Waikat-O-week

Alright so past orientation now we are in school and classes have started, but since it is the first week of classes we still need a good way to meet random people and interact socially so O-week is here. Now WSU- the Waikato student union puts on this festival. There is a big piece of grass in front of the cafes and bank stations that look towards the lakes, which you can walk by on your way to class. This was a hot spot during the day. They handed out free breakfast as you walked to class and they had loud music blaring to let you know that they are there. They had lots of booths up on the green, giving away free stuff to attract the students attention; the wireless provider was giving away free trial vouchers, the WSU was giving away bags and information on what is happening every day, banks were advertising themselves. Monday is "Sexual heath day" at night they had a quiz game at one of the bars. Tuesday was "Who are you?" They had a hypnotist show up and if you are a student you got a free ticket in. Wednesday was "Clubs day" so all the sports, leisure, interest clubs you could sign up for and get information on. I signed up for heaps of stuff. They do not have a girls rugby team here... you have to drive two hours to Auckland to play girls rugby... kind of reminds me of Lacrosse season. There is a lacrosse team (boys, but girls can practice), and a comparable outdoors club that we have at Furman. The other days were international days, but on thursday they had three comedy guys show up. They were also giving out tickets to the Chiefs game (local rugby team). At the bars there were heaps of stuff to do as well. Apparently O-week is a pretty big thing in Hamilton. There were themed bars for every night, monday was a beach party, thursday was flouro or white out, tuesday was 90's. It was really fun to dress up for some of them and go out with my hall, and it was even more fun to watch them dress up and go all out and leave for the bars.
The first week of classes were normal 1st week of classes, you don't do much other than hand out a syllabus and say see you next time. I have class from monday to thursday. I am taking four papers (they call classes papers). I am taking an english: Victorian literature, a Anthropology: Ritual and Magic, a TIKA: Contemporary Maori Society, a earth science: Discovering planet earth. The english and earth class are each an hour and the other two are both two hours. The earth class has a lab and a tutorial and the english has a tutorial as well as the tika class. My days usually start off around 9 or 10 and end around 6 or 1. Only two of these course will transfer to my home Uni; the earth class and the english class and they transfer as general education requirements. I am very excited for my classes and think they will all be very interesting. I am especially excited about the anthropology class as well as the contemporary maori class.
The week was fun it had its ups and downs, got really board with the club scene and was ready for some actual lectures to take place. Friday was the rugby game though and that was worth waiting for, but the Chiefs lost. It was fun to watch a NZ game and be with the crowd and eat nasty sausage hot dogs. Goal before next game get a jersey, that and learn some of the states on the Chiefs. I wish I could play here at the University it would make life so much easier. I met a lot of new people and look forward to continuing that. First impressions are that I can't really tell you until I have an actual class, but people here are a lot less stressed then at Furman.