Mid-Semester New Zealand Update!

I'm now halfway through my classes at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand!! Thats right, and most of you haven't even started school yet! So this past term has gone pretty well, school here is so different from universities in the States, and its very different than Mudd. Most of you guys know (already being students there), that all of our time at Mudd is spent doing endless, multi-hour assignments and labs so long it makes you want to tear your eyes out. Here, I'm actually kind of bored a lot of the time. Here's a rundown of what I've done this term for school:

-Roman Mythologies: go to class, read ancient texts (sometimes), and just this week I turned in a short-answer test talking about how the mythology of the founding of Rome is important culturally to Romans because it connects the founding of their city, and the first line of kings, to the gods and also to the hero Aeneas (who was a big player in that Trojan War you hear so much about). So overall, not much to that class so far.

-New Zealand History: go to class, read stuff for the tutorial classes, discuss NZ history. I wrote a short paper summarizing the life of this NZ family affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam, and then led a discussion in class about the text giving this history. Then I had an essay due this past week that I ingeniously decided to write the night before, ending at 4 AM. It was interesting though, and I think I wrote a pretty good paper. It was about New Zealand's contribution to the armed forces in the Vietnam war, and to what extent their military commitments during that time period were influenced by their various alliances (ANZUS, SEATO, etc). Interesting to see from the other side the perspective of a country that contributes a token force, that I usually look at as kind of silly. It's relevant today as well, with the desires for mulitlateralism in Afghanistan and Iraq though most of the non-US contributions are somewhere between 10-200 people (that could even be non-combat). Interesting also how much historical events in the US affected NZ. For instance, the local Women's Rights movements and Maori Sovereignty movements were directly caused by the Women's rights movements in the US. And man, New Zealanders get crazy with their sports, particularly rugby. The greatest period of social unrest & protest in New Zealand was during the Springbok tours, which was when the South African rugby team came to New Zealand to play in several matches. Many NZers strongly opposed the apartheid in S. Africa, and began to protest heavily. One of the more turbulent times, but I think its funny comparing it to periods of social unrest in the States. The LA riots following the Rodney King event comes to mind. It never got anywhere near that bad in NZ. That's a good class. There's a good balance of Kiwi and American students, so there are some good discussions comparing various events and movements in each.

-Heat and Mass transfer: Well I haven't done anything for this besides go to class so far, but there's a hw due in 2 weeks. Its fairly intimidating that each of 4 hw assignments is 5% of the total mark each, leaving the remaining 80% for the final. Fuuuuuuuun. No pressure at all. Yea, so I have to get a B or mudd doesnt give me credit, but I'm not sweating it.

-Fluid Mechanics: I've done a little more for this class. Besides lecture/notes, there's been one test so far. Now that was a fairly traumatic experience. Not the test itself, the test was the easiest thing I've had to do since entering Mudd. I am not joking about that, it was ridiculously easy. The bad part was trying to find the damn room it was in. Since the class was all 2nd year students, the prof was ok with saying the test was in the "engineering drafting room", and apparently everyone else had some experience there, and were ok. Me, being probably the only American in the class, was completely dumbfounded. I ended up asking a couple people and just managing to get into the room less than a minute before the test started. Other than that test, there's been 3 labs for fluid mech. Those have actually been pretty interesting, plus very simple. I mean, after E80, I had gotten used to being given thousands of dollars of equipment, a vague idea of what to do, and a "have at it!" The first lab I had here, They first gave us a rundown of the theory, the equations and all that. Then we collected data (in groups of 7 or so, to record all of 6 different recordings, two of which (room temp and pressure) didnt change. Then, we actually did sample calculations in the room, and the lab person checked to make sure we all knew how to do it. And then, we were told that there was an Excel spreadsheet available that we could put our data into, and it would calculate everything. It was that easy. Frankly, I was kind of bored, so I went and made my own excel sheet, which I'm sure was better too. So I have to thank E80 for making us work harder than we ever have before, no lab can ever intimidate me now.

