Todd:OK, Christian, you were just telling me that you lived in New Zealand as an exchange student!

Christian:That's right. In high school, yeah!

Todd:What was that like?

Christian:I mean, I was 17 years at the time and, you know, I was just leaving home for the first time and going abroad for a year without going home, and it was the first time to actually move out of my family and it was an intimidating experience but at the same time it was extremely enjoyable. I had a great time, traveled around, met a lot of great people, got introduced into Maori culture, and yeah it was fascinating, really fascinating.

Todd:What did you like the most about New Zealand?

Christian:The country itself, probably the nature and the wildlife. It's just so pure, so green. You got the big mountains; you got the fjords, the rivers. It's all such, it's a great eco-system, you can tell that it's non polluted. It's just really nice. If you appreciate it, call it nature, you can walk around and soak up the atmosphere. It's really good.

Todd:What was the hardest thing about living so far from home?

Christian:The fact that I could only communicate to my family through faxes in the beginning because calling was a bit expensive. The circumstances didn't allow me to use the phone where I was living, so I had to use faxes and that is a bit strange.

Todd:Wow, so there's no e-mail or internet?

Christian:Well, at the time, e-mail wasn't used that much in New Zealand. There was one computer in my school that had an internet connection. And I was allowed to use that because I was an exchange student, the only exchange student at my school. They said, well you can come in and use it every now and then, I used it maybe once a week, because I had never used e-mail before cause this was back in 97, so it's eight, like seven or eight years ago, and I guess, in New Zealand they didn't really have that many connections.

Todd:Wow, great story.

Christian:It was truly great, yeah.