Orientation

Hello, all! I've now been in New Zealand for about 15 days; I can't believe it. I have so much I want to write about, it's been a whirlwind of an experience so far. To start with, I'll recap my orientation, which was an amazing introduction to New Zealand.

The Airport
At the Chicago airport (my mother and Mark drove me up there), my mom made quite the scene. She had kept it together for most of the day, even as I was checking in at the ticket counter. But, when I went to get in line at security, she lost it. "My baby, my baby," she cried. As she wrapped her arms around me whining and crying and rocking me as if I still were a baby. Mind you, this wasn't in a corner, or even to one side. We were in the middle of the walking space by security. People were trying to walk around us, some people thought we were in line, others just thought my mom was nuts. Eventually she was able to let me go and I got in line. Did my mother leave? Nope. She stood there, watching me wait in my line, waving frantically whenever I looked back at her. I may be picking on her, but I don't blame her. We're going to be across the world from each other from the next five months. Once I got through security, I saw that my flight was delayed by an hour. So I was at the Chicago airport at 1:30 p.m. for a 6 p.m. flight. Eventually, I met Kristie, who heard me talking on the phone about New Zealand and asked me if I was with Study New Zealand/Study Australia. Kristie proved to become a friend throughout orientation, I'm hoping to visit her in Melbourne, Australia if I can afford it.

The Flight
The flight was surprisingly fine. I was worried about how it would go with my back, but I got up and walked around about every four hours. I slept for a good 6-7 hours on and off. For the rest of the time I watched The Book of Eli and chilled out. Soon enough, they were handing out the customs forms and the minutes until the ETA dwindled. At 7:30 A.M. on 1 July, I arrived in Auckland.

Day One
I was nervous for customs. I'm not sure why, but I was terrified they'd not let me into the country or something. Luckily, my fear was without warrant and I got through customs just fine. They even let me keep my peanut butter! The customs in New Zealand is notorious for being extremely picky with food and shoes being brought into the country. The country is very watchful for insects that might harm the beautiful trees and other New Zealand plants. Once I was declared fit to enter the country, I went to meet my fellow program participants. What I saw when I found them, did not make me happy at all. There I was, sweaty and tired, makeup-less and jet lagged and they had the audacity to film me? Luckily, Brian, the cameraman explained, he wouldn't use any bad footage of us. The Education Abroad Network is currently having their promotional videos redone, with footage from Australia and New Zealand for the first time.

Anyhow, we eventually all made it on to the bus, which took us to our hotel, in the city of Auckland. We were whisked away, however, into a back meeting room where we did some standard introductions and an extremely brief overview of the next few days. We were then given about an hour and a half. We could shower if we wanted to (there was a shower in the gym area, we were unable to check in since we were there at 9 or so in the morning and check in wasn't until 2 in the afternoon. I chose instead to skype my mother and send some friends/family emails letting them know I had arrived)

Afterward we had about 30 minutes to explore the city so a group of us went for a little walk. We soon discovered Auckland is incredibly hilly. After we regrouped the 23 of us on orientation (though six girls were going to Australia) walked down to Queen Street, the main street in the downtown area. This is the one that has the giant cinema, plenty of shops, several malls shooting off of it and my friends Gucci and Louis Vuitton (by the way, I swear I am going to dress up and go shopping in those stores before I leave). At the end of Queen Street is the harbor, with passenger ferries. We took the ferry to a town called Devenport. It was quite funny because with an Australian accent, Lauren, the woman in charge of orientation, sounded like she said 'Davenport,' which made me feel like I had just gone back to Iowa. Devenport is a cute town a 15 minute ferry ride from Auckland. It's its own community (complete with a library, which I thought was nice), but is essentially a part of Auckland. Much of Devenport's inhabitants commute daily to their jobs in the city. Tommy, who studied at the University of Auckland and loved it so much that he transferred, moved there and now works for TEAN, grabbed our sandwiches for lunch and we met them on the beach. There were children and mothers playing by the water and Mary Bess made funny comments like "It's like we're surrounded by water—we're on an island!" and admiring the "cute, little naked boy."

