Sunday July 3, 2011
The fair itself was small, mainly just raising awareness about the railroad society among the locals. For the first couple of hours I was in the model room with two other students. Our duties were to make sure kids weren’t fiddling with the trains and that the trains stayed on their tracks. The set up they had was neat with some of the trains being about 80 years old. Unfortunately, it was just us students and the trains for over an hour. It doesn’t take three of us to put trains back on the tracks and it was pretty boring to do it repeatedly (I really don’t understand people’s fascination with having a fancy train set and watching it go round and round, unless they change the set up frequently). I ended up wandering just outside the model room for a little bit and started talking with a local fireman, asking about their wildfire fighters (also known as ‘bush bunnies). The bush bunnies sometimes come to the US to help with our bigger wildfires. There’s actually an international standard with their training so they can assist the US.
In the late morning, when I was assigned bathroom-cleaning duty, I checked to make sure the bathroom was in good shape and then wandered over to a group of older women selling delicious soup. As I sipped on the soup, I talked with them and watched their show dogs perform some amazing stunts on the obstacle course they had set up. I learned about this beautiful bread: the New Zealand Header collie. The one I watched was amazingly agile and fast.
That evening was one of the highlights of orientation: dinner and entertainment at a Maori village. It started with our bus ride provided by the village with a hilarious bus driver, Mark (for short, I have no idea what his two line long Maori name is). He began with introducing us to Kia Ora (Maori term for hello basically), proceeded to tell its translation in 62 languages, and then ended with the fact that none of us should have an excuse now not to understand what Kia Ora means. “Does anyone not know what Kia Ora means?” (as he opens the bus door while driving). “Please don’t let the open door sway your answer, we like complete honesty.” He then told us his long Maori name and asked us to ‘simply’ call him by his Maori name if we have any questions and he will answer them. We were then asked to repeat his name. Needless to say it was an epic fail, so he noted that due to our lack of ‘effort’ in trying to say his name, he noted we must not have questions and will not have any, so he doesn’t have to answer any. The ride there (and back) continued along these lines.
As part of entering the Maori village, we needed a chief, so on the bus ride to the village we ‘selected’ a chief among us. Mark set the prerequisites Maori have to be a chief and Austin was chosen because he was the only man among us who played rugby (‘the best sport on earth,’ apparently, as the All Blacks are the ‘best team ever known to mankind’), and he fit the bill for being ‘tall’ (definitely), ‘handsome’ (I’d agree with that), strong (ehh, little slim if you ask me, but looks can be deceiving), and ‘intelligent’ (potentially). When we came to the entrance of the Maori village we were greeted by the three finest warriors to challenge and intimidate us before they then offered us the peace sign (a fern) which Austin picked up. A Maori woman then greeted us with a song and we entered the village.
We had a little bit of time to wander the village and ask questions (it was set up like the Mayflower village in MA-people dressed up and demonstrating different activities) about whatever we saw. We were then guided to the area where our food was cooking underground in the Maori traditional style and watched them uncover the feast. As they went to prepare the meal to be served we went into a separate building to watch some of the people of the village perform native (minus the guitar) song, dance, and ancestral love story. In no time at all though we were enjoying a huge dinner with their version of sweet potatoes, lamb, chicken, fish, fruit salad, potatoes, and pavalova (the national dessert of New Zealand: they have excellent taste).
Our ride back from the village was just as exciting as the ride there, maybe even more so. Mark drove round and round (add like 10 more rounds to that) a small traffic circle...pretty fast too (mind you, we were in an old full length bus). As he did so, he sang the “wheels on the bus go round and round...” and then interjected in the same singsong voice that he hoped the police didn’t see him because it is quite dangerous and, as he found out recently, ‘it’s actually quite illegal.’ “But you know, I still think its darn good fun.” You got to love the Kiwis. They are so much more laid back than Americans and not so paranoid about taking risks (or taking ownership of their mistakes). You know in the US someone would be filing a lawsuit before that ride was over.
Monday July 4th, 2011
Mount Ngauruhoe, North Island of New Zealand= Mount Doom, Mordor, Middle Earth
Our day of travel and moving in. Nothing to exciting to report for today, for half the day was spent flying down to Dunedin, with a lay over in Wellington. The highlight of the trip-flying right by Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. I have to say it looks a lot colder there now than it did when Frodo and Sam were making their way up it to throw the ring into its fiery depths. Interesting fact though, that mount erupted 45 times in the 20th century-most recently in 1977. This mountain is on my to do list by the way.
The other half of the day was spent moving in and doing a lot of walking around town, trying to orient myself and do some grocery shopping. And meeting my flatties (who I will soon introduce you soon)!
I have great news for you. The next few blogs wont recreate every single day of the next three weeks, for probably half of it involves walking and you would become extremely bored. So you'll have a fast forward version of the next three weeks and an introduction to each of my flatties, David, Liz, and Quentin-who are pretty awesome by the way.
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