first day of lectures
Yesterday I had four lectures, each for the first time and in four different buildings… but I somehow managed to be in every lecture in time! The first one was a computer science lecture, which was kind of boring, because I already knew everything covered in that lecture.
The second one is called “Communicating for a Knowledge Society” and seems really interesting… but I have to write an essay, do a presentation and design a poster, in addition to the exam!
At the beginning of my third lecture, “English as a Second Language: Writing Research Reports”, I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place… because nearly 90% of the people there were female and wearing a headscarf. But I was in the right place… I’m basically the only European and one of the two males in this course (and the only science guy :P).
The last paper (another computer science lecture) was read by a German guy… I figured that out almost immediately because of his really strong German accent. Also this guy was literally smiling all the time… for one hour straight. I seem to be the only European guy in this lecture, too.
Overall the day was kind of exhausting… so I went to bed soon, after grocery shopping and dinner :P
PS: the second day was also exhausting… I’m not used to be at the university for half the day, because of all the free time I had during the last weeks :P
Orientation
This Tuesday we had the first official event at the university: an introductory welcome event for the international students. Mostly the usual stuff you can imagine… the Vice-Chancellor telling us that we made a wise decision by choosing Auckland… someone from the International Office introducing a lot more people to us than we can remember… and a group of Maoris performing traditional dances and songs. The last part was actually interesting, but “subtitles” would have been nice. If I remember correctly one of the dances was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMCAV6Yd0Y
For all the German soccer fans: try to imagine our national team performing some kind of aggressive dance right before a match :P
The whole thing took place in the “Fisher & Paykel Appliances Auditorium”… apparently sponsoring is not limited to soccer stadiums :P Another thing that came as a surprise for me was, that approximately 90% of the international students are doing a full program in Auckland… not just a study abroad semester like me :P
The only interesting thing at the second day of orientation was a tour through the campus and the faculty. We also had a lecture about how to use different university websites and platforms… but that was more or less pointless in my opinion, because I already had to figure this stuff out weeks ago to do my enrollment :P
At the final day of orientation we received some information about living in Auckland and about traveling in New Zealand. The first part was, again, partly pointless, because I’m living in Auckland for nearly two weeks now and have already figured out most of the stuff on my own. At least I learned some kiwi slang (barbie = BBQ for example) and was told that New Zealands police is the least corrupted police in the world.
The travel thing was a lot more interesting, even so way to much information was provided for remembering all of it.
The final part of the orientation was a pub night at Thursday evening… under the motto “bad taste”. Since I obviously didn’t bring a lot of “bad taste” clothes to New Zealand, the worst taste I could do was wearing my fairytale fights t-shirt (which I normally wouldn’t wear outside of my apartment) and a sports jacket. So no surprise that I didn’t won any prices :P One of the guys who won something was wearing nothing more than underpants and a fishnet body… kind of hurt my eyes :P
The actual party was really nice though… we arrived a little early, but that was rewarded with free pizza :D After all it was a really nice evening with people from all over the world.
Actually their might be a couple of photos, since my roommate took some… but I haven’t seen them yet :P Maybe I will provide them later.
Tomorrow (Saturday) we will attend the “Ambury Farm Trip”, which is about – as you can guess – farm stuff… and free BBQ for lunch :)
And now I’m going to sleep, because the trip will start “early” in the morning (and my sentences are getting shorter and shorter :P).
a German in Auckland 