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.

SNOW

This week was the second week of my papers.  There has not been much change in them.  My maths class is still my least favorite but it is improving because we now have tutorials where we are in smaller groups and work on problems.  For the CHCH class we had some readings about caring.  This week are going to meet and discuss what caring is and why people sever (as in volunteer to help).  In my Psyc class we learned about nature vs. nurture.  We also had our first lab for this class.  In this lab we discussed how people automatically try to figure out someone personality when they first see them.  We also participated in a demonstration how people with positive personality traits end up friends with people who also have positive personality traits.   In my Geol paper we are learning about what causes earthquakes and how they are measured.  CHCH is a great place to be learning about earthquakes.

There have been a couple of small aftershocks since I have been here.  Friday morning around 5:30 AM there was a 5.1M earthquake about 40km away that woke me up. I woke up and was laying in bed thinking about if I should move and go under my desk but I did not because all I really wanted to do was go back to sleep.  It has been interesting hearing how different people reacted to that earthquake.  My Kiwi flat mates did not think too much of it, they were more annoyed that they were woken up by it.   One of my friends in one of my papers said that she got up and packed a bag in case she had to leave.  Another person I know thought about leaving and another one were rather freaked out because he lives on the sixth floor right next to the elevator and he could hear it banging against the wall.

This weekend was somewhat exciting.  Well Friday night was not so much; I fell asleep around 9:30.  On Saturday I went to the gym (they have group classes everyday at the gym that I have started going to) and then went grocery shopping.  I got some work done that afternoon.  That night the group of people I met at the orientation for international students, some of your flat mates, and I went out  for dinner.  We went to Hell’s pizza.  I had a good pizza that was ham, onion, garlic, and parmesan.  We then went to an Irish bar.  I had to show ID to get in but I was legally allowed in. On Sunday I did not get up to much.  I did some work and went to frisbee.  It was really cold and it started kind of raining.  It is now about 0C outside and kind of snowing.

 It is really exciting and we are all hoping that it will snow over night and stick so in the morning there will be snow on the ground.  It is weird that in July I am hoping for snow.  There are many things here that are different from the US but that is for another blog post. 

UPDATE: So it is now snowing outside and we all went outside and I was standing in the snow in my jandles.

 

Flat – The way flat is used often is to describe where you live so for me it is the floor I live on

Jandles – flip flops

Papers Have Started

It has been my second week in NZ and my first week of lectures at UC. 

Let me tell you a little about my papers.  I am taking a geology course about hazard management.  So far, this has been my favorite paper.  It is interesting taking it here in CHCH because we are able to use what has happened here with the earthquakes as examples.  My next paper I am taking is personality psychology.  Right now, it is interesting but we are still going over some of the introduction things.   There is also a lab component to this paper; I am excited to start it.  My third paper is math, It is Logic, Automata, and Computability.  Right now, I am not really enjoying this paper but I think it will improve soon.  For this paper, we have a tutorial, which is where we get to work on problems.  My last paper is CHCH101.  I am still unsure what I am going to be doing for this paper.  I am going to do a service project in these coming up weeks.  From what I could tell about the paper the point is that the goal is to help us learn about ourselves and how we affect a community by helping them out.

One of the big differences between UC and Bates is the lecture size.  My geol and psyc lectures are really big (like a couple hundred).  This means that the professor does not know who I am or care if I show up to lecture.  My maths class is simply but not nearly as big but during lecture the professor just lectures to us and we take notes.  The idea for that class is that the tutorial will be the time we get to make sure we understand the information. 

This week I did not get up to too much because papers have officially started.  One afternoon I took a walk around campus and surrounding areas.  I found this short path by the river that was nice to walk around.

One morning when I woke up before the sun I saw a really pretty sunrise out the window.

 On Tuesday morning, I went to clubs day.  This was a lot less intimidating then the clubs fair at Bates. I ended up signing up for the University of Canterbury Canoe Club (UCCC) and the Ultimate Frisbee club(UCUC).  I am excited for the UCCC to start (right after the mid semester break) because it is going to be a great way to see some pretty scenery.  Today (Sunday) I went to a UCUC practice and that was a lot of fun.  It was fun to be playing again and just to get some exercise. 

The night of Wednesday the 13^th/the morning of Thursday the 14^th Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out.  I was not able to see it at midnight because the tickets were sold out but I was still able to see it before everyone in the USA got to.  I went Thursday night and saw it in 3D.  I thought it was good but not perfect.  I did go dressed up because that is fun to do. 

On Friday I went to this dinner hosted my Operation Friendship.  It is a group of families from around CHCH that take groups of international students to their house and host a dinner for them.  It was nice and not just because I did not have to cook. I really enjoyed interacting with local families.  It was also nice to be around such a range of people, from little kids, through college students, to adults.  It was a lot of fun and the good was great.

This week has been fun and I am excited to continue with my papers.  Until next week have fun.

