Travels in Te Wai Pounamu

IT'S OVER!!!

Well, almost. I'm currently waiting in a quiet hallway in LAX for my flight to Boston, chugging hot chocolate to fend off the jetlag. Thanks to the magic of the timezones, I'm watching the sun set on March 14th for the second time. Pi Day squared… A = πr²? Nah.

To answer your next burning question, yes Mitchell and I survived our adventure of driving/camping across the South Island (a.k.a. Te Wai Pounamu 'The Greenstone Water', due to abundance of greenstone in the area). Mother Nature was quite kind to us with the weather (apart from the cold nights), and we saw a variety of scenery that can be described only as 'choice'. I'll give you some pictures right now so you can ooh and ahh until you forget to inhale and then pass out.

Surprisingly, more cow farms than sheep farms

Our approximate itinerary from March 5 to 14 was as follows, described à la flux de conscience. There's a map, lovingly modified in Paint by Mitchell, so you can follow along! Check out his more florid post here.

Use the colors to decode the map! It's like a Paint by Numbers puzzle, except
not at all.

March 5: Queenstown (early flight, pick up rental car, name her Shmabel, walk through the city and the gardens, checking into a hostel unannounced, burger dinner = YUM, filling out the New Zealand census [required by law], then writing the Ling paper ugh)

Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown

"Cockadoodle Oink" = chicken + bacon + tasty sauces

Where the sunlight pours down the mountains

The path just keeps going...onto private property >:-(

March 6: Queenstown (a brief hike up a hill, being in awe of Queenstown's gorgeous surroundings, so much paper writing 'cause we're good/cranky students, and 'freedom camping' in a 'scientific nature reserve' outside the township of…)

View of the lake from atop the hill

Mitchell surrounded by cairn invaders

March 7: Te Anau (long hike along the lake, seeing cool birds, cooking an ersatz curry noodle stirfry dish for writing inspiration, and being up most of the night in a hostel FINISHING the paper, while being distracted by American TV shows)

I know why the caged kea sings...and squawks

Probably a deadly mushroom

Where the mountains blend with clouds

March 8: Milford Sound (getting up early to submit the paper, rejoice in actually being done with the FSP, long drive to the Sound via a scenic highway, walk along the beach at low tide, getting misty-eyed looking at the misty mountains, swatting bugs, heading back to visit a gaping chasm and stare into some Mirror Lakes, strollin' on a river, then legit camping...still in the car)

Those are waterfalls of unknown (to me) origin

The Sound is rather soundless but still mind-blowing

Clever signage

[insert 'Fields of Gold' lyrics here]

March 9: travel (sleeping in a bit, then leaving camp early to fuel up, get groceries, and drive all day through Queenstown and Wanaka, stopping only once at Fantail Waterfalls, ending up slightly past Haast, freedom camp on Lake Moeraki)

Winding mountain roads

Mitchell modelling this season's half-shorts half-pants look

Lake Moeraki's mysterious black swans? They made weird noises

March 10: Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers (in Māori, Te Moeka o Tuawe and Kā Roimata o Hinehukatere) (another early start to hit the trails at Fox Glacier with the tourist crowd, curse the expensive tours that let you actually walk onto the glacier, more meandering at and around Franz Josef, looping back to explore the usually-reflective Lake Matheson with all the other Chinese and German tourists, and crashing at the legit campground-cum-parking lot off of a beach on the Tasman Sea)

People scrambling around on Fox Glacier

Franz Josef looks like an elephant head

All the meltwater from the glacier

Some of the cows around Lake Matheson that were
especially loud in the morning

March 11: Greymouth and Pancake Rocks (super early wakeup call to see Matheson Lake at sunrise, yes it was beautiful and reflective and no I don't have pictures, heading toward Greymouth, stopping first at a cute tourist trap to look at socks and used books, then at a lovely little town called Karoro ['seagull'] for beachcombing and lunching in the cemetery, heading further north to Punakaiki to witness the power of time and tide at the Pancake Rocks [made of limestone], discovering a mysterious cavern that led nowhere, rambling down a long rocky beach toward a rock shaped like a shoe, eventually return to Greymouth for gas and food to head toward Christchurch, finally freedom camping near a bridge halfway to 'Chch')

Lake Matheson (Mitchell has better photos,
I'll steal from him later)

