Hello,

Well k.d. lang was wonderful. (I'm sorry, Grampa. I know you'll be devastated, but I was unable to get an autograph. Next time.) Cats was less than wonderful. It really didn't work for me. For those who haven't seen it, there is basically no story, half the words they use turn out to be made-up names, and basically nothing makes sense. Luckily both my flatmates knew all about the show and were able to explain these things to me during the intermission, so I stopped trying to understand during the second half. They did make a really neat pretend train at one point from the set pieces, though.

Strangers have been asking me a lot lately whether I'm Canadian. Now I am living with a Canadian, so it is possible that I'm picking up the accent to some degree. My theory, though, is that everyone's just being careful because they've learned that many Canadians over here seem to get very touchy about being assumed to be Americans.

The big news here over the last week has been that the Government officially apologized to New Zealand's Vietnam War veterans for the official reception they received on returning from Vietnam (which was apparently just as ungrateful and hostile as that they received from New Zealand society in general). They had an official homecoming ceremony for the veterans and their families this week. I understand about 3500 New Zealanders served in the war. 37 died.

For those who don't know, Jake and Robin are coming to visit at the end of June, and we're going to travel New Zealand. When next I write I should have plenty of tales to tell of our travels.

until then

Holidays

Hello again,

It is currently our mid-semester break -two weeks without classes. However, I have been busy. I've started working at Borders, which I'm quite enjoying. Working in a bookstore has been pretty much the height of my ambitions as far as part-time jobs go. Before Borders, I briefly worked in a grocery store deli. My main job there seemed to be putting dozens of raw chickens on racks and into the oven, and I am glad to be done with that. I think if I ate meat before that experience I might not now.

Anyway, apart from training at Borders and doing school work, I've gone on a couple of beautiful hikes. I did one in the hills northwest of town and another today with my flatmate Theresa from town south to the sea. The one today was really nice. We weren't quite clear on how to get to the beginning of the hike so we spent about an hour following a creek bed more or less straight up a hill in the hope of eventually getting to somewhere useful. Thankfully, our scrabbling through the forest did eventually bring us to where we wanted to be (pictures below.) There is pretty much nothing that can kill you in the New Zealand bush (unlike Australia, the land of death) and it's hard to get lost since you're never far from the sea, so wandering the forest in the general direction you want tends to be a feasible option.

My classes have all been going pretty well. I'm really enjoying Brain and Behavior, as I'm constantly fascinated by all the things our brains are constantly doing.

Coming up, I'm going to go see K.D. Lang in concert on the 5th, which I'm quite excited about, and also going to see Cats with my flatmates at the end of May. I'm less excited about Cats, as it's never been high on my list of musicals I want to see and I'm prejudiced against Andrew Lloyd Webber, but hopefully it will be fun.

Hike #1

The top of this mushroom was about the size of my hand.












One of those "shall I / shan't I?" kind of fences.


































Hills and the South Island in the background.














The Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship based in New Zealand. This ship is named for the original which was sabotaged and sunk by operatives of the French government in 1985 when it was part of protests against and monitoring of French nuclear testing.




Hike #2

This is what we were rewarded with after blundering through the woods.








We came round a hill and what should we see but ostriches! It was kind of surreal. Later on one of them did a very strange sort of flapping, neck rolling thing at us. We kept our distance.








Theresa and the hills.

strange things happen in Wellington

Having never before lived in a 'real' city (Toledo doesn't count, I wasn't really in Hong Kong proper, and I can't speak for Columbus since I don't remember it much), I can't say for sure whether it's something peculiar to Wellington or whether this happens all over, but whimsically strange things happen here. You're walking down the street and suddenly you see a statue or some public art you never saw before (this is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not, tastes differing as they do). You glance down at your feet and notice that there's a suitably mysterious quote engraved in the rock. You walk through the 'town square' and there's a festival on, or people doing hip hop dancing, or, my personal favorite, giant unexplained (unexplainable?) pigs depicted on the bricks beneath your feet in masking tape. It's just a fun city.

