Final Dinners

Final Dinner with Friends
Throughout the semester, there had been a group of us that often went places, did things, and went to the bars together. Who came varied on the night and occasion, but everyone (who was anyone) made sure to come to our dinner on the waterfront, at a restaurant called "The Waterfront." Heare are some pictures from the occasion:

Emma, Amy and Me at dinner

The whole group of us

The meal was a great time. I had a magnificent white chocolate raspberry martini to drink and a really yummy steak. It was still early enough that none of us were thinking goodbyes yet, but it was the last time that all of us were still around to do something together.

Final Program Dinner
On November 7, Lauren and Tommy (if you recall, they were the program organizers who was with us for orientation) met with the seven of us studying in Auckland for a nice, fancy dinner at White, another waterfront restaurant, but this time in the Hilton hotel. It was nice to see the other girls from my program, whom I hadn't seen in a while.


We had a full course meal, with wine, appetizers, entrees and then we almost ordered desserts. We were going to get two mixed platters of desserts, but then we decided that it would be much cheaper and possibly tastier if we just went next door to the gelatto place. We retracted the order for the dessert, but the chef was insulted that we didn't want it anymore. As a result he himself made a few platter with mini espresso brownies and mini blueberry muffins. They were absolutely delicious. Then the group of us went over for gelatto. It was so good! I had a really nice chat with Tommy's girlfriend who was there. Tommy and his girlfriend had been together since high school, but went to different universities. They both came to University of Auckland however to do their semester abroad. Whereas she went back to her university back home, Tommy decided to stay in Auckland and they did two years of a really long distance relationship. With my time in New Zealand coming to a close and uncertainty setting in, this conversation with Tommy's girlfriend was just what I needed to be certain that I wanted to commit to staying with Matt.

Final Dinner with Matt
The second to last night before I left New Zealand, Matt decided to make me a special dinner. There's not much to write about, he made venison and blue cheese stuffed ravioli with a blue cheese sauce he made from scratch. We had both (ironically) been saving up tea lights for a candle lit dinner. I had the table lit up with tons of tea lights and Matt came in with more. He had even bought a lighter for the meal. It was tasty and special.

DInners

So in case anyone doesn't know, I'm back at home in Illinois now. I still have so much I want to blog about though, so I'm going to continue making posts despite the fact that my adventure has ended. Throughout the course of the semester I had many important dinners, I thought I'd lump them in an entry together. Here it goes:

Alumni Dinner
One program the University of Auckland offers to international students is the alumni dinner. Alum of the university sign up to host international students for dinner and international students sign up to eat for free and make small talk. Being the self-respecting college student that I am, I would never turn down a free meal and alas, signed up for the program. I hadn't heard anything by my midsemester break so I assumed that I wasn't going to be invited to dinner. Sometime in September, however, I received an email and was told I, along with two other girls would have dinner at Jennie and David's house. On September 26, the three of us met up and tried to find Jennie's apartment. We had the hardest time! The numbering was confusing and we buzzed the building and apartment we thought was hers, but we had no luck. We tried calling them, but we had no answer. About 20 minutes after when we were supposed to have been there, Jennie called Ida's cell phone and they came down and brought us up to their flat.

The couple reminded me of grandparents. Jennie consistently called us "darlings" and gave me a giant hug (especially considering how tiny she was). Before dinner we sat in their family room (I have an urge to call it a parlor though) and ate cheese and crackers and fruit and drank white wine.

During the time before the meal Jennie and David made an effort to get to know us. I talked about my background, both family and education and explained why I chose to study in Auckland, New Zealand. Ida (pronounced ee-duh, not Ida like Idaho) was from Denmark and told us about what it was like coming from a drug-ridden country, but one that also pays for one's college education. Ida also told us about how distinct the dialects of Danish are in Denmark. Depending on what part of the country one was from, there would be different words for the same things and demonstrated the difference for us. She said that people would adjust their accent depending on whom they were talking to. Her parents came from a different part of the country than where they raised her and from where she studied. That means she had three different dialects mastered. The third girl, whose name I can't remember, was a first generation American, whose parents came from Vietnam. She told us about growing up as both Vietnamese and American, it was pretty interesting.

