I just can't be bothered

I love my media studies class. The professor is this absolutely ridiculous liberal nutcase from India that has a half-Indian, half-kiwi accent and seems incredibly informed about New Zealand history and culture, yet mildly detached from the fact that he lives here as well and claims to be uninformed of current kiwi pop culture. Today he was lecturing about the construction of national identities and the nation state, and ended up yelling about the construction of these imaginary communities in this giant, booming voice, and then stopped for a second, and said, "Do you...? Am I...? Yes? OK. We move on" and then made this odd squawking noise and started talking about something else. I thought his change of pace was hilarious, but nobody else seemed to.

I'm still amazed at the considerably lower academic standards here. First off, the amount of work required for class seems extremely minimal, and the papers are about 2-5 pages shorter than I would normally write back at Oxy. Also, an 84-89 here is an A! A 90-100 is an A+, and an 80-84 is an A-. That's a full grade higher than Oxy, an 80 is definitely a B-. I was talking with the Oxy alum I met with for coffee who now is a professor here, and she says one of the reasons she might leave is that the lower academic standards are really frustrating to work with and she gets annoyed that her students think she's asking too much. Still, low amounts of course work and shorter papers work well with my schedule of just traveling all over the country and not thinking about class on the weekends, so for this semester, I'm certainly not complaining.

My feet are covered in sandfly bites--just when I thought they were calming down from 2 weeks ago, we encountered more out in Te Anau this weekend. As we were driving back from our hike and back to Dunedin, Dan opened the window and about six sanflies flew in and started eating my food, and it's incredibly difficult to swat them away when you're using your feet to drive! I have giant bites covering the tops of my feet and one really irritating one right at the bend of my ankle. Apparently, if you consume mass amounts of vitamin B12, they don't eat you as much, but the best way to get that is to eat lots of Marmite, the kiwi version of Vegemite, and I just can't get myself to eat that salty, yeasty disgustingness off a spoon. Ugh.

My flat watched a NZ movie last night called "Once Were Warriors" which was a really difficult movie to watch, but really interesting as well. It's about domestic abuse within the Maori community and has some really hard scenes to sit through. Still, it's interesting to see the way they are portrayed in popular media, and when we were done, we had an interesting discussion about whether certain issues like domestic abuse and alcoholism are more prominent in Maori communities and why that's so. We also talked about the way Maori issues are integrated into the educational system. Our flat has a great mix of playfulness (Joe has jumped out of the pantry to scare me about 4 times already this week) and intellectual conversations, and it's really helpful to have the kiwis here to help us understand what it means to be a New Zealander for them.

One last tidbit of information--my new favorite kiwi phrase is "I just can't be bothered." They use it for everything! Jess came in today saying she was really hot because she was wearing three sweatshirts, but she just couldn't be bothered to take them off. When I asked Jane if she wanted to go hiking with us, she said "I'd like to, but I just can't be bothered to hike up a mountain right now." Sometimes they save dishes for later because they "just can't be bothered" to do them. It's like the ultimate excuse for anything! It can applied to seriously everything...I just can't be bothered to write my paper, I just can't be bothered to help you make dinner tonight, I just can't be bothered to make my bed this morning, I can't be bothered to go to the gym today...it's so universal! I'm definitely bringing that back to the States in June, get ready for it to hit.