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The clock is tolling eight as I start to type this; it's Sunday night and I'm in one of the 24-hour computer labs on campus. The doors lock but we can swipe our ID cards and use a PIN to be let in--I just let in someone who knocked, and he muttered "thank you, cheers." They say "cheers" a lot here. This is all part of living here: using the computer labs for internet or finagling the on-campus wireless (I have a favorite bench under a big pine for when it's nice out, and no one is using it for their cigarette break), the careful decision of when it's really important to leave the flat and connect to the world(wide web), people saying "cheers", the clocktower chiming the hours. And I really am starting to feel like I live here.

There is the fact that I've been in class for three weeks now, and that means there's a schedule around which to center my life. I'm beginning to recognize faces, and occasionally I'm able to pin names to those faces, and I know how long it takes me to get to class so I'm not late, but I'm not early, either. I also know what to buy at the grocery store, and which grocery stores to go to for which things: the farmer's market for produce, eggs, tea, honey and pasta; Taste Nature for bulk dried fruit, beans, barley, quinoa, and HoneyHaze, this delicious honey-hazelnut spread for toast; Countdown for baking supplies, hummus, crackers, biscuits (aka cookies), milk, cheese, mushrooms, avocados and occasionally raspberry lemonade (Charlie's) or fruit smoothies in cardboard boxes (McCoy's); and finally New World for anything I need last minute, because it's just on the other side of the botanic gardens and a nice walk.

I'm not sure how to compare living here to anywhere else I've lived, just because there's too much to describe. It's like America, but emphatically not America--and my life here is similar but emphatically not. Parts of it have to do with country, parts of it have to do with place, because I haven't lived in a town like Dunedin before, either. I walk everywhere. I'm learning to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, though if I don't pay attention I tend to favor the right--it's either instinctive or simply deeply ingrained. We have a main shopping street, a mall, lots of Asian and Turkish restaurants but only two Mexican ones, tourist shops that sell possum-merino sweaters, bars and pubs, three movie theaters (one conventional, two alternative). When the sun shines, it's warm, but as soon as you're in shadow it's frigid ("4 seasons in one day", they say), and almost all houses are badly insulated. The ice cream truck comes on Wednesday around 9 pm and on Saturdays in the afternoon. The public library charges for more things than a library could ever get away with charging for in America--new books and magazines, all DVDs and CDs, mystery and romance novels, putting things on hold. But I have a library card, and I use it regularly (after checking the spine of all my books for the $ sign). We get eight TV stations, one in Maori, one that only comes in black-and-white (for no apparent reason), and one that is just a repeat of another--so really seven. There are ads for a digital box which will let you get "over ten" stations. Channels 1 and 2 seem to be owned by the same company, as do channels 3 and 4--they'll advertise each others' shows. If I'm awake and have the time, I'll turn on the TV around 10:30 to watch "The Daily Show", only six hours after it airs in the States, but there's an Australian talk show that we get a full week after its original airdate.

These are little things, but they're as much pieces of my life in New Zealand as the field trip I took this weekend (where we sat around on the rocks while the tide practically licked our feet and the lecturer competed with the antics of a fur seal, where we got to see one of three exposed pillow lavas in the world), or the things I learn in class. Those are the stories I can tell--these are the things that make it real.