What's that Dad? That's Art Son...

We had carefully planned out a weekend of hiking on the Banks Peninsula. But, as with most planned adventures, the weather didn't cooperate. After a week of gorgeous sunny, warm days, this morning dawned rainy and dreary. Scratch the day hike, we decided to hit up city central again. Not really having a plan, we wandered for a while until we reached the Christchurch Art Gallery. The art gallery had the most appealing nature of being completely and utterly free.

Some of the work was typical historic paintings and such, both from New Zealand and from England artists. There were some pretty cool Maori work, and then a couple special exhibits. One was about the "secret" sites of the U.S. It featured pictures of things like the body farm in Tennessee, the modern KKK, a white tiger so inbred that he's mentally retarded and many other topics that are sort of hushed up. It seemed just slightly ironic to be learning about the underside of American culture in a New Zealand Art Gallery.

The second really interesting exhibit was a modern art sculpture exhibit.. at least I think they would be considered sculptures.I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but I think the idea was the combine the human body, machines, earth and movement. Some pieces contained pieces of coal that were affixed in glass tubes, jars, and other glass objects and then the entire contraption was made to move, another piece was a blue stream that pulsed like a heart beat. The entire exhibit was.. odd.. to say the least.

At one point in the exhibit I was standing next to a father and son, who was about 5 years old. Their conversation summed up all of our feelings towards these bits of art.
Son "What's that Dad?"
Dad "That's Art"
Son "Yeah, but what does it mean?"
Dad "I don't know, I'm not intelligent enough to understand it.."

You can take the girl out of the library, but you can't take the library out of the girl

Thursday, July 15, 2010
This is going to be a bit of a random conglomerated post. But it’s all good stuff, I promise!


First is an adventure in the world of fruit. As an avid kiwi fruit lover, I am beyond thrilled to be able to eat them so cheaply here- in two forms! Golden Kiwi’s are the much sweeter version of the green kiwi that we typically see in the states. Rachel also introduced me to the fijawa fruit. Fijawa’s are a sweet/tangy green fruit- but you don’t eat the skin, just the fleshy inside. Apparently they’re one of those foods that people either love or they hate- and I love them! It's a really interesting fruit; when you scoop out the middle to eat, half of is is textured like a banana, and the other half like a kiwi.


Along with finding all of my classes this week, I also explored the library! The library at Canterbury is 12 stories tall, and towers over all of the other buildings around here! I quite agree that the most massive building on campus (possibly even in Christchurch?) should be filled to the brim with books. However, when I sat down to read my chapters for psychology, I found an interesting problem. Because it is so tall the view is absolutely gorgeous! You can see across Christchurch, and all the way out to the foot hills. This awesome view is EXTREMELY distracting when trying to study!





Tonight my flatmate, Ruth, convinced me to go to a Ucandance night. She said they do lessons for like Salsa, Merengue, and Modern Jive, it’s a great group of people and she promised it would be fun. Missing my old, St. Kate’s roommates and our adventures swing dancing last semester, I agreed to go. What fun! We danced the Modern Jive (MJ) first; MJ turned out to be a lot like the style of swing dancing that I’m used to. There were some moves that I wasn’t familiar with- thank goodness I’m a girl, and therefore I don’t have to lead! There were some excellent dancers there, and it was super nice to be able to convert my small swing knowledge to something else- and not look like a total fool! The Merenegue was also a lot of fun. It felt like I was tossed from one great dancer to the next, which meant lots of twirling, spinning, and general fun making! I love being able to dance with partners that actually know what they’re doing, it makes dancing so effortless and so much more enjoyable! My last dance of the evening turned in to three, one of which he started teaching me how to salsa! I was a disaster; it’s going to take a lot more practice to figure this dance out. I’m hoping to make it to Ucandance twice a week, so maybe by the end of this I will be able to salsa and not look so silly.

Just another number?

Tuesday July 13, 2010
As a special request from Oma here's a post on my classes. Sorry, no exciting pictures. I'm trying to avoid strange looks by waiting for a slow time to go creeping around campus with my camera- but I haven't found a slow time yet!

Alas, the fun and games of summer were cut dramatically short. Yesterday marked the beginning of a new semester; complete with new notebooks, a crazy class schedule, and a forgotten calculator.

My first two classes were my two New Zealand culture-type classes: New Zealand History and New Zealand Literature. The history class ended up being a popular choice for my fellow Arcadia students as five of us decided to take it. While New Zealand has an extremely short history, it still has a rich history. We learned a little bit about it during orientation, and I can't wait to learn more about it. My Literature class promises to be fascinating! It’s all about the gothic themes of New Zealand lit. Our readings are to be very dark and more than a little disturbing at times, and the professor seems like he can get a great discussion going. Through our first assignment is not enjoyable- after all who really likes to read depressing poems and discuss them? Poetry not being my forte in the slightest, plus the one had been written when the author was delusional with some disease in China. Delusional people really shouldn’t write poetry.