After lunch, we walked up a giant hill with a gorgeous view of the city. See for yourself:



We took pictures at the top and I volunteered to be part of the promotional video. I'm pretty sure I look like a dweeb in it though... We climbed down, took the ferry back and I finally had some downtime. First, however, I had to get my suitcases up to my room. This may sound like an easy task to you, but that would mean you do not know about my suitcases. I had a backpack, a relatively small carry-on and a pretty large suitcase. In addition, I had an oversized, bright blue bag from hell. The hotel even gave me a cart to push it all on. Again, sounds nice. I finally got to the elevator, it opened up and I pushed my luggage in. Correction—I attempted to push it in. It was too wide to fit in the elevator! It was horrible. I was mortified and frustrated and needed people I had just met to help me figure out how to get all my stuff into the elevator. Eventually, I got it all up there and got unsettled. Then, I took a very much needed shower and got ready for dinner.

For dinner, we went to a tapas restaurant! The food was delicious and I got to know people who would become some of my closest friends from the program. I had my first glass of wine in New Zealand at the restaurant, a Savignon Blanc, a wine for which New Zealand is very famous. It was delicious! That's one thing that really bothers me about the drinking age in the States, I sometimes wish I could order a glass of wine with my meal back home. Not for the purpose of getting drunk, but rather for enjoyment and to compliment the food.

After dinner, we came back to The Quadrant and went to bed around 8:30 at night; we'd had a long day.

Day Two
The next day was our Maori cultural experience day. Maori, I learned once arriving, is pronounced MOW-ree. They are the native people of this country and are fully embraced within modern Kiwi culture. There is minimal racism and other negative feelings and actions directed toward the population. Many Maori descendants don't look particularly Maori because there's a history of interracial marriage and procreation. The following description of the day is written in past tense as it was in my personal journal, with additional commentary from what I've experienced since first recording the events of day two.

Yesterday was a long and action-packed day. I woke up at 7:30 because I had gone to bed at 8:30 the night before. When it was time to meet, Michele, my roommate at the hotel and a fellow Auckland Uni student, went downstairs and met the rest of the group. We went in a van that held about 10-12 people in each. We drove to an area with a huge crater.



There were signs all around saying not climb in. Apparently, it's because the crater is technically an archaeological site. The three drivers turned out to be our three Maori tour guides. Michelle, one of the guides told us that as a child and even into her adulthood, she and friends would often run or even roll down the massive crater. The guides were youthful, two were probably in their twenties and the director, Melissa was probably in her thirties. The three guides introduced themselves in Maori and explained to us that in their introductions, they traced their tribe and families' lineage from the beginning onwards. It was pretty elaborate. The purpose behind the retelling of ancestry is to hopefully find a connection with someone. After the retelling, they finally said their names. This piece of information, which almost always comes first in an American introduction, is the least important to the Maori people. It is not about who you are, but rather where you came from. Then, Pania (not sure about the spelling, but it was pronounced pawn-yuh), recited a prayer. Maori prayers, as I would learn as well in Rotorua, are not really to a particular God, but rather just and overall thank you. When one recites a Maori prayer, it is to be done in the presence of whatever one is being thankful for. For example, you wouldn't give thanks for the sea in the forest or in your home, but rather in the ocean.

We walked around the crater and the guides explained to us the history of the place. The volcano, like other mountains (giant hills?), the Maori people inhabited were tiered, or terraced. If you can imagine a wedding cake, that's what the hill looked like. The people had pounded the ground down into multiple levels as a defense strategy. Each terrace was surrounded by massive 8 or 10 foot tall fences that enemies would have to climb over in order to fight the local tribe. If the invaders had won the battle, they would have to climb another fence and fight the next level. Thinking about it reminded me of a video game, personally. It was crazy to try and imagine people actually changing the shape of the mountain and going through so much to gain land.

On the sides of some of the levels were holes in the ground to store kumara. Kumara is the Maori word for sweet potatoes. They would build shelter for the holes to protect the kumara from wind, rain and insects. The harvested starches would then last the tribe through the winter.

The next stop for our cultural experience was the Auckland Museum. The Auckland Museum is big and has many components with some permanent exhibits and other temporary ones. The temporary one running right now is called Kai to Pie. Kai in Maori means food and pie means pie. The other name of it is "Auckland on a Plate." They feature food and cultural information about the more than 30 ethnic groups represented in Auckland. We didn't have time to go through that at all, but I intend to go back to the museum sometime soon. On Sundays they have free food samples, which I'm always up for! The exhibit we visited was the Maori one. The first thing Michelle showed us is the war canoe, called a Waka in Maori. It was insanely huge. I didn't have the time to devote to taking nice pictures so I decided to wait to take pictures until I return. The war canoe was made out of one continuous piece of wood from a single tree. The front of the boat had a carving of a head with its tongue sticking out. For this reason, we know the intricately carved waka represents a male ancestor. This is because the protrusion of the tongue is only allowed to be done by the males. It represents intimidation and fierceness. Women are not allowed to do this, for the sake of balance.

