Not the best day yet...

This one’s kind of long so here’s an outline if you’d like to skip over some things:

1. Classes
2. The Stinker of the Day (maybe week. maybe year.)
3. The Afternoon
4. The Dorm
5. Conversations about America
6. Interesting Observations

Things got off to a pretty good start at the beginning of the week with the first 2 days of class… and then it went down REAL fast from there, but I’ll get to that in a sec.

My schedule for the school year is as follows:

Monday- NZ History 1-2, Philosophy of Education 2-4

Tuesday- Geography 12-2, NZ History 2-3, Health & PE Curriculum & Policy 3-5

Wednesday- Geography Lab 10-12

Thursday- Philosophy of Education tutorial 9-10ish, Health & PE 1-3, NZ History tutorial 3-4 and class 4-5

Friday- NO CLASS!

The First Day of Class :) 

1.             The first few days of class were not too different from Furman.  I guess the only differences were that the roll was not taken in a single class (not even the first day!) and the students call the teachers by their first names (even though most of them have their doctorate). I’m definitely going to have to get used to that.  The one thing I’m not too fired up about is that pretty much all of my classes are in the afternoon.  While it does help with being in touch with people from home since the morning here translates to a reasonable hour in the US, I cannot ignore the fact that I am indeed my father’s child and love getting up early and getting things done in the morning.  I have been getting up to go to breakfast in the dining hall every morning only to receive questioning stares when the people I’m eating with find out that I don’t have class until noon or 1pm.  But hey, a girls gotta have her breakfast and they stop serving it at 9!  I’m definitely going to have to work on my time management in the mornings since my afternoons are full of classrooms.

Another difference from Furman, and US colleges in general, is that there aren’t any tests or quizzes, except for maybe a final exam.  The classes are more writing based and “assessments” are actually essays, so I have about 2 for each class.  I’d MUCH rather spend time working on an essay than studying for a test!

2.             And then the ship sinks… and by ship I mean laptop (keep in mind that my laptop has been through orange juice and water already in it’s life).  I got into my room, pulled it (in its case) out of my backpack and just before it plopped on my desk, it slipped out of my hands and right onto the floor.  Not wanting to even think about what could’ve been messed up, I peeked to see that the idle light was still on. Yes. Then I took it out of the case and opened it. Bam. Broken screen.  I think it took me about 10 mins to get over the shock, and then I started crying. I couldn’t see ¾ of the screen, couldn’t send an emergency email, couldn’t look up places in Hamilton to get it fixed, couldn’t call home because it’s 2am there, AND I’m halfway across the world.  Great.  I ended up using a friend’s (good thing I now have friends!) computer to look up the apple number and eventually got the address of a store in Hamilton that I could get to.  Thankfully I didn’t have class at all today, so I devoted my morning to figuring this mess out.  As I was walking out to begin the trek across town, Lauren, a girl that I had met the night before offered me a ride since she was heading that way to work.  It was SUPER weird to sit in the passenger seat with no steering wheel and pedals in front of me!  I wasn’t sure exactly where the store was, so I told her to just let me out on the street so I wouldn’t make her late.  After walking in the wrong direction for about 3 blocks, I found the store.  The nice guy there told me it would be MUCH cheaper to just buy a monitor, hook it up, and use it as a desktop.  I took his advice, walked about 20 mins (5 of those 20 in the wrong direction again) to another store to get a monitor, cried some more, walked back to the first store (in the rain) to get a cord, got the guy to show me how to hook it up and make it work (glad I did because there were some difficulties), walked to get some apples, walked to the bus stop and realized it was the wrong bus stop, walked to another bus stop that wasn’t the right one either, finally found the right bus stop, and took the bus back to campus.  Phew!  3 hours, a few miles, 3 phone calls to mom and dad, and a pint of tears later, I’m up and working!  I guess I’ll have some laptop shopping to look forward to when I get back home, but until then this should work fine!  Even though it’s SO hard in times like this, Psalm 37 calls us to turn from anger and not fret.  God works out everything according to His plan.  Even though this little (BIG) accident was not at all how I intended things to go, I know that the Lord has a purpose for all things that He makes happen.  I should just be thankful that He gave me 2 legs to take me places, caring and supportive parents, and a brain to figure things out (and tear ducts to get some sympathy from the computer guy).

My New Setup.

(complete with a bowl of snacks including apples and nutella, pictures of Anna, my mom, and the brothers and dad old school, a comic from Mamaw about Grandmas, and some things that I randomly had in my pockets when I arrived)

3.             For the rest of the day I did some work on some assignments in the library and visited the club fair.  I signed up for 3 clubs: the international Christian club (I don’t remember the real name of it), some club that has a girls’ lounge in some building (I figured a lounge of any sort sounded good), and the cubing club (releasing my inner nerd).  Hopefully I’ll learn how to solve a 4x4 and maybe even a 5x5..? Let’s see if I actually go to a meeting first…

4.             My dorm is pretty much all freshmen with a few exceptions (for example, the 26 year old girl who lives next to me..? what?) and they definitely live like freshmen.  This week is “Disorientation” week aka party week aka they go out every night.  There is a rule here that you can’t drink in the halls past 10pm and the RA’s come around at 10:00:00pm and literally kick everyone who is drinking out so they proceed downtown and continue the party.  It’s weird to think that these people are 18 years old and can legally drink.  I’m sure I’ll get talked into going with them at some point; it would definitely be an experience. 

5.             I’ve had some pretty funny conversations about America lately.  When people hear my accent they ask where I’m from and we g through the whole thing… where in America? Georgia.  Where’s that? The Southeast….Have you ever been to the US? And so on from there… But one girl asked me if we really “climb the rope”.  I thought she meant like the professional ladder with careers and stuff, but nope, she mean literally climb the rope in gym class.  I’m not sure what movie she saw that in, but no.  Another girl asked if we really use those red cups at parties. Yes, those are called Solo cups.  So far, I think it’s safe to say not many important things have made their way over to NZ from the US.

6.             Interesting Observations:

-Apparently there was a gap in the trend of going to college about a decade ago in NZ, so people over the age of 25 are automatically admitted into University.  This would definitely explain me being the only student in my Philosophy of Education class under 40 years old.

-NetFlix does not work in NZ.  I’m sure I’ll be spending LOTS of time with Jack Bauer come December.

-“Supper” is served in the dining hall at 9pm, complete with hot choc and “biscuits”

-biscuits=cookies

-She’ll be aright=it’ll be ok!

-good on ya=good for you

-Honda Civics here are actually the body of an Acura TSX

-chuck your hand up=raise your hand

-block=building

-grades=marks

-times I have almost gotten run over by a car=4

-seeing the John Deere Classic on the TV in the gym the other day MADE MY DAY