so classes haven't been too hard thus far, although it's only been a week. i dropped bio and am taking linguistics of the pacific with sophie and emily and a bunch of other americans instead. the prof of that is canadian, and both of the ones in my anthro of the pacific that have spoken so far are american. my language & identity in nz class has a kiwi prof, but she does not know how to use powerpoint. the day i was 10 min late from skyping she was still trying to figure it out when i got there, and ended up just going through each slide in the edit mode because she didn't know how to make it a slideshow. both the linguistics classes sound more artsy and less science-y than the linguistics classes i've taken at home. but oh well. i just need to pass, so it's ok if my essays are not fabulous.
wednesday, thursday, and friday i went to fitness classes at the gym. the first one was just step aerobics, which was fun, even tho i did not remember the choreography very well. the second one was step for the first half, and then stuff with free weights, also pretty fun. the one on friday that kendall and i went to however, was called BEGINNER tae power fit, and the instructor was this really jacked guy from like, switzerland or something, who started by making us run suicides back and forth across the room, and then running laps. then he just started telling us to do like jabs and uppercuts and stuff so we just sort of randomly punched, and it was really intense and i can't imagine what the non-beginner version is like. i may not go back to that one.
friday was the "s party" at ih. they really like their theme parties here. everyone was supposed to dress as something beginning with s. sophie was originally going to be herself, but then decided to be sudoku, and drew a puzzle on a piece of cardboard that she hung around her neck. i decided to be a sailor with my striped shirt and made a hat out of newspaper (which i went out and bought for $1.60 just for that). ej and kendall didn't know what to be, and we spent quite a while thinking. we considered being the spice girls, but we couldn't find enough girls (we also suggested we dress the boys up as the spice girls but that did not go over well). kendall decided to be sporty spice and i loaned her my black comfy capris and a tank top, and ej was "six" and just wore her pjs and pigtails. the party was in the big common room in the basement, and they had drinks (alcoholic for sale, non for free) and snacks and pizza, and a strobe light and music. some people had really good costumes. 3 of the girls were sheep, and they glued hundreds of cotton balls to their shirts. cameron was a soldier, including a cap gun which the boys were entertained by all night. brian and ollie were surfers, with just their togs and towels, and ace was a soccer player, but by the end of night he lost his shirt and became a surfer too. there was a sandwich (a group costume), a sketchy 70's gym teacher, a stoplight, snow white, a spartan, a stewardess, and a lot of other fun stuff. i stayed till midnight and then went to bed, and i think everyone else did soon after.
also on friday kendall told me she joined the canoeing club (aucc), and they were having day-trip orientation things this weekend. sophie joined the tramping club, which had a 2-night camping trip this weekend. we had been told joining clubs was a good way to meet kiwis and get involved on campus, and i decided i would rather do kayaking since i a) don't have much hiking equipment and b) can do that anywhere, on my own. so i went to the aucc booth at the student union quad area (quad as in rectangular courtyard between buildings, not grassy like at home), but i didn't have money with me to pay the $20 membership fee, so they said i could just do it online. i also stopped at the ski and snowboard booth, but they said the season doesn't start till mid june, so it's not worth joining for less than a month. i'm a little sad i brought my snowpants and warm coat now. but oh well.
so when i went back and signed up for aucc online, there was no place to like, put in a credit card number or anything, but kendall said i could probably just show up on saturday morning. so i did, and it was fine, everything was very relaxed. all the people with cars just took as many people as they could, and kendall and i found a group at the very last minute which was lucky, because there were a LOT of us on saturday. we went with this french guy, quentin who is a mechanical engineering grad student and in the club, and a german exchange student, and then kendall, me, and lee who is also doing ies and is from ur. quentin had the trailer with all the kayaks behind his car, and we drove for about an hour north of auckland, to the puhoi river, which is really flat and small and nice. the town of puhoi was really cute, there was a pub, a general store, and a library which is about 1/3 the size of the allen's hill one.
there were so many of us beginners that they split us into 2 groups, so 1 group paddled halfway, then everyone drove down and met us and we switched. kendall and i got in the first group. they taught us some basics before we got in, like you put your spray skirt on first, then your life jacket (which are really cool and have like, skeletons on them), and how to get in and basic paddling. my kayak seat was not attached, and the spray skirt did not fit the boat, but they said i would be fine without it. we broke up into 3 groups of 8 students with 2 instructors each, kendall and i were with a guy named ross and a girl named katrina teaching us, and some german and kiwi kids learning too. i asked why it was called the canoeing club when they go kayaking and ross said because it was originally canoes in the 60's when it started.
there were these 2 kiwi kids in the group in front of us who i was sort of talking to before we left, a girl and a guy. the guy, i think his name was like rommy or something was SO bad it was hilarous. he could not go in a straight line, and ran into a bush, and eventually the instructor, kerri, ended up towing him. at the dock where we were switching everyone was waiting and they all threw mud at us and tipped us out, but the water was nice and the mud more or less came off. deborah, a girl from IH who is from saratoga springs dibsed my boat, and then pulled the end down to flip me, only the boat just sort of filled with water and started sinking ha ha. i made it out (covered in mud), and after a lot of jumping off the dock and mud throwing the others left and we all drove back to the pub where we started.
