What a busy week! On Saturday I was supposed to go to an orientation for domestic students and optional for international students and even though I signed up to go I decided at the last minute to do something way cooler. About 11:00pm I checked my facebook and one of my friends had left me a message saying that they were going on a small road trip tomorrow morning and asked me if I wanted to go. I said yes of course and at 8:30 the next morning we were off to visit Lake Taupo! It was a four hour drive to get there but along the way we got to see the New Zealand countryside which was amazing! Lots and lots of sheep. We arrived at the town of Taupo which overlooks the lake and the snowy volcanic mountains and walked around the town and visited the hostel so I could get information for future visits. We ate at Burger Fuel for lunch and had the biggest freakin' burgers I've ever eaten! Before driving home we stopped at Huka Falls just north of the town and learned some pretty cool things about the river. Apparently the river supplies the north island with 65% of its power! In the evening when we returned my flatmates decided to through a spontaneous party that lasted until 4:30 in the morning. It was a good chance for me to meet a lot of the people from Attawhai Village in a fun environment, plus learn some interesting new games. I also got to talk with the group of girls from Germany and learn a little bit more about them and German culture which was neat. We talked about going back to Taupo at some point to sky dive since it is really big up there.
Monday was the first day of classes for me and it was very different from what I am used to. Currently I am talking Animal Health, Behaviour and Welfare, Animal Behaviour, and Maori Customs and Lore. There might be a way for me to take the Equine class, but I will have to speak with my lecturers about that. I had two classes and a lab yesterday and it was very intense. They really pack a lot of information into each lecture and one of my classes comes with a stack of notes that could rival a textbook in size. Clearly a lot of the work that is involved with these classes is studying to be done outside of the class. It will also be difficult for me to learn how to study since the only grades we get for the classes are two exams, sometimes just the final! It is not a requirement to attend lectures, but probably very well advised to. My Animal Behaviour class deals a lot with the quantitative aspect of animal behaviour which in turn involves a lot of statistics. Guess who hasn't taken statistics in over two years...I will have to do some review on my own and make friends very quickly with people or I will drop the class.
Side note: we had our village meeting with the RA last night and I found out that not only am I the youngest in my flat by 3 years, but I am the youngest in the whole Attawhai Village by that same margin! They kept referring to all the students in the dorms on campus as the young ones and most of them are older than me!
So today I will attempt to work the bugs out of my class schedule before I go to my one class this afternoon. After class I will go with my friend Erin to try and find the Green Bike shop where they sell you a used bike for $30. It would be great exercise for me to ride into town every once and a while.
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