When choosing to study on the “most geographically isolated country in the world” one of my largest areas of concern was loosing touch with my family and friends…and that they would forget about me. This week I realised that the exact opposite has happened. I feel that I have gone closer with all my friends and family through long emails and skype chats. On average, I spend about 3 hours a day communicating with people outside of Auckland, and each day I learn something new. So thank you for all the long emails, early Skype calls, and facebook posts- they have all deepened my understanding of true communication. Instead of the meaningless things of life, I hear what is in people’s hearts… and more importantly… why.
This week shared some similarities with the past week in that I attended another walk sponsored by the city council for the Heritage Festival. This walk was fully booked, since it explored Auckland’s history through the stories found in the Symonds Street Cemetery. I wasn’t exactly sure where our meeting spot was, but I followed an elderly couple of women [picking up on the hint from the Art Deco walk], and they led me straight there!
Cemeteries do kind of creep me out, but the stories outweigh the whole creep factor. It was surprisingly beautiful, and very peaceful. Although there are only 1,300 gravestones, about 15,000 people were buried there, so at one point our guide said, “So you are probably standing on someone’s grave. Haha [Insert old-English-man laugh].” Since when did that become funny? The highlight came when one of the women was announcing an iron showcase- yes, like irons used in ironing your clothes- of about 800 irons. Another woman had seen the host of the iron showcase before and mention how she owned an iron swan [Ya, I don't exactly know either]. She was trying to explain it by saying, “I was so excited to see that she [Iron lady] had the swan, since its so.. so… um. What’s the word?” The other lady responded “Ugly” right before the swan woman finished her sentence with “rare.” Haha- I had to walk away to avoid laughing right next to them, cause that’s just funny.
Sorry to everyone I missed on Wednesday Skype/chat, I stopped in to see my Management teacher and we ended up chatting for and hour and a half. He filled me in about the way the department works, and that all classes were required to split their grading systems as 30% assessment and 70% final, unless they appealed to change it- max 50% assessment and 50% final. Crazy. He also shared his experience of the US- a visit to LA and Las Vegas. He knew that the entire US was not the same, but I did have to remind him that we live where it gets really cold in the winter… with heeps of snow, so not everyone wears bikinis and high heals around the hotel lobby.
That evening we rounded up some people for the free “Happy Hour” with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. They played 2 full songs, each very different, and did not use a conductor for either. It was so good to be around classical music again, and it honestly took my breath away. I don’t really miss it, but my background does give me an intense appreciation for their talent and hard work. I also found out that some of the people on the Boston group are still actively playing instruments, and the sight of them so happy made me extra happy. The main violin soloist was German and was totally rocking out the crazy violin hair… ah, brings me back to the good old days.
Thursday [Sorry for the intense level of detail- but I really don’t want to start working on my paper], brought by a special help session with our new Finance lecturer and some great coffee under the twinkly lights of the CBD with Vaness. So- one of the highlights of the week- Emily, another American student, and I went in to review the last test with our finance professor, Cameron. Cameron is exact opposite from Russell, in that he is pretty ripped and about 30 years younger. In fact, he was looking ten times better in a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure I would wear. Emily was getting pretty frustrated at the end of the session, and finally said, “This, this! What is this junk?” haha- oh Emily, but what made it even better was that Cameron calmly said, “Well, this junk is the EAA formula….” Cameron’s Chinese accent made that statement really funny, and I was trying to be polite and turn my head to give a little cough/laugh, but I kept on “coughing” until I ended up full- on laugh. Ah, good times.