they set up a "barbie" with "saucies" and everyone just laid out in the sun on the grass and hung out for a long time. it was lots of fun. the 2 kiwi kids from before and another girl, natasha, who was in our group sat with us and some other american kids and it was lots of fun. natasha has red hair and really pale skin, and is a first year and is living at home. the other 2 are third years, and the girl is studying law, which here means you are already in law school, and just go for 6 years straight. she is samoan and apologized for sitting with her toes pointing at us because i guess that's really rude in the samoan culture. most of us got ice cream at the general store, and a lot of people got beer from the pub and it was just really picturesque and cute.
they taught us about their politics, and i learned about how our primaries work too from some of the other americans. they have the labor party and the nationalist party, which are roughly equivalent to the democrats and republicans respectively, although more left-wing in general. helen clark is from the labor party, but there's an election this year and nationalist is probably going to take over. they also have some thing where they like, vote twice, once for a delegate and once for a party or something? it sounded much simpler than all our electoral college crap.
eventually the second group got back and ate, and then we all drove back to auckland. we were supposed to be following another car with kerri, the president, and her brother in it, so we could leave the trailer with the kayaks at their house, but quentin did not see them get off, so then we drove around the suburbs (the north shore i think) for awhile, and they met us and we followed the rest of the way to their house, where alex's (the brother) car died right when we got there so he was kind of concerned with that. kerri invited us in for cool drinks. their house is really cute, there are palm trees all around, and within sight of a beach. kerri said their parents had been going sailing in their yacht for 3 weeks but would be home soon. she said there used to be a ferry that took 15 min to get to uni, but it went bankrupt so now it's a 40 min bus ride. that seems to be pretty normal for all the kids who live at home. they also told us to come to the aucc toga party that night, but it was at someone's house and no one seemed to know how to get there.
so when we finally got back we had missed ih dinner, so we showered and lee came back and met us here and we went down k' road to find some food. we went to this little vegetarian indian restaurant and i got a $6 'snack' which was the perfect amount of rice and curry bean stuff. then we went back and found ej who also did not feel like going out, and decided to watch good will hunting which she had borrowed from the ih library. however, the dvds here are region 4, and our computers only play region 1 (although you can reset macs a total of 4 times to play different regions). so we first looked in all 4 common rooms in ih for an available tv, but they were all being used, so we re-set my computer and watched it here. i fell asleep quite a few times, and it was over by 11:30, so we all went to bed exhausted.
then today i was supposed to go kitesurfing (i called the company that has the rec center lesson, and they said i could do the 5 lesson package, and that i would get a text saturday night about where to go depending on the weather conditions). however i never got a text, so when i woke up around 9 i called, and the guy said there was no wind so we weren't going, and he must have put my number in wrong or something. so i will reschedule when i know what my weekend plans are. since i wasn't doing that today, i decided to go to the second aucc kayaking practice at a nearby lake. kendall did not want to go today, so i went down to the quad bravely alone. natasha was there so i sat with her. there were significantly fewer people, most of whom were now and hadn't gone saturday. again, the leaders just went around and asked who had cars and assigned 4 people to each one. i went with natasha, another kiwi girl who's name i never heard, a sweedish girl named ulrika (i think), and a girl from florida named keatin.
the leaders just told us what motorway exit to get off for lake pupuke, and to just drive around the lake until we saw everyone, so we did, only there turned out to be about 4 parks on the lake, and no one we recognized at any of them. we drove around one and a half times before finding everyone at the first place we stopped originally (they were just late). it wasn't a big deal tho, and we had fun driving.
they split us up into 2 groups again, letting the people who hadn't gone saturday go first. there were only like 8 of us in the second group, so we just laid out in the sun (with lots of sunscreen - i wore spf 15 on my face and 30 on my body saturday, and my face got burnt). natasha and i sat with alex (kerri's brother), who is a first year at aut, and travis, a kid from california. all the leaders were complaining about someone named colm (craig, who is pretty crazy said to travis, who was watching the phones 'if it rings and it sounds like colin but not quite answer and tell him he's late). so right before we went colm arrived and was like 'yeah i had no idea i was supposed to be bringing all the instructor's boats and my phone was off' so then he was picked upon for the rest of the day. (the 'instructors' are pretty hardcore, most of them have their own gear and stuff, although i think a lot of them started in aucc as beginners too).
so we got the wet lifejackets and skirts from the first group (very cold), and got all situated, and they pushed us off the shore into the lake which was fun. we practiced paddling forward and backward and turning (i actually can't go straight very well but they said that doesn't matter too much when you're in rapids anyway). at the end they told us we were going to practice t-rescue, which is when if you flip over, you can right yourself by holding onto someone else's kayak (the basic exit is to just peel off your spray skirt and fall out the bottom, but then you have to swim to shore and start over). most people did it, but when it was my turn i flipped all the way over before i was supposed to, and then freaked out a little, and just fell out the bottom. it wasn't a big deal though because they made everyone do that anyway to get out at the end. there is rolling practice, where you learn to right yourself without help tomorrow night in a high school pool so i may go to that.
after we got out we loaded all the boats back on the trailer, and then natasha took us back. it turns out keatin and travis both live in the empire apartment building, which is literally right outside our door. keatin and i were going to go grocery shopping, but then i decided to go to the gym instead. then i came back and showered and had dinner, and now i'm considering doing some reading for class.
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