living in new zealand for 3 months

as part of a school exchange and completing my final year project, i had the opportunity to study in New Zealand, specifically Palmerston North, for a full trimester with my classmates.

the city that we were in is more rural, known for their agriculture/farming but is also dubbed by locals as "incredibly boring" due to their lack of a city life. some things my classmates and i weren't prepared for:

- everything closes at 5pm. if you have no food at home, there's nowhere for you to get it

- buses operate in this city at 20 MINUTE INTERVALS because everyone owns a car. neither my friends and i have our driver's license so we have to plan our trips in advance or take the $30 uber to school.

- many of us underpacked for the winter season and ended up having to buy jackets/inner layers there

- food is expensive >$20 per meal, all of us had to learn/rely on each other to cook meals at home to save money

- co-living with friends, which sadly broke up some friend groups during this trip

on top of all this, we had to complete our final year project which was super stressful for me as everything was new: environment, school, laboratory, people etc. there was lack of our usual comfortable spaces that we could hang out back at singapore, which made it that more isolating.

what helped was definitely the classmates there, who i unexpectedly got close to from this trip as we bonded from all these experiences. we all learnt how to adult; planning grocery trips, meal prepping, saving money where we could, fixing house things (our light went out and we had to repair it as it was a rental apartment), those who rented cars had to learn how to top up petrol, splitting bills with roommates, learning the new zealand culture, whereby they are much more laid back and have incredible work-life balance compared to us in singapore.

regardless of the difficulties of this trip, i really learnt to appreciate the conveniences of singapore, such as our transport system, the availability of 24 hour grocery stores, the weather, existence of public spaces for us to hang out at etc.

i feel very lucky to have experienced this, and i encourage everyone and anyone to go on such overseas exchange trips if you have the opportunity to!