Auckland - Weeks 19 + 20 - Beach Trip!

-- 2/19 to 3/5/2017 --

I could have sworn I spent all my time on my computer just watching Downton Abbey and finding episodes of Little Witch Academia to stream. And yet, looking back, it appears that a ton of stuff happened these past two weeks.

In terms of flat activities - Flat-ivities, if you will - John's friend John came to visit with his wife (Kim) and 5 year old kid. We played Monopoly with the most messed up rules I've ever heard of: you couldn't leave Go until you rolled double 6's; we had a 2 hour time limit; if you passed up on a property it immediately went up for auction. Oh, and there was tons of cheating. It was so fun. 

John (flatmate) and I also went to Japan Day on the waterfront with Miguel. We ate okonomiyaki, a lady named Rina stole my takoyaki and I got hers, and Miguel bought us drinks at the Asahi beer garden. I tried to tell them about the Asahi poop building I saw in Tokyo. I don't think they understood what I was talking about, but to be fair I don't understand it either. After that we went down to a bar that was having a special Brazilian Carnival celebration, but it was so loud that John and I ducked out early. We went and got watermelon from the grocery store and made our own Watermelon Ice Cream. Vanilla ice cream goes perfectly with watermelon. Just trust me.

My special treat last week was to go out to Tanpopo Ramen, where I got a yuzu ramen with citrusy broth. 

While I was on campus I found an event guide for the Auckland Arts Festival, which is apparently over a month long. I went out to two of the first galleries to open and saw Der Papālagi (The White Man), photos and video from a social experiment in Samoa where a German couple wearing traditional Samoan regalia stood in public places (markets, restaurants, grocery stores, the street) while Samoans tried to figure out what to do with these crazy white people. The other open gallery is Still, Like Air, I'll Rise, with a bunch of feminist pieces about indigeneity. Most of the exhibit was organized around works by Hanna Brontë from Australia, and in a great description of her feminism I learned that to succeed in achieving equality we must first visualize what victory looks like, which is what Brontë's work is all about.

 

At school, I had a big meeting with my advisors to talk about my thesis proposal outline. They both liked it! A lot! Though they were wondering why I didn't cite any human ecodynamics literature when I have ecodynamics in the provisional title of my thesis. So I spent the rest of the last two weeks on campus reading about human ecodynamics and complexity theory. The basic idea is that human organizations and behavior can't be understood or meaningfully separated from the environmental context that they exist in, so we have to try and study the ways that human-landscape relationships coevolve. Not sure how I'll fit any of that into my research, but we'll see what happens.

A master's student who is studying something about variation in height, leg length, shoulder breadth, and teeth shapes in families practiced taking measurements on me a couple times. In return her supervisor took me out to get a beer at the Old Government House, which was the seat of New Zealand's government for a few years and is now a club for faculty and PhD students on Uni's campus. 

This last week was also Orientation Week, so there were hundreds of brand new students running around getting to know the campus. I can only imagine what it's going to be like tomorrow when everyone is back on campus. I went down to the marae to participate in the Arts Faculty Pōwhiri, but couldn't get in for all of the students that showed up. Instead I watched from a terrace above the marae, as all the students were welcomed to the university with a twenty minute speech in Te Reo Māori, a student leader responded, and the Dean and Deputy Dean of Arts made speeches. While heaps of racial discrimination  still hasn't been addressed by New Zealand society at large, it's so important that Māori culture and language are given these key roles in modern cultural practices. I only hope Native American voices will be given similar recognition some day soon.

I finished off the week by hiring a car and driving out to the Coromandel Peninsula for the weekend. Driving on the left was terrifying at first. It took me even longer to get used to driving on the right side of the car. And it wasn't until the second day of driving that I got used to having the turn signal on the right side of the steering column. But I managed to get by alright, and Google helped me get around some of Auckland's typically awful traffic so that the ride only took 3 hours instead of a possible 4 hours (it's only 2 without any traffic). On the way, I was reminded of how this part of New Zealand looks exactly the same as California.

I drove myself to Hahei and spent a couple nights at a backpacker's lodge. Even though I was only there for a short time I started to think of the folks I was staying with as a little family. There were some older couples from Corvallis, OR and Santa Cruz, CA who made the world feel a little small. I also spent some time at Pour House, the local brew pub with a new friend, Amelie from Bavaria. The Coromandel brews were okay on the lighter side of the spectrum, but the Belgian and the porter I had were great.

On Saturday, I grabbed an armload of snacks and handpies, hired a snorkeling kit, and hiked out to Te Whanganui-A-Hui Marine Reserve. My first stop was at Stingray Bay, where I ran into several rays the moment that I put my snorkel mask on (I'm pretty sure they were not true stingrays, just some other kind of skate or ray). The tide was coming in and the water was pretty murky, so I didn't see anything else right away. Eventually I swam over to some rocks on the edge of the bay and found out where all the fish were. Unfortunately I was already getting cold and had to swim back to shore.