Deceptive sock store; they were too expensive

Pancakes minus syrup and butter and flavor

Scrambling through the slippery, echoey cave

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe

Mitchell, rejoicing at relocating his prodigal jandals

March 12: Christchurch (sleeping in a little before warming up and hitting the road again, maneuvering through the city's construction-riddled streets [some call it an 'urban dystopia' due to post-earthquake rebuilding], poking around the shipping-container mall, exploring the botanical gardens and all their quirks, crashing briefly at the rather homey hostel to recharge before meeting a bunch of friends, who had been hiking, at their hostel for pizza and beer dinner, story-sharing, FSP-reminiscing, and fond avowals of 'I'm gonna miss you' and 'Have a safe trip home')

Shipping containers work pretty well as stores

So many roses

'World Peace Bell' that this one kid wouldn't stop ringing

Black and white ducks...yin and yang?

One of the many traffic-causing construction projects

March 13: travel (morning at the local library to check email and figure out directions/campsites, last-minute duct tape run, then an approximately six-hour drive from Christchurch back to Queenstown, through such hopping urban centers as Geraldine and Ealing, only hitting one bird, weaving through Beautiful Valley and past Lake Tekapo to arrive back at Queenstown for some wonderful ice creams and settling in at the most legit campsite yet, just before nightfall)

the aptly-named Beautiful Valley

The road goes ever on and on

'Mascarole cheese and forest fruits' plus 'Fig and pistachio' equals
mind-numbing pleasure

Twelve-Mile Delta was the filmsite of the scene in one of the LotR
movies where they're camping at Ithilien! Thanks for that tidbit, Mitchell
(who still hasn't seen the movies or read the books)

Goodnight, sweet Shmabel

March 14: departures (packing up in an empty church parking lot, devouring most of our remaining food supplies so as not to waste space packing them, returning the rental car [goodbye, Shmabel], getting my peanut butter and condensed milk confiscated, flying first to Auckland then, after doing all the baggage necessities, one last lunch at KFC and Tank before heading to the international terminal and parting for real [it still hasn't sunk in yet] as Mitchell goes to China and I return to Amurrica)

You might wonder what we were eating to sustain ourselves throughout all this. Being savvy/crunchy/hungry hikers, we opted for such nonperishable foods as hummus, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, capsicum, muesli, apples, kiwis, apricots, dried mangoes, dried bananas, beef jerky, trail mix, peanut butter, regular crackers, salt-and-vinegar rice crackers, lemon biscuits, and chocolate (for dessert and breakfast only, due to daytime melting). This ensured high caloric intake, a decent array of flavors, and very minimal preparation.

In addition to the experiences we had on the beaten path, there were quite a few enjoyable moments in-between events, like keeping track of the ridiculous names of the streams we passed over (Mimi Creek = 'Pee' Creek), eavesdropping on tourists in different languages (a grumpy old man clearly not enjoying the Pancake Rocks: 'just more rocks and water'), and running through fields of gold just because no one was there to tell us otherwise. I should have some deep insight to offer about these off-the-record experiences, but I feel increasingly like @NotTildaSwinton, as my departure time draws near and I prepare to head home for the last time.

To sum up: it's been real, it's been fun, and it's been real fun, South Island. I hope to come back someday to explore the many places I've yet to visit: Dunedin, Nelson, Akaroa, and Stewart Island (Scottish heritage FTW). Lots more wildlife yet to see, including mini-dolphins, seals, and of course kiwis of all kinds. Should I ever find myself in New Zealand for a conference or something, I'll have to find a way to get back on the open road again. I'll post the rest of my pictures on FB once I have few spare hours to caption.

I might post again soon with more post-trip reflections, but in case I don't here's my big thanks to everyone who helped make this FSP possible, and to those who made it as amazing as it was. I don't even know where to start, so I'll just end by saying one more time, kia ora tātou.

And we're off!

After a terrific weekend staying at a marae in Leigh, snorkeling and kayaking like a bunch of crazy tourists, and one last hoorah together last night...the program is over. Time has really gone way too quickly these past few weeks, and I have a feeling the last week is going to be just as fast.

