Yay for jobs!!!

I have a job. I am going to be waitressing at a hotel in Christchurch. I'm not sure which one in the particular chain yet but I find out on Wednesday when I have a meeting with the people who are hiring me.

I had an interview with them the other day and they are lovely. And it seems like they like me as well. So this means that I can stop being incredibly bored all day every day and earn some money so I can pay my rent and I get to spend lots of time with lots of different people. I like waitressing!

Yay for jobs :)

Job Hunting is Boring

I admire people who spend so long after they finish at uni looking for a 'proper job'. I have been looking for a job for two and half weeks and I am bored out of my brain. And I'm not even looking for a 'proper job'.

I have finished my BA (as I told Ruth I am now qualified to be a sheep!). I'm going to have to do more study to do the things I want to do but I'm having a break from uni for a year or two first. So I am currently looking for a job doing waitressing (which I did last summer and enjoyed). So far I have applied for about 8 jobs, and have heard back from one place.

I've had an interview at one place and I don't think the job is what I am looking for. Too formal and kind of unfriendly feeling... so if I get offered the job I plan to turn it down. But as the days go by and I get more and more bored I keep thinking maybe I should take the job. I hear back later today or tomorrow...

Anyway applying for jobs can only take up a small proportion of time and I've been doing very little else. I think I need to find things to do in the evenings. The last two nights both my flatties have been out and having nothing else to do I watch bad tv and feel sleepy because I always do when there are no other people around.

Anyway maybe I'll go and organise Sunday School for this week (which I never do till Saturday) for lack of anything else to do :)

It's been ages since I last posted so I figured I should write another post.
Exams are over, yay :) I think they all went ok.
I've been in Blenheim for the last week. I went up for my family 21st which was last Tuesday night. It was good to see all my grandparents who I haven't seen for a couple of years. And I was there for my brothers birthday too. And we celebrated my dad's birthday and my grandma's 75th, and my other grandma's 80th.
Anyway I got back to Christchurch last night and im glad to be back. Now I have to find a job before I run out of money :)
This post is incredibly boring especially considering I haven't posted at all in the last few weeks. You'd think I could find something interesting to say but I can't so I'm going to go.

Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows

Ok well actually only sunshine but I am happy :)

This weekend was the best weekend I've had in a long time. I'm actually completely serious when I say I'd forgotten what it was like to have a weekend where I could just hang out with friends and not feel like I should be doing any work.

And now it is study week and I actually feel like I'm ready to start studying. Which is a big change from Friday lunchtime when I had just finished a test, and had handed in two completed assignments, the last of the 5 due in the last two weeks of term, and was feeling dead and totally unmotivated.

I went to Hanmer from Friday night till Saturday with some friends from church and had a great time relaxing and just hanging out with friends. Yay for friends, they are so cool :) Then yesterday I went to church in the morning, and then spent the rest of the day hanging out with friends, went to church again last night, then hung out with friends some more.

I really think that this weekend was possibly the best weekend I have ever had. I love just hanging out with friends, especially when I know I don't have anything else that I should be doing. People are my favourite.

And I'm excited about my future. There's so many things I want to do both short-term and long-term, and I still don't know how I'm going to do most of them but right now it doesn't seem to matter. I feel like I'm ready to try following God the way I should again. I know I'm going to stuff up but to be honest right now I don't care.

I am sunburnt which means summer is here, and it seems that I have reached summer in my life as well. Okay so not everything is perfect, in fact some things are far from it but I don't really care right now. I believe they call this feeling contentment...

