Adventureland

To all that have been reading my blog with regularity, I apologize for the amount of time it has taken me to update but as you all may know, the primary purpose of this trip is to study and as the semester has begun to get rolling, I have been finding less and less time to devote to blogging. That said, here are a few highlights from the last few weeks:

The weekend of March 25-26 I went on a camping trip up to the Coromandel Penninsula with four other girls from Student Village, three of whom were from the USA and one goes to school at URI! The Kiwi chick was an RA, Talia and she drove the van. We did some beach hopping and saw some magnificent sights and got to know each other quite well. On Sunday it rained all day because of a cyclone (hurricane) that came by that way so we returned home early. A few days after that, we got together in Talia’s room and traded pics and just hung out.

Friday, March 31, my parents arrived in New Zealand and I saw them in the evening and then went to go spend the night in their hotel in Hamilton. We caught up and they gave me all the things my brother and boyfriend had sent with them as well as a whole suitcase full of winter clothes. The next morning we set off for Waitomo to see the famous glow worm caves there. Dad and I did a black water rafting adventure trip that took four hours while mom visited some of the walk through caves and the museum. It was great and since I was about the same age as the guide guys they kept picking on me and making me go first for everything and just teasing me. The next morning my parents left again to fly to Oz. They will be back for Easter when we will travel all around NZ.

Sometime in the first week of April, I got my first cell phone. This girl, Alex had it and she gave it to me so as long as I pay the monthly plan while I’m here, I can use it and then just give it back to her without having to deal with any contracts and stuff.

April 7 my flax weaving class was at the marae on campus. A marae is a Maori meeting place and we took part in a ceremony before class where we approached the marae and were greeted and then we listened to speeches and had a representative speak. It was all in Maori so I understood very little. After the speeches and songs, our group walked over to the greeting group (because we had sat facing each other) and we hangi-ed with each of the greeting group. This is a traditional Maori greeting where you press your noses and foreheads together while shaking hands. It is very beautiful way of greeting in my opinion. We spent the rest of the day dying and boiling flax. The next day, Saturday, I also had the flax weaving class and we began to work on a nice big kete with colored flax. In the early evening, I went with some Kiwis and Ceren the Turkish girl to see Balloons Over Waikato Night Glow which is where all these hot air balloons get all lit up and then they have fireworks. It was a bit dissapointing because I was expecting lots of balloons, but there were like only 6 of them and I thought that they would go up in the air but they stayed tethered to the ground. Then we went back to Stud Ville and I got ready to go out dancing with Pablo and some of his friends.

This week I have a two tests and a big homework assignment to do so I’m quite busy but my parents will return on the 14th and we will go from there. 

My latest Kete

Monday was a regular day but in one of my classes, the lecturer cancelled the next day’s class so I ended up with no classes on Tuesday. So Monday night I stayed up quite late talking with this Chinese-Kiwi (he calls himself “Z Asian”) guy, George, who lives across the hallway from me, and Ceren and Pablo. I hadn’t really talked to George before, so that was cool. He said that he would take me around Hamilton the next day after his classes because I mentioned how kind of trapped I feel not having a car to get around. New Zealand is a lot like the US when it comes to transportation: you really need a car. We also talked about traveling during the “study break” we have in April and he said that he was up for a road trip so we’ll see what happens with that. 
 

Tuesday, I spent doing errands and homework until 3:00 PM when George knocked on my door and we went to drop off his South African friend, Richard, and then he took me everywhere but the downtown, which I had already seen. First we went to the local mall which was about the size of Lincoln Mall and I finally bought some cheap nail polish (they usually charge $11 for nail polish!). We also went to the river walk along the Waikato River. The Waikato is a very important river in the area. It was a main thoroughfare for Maori by canoe (waka) and it is the reason Hamilton is where it is, because Hamilton is a river city. It was very beautiful, but I forgot my camera so I didn’t get any pictures. We also went to the lake and walked part of the way along it and that was very nice too. He had to pick up some mail from some family friends so I got to see a nice upper middle class Kiwi neighborhood too. I found out a lot about George as well. His family moved to New Zealand from China when he was seven so he speaks Chinese (but the Chinese guys here say his pronunciation is bad) but he has no accent in English, other than a Kiwi accent. His family owns a resort and his uncle has a $3 million yacht, so he’s pretty rich. He goes hunting a lot too. He was showing me a scar he has on his leg from when a boar they were hunting gored him and took out all the flesh to the bone. I also got his perspective on a lot of New Zealand things, which was very different than other points of view that I’ve encountered so far, especially when it comes to the Maori. For example, he couldn’t believe that I had come all the way from the US to study Maori language. He says that it is a dying language and that it is useless and that the government is just keeping it alive by sinking money into it. He and his friends always make jokes about Maori (who are considered “black” in New Zealand) which are the same exact stereotypes people have about African Americans in the US. Like “to Maori” something is “to steal” and that they all like KFC and that they are all on “the dole” (welfare) etc. Anyway, it was an interesting day.
 

The rest of the week was uneventful until Friday after dinner. I’m participating in a scavenger hunt with a team from my block and we have to do all of these silly tasks like take a picture in a tree, outside a strip club, with a famous person, walking an elderly person across the street etc. So we spent several hours after dinner running around downtown completing the assigned tasks. It was great fun and people were so obliging because it was St. Patrick’s Day. We finished for the day at nearly 11:00 PM and then I met that British girl Christie, Pablo and three friends of Christie’s and we went out on the town. We went to four different clubs and danced all night. Most of the time we were at this techno club called Monkeyfeather. Techno is not really my thing but I still had a good time and only Pablo could match my stamina when it came to dancing (he teaches salsa, I found out). I found out that in New Zealand they have these “Party Pills” which are illegal in the US but they sell them everywhere here. It’s not ecstasy, but it’s some caffeine and other stuff that really amps you up. Anyway, it is so bizarre to see that for sale on the street. At Monkeyfeather we met up with a couple of other guys from Student Village and stayed until the club closed at ten past 3:00 AM. Then we all went out to get a taxi-van but none would stop for us so we walked down the street hailing cabs along the way. Finally, one did stop and we got back to the Uni at around 4:00 AM.
 

Saturday, I spent the day cleaning my room and getting organized for the next week. After dinner we continued with the scavenger hunt. It was hilarious. Some of the highlights include hitchhiking in our bathing suits and cross dressing at the cinema. We got back around 10:00 PM and watched Snatch in George’s room and then hung out and talked in the little kitchenette area.