Mitchell and I are heading to the South Island for a week of driving about the countryside, hitting up various places like Queenstown and the Fiordland. No guarantees on updates, given our uncertain Internet situation along the way, but we'll be back in Auckland on the 14th to part ways. I'll be posting more once I get home (pictures, musings, etc.), but for now wish us luck

Far-flung Cousins: Māori and Tongan

GIF WARNING! Also if you're not a language nerd, you will probably fall asleep reading this post, so you might wanna wait for my next one about the Chinese Lantern Festival and/or the Polynesian market.

So...I survived my Māori final exam last Wednesday. Despite having studied for the past few weeks, I was worried it would go a little like this:

Upon first seeing the test

Attempting to remember all the grammar patterns we learned...
plus a few we never explicitly learned

Reflecting on the test afterward.

There was a little of the panda-regret on my part, due to dumb vocabulary mistakes (waewae = 'foot, leg') and more than a few translation mishaps. But otherwise I think all the studying paid off, and I'm happy to be done with direct treatment of Māori for a while. So, the aftermath ended up being more like this:

For now, though, our Field Methods class has started off with a bang: we're working with two recent college grads who are native speakers of Tongan, which is a thriving language spoken by upwards of 200,000 people. This is a stark difference from Māori, which is still struggling to rebuild its native speaker population after so many years of linguistic/cultural oppression. One more fun fact: for some reason the king of Tonga currently lives in Auckland, but we have yet to invite him to join our field work sessions. We would probably have to pay him extra for the hassle.

King Tupou VI, in all his glory. Maybe he can be the next Pope,
with the way he's rocking that hat.

Onto the class itself! Starting from basic word elicitation ('what's the word for man?'), we quickly discovered the similarities between the Māori and Tongan sound systems (they both use h, p, t, k, f, m, n, ng, and the same vowels), which include the following general patterns of correspondance (lots of exceptions to the rules; deal with it):

Māori r = Tongan l (toru = tolu = 'three')
Māori w = Tongan v or u (wai = vai = 'water', waea = uaea = 'wire')

As a sidenote, some of the exceptions are pretty cool (rima = nima = 'five/hand', since hands have five fingers). But I digress, as usual.

One thing we're still getting used to is the Tongan sound ', which represents a glottal stop...difficult for English speakers to pronounce word-initially. Try saying the word 'butter' a few times with the cheesiest Cockney accent you can muster, and feel what your throat muscles are doing in the middle of that word. Now try putting that glottal stop at the beginning of a word like ʻanga ('shark'). It's not easy!


So yeah, we're still struggling to pronounce things. But fortunately from the grammar perspective, a lot of the same building blocks we picked up in Māori 101 tend to fall right into place where we expect them in Tongan. This was a big help when we've had to struggle our way through a transcription of 'The Pear Story', which is basically a wordless video meant to encourage storytelling.
But then again...we still haven't fully figured out why the focus particle ko, rather easy to define and use in Māori, is more fluid and resistant to grammatical categorization in Tongan. Or why some sentences include multiple references to the subject pronoun. Or why some verbs mark transitivity with the suffix 'i (e.g. maumau'i = 'to break something', derived from maumau = 'to break) while others use the prefix faka (faka'osi = 'to finish something', 'osi = 'to be finished')...while others employ another strategy entirely. If we had another month or so, we might be able to pin down the details, but for now we're doing the best we can by cobbling together ideas from our knowledge of Māori grammar and our professor's often erroneous guesses (he didn't take Māori with us, leading to some amusing information gaps).

One more cool thing about Tongan before I sign off to be "productive": the definitive accent! In English and Māori, to distinguish between a noun that is definite and one that's indefinite, you just use different articles:

he wahine = 'a woman'
te wahine = 'the woman'

Simple, right? In Tongan, you still stick on an article...but you also change the pronunciation of the word itself! Check this out:

ha ika = 'a fish'
he iká = 'the fish'

In the first word ika, the stress (as it usually does) falls on the second-to-last syllable. In the second word iká, the stress ends up on the last syllable, thus lengthening the vowel and confusing us when we were still struggling to differentiate long vowels from short ones. Anyhow, this might seem pretty dull to you, but I think it's pretty crazy. Hence why I'm writing my final paper on the topic. Yet as I learn more about it, I can't help but think:

Oh well. One more (short) week of elicitation with our ever-patient consultants, then we'll be in the home stretch. Wish us luck!

Stuck in the Suburbs: The Homestay

Hi again! I hope Hallmark™ Valentine's Day was good to you all.

A can of L&P from my friend Cali, and a yellow
rose from a restaurant called Thai Me Up. Yay.

