Term two – the second six week chunk of classes, was packed full of adventures and learning. I continued my Te Reo learning, and ended the semester being able to build a variety of different sentences. I was also hard at work practicing for the Kapa Haka performance at the end of the semester with my class. When we performed on June 1st, it felt amazing, and so many people came to watch us. It was also videoed, see the YouTube playlist below!
Click here to see my Kapa Haka performance!
Before I tell you about the places I went, I want to show you some pictures taken in and around Christchurch. I think it’s important to appreciate my home base as well as all the cool places I have visited!
Here are some pictures from the University of Canterbury campus.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you may remember my friend Jorinde from the Netherlands who I met in Peru. Amazingly, she is spending a year in New Zealand at the moment doing a working holiday, and she came to visit me and spent two days here! We talked a lot about Peru (she was there last year again), and explored central Christchurch.
The University of Canterbury international students organization provided every study abroad student with a voucher for some activity in or near Christchurch. One of the activities you could choose was a sea kayaking tour to see Little Blue Penguins near Akaroa, which is on the Banks Peninsula about 1.5 hours drive from Christchurch. My friends and I decided to make a whole weekend out of it, so we drove up the day before to go on a hike, explore the town, and then camp before our tour the next day.
We hiked at the Hinewai Reserve, which is an area of land that has been restored mainly through natural succession (there is a cool documentary about it on YouTube, click here to watch it). It was raining while we hiked there, but it was still beautiful. Also, there were some highly entertaining signs and a wētā hiding under them! Wētās are giant flightless insects in the cricket family that look pretty scary but won’t hurt you unless you bother them at length.
The town of Akaroa is a cute little town on a harbor that was once upon a time a French colony. A museum in the town told the story of how the French nearly colonized New Zealand, but were pre-empted by the English.
That night, we stayed in a campsite that had a kitchen and a common room. We made a yummy dinner on the grill, and then played some board games before bed. I slept in the car, although slept is an overstatement – I don’t think I ever actually went to sleep all night. Fiona also did not, and we agreed that there was a weird energy there – perhaps some sort of vibration from a generator.
The next day we went to meet our tour guide, who, despite having lived in New Zealand for the past 15 years, sounded like he had just arrived from France yesterday. As we drove to the bay we would be kayaking at, we learned about the volcanic history of the Banks Peninsula, and stopped a couple times to enjoy the views.
We went kayaking in the bay there. Fiona, who I shared the kayak with, felt pretty seasick, so I did most of the paddling. It’s not really penguin season, and we only saw one penguin on the rocks. We did, however, sea many New Zealand Fur Seals. Once we got back to shore, the guide showed us a mated pair of penguins in one of the little penguin houses they have there for breeding penguins.
Probably the craziest thing I’ve done since I’ve been here was Twalk. Twalk stands for twenty four hour walk, and it is an orienteering competition put on by the University of Canterbury Tramping Club. (Click here to see the official website, click here to watch a documentary about it). Here is a description of the rules from the website:
“The event is held in a mystery location, and the course contains a total of five legs. Each leg is usually between 15 and 25 kilometers in length and teams are free to do a many or as few legs as they wish. Each competitor will be given a map of the course upon arrival at the start of the course, which will have all controls for leg one marked on it and the location of the Hash house. Teams find as many of the controls on the map as they want, before ending at the Hash house.”
I didn’t know anybody doing it, so I asked my friend from the tramping club if he could find me a team, which he incredibly did. Turns out that most of the team was flying down from Auckland to participate, so I didn’t know any of them. One of the fun parts of twalk is that everybody dresses up in elaborate costumes for the first leg. The name of the team I joined was Psychedelic Shamans, and two of our 7 people on the team had really cool shaman costumes – one guy had a mask made out of a deer skull. The rest of us met up the night before at a costume store to decide what to wear. I suggested that if two of us were shamans, then the rest of us should be the mushrooms that made the shamans psychedelic. Our costumes came out really well, and we actually ended up winning the award for best costumes!
