Let me bring this down to your hemisphere
How’s everyone doing? Moved in alright? Sinking your teeth into those new classes? That sounds adorable. Good for you. Personally, I’ve been attending class since the beginning of July. Why, you ask? Dear reader, I am currently living in the future. Also, New Zealand. For those of you who aren’t aware, New Zealand is a small country located on the bottom half of the globe. Its “claims to fame” include sheep, rugby and being the set for “The Lord of the Rings” films. It is also literally in the future. Over here, we’re on the other side of the International Date Line, which is some kind of shamanistic boundary that divides today and tomorrow.
When it’s Monday in Maine, it’s Tuesday in New Zealand. Want to know what happens on Tuesday? Can’t tell you. That violates all the laws of time travel. Sorry. Although I have to say, it’s pretty nice. I got to see the last Harry Potter film while most of you were standing in line wearing robes and practicing charms. But it’s not all good. Sometimes the burden of knowing what happens before everyone else weighs on my soul. Also, my parents are really starting to get tired of me starting every Skype conversation with “welcome to the future, bitches!” and then flashing a strobe light.
But why have I started school so early? Were you even paying attention? I said that New Zealand was on the bottom half of the Earth, which, if you don’t have a globe handy, is located almost entirely in the southern hemisphere. Thus, the seasons are completely reversed. Summer is winter, winter is summer, the Fourth of July is called “Scrimsham’s Spectacle,” and St. Patrick’s Day is, apparently, every day. It’s a wonderful place.
But here we are, all the way down in the fourth paragraph, and I haven’t even answered the question that surely is at the top of all of your minds: what direction do the toilets flush? In the northern hemisphere, the water spirals in a certain, American direction that I currently forget (I have been away for a while). Legend tells that down in the southern hemisphere, due to something called the Coriolis effect and probably also communism, the water spirals in the other direction. Now, I’m not saying this was the first reason why I came to New Zealand, but it was close. And what I found out was shocking: the water doesn’t spiral at all. Whatever uncouth mechanism is responsible, it results in a bastardization of the proper American flush.
Apart from the toilets, there’s not much to complain about in New Zealand (which is not meant, in any way, to downplay the seriousness of my complaints about the toilets). The landscape is almost annoyingly beautiful; it’s impossible to travel fifteen minutes without seeing something worth taking a picture. As a New Jersey native, I am often overwhelmed by the natural splendor. They don’t even have good highways down here; just lots of sheep and rainbows.