Hostel: Bay of Islands Edition

Well hello there! I bet you were expecting an update from me sooner, but my head is still spinning from the Māori test I may have just bombed. Anyway, I thought I'd take a moment to put off real work and tell you about our field trip to the Bay of Islands!

A map of where we stayed for most of the trip (Paihia and its environs).

The Not-So-Awkward Interviews

How's it going, everyone? I've been surviving my Māori class (our first test was today; pretty easy) as well as kapa haka classes (more on those later) and various extracurricular explorations (let's be honest, I probably won't have time for a separate post on all those). 

Bad news first: my camera appears to have taken its last blurry shot and gone to the great electronics heap in the sky, so all the pictures posted from now on will be from my extremely professional cellphone camera. Or I'll just steal everyone else's photos. Yeah, I think I'll do that.

On the bright side, this is a text-based post (yay reading), since I didn't take any pictures while in the process of...

INTERVIEWING PEOPLE for a class project

For my Anthropology class ("Colonialism and its Legacies in Anthropological Perspective"), we have eight weekly essay assignments based on each week's reading and class discussion, and we have to complete three of them during the term. Pretty simple. Last week's topic was "Postcolonialism as Theory, Method, and Lived Experience," and we had a fascinating discussion on this book, which is basically a montage of experiences among people and cultures (e.g. the Third World) reacting to the official "end" of colonialism.

Anyhow, for last week's assignment we essentially had to address this question: "What does it mean to be a New Zealander?" A very broad question, that could focus on aspects of the country's colonial or Māori history and culture. We had the option of either finding relevant articles online or interviewing real Kiwis.

Since we were feeling a bit ambitious (i.e. uppity), my friend Grace and I decided to go interview people in a local park. We made a big ol' sign that read "Got a minute? Help two students with their project by answering one* short question! *(or more)" and then headed out to get our data.

Here's a gazebo in the park where we interviewed people.

The park also has a giant D. Dartmouth?

We started off by sitting under a tree (for shade) with our sign, and then relocated to a sunnier park bench to attract more customers. Almost right away, we were introduced to a wide range of people: rebellious teens with crazy hair, Japanese tourists, tan shirtless man, Canadian tourists, a guitarist/juggler, a guy with an ambiguous accent, and a Māori/Pākehā man who was probably a drug addict. I was taken aback not only by their friendliness in approaching us but also in their abrupt openness in discussing some pretty intriguing topics. Without too much prompting, these people brought up urban drug culture, the role of nature in New Zealand, multiculturalism in schools, numerous comparisons between countries, socioeconomic disparity, and the difficulty of managing multiple identities (especially when raising children). I could go on and on about the specifics, but I'll spare you the details.

Admittedly, I was initially worried that we, being awkwardly American university students, wouldn't know how to start a conversation with the people who approached us. We did have some trouble with the first one, in explaining what kinds of topics our interviewee could cover while answering the big question. After that, however, we brainstormed some specific prompts to help struggling interviewees (e.g. "What do they teach you about New Zealand in school?") and thereafter achieved much better results.

When beginning to write the paper, I had trouble identifying coherent themes that addressed the question of "being a New Zealander." Therefore, I ended up writing my paper on my impressions of New Zealand "multiculturalism", how it plays into contemporary New Zealand identity, and the difficulty of pinning it down. I'm very hesitant to write or talk about culture in general, but I do enjoy thinking about how different cultures interact, sometimes ignore each other entirely, and very occasionally hybridize. As for what I learned from this assignment...I at least have a lot of new perspectives to apply to my experiences over the next month and a half. It'll be a nice change from the rose-colored glasses that I often don.

On the whole, though, I am really happy that I pushed myself to talk with complete strangers, mostly thanks to Grace and her insistence on doing the interviews. There are a lot of cool stories out there that are waiting to be told.

In other news: Abby is pretending to be a Metapod right now because I buried her in pillows. Good night!

How she puts up with my antics, I'll never know.

Rangitoto Trip

Sorry about the delay, people! It turns out doing Anthropology research and then writing a paper on it takes a little more time than I originally thought. But I'm back on track (for now) and ready to dish about my trip to Rangitoto Island that happened last Saturday! Since my last post was mostly text, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking this time.

