Busy Days

Finding spare time when my brain is interested in yet another form of writing is not easy these days, with 5 classes that are all reading and writing intensive. This is my excuse for taking so long to post something else. I am sure you are all shaking your heads and thinking that yes I chose this, and I did and I am mostly enjoying the experience, but it quickly became apparent that leisure time for things like non-academic reading or blogging would become non-existent until 1 June. I am 16 days and 9 assignments away from the end of the term :)

But enough about that. A couple of weeks ago a friend was up in the city for the weekend so we enjoyed doing a bit of exploring. I did not get photos of everything, but we enjoyed a good early 20th century display at the Auckland art gallery and a WWII exhibit at the War Memorial Museum, both excellent places to visit if you are making a list. We also found a pretzel shop selling stuffed pretzels. After a low of indecisiveness we settled on a pretzel stuff with vanilla custard and mixed berries. It was as delicious as it sounds :)

Narrow city streets

I just liked the name of this place!

The Auckland Art Gallery

Hipster Hoot - one of many owls
painted by local arts to be auctioned off as
a fundraiser for the children's hospital

Street murals

Bit of city fashion

A lovely garden we stumbled on

Unsure who this guy is but he made me feel short!

Dunedin at Easter

I like Easter weekend in New Zealand because you get a four day weekend, since Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. It’s a good opportunity for an adventure before winter sets in. We spent Easter weekend this year in Dunedin, one of the Southern-most cities in New Zealand. I had briefly visited there in 2014, but enjoyed a bit longer stay this time.

We started the weekend by attending one of Ed Sheeran’s concert, which was fabulous J We enjoyed kiwi-band Six60 who opened for him as much as we did Ed I believe, wonderful night of music.

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying long coffee breaks, massive burgers from a Chinese takeaway place, and roaming the city. 

Highlights were seeing the old European style architecture, marvelling at how people get up and down the hills once snow and ice set in for the winter, and touring an underground fort built in the 1880s due to fears of a Russian invasion, Fort Taiaroa. The fort was built with a disappearing gun that could be fired and then put back underground. I found it quite interesting that the guide said it took 6 hours to pressurize the gun so that it could be used, which made me question its usefulness in the event of a surprise attack. The fort was compact with the disappearing gun clearly the focal point. The location was beautiful, but due to its location at the point of a peninsula would be terribly unpleasant during cold winter months with no barriers to break the wind.

For more information: https://www.newzealand.com/int/plan/business/historic-fort-taiaroa/

There is never enough time to see everything but we particularly enjoyed the movie theatre with murals on the walls, the ‘Hard to Find’ bookshop, and the albatrosses that live near the underground fort.

'True Love' statue in Ashburton

Haka at the beginning of the concert

City bus!

Movie theater murals

Street art

Lovely coastal drive to the fort

View from the fort

Lighthouse near the fort

Sound the alarm!

The jail is the only original part of the fort still standing

Speaking of the wind...

Mini adventures

Being on both a student budget and a student schedule does not necessarily allow a lot of time for exploring, at least not for this student. But here and there I am making time to visit new places, or actively taking a different route to see new things, and last weekend, even had a full day of adventuring with only 2 hours of study!

My most recent "mini-adventure" was to a Portuguese bakery that I have seen on the bus to school. It was close enough to campus that I could get off early and walk the rest of the way. I was certainly glad I did on Monday, as the Portuguese chocolate shortbread cookies I got were yum!

I thought the pictures would explain just as well as a bunch of paragraphs for you to read, so here they are (plus I have done enough writing this week, it is nearly mid-terms haha):

View from Mt Eden

Mt Eden crater

Downtown 

Auckland skyline

Little Manly Beach in Whangaparaoa

blue bottle - kinda like a jellyfish

Found this guy in Newmarket while out for breakfast

Some sculpture at the edge of campus....

Definitely going back :)

Maori war memorial

Student Life

Graduate school has been in the back of my mind since my Senior year of Undergraduate. However, all those years ago as graduation was nearing, I could feel it was not the right time to go (not least because try as I might, pinning down an area of study seemed impossible). So instead I entered the workforce, and found that I enjoyed the freedom of no homework, expendable income, and reading whatever I wanted. But in the last 2-3 years, I have increasingly given a Master's Degree consideration.

Last year this led to undertake the application for the program I have now started. Sorting out the particulars of the application, finding time to do the application, and determining how I would complete the program if accepted seemed to drag on for a terribly long time. Once the application was in, I felt relief that it was now in someone else's hands, but also found myself wondering whether I could have done better. Since there was no indication of how long the decision-making process took, I went about life without thinking too much about it. When I received an acceptance letter (albeit not quite in the fashion I had originally hoped for as I needed to complete the Post-Graduate Certificate first), it was a pleasant surprise that set in motion all the steps required to where I am now.