Weekend adventure

I last left off right before going to orientation.  Orientation itself was not very exciting.  At orientation, we learned about how to enroll the next day and then we heard about different opportunities we had here at UC and in CHCH.  We were told about a paper, CHCH101, which is about doing service projects in CHCH.  There was also a representative from Opportunity Friendship which is a program done by the local Kiwis where they host dinners for the international students.  Two guys from Tour New Zealand also told us about some trips that they will probably be taking this semester that we can join in.  We were then given lunch.  At lunch, I met four other international students.  We hung out, talked during lunch, and then decided to walk around campus after for a while.  It was nice to be interacting with other people and walking around.  The next day I had to enroll.  Enrollment went smoothly for me and I got all my papers.  I am going to be taking mathematics, geology, psychology, and CHCH101 paper.  I walked around campus some more.  On Friday, I did not do much besides go to the grocery store (I feel like I am going to be doing that a lot, at least it is a less than 10 min walk).

This weekend I went on an adventure around the south island.  One of the friends I met at orientation had met a person that was going up to the north part of the island to pick up a motorbike she decided to join and go site seeing along the way.  On the way, we past many farms, many sheep and cows.   Even though there are more sheep than people in NZ (I have been told) they still feel like there should be fake sheep lying around. 

We drove up on the east coast of the island.  The ocean on this coast was the Pacific Ocean.  I thought this was weird because that is the same ocean on my coast at home.  The weather that we got was not too bad.  It was raining at some points but that just made some rainbows.  At one of the points we pulled over there was a rainbow over the water. 

As we drove, we pulled over at a town and here we were able to go and touch the water.  It was cold. 

Another place we pulled over was this café.  It was really pretty inside and it also had a lawn outback that went to some more water. 

We finally made it up to Picton.  This is where you could take a fairy up to Wellington on the north island.  Here we went tromping along the sound for a short while.  It was really pretty and green.  We went out to this grassy area and there was a toilet there.  This toilet was one of the nicest toilets on a trail I have ever seen.  Inside  there was a little bottle of soap, and a jug of water so you could wash your hands and then a towel that they say they wash every two weeks.  

That night we stayed at a backpackers.  It was a very nice one.  There was a great kitchen where we cooked ourselves some dinner.  There was also a lounge with a fireplace and couches, a spa, pool table, tv room, and they served ice cream and apple crisp in the evening and had breakfast for us.  We were also able to play SET.   That night was also the finals of the Supper 15 Rugby (I hope I got the correct) and it was a NZ team from Canterbury and one from Australia.  We went to a local pub (yes I am legally allowed into them here) to watch the game.  It was really fun to be in that kind of atmosphere for that big of a game.  Throughout the game I tried to learn the rules, I think I mostly get them now.  It was really exciting because the Canterbury team was winning for a while but sadly by the end they were not. 

To get pack to CHCH we went through Nelson.  In Nelson we went to a botanical garden like place where we walked around a pond where there were many ducks. 

We continued on our way and stopped at some beaches and scenic views.

We then went thought the mountain pass where there was some snow. 

I am going to be trying to use the language that is used here so at the end of each post if I feel that there are new words/abbreviations I will let you know what they mean. 

UC-University of Canterbury (not the University of California or University City)

CHCH-Christchurch

Paper-classes/lectures

Kiwis-People of New Zealand

NZ-New Zealand

Tromping-hiking

Toilet-this is the bathroom not just the thing you sit on

Backpackers-a hostel

Move in day

This is going to be my blog about my adventures studying abroad at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand.  The way I am going to try and work this is I am going to post pictures from life here and tell you about what is happening.  (I am not an English major and am not very good at spelling, grammar and the whole writing thing so I am trying my best but it may not be perfect.)

I finished packing all the things I would need into two large suitcases.  These ended up being very close to overweight, one was 49.5 lbs.

My two suitcases, the grey was was 49.5 lbs

I then made my way to NZ.  This was not a very exciting adventure.  My flight from SD to LA was a short flight.  We were delayed for 30 min on the run way because there was fog in LA and when we finally took off it was for a 24 min flight.  (I was sitting on the runway longer then I was in the air for.)  I made it to LA and met up with one of my friends.  The flight from LA to Auckland was also not very exciting.   On the flight we were served dinner and then we went to sleep.  After sleeping for probably around 8 hours we both woke up and watched some things on the TV and colored.  We were then given breakfast about 2 hours before we landed.  After we landed, we went through customs and immigration.  To get to the domestic terminal we had to go walk outside.  It was nice a cool outside, not that cold.  On the way I saw my first NZ flag flying. 

There is a small flag in the background

That all went smoothly.  Since I was more than 2 hours early for my flight from Auckland to Christchurch I had to wait around with all my luggage for an hour and then I checked and went through security.  It seemed that the security there not very tight like in the US.  We did not have to take off our shoes or take out any liquids.  There ended up being three of us going to UC on that flight.  We got dropped off at the apartments and checked in.  I got my key card and key and told where my room was and I headed up.  There was one Kiwi girl who was on my floor.  Later that day she showed me to the grocery store.  After that, I continued to move into my room.  There are two French girls also on my floor who are here and two other Kiwi girls who are not here yet.  I have started decorating my room. 

This is what my room looks like right now

(I have only put up a small portion of my pictures.)  Today I also went on a walk.  It was a nice day.  I was like an early spring day, a little windy but sunny.  When I was walking around it was weird seeing people driving on the left side of the road.  I was trying to figure out where I have to go to orientation tomorrow and had to cross a road, which was kind of, nerve racking.  I am excited for orientation tomorrow to learn more about being here.  I will let you know how it goes.