My other two classes were today, they are Statistics 101 and Personality. I admit, Stats might just be the most boring course I will take here. It reestablishes why I’m not some math/accounting/ crazy genius major. I just don’t enjoy math as a subject and this class isn’t difficult it’s just not interesting either. However, Personality is a totally different story! Love, love, love, love, LOVE! I love psychology in the first place, but personality has always been a not-so-secret passion. From horses to people, I just love figuring out their personality types. And finally I will have the tools to do it properly, and not just with the Parelli model. Our labs are dedicated towards doing personality tests on ourselves, and homework is doing them on other people-could there be a better class?!?

There is one drawback to the classes today, and that is that they are slightly larger than what I am used too. My flatmates warned me to be prepared for huge lectures. But there’s only so much preparedness you can do when going from St. Kates(Large lecture = about 50) to here, where there are 400 students in the lecture hall with you. I’m so used to my professors knowing me by name, now I’m some unknown number or a blurred face amidst the sea of other blurry half-asleep faces. It’s a bit of a culture shock, and will definitely take some time to get used too.

So the fun and games might just have to be rescheduled around class time.. and homework time.. maybe it can take the place of sleeping?

Taking your breathe away

Sunday July 11th 2010
Officially it’s my last day of summer- tomorrow my classes start at Canterbury. I admit that I’m too big of a nerd to be disappointed; in fact I’m down right excited for them! But that’s not what this post is about. Because it was our last free day, and because I was really bored I didn’t want to sit around the flat all day. With sudden inspiration I ran to Brittany’s room to ask/yelled through the door if she wanted to go on an adventure with me today. Within 15 minutes we were out the door and on our way to the Christchurch Gondola for a gondola ride and a day hike through the port hills. As with all of the best ideas, we had minimum planning; just a bus number, some lunch and a thirst for adventure.

Our first task was a test of our navigation skills. We had to not only survive the metro system, but use it correctly to get to our destination. Previously we both had only gone with people who already knew what they were doing. This didn’t deter us, we managed to get ourselves to the center city, and we caught, what we hoped was, the correct bus out to the hills. Our 15 minute journey was filled with the whispers of uncertainty “Is this is?” “Were we supposed to get off there?” However, we eventually came directly to the gondola ride leaving all doubts behind-and making us feel extremely successful.

Once up the hill we hiked throughout the hills all afternoon, and then waited for the sun to set before taking the gondola ride back down. One side of the hill looks out over Christchurch(and the far off mountains) and the other side looks down on Lyttelton and the port. The details of this story I will leave to pictures. I am not nearly a good enough writer to even start to explain how gorgeous the scenery was.



























We walked all along this hill












Please take note that I took almost 200 pictures today. Blogger started to have a heart attack half way through uploading only these few, other whys I wouldn't have kept adding too them.

Free Hugs!

Saturday July 10, 2010
So you know that feeling when you absolutely love life? I’ve come to really enjoy this feeling; it seems to haunt me this past week. Today’s adventure started with the Ilam Apartments “Amazing Race” competition. In teams of four we had to figure out clues that lead to other clues that were all across the city.

For our first clue we had to figure out sayings from a bunch of different images or words(like ppod for two peas in a pod) we were the second team done by a mere seconds! This entitled a mad sprint to the library for our second task- we either had to find a certain book, or sing the New Zealand anthem in the middle of the library. Lacking any sort of grace to be embarrassed we chose to sing. The NZ anthem is not just in English but also in Maori.. making us poor Americans and the one Taiwanese stumble over the lyrics as we loudly belted out the anthem. Sadly the other team finished at exactly the same time, so as we grabbed our next clue it was again a dash to the bus stop so that we could get to the mall. We arrived just in time to catch the bus; wheezing and about to die we boarded, swiped our metrocards and collapsed on to the nearest seat. This lasted 10 minutes until we all jumped off the bus and attempted to dash across the street- this lead to me almost being hit by a car when I looked the wrong way. Oops. But we all made it safely across in the end. Thanks to some careful car weaving and people weaving skills we were able to make it to the next clue before the other team. Which lead us to just barely catching the next bus to the city center, barely as in we were running up as it pulled up to the stop. By now we were all entirely out of breath, but gleefully enjoying the fact that the other team missed the bus and now had to wait 15 minutes for the next one.



