In NZ

So, my laptop has died (just the computer and not the hard drive, fortunately), and with it all my plans of uploading photos, catching up on blogging, and getting homework done.  Right now Nora is kindly letting me use her computer, but I feel bad taking it from her to often, so I probably won't be getting nearly as much done as I intended.  On the plus side, I won't be staying up late online, either.  Anyway, all that to say that my posting schedule is not going to be as promised the other day.  Maybe I'll write some retrospective posts once I'm home, if anyone's interested in that?  (If you are, let me know...)

But for now, here's a little more on where I am now and what's been going on: Nora and I are staying with a family who live in a suburb of Auckland.  The dad is from New Zealand and the mom is American (from Michigan); she moved here with him after they got married less than 10 years ago.  They have three children, ages 2, 4, and 6.  The kids are all quite high-energy, and the youngest, especially, has been playing with us a lot.  She likes to make me pretend to go to sleep and then sing, yell, or hit me with a pillow to wake me up.  She's super cute; they all are.  We've been eating great home-cooked meals with them and we watched NCIS (an American crime show that I'd never heard of before we came here) with the mom the other night.  So it's been fun so far.

For the past two weeks we've had Gary Baxter, a Houghton art professor, with us to teach the Art and Film courses.  So for the past three days our classes have consisted of watching New Zealand films, which is fun.  The movies are, in case anyone's curious, Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider, and Boy.  All quite good, all dealing with some hard issues--Once Were Warriors is especially dark, very disturbing.  Boy had a good amount of humor in it, so that balance was good.

Today we visited a super nice public school and heard about it from one of the teachers and chatted with some of the students and then had a wonderful afternoon tea there (here and in AU they eat so many times in one day; breakfast, then morning tea, then lunch, then afternoon tea, then dinner [which they call tea--so many teas!  But it never means just tea, there's always food too], and sometimes supper, which is a light snack before bed).  Tomorrow we have a guest lecturer in the morning, and then we have a free afternoon.  Not sure what I'll do; maybe try to get into the city by ferry if it's not too expensive and if I can figure out the bus system to get there.

So yeah, I guess that's a pretty good overview of things right now.  Not sure when I'll post again, but I'll try to at least once or twice before I come back on the 18th!

Classes, church, bus fail, food

Well, classes have started...  9am every day this week we have Music with a professor from Houghton who lectures via Skype.  So far it's been about music in general rather than Australian music in particular, which I think is a little weird since it's only a week-long class.  But it's been pretty interesting.  Some of it just goes over my head, and sometimes there's this horrible echo on Skype so you can't really understand anything, but there have been a lot of YouTube clips of different types of music from around the world, so that's been cool.  In the afternoons we have another class, Engaging Australia Culture (I think...), but we don't really know what we're doing for that one yet.  Yesterday we talked about different stages of adjusting to a new culture and intro stuff like that.

Let's see... on Sunday we went to church, not the one where we had youth group but a different one, Southgate Wesleyan Methodist, I believe.  It was kind of in the middle of nowhere and was a big square building, not particularly church-like.  There was a peacock in the front when we pulled up--they're wild here.  The service was pretty normal; we sang some familiar songs and some new ones, Prof. Kettelkamp preached, and that was about it.  Afterward we had snacks and tea and chatted with the Australian people.  An older man told me about his grandsons and how to make pumpkin soup.

Back here that afternoon, we didn't have anything to do and wanted to do something exciting, so we decided to try taking a bus for the first time.  We walked to the bus stop and waited 10 minutes or so for the bus to Victoria Point, where we'd gone shopping the first day.  When the bus was in sight, we all watched and waited expectantly for it to pull up and stop.  But, as we all stood there, waiting and watching, the bus drove right by us.

Of course we were all like, "What?  What was that?" especially because the next bus wasn't for another hour (they run the least on Sundays).  Then we saw that on the sign for the bus stop, beneath a picture of someone waving to the bus, it said "Hail driver."  So, realizing our mistake, we headed back the way we'd come to the other close bus stop, deciding to take a bus in the other direction, where there's another shopping center.  When that bus came into view we all waved frantically, and were very relieved when it pulled over and stop.

But then, after talking to the driver for a minute, we realized that that bus wasn't going where we wanted to go; the bus we wanted didn't run on Sundays.  So we finally gave up and headed back to the college.  It was pretty sad.

But after a little while of sitting around in the lounge area, some people got a ride to Victoria Point with one of the Australian students here, and Adam, Nora, Bekah and I ended up biking there, led by the only American student here, who's really into biking and was happy to show us the way.  It was a nice ride there, all downhill.  We bought a few groceries--everything was closed but the grocery stores and Kmart; things shut down around 5 here, it seems like--and then we had to bike back.  All uphill, this time, with our groceries.  It was exhausting, but we made it (walking up the last hill helped).  And we'd had our adventure for the day.