I am sick of me!

okay so this post is really nothing like what the title makes it sound like. what I actually mean is I am bored of writing about me. I have a 4000 word essay due next week and the topic of the essay is writing about me. my adult development to be more specific. in fact my adult identity development and whether it lines up with the theory i chose to talk about. the next bit i have to write is where i get to make predictions about my future...How about this?

i will ride off into the sunset on a white horse with my handsome prince charming and live happily ever after

or

i will grow up and be a mad old women with 552 cats and will live in a house all by myself with 23 bathrooms

or how about this one

i will go absolutely bonkers because i wrote an essay about my life and it drove me mad and i never recovered

i have a brain
it is going insane
too much work to do
my mind has turned to goo
uni is just about over
only one essay, one lab report, one assignment, one test, and three exams to go

right i must go back to work

I am legally grown up :)

I am 21 now, which means that I am legally an adult. That does not mean that I'm going to act like a grown up though. I still like to play and do fun silly things (like that will ever change!)
Anyway my actual birthday was yesterday. Ruth stuck newspaper over my door in the morning but I got up while she was in the shower so she missed seeing me walk through it. She gave me some cool desk stuff. Yay for desk stuff :) Michelle gave some bath stuff including a foot shaped pumice thing with a foot brush thing on the back. She laughed at me because I got excited about the pumice! Pumice is very exciting. Michelle made me a cake too. I like cake. I like my flatmates too, they are very cool :) Thanks guys for making me feel special.
I went to uni like normal after that, except I came home earlier than normal. I got exciting birthday mail!!! A card from my brother, and one from two of my friends in Auckland. They made me a collage of silly photos of me :) It will be at my party on Saturday for anyone who wants to see. I also got a card from my grandparents which arrived on Tuesday.
My sister came round and gave me a present from her and my brother, and a card. I like my sister. She likes to be silly like me which makes for lots of fun when we get together. She took me out for a birthday hot chocolate.
Anyways that was my birthday. Yay for cool people who make me feel special. I like you all lots. People are cool :)
Anyways me and my flatmates are still curious about the mysterious but lovely giver of groceries... (see Mrs Yang's blog). If you happen to be reading this thankyou very muchly :)

My new pet

I have joined in on the recent trend of adopting a pet.

This is my pink tiger called Spotty

A boring post about nothing in particular

I got to dress up twice in the past weekend. I like to dress up! It's so much fun.
First I got to dress up as a 1940s girl in my pretty dress. Then for a complete change I dressed up as a pirate for church on Sunday morning.
The Sunday school kids thought it was brilliant that there teacher was a pirate. I have two new boys in my class who are twins. They are the cutest, funniest kids! They have just turned 3, and they don't really know what Sunday school is all about yet so they are still pretty shy- except to each other.
Anyway onto another topic. I am doing a paper this semester called violence in society. It's really interesting, but pretty full on as well. I'm researching for an essay for it at the moment. The topic I'm doing is about Maori victims of domestic abuse, which is again really interesting but not particularly pleasant to read about. Especially the case studies.
I talked to my parents tonight. My conversations with them are pretty mundane and repetitive.
"Hello"
"Hi, It's Rachel"
"How are you?"
"I'm pretty good, what about you?"
"I'm good, What have you been doing?"
"Uni, hanging out with friends, {insert anything else important here}."
"Oh, just the usual then."
"Yep, what have you been up to?"
"Work, golf, {insert some sort of social event here}."
"Sounds good."
"Do you want to talk to Dad?"
"Sure"
"Hi"
"Hi"
Repeat above conversation with my dad instead of my mum.
"I think that's all our news, Bye."
"Ok, Bye."
All up that takes about 5 minutes, sometimes less.
Well I'm going to go now because I'm probably boring everyone since I really have nothing to say (incase you hadn't worked that out already).

Experiment

I need to do an experiment on at least 10 people by Friday, and I'm looking for people who would be happy to do this. It's not hard, or scary, or anything negative like that.
So if you have some spare time and want to help me out then let me know somehow what time within the following time periods suits best:

Tuesday 12-4pm
Wednesday 12-4pm
Thursday 3-5pm

The experiment can be done anywhere, so if uni doesn't suit then you can make another place instead :)

In response to Lana's comment

Here's what I have to say about Lana's comment on my last post:

