You can study in New Zealand as an international student. Studying here will help you get much better at English and there are lots of supports for you to help you with uni life. There are places at uni that help you with your English, there are people to talk to if you need advice or if you just need someone to listen to your life problems.
If you're wondering what university to go to, I have to say it depends what you need to study. The fees vary too depending on your program of study.
The best university here is called The University of Auckland located in Auckland central. It provides a very good education in a fun environment. This is the address of the site:
Click here to view the web page
The next university is called Auckland University of Technology or AUT for short. They can be less strict at times in comparison to The University of Auckland. This is the address of the site:
Click here to view the web page
The other university is called Massey University. This is the address of the site:
Click here to view the web page
Another good university is called University of Otago. "The main campus of the University of Otago is located in the city of Dunedin, which is the major city within the province of Otago. It also has campuses in Christchurch and Wellington." This university is for medical and post graduate health education.
This is the address of the site:
Click here to view the web page
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Friday, 15 February 2013
Working in New Zealand
There are jobs available but like any other place it might be a bit hard to find the job that you are after. I should note that places like fast food providers and supermarkets usually hire a lot of people. To work in New Zealand you either need to be a resident here or hold a work permit (I suppose people who have Australian residency are able to live and work here without any problem).
My work experiences:
I used to have a part time job in a restaurant while I wasn't studying. It was a very good experience because I got to learn about all the new foods here and all those deserts and drinks! Working there helped me to get used to the different accents here. The funny thing was that I had a kiwi coworker who used to talk allll the time and I was only understanding the overall meaning of the conversation lol Sometimes I was just laughing when she was laughing without knowing what we were laughing at (well I didn't want to be annoying to keep asking her to repeat her sentences) but after a while I started to understand her much better! all in all it was a job and it was paying.
The cons about that job was that we had to run around all the time and sometimes do more than we were able to (because they didn't want to have pay more people in those shifts so we had lack of staff), because of that we were rarely feel appreciated since the manager was not satisfied most of the times.
The other thing that I didn't like was that sometimes people weren't that nice. I should say that there were a lot of other nice people though. I was meeting a loooot of people in one day so of course I was meeting few that weren't that nice. One of them that I still remember was a woman who was making fun of my accent (I have an American accent) and kinda making fun of the whole me! It didn't feel good at all but well I was in the work place and I had to be nice to them in return. I guess there are hard times in every job so don't get disappointed if things aren't very pleasant.
The other hard thing about that job is that you might get body pains because of a lot of work (it might depend on the type of body though).
Working in a supermarket:
Being in checkout is quite nice, you got a big space and you see a lot of people. Again because we see tones of people daily, there might be some nice customers between them and some angry or even mean ones. Your job is to serve the customers, be friendly at the same time, have a conversation with them and a big smile on your face. It might get hard though cuz you might get very tired after some hours or even get an irritated throat! The good things about this job was that I got to learn all the names of the fruits and get better at English. I met a lot of lovely people and again its a job and it pays :)
One of the cons about this job is that you can get very dry hands after work (because you're touching a lot of things at work, like products, water, money and etc.).The second one is that if the company decides that there shouldn't be any chairs for the staff while working, you can end up with very sore feet and legs! (depending on person to person, the leg tiredness might last for a day or two after the work day).
Starting a small business with companies that want to use you to sell their products. Never EVER do it if you are after a part time job that would give you the freedom to study at the same time! If you do it as a part time job you will end up losing money and also time! This kind of job requires a lot of work and lots of effort. I'm not even sure if it's a good idea as a full time job for some couple of reasons:
- In this type of job you receive about 15%-24% of the sale BUT you have to pay for the brochures (you need them cuz that's how customers will buy from you) and they sell the brochures in bulk which wont be cheap.
- You will be responsible in taking the goods to the customers which will waste your time and money (cuz you have to pay for the petrol).
-You will have to handle the customers. You might trust someone and they will steal from you by not paying you! So you will end up losing money. An advice: NEVER EVER accept cheques! what they do is they just write a cheque and give it to you. You go to the bank put it through and bang it gets bounced back! The bank wont do anything, the customer will avoid you and other people will help her/him with it. You will be left with hundreds of dollars that you have to pay to the company otherwise you'll get into a serious problem! What you do is that you go and pay them using your credit card and pay interest on it. Your earnings will be in a negative way. To sum it up, its a terrible idea and it wont pay you at all.
My work experiences:
I used to have a part time job in a restaurant while I wasn't studying. It was a very good experience because I got to learn about all the new foods here and all those deserts and drinks! Working there helped me to get used to the different accents here. The funny thing was that I had a kiwi coworker who used to talk allll the time and I was only understanding the overall meaning of the conversation lol Sometimes I was just laughing when she was laughing without knowing what we were laughing at (well I didn't want to be annoying to keep asking her to repeat her sentences) but after a while I started to understand her much better! all in all it was a job and it was paying.