Around 6:30 (ugh) on Saturday, we (Melinda, Grace, Justine, Mitchell, and I) got up and headed north to catch the 7:30 ferry across the bay to Rangitoto. This volcanic island has a pretty interesting story: it erupted out of the sea about 700 years ago in a spectacular pyrotechnic birth that may have inspired its Māori name ("bloody sky"), though the name is also tied to a bloody battle that happened around the same time. Even today, there are footprints left over from Māori people who explored the island soon after the dust settled (perhaps even before the lava fully cooled). Despite its violent origins, Rangitoto has an incredible array of trees, flowers, and birds.
In the 1920s and 1930s (up until the current construction prohibition established in 1937), Pākehā settlers built a number of baches (pronounced "batches") as vacation house. There were also military fortifications built during World War II in preparation for an invasion that never came. After this, the bach owners had a quaint little community that lasted until the late '70s and early '80s, when the residents moved back to the mainland.

Back to the present! We decided on a pretty long route, since we wanted to stay for most of the day: start at Rangitoto Wharf, meander through the kōwhai grove, explore all the empty baches, then head west on Coastal Road toward the Lighthouse, turn right to head up the summit, hit the lava caves on the way down, and finally loop back to take Islington Bay Road back to the Wharf.

Approaching Rangitoto Island!

It's a map! And no, Dora, it's not a talking map.

The kōwhai grove was quite lovely. Even though the kōwhai trees weren't in bloom and there were a lot of spiderwebs (sorry, spiders-whose-webs-we-destroyed), the other plants were cool.

Walking through the grove.

I think that was some kind of moss covering this tree. 

This grass had knots tied into it for some reason.

It's Christmas again! I will never get tired of looking at these Pōhutukawa trees. 

A closeup of the Pōhutukawa flower.

We then proceeded to check out the old baches, which were cute but eerie in their emptiness. It made us feel like we were in a disaster movie, where the area had just been evacuated and the houses left behind.

Pink and portentous.

It looks like someone could just come outside and sit on the porch. 

"Rangitoto is beachcombers paradise"

A barrel behind one of the baches, used to catch rain for drinking water.

Shameless creeping on one of the houses. It's all so neat inside! 

Yes, that is a baby-doll-teakettle-thing on the fireplace.
Otherwise, the room looks quite cozy.

They had weird names.

After a short stop for breakfast along the water, we set off on our circuitous path to the summit. Along the way, we passed by some stunning lava fields and trekked through the woodlands that looked increasingly like rainforest.

Where the lava met the sea. It looked like another planet.

Here's what most of the rocks looked like. They didn't float in water like
pumice stones, but they're probably good for exfoliation, anyway.

Tide pools amid the rock and shrub.

This pool/lake was startlingly green. 

These oystercatchers were all along the water,
chirping and poking about in the sand for food.

Rocks, plants, and water. 

A view of the city from the island. It fits so nicely between those  two big hills! 

Crazy tall trees that bent like no one's business!

Mitchell's not entirely sure what to make of it all.

So he decided to take a break, in his gleaming white clothes.

It's not a snake! Just a bright piece of driftwood hanging out in the lava field.

A very unusual rock formation. Almost like a flower.

Like lightning shooting upward.

I got bored on a beach where we were taking a break.

Now we begin the real ascent to the summit! The boardwalk was much appreciated after so much gravel path.

The rolling hills of Rangitoto's neighbor, Motutapu.

All those stairs...

And here we are at the top! Look at all the friends I have!

Still not sure what that marker thing is.

The crater at the top. As you can tell, it hasn't been active for quite some time.

 After meandering around the summit for a while, we headed back down the mountain to stop by the lava caves for lunch before departing. If we had remembered to bring flashlights (they're called "torches" here...), we could have explored them further, but since we didn't we could only go a short ways into the caves before being stopped by the darkness. Fortunately, we arrived at the caves mere minutes before a tidal wave of other tourists came crashing through, chattering in English, Korean, and Chinese, to do their own spelunking.

Grace, armed with a flash camera, was brave enough to foray deeper into one of the caves.

Creepy but very cool.

Following lunch, we realized that we had less than an hour before the next ferry left (otherwise we'd be waiting another hour and a half for the following ferry). We decided to try and catch the ferry, even though the signs pointing us back to the wharf indicated that the trek would take at least an hour and a half. We ended up running for the last five minutes of the journey, and saw the ferry pulling out of the wharf...but the captains took pity on the sweaty, sunburnt Americans and reversed, letting us hop on board. To celebrate our athletic awesomeness, and parch our quenched throats, we all got smoothies at McDonald's. An unorthodox but happy ending to a marvelous day with friends.

Future updates will come sooner, I promise! My workload is a little lighter this weekend, so blogging/procrastination should happen.

I'm Actually Taking a Class, You Guys

Tēnā koutou katoa! (or if it's just Mom reading: Tēnā koe e whaea!)

Just in case you thought I was spending the term bumming around New Zealand, let me prove you wrong by telling you about my first week of Māori class! Warning: wall o' text ahead.

