The First Week of Uni

Well, before I go into the first week of uni, I thought I might touch on classes and structure, as I think it's rather different from the US system. For most classes I have a single lecture a week, along with either a tute or a workshop. Tutes and workshops are made up of 20-30 people, and we go more in depth with what was discussed in lecture, explore it a bit more. Additionally, there's no Mon/Wed/Fri, Tues/Thur thing. Instead, I just have my classes whenever they can be slotted in. So I'm pretty busy Mondays and Tuesdays, but then Thursdays and Fridays I have a single morning class. Wednesdays are sort of mediumly busy.

While I'm on this subject, I might as well go ahead and list what classes I'm in, for those of you who are interested. I guess this is also rather different from the US system, as all of my classes relate to my major. Ooh, that's another thing that's different from the US. I am not a freshmen, I'm a first year, which makes me think of Harry Potter, haha. But anyway, my classes. They are:

Education 1: This class is like a general Educational psychology, theories of practice, sort of thing.

Science and Technology 1: This class is focused on teaching us science knowledge that we're going to need to know so that we can properly teach it ourselves. So there's not much teaching theory or anything here, it's just sort of like a middle school science class. But more in depth, since we have to really know things to be able to answer all the questions kids come up with. But it's not all too hard, content-wise.

Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE): This class is about societal and environmental issues. Shocking, I know. And how we can teach our kids about them, make our kids global citizens so they will want to and know how to act and save the planet and end poverty and yay!

Maths 1: This class is about math. Both making sure that we know how to do primary math, quickly, easily, and without calculators, but more importantly that we understand the mistakes kids make and why and how we can help them understand math and fun stuff like that.

Primary Music: This is hands down my most fun class. We meet once a week, there's only about 15 of us, and we play instruments and sing songs and make music. We'll all grab whatever instrument strikes our fancy and sit in a group on the floor, and our lecturer will say, "Okay, let's make the sounds of the ocean." I'm not really sure what it has to do with teaching primary music. But it's fun, so I guess that's what counts.

So yes, those are my classes.

I typed up all that because I honestly don't remember much of my first week of uni, but I needed something to fill up this entry.

I do remember my very first lecture! I thought I was way too early, but then everyone else was way too early as well, so I guess it worked out well. I ended up finding some people that I met at orientation. But after a while, I found that they talked about drinking and partying a bit too much for my tastes, so I've since found different friends, but it was good to have people to hang out with the first few days.

Wednesday of that week was Eloise's and Pippi's birthdays! I went with Eloise to her birthday picnic and a movie. We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens for their Moonlight Cinema. You sit outside on picnic blankets and then when the sun goes down this inflatable movie screen appears! I thought this was very cool, so I took pictures:

Finally the movie began! It was the Breakfast Club. But the movie's film was apparently rather old and it broke every 10-15 minutes, and then it took another 5 minutes to get it going again. So we eventually left at about 10:30 and got refunds. But a fun time was had by all nevertheless!

So then I had Thursday-Saturday. Some things happened, I'm sure. I'm pretty sure I went to Pippi's for dinner Sunday night. We ordered pizza.

And so concludes the first week.