The cons about that job was that we had to run around all the time and sometimes do more than we were able to (because they didn't want to have pay more people in those shifts so we had lack of staff), because of that we were rarely feel appreciated since the manager was not satisfied most of the times.
The other thing that I didn't like was that sometimes people weren't that nice. I should say that there were a lot of other nice people though. I was meeting a loooot of people in one day so of course I was meeting few that weren't that nice. One of them that I still remember was a woman who was making fun of my accent (I have an American accent) and kinda making fun of the whole me! It didn't feel good at all but well I was in the work place and I had to be nice to them in return. I guess there are hard times in every job so don't get disappointed if things aren't very pleasant.
The other hard thing about that job is that you might get body pains because of a lot of work (it might depend on the type of body though).
Working in a supermarket:
Being in checkout is quite nice, you got a big space and you see a lot of people. Again because we see tones of people daily, there might be some nice customers between them and some angry or even mean ones. Your job is to serve the customers, be friendly at the same time, have a conversation with them and a big smile on your face. It might get hard though cuz you might get very tired after some hours or even get an irritated throat! The good things about this job was that I got to learn all the names of the fruits and get better at English. I met a lot of lovely people and again its a job and it pays :)
One of the cons about this job is that you can get very dry hands after work (because you're touching a lot of things at work, like products, water, money and etc.).The second one is that if the company decides that there shouldn't be any chairs for the staff while working, you can end up with very sore feet and legs! (depending on person to person, the leg tiredness might last for a day or two after the work day).
Starting a small business with companies that want to use you to sell their products. Never EVER do it if you are after a part time job that would give you the freedom to study at the same time! If you do it as a part time job you will end up losing money and also time! This kind of job requires a lot of work and lots of effort. I'm not even sure if it's a good idea as a full time job for some couple of reasons:
- In this type of job you receive about 15%-24% of the sale BUT you have to pay for the brochures (you need them cuz that's how customers will buy from you) and they sell the brochures in bulk which wont be cheap.
- You will be responsible in taking the goods to the customers which will waste your time and money (cuz you have to pay for the petrol).
-You will have to handle the customers. You might trust someone and they will steal from you by not paying you! So you will end up losing money. An advice: NEVER EVER accept cheques! what they do is they just write a cheque and give it to you. You go to the bank put it through and bang it gets bounced back! The bank wont do anything, the customer will avoid you and other people will help her/him with it. You will be left with hundreds of dollars that you have to pay to the company otherwise you'll get into a serious problem! What you do is that you go and pay them using your credit card and pay interest on it. Your earnings will be in a negative way. To sum it up, its a terrible idea and it wont pay you at all.
Monday, 4 February 2013
First Few Weeks
It was a whole new experience for me to get out of a country (Iran) that I lived in for 18 years for the first time. I have to say I LOVED IT! :D
The first funny thing was that I wasn't used to the Kiwi accent (well we have so many different accents here) so if somebody wasn't looking into my face while talking to me I wouldn't notice them lol Like when I was on the way to NZ a kiwi guy told me that I had a nice shirt and I thought he was talking to someone else, I noticed he was talking to me when he said it two or three more times lol When I got to the airport the guy who was checking my passport said "How are you?" and I just said "Hi" gosh then 3 seconds later I realized what he has said but it was a bit late to reply him! I felt kinda dumb lol anyway it took me nearly a month to get used to all the accents here :)
The greatest feeling was that I could finally feel the breeze in my hairs! I wasn't forced to wear Hijab. Then I was thinking probably not many people here know how it would feel to wear a scarf, a long sleeve dress and a pants in a hot summer day, phew I'm glad that I don't have to wear scarf anymore and swear at it every time.
When I came to New Zealand I came straight to North shore in Auckland and I was like "where are the humans?!" I should say the population here is much much less than Tehran which is a good thing. I feel life is much more relaxing in Auckland.
For a few weeks I was feeling that I was living in a bubble, everything was different! When I wanted to cross the street I should have remembered to check the right side and then the left side instead of the left side first and then the right side. As you might have guessed, yes the drivers seat is in the right side of the vehicle unlike Tehran and that makes everything else different.
As I started having a part time job over here I started learning more about the English language and the foods and everything else. The funny thing is that it happened for me to hear a lot of people saying "sweet as" and well I've never heard about it before back then and the closest meaning that I could relate it to was "sweet ass"! lol I was a waitress in my first part time job and it happened that a lot of people were using sweet as and then I was thinking "whats wrong with the people here?!!!" :)) Then one day I asked some guys who were sitting at a table to explain me the meaning of sweet as and I told them about what I used to think about it before and guess what it means something like "all good" and we all laughed about the whole thing.