To preface, I've always loved different languages, and this drove me to study French and Latin in high school (and via cognates, Spanish), as well as Japanese and a little Korean in college. It all probably started with me making weird sounds with my mouth when I was little. Anyhow, I was pretty excited to dive into a whole new language that had tons of new vocabulary and grammatical structures to pick up.

An overview of the course schedule: we meet from 10:00 to 1:00, Tuesday through Thursday. Our lecturer, usually Margaret Mutu, goes over two lessons over the course of two hours, which are often centered on a key aspect of Māori grammar such as focus. Though this sounds dry, there are always gazillions of examples to illustrate the details, which are usually short sentences like ko te wahine e kai ana ('(as for) the woman, she's eating'), as well as interesting/amusing interludes about aspects of Māori culture. After the lecture, our TA spends an hour going over a bunch of exercises to cement the lessons in our heads and help us with some of the trickier vocabulary (like all the pronouns...so many pronouns).

First things first: the sound system (check it out here). Māori has the five vowels a e i o u, roughly pronounced 'ah', 'eh', 'ee', 'oh' (or 'aw'), and 'oo'. Though that is way simpler than English's nightmarish vowel system (this is why so many people struggle to pick up a 'real' American/English accent), I'm still having trouble with recognizing some of the diphthongs, which are two-vowel sequences like ai and ae. Those two in particular, as well as au vs. ao, are a struggle for me, but I hope that listening to more Māori, perhaps via this TV channel, will help me acclimatize. As for the consonants, they are all pretty straightforward (e.g. p t k f), though I do enjoy the ng sound (pronounced like the last sound of 'thing') in words such as ngaoki ('to crawl').

On the grammar side of Māori, the most difficult thing for me to wrap my head around so far is probably the Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) order. This means that the first thing you say in a sentence is (almost) always the verb phrase. For instance, kua patu au i ngā karoro translates literally to something like 'have kill I [OBJ] the seagulls' (i.e. 'I have killed the seagulls'). Only about 9% of the world's languages have this order, and English only has it in some questions like 'Are you insane?' Despite this temporary difficulty, I hope that by the end of this course, will think I in VSO order.

As I mentioned before, we occasionally discuss certain aspects of Māori culture, as would be expected in any good language class. For instance, when introducing yourself in Māori, it is most common to talk about your local/tribal identity (e.g. iwi and hapū), rather than simply saying your name. As a very white person with no tribe to which to lay claim (I don't think Stewart really counts), this seemed like a pretty interesting way of going about introductions.

However, sometimes our lecturer attempts to link the language and culture a bit more closely than we linguistic students are willing to accept. For instance, I think Professor Mutu drew a connection between a certain selfishness ('in Māori, it's all about me!') and the language's system of demonstratives ('this [near me],' 'that [near addressee],' 'that [distant]'), and she said that this apparent self-centeredness is reflected in Māori culture. In response, I thought about the fact that similar 'selfish' demonstratives are pretty common among languages in general, but of course none of us linguistics students spoke up for fear of derailing the class. Still, we'll keep an eye out for similar suspicious hypotheses in the future.

Now for my most pressing worry with this class...I've had to start up the old flashcards again to review the nearly 200 new words we've learned this week. Anki is a great little flashcard program that has saved me lots of paper, and it is terrific at forcing me to do spaced repetition, but it doesn't spare me from actually putting in the time and effort.

I've gone over this card at least four times by now. I think it's going to be a few more years
until they figure out how to directly upload vocab to your brain, à la Matrix.

Anyhow, that's how my Māori class has been going. Wonderful. Lots more to talk about for this weekend's activities, so expect more updates (and photos) soon! Ka kite!

First Weekend Update

I'm back, after a very long weekend and a busy first few days of classes! More details on the important academic stuff later – for now I'm gonna bore regale you with wonderful stories and images from my weekend.

Just for the record, here is the front of the lovely abode in which we currently
reside, along with a bunch of other awesome international students.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to be greeted at 9:00 AM sharp by three women who would serve as our tour guides for the rest of the day. After a formal Māori greeting, we piled into two big vans and headed to Maungakiekie (a.k.a. 'One Tree Hill') for the terrific views and the fascinating backstory. 
First thing we noticed: sheep! Their farmer is allowed to let them roam freely, but they mostly shy away from curious tourists. I've seen sheep on farms before, but I haven't experienced their capacity for meandering.

Casually grazing on the hillsides. 

Come back, sheep! We just want to feel your fleeciness.

Revenons à nos moutons. (I have been waiting for years to say that in this context.) Our tour guide B told us about the long history of Maungakiekie, including its past as a prominent pā, or fortified settlement, in times of war. This legacy remains in its terraced hillsides, around which large wooden palisades would be erected to deter invaders.