So classes - easy. My only problem with them is that I get lazy, and then I procrastinate, and then I stay up till 4 am doing an essay.

Other than classes, I have to report that I haven't really been busy with much of anything else. I have a lot of free time, but its mostly broken up into chunks during the week, so I don't have a ton of contiguous free time where I can go on trips. I have been able to do a couple things with some of the other Americans in my study abroad group. One of the first weekends we rode the bus across the city out to the beach (yep, the same Pacific Ocean that touches land back home) at New Brighton. We went out along the beach and the pier for a little while, and got some food in town. I'm looking to get back out there later on as it warms up to actually go into the ocean (and maybe do some surfing). I've seen 4 movies since I've been here. The first one was the new Harry Potter movie right when it came out. With all the excitement about the last book coming out, they wanted to go watch the movie. And yes, I did read the last book. It was pretty good, although I don't know if I really like the ending all that much (just the last chapter).

I also went to see the Simpsons movie with my friend Erin and her flatmates. Another weekend I saw License to Wed with some of the girls from IES, plus Thai food (there are a lot of Asian food places here - particularly good Thai and Indian places, so I've been enjoying those. What I really miss though is good Mexican food. They have one overpriced, semi-fancy Mexican cafe, but I really miss that part of Southern California. So many places to get good Mexican food. There's actually one place out near school that the Chem dept took Glennis and I to for being such great preceptors that had authentic Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and Mexican food. For the longest time, we couldn't remember where it was, or what it was called, but I got really hungry for it one day here, and I looked it up and found it! Guasalmex, in Pomona. When I get back to school, you're all coming with me there.

Wow, this is a long tangent, back to the main story about movies). That same weekend, the New Zealand Film Festival was in Christchurch, so Erin and I went downtown and saw the movie Rescue Dawn, about a Vietnam war fighter pilot who gets shot down over Laos and taken prisoner. It's pretty intense, but I really suggest it to anyone who likes the War genre and a good POW story.

On a thursday night a couple weeks back, we went with the whole IES group to Tamaki Heritage Village, which was a reenactment of a small part of Maori history during the Musket wars. It was very well done. We first went into a mock Maori village that had several actors walking around, and several different huts that we could go in and learn about a different part of Maori life, such as about food, about herbal medicines, and weapons. Then a rival Maori tribe rode into the village and began to attack. They did very well making us feel involved, as a part in the story. We watched a reenactment of the battle played out on a large field outside the village. Then we rode an old-fashioned train to another part of the park that had a mock-up of an old NZ city. There we learned about Maori and their confrontations with the Europeans moving in and displacing them from their land, and the influence of Christianity. It was really cool because they had Maori and European actors spread out across the town, interspersed in the group, and they would talk in character, and make comments at the Europeans. It was all very cool. One of the Maori came up to a guy in our group, Mark, and offered to trade him a musket. Mark offered this blanket that they gave each of us (it was a little chilly outside) plus this girl Sara in exchange for the musket, but he was turned down... After traveling through the town, they took us to a banquet hall where they danced and sang for us, and then we ate a hangi, which is a traditional Maori meal for special occasions cooked underground. One of the things I'm looking forward to later this semester is that my tutorial prof for NZ history is Maori, and later on next month he has offered to bring our tutorial group back to his house for a hangi... I'm really looking forward to it.

Another weekend me and a couple other people from the IES group went to the Orana wildlife park to see some animals. The best parts were the animal feeding times. We got to hand feed giraffes, and watch tigers get fed.

Last week my flatmates and I went out to get dessert at this place called Strawberry Fare in the city. They had some amazingly good desserts. We were joking at the end that we wanted to get more, but they were so rich that by the time i was finishing up my Devil's Dream, I didn't think I could eat anymore. When we got back to the flat we spent the rest of the night on David's PS3, playing some fighting game...I forget what it was called, maybe Tekken? Well anyways, we played so many times, I was getting pretty good towards the end. I was getting tired though, so i started to lose, so i headed to bed.