Yesterday Prof. Kettelkamp drove us to Victoria Point--he'll be doing that every Monday and Thursday, which is nice because I was expecting to have to pay for the bus every time we wanted groceries--so Nora, Adam and I went and got even more food.  The three of us have decided to cook together, and now we should be set for a while with food.  There was a community dinner last night for everyone at the college, and we ate burgers with fried egg and beetroot.  It was different, but good.

Class time... more soon.

Lanthorn update

The party last night went really well.  People actually did come, several staying the whole time (including two professors) and a bunch stopping in for a little while.  The lecture ended before the party, so some people came by afterward.  Almost all of our food got eaten, but not quite all of it, meaning we had just about the right amount.  We had readings from the book, some people reading their own work and some reading other people's.  And everyone told us we did a great job.  People especially seemed to like the cover a lot, so I was pretty happy.  A lot of the books got taken, which was good, and then Adam and I spread the rest (except the black and white ones, which are in a box in our office) around campus.  All the ones in the Chamberlain Center are gone already.  In class today, my Lit. by Women professor congratulated us on it and told us how nice it looked and told everyone they should read it.  So I'm happy with the way things turned out.  Now we just have to do it all again next semester . . .

Part of Prague

It was cool driving through Germany and the Czech Republic on the way to Prague.  It was funny, there would be all these signs/ads in German or Czech and then randomly one in English.  Germany had lots of pine forests, France had lots of fields, and when we reached Prague I found that it had lots of cool buildings.  The bus station wasn't in the best shape, though.  Because it had been hard to sleep on the bus, when we arrived at the station, a little before 6am, I was exhausted and couldn't wait to get to Nora's friend's house, where we were staying.  But that wouldn't happen for over an hour.  For one thing, the bus had gotten in a little early.  Worse than that, though, I had told Nora's friend the wrong time to meet us at the bus station.  I had assumed there was a time difference between Paris and Prague, and I didn't find out otherwise until right before the trip.  Consequently, I'd had Nora tell her friend the bus would get in at 7:15, when it was actually supposed to arrive at 6:15.  We had no way to contact her, so we just had to wait.

We sat inside the bus station, but it was still cold.  Around 7 the bus station food shops began to open.  I kept watching the people who came in, wondering if each woman was Lucie, Nora's friend.  At 7:30 the real Lucie came, and we took the Prague metro to her apartment (which was on the other side of the city from the bus station).  Once there we ate breakfast; I was so tired I ate with my eyes closed, practically sleep-eating.  Afterward I took a much-needed nap.  A few hours later Nora woke me up so we could go into the city center.  I was still pretty tired, but the sleep had definitely helped.

Lucie had the day off from work, so she took us around, which was good because I at least wasn't up to navigating a new city by myself (Nora was much more awake that day than I was).  Now that the sun was up it was really hot out.  First we went to the castle area, which was a complex of buildings (like a palace and a huge cathedral) and not an actual castle.  It was on a hill, so we had a good view of the city.  Later on we walked across Charles Bridge, which has lots of statues of saints on it.

I don't really remember a lot about that day except walking a lot and being tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty.  Besides Czech Lucie spoke Swedish and English, and since her Swedish was the better of the two, she mostly talked to Nora in that language.  Because I know absolutely no Swedish, I couldn't really follow the conversation, so I didn't always know what we were seeing or where we were headed.  Eventually we went to a pizzeria for lunch.  I was so looking forward to drinking a glass of water--but when the water came, it was fizzy water, which was pretty disappointing.  Apparently that's the norm there, and regular water is pretty expensive.  I swished it around to take some of the fizz out, and that helped, but it still wasn't the same.

After lunch we rode around on trams some and got gelato at one point (I had peach, which was awesome) and later got citronada, which was like lemonade.  At 5-something we headed back to Lucie's apartment.  We got back to her neighborhood after the long metro ride and went to the grocery store.  Although Lucie only got a few things, we were there for a while because the checkout line was so long.  When we finally made it out we went to the post office to buy stamps for the postcards Nora and I had bought in Paris.  Again, we had to wait a really long time, although there we at least got to sit down.  At last we got the stamps and went back to the apartment, around 6:30, and Nora and I both lay down and went right to sleep.

