Suddenly it was there!

I couldn't miss this wonderful opportunity. Two rainbows just a couple hundred metres from me. I snapped the shots through my window.

Abel Tasman!

Photo from: http://www.lafessecacheedumonde.com/goodies_en.html

I Googled "Abel Tasman" and this picture came up. Now I'm expecting a lot - a beautiful national park and a lot of tanned naked men.

On Friday Eilidh are heading off to Nelson, stopping in Christchurch on the way. When we get to Nelson I'll make sure Eilidh shows me this paradise!

Morning fog

View from my window.

A normal Monday

8:00 - Woke up, took a shower
8:10 - Ate breakfast, breathing fumes in the cold kitchen
8:45 - Went to school with a backpack weighting way too much (laptop, books, lunch, glasses etc.)
9:00 - Tutorial in accounting, started with a 10 min quiz on this week's case
9:50 - Rushed to the next lecture in another building
10:00 - 2 hour lecture in another accounting paper, professor was going through exactly the same things as the book did (and I had just summarized the readings during the weekend)
11:50 - Ate lunch with Blake and Paula (fellow accounting students)
13:00 - Studied at the library with Paula
15:00 - Went to an econometrics lab, understood nothing, sat there through the next one and still had no idea what to do. Damn Eviews!
19:00 - Went to a meeting with my Activate project group, we brainstormed and decided we should do an event on time management
20:00 - Met Scott in the library and we tried to finish an assignment in microeconomic theory, but were too tired
22:30 - Went home, ate dinner, chatted with Eilidh about our trip to Nelson (mid-term break!)
23:30 - Fell asleep hugging my laptop

Cheers!

This is about as much daylight as I see every day

I know it's sad, but I spend all my free time at the library studying. It's open from 9 am to 11 pm, heated and offers good internet connections and cozy armchairs.

I'll try to keep the blog alive.

Perseids

Botanical garden

I went shopping the other day, and the way to the supermarket goes through Dunedin Botanical Garden. So here are some photos from my quick walk:

And I thought this would be easy...

When the university finally confirmed my enrolment for all 5 papers I thought this was going to be a nice and easy semester with a lot of free time to explore New Zealand. I was so wrong.

I have now reduced my workload to 4 papers and I still feel that I won’t be exploring anything other than what’s written in the bunch of thick (and expensive) books I’ve bought for this semester. Here I have to study all papers simultaneously and then have 4 exams within two weeks. That’s 100 % workload for an ambitious student (3 papers = 100 % for a less ambitious student). People pay for every paper they do, so there is no rush really and most do 3-4 papers per semester. And I thought I’d do 5, easily.

The difficulty of the papers here should be taken seriously. Some are really easy, while others feel overwhelmingly hard if not impossible. Students with good grades on their Bachelor degree can proceed and do an honours degree (one extra year). I wouldn’t say my grades are good in certain subjects; in fact they are really crappy. Yet I’m doing two papers for honours’ students and I find them arduous (just to use a nice word). I see them as big challenge because that makes me feel less stupid.

I would never have time to study 200 % and work part time as I did in Sweden. It’s not easier there, but the assessment is concentrated to exams and group projects. Here assessment is spread out as marmite on toast. It tastes salty, just like sweat and tears. I’ve had none of that yet, but I’m sure it will come sooner or later.

Now I’m going to find out what consumers really want in microeconomic theory.

Cheers!