So thats been all the main events so far this semester. The rest of the time, if I'm not doing work or eating, I'm usually found on the computer or hanging out with flatmates, or on occasion going out. These next two weeks though are gonna be the exciting ones. Boy, we've got big plans.

Spring break here is 2 weeks long, beginning this weekend. Starting this saturday, Erin and I are renting a car to drive up to Kaikoura on the coast. Kaikoura is mostly famous for whale and dolphin tours, but we're also looking at tramping (hiking) along somewhere. We've heard there is a really nice hike that goes along the coast around the peninsula. There's also a winery south of the city overlooking the ocean, we'll probably go take a tour and go wine tasting. There's a variety of things to do there, we haven't made any definite plans yet. Then at some point we're gonna drive south and inland to Hanmer Springs. They have (obviously) hot springs there, but also tramping, horseback riding, and other things. We haven't made any plans besides renting the car, so its going to be a very spontaneous trip, and a lot of fun! We'll get back by thursday morning, because friday evening we'll be heading to the Christchurch Int'l Airport, and boarding an Airbus A320 to head to Rarotonga, the capitol centre of the Cook Islands!!! Thats right, I get to go to a South Pacific island the same week you guys start school! (except Shannon I know, shes already into classes like me). There's not a lot planned out for us, so we have a lot of free time to just hang out or go down to the beach and just chill. Its gonna be beautiful down there, and I'm not gonna want to come back and go back to class...

I'll send out another email when I get back from Spring Break, and I'll tell you guys all about Kaikoura, Hanmer Springs, and Rarotonga. Hope you guys had a great summer, school's starting again! Good luck this semester, And I'll see you guys (except Judy! Have fun in Ireland!!) when I get back sometime either late Nov or early Dec.

First Week in New Zealand!

I flew out of LAX friday evening on an insanely long 13 hr flight to Auckland on the north island. It wasn't a bad trip though. I got a window seat (yes!) on the right side of the plane, just where the back edge of the main wing attaches to the fuselage. Some people might think thats a terrible seat, cause the wing cuts out all your view, but this was a night flight, so there wasnt much of a view to see. And I got to see the flaps, ailerons, and airbrakes, so I was happy.

I sat next to these two girls from the University of Denver who were also studying abroad, but in Auckland. We chatted some throughout the night, between TV shows and movies. One really cool thing is that the Air New Zealand 747-400 we flew on was equipped with personal entertainment centers, 8-inch screens in the back of the seat in front of us, controlled with the remote/phone attached. So I watched an episode of Arrested Development, CSI Miami, and some movies. They brought us out dinner (mmm airline food...) and to my suprise, they had an open bar aboard the airplane. Yes, thats right, free alcoholic drinks. So the two girls and I had a glass of wine with dinner. I watched another movie before I fell asleep. They also had a section that showed stats about the flight, like where we were on a google earth-like thing, groundspeed, current time, ETA, outside temp (it got as cold as like -50 C at 37,000 ft). I woke up at what to me i guess was about 7 am, but in NZ time thats about 2 AM. So I had still several hours before we were to land in Auckland at 5:15 AM local time. Had breakfast, I started watching Letters from Iwo Jima, but I only got like halfway through before we started to descend and they turned the entertainment system off.

We were late getting into Auckland, and I was worried cause I thought that to catch my flight to Christchuch in less than an hour, I had to go through the terminal, get my bags, go through customs, get to the domestic terminal, go through security and then get on the plane, but they had a nice setup where the flight to Christchurch left from the International terminal. For some reason, we had to go through security again, although we just got off the plane...oh well. Had a nice short hop to Christchurch, got to see some awesome views of the mountains in the southern island as we flew over.