There were a lot of other really amazing costumes – one team even dressed up as furniture movers and carried an ironing board, an office chair, and a functioning lawnmower for the entire first leg!
We met at the carpark at 7:30 on Saturday morning, and they loaded us into busses. Part of Twalk is that the location is a mystery, and so on the bus ride everyone was guessing where we were going. The final location was called Lake Heron, and we spilled out of the busses, found our teams, and got our maps and clue sheets. This year’s Twalk was the biggest one ever, with around 500 people participating!
At 11:30, we were off! Although we all started at the same time and were searching for the same controls, it did not take long until we were spread out. Some people ran – my team did not thank goodness. The first leg was 18 kilometers long, and we arrived at the Hash House at 4:00. The Hash House is the home base for the rest of the legs, and people set up their tents there to store their stuff and sleep if they want to. Food is also served for the whole 24 hours there, because teams are coming in and leaving at all times. Progress of each team is also charted at the Hash House, so you can always see how many points each team has, how many legs they’ve done, how long each leg took, and which leg they’re on now. Each team is required to spend at least 30 minutes at the Hash House between legs, and when those 30 minutes have passed, it is announced that they can leave again. During those 30 minutes (or more if you want), teams eat and also record the locations of the controls for the next leg. The first leg was given to us, but for the rest, we had to mark on our maps where they were. This can lead to some interesting situations where people have slightly different locations marked for the controls.
After our first leg, my team had to wait for dinner to be served, and then we left for leg 2 at 5:30. It was so strange to just have done what was, by all accounts, a very long day hike, only to set off on another hike at sunset. For our second leg, we had to cross a braided river and then hike straight up a very steep ridge. While hiking up, I was really struggling – I was much slower than the rest of my team, and had to stop frequently to catch my breath. I felt pretty bad about slowing them down so much but there really wasn’t much I could do to change it.
(Now for a quick side tangent: I had begun to suspect that I have Exercise Induced Asthma after talking to one of my friends who has asthma on our road trip over the midsemester break. For years really I have been struggling with running or going up hills and generally having a hard time anytime I start breathing hard, but I have somehow mostly been able to avoid intense exercise like that, and capoeira doesn’t really trigger it. After Twalk, I decided it had gone too far and went to the doctor here. Sure enough, she agreed and prescribed me an inhaler. And let me tell you – walking up hills is so easy now, as is running. I am pretty angry I didn’t do anything about it earlier, but thankful that I am not struggling nearly as much now. For so long I thought I was just unfit, but now I know I just wasn’t getting as much air as I needed!)
Now back to Twalk: The second leg took us a total of 11 hours. When we got back to the Hash House at 4:30 am, we realized that we had been using the clue sheet for leg 3 for all of leg 2. The clue sheets provide a couple cryptic words to help locate the controls (paper plates with words on them). Even though we were using the wrong clues, we still got 8/17 controls for leg 2. After eating a little bit of soup, I went to bed at 5:30 am. 3 of my team members continued on to do part of leg 3. I woke up around 10, and at 11:30, the competition ended. Winners were revealed – there were several categories including best overall, best student team, longest leg 1, and best costume (which we won). Then everybody packed up their tents, loaded into busses, and slept the whole way home.
If you remember, at the beginning of the midsemester break I had gone to Wellington for a capoeira event. Halfway through term 2, I flew back up to Wellington for ANOTHER capoeira event. Fiona came with me, and explored Wellington while I was at the event. We spent the first morning together, and went to the Wētā Cave, which is a museum/overpriced gift shop that has Lord of the Rings items.
