First week of class

Classes have now officially started here at the UoA. Bit weird being that it's first term here and second at home. I suppose it won't be too bad going from summer to summer. Everyone here thinks winter is coming but in fact it will merely be a nice fall as far as I can tell. Still warm for now of course. Everyone here can't believe I've come from weather in the negative C range.

So as for classes, they seem great so far. I have some how ended up with more class hours than most in my program but that's just life. The environmental class I'm in is relatively small for Uni, probably about 60 or so, and has a fantastic prof (or so it seems after two classes.) He's already explained about the two assignments we'll have in the course and they sound great. Both involve going out into the field and seem like they'll be fun to figure out. There are so many people here that there aren't barely any assignments and instead everything rests on a couple assignments or just exams. We shall see how that turns out.

My Geography class is also seeming like it will be pretty interesting. That's a huge lecture (though still comparatively small) with probably around 200 people (as a wild guess.) There are smaller tutorials to help with HW assignments and get a smaller group dynamic going, but the prof also seems good and still facilitates questions etc well in class.

Engineering class has two very adorable profs (or at least they looked that way from where I was sitting towards the back end of the hall.) The one that will be teaching us statics, the first half of the course, is extremely funny, and the second, seems like he'll be fun to have class with as well. This class also has tutorials but really no homework assignments. Seems unbelievably weird after problem sets at Oberlin, but I suppose I will adjust. Either way, the class looks interesting and I already met two people in it both of whom are not first years but 4th years working on their second degree. Sound like some good study mates : ) Since this is predominantly a first year general education for engineering paper (that's what they call classes here,) there are crap tons of people in it...probably 400 or so. This is all guessing but it was like putting a fair fraction of oberlin or more than my entire high school in an auditorium. Also, there aren't many women in the class, as one might have expected.

I haven't yet had my Kapa Haka class because that meets once a week for three hours on thursday, but once that happens I will update you about the performances we'll be learning there. There are some others from my program in the class so good fun in store.

My phone arrived today but I won't be able to activate it until Charlie comes home from class and gives it to me. We ordered our phones together off trademe, a website similar to ebay. They came today and it turns out Charlie's is pink...and not a cool hot pink, but a cute ballerina pink. Even the buttons and the screen border. It's fantastic and he pulls it off quite nicely. Probably won't be using it often except to keep in touch with people here when/if necessary.

We get an easter break in a couple weeks (so cool that christ is rising and giving us some time off school) and Liz and I just bought tickets to the south island. Going to be an adventure!!! I'll write again when more exciting things happen.