First Day Back At UC + 5 Years After February CHCH Earthquake

Hello! Today (Monday 22nd February) was the first day of Uni for 2016 at Canterbury University here in Christchurch! It is also the anniversery of the February earthquake back in 2011.

First thing in the morning I went to the Gym at UC, I never skip a Monday. I don't know why heaps of people hate Mondays, I actually love Mondays. It's the start of the brand new week and I love fresh starts because if you start things off the right way right from the beginning everything else follows along smoothly! Plus, Monday nights is when the new episodes of WALKING DEAD airs!!!

After the Gym, I headed for the Library and it was so busy! The Gym was actually busier than normal as well (I usually go from 9am - 10am when it's quiet but this morning was a bit busy!). The library was packed though, I headed straight for the 4th floor where I always go but the printer wasn't working on that floor! I had just scanned the first 4 chapters of the exercise book that is required for JAPA325 because obviously there is no point in my buying it since I am going on exchange!

I just had to use the first floor printers despite how crowded it was. After that I headed back to level 4. I ate my lunch in there too, I did a bit of basic study before heading to the JAPA325 class which was in Logie213 (the computer room).

I sat next to Rachel in class and the Ogino Sensei spoke to us in Japanese only and explained to us that on Mondays the classes would be completely in Japanese which I think is fantastic and I did my best to speak only Japanese however a few of my classmates were responding to me in english! That was a bit annoying.

After class I went to Maki Sensei's office to see both her and Rachel Sensei. I hadn't seen them sincethe last revision exam session last year in November. Such a long time! It was great to see them both. I spoke in Japanese only and I was surprised with how much I was able to sayin Japanese, stuff that I haven't said in Japanese before since I was speaking to Maki Sensei. I surprised myself in a good way, I felt a bit more confident. Both of them even praised me for my Japanese use in my Youtube videos and my email to both of them even though I hadn't done any proper Japanese study since my final exam. Maki Sensei gave me great advice and wisdom today and she really encouraged me. I felt great after speaking with her. (Rachel Sensei had to leave to do work so I mostly spoke with Maki Sensei) - Oh and another thing, she was using the mug that I gave her last year as a thank you which made me really happy!

I felt great at Uni today and after leaving Maki Sensei's office it was around 4:30pm and so it was time to head home. As I was walking through Uni I noticed these street cones with flowers in them.

Pic from my Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/BCE3fMjpkQn/?taken-by=mahamaha.97)

I almost completely forgot that on this day 5 years ago was the massive and tragic February Earthquake here in Christchurch. It was at 12:1pm and was a shallow magnitude 6.3. I was at school when it happened. I was in year 10 (my second year of high school, 14 years old) and we had just finished lunch time and everyone was on their way to class when it happened. It was so strong, I was walking with my friends to class and the earth shook so hard that I lost my balance and almost fell to the ground. A lot of people di fall to the ground because the pure force was so strong and people were screaming and crying. It was shocking. We had already experienced a very strong earthquake before this one but that one was at 3am in the morning so everyone was in bed at home so no casualties. This time around was different. 180 people lost their lives in the 2011 quake.

You can read up on it here on the Wiki page - it's all quite accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake

Right, back to Uni stuff! There is a task for us to do on Facebook which is to post a 'self introduction' in Japanese to our group page, around 5 sentences. So I am going to write mine here first then post onto the group page.

(I'll probably be the first person to do so and I'm not even a real student in the class!)

はじめまして、マハと申します。私わ十八歳です、来月は十九歳になります。じつは、今年私はカンタベリー大学の学生じゃない、今年早稲田大学で日本語を勉強しますよ。私は三月十六日に日本に行きます。あまり時間がないんですね！でも、日本に行くまでによくJAPA325の従業に来るつもりです。留学のために　たくさん日本語の練習のほうがいいと思いますから！もう、すぐ日本に行きますがJAPA325のみんなでよろしくおねがいします。

Annnd there done! I'm going to end this post here because WALKING DEAD is about to start! Yay!