"Morish"

Another day in the Kiwiland! Today was our second day of school, and it was much different than the first…meaning we actually had to do school work today. In the morning we had our literacy class with Carol Anderton. I think we surprised her a little because we already had learned much of the New Zealand approach to literacy in our Literacy class last semester. I didn’t know it was from New Zealand at the time, but now I see that our whole class about reading/writing TO, WITH, and BY students—and that’s from New Zealand!

In the afternoon we had our first Assessment and Management class with Dr. Jacobs (our Professor from BYU)…it was so good. Dr. Jacobs is so knowledgeable and I feel like there is so much that we can learn from him. He doesn’t just automatically accept any answer we give him. Instead, he asks us a ton of questions in response to help us explain and better understand exactly what we’re saying or what we believe. I remember being intimidated by his method at the beginning of his Children’s Literature course, but I love it now. We talked a lot about what having/getting an education means; how it’s different for different people, cultures, location, etc. We also talked about what assessment means, or at least what it should mean; how there should be more of a focus on understanding and application instead of just memorization.

For our class we had to read a speech from a BYU devotional from Gregory Clark. In it, he quotes Gordon B. Hinckley saying, “It isn’t as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don’t worry. I say that to myself every morning. It will all work…put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. He will not forsake us…If we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers.” President Hinckley said this at his wife’s funeral, a day that must have been one of the hardest of this good man’s life. About this, Gregory Clark said that if President Hinckley needed to remind himself daily to choose faith over fear, then we all probably need to reminding ourselves even more often! Life is pretty great right now, as I am removed from my “normal” life back at BYU, but I am still grateful for the comfort this brought me.

So, school was great today, and then we had a little adventure trying to get bus passes. Our host mom has been driving us to class on her way to work, and then Dr. Jacobs has been driving us home, but we had to figure out another means of transport so we don’t always have to rely on Sheryl. Busses seemed the best way so we stopped by the mall to get some passes. Well, we thought we knew everything we needed to know (the bus # 090), but we needed to know what they call the stage. Depending on the distance travel, there are different stages that determine how much you pay. Fortunately the girl working was extremely helpful and we ended up buying 30 stage 2 rides for 60 bucks. If she hadn’t given us the tertiary (student) discount, we would have had to pay $102! Good thing I had my BYU i.d.! Also, good thing Dr. Jacobs will reimburse us for all transportation! (I guess he’s really reimbursing us with the money we have already paid, but still I was glad I didn’t have to fork over more money!)

When we got back to the Lord’s house, we told Sheryl we got bus passes, and she said, “Oh good, and you just told them you needed it for bus 090 right?” To which I responded, “Yes bus 090”—in my fake New Zealand accent! I was sooo embarrassed because I didn’t want her to think I was making fun of her, so I just kept talking in my normal voice and luckily she didn’t seem to notice. When we’re with the group we always practice our accents, but that was my biggest fear is that I would slip into it when talking to a native—and it happened! Good thing it was short and nothing too obvious J

I love my host family. They are just so friendly and nice to us. We have had delicious meals every night (tonight we had grilled ham steaks!), they are so willing to answer questions and help us out, and they went out of their way to get us hokey pokey ice cream to try tonight. We had heard that the ice cream was amazing and this hokey pokey was amazing…it was ice cream with honeycomb in it. Kinda interesting and crunchy, but so good! Oh, also, Sheryl is so funny, always making us laugh. Today she was eating the peanut butter M&Ms we gave them and when I asked her how she liked them, she said they were very “morish.” Of course I had no idea what that meant, but she went on to say she means that after you eat one, you just want more and more. Haha So now, whenever you eat sometime as delicious as M&Ms, you can describe them as “morish!”