I woke up several times while it was still evening, once because there was a thunderstorm, but I always fell back asleep quickly.  I also woke up a few times overnight and early in the morning, but I ended up sleeping past 10am, and the only reason I woke up then was because there were lots of noisy kids outside (there was a school next door).  I must've gotten over 12 hours of sleep, maybe as many as 13 or 14.  I felt really weird when I woke up, but that wore off, and I felt so much more awake and alive than the day before.

Paris

My flight arrived in Paris only a little late, somehow.  We didn't have to go through customs or anything as far as I remember.  I came out to where all the people were waiting for their friends who'd been on the plane and looked for Nora, but she wasn't there.  I was hungry and tired and in a foreign country, so I freaked out a little.  I just stood off to the side and waited, but all the time I was wondering if something had happened to Nora and trying to think of what I would do if she didn't come.

Then I saw her in the crowd of people, and everything was okay.  She was just late because she'd missed the first train to the airport.  I felt much better, and we went off to our hostel. Nora and the two friends she'd been in Paris with for the past week were staying in a three-person room, and I was in a four-person women-only room upstairs.  I rested a little, and then Nora and I went out to Victor Hugo's house.  It took us a long time to find it, even though we had a map and there were signs supposedly pointing the way.  I didn't mind, though, because I enjoyed just wandering around Paris.  We happened upon a big market and looked at stuff there for a while.  Pretty soon after that we did make it to the house; it was interesting to see, but not that exciting.

We got pizza for lunch and then went to the Louvre, which is free the first Sunday of the month, exactly the day we happened to be there.  We just wanted to see the most famous things, but we kept making mistakes and going the wrong way (the map confused me), so we ended up walking a lot more than we needed to.  Every time we sat down to rest I started to fall asleep.  But it was cool to see so much famous art, and we really barely saw any of what's there, because the Louvre is such a huge place.  I would love to go back for a whole day sometime when I'm not exhausted.

We went back to the hostel when the museum closed, and I finally got to relax.  My sense of time was really skewed, and it felt like it had been a really long day even though it was only early evening.  I went to bed around 9 and slept pretty well.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast with Nora at the hostel.  After the other two girls came down and ate we checked out of our rooms.  I accidentally left my pajamas in my room, but before we left one of the ladies who'd been in the room with me came and found me and told me, which was nice.  We left our luggage at the hostel and headed off to Sacre Coeur, a big white church, which was pretty close by.  It's on a hill, and the view of Paris got better and better as we went up.  When we reached the top we were so high; it was like we were on top of Paris.  Nora and I looked inside and then walked along the edge of the hill until we could see the Eiffel Tower, which was blocked by trees before.

We walked around Sacre Coeur, and as soon as we left the front area there were practically no other people around, which was nice.  We then met back up with the other two girls and walked around the area, Montmarte, which had nice cobblestones streets and pretty houses.  We got crepes at La Maison Rose, a tiny pink cafe.  The weather was beautiful, so it was really nice just walking around.

Nora and I had to be at the bus station to check in for our bus ride to Prague at 3, so we left Montmarte before long and picked up our luggage at the hostel before heading to the bus station.  On the way we stopped at a grocery store to buy dinner, spending only 4.23 total on drinkable yogurt (which Nora introduced me to and I love), a baguette, an apple, and brie.  We made it to the bus station right on time and checked in, and then we just had to wait till our bus left at 4.

Nora had realized that she'd left her iPod charger in the room at the hostel, so she went to look for a place to get internet (on her iPod touch) to email one of her friends, who was staying at the hostel another night, and ask if she could get it.  I stayed with the luggage and ate some brie on rolls we'd taken from the hostel (it was quite good) and then just waited.

After a while our bus pulled up and people started getting on.  Nora had said she would try to be back within half an hour, so after half an hour had passed I started getting worried, both about whether something had happened to Nora and about missing the bus.  I had a plan to ask the bus driver to wait and then tell one of the bus station workers that Nora was missing if she wasn't back by five of 4.  But then, around 3:50, Nora came in.  She'd had a hard time finding somewhere where she got internet, but she finally had, and then she'd hurried back.  We got on the bus, and pretty soon we were off to Prague.

An away-from-Houghton adventure

Yesterday Adam, Steve, and I borrowed Alexa's car and drove to Rochester to see Avatar in 3D. I drove, and no, we did not get lost. There was a lot of traffic as we got close to the city, and there were pretty strong winds, but everything went fine. We got to the theater and watched the movie, which was almost 3 hours long. The story was really cliché, but the effects and the 3D were really cool, so it was worth seeing.

Afterward we went to Adam's house for dinner. His mom made us calzones, which were amazing, and we had real salad, so much fresher than Houghton's, and brownies and ice cream for dessert. It was a delicious meal.

