Week 2 already!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been here for two weeks, and yet we’ve already done so much. This week was a rainy one and we had our first disappointment when the trip to White Island fell through.

On Friday, we stayed at a marae, had some really good food, and had a slumber party in the meeting house. We didn’t have to take our shoes off when we went into the meeting house, and they allowed us to take pictures. That was really shocking to me. When we were at the Waitangi Treaty House Wil told us that we wouldn’t be able to take pictures when we stayed at the marae. We must have stayed with the laid back Maori tribe. The people weren’t as fierce as I thought they would be, which is probably a good thing. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was expecting a warrior to challenge our chief (Chris) and try to scare him, but I don’t think that they were trying to really scare us away. There was a group of Germans at the marae with us. All five of them sang louder than the 27 of us. Our song was pretty good though, considering the way that the practices went. The Maoris were singing along to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” with us, so I think that they enjoyed it. After they sang a bunch of songs, they served us dinner. The food from the hangi (Earth-oven) was delicious! You could taste the smoky wood flavor in everything. After dinner, we all piled into the meeting house and told ghost stories and played games like we were at summer camp.

The culture here is a good mix of Maori, British, and Kiwi. There is definitely a lot of British influence on the food (like spaghetti or baked beans on toast for breakfast), but there is a lot of stuff that is just unique New Zealand culture. Some kiwi phrases that I want to bring back home with me: togs, jandles, choice, takeaways, round-a-bouts. I like that the Kiwis kept a lot of Maori names and phrases. I think that in the US we don’t respect the Native American cultures as much as the Kiwis respect Maori culture.

A highlight for me was Raglan even though we haven’t officially gone as a group yet. A couple of us took a bus from Hamilton into Raglan last week. We spent half of the day just collecting shells from all over the beach and Matt helped explain some of the geological stuff for those of us that didn’t quite get it. He explained how shell colors are determined by the minerals that are in the environment. So, the black shells are black from iron sulphide. I was happy that I already knew that when we went to Mount Maunganui and Art lectured us about iron sulphide and iron oxide.

Even though we didn’t get to go to White Island, I thought that Mount Maunganui was a really cool place and it highlighted both geology and biology for me. I didn’t really understand what a “rocky intertidal” habitat was until we got there. All I knew was that it had rocks, but there are rocks everywhere in New Zealand. We climbed barefoot all over rocks and collected some really cool shells. I figured out the name of a really pretty spiral one that we found all over Mt. Maunganui and Raglan, a sundial. We found lots of scallops and some green lipped mussel shells on the beach. The water must hit the rocks pretty hard because there were shells wedged into every crack on the rocks. Someone found a really big piece of kelp on the beach. I never realized how tough kelp is! It felt like rubber. I also didn’t realize that kelp doesn’t have any roots.

Another fun thing that we did this week was zorbing. Initially, I wasn’t going to do it because it was cold and raining and I didn’t want to get wet. After a few people went and said how awesome it was though, I changed my mind and Karen, Chris, and I all went. I’m so glad that we did because it was so much fun!