Day 1 - Sunday

Landed in Christchurch, met some of the IES students waiting for the taxi. The first day, we couldn't go to our university housing yet, so we stayed in a motel right across the street from the engineering dept. Of course, the first task of the day was to get some FOOD!! It was only about 10 AM, but most of us hadn't eaten since breakfast on the plane at 3 AM local time. Our IES coordinator, Eunice, took three of us guys to the grocery store. The whole time we were driving there I couldn't help but think, as we made turns "Ahhh!! there's someone in our lane coming right at us!!" I'm getting a little better about getting used to driving on the left side, but it was definitely weird the first day. Then after we ate, everyone who had showed up so far went on a little touring walk of the university campus.

I was surprised to see how close together it was compared to what I initially thought. The entire academic campus is probably covering an area approximately the same as the 5Cs, but most of the academic buildings are 5+ stories, so a lot more can fit. I was worried initially, before I came, that my flat would be kinda far from class, but its actually like a 5-10 minute walk to anywhere on campus. Granted, its nowhere as close as everything was at Mudd, but closer than I expected. So we walked around a little bit around campus, and then went up the road toward the supermarket we got food at earlier to find lunch. We found a small place that had an interesting combination of asian food, fish and chips, and burgers, and had lunch.

Random NZ observations: a lot of houses have a 6-7 ft "privacy fence" around it. Ketchup is known as tomato sauce. Eggs in the supermarket are not in a refrigerated section. Identical products, from the same manufacturer, can have different names: Rice Krispies -> Rice Bubbles. No stop signs, just traffic lights and "Give way". Really cold!! First couple nights there was frost on car windows. British words and spelling: elevator -> lift, center -> centre, z ("zee") -> "zed".

We hung out for a little bit back at the motel before dinner that night, and then hung out some more that night. I was surprised that with 18 people total in the IES group, I got to know the majority of them that night, and had their names down cold the next day. One weird thing I noticed was that since it was in the middle of winter, and we're so far south, the sun never comes up more than about 45 deg above the horizon, so all day, it seemed to me like it was about 5 pm from what I was used to. Because of the flight, the time change, and the being in a new place, that first day was one of the longest days I can remember.

Day 2 - Monday

Woke up and got all our stuff together. We took most of the stuff except for what we needed for orientation to our flats, and then got back on the bus. For the IES orientation, we went up to the foothills of the southern alps. It took a couple hours to get there, and we stopped for lunch in the city where we'd spend the night, Springfield. That afternoon, we went up into the mountains, and hiked around for about 2 hrs at Castle Hill, which was a series of hills with a collection of enormous boulders all along the hillside. But because it had been snowy and in general very wet, the hillside was pretty muddy and difficult to climb. Once I got to the top however, I got some amazing views and pictures of the mountains and the valley below us. Once back in the bus, we continued on a little bit to this place where the final battle scene of Narnia was filmed. We couldn't go down there, but we got to see the entrance to a cave/tunnel that traveled all the way through the bedrock that was the parking lot (or car park) to the area.

We then headed back down the mountain, back to Springfield and the hostel where we'd spend the night. Had a good dinner there, and then went down the street to hang out at the pub for a while. They had a nice fire going, which felt great. We were there for a while, but they wanted us back at the hostel by 11 (where they also had a nice fire going. See a pattern? It was way cold). We stayed up for a while and hung out. It was actually one of the girls' birthdays the next day, so we sang happy birthday at midnight. I went to bed not much later.

Day 3 - Tuesday

We had breakfast at the hostel before heading out that morning on a pair of 4WD tour buses (aptly nicknamed The Popemobile by our bus driver/4X4 driver/tour guide Jeff). Jeff was quite a character. He was always making us laugh with his little comments about everything. Like when we were getting on the "Popemobile" for that mornings tour, two people were going to get in the cab with him, a guy and a girl. When the guy got in first to sit in the middle, he objected, saying that the outer person was going to have to be able to jump out and open farm fences, and he said he didn't trust the blond girl to do it right, when we all knew it was just because he wanted to sit next to the cute girl.