I was reminded of this yesterday when, just as I came up to Lambton Quay, the main street of the financial/governmental/upscale-shopping district, at least 50 cyclists whizzed by at high speeds. I came all the way out onto the sidewalk just in time to watch the whole pack zoom back in the other direction and realized with some surprise that there was a full fledged race going -they had blocked off the entire street and the cyclists were racing up and down it (with a police motorcycle in front and everything). It probably loses something in the telling, but it was kind of surreal at the time, especially as I had heard nothing about anything of the sort happening.

Anyway, things are still good here. I'm planning on joining the tramping, vegetarian cooking, and jujitsu clubs, finding a job, and maintaining all my commitments from last year. I have a feeling I'm going to be busier than I've ever been in my life -I'm not quite sure I know how to be busy, so this will be a challenge. In any case, you'll get to hear all about how it goes. Aren't you lucky?

I tried ju jitsu out for the first time on Sunday and really enjoyed it. First thing after a bit of warm-up, the instructor basically said "ok, now find a partner and wrestle." It was kind of a "you want us to do what?" sort of moment. Anyway, then we got in to the actual training. Jitsu is a martial art that involves a lot of using your opponent's strength against him, and it's supposed to be actually useful for self-defense.

Sorry no new pictures this time around.

p.s. the paean to gumboots was a song extolling the virtues of gumboots (otherwise known as Wellington boots, big rubber boots, etc.). The chorus goes:

If it weren't for your gumboots, where would ya be?
You'd be in the hospital or infirmary
'coz you would have a dose of the 'flu, or even pleurisy
If ya didn't have yer feet in yer gumboots.

full lyrics: http://journals.jevon.org/music/Fred_Dagg_-_The_Gumboot_Song

I'm back!

Hello all!

Well I'm back in lovely Wellington and I'm having quite a nice time so far. It's been hectic but fun. My flights were fine. A highlight was the woman in front of me at the security checkpoint trying to convince the screener that Puerto Rico is indeed a US territory (she was eventually successful). Also, I've decided that vegans, or at least airline vegan meals, should stop trying to make chocolate chip cookies. A high point came when I discovered that alcohol was free and that I could thus avail myself of Bailey's to wash away the vegan cookie taste. Landing in Wellington was exciting as always. It's a gorgeous location to fly into since you basically come in right over the ocean and between beautiful hills.

Since I've been here I've been getting myself settled, meeting friends from last year, and training to help with orientation. I quite like my new dorm, except for the fact that I'm on the 12th floor and there are no working elevators at the moment (there was a pyromaniac with a grudge apparently).

Yesterday was great! Summer in Wellington is a season of many festivals and yesterday there were three on. There was a Pasifika festival with stalls from all the islands in the vicinity, several of which I'd never heard of. Unfortunately it rained much of the day so that and the chalk art/picnic extravaganza were rather subdued, although still fun. The clear winner, though, was the free celebration in honor of the 10th birthday of New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa (incidentally the most visited museum in Austalasia).

Te Papa has history, nature, and culture exhibits with lots of stuff for kids. Anyway, it was a great day with all sorts of shows and things going on. I cannot overemphasize how impressed I was. The NZ Symphony Orchestra played and did a few great pieces along with a Maori woman singing which were beautiful. There was also a ukulele band, which was quite nice, though hard to hear as they had to play in an unwired room due to the rain. They played mostly kiwi songs including a lovely paean to gumboots. The final event of the evening before the fireworks (it had stopped raining by then) was a "Queen of the Whole World" pageant (i.e. a drag show) which usually performs in Auckland to raise money for the NZ AIDS foundation. I think it says a lot about New Zealand that the culminating event (and the best-attended) of the evening at their biggest public museum was a drag show. What exactly it says, you can decide for yourselves, but it was hilarious.

