Haere Mai (Welcome)!

     Kia ora (hello!) everyone and welcome to my blog :) Here you will find a wide range of weird thoughts and ideas of mine + hopefully helpful advice coming from an international student at the University of Auckland.

    A little bit about me: I am a student at UoA studying a BA in psychology and education. I came to Aotearoa New Zealand at the start of 2020 (I know...) to do year 12 (second last year of high school in NZ). I chose not to do year 13 and went to uni in 2021. Hopefully I'll be done with my degree by July 2023! 

    I have lotsss of hobbies. I like pretending to be Taylor Swift (god I love her) and writing music about imaginary (sometimes actual) scenarios. I was a piano teacher for a few months in 2022 and it was so much fun! I am an absolute fan of languages and an aspiring polyglot - I can speak fluent (sort of) Cantonese, English and Mandarin, and I'm learning le français (French), español (Spanish), 日本語 (Japanese), and Esperanto. 

    More on my journey to becoming an educated and productive member of society (or not): After a year of high school (mostly under lockdown), I realised I could go to uni... so I did (will cover more in a future post!) I started uni in January 2021. The summer start programme had just launched in 2021 and I highly recommend students to do it and live in halls if you can (more on that in a future post)!   

    For now, my focus for this blog will be tips and advice for international students in New Zealand, or coming to New Zealand. Some of it might help domestic students too.

    That's it from me, for now. Stay tuned for some good chaos :D

- Andrea