Then it was time to drive back, which was when it really became an adventure. Steve drove, since I'd driven the whole way there. It was snowing a little, and it was dark since it was about 9:30 by the time we left. We made it onto the highway and back off fine and continued to follow the directions I'd gotten from Mapquest. But the directions must have been wrong, because we'd been going for a while and hadn't seen the road we were supposed to turn onto.

Then I suddenly recognized where we were--the tiny town of Short Tract, which was really ironic because Eri and I and some other people had been lost there on the way back from church a few weeks ago. We'd called Dan and he had looked up directions and told us how to get back, so I was pretty sure I remembered. But we'd driven past the road we needed to take, so we had to turn around, and the inside of the car was getting really fogged up and the defrost wasn't working very well, so Steve pulled over so we could clear it up. But he'd pulled onto a side road with a good amount of snow on it, and it turned out to be deeper than it looked. We opened a window and wiped the fog off the windshield, and then Steve tried to pull back onto the road. But we couldn't get out--we were stuck in a ditch.

I definitely had a moment of panic, wondering what we were going to do. Adam and I got out of the car and Steve drove forward, able to move in that direction but still not able to get back on the road. It really looked like we were stuck there. Then Steve tried backing up, and as Adam and I watched the back end of the car pulled up and out of the ditch, and the front end followed. After jumping up and down in celebration, Adam and I got back in the car. Steve turned it around, very careful not to go back in the ditch, and we drove back the way we'd come. We had to turn around several more times because I was confused about whether the road we needed was on the left or right, but we found it, and it was the right one.

It was about 15 or 20 minutes back to Houghton from there. The only other problem we had was that Steve's window wouldn't close--Alexa's car is pretty old and beat up, and the driver's side window gets stuck. There's a special way you have to close it, but I didn't remember what that was, so we had to drive the rest of the way with the cold wind blowing right into the car. I felt really bad for poor Steve!

But we did make it back, finally; it was almost midnight and I'd expected to get back around 11. It was definitely an adventure, with its scary moments, but it ended well and makes a good story. It was great to get away from Houghton for 9 hours and see a movie in a theater and eat a real meal in a house with a family.

***

Right now I'm half-watching the Olympics. The biathlon is on, which is a weird sport. Before that was ski jumping, which was pretty cool. Hopefully I'll be able to catch some of the figure skating tonight.

Thanksgiving break . . .

. . . was wonderful! It was great to go home after three months' absence and see my family, pets, and friends. I enjoyed living in a house again and eating good food, and not having to do schoolwork.

I played lots of games with my family, went shopping with my sisters, went climbing at the Milton Rock Gym with friends, and went to my old church. I didn't want to leave! But soon I'll be back again; I can't believe I've only got a week of classes left, then finals, and then . . . my first semester of college will be over! It's gone by so fast . . .

Gillette Thanksgiving

Tomorrow Thanksgiving break starts. I can't wait! To see my family and pets again, to actually be home, not to have classes or homework . . . it's going to be wonderful.

Yesterday Gillette (my dorm) had Thanksgiving dinner, cooked by the RAs. It was delicious, especially after eating cafeteria food for so long! And in a few days I'll get to have another Thanksgiving dinner, this one with my family. :)



Mmm . . . I especially liked having real mashed potatoes!

Sunday = church and the sabbath

Today I went with Laura, my FYI leader (First-Year Introduction -- it's a class all freshmen have to take; we're split into small groups with upperclassmen as leaders) to her church. It's a Mennonite church, like my church at home, but it's quite different. For one thing, it's in the afternoon. Today they met outside someone's house, although they do have a building where they usually meet. We all (under 50 people) sat in a circle around a fire, and whoever wanted to could call out a song, provided it was in the blue hymnals we all had, and the two guitarists would play it and we would all sing. It was an interesting way of doing worship, letting the congregation choose the music.

After that there was not a sermon, as you would expect -- they don't even have a pastor, but rather there's a man who directs things, who I believe is a professor here. Anyway, we broke up into small groups and discussed forgiveness, specifically the movie series they had been watching on forgiveness, which meant I didn't always know what they were talking about. After that we sang one last song, and then we ate dinner; it was their monthly potluck. It was nice to eat homecooked food instead of cafeteria stuff.

So it was quite different, but I did like it. Houghton's church fair is tomorrow, so I'll look around there and see what other churches I'd like to visit.

~~~

Today was also my first attempt at keeping the sabbath. It was so nice to have a day with no homework. I slept in really late, made yogurt-bran muffins with Laura for the potluck (the muffins sound really weird, but they were actually quite good), and went for a short bike ride. And am now doing computer stuff, obviously. So it was a good day.