Classes and Weekend #2

The city of Auckland itself!  On a slightly cloudy day but I thought you would all appreciate seeing it anyway.  This was taken from Kelly Tarlton's (see bottom of post).

It dawns on me that some of you might be interested to hear about my classes :-P  I’m taking four – Psychology 311: Social Psych, Pacific Music and Dance, Maori Studies 190: the Kapa Haka, and Contemporary Dance and Choreography.  I get to do some dancing in the Pacific and Maori classes as well, but it is less intensive than the Choreography class.

I’ve had some bad experiences with Psych so far – not because of the class itself, but because of my own awkwardness/stupidity.  The first day of class, after seating myself in the center of a row toward the middle of the lecture hall, I realize that everyone in the room has a piece of paper (the course syllabus) that they took from the front upon entering.  I, of course, didn’t think of this before I sat myself smack in the middle of a row full of people, so I get up and brace myself to push by them all.  Another girl gets up as I do, so I don’t feel as stupid.  As we’re walking down to the bottom of the auditorium, she wavers slightly and I take my step an inch too big and I step on her heel.  As my foot hits her heel, she continues the movement of walking (e.g. lifting her foot off the ground), and her fabric flip flop rips apart!  The top completely dislodges from the platform of the shoe.  SO EMBARRASSING!  Luckily she was very nice about it.

The second day of class, I arrive in the classroom that I think I am supposed to be in and find myself with one other student.  She looks at me and asks if I’m waiting for Psych 311, to which I reply yes.  We realize that something is obviously wrong and leave the lecture hall so that she can text one of her “mates” in the class to find out where it is.  10 minutes later we realize that we’ve both shown up an hour early for class – Wednesday’s session is at 10, not 9.  Needless to say we both felt pretty stupid.  The situation actually worked out well for both of us, because I made a friend who showed me around the campus, and she needed the lecture notes – of which I had managed to print two copies of while trying to figure out the Library’s printing system.

The rest of my classes are pretty decent.  I look forward to Choreography class because I get to really dance, although even that hasn’t satisfied my needs.  I miss dancing for 2 hours a day in Dance Company!  Today I went to CityDance on Queen Street and bought a pass for 10 classes for $117.  If you do the math, that’s like 60 American dollars for 10 classes… which is VERY cheap for a studio like this!  It’s similar to Jeanette Neill, BDC, or Millennium for those of you who understand that… Basically, all of the classes are ‘open,’ aka you can walk in any week and take a new class.  Some are leveled and some are not.  The class I took today was called “Burn Boogie” and wasn’t leveled (Beg, Int, Adv).  It was a fast-paced hip-hop and aerobics class and it totally kicked my butt!  I could keep up with the hip-hop but I was definitely winded after about 3 minutes!  I’m definitely going to become a regular there.

I guess that about does it for classes.  For the sake of having pictures involved, I’ll explain our beach trip to Long Bay on Saturday.  This was an International Student event that we could sign up for.  We were bussed to Long Bay at which we were pretty much just set free for a few hours.  There was a BBQ (“Barbie,” and yeah I’m serious), which to Kiwis consists of grilling sausages and eating them with bread and mustard.  Luckily for me there were vegetarian sausages.  Some of the boys I’ve become friends with from my dorm hiked the Ocean Walk thing with me, to where we could see miles and miles of amazing New Zealand scenery.  I was truly in heaven!  Minus the sandflies (THEY SUCK.  They’re like mosquitoes but worse!), we had an amazing time at our beach day. 

Saturday, Meaghan, Britta and I headed to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World.  The title is a little more exciting than the venue itself, but we had a good time.  It was basically an aquarium that also had a little ride that took its passengers around in a circle, where you could view penguins in an “Antarctic” setting.  We had a great time and got great pictures!  I was astounded at how beautiful some of the fish were.

And thus ends my adventures of the past week.  There is currently one working washer (of about 12) for a dormitory/apartment complex of 400+ students, therefore I am suffering greatly.  Hopefully tomorrow’s excitement will include getting lucky and finishing one load of wash!

Cheers!