And so break begins

Hello everyone!

So, let's see, what's the news from pseudo-down under?

(Psuedo because people usually think of "down under" as Australia, I think?)

Well!

The first semester is over as of the first of July, and we are now on a three-week break (NZ's winter break, essentially), which is both good and bad. Leading up to the end of the semester we had our productions, where everyone spent one week as a front of house person at lunch, one week as a cook at lunch, and one week as a cook at dinner for people who were actually paying to come to the restaurant on campus (sorry, people who came!). It was still only three days per week, though, so it wasn't *too* intense...during service it did get a bit hairy at times, though. For lunch I was on spanakopita duty one day, then pasta carbonara the other two days. For dinner, it was steak with hand-cut fries and mushroom sauce all three nights (kind of...I wasn't there for one service because I had done a double shift - lunch and dinner - one of the days the week before so I could still make it to field hockey practice).

It was a bit silly because we were all supposed to rotate between appetizers, mains and desserts for each meal to give us all experience doing each station for that mealtime, but that really didn't happen. So the dessert people the first day pretty much desserts for all three, mains did mains all the time and appetizers did appetizers the whole time. It was nice to be able to get a bit more comfortable with the meals you were preparing, so it wasn't just one day of something, but I really didn't get to do anything with desserts or bread like I was hoping to. Oh well! We'll be doing many more productions next semester, so I'll be able to do it then.

Speaking of next semester, it looks to be even...stranger than this past one as far as class goes. It was a bit of a stretch in my opinion to call three half-days a week "full-time", and next semester....well, here's what we'll be doing. We'll be split into two groups again, and Mondays/Tuesdays we'll be doing the usual: Mondays one group will be in the kitchen in the mornings, one in the afternoons/evenings, and Tuesdays will be "theory" or computers. The next part is where it gets weird. We'll be doing productions every other week for two days. Example: Week 1, group A does Monday morning in the kitchen, theory on Tuesdays, and dinner productions Wednesday and Thursday while group B does Monday evening in the kitchen, theory on Tuesdays, and nothing for the rest of the week. In week 2, Monday and Tuesday will be the same, but group B will be doing productions Wed/Thurs while group A has the rest of the week off.

So, some weeks I'll have two days of class while other weeks I'll have four. It's kind of awkward, I'm not going to lie. We'll see how it goes, though! They want to give us two days of productions in a row so that there's a bit of continuity and it's not just a string of one night services, which makes sense. I'm just not sure how I like the idea of having two days of class per week half of the time. The alternating schedule will also make it kind of awkward to fit other things in on those days, not to mention that dinner services on Thursday will clash with field hockey practice (oh no!).

But again, we'll see! It'll be nice to get more experience in the kitchen during productions, even if it is a rather awkward schedule. And maybe having fewer days of class one week will mean I can make a trip or two every now and then. It could be a good thing!

Let's see, what else? I haven't been doing as much field hockey the past week or two, because I managed to hurt myself in a rather silly fashion in the game two weeks ago. We were getting clobbered by a the A team of a club whose B team beat our A team, and I was getting frustrated, and I managed to temporarily blank on a rather strict but easy-to-follow rule and managed to twist/roll my ankle and bruise my foot at the same time. I'm pretty sure it looked utterly ridiculous to everyone else on the field. It's a rather strange injury because my ankle is pretty much ok (thankfully), but the part of my foot under my pinky/fourth toe is really sore/bruised. Better than a sprained ankle, though, that's for sure!

So I've been staying away because I can't really run very much, which would be a problem in many sports, field hockey included. I'm hoping that by next week it will be back to normal - it's pretty close now, but not quite there yet and it would be silly to go back to early and just mess it up even more. They've finally split up the pool of teams as well, so there shouldn't be too many more ridiculously lopsided games (I think the one I hurt myself in ended up being around 16-1? And field hockey is supposed to be a low-scoring game...), which is nice. The only bothersome thing is that there's only one game during the cooking course's three-week break and that's this upcoming weekend, so I probably won't be able to play in it. Bah!

In other news, I've joined Big Brothers/Big Sisters! I'll be matched with a little chap in a local school and will be meeting with him there starting next semester, which should be neat. It's the first time they've done mentoring in schools in this part of NZ, so it's kind of exciting to be one of the first people to do it. I may start to look for another place to volunteer at on top of that, because I need to start filling up the ridiculous amount of free time that I have.

I think that's about it! I'll be going around applying to jobs/giving people my CV even if they don't want it tomorrow so look out, cafes and restaurants in Napier! I'll probably have enough time in the near future to throw up another post with more interesting things about life in New Zealand in general, not just my life, and maybe some pictures (no promises on the pictures though). So stay tuned!

Or don't, that's cool too.