We went out on the 4X4s through a farm in Springfield. I was surprised to see that one part of the farm, at least, the section that held all the sheep included a very large section of mountainy hillside that the sheep could roam through. We learned a little bit about how the sheep were taken care of, like that only the female sheep born on the farm were kept for breeding purposes. Males were grown to a certain age and then shipped off for meat. To prevent inbreeding, the farm gets its breeding males from a breeding company. The males are let into the female pen for 6 weeks during the winter for breeding. Then, when the baby sheep are born, they're separated and taken to have their tails removed with a hot iron. If they're not removed, they gather dirt and poop and flies, which hurt the sheep and damage its meat and wool. After going through the farm, we went to a farm house of a working (example) farm on the bank of the Waimakariri river. We got to go on a jetboat ride on the river, which was a lot of fun, but so cold!! I was wearing jeans, tshirt, sweatshirt, heavy jacket, splash jacket, life jacket, gloves, and beanie, but my face got so cold on the ride it felt numb as i got off. After the jetboat ride we had a great barbecue lunch, complete with birthday cake for both Maggie, whose birthday was that day, and Mark, whose birthday was Thursday.

After lunch, we went outside to see some of the animals at the farm, and then got to see Tess the sheepdog do her thing. There are two types of sheepdogs, those that go out behind the sheep and bring them to the farmer, and those that drive the sheep toward where the farmer wants. The 2nd one gets it done by barking at the sheep to scare them along, but whats cool about the first is that it gets the sheep to move just by staring them down. The whole time we were there, Tess didn't make a sound, her eyes would just stare at each of the sheep, intimidating them. Then came the really fun part, we went inside to see how they sheared a sheep. Normally, they use what's basically a large pair of hair clippers, driven by a large, mounted motor. After he took most of the wool off with the clippers, he brought out the shears, so each of us got to try cutting off some of the wool with the shears. I have the sample of wool I cut, along with a sample of very soft Merino wool. After this we got back on the bus to head back to Christchurch

That night, to celebrate the birthdays, we took out first visit into town to a Mexican restaurant (Mexican in New Zealand?? I was suspicious too) We had about 25 people total (flatmates joined), so it was a good thing it was Tuesday night, there was enough room for all of us. The food turned out to be pretty good for being so far from Mexico, but where I was really disappointed were the drinks. The food was already expensive enough, but me and 2 other people got a pitcher (3 servings ish) of margaritas for $20. The pitcher was smaller than the pitcher that we got water in. There was enough for 3 tiny, tiny cups. Rather disappointing.

Riding the buses was pretty exciting though. I now have the reputation of knowing where we are and where to go and what bus to take. More than once I've kept us from taking the right bus in the wrong direction out of the main bus exchange in the city centre. The buses are organized so that 90% of them go radially in and out of the city centre, and one, the Orbiter, goes in a continuous loop a couple miles out of downtown. You can get just about everywhere by either riding into the city center and then transferring, or taking the orbiter around if its on the same side of the city so you don't backtrack. Its sort of expensive (i think at least, but I haven't rode the buses anywhere else) at $2.50 a ride, with one transfer within 2 hrs. But you can also get a metrocard so that its $1.90 a ride, free transfers within 2 hrs, and the max you pay a day is $3.80.

Day 4 - Wednesday

There was a University international student orientation for a couple hrs wed morning, which was sorta boring, because it covered a lot of stuff like tips on renting a flat or a house, when everybody already had university housing. OOO and they gave us a couple of very interesting and somewhat disturbing facts about Christchurch: 1) There is a type of spider here, the white tail spider, whose bite is painful but nonfatal. Doesn't sound too bad, right? "Nonfatal" means though, it wont kill you, but it will start eating away at your flesh so that you'll need to get the entire area surrounding the bite excised. Fun! and 2) Christchurch has the nickname "wart valley" due to the absurdly high rate of STDs. Maybe this is exaggerated, but they said 1 in 3 people have had an STD. But they gave us free muffins, so I was happy.

