hall-McMaster
UC Berkeley, California
Four months in the home of maple syrup
A chilled semester, with plenty of free time and Fridays off, was what I was after, and it is what I got. I arrived in Vancouver on a quiet Saturday afternoon and instantly felt at home. I lived on campus in a residence (hall) called Fairview and paid an upfront per-term fee that was around NZ$150 a week and included unlimited power (heating!) and super fast Internet of up to 1gb per day. The residence was over 50 per cent exchange students so there were plenty of pot luck dinners, poker nights, parties and movie nights – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Wednesday night was free entry and cheap drinks at one of the student pubs, so it was always a big night.If you love skiing, consider spending a semester at UBC in Vancouver. It is only a two-hour bus trip from Whistler, which was bigger and better than I could ever imagine. As well as this, there are three local mountains – Grousse, Cypress and Seymour – which are less than an hour’s-drive from campus. One of the most memorable moments I have was getting off the chairlift at Mount Seymour during a night of skiing and looking out over the city of Vancouver all lit up. British Columbia has so much more than just skiing, though. From hiking in Lynn Canyon and Bowen Island, to walks on the beaches, to deer, elk, bear and moose watching in the breath taking Canadian Rockies. If you are an outdoors enthusiast, British Columbia has it all!
For the classes themselves, I took three – International Marketing, Market Research and Project Management, and they all gave me awesome opportunities to get involved and meet people. In the Project Management course our entire semester’s marks were from organising, planning and executing an event. We organised two charity Yoga sessions and raised just short of $500 for the Canadian Mental Health Association. In the Market Research class we were allocated real clients and our group was fortunate enough to work on our project with senior management at one of Canada’s biggest telecommunications companies – a casual 13.5 million customers. One day in our International Marketing course we had a guest speaker who I will never forget. Now, when we get a guest speaker at Otago we would be stoked if they were a New Zealand manager. This guest speaker was the World Brand Manager for FIFA at EA Games. At the conclusion of his presentation he hands out around 30 free games. These experiences themselves made exchange worthwhile.
Sarah Robertson
University of British Columbia, Vancouver