First day of school was pretty inspiring! I was worried at my first class though- I was told that the class was going to be pretty packed (I hadn't officially added the course yet.) Well, lucky me apparently "packed" just means an almost-full lecture hall. So, 63 students worth of being packed for the popular Viticulture class that I am STOKED to be in! I'll have my first lab for that tomorrow. The other 2 classes that I was set about being in are both environmental classes. One on Environmental planning based on regions- si that's kind of an international culture/ policy/ sustainability class. Which sounds like a weird mix but the professor seems like a great guy he's originally from India and has studied in the states, and he seems to have a pretty good grasp on sarcasm. Which is nice since some people I've met have not been so quick on that... also, I have heard people say in the past that I'm just simply not good as sarcasm but I choose to ignore all of you.
Class 3 is Agricultural Systems Management/Sustainability which sounds like it will be based a lot on resources, mainly water. Lots of field trips to local farms for that class. Oooooooh which brings me to field trip days.
You read right- I get FIELD TRIP days. Days of no class if I don't have a trip for a class, but otherwise on a bus to visit a farm, or in the case of my wine tasting class, up to the North Island for 2 and a half days of wine drinking.. er, tasting and learning!
My last class is Under the Recreation and Tourism classes, and it focuses a lot on interpretation. Sounds like something Heidi (my boss from my internship this summer) would've loooved to have seen on my resume. One of our assignments for that class is to give a guided tour. So, if nothing else it will give me a chance to practice public speaking. Which in the past I haven't been too bad at, but I'm not sure about it here. Here I have managed to make a scene in situations where normally I can stay under the radar. For example:
Day 1: Connecting flight from Australia, walking up the stairs to my plane. So close to getting on and fumbling simultaneously with passport and boarding pass. One falls to the ground but the other goes flying under the wing of the plane... I pointed to it when I stepped up the the flight attendant and said "That's my boarding pass!", but for some reason they didn't accept that. A friendly flight attendant braved the plane engine to get it for me.
Day 1 to 12ish: Out in Auckland, constantly being "that tourist" who is excited about everything. Consequently, I managed to run into quite a few kiwis this way. Although most of them were quite lovely and willing to point me in the right direction, pointing out in our final moments of conversation that I should actually look ahead when I'm walking rather than anywhere BUT ahead.
First day of school: Gorgeous day. Insanely sunny, not a cloud in the sky- which keeps the day from being perfect, in my opinion- but still so nice to be soaking up the warmth in shorts and flip flops. (Or jandals if I'm being NZ appropiate. ) Anyway, I managed to find the one mud puddle that probably exists on the entirety of the campus and get my foot stuck in it. Given, it was only about a millisecond until I took it out, but I'm sure I made a few people laugh as I wiped it off on the grass. It was a good experience.
Also, I have seen enough boys now to realize that my brother would have loved being here in the preteen years. Ah back in the days when the length of a boys' shorts were the only thing that really warranted any attention as far as male fashion sense was concerned. ALL of the rugby boys here- so, pretty much every boy- wears rugby shorts everywhere, which are about the same length as my own. So, pretty darn short. Combine that with a nice little mullet and rattail and you have the stereotypical Lincoln rugby schoolboy!
Sadly, the voice is still not back, so most of my introductions are preceded with "I don't always sound like this, but Hi..." etc etc. Feeling immensely better though! IT'S ABOUT TIME. Penicillin in NZ apparently takes 72 hours before it works. Oh how I miss American drugs.
Love to all from a happy NZ school girl!
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