Rugby

I think most of you know that I played rugby a bit at Midd. It was kind of an odd thing to do, because it's not a very widespread game back home. When I first got here, I was happily surprised by just how ubiquitous rugby is in New Zealand. This is a picture I took on my first morning in New Zealand, while I was wandering around waiting for International Student Orientation to start. I was just so impressed by how many rugby fields there were, everywhere!!!

I also saw this car parked on the side of the road one evening when I first got here. It's a pretty sweet old car, but more importantly, I love the license plate! "Sevens" refers to a version of rugby with only seven players on the field from each team and they only play seven minute halves. It's a pretty intense game. It's also not very well-known at home, as I'm sure you've guessed, so it made me really happy that it was on someones license plate here.

There are actually several variations of rugby. There is rugby union, which is what I played. The New Zealand rugby union team is the All Blacks. If you ask someone outside of NZ, they will tell you that the All Blacks are one of the best rugby teams ever. If you ask someone inside of NZ, you had better agree emphatically when they tell you that the All Blacks are THE rugby team. Full stop. There is also rugby league, which is slightly different and even less common in the US than rugby union. The NZ rugby league team is the Warriors. Historically, they haven't always been No. 1, but this season, they made it as far as the semi-finals of the playoffs (I think... it was something like that, and it was a pretty big deal).

I got to see my first New Zealand rugby game this weekend (rugby union). It was a part of the Air New Zealand Cup, so the teams represented different regions within NZ (Canterbury v. Hawkes Bay). The stadium was eerily empty because the Warriors had their big game the same night and everyone was at home watching them on TV (they were mercilessly slaughtered by one of the Australian teams, I believe). However, I still really enjoyed the game I saw. Rugby is such a normal part of life here that people grow up with it, sort of the way some people at home grow up playing catch with a football or a baseball in the backyard, and it just becomes second nature. Let it suffice to say that I was quite impressed.

Apologies for how blurry the pictures are. The Canterbury players are red and the Hawkes Bay players are white. This is just before Canterbury scored their first try (which is sort of like a touchdown).

This was the first scrum of the game. If you don't know much about rugby, a scrum is a way to put the ball back into play after a minor infringement (I sound like the rule book, sorry, I'll stop). It basically involves lots of pushing, and the people in the picture who aren't in the big push-fest (the scrum) are waiting either to play defense or to get the ball passed out to them.

This is the classic rugby picture. The Canterbury players are in a flat line because they don't have possession, so they're trying to stop the other team from getting past them. The Hawkes Bay players do have the ball, and the diagonal backwards sort of line is the most efficient way to get ready for the pass, because you can't pass forwards in rugby. Sweet, now you know as much about rugby as I do :) And for the record, even though Canterbury is on defense in this picture (and in the last one, actually), Canterbury won by a lot (which was good, because I live in Canterbury, and it would have been very disappointing if my favorite team lost the first time I went to a game).

This has nothing to do with rugby. It was the half-time game. It involved people running around inside large inflatable beach balls. I didn't understand it at all, but it was pretty funny.

Botanic Gardens

This post is really just an excuse to put more pretty pictures up, because it's spring here and it's beautiful. My friend PJ and I went to the Botanic Gardens last weekend on a spur-of-the-moment trip, so that's where all these pictures are from.

There were tons and tons of daffodils at the gardens. In the picture that looks like some trees and lots of grass, it's actually just a field of daffodils that goes as far as you can see. It was pretty amazing.

There were also lots and lots of sakura trees in blossom. There's one right outside my bedroom window (that's the picture in the last post, actually) and there were heaps of them in the gardens, too. The blossoms are just starting to fall now, which means spring is well on its way. If you're in a dreamy sort of mood, the falling sakura are really pretty. They come down a petal at a time, and sometimes the wind catches them and it looks a bit like a miniature snowstorm (except that the wind is usually warm and smells like green things, which isn't very snowstorm-like). Very poetic and all that. However, when you're in a less than dreamy mood, you realize that all those falling petals have to go somewhere. Actually, they don't just go somewhere- they go everywhere. In particular, they seem to like to stick to my bike tires, which I find a bit odd (although it is pretty funny to see a rugged mountain bike decorated in little delicate white and pink flowers...) Regardless of what sort of mood you're in, though, the sakura trees are always very pretty.

I have no idea what the flowers are in this picture, but I thought I should point them out because they were so pretty. It was this massive flowerbed with all different coloured flowers arranged in a repeating pattern, which I thought was pretty cool.

Spring

Spring is here :) Christchurch is occasionally called the Garden City of New Zealand, and I'm starting to see why. Here are just a few random pictures of how pretty spring is here:

Despite all the pretty flowers, it didn't officially become spring (in my book, not by the calendar) until the other day, when I had to stop on my bike ride to class because a mother duck and her three ducklings were crossing the road. Really, it was like a moment out of "Make Way for Ducklings," and it was impossibly cute.

Stolen Idea

Allie, I am shamelessly stealing your idea for a list of favorites, partly because I have nothing else to do before my next class but mostly just because it's an awesome idea. So in no particular order, here are some of my favorite things about New Zealand:

Southern Alps! Every time I see them, I remember why I'm here.

Sunshine. There's a lot more of it. It's also a lot brighter here. Really. Probably something to do with the hole in the ozone, which is a bad thing, but I still like the sunshine.

Commercials. Okay, TV commercials do get old, but some of them really make me laugh. Nutella is marketed as a health food, banking is marketed with sunbathing piggy banks, and Pineapple Lumps (a NZ candy) are marketed as a divine gift and resource.

Metrobus 21. Straight from my door to uni to Central City.

Milo. Like hot chocolate, but better. On a side note, the marshmellows are way better here, too.

Daffodils. So many of them!

Bike lanes. Particularly because the curb and the roadside parking spaces are synonymous.

Avonhead Park. It's just around the corner from my flat. I usually start my run there, and then proceed to get lost when I leave the park. The length of my run is determined by how lost I actually got.

Hot chips. And by that I mean French fries, sort of, but a little thicker and way better.

Water. A strange thing to like, I know, but someone told me that Christchurch has something like the best tap water in the world. I believe it.

That's far from everything, but I'm pretty sure it's not possible to give a list of everything I like about living in New Zealand.

A Little Australia

I think I promised multiple people that I would put up some Australia pictures after this weekend. My camera was being unhappy, so most of my amazing beach shots look like I took them on a gray January day in Vermont. I was going to get together with some friends and trade pictures over the weekend, but both PJ and Michelle (the two girls I went with) had assignments over the weekend, so just imagine lots of sunshine in all the gray pictures.

This is Michelle on the beach.

It was really windy. I was pretending to be Superman, but the wind didn't really catch my fantastic beach-towel-cape.

We went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. We saw heaps of animals, dingos and lorikeets and emus and echidnas and crocodiles and cockatoos and I don't even remember what else. This is PJ holding the koala. There were several places at the Sanctuary with more koalas than all the koala items Laura has ever owned times three. They were super cute.

I fed a kangaroo. From the bio point of view, I'm not sure how I feel about hand-feeding animals that are supposed to be wild, but from the tourist point of view, the kangaroos were really cute (even if they did slobber all over our hands...)

This picture just makes me laugh. What up, kangaroo?

This is a paddemelon. Really, that's what it's called. They look and move like little kangaroos, but they're regarded sort of like the Australian rabbits. They're shy, cute, and mild pests that eat your vegetable patch. I like them.

We saw the paddemelon on a tour of the hinterlands and Springbrook National Park. This is a part of the park called Natural Arch.

These are Antartic Beech trees. It's three different trees from a single root system, and they're really old. Unfortunately, I forgot the exact number and Wikipedia isn't telling, so let's just go with mind-blowingly old times eight.

On the tour of Springbrook, we met two Japanese girls that were living with host families in Australia for their summer vacation.

We also went to Tropical Fruit World. Amazing!!! The top row, from left to right, is chocolate fruit with ice cream and strawberries (chocolate fruit isn't related to coco beans, but it tastes just like chocolate if you eat it with dairy), boiled egg yolk fruit (which looks just like boiled egg yolk but tastes sweet and yummy and nothing like egg), and blood orange (which is a lot like the normal kind of orange). The bottom row from left to right is champagne fruit with passionfruit juice on top (it had a fancier name but I forgot it), custard apple (the closest thing you'll ever find to ice cream on a tree!), pineapple, banana, and mango. We also had fresh macadamia nuts and guacamole made from fresh avacado and tea made from lemon myrtle. It was all really good!

This is PJ in the kitchen of our apartment. We got really lucky and found a fabulous deal on a two-story two-bedroom "holiday apartment" with a laundry room and a fully equipped kitchen. But the best part? About a 30 second walk to the beach :)

We were on the Gold Coast for the whole week. The Gold Coast is broken up into several sections, such as Broadbeach, Miami, and Surfers' Paradise. What would a week in Surfers' Paradise be without a surf lesson? I wish I could say that this was me right before I stood up, but unfortunately I'd be lying if I said I did any better than kneeling. It was crazy fun though!

Traditional Greetings on the Marae

We did some really cool introductions on the trip. For the Maori, the idea of whakapapa is really important. Whakapapa is partly geneology, but it's more than that. It's about how people are connected to each other and to different places.

We did several different introductions, and everyone talked about their ancestors and where their ancestors came from and the place they considered home, including the natural features and resources of their home. It was really cool to see everyone talking about their home, because despite a culture that values new experiences, new places, cities, and travel, you could see how proud everyone was of their families, their homes, and their traditions. It was also a much better way to get to know people than asking about their job or their studies. One girl I met went to school in Montana, and I normally wouldn't have learned much more than that in a first conversation, but she when she talked about her home, she talked about Lake Champlain, Mt. Mansfield, and maple syrup. It turns out that she was born in Jerico, lived in Stowe for a few years, and only moved out to Montana for college! We even knew a few of the same people. It was really cool.

We also learned a traditional Maori way to introduce ourselves, called a pepeha, which follows along the same lines. Mine goes like this:

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
Ko Mansfield toku maunga.
Ko Lamoille toku awa.
Ko Putnam toku hapu.
Ko George raua ko Nancy oku matua.
No Vermont au.
Kei Otautahi toku kainga i naianei.
Ko Emily toku ingoa.
No reira tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

It translates as:
Greetings to everyone.
My mountain is Mt. Mansfield.
My river is the Lamoille River.
My hapu (sort of like a sub-tribe or family within the tribe, I think I'm stretching the meaning a bit here) is the Putnam family.
My parents are George and Nancy.
I am from Vermont.
I live in Christchurch now.
My name is Emily.
Greetings again to everyone.

I wish I could claim all sorts of credit for that, but I really just took it straight from a worksheet we did in class to prepare for the trip... There were several spaces that I had to leave blank, because they didn't really seem to apply to me. I could have also introduced myself in relation to my waka (the ancestral canoe that brought my ancestors to New Zealand, but unfortunately I'm pretty sure that I'm the first in a long time to come here, and I came by Quantas Airways rather than canoe), my iwi (my tribe, also doesn't really apply to me, although some Americans used their state to represent their iwi), and my marae (I did try to think of somewhere that my family always gets together for everything, but it seemed a little flippant to put down Beth's backyard and pool).

The only other thing I wanted to point out is that when you introduce yourself, your name is pretty much the last thing you say. The way I understood it, that's not meant to make the individual unimportant in comparison to the group. Rather, your whakapapa, your connections to the land and to your tribe and family, and what are most important in understanding who you are. Your name is a word that you answer to, and maybe it has a meaning, but it doesn't say much about who you are.

The Marae in Kaikoura

I went on a field trip this past weekend with my Science, Maori and Indigenous Knowledge to a Maori marae. A marae is a place that is sacred to a Maori iwi (tribe). It is situated on the traditional land of the iwi and serves as a gathering place and a meeting place. The one we stayed at was used for everything from a primary school for the iwi to a site for weddings and funerals to a place to welcome visitors onto the iwi's land. We stayed for two nights, and I wish I could describe everything we saw and learned and did, but I'm pretty sure you'd fall asleep before you finished reading it all, so for now I'll just start with the welcoming ceremony. On a side note, I have no pictures of the trip because the marae is tapu (sacred) and it is considered quite rude to take pictures without written consent from the iwi.

Anyway, the welcoming ceremony was quite interesting. It is supposed to start with the visitors gathering outside the gates and waiting, to show that they are ready to be welcomed to the marae. There is then supposed to be a wero, which means that the hosts lay down a spear, dart, or twig as a challenge and one of the male visitors picks it up. The way it is picked up indicates whether or not the visitors have come peacefully or for war. It's also very important not to smile during the wero, because the host who is issuing the challenge might think you are making fun of his challenge and it would be very insulting. Once the guests have accepted the challenge and picked up the twig peacefully, one of the female hosts starts the karanga, which is a call/song. The eldest female visitor will answer the karanga, and everyone will go in a procession (older women first, then younger women, and all the men have to go in the back) into the marae and then into the wharenui (which translates roughly as the "big house" and is the most important building/room within the marae). We spent a lot of time prepping for this part of the welcoming ceremony so that we wouldn't mess it up and insult someone, but we didn't actually do anything I just described, because it was raining and no one wanted to stand out in the rain. Instead, someone greeted us in the parking lot and showed us in the back door, and we all just walked inside the wharenui.

Once we were all inside the wharenui, however, we did continue with the rest of the traditional welcoming ceremony. Everyone took their shoes off before they went into the wharenui, because it is the most tapu (sacred) part of the marae. The whole inside of the wharenui was completely covered with intricate and traditional Maori carvings, each representing a story. I'll try to describe some of it some other time. Anyway, once we were inside, we all sat down, the hosts on one side and the visitors on the other. The seating order is supposed to be elders males in the front, because they give speeches, and then younger males and all the women in the back. However, there was actually only one host greeting us, a man named Tai. He made a speech in Te Reo Maori (the Maori language) and followed it with a song, and then the visitors were supposed to make a speech and follow their speech with a song. One of the students on the trip was actually a Te Reo Maori major at the university, so he was able to make a speech on our behalf, and we had all practised a Maori song to follow the speech (although I have to admit that it was a call-and-repeat song...) Then the student who made the speech laid down the koha (gift) on the floor between the guests and the hosts. Traditionally, the koha would have been resources that were valuable or important from the land of the visitors, but now it is usually money, so our koha was just an envelope that we each put a few dollars into. After that, the division between the hosts on one side of the room and the guests on the other side is supposed to be symbolically broken for the first time, so we each shook Tai's hand and pressed noses (I think I mentioned before that pressing noses is a traditional Maori greeting, and it's a bit strange at first, but it's not actually as awkward as it sounds, provided that the other person isn't giggling).

For the final part of the welcoming ceremony, we all left the wharenui and went to the kitchen for tea and cookies. It sounds fairly ordinary, but there are actually a couple of things that are important. Firstly, because the wharenui is tapu, you aren't allowed to eat or drink inside it, because those are acts of the more mundane physical world. Secondly, the act of eating the hosts' food lifts the division between the hosts and the guests. Also, the food would traditionally have been the delicacies of the area (for example, the iwi of the marae we visited were renowned for the crayfish along their coastline). Now, however, the food served is usually tea and cookies and such things, which is what we had.

(On a side note, tea was actually a very good representation of the food we ate while we were at the marae. We literally had five meals a day, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and tea- tea meaning dinner- and every single meal involved at least two cups of tea. I don't think I've ever drunk so much tea in my life, which is saying something coming from me. Not that I'm complaining, by any means!!!)

Anyway, that was the welcoming ceremony. I'm now going to steal the idea from Tori's post to be indecisive and just throw some ideas out, so let me know if anything sounds interesting enough that you'd like to hear more about it. There were the panels on the walls inside the wharenui and the stories behind them (as best as I can remember them), the work we did while we were there (mostly reseeding the bay with abalone, using a really cool mix of scientific methods and traditional methods), or random bits of Maori culture that I learned a bit about over the weekend (including a children's game, a few words, and a lot more about whakapapa).

Oh, and Kaikoura is the name of the town where the marae is, located two or three hours drive north of Christchurch and on the ocean. It's really pretty there!

Welcome to Surfers' Paradise

I just got back from a fabulous week on the Gold Coast in Australia! Part of the Gold Coast is called Surfers' Paradise- hopefully the pictures will give you some idea of why. I'm afraid I don't have enough time at the moment to tell you all about everything from Aussie, but there will be more pictures eventually (probably more than you ever wanted to see, but I'm sure you're getting the idea that that's the whole point of my blog... waaaay too many pictures!)