I think we can all agree if you are considering staying in the halls of residence during your first year of uni you will be intrigued as to what you will be fed.

All I can say is don’t expect home cooked meals cooked made with love. The food is not what you will be used. But for cooking for about 400 hungry uni students they do a great job catering for all types eating requirements. Vegan, vegetarian and your typical meat eater.

In O’Rorke, Uni hall and Whitaker they are fully catered with three meals a day during weekdays and during the weekend two. In Huia, you have the option to be fully catered or partially. This gives you the option to have dinner cooked and cook your other meals (which yes! does reduce your weekly cost for the hall).

A sample of what we might have during the weekends.

A sample of what we might have during the weekdays.

If you have only half an hour to eat for lunch and don’t think you will have enough time, do it anyway. Lunches will become the highlight of your day. Pizza, nachos, wedges, burritos, lasagna. If you can avoid getting a packed lunch do it. Because I can guarantee you will miss out on a great meal back at the hall and feel left out when everyone talks about how great it was.

While we are on the topic of packed lunches. Let’s just say they do their job. I’m not a fan of the salads, but the popcorn, sandwich, and fruit fill you enough so you don’t spend money at campus shops. You do NOT want to be spending money on campus.

There are a few things that you think you will never get used to but adapt very quickly.

1. Eating dinner at set times. For most people, they eat at very different times to what is available in the halls of residence. but by the second day, you are eating dinner as soon as it is available.

2. You will quickly get so used to grabbing rice at dinner that you will grab it when it makes absolutely no sense. You look at your plate and are like “Steak and rice? Really what was I thinking?”. It just becomes a habit because most dinner we have, go with rice. 

3. Having the availability of dessert twice a day can scare a lot of people. I personally just eat every descent dessert they have, because why not, I’m sure ill lose the weight next year when I’m fending for myself and starving.

Sundaes on Sunday 😉

Just take the food for granted because I’m sure the second year of uni is going to be quite a struggle to find what goes well with noodles. Or even finding out how to cook noodles (6th-floor O’Rorke 😐 ). Kids remember to always add water to your noodles before putting them in the microwave, we don’t want the whole hall being evacuated at 1am.

xx