Hello Weekend!

This week has been another good one!  I got my first 3 graded assignments back in my Philosophy of Education class on Monday and one in NZ History today.  Let’s go over the “marking” scale real quick (America, take note):

A+ (85-100)

A   (80-84)

A-  (75-79)

B   (60-75)

C  (50-60)

Fail (below 50)

Don’t worry, you’re seeing that correctly… A’s are 75% and above.  What?!  Fine with me!  I’m happy and proud to report that, according to this scale, I have received 4 A+’s!  Let’s hope I can keep that streak going!  Furman is really going to damage my ego after being graded on this scale for a semester.

More school news to report:  I finally talked in my NZ history tutorial today!  5 times!  Class discussion is definitely up there with movie theaters and feet on my list of things I absolutely hate, but I today I went for it.  I was chatting with a kiwi girl, Shaynah, before class started and told her how intimidating it was to talk in that class and she helped me psych myself up for it (then she told me I was on fire after I made 2 comments, so encouraging).  We had a nice little conversation about America as well…

“So you’re from America?!”

“Yep, I am”

“What part?!”

“Georgia”

“Ohhhhhh…”

“You don’t know where that is do you…?”

“Not at all”

“Above Florida”

“Ohhhh yeah ok!”

“Have you ever been to the US?”

“Oh my gah no, but I would absolutely die to go!  I want to go to LA and meet everyone from Grey’s Anatomy!  Have you ever met anyone famous?! You probably get asked that question a lot.””

(I decided not to burst her bubble by telling her that they probably don’t all live there and that famous people aren’t just out on the streets signing autographs all the time.)

I love having conversations about America with Kiwis!

Another accomplishment of this week is that I found the public library and successfully got a library card!  You know you’re not at Furman when you have time to read for fun during the school year.  Isn’t that the truth!  I have thoroughly enjoyed leisure reading while I’ve been here (who am I?! this country is just turning me into a new person!), but I don’t want to buy books (1. that costs money, 2. that just means I have to add more weight to my bag on the way home and I already know I can’t afford that.) and the Uni library has a poor selection of fun books.  I directed myself to the Hillcrest public library, all 20 square feet of it, on Wednesday via my trusty map and got myself some leisure books!

More fun news… One of my Aunts has relatives who live in NZ and as it turns out, some of them are only about an hour away from me!  I got their phone number, but was really scared about calling them.  I could just picture them thinking that I was some random girl with an American accent who claimed to be distantly related, but was actually a crazy hobo setting up some scam on them.  However, once again, the more outgoing NZ version of me dominated over the other me and I called them anyway.  A sweet, sweet lady answered the phone and for a split second I forgot everything I had planned to say in order for it to all make sense.  Anyways, I told her who I was and quickly connected the dots to how we were sort of, kind of, maybe very distantly related.  We talked for a few minutes and as soon as they or I figure out a way for me to get to their house, I’m going to go meet and hang out with them!  How cool and exciting is that?! Thanks Aunt Rozanne!!

This weekend will be filled with “inter hall basketball” tomorrow (Friday) night, writing papers, reading (for fun(!) and for school), a trip to a friend’s house/farm, and a continued church search on Sunday!  I’m sure I’ll have more to report about all of that, but until then…

Interesting Observations:

-When Kiwis pronounce words with that start with T it sounds like Ch.  Example: Tuesday=Chuesday, Tunes=Chunes, etc.

-“whorry”=”rugged”  Example: “Ey bro, look at that whorry-as guy over there in sweats and no shoes.”

-“shout”=”this one’s on me” Example: “I’ll shout you a vanilla coke next Tuesday since you’ve got 5 hours of class to get through” or “I lost the bet so I’ll shout you some pizza tonight”

-Today we had fries for lunch.  FRIES. Fries as the main dish. Just fries.

-“heaps”=”tons” Example: “You like heaps of spaghetti on your toast, eh?” Sometimes they drag it out too… “There’s heeeeeaps of rolling hills in this country!”

A playground in Raglan