Adventureland

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. 

Scavenger Hunt Highlights:

  Posing as body builders with sheep and cow statues in Victoria Street

 With “famous person” Riff Raff

 Human pyramid at the Gatehouse

 

Some drunks on St. Paddy’s Day

 Phone Booth

 Hitchhiking in our bathing suits. The “we won’t KILL you” sign was George’s idea (and he’s the one holding it), he’s also the one who spelt Stud Ville wrong.

Sunday, I saw the Family Guy movie that one of George’s friends brought over for the umpteenth time and found out that they don’t have Tivo in New Zealand. Then we watched 12 Monkeys which was ok, I guess it was kind of outdated but Brad Pitt’s performance was awesome. He’s good at playing crazy people. Then we sat around and talked until like four in the morning.

Tags: New Zealand

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Pictures, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.