Day 11

Today was quite the rollercoaster of emotion. This morning I did some investigating as to when the Auckland University Underwater Club meets, as well as the upcoming trips. The trips look awesome!! Here’s the website: www.akunidive.com in case you’re interested. I signed up to go to The Poor Knights Islands this weekend, for 90$ a day I would get the chance to dive in one of the top ten places to dive in the entire world! There’s schools of fish, huge arches and caves, shipwrecks, and even sharks. You can see a video of the Poor Knights here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GPJ5-pG7vE. I realized that if I wait around and sign up for a trip that is happening a few weeks from now, I might not have the courage to just go with a group of other students that I don’t know very well to a place I’ve never been… so I decided to just jump right in right away! That way there is no room for hesitation for having a new experience.

In Coastal and Marine Geography I signed up to be the class representative, which is a person that communicates issues that students in a class have with the professor and vice versa. I have to go to two meetings over the course of the semester to explain to university committee members as to how the class is going as well. I love being involved, so this would be a good way to learn a little bit more about the university.

I also had physics today, where I spent ten minutes realizing that the professor was talking about things that were so far above and beyond my own knowledge (and we’re only in the first week!) and the rest of the class trying to figure out what I could take instead. I emailed a Physical Oceanography professor back at UConn to try to see if there’s any way at all I could get out of having to take this course this semester. If I were to stick with it, I would have had to spend long hours learning differential equations and even longer hours trying to figure out what the professor was talking about. My professor for this class is a really really smart older man, who seems to think that if you were accepted into the class then you should absolutely know what he’s talking about at all times. However, this is not the case. I’m dropping this course.

Then, I went to the Auckland University Underwater Club meeting, heard about all of their great diving and snorkeling destinations (Mom and Sharon I’m saving Goat Island Marine Reserve for when you guys get here!). Upon the walk back, I almost got hit by a bus! In all honesty it wasn’t going to hit me or even come close but it beeped it’s horn at me and that scared me enough to ALWAYS pay more attention to road traffic. I was crossing just before a crosswalk when the crosswalk “Okay to walk” light came on, but failed to notice the bus that was in the BUS LANE coming full speed ahead, even though it would have to stop in just a few more meters. Very scary, but I learned to never underestimate the buses here. Shortly thereafter I learned that Kiwis are famous for being bad drivers.

Then I came back to another Quiz Night in my building, which was again tons of fun! We didn’t win but it was a blast. Oh yeah, for lunch today they served “American Hotdogs” but let me tell you, they weren’t like homemade at all! They were gross tasting with “tomato sauce” which is not-as-good-ketchup on wheat grinder rolls, so they were just horrible. I’m looking forward to hot dogs on the grill this summer!!
(Sorry no pictures today, but click on the links to see where I’ll be diving!)