I have now had 3 days of classes, where I have attended 4 of my 5 classes for the first time. I have been interested to observe how my impression of the class from reading the course description and outline has changed after attending the first seminar/lecture. I found myself pondering the old adage of not judging a book by it's cover when yesterday I realized that the class I had thought myself most unlikely to enjoy was actually one of the two I have enjoyed most so far this week.

Two of my classes (so far, as one has yet to reveal itself, later today) are combined upper Undergraduate and lower Post-graduate. I find this brings an interesting dynamic to the group, but I also felt there was a clear distinction in knowledge, attitude and interest between the two levels of students. None of the classes are big (thank goodness!), and all are largely discussion based (rather than lecture, also thank goodness!), but I found it interesting to note the confidence or reluctance of various students in speaking up.

I am hopeful that by the end of this week, I will have enough information around course expectations and time requirements that I can work out a reasonable schedule that allows me to adequately juggle work, study, and class-time. I am still working out just how long I need to allow for my commute. There's no more than 15 min required walking time, and time on the bus seems pretty consistent at 20-25 min (give or take with traffic at different times of the day), but since I am not yet familiar with campus I have a slight paranoia of getting lost and therefore being late(despite most of my classes all being in the same room haha).

It has been an interesting week of ups and downs, in adjusting to such a dramatic change. Some technical difficulties have unfortunately caused some frustration on the work/study side but those seem to be sorting themselves out. Unfamiliarity with the area has caused me to get off at the wrong bus stop, walk the wrong direction, and rely on GPS far more than I would like to. Being in both a new city and a new program means I know virtually nobody (I do live in New Zealand, so there are people at the university I know, just not ones I see daily), and therefore do not always know where to turn for assistance or feel as if I have any sort of social connection. While I am always happy to find someone to ask for help, and know that I can and will make friends, it is interesting to reflect on the situation. As I was walking to the bus stop yesterday,  I realized just how little I have talked in the last week. My job involves a lot of talking, not to mention it is a situation where I am comfortable with those around me so conversation comes naturally. However here, the majority of dialogue in the last week (from my side at least) has been pretty isolated to "Thanks." or "Excuse me, where is..." or "can you confirm when that is due?".

As we get a bit further into the term, and I become more familiar with Auckland, I hope to give you more exciting updates than this rather reflective one :)
Have a great week!

Cyclones, boil orders and road trips

This last week has been one of ups and downs with a bit of chaos thrown in the mix. Most of you probably already know this, but it was my last week of freedom before re-entering student life. This meant my to-do list before leaving home seemed to only get longer, no matter how many things I ticked off. To make matters worse, Mother Nature decided I should be busy at work too.

We are nearing cyclone season, so nobody was terribly surprised when Tonga and a couple of the other islands got hit by cyclone Gita. But we also knew that meant it was only a matter of time before we started feeling the effects here. So we prepped things at work with extra staff on, contractor crews on stand by, etc.

Things got dark, windy and rainy on Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning full chaos was reigning. I would like to say it was organized chaos, but when the phones and RTs go non-stop for 14 hours, things can hardly stay organized. To top it off, all of New Plymouth and the surrounding areas were on high alert for water conservation and under a boil order. This is because the severe winds caused a tree to come down and damage the in-take pipe at the water treatment facility. We were fortunate that our part of town never ran out of water, but many others were not so lucky. So by Thursday afternoon, work was getting complaints not only of the electricity still being off, but what were we doing about the water?? (Even though that has nothing to do with us!).

Just to keep things interesting with all of this, Thursday was my last day in the office until June. I finished packing my bags Thursday night, loaded the car Friday morning, and hit the road for Auckland. Weather and traffic both behaved themselves, so I got here by lunchtime. I checked into my student accommodation, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Everything is spacious, tidy, and comfortable. Of course, I am not thrilled at sharing a kitchen with people who have varying standards of cleanliness, but I was pleased that my room was already clean, and has adequate space.

Successes over the weekend include figuring out my bus route and getting a student bus pass; finding a Farmers market; locating 2 grocery stores, a sushi place, and a cheap burger joint :) And this morning I ventured down to Queen's Wharf for a wander around a Japanese festival. I also encountered Spiderman wearing a pink Hello Kitty backpack, a man wearing a purple felt suit jacket, and an establishment called "Edinburgh Castle: Dim Sum, BBQ & Accommodation." All in all not a bad way to spend the first weekend away from home, even if things do still feel a bit unsettled. Tomorrow morning at 11am marks the first class in my new adventure to complete a Post-Graduate Certificate in Musicology so that I am eligible to complete the Master's Degree program. More student life updates to come!

Parnell Farmers Market

Shops at my new neighborhood

My new school

Making rice cakes

Taiko Drumming: