Another Happy Day

I wrote before that it was probably the best I’ve ever felt since arriving in New Zealand, but I’d like to update that status. I managed to wiggle my way into a group of friends that I actually really like, not just people being nice to me and having a chat. It’s funny though, most of them are a lot like some of you guys back at home, In fact there are at least three of you who pretty much have mirror images over here, but I’m not going to name names for fear of people feeling left out. Regardless I feel absolutely elated, as tonight we all went to a ballroom dancing class, which is just as fun as it is confusing and embarrassing, although it wasn’t as embarrassing once you got the moves down. The group has two other exchange students in it, one from South Africa, who is (contrary to your first impression I know) about as Arian as it gets (light blonde, bright blue eyes) and has hardly any accent. The other is from Belgium, he takes a cooking class and he brought us some hot cross buns today at lunch that he had made himself. As we were eating them a seagull “shat” on him, needless to say, his reaction still makes me chuckle (it was rather higher pitched than his normal voice, and contained a lot of hiding his face behind his hands and saying “ewww, I can’t believe I just got shat on” then looking through his hands at the splotch on his knee, then covering his face again, rolling on to his back, and repeating the process about five times)Something else remarkable (at least to me) happened right before lunch. I had a study period, so I was just walking around as they were setting up another “hot dog” fundraiser. I happened to have some money on me at the time, so I heeded their peas to come over and buy something and receiver my slightly charred sausage on a slice of toast. As I was eating it a kid from my music class came up and asked me how my composition was going, we talked a little and then he asked “are you going to cheer?” (I think it was cheer, it started with “ch” I know, could have been chim, or char, or chimp, I don’t know) I intelligently inquired, “what?”“The Christian group meeting at lunch today.”“oh, um no I’m not”“why not?”“Well I’m not really keen, so I don’t think I’m allowed” I was referring to the notice that our form teacher had read to us that morning that actually said that if you weren’t keen on going (meaning if your not interested), don’t. He got the joke and chuckled, then replied, “ah but you are keen” (meaning I’m intelligent)I in turn gave his play on words a brief chuckle and replied “yeah, but I’m not keen to go”“why not?”“well, I’m not Christian”“I’ve only been a Christian for a few weeks, you can change too”“Yeah, but I don’t really want to”“why?”“Well, I’m an atheist”“what’s that?”“Um, I deny the existence of god?” I said tentatively, bracing myself.“oh, so you worship the devil?”“excuse me?” I thought this was going to be the part where I got told I was an evil person. But as it turns out, it was just a bit of not-meant-to-be-offensive skewed logic.“Well, if you don’t worship god, your helping the devil indirectly”“Yeah, but not believing in god and not believing in the devil kind of go hand in hand, so I don’t really care.”He stood there for a second silently, then the bell rang, signaling the beginning of his meeting. “Damn, I’m not going to be able to convince you am I?”I smiled at him.“All right, well see you later.”Personally I was stunned. “I’m not going to be able to convince you am I?” that was all he said. In America if I had pulled the atheist card (and trust me I have) on a Christian who was rather secure in their beliefs (you could tell be talking to this kid that he was very convinced he had found the light, and was just trying to help others down the same path) most of the time (not all of the time, but most) I’d get verbally abused, and told off for choosing a wayward path, sometimes people would be a little nicer and throw an unrelenting stream of arguments at me to try and convince me otherwise, but not once do I ever remember someone conceding, just dropping the subject when he realized he wasn’t going to convince me otherwise, and then “I’ll see you later” like it was just a normal conversation. It was pretty nice.And for those of you who were wondering how my composition was going, I’m not sure. My music teacher confuses me. There are aspects of her that I like (she’s nice enough, she’s not too strict, she knows her stuff, I think) but there are other parts of her that I just can’t stand. Example, when she’s talking to you one on one, and sometimes when she’s talking to the class, after every sentence she’ll pause for a second and wiggle her eyebrows like she’s just said something suggestive, except she hasn’t, she just say something like, “you need to go to the school shop to get your student ID” AND THEN SHE’D WIGGLE HER EYEBROWS!!! It’s so confusing, and needless to say, more than a little creepy. Anyway, she gave me a bunch of suggestions on my song, that I did not like at all, like “you have a really nice beat going here, why don’t you try changing it from 6/8 time to 8/8 for a measure” which makes absolutely no sense to me. But then went on to demonstrate by flailing around on the piano behind me to the general tune of my song, which was embarrassing to me because it made it look to the other students in the room like I had just written an absolutely abysmal piece of music. Any way, I don’t really know what to do, because I hate all her ideas, but I don’t want it to look like I was completely ignoring everything she was saying. Plus my piece is getting to the level of complication that I actually need to practice it (even though I wrote it) and the Gardiners don’t have a piano. But at least the computer program can play it correctly, so they’ll know I wrote it right, even if I can’t play it.