School School School

Hey everybody. Haven't updated in a while so I thought I would keep you guys informed. I haven't done much the last couple weeks because I have been pretty swamped with school work. I have also had rugby practice so between the two I have been pretty darn busy. By the way.....rugby is awesome. Pretty much a combination of football, basketball, and soccer all into one sport. I highly suggest trying it if you ever get the chance. Just make sure to wear a mouth piece, I had a teammate lose a tooth at practice because he forgot to wear the mouthpiece......ooops!!! I do have some other updates though. For those of you looking to lose weight I have found the magical formula. Move to Auckland......The whole city is built over volcanic cones and so pretty everywhere you walk you are going uphill. I am honestly trying to gain weight so I don't get killed in rugby and it is almost impossible because each class I walk to is up a steep hill. Now throw in a backpack full of books??? Fat burning machine. I weigh close to 170 right now which makes me a dead man on the field. I also have been trying to cut costs wherever I can, so this includes going to a cheaper grocery store which happens to be an easy 15 minute walk downhill, and a ridiculous 30 minute climb back uphill. I have a two week break for the holidays and I promise I will travel and post some good pictures for you guys. Hope everyone is doing well. I saw the pictures from the great race and they looked awesome. Hope you guys are having fun back home!!!

Classes/Beach Trip/International Party

Ok, so I started my classes last week and they are all pretty cool. My Exercise science class is actually a Biomedical biology class that they are making us take. It is extremely hard but to say the least I am learning A LOT. The classes here are very cool. You are not in a small classroom with 30 other students, instead you are with around 600 other students in a giant stadium seating theater. There are 2 giant projecters that project onto 2 giant screens that show the relevant material for the day. The other cool aspect of classes is that there is not just 1 professor. We have around 5 or 6 professors that teach the class because they are experts in their specific field. So we change professors about every 3 weeks. I also learned the difference between chico state and a REAL university. I find myself studying pretty much all week long and even sunday is designated a full study day. Saturday, however, is for fun.

This saturday I hoped on a bus with the rest of the international students at the school. The bus took us to long bay which is a beach outside of auckland. The beach was very nice and the water was super clean. I was really surprised when I didn't see beer cans floating by with seaweed attached to them. I kind of missed that but oh well. I was also excited to play some sports with the other students but they all played cricket. I had no idea what the hell was going on so I just watched. After that, they served us lunch and then we all went into the water. It felt good to be in the ocean, however, when we got back from the trip I realized I had morphed into a lobster. The sun here is rediculously strong due to the lack of an ozone layer above new zealand. Who do I have to thank for this? Well that would be my lovely neighbor Los Angeles. Thanks.

After the beach everyone took a nap to save energy for the saturday night festivities. What festivities would that be? Well anyone who knows me that well understands that festivities, when translated to chicoenese, means party. So we all got dressed up and hit the auckland clubs. Definitely fun, thats all im going to say about that e-mail me for details. Well I definitely miss everyone back home so I hope you all are doing well. Those of you going to stevenson fitness get excited for the new gym. The new website looks amazing!!! Chris who is the girl on the front page? Anyways have a great everyone i'll be back on next week!!

Rangitoto

Ok, so last weekend I went with a bunch of other international students to Rangitoto. Rangitoto is a volcanic island very close to Auckland. The island supposedly formed only 500-600 years ago so it is very new. We all met up and walked about 5 minutes from our hostel to the ferry. The ferry is only about 20nz$ which is the equivelant to about 15 U.S. dollars. The ferry ride took about 20 minutes and then we were on the island. It is very apparent that the island is young because when you get there, volcanic rock is everywhere. What is wierd is that there are plants everywhere growing out of the volcanic rock. We hiked up to the top of the volcano and walked out onto a ledge that lets you look into the crater. Now the crater is covered with plants and trees but you can definitely tell that it is a crater. Afterwards we hiked back down into some lava caves. Now the first cave we found was pretty cool and we tried to squeeze our way through the cave, but the next cave we found was huge. We actually could just stand up and walk through it, the only problem was that you couldn't see anything, it was pitch black. So all of us tripped about a hundred times trying to make our way through the cave. Eventually after a few hundred feet we made it out though. After this we hiked back down to the bottom of the island and decided we couldn't leave without jumping in the water. Now, none of us had brought any swimming attire so everyone just jumped in with their normal clothes on.......clearly a bad idea. On the ferry we all looked like we had peed our pants, especially me because the bottom half of my shorts were dry but the top half remained wet. Attractive. After a long day of hiking (about 5 hours), I went looking for some food on the ferry and found something I have never heard of. A carrot, orange, poppyseed muffin. What the hell is that. Well one of the other international students bought one and gave me a piece to try. By far, the best muffin I have ever tasted, I'll have to buy like a few packs of them and bring them home. Anyways, that was my weekend and now I am still in my first week of school which I will talk about in my next post. Hope everyone is doing well!!