Then I went and ate lunch with several of the girls in the IES group at a place on campus. After lunch, there was a short library tour. The library is pretty massive, at 11 stories, but the top 5 stories have a pretty small footprint, and don't hold many books. I'm pretty sure the Honnold-Mudd library in Claremont is bigger. And you know what is lame? There are fees here for internet use based on usage. Its like 4c per Mb of data transfer. And they charge for printing and stuff, but thats a little more normal. I miss the internet at mudd... ah, the T3 (or is it T1? either way, superfast ethernet), unlimited internet usage, free printing, and all the free stuff you want on the network....

Later that night we had dinner at Maggie's flat. The girls made stir fry vegetables, I ate it. I have to say, its quite a good system. I had been kind of worried about having to make all my own food, cause I know I cant either cook or make up my mind on what to have. So I've gotten to be good friends with a bunch of the girls from IES. They like to have dinner together, and they invite me along, so I get a great meal and good company. Of course I always help them however they need. I always tell them, I can't cook very well, but tell me exactly what to do and I can do that very well.

Day 5 - Thursday

Thursday was enrolment day. Theoretically it should have been nice and simple, since I already selected all my classes and everything in pre-enrolment online. There was one minor hitch, though. We needed to get each class approved by the department. Some of the approvements were already done, but I still had one class, Fluid Mechanics, that had to be approved. I figured it would be a simple task to go over to the mechanical engineering dept, find the guy, and get him to sign off. It would have been pretty simple, had the guy actually been there. I went back to my flat to get some lunch (pb&j!), and then after that I headed back out to see if the guy had gotten back to his office. No such luck. I asked someone in reception where he was, and apparently he was on holiday that day, and this other guy was supposed to sign things off in his place. Only second guy wasn't in his office either. So I couldn't finish enrolment on Thursday. That night Doug had all the IES people over in his flat, along with some other people we knew, for dinner. He made this great breaded chicken, plus baked potatoes and salad. Funny thing was, there weren't nearly enough plates and forks, so we resorted to using whatever we could. I found myself a small frying pan and a spoon. It worked!

Day 6 - Friday

I got up and went back over to the Mech Eng dept to see if either of the two profs were back yet to sign off on my enrolment. Neither were there. I went back down to the main engineering office and asked the receptionist there for help. She took my form back, and in about 10 minutes, it was all set! I didn't even have to go back to enrolment to print out a revised sheet. It turned out that that entire department was on some sort of retreat during this time. What a time to not be in the office!!! In the middle of registration!! So then I was all set with enroling, and i went and got my canterbury card. All set for school!! Scary, it starts monday....

Class Schedule:

Roman Mythologies M Tu Th 2-3

New Zealand History: Since 1940 M W 4-5

Heat and Mass Transfer W F 11-12

Fluid Mechanics M 11-12 Tu 9-10 Th 11-12 F 11-12

Apparently there's a conflict on friday with Heat and mass transfer and Fluid mech....although the syllabus lists a different time for the fluid mech on friday...I guess I'll see later this week.

So later on that afternoon I met up with a bunch of the girls who had had lunch in the city. We saw Harry Potter!! I have to admit, my primary reason for going to see it was because I thought it got out earlier down here than at home, and I was really looking forward to bragging about it to my sister, who is one of those crazed Potter fans. Turns out she saw it a day or 2 ago...oh well, it was still fun. The theater was really interesting too... there was so much room!! At theaters back home, theres not much room between your seat and the one in front, just enough for your legs. At the theater here, i slouched down as much as i could (like, only my upper back still on the seat) and my feet still didnt reach the seat in front of me. It gave me plenty of room to slide off my seat as i groaned in frustration at the Bratz movie. Don't ANYONE ever go see that movie. Its like a really, really bad variation of Mean Girls. At least Mean Girls was pretty decent. We stopped at the supermarket on the way back and got some food for dinner. Tonight's dinner was pasta...... I at first ate it cause I was being polite, but then.....you know.....it wasnt too bad...hmm

Day 7 - Saturday

Saturday I just hung out most of the day, nothing all too exciting, that is until....

