Well, I've now been here a month and feel as if I'm settled in pretty well. My first week at church I met a lovely woman named Yvonne and before I left that Sunday she made sure to invite me to the Craft Group that meets on Tuesday mornings at the church. I decided that since I enjoy crafty things and had no other plans that I should attend, even if it wasn't my demographic in terms of age. The ladies are so lovely and made me feel right at home. They're all retired and decided that they might as well get out of the house and do some crafting with other ladies than just sit at home. They do a variety of things, often just bringing along whatever project they're working on, be it cross-stitch or knitting, one woman embroiders greeting cards. Some weeks they make a craft together, so we made some lovey cards. Yvonne, who is usually cross-stitching decided I needed something to do every week and brought in some New Zealand cross stitch patterns and is teaching me. My mom is an amazing cross-stitch-er so I'm praying I inherited some of that so my project is worth keeping once I'm finished.
Yesterday at church, before prayer meeting, I was chatting with Inge. She's a lovely Zimbabwean woman who I also met my very first week. Her and her husband are farmers and moved from Zimbabwe to England maybe 12 years ago, and then from England moved here to NZ. She's part of the music team, which for a small church (I'd guess they have about 50 people in attendance on Sundays) has a lot of people on it, in my opinion. As most of you know, I tend to sing rather loudly when I sing, and it seems she heard me one week and decided I should join their music roster! I know how nice it is to not have to be up front every single week, so, it would seem ,that at some point this month I'll be helping give some of the others a break. Their musicians and singers aren't about to win any awards, but no one cares and I appreciate that. They're not there to put on a show and most everyone is involved in their services in some way anyway throughout the month; it is a bit hard to explain without it seeming as if it's not an actual church service. It feels like church, but in a relaxed way.
Yvonne and Margaret (another woman from craft group) both volunteer at the local Hospice Shop, a second-hand store where all the proceeds go towards those in need of hospice care and they asked their manager if it would be ok if I stopped by some mornings to volunteer as well. Once again, they're mostly retired people, but it is nice to get out and meet people and do some good. I basically just clean and tag the items (they're already sorted into boxes of a certain price) for someone else to put on a shelf.
Sam, of course, is good company while I'm at home. Mike and Eileen, along with Val (all friends of the home-owners) are also wonderful people. Val, the retired chef had a dinner party on Friday night and it was like a Thanksgiving dinner. As a retired professional culinary professor, she does everything from scratch. Her dinner rolls: amazing. Lamb shank, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies (kumara and beet root): perfectly paired. Dessert? Unbelievable and completely over the top. Ice cream with cherries (home made of course), a cherry-almond torte, and custard. She'd also made crepes suzette, but not a single one of use could possibly have eaten another bite... I had stopped by for a chat sometime the week before and she'd just pulled shortbread cookies out of the oven. I have a weakness for shortbread and she might have spoiled all shortbread cookies from here on out. I wish I could have recorded our conversation about her training as a chef, it would have made an excellent blog post; she's an impressive woman.
The newest main project is a General Psychology class. When I first got here I wasn't sure how I was going to fill all my time for three months so I decided to see what options I might have in terms of online classes at BC3. Since it is summer in the northern hemisphere the school is currently having Fast Track summer courses. I looked through my transcript and eventually found a class they were offering that I hadn't already taken (and still needed) that sounded interesting. It has definitely been interesting so far, but has been a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated. A regular semester crammed into 5 weeks is a bit intense and I am a bit paranoid about getting behind, what with the time difference and due dates, etc.. I'm enjoying all the "random facts" sprinkled throughout the textbook as examples of topics we are covering. Here are a few:
The neurotransmitter "Dopamine is related to the personality trait of extroversion (being outgoing and gregarious)..." Someone at craft group erroneously commented that I'm so outgoing...perhaps solo-travel increases my dopamine levels, because I am definitely not outgoing.
"During World War II, B.F. Skinner trained pigeons to pilot missiles. Although top navy officials just could not accept pigeons piloting their missiles in a war, Skinner congratulated himself on the degree of control he was able to exercise over the pigeons."
"Individuals from Western cultures are more likely to attend to objects in the foreground of scenes (or focal objects), while East Asians looking at the same scenes are more likely to notice aspects of the context. For example, in one study (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), American and Japanese participants were shown video clips of underwater scenes. When asked to describe what they had seen, the Americans were more likely to talk about the colorful fish swimming around, and Japanese participants were more likely to talk about the locations of objects and aspects of the setting. Such differences have led psychologists to conclude that Westerners take a more analytical orientation, while Asians are more likely to see the big picture. Culture also influences the kinds of stimuli that are missed in inattentional blindness. Research on change blindness (the tendency to miss changes that have occurred in a scene) shows that when objects in the foreground change, Americans are more likely to notice, while Japanese are more likely to notice when changes occur in the context (Masuda & Nisbett, 2006)."
All quotations taken from "Experience Psychology" 3rd Edition
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