Oh, and I can’t forget that evening- the granola incident of 2008. I had made granola the night before as a trial run, and I was definitely craving it for the morning, so I decided to make it at about 11:30pm. The oven is MIA, so I had to resort to using the “convection oven” A.k.a a Microwave that thinks its cooler that all the other ones cause it has a “crisp” function. So I popped the granola w/pistachios in that bad boy for 15 minutes on the cake function [in the main kitchen on the ground floor]. I went back up to the room and was cleaning up the mass of papers on the floor, and then my roommate came up from working out in a panic. “Dude, there is smoke everywhere downstairs. I think something is on fire.” Me: “What?” Jasmine: “I came back from working out and the smoke was pouring out the windows. I dropped my books and screamed “My granola!” Jasmine: “What?” Then we both sprinted down stairs as I tried to explain everything. As I rounded the corner, the smoke wasn’t honestly as bad as I thought, but it definitely reminded me of the Safety Town smoke houses that we had to crawl through in grade school. We found my granola black, but not flaming. We’re were both laughing very hard, but managed to get the pan upstairs and cleaned it off. I still wanted my granola, so I started to get the ingredients out for another round and Jasmine wasn’t a big proponent of the idea. “What the hell are you doing?” “Round two.” “No, you almost burnt this place down!” Okay- true, but I didn’t almost burn it down, the convection oven did. Round two ended up okay, but the smoke was causing almost everyone to cough as the walked by, and my friend on the first floor mentioned that she smelled something and went out to check on it, but couldn’t find anything. Oops. On Friday my friend Annie and I were able to bake a cake successfully it- it took a little over 2 hours, but nothing says happy birthday like a homemade cake!
On Saturday, I decide to brave the Les Mills classes at the official Les Mills Gym. Les Mills is a series of workout classes that were developed right here in New Zealand, but are used all over the world. They were in Mexico and in every part of the US that I’ve lived. They are all the same, which is cool- and they pretty much kick your but. Upon walking up to the big class box of a building, you could hear the music and the instructor yelling “One, two. Ahh!” Haha- I knew this was going to be a good morning. The gym was pretty nice, and very very big. The classes were in a separate building, which attached to the main gym that also had a large gym area and the 4 floors of rooms for work out classes. The actual gym was pretty modern, and not as intense as I imagined. So, I took BodyAttack and BodyPump- getting a great work out. Both instructors were hilarious/intense, and very enthusiastic. My favourite line of the morning was, “Bring it down or….. I’ll kick your ass!” Okay buddy, easy there. I didn’t get an exact count, but I’m guessing around 80 to 100 people were in each class. There were some insanely fit people, but mostly everyone else looked pretty normal. It was a great way to start the weekend, and I am going to attempt to be productive, since next week looks crazy with cooking class [with Jess] and a paper and finance assignment.
Have a great weekend! Miss and Love you all!
This week shared some similarities with the past week in that I attended another walk sponsored by the city council for the Heritage Festival. This walk was fully booked, since it explored Auckland’s history through the stories found in the Symonds Street Cemetery. I wasn’t exactly sure where our meeting spot was, but I followed an elderly couple of women [picking up on the hint from the Art Deco walk], and they led me straight there!
Cemeteries do kind of creep me out, but the stories outweigh the whole creep factor. It was surprisingly beautiful, and very peaceful. Although there are only 1,300 gravestones, about 15,000 people were buried there, so at one point our guide said, “So you are probably standing on someone’s grave. Haha [Insert old-English-man laugh].” Since when did that become funny? The highlight came when one of the women was announcing an iron showcase- yes, like irons used in ironing your clothes- of about 800 irons. Another woman had seen the host of the iron showcase before and mention how she owned an iron swan [Ya, I don't exactly know either]. She was trying to explain it by saying, “I was so excited to see that she [Iron lady] had the swan, since its so.. so… um. What’s the word?” The other lady responded “Ugly” right before the swan woman finished her sentence with “rare.” Haha- I had to walk away to avoid laughing right next to them, cause that’s just funny.
Sorry to everyone I missed on Wednesday Skype/chat, I stopped in to see my Management teacher and we ended up chatting for and hour and a half. He filled me in about the way the department works, and that all classes were required to split their grading systems as 30% assessment and 70% final, unless they appealed to change it- max 50% assessment and 50% final. Crazy. He also shared his experience of the US- a visit to LA and Las Vegas. He knew that the entire US was not the same, but I did have to remind him that we live where it gets really cold in the winter… with heeps of snow, so not everyone wears bikinis and high heals around the hotel lobby.
That evening we rounded up some people for the free “Happy Hour” with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. They played 2 full songs, each very different, and did not use a conductor for either. It was so good to be around classical music again, and it honestly took my breath away. I don’t really miss it, but my background does give me an intense appreciation for their talent and hard work. I also found out that some of the people on the Boston group are still actively playing instruments, and the sight of them so happy made me extra happy. The main violin soloist was German and was totally rocking out the crazy violin hair… ah, brings me back to the good old days.