One of the hill's sides, with the obelisk monument at the summit.

After a few stops along the way for picturesque photos that millions of tourists before us have taken, we arrived at the summit, where we beheld marvelous views of the surrounding city, as well as this towering monument commemorating the anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi:

Note the bronze statue of a Māori chief. In front of the monument is
the grave of Sir John Campbell, an important local political figure.

After telling us about the natural history of the surrounding landscape (interesting discussion about whenua, or 'afterbirth'), our tour guides explained the hill's colonial history through the trees that used to live atop the hill. While the Māori were the majority in the area, there used to live two pohutukawa (or totara) trees at the hill's summit...until some drunken white sailors chopped them down. Despite Sir John Campbell's attempts to replace the trees with another seedling by protecting the baby tree with a wall of pines, the poor tree and most of its barrier died soon after being planted, leaving a single pine tree standing. Hence, 'One Tree Hill.' However, sometime in the 1980s a Māori activist (who we later learned was the father of one of the tour guides) attacked and fatally damaged (injured?) the tree to bring attention to injustice done to his tribe. Since then, there has been no end of debate over the possibility of replacement trees, and very little decision. Therefore, though its official name remains 'One Tree Hill,' locals have taken to calling it 'None Tree Hill.' I found it interesting that such a prominent location (which was once used for self-orienting among those lost in Auckland) now serves as a pointed reminder of colonialism's legacy.

After a few obligatory vista shots (when else am I gonna be this high up in the city?), we descended the hill, stopped for morning tea (hmm quite), then headed off to our next destination: the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

View of the water

I forget the name of that far-off mountain, but I think it might have been named
something like 'Sky Blood' in honor of its violent volcanic birth.

Note the stump (I think) and the Sky Tower, ever present in the city skyline.

When we arrived at the museum, rather than looking at the World War-related exhibits, our tour guides steered us to the exhibits dedicated to Māori culture and history. Here, we encountered such relics as this old war canoe:

It took months and months to build by brilliant craftsmen and carvers, but was sunk by the British
to discourage warfare...and eventually dredged from the bottom of the harbor.

Our tour guide told us stories of warfare and violence, as well as her own memories of traditions and family. For instance, although much damage and bloodshed was inflicted by the weapons below...

Note the impressive pendants and mere (clubs) made of pounamu (greenstone).

...there was always much to be celebrated and remembered in any Māori community. Many ceremonies (weddings, funerals, rites of passage) would be conducted within a marae, which, as a sacred space, we students were extremely privileged to enter.

It's huge! You could fit a hundred people inside, easily.

Our tour guides explained some of the different components of the marae to us. Since the building can be seen as the body of a particular ancestor, the two pillars supporting it are known as the liver and the heart, two very important organs in Māori culture. The main pole running down the middle of the marae is the spine, and the poles spreading to the outside are the ribs. Meanwhile, the walls are decorated with intricate wooden sculptures of other ancestors of the tribe, which were made by the men, that alternate with fabric woven into more abstract patterns by the women. Overall, it's clear that we could spend months absorbing the rich history in the marae and still come away with much to learn about Māori culture.

Once we exited the marae, we looked at some fantastic portraits of 19th-century Māori elders with tattoos, discussed the importance of said tattoos in representing one's identity and history, and saw a few more things before leaving, like this model of a pā:

It reminded me of Age of Empires.

One thing that stuck with me throughout the tour was the theme of carving. Though Māori didn't have an official alphabet until British missionaries arrived in the 19th century, their tradition of carving is as old as they are. In particular, Māori tribes throughout the centuries have carved wood to keep track of their extensive whakapapa (geneology), in addition to many other uses like magically imbuing a canoe with speed. Interestingly, our tour guides compared the carving of wood to the Māori tradition of facial tattoos, which many native people wear proudly to indicate whakapapa as well as their trade and life journey. Though this tradition encountered difficulty during the punk/rebellious age of the '70s and '80s, when such tattoos carried negative connotations, they seem to be returning to their former respected status. The connection between the traditions of physical carving and the body 'carvings' of tattooing leads to questions of permanence and continuity that I'm way too tired to fully hash out right now. But just know that it's a cool connection.

A few stops by a local beach (semi-warm and beautiful water for swimming) and Devenport (a cool little artsy suburb), and then we were done. I wish we'd had time to experience a little more Māori history, and especially had more time to just chat with the tour guides about their own thoughts on Māori culture today (we did have a short discussion about the importance of the language in their lives), but I suppose that will come later in the trip.

For now, though, ka kite anō (see you later)!