Everton Hall Orientation Part 1

Victoria University has a week for hall orientations and getting acclimated before the semester begins. Everton Hall, my hall, arranged a ton of activities for us!

On Tuesday, my flatmates and I were a team for Amazing Race. Basically, we had to walk around Wellington with an app on our phone and when we got to a location marked on the app, we would have to answer a question. Whichever team hit the most targets would win. And we hit every target! My flatmates love playing games so they really gamified our strategy to make it possible.

In the evening, I went to the Speed Friending event. We’d sit at a table across from someone else, talk to them for about a minute and then we’d switch to the next person. I met a ton of people by doing this but their names and what I learned about them is all scrambled in my head. I’ll sort it out eventually. Everyone was very friendly! I ended the day by playing a board game with my flatmates and a few of their friends who were visiting.

Wednesday was the day of the Everton Hall Mount Victoria hike. At the top of the mountain, we saw some gorgeous views! In the afternoon, a Mr. Whippy icecream truck came to the hall and in the evening we took a hall picture and had a BBQ. Afterwards I played pool with my flatmate Sam and two other people I met.

On Thursday, Everton Hall took us on a tour of Parliament. I got to see where all the Parliament members would sit and work and we even got to sit in the press room which the Kiwis (people from New Zealand) recognized from all the Covid-19 press briefings they would watch during the last few years. In the afternoon, my hall held a sports day event and we played a game called Multi-sport. Basically, we would just alternate between basketball, dodgeball, ultimate frisbee, and football (soccer). It was actually super fun and they thought *I* was really good at basketball because I stole the ball, passed it and shot it in! We ended the event by playing some ping pong.

That night there was a trivia event and I played on a team with my Arcadia friends Skye and Rebekah. We didn’t do very well hahaha. I’m just amazed by all the events the RAs and staff at my hall arranged! In the next post, I’ll tell you about the rest of the week!