Anyway take care

















somebody's chalk creation








Miss Canada












people leaving Te Papa after the pageant

Heading Home

Hello,

Well my room is ashambles despite the fact that I think I've packed everything that can be packed at this point. I'm flying out on Wednesday afternoon. My dorm is more or less empty at the moment. They officially kicked us out Saturday, but as far as I can figure out I'm allowed to stay until Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

My exams are all over, which is a strange feeling because I had about a month with (officially anyway) nothing to do but study for them. There were lots of good-bye parties for various people who aren't coming back next year. There were also some really cool fireworks shows. They had one display for the Diwali festival here (actually a Hindu holiday, but here they've turned it into sort of an Indian festival). Those fireworks were amazing, largely because they were shot off really close to us. They were literally going off overhead and filling the entire sky. It was kind of scary, but very impressive. The other fireworks display was on November 5th for Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates a failed attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605. I believe the celebrations started because they used to burn Guy Fawkes (one of the plotters) in effigy, but that seems to be happening a lot less now even in England (or so I read). Anyway, those fireworks were nice too, and it was kind of cool to see personal fireworks displays going off all over the city. This was also occasionally terrifying, as when you saw little kids shooting them off sideways and that kind of thing.

Yesterday I went for another hike. This time I went across the Eastern side of the bay and did a walk along the coast. It was really pretty. I'll put some photos below.

Anyway, I shall see many of you soon!
































The coolest bus-stop I've ever seen.















The lake where I stopped for lunch. This was my favorite part of the hike.















The coast, looking south towards where the South Island ought to be.



















New Zealand's oldest permanent lighthouse (1859).

Kiwi

A kiwi, for those who don't know, is several things:

It is a large flightless bird native to New Zealand. They walk around on two legs and eat insects and things like that with their long beaks. The one I've seen at the zoo was about the size of a serious rabbit in terms of its body, but with long legs. There used to be flightless birds in New Zealand called Moa bigger than ostriches but they got killed off by humans because they were such tempting targets.


















It is a fruit (here always called kiwi fruit rather than just kiwi to avoid confusion).












It is a person from New Zealand. The one below is named Danielle.















It is an adjective describing anything from New Zealand. (e.g. kiwi culture, kiwi exports)

What happened to September?

Greetings!

I am writing to you from my first relaxing, guilt-free day in quite a while. Yesterday I handed in my last essay due before exams. I had four major assignments due over the last two weeks, so I had several very late nights. I was writing essays on:
a book by the author of Whale Rider, for those who've seen the movie, for English;

the oh-so-tenuous connections between spatial abilities, testosterone, and finger length ratio -or 'why males perform better than females on visual-spatial tasks' for psychology;

whether or not everything we do is unavoidable and already determined (this one drove me absolutely nuts) for philosophy;

and finally the ways in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer challenges assumptions about heterosexuality being the only legitimate sexuality for Sex and Society.

So I've been very busy researching and writing. My classes are still going quite well. Right now we're talking about commercial sex in Sex and Society, which is especially interesting because New Zealand legalized prostitution in 2003. The aim was to bring prostitution into the open so that health and social workers and police had greater access and so that 'sex workers' would have more scope for protection from attack and abuse. The jury's still out on whether this change is having overall positive or negative effects.

My English class is also going well lately. I've never had a class before that made literature seem like such a living thing. We study recent works and talk about current trends in New Zealand and Pacific literature rather than those of decades or centuries ago. We're also looking at Pacific writing from quite a political angle: how Pacific Islanders are reclaiming their history and culture through stories and poems. I feel like I'm learning a lot about the cultural tensions in the region.

Anywho, fun things lately have been going to see Stardust, which came out in the States a while ago. The book it's based on was written by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, and I really enjoyed the movie.

I also went out for a birthday celebration at Lone Star Steakhouse, which is heavily American themed but also vehemently Kiwi. They've even got little explanations in the menu of how, despite the theme, the whole place is New Zealand run, gosh darn it. McDonald's does much the same thing: all of its wrappers proudly proclaim that they use Kiwi meat, bakeries, fish, vegetables, etc. The Kiwis are really a very patriotic lot. It's remarkable how many of them go around wearing sweatshirts with "New Zealand" emblazoned on them. Right now the Rugby World Cup is on, so everyone's in something of a tizzy. New Zealand's All Blacks are always in the top few teams. Given the size of the country, this is a point of considerable pride here. America, for those who are interested, haven't won a game and are out of the running. They did do respectably against England, though, which apparently surprised people.

There are only two weeks of class left before exams and then I'll soon be heading back to the States.

Here I am on a windy Wellington night by the harbor: