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Today the guy at the student information desk told me "You're down under now, mate". No matter that he, along with everyone else I've met here, thought I was from Canada, he is right. This marks the second time in the last year that I have crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere, this time to New Zealand, known to the Maori as Aotearoa, "land of the long white cloud", or, as I call it, land of the flightless birds.

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After sending hundreds of documents to the New Zealand immigration office, our visas have finally arrived—we’re not getting deported after all! It’s like little elves showed up and brought Christmas early.

The visa process went something like this:

Immigration: Please send an original copy of your marriage license signed in blood, embossed in gold leaf, and hand-delivered by a fairy riding a flying white pony.
Us: Um. Okay....

Immigration: That is the wrong kind of flying white pony.
Us: You didn’t specify.
Immigration: It was implied. Please start over.

Immigration: Please send your firstborn child dressed as a kangaroo, riding a llama, and holding the original Declaration of Independence. 
Us: We don’t have a firstborn child. 
Immigration: Please try harder.

Immigration: Please send three pictures of you holding Oompa-Loompas while riding a Ferris wheel with Bigfoot in Antarctica.
Us: Um. What?
Immigration: Please send them by tomorrow in the early A.M.
Us: We don’t know any Oompa-Loompas.
Immigration: You know Oompa-Loompas.
Us: Um... we're pretty sure we don’t.
Immigration: You don’t understand how this works, do you?

Immigration: Please send...
Us: *BANG HEADS AGAINST WALL*

Needless to say, we are excited that the process is over, and that we're officially considered real people! Now we can, you know, work and get paid and get health insurance—the little things in life.

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Whoever named things in New Zealand either had a morose temperament or a curious sense of humor. As we drove around the South Island, we were constantly caught off guard by the oddly pessimistic names for the natural phenomena. There is, of course, the well-known Doubtful Sound, but it doesn't end there: Dismal Creek, Poverty Bay, Mount Misery, and our favorite, Mount Awful.

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While Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings put New Zealand on the international film map, the country already had a significant film tradition before the hobbits journeyed to Tongariro National Park. Anyone interested in the moving image, social history, or who simply wants to view a free feature film, should head to the New Zealand Film Archive, one of the country’s hidden cultural treasures.

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