Long time no blog to all. I wanted to get through the first week of classes before I could convince myself that I would survive them and be able to write again. Turns out I could!
(side note, I just completed another week of class since writing this intro, sooo that makes two weeks down. Woot!)

I have three papers, totaling 60 credits. 30 of those credits are in one Architectural Design Integration course. The first major project is to design a beach house near Wellington. There is a real site (that I’ve visited) and a real client who wants to know if building on the site is possible for their budget or even practical at all. There’s a pretty substantial brief outlining the expectations of both the client and the professor. In two weeks, I should have a completely designed house fully analyzed for lighting, heating, acoustics, and aerodynamics. Needless to say it’s slightly overwhelming, but with four hour small-session tutorials twice a week, I don’t feel like I’m left hanging in the dark behind a couple hundred other students who’ve specialized in design a year longer than myself. The below photos are from the site. One faces the site (it's left of the bridge and right of the shack), while the other is the view from the site itself.



The second course tags along to the first, providing four short projects about analyzing the lighting, acoustics, heating, and aerodynamics of a building so that we can apply the techniques to our beach house design and future projects as well.

The final paper is an introduction to music technology: microphones, pre-amps, editing software, etc. Obviously I already have a little experience in the area, but I’m really looking forward to learning it a bit more formally.

A definite highlight of the week (and I’m sorry that you can’t go a step without hearing about it) was the Harry Potter premier! The midnight showing was sold out, but I managed to get tickets with some friends to the 3am showing at the Embassy Theatre, which we all know as the place that premiered the Lord of the Rings movies. They did a whole getup inside with posters of the Hogwarts Houses and were also selling Butterbeer, Hagrid’s rock cakes, and pumpkin pasties. We split the cost and tried them all. Each was a great success, though I preferred the pumpkin pasties. I had altogether too much fun, grabbed a couple hours of sleep, and made it on time to my 9am class.
And if any of you think that I scandalously went to the final premier not dressed in character, think again. Notice the "jacket unbuttoned over hoodie" look that I share with the one and only Hermione Granger. Jealous?


Another highlight was a bike around the bays that I did with the Arcadia group. We started in the heart of Wellington and followed the coast south past the airport down until we could see the south island.
It was beautiful, but WINDY. 65 mph gusts kind of windy. Incidentally, we looked at a wind measurement chart of Wellington vs. Chicago in one of my architecture papers, and Wellington literally blows Chicago away. Biking one direction, this was an advantage. Biking the other way.... well, not so much.


Yes, these are $30 sticky notes. School supplies are 'spensive.


Today I learned a lot about tea. One of my flat mates works in a tea shop in town and brought back a few different kinds to analyze “for work”. The tea culture is HUGE here (hi Shannon!), and I intentionally didn’t say “down here”, because it seems that Kiwis don’t appreciate the association of being “down under”. Australia and New Zealand are friendly, but everyone here knows that New Zealand is better, as are their teas. Duh.

Other than that, I’m really looking forward to this weekend, when I’ll be journeying with the Arcadia study abroad group to Abel Tasman National Park. We’ll be hiking, kayaking, and swimming (depending on weather?) and taking obnoxious amounts of pictures at this very northern part of the southern island. Now, if only the 95 degree weather from Minnesota could replace the 50’s weather here for a day or two at the beach….

Realizing I’ve missed quite a few slang of the days/posts/weeks/etc, so here are six (sorry if I repeat)
How you going? -“how you doing” doesn’t seem to exist
Boot = trunk of a car
trousers = pants
pants = underwear
she’ll be right = it’ll be ok

And in a league of it’s own: “sweet as”. Replace “sweet” with a lot of different words and it works. Cool as, hungry as, tall as. “Aww man that bloke was fine as, but I just couldn’t be bothered.” Kiwis are too cool to finish their similes! It's like whatever you're talking about is "sweet as" anything you could possibly imagine ever! And then use it casually. Got it? Good.