Balance is a major theme within Maori culture. Women were not allowed in the waka and Michelle explained, people who are not knowledgeable about the Maori assume this is sexist. This assumption would be false. Women give birth and therefore represent life. The opposite of life is death, so men are the warriors that kill. It would be wrong for something that is supposed to bring life into this world to take it away. A lot of Maori stories and culture seem to be built around the sense of balance.

According to Michelle, Maori tribes were often matriarchal before the British invaded. The British imposed their sexist, patriarchal, Victorian marriage lifestyle upon the Maori and the culture switched. It became patriarchal and stayed that way. As with most native peoples, there was a period in which the Maori were very discriminated against. One of the tour guides explained to us that the reason she wasn't taught the language as a child was because her grandfather had been beaten up when he tried to speak Maori in school. He, therefore never spoke it to his family, thus not giving my guide anyone to learn the language from. In what seems to be recent years, there's been a movement to embrace the Maori culture. She did an intensive year-long program in which she learned how to speak the language and learned a lot about the culture. Nowadays, I've been told there really isn't any animosity between Maori and the other Kiwis. Most signs have both Maori and English on them and I often hear Kia Ora (a standard welcome in Maori) at formal events.

The rest of my museum experience included looking at the weaponry and other artifacts. Next, we saw an awesome cultural show. It included traditional song and dance as well as amazing demonstrations of how they would use their weaponry in battles. It's one thing to see the items in a glass case, it's another to see them in action. Finally, they performed a haka. A haka is a traditional Maori dance, whose purpose is to challenge and intimidate the enemy before charging into battle. It's extremely high energy and truly is quite intimidating. The New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, perform a haka before every game. I encourage you to watch the embedded video HERE, it really is quite cool.

After that, we went into the Marae (muh-rhye), the holy meetinghouse. Out of respect, we removed our shoes before entering and were not allowed to take pictures. The different pillars of the house represented different ancestors and were again intricately carved. I've tried to wrap my mind around how many hours upon hours it would take to make one of these supports, let alone enough to create the massive meetinghouse and I simply can't. It's really quite incredible. Then, it was time to go. Before leaving the museum, we rinsed our hands with water to wash the holiness away so we didn't carry it with us for the rest of the day. If holiness was with us all the time, then it wouldn't be holy, right?

On the steps of the museum, was Lauren with bags of fish and chips. The chips (like thick fries, but not quite as thick or lightly cooked as wedges) were both white and sweet potatoes. Interestingly enough, the sweet potatoes aren't redish orange here as they are in the States, but are a much lighter, almost white variety.

Next, we sat in the car for about a half hour long drive to a beach on the west coast. Auckland is on an isthmus so it has beaches on both of its coasts and it doesn't take that much time to get to either. The west coast beaches have black sand because it comes from volcanic ash. It's incredibly fine and soft and very different from any other beach I've been to. It was a beautiful spot, great for photographs. As we were walking toward the beach, a man base jumped off the side of a cliff next to us, it was awesome! We marveled at the ocean for a while and then played some touch rugby before heading back to the vans.

Next, we went for a bit of a hike. It was really pretty and mostly uphill. We ended up in front of a beautiful waterfall. On the way back to where we had parked, we stopped and were told the Maori creation story. It was extremely interesting. Writing it in here wouldn't do it justice, and I encourage you to research it or ask me about it in person/over skype. Finally, the tour guides honored us by doing the Hongi with us. The three of them lined up (imagine a receiving line). We would shake their right hand, and we placed our left on each other's shoulders. We put ourselves forehead to forehead and bridge of nose to bridge of nose. Then, we would each breathe in deeply. The idea behind this is connected to the creation story, but in essence, we are breathing in each others' life force, acknowledging that each other is alive and appreciating it. At first I was a bit nervous and uncomfortable about the idea of getting so close to women I had just met, but it turned out to be very intimate. I found myself closing my eyes and really trying to breathe the other person in. It was very meaningful to me.

