http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni A BootsnAll Travel Blog Mon, 10 Apr 2006 08:48:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en To all that have been reading my blog with regularity, I apologize for the amount of time it has taken me to update but as you all may know, the primary purpose of this trip is to study and as the semester has begun to get rolling, I have been finding ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/whats-been-happening.html   My latest Kete Monday was a regular day but in one of my classes, the lecturer cancelled the next day’s class so I ended up with no classes on Tuesday. So Monday night I stayed up quite late talking with this Chinese-Kiwi (he calls himself “Z Asian”) guy, George, who lives ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/late-nights.html Here are some images from the Campus of the University of Waikato. I took them at about 7:00 PM, so that is why it is so deserted. During the day, the campus is teeming with people. Click on the image and you'll get a bigger one.  Block 5  ,  Student Village,  Oranga ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/images-of-uni.html Sunday, all of Student Village went on a trip to a nearby beach called Raglan. It is a volcanic black sand beach and very popular with Uni students. Unfortunately, it was quite chilly when we got there so I did not go into the water.   Chia, Shaung and I went for ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/average-week.html So Kiwis have some strange vocabulary that I thought I would share with you all. Enjoy!  Flip-flops = Jandals  Swimsuit = Togs  Muscle Shirt / Wifebeater = Singlet  Awesome = Choice  Summer Home = Bach (pronounced Batch)  Convenience Store = Dairy  Rugby = Footie  Food cooked underground (kinda like a clambake) = Hangi  Beer = Piss  (to be) Drunk = ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/american-english-kiwi-english.html Friday, I had my first Flax (Kete) Weaving class and it went from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM. We will have all day studio classes like that about twice a month, the rest will be just 9:00 AM to noon. It was great, and I made my first basket that day! ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/bomfunk-mcs-rock-tha-microphone.html Tuesday, I had the same papers as the day before but they were very interesting. I found out that the Maori language only has ten vowel sounds (a,e,i,o,u both long and short) and only ten consonant sounds (t,k,wh which is an f sound, ng which is like the ng in ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/everybody-was-kung-fu-fighting.html Monday was my first day of classes. While waiting in line for lunch (lunch starts at 11:30 and my first class, actually they call them “papers” here, was at noon), I found out that Alice had a class in the same building as me, also at noon so we walked ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/o-week-kicks-off.html Friday, there was a costume party at this pub near the campus that is the official Uni pub called the Hillcrest Tavern. I wasn’t planning to go because I didn’t really have a costume (everyone from Student Village had to dress up as something that starts with “s,” the other ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/uni-life.html  My name incorrectly in English and correctly in Chinese on my door. I’m learning to write my name in Chinese, how cool is that? I’ve also learned “Ben,” “Gigus” and “William’s” real names and am working on my pronunciation. They are, as best as I can spell out the sounds in ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/agni/chinese-stuff.html