This may not come as a surprise to many of you, considering we often forget we're at school when we're at USC, but I've been out of school for so long, doing so many fun things, that it was a weird reality check when we woke up yesterday morning and had to go to CLASS! Luckily the class schedule isn't too demanding -- I only had one class yesterday, a nutrition class that I think will be really interesting. Today I don't start til 1. I'm taking a Maori leadership class that comes highly recommended, and an International Business class this evening. On Weds and Thurs I have the lecture and discussion section for my Computer Science class... ahh. We'll see how that goes!
So the actual time you're in class isn't a lot at all, but all of our teachers apparently expect TEN HOURS A WEEK of work outside of class. For each class. That's a lot. My mom seems to think that's normal for college kids, but I certainly haven't done that throughout my educational career yet...
Some other exciting things that have happened since I've been here, that I didn't really mention before: the program introduction in Rotorua was really fun and a really nice way to enter the country. There were about 50 of us together in Rotorua, and it felt like camp, with basically all of our time scheduled - it was a really quick intro to everything Kiwi. My favorite, of course, was the sheep show, where we got to see basically a pageant of about 20 different breeds of sheep, got to see one sheared, and I got to go up onstage to feed a baby lamb!!! Basically heaven. I did some other brave (for me) things while we were there, like Zorbing, which is rolling down a hill in this big rubber ball, and caving. We got to wear wetsuits and squeeze through really tiny openings in the Waitomo caves. The caves are full of glowworms, which look like stars when we all turned off our lights and just looked up.
On our second night in Auckland, I went out to dinner with a few friends and we wound up RANDOMLY running into these guys in a band. Sounds cliche, I know, we didn't even believe half of what they said at first. But look up Midnight Youth - they're pretty legit! We chatted with one of them, who told me they're playing at SXSW in Austin, and then the rest of the band showed up and we slowly figured out that they're #2 on the charts in NZ! We've now seen their music vids on TV, and last night we went over to a bar on the University of Auckland campus to see them perform. The bands who opened were questionable, but we all really enjoyed MY! It was a really fun show, and fun to see guys we sort of "know" up there.
I'll try to post pics of my school or my apartment soon. The apartments are pretty nice, and are literally a block away from the center of campus. Each unit has 5 rooms. I'm living with 4 Americans and 1 Kiwi. Meaning we're going to have to work even harder to meet the natives!!! But I like my room mates, and it's like dorm life, where we just run upstairs to find the rest of our friends.
Need to get ready for class now... feel free to email me and update me about what's happening at home! I really miss everyone a lot.. I can't believe I've only been here a little over 2 weeks!
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