Honing my Harassment and Impersonation Skills

Bake sale day 2, some Fulbright alum enjoying apple pie.

Yes, I made us wear red, white, and blue and our little flag pins.

Stripes - optional, but encouraged.
Baking away, brownies from scratch are actually really easy
Bake sale, day 1, before the action started

You can't tell, but my jacket is striped.

Well I really could have used a few of you around this week as I took on a few tasks that you all excel in and I was definitely challenged by. But I'll start at the beginning -

So you know how I mentioned a while ago that I'm not good at baking? Why on earth in my brilliant idea of putting a fundraiser together for Christchurch did I think a bake sale was a good plan? And since it was American themed baked goods, we obviously had to make pies so over 3 days I made 8 pie crusts - including 5 apple pies, and 3 kentucky derby pies, and four batches of brownies from scratch. Next time someone please remind me that we should just organize a happy hour. In the end all the sugar I ingested and the five burns on my hands, were all worth it - we raised $1200, yeah, at a bake sale! The Fulbright asked for a quote of what motivated us to want to do this - umm, are you joking? An excuse to wear stripes AND red, white, and blue, two days in a row? Fulbright, don't you even know me?

I mentioned last week that the time had come to start thinking about applying for jobs. I didn't realize that in applying, the Wellington one would want me to start right away. My friend Bob once warned me about becoming a consultant - that it's actually a lot of work. And let me tell you after "working" for the first time in 7 months for 1.5 days this week - I experienced stress for the first time in New Zealand and realized just how comfy I've gotten not working. And although I wake up at 7am 90% of my time here, and often am doing research/reading till 7pm at night, it's totally different when you don't actually answer to anyone but yourself. On the phone with my brother the other day he said, "So what are you doing in New Zealand again, are you there for DreamJobs.com or something?" While I first felt like fuming about how my family apparently has no idea what I'm doing over here, I then realized - well, I guess that's pretty spot on. So after all that complaining I've done about being poor, I really really want to thank the Fulbright for forcing me to not work for 7 months, and now I will spend the next 3 figuring out how to draw this deal out a bit longer and live a bit more of dreamjobs.com (whatever that is).

Additionally the work that I was doing for this "internship" is economics and finance consulting related. As part of the internship, I had two interviews - one with the Welly office and one with the DC office. I naively thought (I mean I live in la la land so I'm a bit out of practice) that we were just going to chat and it would be great. Instead, it was basically 2 separate 1.5 hour quizzes of my knowledge of economics and finance. Let's just say that basic is being generous. Why do I always feel like an impostor no matter what I'm working on?

In addition to raising money for Christchurch, wearing stripes, and interning, I also needed to finally strong arm people into meeting with me so I could finally conduct my actual fieldwork research. I've spent six months being patient and building relationships and learning, and I now don't have any time left for people to be convinced of the value of my research and I can't learn any more Maori language or share breath with more folks before I need to finally collect some data. So this week I resorted to just full on harassment and casting my net real wide in terms of who could hook me up with whom. One response I got - "You know Elizabeth that this type of research is really only conducted by large research teams with substantial budgets, so I really think you should adjust your scope". Again, no time for readjustment, hopefully dreamjobs.com will pay for it

In gardening news this week, I have a totally new appreciation for teachers. At the end of every gardening session, I'm like, "Wait was that really only an hour?". Then I usually go home and have to stare at a wall for an hour before I can do anything again. I can not imagine having 20 kids for a full day, so hats off to you teachers. I also try and plan something new and exciting each week, and each week it generally turns to chaos with whatever I carefully planned, being very quickly adapted to lots of screaming and chasing and lots of grabbing. This past week, I brilliantly came up with planting cress (it's a British thing, eggs and cress on toast) in egg shells and the kids could design faces on the shells so that the cress is like hair. Well apparently that's one thing they didn't get from the British and have no idea what cress is. But they are also adorable, this week in addition to being exhausted, they also really turned around my whole day - so maybe that's why you do this teachers?

I also discovered a few new points of evidence of the confusion that is Kiwi culture - they measure weight in kgs here, but baby's weight is in pounds. When asked why? "Because baby weight is more often noted in pounds". What?? They also make a big deal out of 21st birthdays here, but the drinking age is 18 and there's no actual milestone at 21. When asked why? "Well isn't that how you do it in America?" Umm yes, but with some logic behind it. "Well it's probably just because of the U.S." So do you have a big Sweet 16? "No, why would we do that?" I give up

So in the end, I did some event planning (Eroc when are you visiting again?), some finance/econ consulting (Bob, when is our tutorial?), and some hard core harassing (Steez, why'd you go home?), and learning to teach while gardening, both things I know nothing about (Eve, Mom - could use some tips). So the lesson again is I miss you all, and I continue to be shocked by how I spend my days here