I woke up this morning to cloudy gray skies but quickly became distracted by Facebook, as I do many mornings. It was 9:25 and I had planned to leave my flat at 9:20 to get to my 10 o'clock class, but instead of racing out the door, I made toast with avocado on it. Thanks to my awesome kiwihost, Kinga, I am now fully addicted to avocado on toast. With my toast in hand, I left to go look for my food science class. I have learned to leave really early for things, because there is no Bryn Mawr time and the number of times I have gotten lost is starting to become embarrassing. It took me 28 minutes to find my class this morning, not to mention the 5 people I stopped to ask for directions. I had even found the building the day before but still managed to not be able to navigate to it a day later. This campus is quite big but I am determined to learn it by next week. I will keep you guys updated.
While I was walking to food science (with my avocado and toast) it began to rain and my Converses got wet and my feet froze for the rest of the day. I walked into class at 10:01AM except I managed to miss enough information that the person next to me had to fill me in. Again, there is no Bryn Mawr time here. In fact, professors have started classes so promptly in the last two days that I think I should prepare to arrive 10 minutes early just in case. I plan on leaving for class incredibly early tomorrow. I also ran out of avocado.
Anyways, I walked out of my food science class an hour later and headed to the gym to sign up for art classes. It was still raining when I arrived at the gym but after signing up for a ceramics class and a kiln fired glass class the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Not only had the sun come out, but there were no clouds in the sky and the sun was so bright that I could not see where I was going since the ground was still wet and everything shined. I went to my Maori Society class, with my still wet shoes, but was generally happy that the sun had finally come out. Directly after Maori Society, I had computer science lab, conveniently in the building next door. Also, a little side note about my classes and their locations. My computer science class meets 4 times a week in 4 different locations. It is the same with food science, except food science meets 3 times a week. Anyways, once I was in lab, the clouds set back in, and all of a sudden it was snowing. SNOWING! But by the time I left lab at 3pm, it was sunny again, with no clouds in the sky. I got home, and within a few minutes, it was raining! So when people say Dunedin can have all four seasons in a day, they really meant it.
On to some information about my classes. At this point i've been to each of my classes once, so this is a perfect time for first reactions. On Monday morning, after going to the gym at the crack of dawn, I headed over to my computational modelling class. There are ten people in my class, eight of which are men. My professor showed us some videos of walking robots, and told us that our first assignment was to create a rimless wheel that would walk on a slope. I became increasingly concerned about the class as Mike, our professor went on to write equations on the board and talk about physics. Apparently, I'm supposed to have a year of college calculus and physics, differential equations, and a background in MATLAB, hence I cannot make up my mind about whether to stay or to go to another class that Deepak (my major adviser at Bryn Mawr) had chosen. The topics seem really interesting in this class that i'm in, though, i'm really not prepared.
After computer science, I went to Chinese. This class also shocked me, for three reasons. 1.) It only meets once a week for two hours. 2.) I placed into Chinese 4. And 3.) Class started and my professor basically asked us a read an excerpt from a book. Now you may think an excerpt from a book isn't anything at all, and when it is in English, it really isn't. But I really wasn't ready to be reading Chinese literature. BUT! the good thing is, i'm determined to read that book because I feel like it would really help with my I-can't-read-but-I-can-speak-Chinese phenomenon. Anyways, Monday was quite the day of shocking classes and getting lost one too many times. I returned to my flat and ate avocado on toast.
Earlier today (Tuesday) I began my day of many seasons with the food science class, which I believe I will enjoy greatly. We watched a video of how food developed and such and labs will be begin next week where we will cook food. I will also get to wear a lab coat! Following food science I had Maori Society, which is my biggest class. There are 4 people in my Chinese class, 10 in computational modelling, 30 in food science, and 564 in Maori Society. Maori Society is composed of mostly internationals students, many on study abroad/exchange, like me, and for the entire 50 minute lecture, the professor basically repeated "Do your work, come to class, hand things in, do not plagiarize, check the syllabus, do the readings, PLEASE." I think I will enjoy Maori Society a lot too, once we actually start learning things other than to do our work. I had CS lab after that, which was two hours of figuring out MATLAB and coding, and watching the snow outside. I was going to go buy avocados after lab but is was so cold I just went home. Alas, no avocado and toast tomorrow morning.
Anyways, I baked some rainbow cookies earlier, and watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice with Kinga and her dad. I also met two of my flat mates today, Jos is from Mexico, and David is from Oregon. My last flat mate Mike will be arriving next week. More about the big happy family later on, once I've met and gotten to know everyone. I should probably go to bed now. I only have one class tomorrow because food science lab doesn't begin until next week. Good time to go to the grocery store for avocados.
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