Day Three

The next day we woke up super early and hit the road for Rotorua. The drive was about 3 1/2 hours, but it wasn't too bad. Right when we arrived, I went zorbing. See for yourself!

We then went to a cafe called the Fat Dog and had delicious seafood chowder and paninis. Next, we went white water rafting. It was an absolute blast. We went over a 21 foot drop of a waterfall; it's the largest drop one can do in a commercial raft. It felt like we were in boot camp; the professional with us, (he said his name was Ranna, rhyming with banana, which is funny because it only rhymes with a British/Kiwi/Aussie accent) would drill us on if we were paddling forward, backward, stopping, holding on or getting down. It was an awesome experience, but I was excited to change out of my wetsuit and into some warm clothes (remember, it's winter in NZ).


Afterward, we went out to a pub called the Pig & Whistle and devoured some nachos and beers. I was introduced to a classic British/Kiwi/Aussie drink called a shandie. It's simply beer with sprite and you can tell them if you want 1/3 beer or 1/2 beer. It's nice for people like me that don't really like beer and are not big drinkers. We hung out there for a while, then went back and changed into our swimsuits once more. We walked to the Polynesian spas, ranked as one of the top 10 spas to in the world visit. We went to the mineral baths. One was just normal minerals and the other one is called a priest bath. That's because it is supposed to heal, which was nice because I had injured my shoulder a bit earlier white water rafting (I'm doing perfectly fine now, no worries). There were seven different pools (either mineral or priest) in varying temperatures and some under coverage and some not. It was pretty chilly out of the pools, but that just made the baths seem warmer and nicer. We stayed there for maybe about two hours, relaxing and talking, enjoying life before we headed back to the hostel for a good night's rest.

Day Four
On day four, we drove back home, to The Quadrant. We had the middle part of the day to ourselves and regrouped at 4 p.m. At this time Lauren and Tommy sat down with us and had the actual orientation info session. They gave us advice about school, traveling, insurance and everything in between. It was extremely informational. Afterward, we went back and changed into nicer clothing for our dinner that we were told would be nice. Was it ever! The lights were dim with a few candles on the table. We had special lights that were brought over for when we needed to read the menu.We started off with a wonderful Italian appetizer plate with olives, cheeses, meats, chopped liver, spreads, salmon and more. I had the veal marsala for my main course. There was so much food and it was so delicious, but I couldn't finish it. I unfortunately found out after I had almost stuffed myself that dessert was also included. I had to find room for that too. Luckily, I've been trained by mother that there's no such thing as being too full for dessert so I decided to try something different and ordered the fig pudding. The "pudding" wasn't pudding as we think of it. It was essentially cake, but considered a pudding because of the extremely hot butterscotch sauce it was served with. It was absolutely incredible. When I could fit no more into me, we walked next store to a bar, where they were waiting for us with champagne. We had a cheers and schmoozed around for a bit before returning back to the hotel. That night, a group of us stayed up talking and drinking until 5 AM. It was a fun time, though I ended up throwing off my system.




Day Five
On what was technically considered the last day of orientation, everyone flew off to their respective parts of the country at which they were studying. The three girls studying at Auckland living in Parnell Student Village were allowed to move in at three. Harley and I are living in Number Fourteen, and were unable to move in until Tuesday. I spent the day doing errands and exploring the city. Harley and I went to Pita Pit (which I guess they have in the U.S. though I've never been) for dinner and Harley, Brian (the camera guy), Taryn, Michele and Meg (the girls living in Parnell) and I went to a microbrewery and enjoyed some New Zealand brews. It was a nice, relaxing end to a great orientation week. The four girls studying at Auckland Uni are pictured above, at the bar where we had champagne the night before.

Now
I must admit, it's taken me an incredibly long time to write this blog post. I'm so, so sorry and I hope to put my next one out very soon. I've moved into my new home in Number Fourteen Whitaker Place and I absolutely love it. I won't elaborate now because I want to post the blog entry about my pre-semester experiences right, and I don't feel like writing anymore tonight.Please feel free to comment with questions or feedback. I really enjoy talking about my experiences here and would love to share them with everyone who is willing to listen. Also, if you are on facebook I encourage you to look at my pictures—there's much more on there. And if you're not on facebook, but wish to see them I can send you a link where you can do that. Thanks for reading. Cheers!