So I've been really busy all this week, dealing with not only readings and essays for my Anthro class (plus applications for internships) but ALSO our first few sessions of our main Linguistics class, Field Methods. We're studying Tongan, a relative of Māori that is strange and awesome but not the subject of today's post. Instead, let's take a quick tour around my host family's house!

My lovely bedroom (don't worry, I'm fully unpacked by now).

The living room! Note the upright piano in the corner.

Kitchen/dining area, which my housemate Adam and I recently
used to make tacos and quesadillas for our family.

Mmm. Homemade guacamole is best guacamole.

View from the back porch.

The bay behind the house is great to look at; not so much for swimming.

The clouds make cool shadows on the water.

A not-really-secret trail from behind the house into the woods!

Oh hi, crane-like bird.

Plenty of cool houses in the suburban neighborhoods.
Apart from the older houses like this, the 'burbs remind
me of Florida.

A little nearby school, with cute multilingual greetings.

The sunset always catches me off-guard.

SO INTENSE

I'm not sure how acceptable it would be to post their names on a public blog, so I'll just use their first initials for now. D and M, the mother and father respectively, are a wisecracking Pākehā couple with four adult sons scattered all throughout the world. She does substitute teaching, he works on airplanes for Air New Zealand, and they both manage to keep busier than most adults their age. I'll frequently get up in the morning to greet D on her way out the door as she bustles off to go walking with a friend, and later come home to find one of them talking to a friend or family member via phone or Skype. 

Still, in the midst of all that, they've made time to get to know us and get us acquainted with various aspects of New Zealand life. For instance, spaghetti on toast! Sounds crazy, but it's easy to prepare and pretty tasty after a long day of chasing buses around the city. Don't knock it before you try it. I hope to expand my repertoire of Kiwi food over the next few weeks (pavlova, please?).

Without reading too deeply into anything, I'd like to think that D and M exemplify a lot of traits commonly ascribed to Kiwis. Hardworking and practical, they have a zeal for travel that's kept them going throughout the years and has given them a lot of great stories. On top of that, they have a penchant for dry wit that always keeps me and Adam on our toes, with such exchanges as the one below:

D: I hope you like your bed.

Me: Yeah, I really like the comforter. I used to have one at home, but we had to get rid of it once it started to smell weird.

D: Well, how long are you here for?

They've also offered a lot of neat insight into New Zealand politics and culture, especially as we've asked them more about Māori issues. It seems that they, like many Kiwis, want to find a middle ground between the ideas of Māori activists and those of the sometimes-sluggish government. Of course, that doesn't make solving problems like land claims any easier, but it does provide perspective on the Pākehā view of these issues. I learn something new from them every day, and I hope it stays that way.

By now, I bet you're wondering what my daily schedule is like. Well, I have a weird class schedule, but here's a rough approximation of a typical day in the life of me:

6:30 AM = Wake up due to sunlight, attempt to sleep in.

7:30-8:30 AM = Roll out of bed and head to the kitchen to make breakfast and lunch.

9:00 - 9:45 AM (on an early day) = Catch the 267 bus into the city to get to the university.

(early day) 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM = LING 54 lecture/discussion with a Māori professor (this week was Professor Mutu) on various aspects of Māori, like this one tricky particle ai

(later day) 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM = ANTH 51 discussion on postcolonial stuff; this week on indigenous issues and the benefits/problems of NGOs

at some point between 12:00 and 2:00 = lunch with the gang, either at an Asian food court or some other fun place

4:00 - 6:00 = studying/hanging out in the library to do readings and homework before heading back to the suburbs

7:00 - 8:30 = dinner and lots of chatting with the host family (usually includes ice cream or other desserts...they are too good to me)

8:30 - midnight = more homework and/or procrastination in the form of watching Downton Abbey (I am addicted...help)

So, yeah! There's a little bit about my life so far, and how I'm often busy but not (yet) overwhelmed. I'm really enjoying my homestay and I hope to keep learning from the family.

If you've gotten this far without falling asleep, here are some more blogs from my fellow FSP-ers! Plus, my sister Lily is road-tripping to Alaska for the Winter World Championships, because she's a boss. Read about her long, cold journey here!

And with all those links, I bid you adieu. Auckland's Pride Festival (the first in 11 years) is this weekend, so lots to look forward to and write about!