New Zealand's bomb, but choose your city wisely

Overall my experience in New Zealand was phenomenal. I'm currently sitting in the San Francisco Airport typing this as I end my abroad experience, which is a bit surreal. In general, if you like adventure, the outdoors, and in general pushing your limits, I'd say New Zealand is the perfect place to study abroad. For me, I chose New Zealand because I needed an English speaking country to learn my engineering classes in and New Zealand, especially the University of Auckland, is great for that. And then on top of that, New Zealand just seemed like such a unique destination… Not to mention that I heard is was unbelievably amazing. That it certainly is. I promise you there are places and sites in New Zealand that you could have even imagined existing on this planet, they are so beautiful. I wasn't much of a hiker before and to be completely honest, I'm still not- but with that being said, it was nice to have a completely different dynamic. The great thing about New Zealand is that its smaller size allows you to travel throughout almost the entire country in your time here, regardless of what city you are in. As my title said though, choose the city you study in wisely because even if you go away every weekend, you are still going to be in your abroad city for the most time! Something I wish I could have read some where before deciding is what it's like to live in the New Zealand cities as a student, so I'll quickly try and give my best impression of the main cities. Auckland (where I studied) is the biggest city in New Zealand, but that doesn't automatically make it the liveliest. It has the tallest buildings and the most people, but ironically, it's a bit dead there. In terms of the social scene, Auckland is definitely not the best, but it also definitely isn't the worst. If the social scene isn't a priority for you, then you can disregard that, but even with that, I must say that Auckland was missing a sort of character. IF you want a city with character and soul, I would say your best bet is Wellington. Although I was only there for a long weekend, you could see the the city really had culture, and that carried over into awesome places to eat, good bars, and a good nightlife. To be honest, if I could do it over again, I probably would have chosen Wellington over Auckland, BUT that doesn't mean Auckland is bad in anyway. Weather-wise, Auckland is the best because it stays relatively warm there for most of the year, which isn't true for the south island and even for Wellington because of how windy it is. Two cities on the south island that you could potentially study at are Christchurch and Dunedin. In all honesty, I got bad vibes from Christchurch as a place for a student to live. I was at a restaurant with my friends at 7 PM there once and we asked the waitress where we could go to get ice cream after and she was like " Oh lord, well it's much too late now- they're all closed. But earlier on you could have gone to…" and then brain cut her off because she acted like 7 PM was 3 AM. Christchurch is definitely not the liveliest city, but I guess it has a quaint vibe? And it's also in a pretty great location for a lot of awesome points of interest, like Arthur's Pass, Mount Cook, Queenstown, etc. Dunedin, on the other hand, is the opposite and is said to be the party capital of New Zealand. I only drove through the city once and it was definitely smaller- but in a good way. For my first time in NZ, I passed houses that looked like fraternity houses and I saw students walking around and I thought to myself "Ok, this is a cool college town." I can't really judge Dunedin much because I wasn't there for long, but I've only heard great things about it. I would definitely have considered that city much more had I known that Auckland wasn't much of a party city. Just remember though, that cities do get colder quicker on the South Island (Christchurch and Dunedin)… Like, for example, I traveled the south island during mid- April when it was still around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and there it was around 50 degrees instead. Not that big of a deal, but if you are a brat from Miami, LA, Houston, etc., you might not appreciate that. Altogether though, whichever city you end up studying in, you will learn to love for its individualities and you will be able to see all the wonders that NZ has to offer. In addition to that, you'll be able to go out out to bars and clubs as much as you want to in any of the cities… It's just that in Dunedin and Wellington they may be a bit more lively.