The other funny thing that happened was when a couple asked me to give them a paper. I went "Ok, I'll be right back" and I took some white A4 papers with few small pencils for them. Then I noticed that they weren't expecting those at all and they looked quite confused! and that was the time that I found out some people call newspaper "paper" over here.
I'm guessing probably a lot of similar situations happen to people who English is their second language.
Another thing that I found out was that the most favorite game in NZ seems to be Rugby! and for some reason I had never heard about Rugby before in my life! In the first few weeks of my arrival, one of my coworkers was telling me how much he liked rugby and stuff like and he turned up the volume of the radio. Since I was still getting used to the accent I didn't get what he was talking about and the closest thing that my mind related the word "rugby" to was "radio"! lol so I thought he was talking about radio and I didn't say anything. Later on I tried to watch rugby and see whats going on but I gave up, it was hard to understand what was going on lol
When I came to NZ I felt everything was expensive because I was converting the price to the Persian money and it took me few weeks to get used to it hehe and now I feel like saving is a challenge! There are lots of pretty things in the shops especially clothes! and the CHOCOLATES! I should warn you not to have many chocolates if you don't wanna get fat! Its easy to gain weight when we have so many yummy chocolates around with a lot of good deals! :p
Another thing that I noticed here was that all the shops close at about 5ish pm! that's pretty early when I was comparing it to Tehran. Over there the shops are open till 11pm or even later and everything else is open.
To Be Continued...
The first funny thing was that I wasn't used to the Kiwi accent (well we have so many different accents here) so if somebody wasn't looking into my face while talking to me I wouldn't notice them lol Like when I was on the way to NZ a kiwi guy told me that I had a nice shirt and I thought he was talking to someone else, I noticed he was talking to me when he said it two or three more times lol When I got to the airport the guy who was checking my passport said "How are you?" and I just said "Hi" gosh then 3 seconds later I realized what he has said but it was a bit late to reply him! I felt kinda dumb lol anyway it took me nearly a month to get used to all the accents here :)
The greatest feeling was that I could finally feel the breeze in my hairs! I wasn't forced to wear Hijab. Then I was thinking probably not many people here know how it would feel to wear a scarf, a long sleeve dress and a pants in a hot summer day, phew I'm glad that I don't have to wear scarf anymore and swear at it every time.
When I came to New Zealand I came straight to North shore in Auckland and I was like "where are the humans?!" I should say the population here is much much less than Tehran which is a good thing. I feel life is much more relaxing in Auckland.
For a few weeks I was feeling that I was living in a bubble, everything was different! When I wanted to cross the street I should have remembered to check the right side and then the left side instead of the left side first and then the right side. As you might have guessed, yes the drivers seat is in the right side of the vehicle unlike Tehran and that makes everything else different.
As I started having a part time job over here I started learning more about the English language and the foods and everything else. The funny thing is that it happened for me to hear a lot of people saying "sweet as" and well I've never heard about it before back then and the closest meaning that I could relate it to was "sweet ass"! lol I was a waitress in my first part time job and it happened that a lot of people were using sweet as and then I was thinking "whats wrong with the people here?!!!" :)) Then one day I asked some guys who were sitting at a table to explain me the meaning of sweet as and I told them about what I used to think about it before and guess what it means something like "all good" and we all laughed about the whole thing.
The other funny thing that happened was when a couple asked me to give them a paper. I went "Ok, I'll be right back" and I took some white A4 papers with few small pencils for them. Then I noticed that they weren't expecting those at all and they looked quite confused! and that was the time that I found out some people call newspaper "paper" over here.
I'm guessing probably a lot of similar situations happen to people who English is their second language.
Another thing that I found out was that the most favorite game in NZ seems to be Rugby! and for some reason I had never heard about Rugby before in my life! In the first few weeks of my arrival, one of my coworkers was telling me how much he liked rugby and stuff like and he turned up the volume of the radio. Since I was still getting used to the accent I didn't get what he was talking about and the closest thing that my mind related the word "rugby" to was "radio"! lol so I thought he was talking about radio and I didn't say anything. Later on I tried to watch rugby and see whats going on but I gave up, it was hard to understand what was going on lol
When I came to NZ I felt everything was expensive because I was converting the price to the Persian money and it took me few weeks to get used to it hehe and now I feel like saving is a challenge! There are lots of pretty things in the shops especially clothes! and the CHOCOLATES! I should warn you not to have many chocolates if you don't wanna get fat! Its easy to gain weight when we have so many yummy chocolates around with a lot of good deals! :p
Another thing that I noticed here was that all the shops close at about 5ish pm! that's pretty early when I was comparing it to Tehran. Over there the shops are open till 11pm or even later and everything else is open.
To Be Continued...
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