Botanic Gardens and S'mores

Some really tall flowers
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Nothing too exciting to report about the first week of classes. I decided to drop my mythology class since I wasn't a big fan of my professor, to say the least. I'm still hunting around for a replacement; I think I'll take an American studies class; I've always wanted to, and taking one outside of the US should be pretty eye opening. My Maori class is really neat; my professor is from a trybe on the North Island, and he's REALLY funny. But it's weird how Kiwis (and actually a lot of non-Kiwis as well) treat classes here: nobody ever goes. Professors give everyone hard copies of the powerpoints so you don't really have to take notes, and lectures are huge so attendence is never taken. Ella and I were reading out on the quad and people kept asking us what we were doing; when we said homework they couldn't understand why we were reading since all of our classes are open book tests. The mentality is pretty much to just pass a paper. An 80% here is an A+, so grading is totally different too. It's just a lot to get used to I guess....

That's a tree branch! Neat-o
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But anyway, over the weekend we decided to check out the Botanic Gardens finally; it's one of the "gems" of Christchurch, but I've been so busy I hadn't gotten there yet! It was absolutely gorgeous; everything here is so pretty; especially the trees (but I have a weird thing for trees; everyone else was a lot more interested in the flowers--and there were a LOT!). I'm not exactly sure how big the park is, but it's definately good-sized.

We took the bus since it's almost an hour and 30 minute walk, and Ella, Greg, Nick, and I walked around the gardens for a while before wandering downtown to check out the open markets and the "Challace." Downtown in the center square there's a BIG chessboard and TONS of shopping, which Ella and I checked out much to the guys' dismay. Clothing here is pretty expensive compared to home, which is a total bummer because I did NOT pack the right stuff; everyone here is super trendy and really into fashion and looks good ALL the time. All I have are some jeans, sweatpants, some T-shirts and a few things to wear going out at night. Oopsies....Hopefully we'll find some cheap stuff somewhere along the line. We did, however, stumble upon cosmetic contacts in our travels, which are completely legal here, and they were only $25 NZ (about $18 American), so we HAD to try those out. I got purple and Ella got CRAZY aqua blue. They took a while to get used to, but it's not so bad anymore. I'm sure my mother is very pleased reading this right now, but don't worry Mom, I'm being careful!!!! :)

I'm a true tree-hugger (and that one was really big)
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At some point over the weekend, Ella and I quoted something from the Sandlot, and got a huge craving for S'mores....but when we brought it up to Glen, Greg, Amar, and Nish, they had no idea what we were talking about! So Ella, Nish, and I headed to Coutdown to buy some supplies for an American dessert night. There are, however, no grahm crackers here, or Hershey's chocolate....or normal marshmallows. So we fudged it and got some cookie/cracker things that remotely resembled graham crackers, some milk chocolate bars (that are SUPER chubby here, but oh well!), and some really funky looking marshmallows. We headed back to campus and made everyone we saw go on a stick hunt so they could roast their marshmallows (we literally ran through the quad screaming "STICKHUNT" about a 15-20 times), and then showed everyone how to roast mallows on the grill, slap some chocolate on a "graham" and then squeeze the mallow off with the crackers so you don't get all sticky. It was super fun, especially when we made Cory chug almost a liter of milk, but that's another story. Overall, I think we all had a pretty good time. :)

Huge!
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Until next time; peace and hugs

-mLe