Like she said I like people, and I much prefer being with other people to being alone. Basically I'm an extrovert. However I do have a natural tendency to be quiet. I know this seems like a contradiction so I will now attempt to explain what I mean.
My personality psychology textbook from last year explains it quite well so I will paraphrase what it says. In general shy people are not introverts. The psychological term for shyness is social anxiety, meaning that shy people are scared of being evaluated negatively by other people. They want to have friends and spend lots of time with other people, but their fear of not being liked leads to them avoiding spending time with other people, and being quiet and rather inconspicuous when they do.
I used to be incredibly shy. I would pretty much never say anything to anyone. I was always worried that I'd said the wrong thing when I did say something, that people didn't like me or thought I was stupid. I'm no way near as shy as I used to be now. I have come to like the person I am, and I know that other people like me too. I do however still tend to be a quiet person at times.
I like to spend time with people but I have a tendency to wait until other people organise something before I do. I'm trying to work on this because obviously if I want to be invited to things I have to invite others to things too, however it's not easy to overcome a lifetime of being scared that other people won't want to do stuff with me.
Lana said that she sees me as being on the outside of the group. This may be true at times, although it's always a difficult thing to judge, but I see this as being my fault rather than anyone elses. Thanks for your concern Lana, I appreciate it, but I think the reason I don't always seem to get much 'attention' is because of me not anyone else.

I think that pretty much sums up my thoughts on that. I hope it makes sense :)

Some thoughts :)

I've been road tripping the last few days with Lana. We drove up to Blenheim, across to Nelson, to Golden Bay and Farewell Spit and back, and then over the Lewis Pass back to Christchurch. All in three and a half days. Lots of fun and craziness.

Heres some of the stupid/crazy/funny things that happened over the three and a half days:

1) My $2.50 sunglasses cracked because the sun was too hot for them!!!
2) Having no fork/spoon, etc. when eating chinese food I used half of my broken sunglasses as a spoon things (the lens was the spoon bit, and the bit that goes behind your ear the handle). It worked quite well.
3) I hit myself in the head with the carseat.
4) I sung songs in silly voices.
5) I can't remember anything else but there's sure to be more. Ask Lana.

Here's some things I discovered/rediscovered/thought about on/after the trip:

1) I like my friends a lot and I missed them although I was only gone a little while. It was good spending time with Lana but I've spent lots of time with her these holidays and much less time with other people and I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing other people in the next few days. It was kind of different for me to have four days where I only really saw two other people (Lana and Jazz) and while I like them both lots it showed me how much I really like having lots of people around.

2) My parents (who we stayed a night with in Blenheim) have very different views on some important things, and their lfestyle is different from anything I ever want. Basically I have made my own choices in life and am my own person. This is all good, but the bit that is not good is that my parents want me to be something different and when I see them I tend to do and say some things they won't like just to annoy them. Bad Ray :(

3) We stayed with Jazz's family in Nelson for two nights. I really liked Jazz's family. They appeared to be close, and to really care about each other. And they weren't afraid to show it. It's the first time I've stayed with a Christian family, and the difference between them and my family the night before was quite obvious. If/when I have a family I would like it to be something like this.

4) Now that I'm back in Christchurch and my flatmates are both away I'm bored 'cos I want other people around. I went into uni today for a meeting for a group project and it was really good to see some other people. It really doesn't take me long to feel lonely when no one else is home. Ruth gets back tonight and I'm looking forward to it a lot, even though it's less than 24 hours since I got back myself.

5) I was reading from Luke last night, and this morning. I like how Luke makes it so clear how much Jesus cares about the people that no-one else wants anything to do with. These are the people I want to work with (eg. at-risk youth, abuse victims and perpetrators, disabled people). Obviously this isn't an easy area to work in and I've been thinking about how I'd relate to these people. It's all good to ask how Jesus would relate to them, but obviously I'm going to make mistakes and not relate to them in the best ways some times.

