Cookies

Yet again, this week was not very exciting and yet again, I am going to start out by talking about the weather.  Most of the week we had nice weather but yet again today it is windy.  I was not as glad about the wind today as I was last week.  I did do some more cooking this week but it went a lot better.  Today I made chocolate chip cookies.  The cookies turned out really good and yummy.  On Friday night I went to another Operation Friendship dinner.  The food was good and it was nice to hang out the families and other students.  After the meal, we did a quiz in 6 teams of about 5 people.  There were four categories, NZ, history, sports, and food.  Doing the quizzes I learned a lot of new and interesting information, James Cook was the first explorer in NZ, the NZ women’s soccer team is known as the football ferns, and in curling the target for the stone is thrown/slid to is called a house.

My papers have been going well.  In my psychology paper we are now learning about Freud.  For the last lab we had a friend, I had one of my flat mates, write two stories about two pictures we showed them.  We then analyzed the photos.  It was fun to be doing real psychology things but the analyses were not very accurate.   In my maths paper learned about Markov Algorithms.  I am enjoying this paper more and more as the weeks go by.  This past week in my CHCH paper we had a group discussion about the helping readings we did.  One of the main question we talked about different types of helping are and if we are able to judge different types of helping. In my geology paper we are now talking about volcanoes and the hazards along with those.  For this class we had a workshop all day this past Saturday.  It was long but interesting.  In the workshop went over the key points about earthquakes and the alpine fault.  We then split into three groups, one for each of the key industries on the west coast (tourism, mining, and dairy).  In the groups we discussed what would the priorities for our industries if there was a large earthquake along the alpine fault.  The second part of the workshop we were in groups with representatives from each of the industries and we discussed the priorities for everyone.  We now have to write a report, which will be hard but fun.

Since I do not have any pictures from the things I did this week here is one of a bird that I saw.  If you know the type please let me know.

This next week will probably be more of the same stuff, studying and going to lectures.  There have predicted snow again here for tonight and the next couple of days so we will see if that happens.  I am not fully sure when I will be posting next on here, hopefully before Sunday, because I will be flying up to Wellington on Friday and heading around NZ for the mid semester break.  Until next time have fun and smile.

Klunse

This week was not too exciting.  I last left you off with nice weather on Sunday.  The weather continued to be nice.  It was sunny and not too windy most of the week.  Today (Sunday) the nice weather disappeared, it became really windy.  I was sitting doing my maths (I may have been chatting with my roommates from Bates at the same time but I was mostly doing maths you can ask them) and you could hear the wind whistling through the window and see all the leaves being blown around.  I will not complain too much about the wind because later today I was glad there was a good breeze outside.  The story I am going to tell now is slightly embarrassing but I am going to face up to it and tell the whole internet about it. 

There is some information you need to know about me before I get into the story.  For quite some time now, I have eaten pasta for lunch and dinner.  I don’t mean like only one a week but every lunch and every dinner I would have some sort of pasta dish.  Since going to Bates the last two years I mostly had the same things on my pasta to but I have not gotten sick of it yet and don’t think I will any time soon.  Since coming here I have been eating the same thing mostly.  I would cook some mince and then add a jar of pasta sauce and some frozen veggies (corn, carets, peas, and beans) together and then I would cook a pot of pasta.  I would eat this for lunch and dinner for a couple of days and then I would cook the same thing again.  (If you are wondering I have been having portage for breakfast for the last week or so and will probably continue with that.) I have yet to get sick of this meal.  It is cheap, easy to make , healthy and yummy.  I decided this weekend that I should try something new.  I decided I would make myself caramelized garlic chicken breast and cheesy rice, two things I have never cooked before.  I was excited for my dinner.  I started the chicken and the rice.  Things were going well until the end.  I was getting ready to check to see if the chicken was done and I open the oven door and smoke came out.  It was not too bad, the sugar had burned but the chicken was still good.  I took the smaller pieces out and put the two bigger pieces back into the oven.  After that I opened the lid to the rice to see how it was doing and I noticed that it was looking a little dry and then I realized that I had burnt my rice too.  Ok so I take out the last of the chicken and by then the sugar was burnt but the chicken was still fine.    It was pretty smoky in the kitchen so we opened up the windows and the balcony door, this is why I was glad there was a breeze outside.  My chicken and rice ended up being really yummy but it was a pain to clean up.  I got all the burnt sugar of the pan, but right now, the pot is not as well off.  I did a good amount of burring of the rice in it but I am determined to get it clean.  To begin today I was making muffins and I burnt those also.  I should have realized that today was not meant to be a cooking day at that point and not tried to cook my dinner.  To top it all off I was trying to use boiling water to help clean the pot and it was working and then I accidently got my figure in it and burnt it too.  Today I ended up burning 4 different things.  I hope I have filled my burn quota for the year.  On a good note my food was still really yummy and I did not set off the smoke alarm.  So the point of this story is that since I burnt my food and made the kitchen and common room smoky I am glad there was a breeze outside to air out the room. 

