Hanmer Springs and so much more

Yesterday I went to a place called Hanmer springs (its about 2 hours - don't know miles - northwest of here) and it was great. I spent like 4 hours in thermal pools, looking at the snow-capped mountains in the distance. So great. Well, it was great until I had to get out of the pool - it wasn't exactly a warm day. In fact it was pretty cold. But it was worth it.

There are so many Americans here. Half of my professors are American and just about all of the people I hang out with are too. I'm not sure I'm getting the full Kiwi experience here. Of course, this place isn't that different than the States in a lot of ways. I mean, they get our music, our movies, our TV shows - the American media is all over this place. And my accent isn't cool. That makes me kind of sad. Not only do they hear the American accent all the time, making it anything but special, but I also think that they don't like it much. I've heard that they think the American accent is annoying. Thats pretty understandable. I mean they are so articulate and well spoken and they use big words; we probably sound like idiots when we talk. Or maybe its just me. I still have trouble understanding them sometimes. Like this girl I met in one of my classes was asking me if I had any pets, but I kept hearing peets, so i didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Finally, she slowed it down, and asked if I owned any animals. I finally got it. I told her I used to have a dog named Buddy, but it died, and my parents didn't even tell me, and I was really upset about it. I have a feeling that was too much information.

The class we have together is Personality Psychology. We have our lab together too. We played this game in lab called "The Pairing game." Everyone is given a card with three personality adjectives on it and we can't look at it. We all go to the middle of the room and hold up our card so everyone else can see it and we have to find someone that we would want as a partner. It took me a long time to find someone who wanted me. Everyone kept laughing when they saw my card. Finally someone felt sorry for me and paired with me (I didn't think I had much room to be picky so I would have taken whoever wanted me). Then we had to tell the lab instructor whether we thought we had good or bad personality traits, or a mixture of both. I figured I had all bad. This is what I had:

Loyal

Horny

Low self-esteem

Ha Ha very funny. Now I know why everyone was laughing. Still don't know why no one wanted me...

By the way for all of you who wanted my address. here it is:

Jessica Lambert

University Hall

University of Canterbury

Private Bag 4760

Christchurch, New Zealand

I like getting mail...

One last thing - SO sorry that I haven't posted pictures yet...they will be coming shortly. And they will be worth the wait.