I think I'll stop there for now. There's more stuff I could say but I feel like I'm rambling on already. I'm going to go and enjoy the last of the sunny day :)

People

I really like people. I like short people, tall people, and the ones in between. Blond hair, brown hair, red hair, blue hair. Curly hair, straight hair. Short hair, long hair. Blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes, hazel eyes. People are really cool :)
I like personalities too. I like the fact that every person is different, and yet we are still all people, and therefore are still essentially the same in many ways. I like that everyone has different experiences, and that even the experiences we do share are perceived in a different way for each person.
What I don't like is when I dismiss people, or judge them when I don't know much about them. And yet I still do this all the time. I don't like that I find it so easy to blame something someone else does on them, whereas I'll blame things that I do on the situation. I don't like the way that when I honestly look at myself I see how much I fail at being the person I want to be.
I really like people. Each one is amazing, unique, special, and precious. So why is it that I don't show this in my actions? Why is it that when I try my hardest to be the best person I can possibly be, when I ask God to help me to be better, when I make an effort to really care about and love people for who they are, I seem to end up further back from where I started?

Procrastination is a great motivator :)

Look at this! Two posts within 24 hours. This is a very definite change from the gap between my last post.
And all because of procrastination. Who said procrastination is not motivating. It just motivates you to do the wrong things that's all.
Anyway I'm slowly working my way through the essay that is due tomorrow. And I think it is beginning to make sense, but maybe I shouldn't say that because whenever I think that words seems to jump around in the computer and I open my essay again and I think huh???
Well I better go back to not procrastinating now. Somebody better tell me if anything interesting/important (like pigs or other farm animals flying) happens today or tomorrow 'cos I'm going to be holed up at uni.

Time for some silliness :)

It's two weeks since I've posted for the sole reason that I have been having fun playing with my friends. However now that I have an essay due on Tuesday, an assignment due on Wednesday, and a research article summary for a group project to do by tomorrow I find the need to procrastinate.

So, I believe it is time for an update on the silliness of the last two weeks. The problem is that I do not recall the last two weeks involving much silliness. This trend is rather disturbing, and I feel the need to remedy it...
So if anyone would like to join my in some extreme silliness let me know. Then sometime after Wednesday when I have got rid of my last assessment for a while I will let the pent up silliness loose!

Hehehe. Watch out world here I come!

What shall I post about today?

I was informed today that I should make another post by a person who started up a blog after me and has already posted 3 times. No prizes for guessing who...
Anyway I really don't have anything much to post about so be prepared for some silliness.
I sent an email to a friend the other day referring to the exploitation of walruses (I really did!!!). You see in my school drama class in third form we had to create our own character and do various scenes interacting with other peoples characters, and other such things. One of the exercises in developing our character was to draw the door of their house. Some of my friends vandalised my picture (does it count as vandalism when they have permission?) with numerous flowers and peace signs, so my character was established as a hippy going by the name of sunbeam moonshine or something similar.
Now a hippy needs something to protest about, so I decided that I would protest against a new (and imaginary) icecream product named walrus pops. The problem with this new product was of course that it exploited walruses.
This is just one of many stories from the store of Ray's silly memories, and I'm sure many more will come to the surface in the future.
As for some silliness that occurred this week there is sadly very little that I can remember, although my wonderful flatmates may be able to remedy my forgetfulness. The best I can come up with is to say that I fell down the stairs today, and went for a bit of a slide on my bottom. Ouch! I promise to try and be sillier this coming week, I'm sure it must be time for some truely majestic act of silliness.

My very first post

Ruth would like to say that she has first comment glory because she would have first comment if she wasn't going to bed right now.
Now for what I would like to say... I have finally after many months of consideration joined the world of blogging. And what is the reason for my eventual decision?
Well, it's not a boy, it's not because I think people need to be enlightened by my (non-existent) brilliant insights into life, and it's not because I feel the need to spread my silliness although I do like to be silly on many occassions.
The reason is in fact quite simply because I have been attempting to get to know people in my group of friends better over the last year or so, and have been rather unsuccessful. In fact I (and probably other people too) consider myself to be on the outside of a lot of what is happening. So I'm hoping that having this blog will keep me in the loop a little more.