The rest of my week has been much of the same.  I felt a couple of earthquakes here and there.  I am getting good at figuring out there magnitude.  I can guess within plus or minus .2 magnitudes, there is at least one thing I have learned here.  My geology class has continued to be interesting.  We are still learning about earthquakes.  In the last lecture, we learned about the location of aftershocks and why they happen. They happen where the there has been less slip in the ground compared to other locations in the rupture area.  In psychology, we have been learning about the nerves system, hormones, and stress.  We learned that it is good to stress in small periods of time but bad for your body in long doses like when studding for exams and such.  My maths class is getting more interesting as we are now learning about Turing Machines.  This week’s reading for my CHCH 101 class were on the topic of helping.  I am excited to continue with my papers this coming weeks.

So outside of my papers I have not been doing much.  On Tuesday I went to frisbee practice which was fun and good exercise.  On Wednesday I go to play indoor soccer again and this time we won and I even scored a goal.  Not much else happened during the week.  On Saturday the group of people form orientation (from now on I will refer to these people as the international people) and I went to a bar and watched the All Blacks vs. Wallabies.  The All Blacks won like they should and hopefully they ended up winning the whole try nations tournament.   I think I have learned the rules of rugby now.  While at the bar we learned a Danish bar game, Klunse.  To play each person is given two matches.  For each round, each person puts one fist into the middle with ether, 0, 1, or 2 matches in it.  After everyone’s fist is out each person makes a guess of how many matches are in the middle.  After everyone has guessed then people show how many are in their hand and who ever guessed that number gets to take one of their matches out.  The idea is not to be the last person with any matches.  If you are the last person with any matches, they you are suppose to by a round of drinks for everyone.  If you are paying attention during the game you could probably do a good job guessing on how many are out there based on what other guess and how many you put out, but this does not happen much.  It was really fun hanging out and watching the game.

Since this week did not have any pictures here are two, one from last week and one from today to show you the difference in weather.  

This coming week does not have too much exciting planed but should be nice. Until next week have fun and smile.

Jandles

I last left off with saying that it was snowing and I went outside in my jandles.  On Monday morning, I woke up and looked out my window and it looked white but I was not sure because my window was frosty.  I went out to the common room to look out those windows to see how much snow was out there.  There was some on the ground and it looked pretty.  I started to eat my breakfast and then I heard one of my flat mates say that uni was closed.  I thought that it was really strange that it was closed because there was not that much snow outside but I did not mind.  Since uni was closed but we were all up anyways, we had breakfast and then got ready to head outside in the snow.  Looking at who was outside you could tell the skiers apart from the locals.  The skiers had on their matching ski jackets and pants.  The locals really did not know how to dress to go play in the snow; most did not have a good snow jacket or good shoes or gloves.  The lack of gloves made it hard for them to make snowmen or snowballs.  It was really pretty once we made it outside.  We went over to another flat and started throwing snowballs at the window of my flat mates friend.   We then all walked around campus.  It was really pretty seeing all the trees covered in snow.  

We went to the big sport field and saw many people making snowmen.  We left there right before a big snowball fight was going to break out.  The snow was not quite deep enough to summersault in/head stand like Maine but I was able to belly slide in it.  

We headed back to our flat and went inside and warm up.  I then spent most of Monday sitting inside the common room looking out the window watching the snowfall.  I was not able to stay out of the snow for too long though and since my jandles were still in the common room from the previous night I often put them on and headed out to the balcony to enjoy the snow falling.   

On Monday night we were talking about if we thought that uni was going to be closed on Tuesday.  The news was saying that people should try to stay off the roads because they were going to icy.  On Tuesday uni was closed until 11 because of the ice.  I found out that CHCH does not know how to function in the snowy weather.  On Tuesday, it was really icy.  On Monday afternoon, they should have gone out and solved the slush of the paths because it froze over night.  They started putting sand/gravel down on the ice in the afternoon but at one point looking out the window we saw three people fall in about a five minute time frame.  By Wednesday most of the snow and ice was gone but in the shade it was still icy and slippery.

Monday was an exciting day but most of the rest of my week was not that exciting.  I continued to go to my lectures once uni opened up again.  In on Psyc class we have started talking about the accuracy of theories and how to test the theories.  In my Geol class we have continued to learn about earthquakes but we are now focusing on how different types affect people and society.  My maths class has gotten better I think.  It is more interesting and I am understanding it better.  I went to my maths tutorial on Friday that helped.  In tutorial we go over some examples of what we are doing in class.  In my CHCH class we had a disruption about the readings we did the week before.  I think a couple of interesting things that we talked about was why people served, if that mattered and what the definition of caring was. 

One exciting thing that I did this week was I played soccer.  I was invited by two people from the operation friendship dinner to play indoor soccer with them.  It was really fun to play soccer again.  I hope I can play some more.  On Sunday I went to frisbee. It was really nice outside so it was nice to spend some time outside. 

This week has been a nice and calm week.  Until next week have fun.