RUGBY MATCH!!!! ALL BLACKS VS SOUTH AFRICA!!!!!!!

With the Rugby world cup coming up soon in France, it was pretty likely that the match this saturday was going to be one of the only ones the All Blacks would play in NZ while we were here. We got tickets the night we got back to school from the orientation trip. Such a great NZ cultural experience, we couldn't afford not to go. Rugby is to New Zealand as...well... I'm having trouble making an apt comparison. Maybe South American countries and soccer. Rugby, and more specifically, the NZ national team, the All Blacks, are embedded in the spirit and character of New Zealand. Its kind of like how baseball is that "great American pasttime". Kiwis just love rugby and the All Blacks. There are stores downtown (that I'll totally be going to) that have all All Blacks gear.

Rugby is pretty similar to American football, exept without all those stupid rules, silly breaks between each play, and pansy helmet and pads. The gameplay is nonstop, except for when the ball goes out of play, there is a penalty, or points are scored. It is set up similar to football in that you must carry the ball across a rectangular playing field to cross the endline on the opposite side. You can run the ball up, throw it to a teammate to the side or in back of you (no forward throws), or kick the ball forward. As you run the ball up the field, if you get tackled, there is basically a dogpile of players as each team tries to get the ball out and back to their players, and then they continue to move the ball up the field. Unlike football, however, there are no "downs" or anything silly like that, the play just continues. There are two ways to score. You can either kick it through the uprights (3 pts), or run it pass the endline (5 pts, and have a chance to kick for extra 2 pts). It can get vicious, and I'm really suprised no one got injured at all the entire match (although it looked like one guy pulled a muscle or something minor). If you ever get a chance to watch rugby on fox sports world or something, definitely watch a little of it. I think its one of the most thrilling sports ive ever watched. Baseball is just boring, nothing more. Basketball is too repetitive, back and forth across the court. Football is ok, just so many damn stops in the play. Soccer is a lot of fun to play, but watching it (especially the professionals who are so good, that ironically there is very little of the fun one-on-one action) is kind of boring. Who couldnt love watching rugby? two dozen of the beefiest guys youve seen beating the crap out of one another? But undoubtedly, being in Jade Stadium in Christchurch definitely added to the experience of watching rugby. I've never seen so much spirit in an entire stadium before. The people just love it. And I have to say, I loved it as well. If you ever get the chance to watch a rugby match in New Zealand, do whatever you have to do to get there. I think that's going to be one of the best experiences I'll have here.

Damn it Glennis, why didn't you go to France this semester. The Rugby World Cup is going on all september and october all throughout France. Final Match 20/10/07 in St Denis

And I don't really know if the Wave is a common occurence at rugby matches in New Zealand, but we totally got a couple Waves going that made it all the way around the stadium. That felt pretty amazing as well.

After the match, some people were going to go into the city and hang out at some bars, but i was getting pretty tired, so me and a couple other people went back. I went over and watched an episode of The Office with Erin, and fell asleep right in the middle of it.

So thats been just my first week here, and its been the busiest, most fun ive had in a long time. Where else can you study, go to a farm, ride a jetboat, shear a sheep, fall in mud, visit downtown, see the All Blacks play, all in one week?

Of course, feel free to contact me anytime

Email gherschler@gmail.com or glh42@student.canterbury.ac.nz

or I'll get on AIM soon: bmunichman

my international cell phone +64 21 221 3439 (check on how to call NZ from the US).

Or my US virtual number (US call for you) 1 310 598 1734
Room phone +64 3 341 1500 X52049

Mailing address:
Flat 9 Room 4
Ilam Village
PO Box 6362
Christchurch