With our slight lead we slowed to a mild power walk to the next clue.In the middle of a busy square we had a choice between two tasks- either everyone hug 5 people, or sing and dance to a song. Purely for time sake we agreed to hug. My first group was an older couple who had the biggest laugh over my hurried task, but they both agreed to a hug. I hit up a couple teenagers before running in to a road block when I mistakenly asking an Asian tourist for a hug-she didn’t understand English! She hurried away (clearly thinking I was completely bonkers) but I was able to get a hug from the next girl I spotted. Success!


Task completed we ran off to a museum for our next one. During our 20 minute walk over there we came across one of the RA’s walking down the street, he asked if we were doing the race, made some kind of grunt noise and speed up his walking. Perplexed we continued on, still walking slightly in front of him. When we reached the museum we started looking for the RA with the next clue, only to find it was the guy we had been walking in front of the entire time! We were so fast we beat the clue to the spot! After he divulged our next clue it was off to the Art Gallery for a pop quiz! Between the four of us we quickly answered enough questions to earn our next clue, but alas! We spotted one of the other teams only two clues behind us! We hurriedly walked(still out of breath from all of the sprinting at the beginning of the race) to the Remembrance Bridge to get our final clue!


From there it was only a short walk to a restaurant and the collection of our winnings! Thankfully having Rachel (who’s lived here for a semester already) on our team meant that we knew where we were going plus all of our awesome singing/hugging/knowledge skills meant we rocked it! For coming in first place out of eight teams we won a $60 gift certificate towards a pizza place at the mall!

At the finish line!

The fried spaghetti adventures

After a busy couple days getting life sorted out. I decided to make my first real meal(as in no toast and peanut butter in sight). I wanted something that was easy to make, didn't take too long, yet was still spectacular and yummy. The answer? Spaghetti! It's almost impossible to mess up, yet, if done right is incredibly delicious! Perfect! The noodles finished first, and in absolute noodly perfection. They were neither over cooked or still raw, but just right! I set them off to the side while the sauce finished heating up.. Humming happily to my self I imagined how wonderful all of this will taste in the end. All of a sudden I hear this terrible frying sound coming from my noodle pot. I had accidentally set the noodle pot back on the hot part of the stove! Gone were my noodles from heaven, instead the bottom layer was now crunchy and golden brown. Disaster! But, alas, what is a poor(literally) college student supposed to do? I scooped/scraped it out on to my plate, coated it with a layer of the now delicious looking sauce, added a touch of salt, crossed my fingers, and dug in. There wasn't any twirling of the noodles neatly around my fork, more of a delicate crunch as I broke the noodles apart. However from first bite on I was sold! It was still the classic spaghetti that we all love, but this time with more texture. The crispy noodles on bottom added an element of surprise, while the still soft noodles in the middle kept it spaghetti like, and the sauce created the wonderful flavor. I call it Spaghetti a la Anna! Some would say that all the fried fair food over the years has distorted my taste buds, but I still think this was a definite success!


Besides almost ruining my food, we've been exploring Christchurch-in the rain. It's still a wonderfully fun time, we just need the necessary protection from the chilly winter weather.

Finally, some sleep!

Tuesday July 6, 2010
After the crazy past few days of being shuttled from one place to the next, I took full advantage of finally be able to settle down to sleep in-well at least to the very late time of 9:00 in the morning that is. I know that this is slightly extreme, but some days you just have to sleep in. The lazy day continued with the grand scheme of unpacking my bags (Derek, I found my belt!) and making my room feel like home.


My roommate, Britney, and I decided to walk down to the mall to do a little shopping for the necessities. This was deemed successful since we were able to (a) not get rained on and (b) not get lost! The mall is exactly like every other mall you find in the states; loud and full of tweens/moms with strollers/cranky shoppers. The babble has a different accent, and the stores, while they look the same, are named entirely different things- well beside the McDonalds and Starbucks of course. But the general atmosphere is extremely similar. As a reward for our successful walk we agreed to get ice cream, in particular a flavor called “Hokey Pokey” which is the flavor NZ is famous for. This vanilla ice cream is swirled with yummy, crunchy, candy bits and is quite delicious, definitely beats Vegemite!

The interesting thing about shopping here is that much of the food is exactly the same, except in different packaging, or called something different. Walking through the grocery story is quite the adventure; Cheddar Cheese is white not orangy yellow, Bread can be “Toast” or “Sandwich” style, there is 10 different varieties of Nutella, and plastic bags can cost as much as 10¢(best bring your own).

We also added another roommate today, which brings us up to five. Ruth and Rachel are Kiwis, Britney is from Oregon, and Julie is from Chicago. They are all fantastic girls, and we’re off on the start of an excellent semester together.

Here's a picture for the Crew Team:

Your magical towel turned out super cute! Love it! Thanks!