That evening, I went to the capoeira event. It was being held at a marae (pronounced mah-RY (y as in cry)), which is a Māori meeting house and community center. Maraes are and always have been the hubs of Māori communities, and everything from birthday parties to weddings to funerals to important business meetings and everything in between are held there. They are usually beautiful buildings with intricate carvings and other symbolic art. There is also a whole code of conduct, called tikanga, about how you should act on a marae. In Te Ao Māori, the Māori world, there are two opposing forces called tapu and noa. Tapu and noa are states of being. Here is a brief explanation of tapu and noa (click here to view the source website):
“Tapu is the strongest force in Māori life. It has numerous meanings and references. Tapu can be interpreted as ‘sacred’, or defined as ‘spiritual restriction’, containing a strong imposition of rules and prohibitions. A person, object or place that is tapu may not be touched or, in some cases, not even approached.
Noa is the opposite of tapu, and includes the concept of ‘common’. It lifts the ‘tapu’ from the person or the object. Noa also has the concept of a blessing in that it can lift the rules and restrictions of tapu.”
In a marae, there are two main rooms. One is the wharekai, which is where everybody eats. There is a kitchen attached, and there are tables and chairs. The other room is the wharenui, which is where meetings are held, and also where people sleep. Generally, things in the wharekai are noa, and things in the wharenui are tapu. Food and water are noa, so they must stay in the wharekai and may not be brought into the wharenui. Shoes must also be taken off before going into the wharenui. Also, the wharenui must be kept clean and tidy, because the ancestors are watching.
We had a roda on Friday, workshops all day Saturday and a roda that night, and workshops Sunday morning and a roda in the afternoon. Although I enjoyed all the workshops, I struggled a lot on Saturday. I am very sensitive to loud noises, and I generally know this. If I’m proactive about wearing earplugs, usually I don’t get too overwhelmed. However, the acoustics in the wharekai, where we did our workshops, were such that it didn’t seem like it was that loud, but every sound – music, voices, shoe squeaks – was reflected back off the walls. Halfway through the morning workshop on Saturday, I had to take a break and go sit with my hands over my ears for 15 minutes. After that I put in earplugs, but the damage was already done. That evening, during the roda, I started crying. It was just tears running down my face, and I mostly kept it together. I didn’t leave because the roda itself was awesome and I really wanted to be there, even though I wasn’t reacting well. I paid a steep price afterward, though; I couldn’t stop crying for an hour and a half afterwards. I had to eat dinner outside alone, and went to bed way before everyone else did. Several people were concerned about me, but there wasn’t much they could do. I’ve had reactions like this before to overstimulation, so I knew what was happening, but it’s never been quite this extreme. On Sunday, I wore my earplugs all day and was perfectly fine.
Overall, I enjoyed the capoeira event, and I learned a lot. These kind of events are always challenging for me in ways that most people don’t deal with. In the past, sometimes I have avoided them, and generally always make sure I have an exit plan. This event made that a bit difficult because everyone was eating and sleeping there together. I learned my lesson though, and in the future know that I need to make sure to be proactive about protecting myself from getting overstimulated even if I don’t think it’s going to be an issue or feel like it’s rude to leave.
My last update for this very long blog post is that I started doing fieldwork every week with someone from Manaaki Whenua, the Landcare Research Center. The goal of the fieldwork is to measure the health of kānuka trees on the Banks Peninsula and determine what factors – including nearby trees and plants, microbes in the soil, and fungi on the roots – contribute to a tree being healthy or not. The sites are randomly selected using ArcGIS, which means that we don’t know what a site will look like until we’re actually there. Some of the sites are beautiful, with stunning views and easily accessed trees, and some are really difficult, to the point where we are crawling through dense bushes and trying our best to avoid stinging nettles.
I am not getting paid for this work (even if they wanted to, my visa won’t allow that), but I love spending all day outside in the New Zealand bush paying close attention to the plants and fungi around me. It’s also great experience for my resume, and I am getting valuable experience for future plant-related field work.
That’s all for now! If you made it to the end, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed. I am about to travel for a whole month, so my next blog post probably won’t be for a while. Also, in case anyone is wondering, I will be back in California on September 12th!