Heyward Point and Week One of Papers...

Okay, I've discovered that it's really easy to get behind on updating my blog. I could've sworn I wrote my last one a day or two ago, not 10 days. Anyways, here's what's been going on since last weekend:

Heyward Point: Sherry, Claire, Andrea, Jane, and I (aka the girlz and me) took the ladies' new ride, newly named the Golden Nugget, to a trailhead near Long Beach. It was a beautiful day, and it turned out to be a fantastic hike to Heyward Point. We saw a hedgehog, a ton of birds, and a lot of adorable seals. Check out some of the highlights:

Andrea, Jane, Sherry, and Claire

We nearly stepped on this hedgehog, who decided the middle of the trail was a good place for a nap.

This one was nice enough to pose for me! And his little nugget seal was sleeping...

That beach to the left is Long Beach, one of our favorite climbing destinations

Okay, so that was a lot of pictures. Now I'll move onto some slightly less interesting stuff with fewer pictures...

School? Classes started this past week. Here's some details of the classes that I'm taking:

Modern Algebra: This upper-level math course is one of the required papers (classes are called 'papers' here) for my math major at Hamilton, so it's really nice to get it out of the way here, so my senior year will be a bit easier. It's also one of the most difficult papers in my major, so this one will require a decent amount of work. Gioia is taking this class with me which is cool, too. All of our assignments are to be done on the computer using a coding program called LaTeX. It's been slow work, and a little frustrating, figuring out how to write everything in this program instead of simply writing out the math by hand. Instead of typing what you actually want to write, you have to write some code. For instance, if you want to use infinity ( ∞ ), you actually need to write /infty. Unfortunately, this is on of the few that makes sense - the rest we have to look up in the index, and trust me, there are a lot of symbols we need to use. We're getting the hang of it, though.

Adventure Education: Sherry and I were really stoked when Hamilton decided to give us credit for this paper. It's a 300-level phys ed paper here, and Hamilton originally denied credit, but I reapplied, and they changed their mind. It's a really interesting class so far. We're studying experiential education from philosophical, psychological, and sociological perspectives. We study risk and risk assessment, and we look at some of the big names in outdoor ed and see how their ideas are being used in NZ today.

Maori Society: This is probably the most popular class for internationals. It's an introduction into the Maori culture, who are the NZ native people. So far we've learned some basic linguistics including their language and some important words. They have the same vowels as english with the addition of aa, ee, ii, oo, and uu, and they only use a few consonants: r (pronounced similar to our 'L'), p, m, n, k, wh, and ng (pronounced like the end of 'sing'). Fun fact: all words end in a vowel, and all consonants are followed by a vowel. So a lot of their words look like 'whakapapa', 'whanungatanga', and 'manaakitanga'. Cool stuff.

Interpreting Artworks: This Art History paper is a requirement for my art minor at Hamilton (that's right, I'm going to be an art minor...). Each week we look at a new piece of art and dissect it. The first piece is the Mona Lisa - what's all the hype about? Everyone that I know who has seen it has been pretty disappointed. It's still the most famous painting in the world I suppose. We start looking at it this week, so hopefully my questions will be answered.

So my papers seem pretty interesting. Here's some more info about school in NZ: I only have class every other Friday (score!), Tuesdays and Thursdays I don't start until noon (double score!), but Mondays and Wednesdays I'm up at 8:30. Also, the grading here is really weird. Most of my papers have two-four assignments throughout the semester (either essays, projects, or homework assignments) that total up to 40-60% of the entire grade, and the final is the rest. The grading is also really weird here. A normal grading scale is something like:
95-100: A+
90-95: A
85-90: A-
80-85: B+
75-80: B
70-75: B-
65-70: C+
60-65: C
55-60: C-

Getting A's here is pretty rare, but B's are pretty common.

Besides classes, I've been climbing a decent amount at Long Beach as well as attending rugby practice, which is just as hard as before and now with upwards of 60 guys at each practice. My flat has begun our dinner schedule, too, so I've been enjoying some fantastic meals by my flatmates.

Okay, that's it for now. Hopefully I didn't bore you with all of this intellectual news. This past weekend was chalked full of excitement, so my next blog should be the best yet. Until next time.

P.S. Go Wild.