School's In!

Everything has been going well lately, moving right along into my second week in New Zealand. i have switched out one of my classes "Culture and International Relations" because, though it sounds enthralling, the whole first lecture was this philosophical talk about how "boundaries are only in your head." Which is fine, but we don't have to talk about that for an hour. Also the professor was Scottish (but not the hot kind) and quiet and very difficult to understand.
So I dropped in on "American Politics" and the first lecture was going over what the 50 states are and why there are 50 stars on the flag, etc. So I signed up for it immediately. This is because:
1. I am admittedly very very lazy.
2. I won't have to worry about doing well in this class and I can spend my time enjoying New Zealand and doing other cultural things and not in the library.
3. It's "Modern American Politics" really so it will be nice to have an update in class about Sotomayor and other such happenings so that I don't fall too much out of the loop from home.
4. It's not on Fridays.

So my classes are

New Zealand Politics

Modern American Politics

Gender and Policy
^^This is a sociology class and I LOVE it. It is by far my favorite class. Right now we're talking about the difference between sex and gender and how much of our gender roles are biological and how much is from socialization. We've also been talking about the intersex population and feminist movements led by men. I raised my hand in class when a Canadian brought up some feminist group of men in her town who are doing programs to discourage violence against women. Which i think is spectacular, but I don't think you can call it a feminist movement really. If the goal of feminism is to empower women, then the movement can't be driven by anyone but women without it negating its own point. It's not a feminist point of view to claim that women need men to protect them from other men, it's just paternalistic. I said that in class, I am THAT girl. Oh well. It's fun. And I sit next to a really cool guy and we talk about Stevie Ray Vaughan and Austin.

Biology of Conservation
^^This class has its pluses and minuses. The plus is that we talk a lot about species native to New Zealand and that can only be found here and I find that endlessly interesting (did you know there is only one kind of poisonous spider in New Zealand? And no snakes). Another plus is that it's a first year class so it's pretty easy and I think I'll do fine in it which is thrilling since it's a biology credit. The minus is that I spend the whole class on the verge of bursting into tears and leave super depressed. We talked about poaching around the world today and saw this video made by the Planet Earth people where they had these evil people who set traps in the rain forest and leopards and monkeys get their paws and hands stuck in them and they either die of infection or they get gangrene and their hands fall off. So there are these chimpanzees in the forest trying to survive with missing hands. Why are people so awful? It just really makes me mad how entitled we all are and how everyone has this egotistic mindset that God made the world FOR man and that everything in it is only in it to serve us. Get over yourself, we're just a small part of it.

Oh, here's a picture of the main road that goes through campus, Kelburn Parade.


On a lighter note, I just want to point out one difference between our cultures which I have found to be delightful. Kiwis commonly use the word "naughty" in its original sense in many of their day to day conversation. It makes me laugh every time because it's so awkwardly adorable. For example, I was having a conversation with the guy next to my in sociology about plagiarism and I told him that I plagiarized an entry into an essay contest when I was in 4th grade (true story) and he was like, "No way, you're a naughty girl."
HOW AWKWARD AND WEIRD IS THAT?! But it's not really because he just means "that's wrong" so it just ends up being so cute.
That's all, and here's a picture of me with my second beer in the country.

Cheers!