 

After eating lunch and warming up, I hiked back up hill over to Mare Leg Cove and went snorkeling along the edge where the big rocks were and found a lot more fish. I even floated with some squids for a bit! I decided to come back in pretty quick so that I wouldn't get so cold again, and hung out on the beach eating more snacks and drinking guava/pear juice. Only then did I realize that the place called Cathedral Cove that I had specifically come to see was on the other end of the beach. I walked through it and took some pictures of the beach I had thought I was on, and then went back to get my stuff. 

Today, I woke up early and walked out on Hahei Beach from the lodge and hiked up to the Pā, a kind of Māori defensive site that's commonly located on hills and headlands (those terraces on the slope in the photo below were dug out by hand and used to be lined with wooden palisades). It was a little strange that there was no signage at all for it, but it would have been a great vantage point for checking out everyone who tried to pass by in a waka.

After getting a good helping of eggs benedict with salmon at the Hahei Beach Cafe, I said goodbye to everyone and took a circuitous route home by way of Whangamata and Karangahake Gorge. Karangahake was New Zealand's most profitable gold mining town at the beginning of the 20th century, and there are still miles of tunnels and tracks carved into the sides of the mountains. I took a long walk up the river along the old mine cart tracks and had a great time exploring the mines that were open to the public. Unfortunately, I had to return the car by 4, so I reluctantly made my way back to Auckland and started getting ready to get back into school life again.

Auckland - Weeks 17 + 18 - Research Bazaar

-- 2/4 to 2/18/2017 --

Two weeks after celebrating Auckland Anniversary Day, we got another holiday for Waitangi Day. All of New Zealand has observed this February 6 holiday since 1934 to commemorate the nation's founding document. While 52 Māori chiefs had already signed a Declaration of Independence to create the United Tribes of New Zealand in 1835, which was explicitly recognized by King William IV, no united tribal government emerged. By 1840, the British state got over its reluctance to establish yet another colony and sent a representative to negotiate a treaty with the Māori that would establish British rule and protect the commercial interests of UK citizens in the country. Auckland Day celebrates the arrival of William Hobson, who negotiated the treaty and became governor, and Waitangi Day celebrates the treaty itself, the 'founding' of the nation, and a myth of racial harmony between Māori and Pākehā. 

For my Waitangi Weekend, I went to a dance party, a birthday BBQ party, and took a long walk out along the waterfront to see some Waitangi Day celebrations. The dance party was a big highlight of the weekend. It started off with swing dance, which is hard for me to do here since East Coast isn't a thing and I've just started learning Balboa. Then a live blues guitarist and singer started playing. Almost all the swing dancers cleared out at that point, but I had some really good dances to awesome live music.

After the long weekend I went to the Auckland Research Bazaar, one in a series of worldwide free events where researchers of all stripes were invited to come for three days of workshops and activities designed to broaden our range of research skills. Everyday we had story time with talks from researchers while we sat in bean bags, and then we'd go off to get a crash course in coding with particular programs like Bash, R and R Shiny, Python, LaTeX, and Git. We also had soft-skills workshops which were generally much more helpful to me. On top of all that, we spent time drawing together on giant sheets of paper, playing with poi, and eating lots of good food, like pizza by the meter (note: Auckland NY-style pizza is still better than Portland's).

Above all, the most useful part of the ResBaz (as they call it) for me was the Program Management workshop, where the presenter introduced us to Scrum - an iterative approach to projects that focuses on finishing 'potentially shippable' products on the way to completing the final objective - and showed us all of the web tools she uses to communicate with her team and manage her workflow. After that talk, I immediately set myself up on the web app Trello and designed some Scrum-inspired project management boards to help me manage grad school. In the first week since I started implementing the ideas I got out of the workshop, I feel a major improvement in my productivity, and a major reduction in my stress-load now that I keep track of my work, have a way to hide my to-do list from myself, and take breaks more frequently (5 minute stretch after 25 minutes of work, longer snack/lunch every 2 hours). Talk to me if you want to hear more!

Last weekend was also a party weekend. First Sehui, John, and I met up with their friends for the Chinese Lantern Festival, where we ate dumplings, sausage on a stick, and takoyaki. We also got watermelon and ice cream, which is where you cut a watermelon in half and put three scoops of ice cream on top of it, and is surprisingly great (cookies and cream + watermelon!). We wandered around checking out the lanterns and watched a very 80's rock band from northwest China. On Saturday I made pizza for John's birthday (including a topokki pizza based on the quintessential Korean street food) and we managed to cram about 25 people into the flat for a dance party and social. It was a little crazy, and I was very thankful when everyone left around 1:30am to go clubbing so that I could go to sleep.

