Hi Colin, welcome!!!
My friend studied abroad in New Zealand once, she loved it. It was a return trip for her though, since she'd been once before. I guess they were filming Lord of the Rings either during her first trip or semester there, because she bumped into Elijah Wood twice and, uhm.... well, while those stories were *our* favorite parts of her trip, they were the least favorite part of hers.

But she loved it there overall.
I'll introduce myself as well... I go by many names but typically these days online I'm called Cray. My real name is Graham. My old forum account was Questing Character which earned me the names "Questie", "QC", "Q", "Q-meh", and "Questieh". (And let's not forget my evil counter part "
Questiebil". I've been a fan of King's Quest for roughly since the dawn of time, and I've been following TSL for.... well, let's do the math.... six years? Seven years? I think seven years. Since about 2003.... so, yeah, seven. I especially love them, but in general I love everything that's high fantasy.
And, yeah, like that. And stuff.