Classes Begin (finally)

Yes, I have actually started attending classes at this point. After the first week all are going quite well. I made a schedule swap on Thursday, out of Marine Ecology (sorry fishies, just not for me) and into a Sociology course on the Global Politics of Food. This course has a great lecturer and I will be doing a group project on chocolate…yum. Below is my revised timetable:

The other classes are good too. Geography is huge (315 students) and mostly freshers, but the course is growing on me. So far we have been studying tectonics: faults, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other topics. New Zealand is a perfect case study for many of these subjects and it has been interesting to learn about the physical history of the country.

Maori Society and Environmental History of New Zealand are both full of international students, but I am enjoying learning about New Zealand history, culture, and perspective on the world and the US.

Outside of class, I have not spent much time on campus. The university has a really neat library, but I haven’t exactly been hitting the books all that much (we’ve only had one full week!). I’ve been on a few more walks around the city including the botanical gardens, the reservoir, and signal hill (again)…

On Thursday, we had a potluck BBQ with all the flats in our complex. It turned into quite a kebab-fest! Here is a picture of the kiwi hosts tending the kebabs on the grill.