Thursday [Sorry for the intense level of detail- but I really don’t want to start working on my paper], brought by a special help session with our new Finance lecturer and some great coffee under the twinkly lights of the CBD with Vaness. So- one of the highlights of the week- Emily, another American student, and I went in to review the last test with our finance professor, Cameron. Cameron is exact opposite from Russell, in that he is pretty ripped and about 30 years younger. In fact, he was looking ten times better in a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure I would wear. Emily was getting pretty frustrated at the end of the session, and finally said, “This, this! What is this junk?” haha- oh Emily, but what made it even better was that Cameron calmly said, “Well, this junk is the EAA formula….” Cameron’s Chinese accent made that statement really funny, and I was trying to be polite and turn my head to give a little cough/laugh, but I kept on “coughing” until I ended up full- on laugh. Ah, good times.
Oh, and I can’t forget that evening- the granola incident of 2008. I had made granola the night before as a trial run, and I was definitely craving it for the morning, so I decided to make it at about 11:30pm. The oven is MIA, so I had to resort to using the “convection oven” A.k.a a Microwave that thinks its cooler that all the other ones cause it has a “crisp” function. So I popped the granola w/pistachios in that bad boy for 15 minutes on the cake function [in the main kitchen on the ground floor]. I went back up to the room and was cleaning up the mass of papers on the floor, and then my roommate came up from working out in a panic. “Dude, there is smoke everywhere downstairs. I think something is on fire.” Me: “What?” Jasmine: “I came back from working out and the smoke was pouring out the windows. I dropped my books and screamed “My granola!” Jasmine: “What?” Then we both sprinted down stairs as I tried to explain everything. As I rounded the corner, the smoke wasn’t honestly as bad as I thought, but it definitely reminded me of the Safety Town smoke houses that we had to crawl through in grade school. We found my granola black, but not flaming. We’re were both laughing very hard, but managed to get the pan upstairs and cleaned it off. I still wanted my granola, so I started to get the ingredients out for another round and Jasmine wasn’t a big proponent of the idea. “What the hell are you doing?” “Round two.” “No, you almost burnt this place down!” Okay- true, but I didn’t almost burn it down, the convection oven did. Round two ended up okay, but the smoke was causing almost everyone to cough as the walked by, and my friend on the first floor mentioned that she smelled something and went out to check on it, but couldn’t find anything. Oops. On Friday my friend Annie and I were able to bake a cake successfully it- it took a little over 2 hours, but nothing says happy birthday like a homemade cake!
On Saturday, I decide to brave the Les Mills classes at the official Les Mills Gym. Les Mills is a series of workout classes that were developed right here in New Zealand, but are used all over the world. They were in Mexico and in every part of the US that I’ve lived. They are all the same, which is cool- and they pretty much kick your but. Upon walking up to the big class box of a building, you could hear the music and the instructor yelling “One, two. Ahh!” Haha- I knew this was going to be a good morning. The gym was pretty nice, and very very big. The classes were in a separate building, which attached to the main gym that also had a large gym area and the 4 floors of rooms for work out classes. The actual gym was pretty modern, and not as intense as I imagined. So, I took BodyAttack and BodyPump- getting a great work out. Both instructors were hilarious/intense, and very enthusiastic. My favourite line of the morning was, “Bring it down or….. I’ll kick your ass!” Okay buddy, easy there. I didn’t get an exact count, but I’m guessing around 80 to 100 people were in each class. There were some insanely fit people, but mostly everyone else looked pretty normal. It was a great way to start the weekend, and I am going to attempt to be productive, since next week looks crazy with cooking class [with Jess] and a paper and finance assignment.
Have a great weekend! Miss and Love you all!
1 comment:
BETH! When I was reading your post about you going to the gym it reminded me of the time we went to pilates and I was in so much pain..and you looked at me and said:
"DO NOT cry!" "Alicia Brownlee, DO NOT cry"
hahahahaha good times
Glad to see you're still setting things on fire :) You're just so hott!
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