Dinner was really nice. She made some kind of a curry, rice, salad and shredded carrots with coconut and raisins. I didn't think the carrot dish would be very tasty, but it was delicious! There we had more philosophical and ethical discussions about life in New Zealand among other topics. I learned about Jennie and David. They had been a part of the program for many years and their niche in life seemed to be to give foreigners a home. They consistently were host parents for Uni students and had a few "adopted daughters" that lived around the world. Jennie herself went back to school a few years ago (she's in her 60s or 70s) to get a masters just for the sake of loving learning. She works at the Short Loan (reserve) library on campus.



After a long, but enjoyable dinner, Jennie served us baked apples with ice cream for dessert and sent us on our merry way. David didn't want us to walk back in the dark (though they really weren't that far from campus) and dropped the two girls off at Parnell (an area of Auckland where another student accommodation is) and dropped me at Whitaker. David and I had a nice conversation about his adopted daughters on the drive home. It was quite lovely.

I visited Jennie a few times at Short Loan before leaving Auckland. She's so sweet! It was a great experience.

Whitaker Place Formal Dinner
On October 8, my student accommodation hosted a Formal Dinner. It was toward the end of classes, but before people started studying for exams. The meal was completely paid for and all we had to do was show up looking nice and with the optional bottle of wine. The day before the dinner, I went shopping with my friend Katie and her friend Laura. Laura is an Aucklander so she helped me find a dress shop that I liked. And she did a wonderful job! I fell in love with a dress and it was super on sale.

The evening of the dinner I got all dressed up, bought a couple of bottles of sparkling wine for myself and my flatmate Helen and made my way over to International House (another student accommodation just up the street with an actual dining hall). The room looked amazing. The theme was Casino Royale. There were candles and tiny cards on the tables. The food was fabulous and there was so much of it. It was a lot, a lot of fun. Here are some pictures from the evening:

Myself and three of my four flatmates.
This is my current background on my laptop.

Me and Claire, one of my friends and RAs.

Me and Innes. She's one of my friends from
Germany. She helped me with my homework
and practiced speaking with me.

Matthew and I after the dinner. He
lent me his coat like a gentleman.

Dinner at the Sky Tower
My favorite meal during my time in New Zealand took place exactly a week after the formal dinner. Originally it was supposed to take place on my birthday, but I thought the group dinner I will discuss later was going to happen at the sky tower and I wanted to make sure Matt took me there first. It was my birthday present and a delicious one indeed. Matt's philosophy about the sky tower is that it costs $25 to get up to the viewing deck anyway, so you might as well get a meal out of it, as he told me on the fourth day I knew him.

Here's a picture of Matt and I all dressed up for our dinner:

We arrived early so we went up to the observation deck first. It was okay, but after the Eiffel Tower, no view of the city quite looks so good.

The view from the observation deck

Then we went upstairs to "Orbit." The restaurant rotates, hence the name. Matt ordered us a really nice bottle of Savignon Blanc (a sweet white wine that New Zealand is known for) as we decided on our mains.

Fun Fact about New Zealand: In NZ, an entree is a smaller main course, whereas a 'main' is what we would consider an entree, basically a meal sized dish.

Matt got some kind of steak (can't remember) and I got the seafood risotto. My dish was okay, it was a bit bland for my liking. The steamed vege we got was tasty and Matt's dish was also delicious. To be honest though, my favorite part of the meal was the next two courses. Next was the dessert. I got the chocolate and caramel mousse, which came with a scoop of hokey pokey ice cream. Matt got just the ice cream and some wafers that came with it. My dessert was tasty. Just when I thought our meal was about to end, Matt decided to go all out and ordered us a magnificent cheese board. It had cheddar, brie and bleu (our favorite). It came with wafers, grapes and strawberries and these tiny, little jam-esque things in a few flavors. It was really fun because this was the only dish we shared and the cheeseboard had an exponential amount of possibilities. I would try the grape with the brie and would suggest it to Matt, then he would try the cheddar with one of the jam things and would suggest it to me. Between the board and the nice wine, it felt like we were cheese connoisseurs or something.

The whole affair took about two and a half hours, we saw the entire city of Auckland two and a half times, from sunlight to sunset. It was absolutely lovely. After our meal, we stopped at a convenience store, picked up some specialty soda (pink grapefruit flavor for him and blood orange for me) and a bag of gummy snakes and headed back to his flat. We watched the first Star Wars and called it a wonderful night.

Well folks, I have a few more dinners to write about, but speaking of dinner, Mom wants to go to Olive Garden. Take care all.