After waking up late on Sunday and spending a good part of the early afternoon cleaning up the flat and vacuuming all the doritos out of our carpet, I went to an Auckland dance community meeting to discuss community safety. Dancers around the world are having some tough conversations right now after a number of women came forward with accounts of sexual assault and rape perpetrated by several big-name dance instructors in France and the US. Auckland dancers responded in a very mature way by coming together to establish a community code of conduct with mechanisms for enforcing that code so that we can prevent similar scandals before they develop, make everyone feel welcome and safe (LGBTQ people haven't necessarily been welcomed with open arms to date), and detect ongoing or future issues before assaults happen. 

The plan is to have trained Community Volunteers at every dance for anyone to talk to about how they're feeling and being treated, or to report any shenanigans they see or hear about. Those CV's will report to a handful of community leaders who will keep records of any complaints so they can spot patterns and intervene when necessary. Those leaders are trained to refer victims to counselors or legal help. The goal is to break through the barrier of social isolation that perpetrators create to protect themselves from retribution and increase their control over their victims. The more I think about it, the more I feel that it is essential for any community to have similar mechanisms in place to make it harder for anyone to get away with abuse.

We had several flat activities this week ahead of Sehui's departure for a month-long visit to Korea and for John's birthday. First we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant for John, and then we went out to Burger Burger for burgers, shakes, and onion rings. I was semi-horrified to see that Sehui eats her burgers with fork and knife.

There were also several anthropology events. On Thursday I went to an Anthropology Department Seminar about petroleum exploration and the ways that the government is undermining the voice of local councils and communities in a newly reframed top-down, paternalistic relationship. I spent Friday night at an Anth Read-In, a global effort to get anthropologists reading political literature and discussing current events. It looks like the Auckland chapter is just me and Corina, a Romanian applied anthropologist, but we had a great conversation about the political economy of social media and the importance of civic engagement.

Finally, on Saturday I went to the Auckland Art Gallery and checked out the Lindauer Māori portraits, which are a series of amazingly life-like paintings of important Māori political figures from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I was also impressed by the Gallery's main collection, which has represents tons of Māori artists and perspectives.

After I posted results from my survey of new about the new President's deplorable actions, I ran out of steam. I couldn't keep up with the constant barrage of terrible things. Fortunately, someone else has started keeping track for us. You can follow along on with this daily summary by Jezebel if you ever worry that you aren't hearing about every action the new administration is taking to erode democracy and our trust in government. 

Auckland - Weeks 15+16 - Waka

-- 1/22 to 2/3/2017 --

So I've been maintaining a spreadsheet to keep track of every terrible thing the new administration is doing to unravel the values that America is founded on and that I hold dear. In the two weeks that Donald Trump has been president, his administration's actions, threats, and inaction amount to 105 specific instances in which he has made America Worse by undermining human rights (x18), a functioning government (17), truth (10), diplomacy (7), and economic prosperity (6), among other American ideals.

Now I've gotten that out of the way, I can tell you about how things are going in New Zealand.

The Sunday before last I spent the entire day on Facebook watching the Women's Marches unfold across the nation. I absolutely hate using Facebook, but I felt strongly that since I couldn't participate I should help out by being part of the audience and hearing the messages that everyone is trying to send. Now I have a minor addiction to social media, which is exacerbated by my feelings of isolation in New Zealand, and by a desire to remind myself that I have friends who are paying attention and feel just as horrible about the state of the US government as I do. Hopefully I'll find some kind of balance soon.

Fortunately, some of those feelings of loneliness are being assuaged by social changes at school and after school. Last week we got our tea room back from the construction workers who are removing the potential asbestos panels from our building. Now I can go eat lunch and hang out with other people! Then, this week, the All-In Swing and Blues dance classes started up again. I went and learned how to do balboa block, which felt oddly similar to blues for a swing dance. It's pretty exciting getting back into swing, and the frenetic, exhausting, almost masochistic energy that comes with it.

We also had several visitors at our flat. Last Wednesday, Sehui's old work friend, Carolina, came over with anchovies for John, because she thought he was from Spain. Fortunately, I was there to eat up all the anchovies with some crackers and cheese. On Saturday, John and Sehui invited their friend Juan Manuel over, and the four of us went out to dinner at a Chinese dumpling restaurant to observe the lunar new year. It turns out that NZ Chinese food is like US Chinese food, but there are no fortune cookies. Also, we had a dish called diced chicken that was cooked with peanuts and cucumber! We all went on a huge trek to Mt. Eden, then ordered a ride back to the flat. I had an excellent conversation with the driver, who told me all about the lava caves there are to explore in Auckland. So that's at the top of my bucket list now.

Last weekend was Auckland Anniversary Weekend, which sort of commemorates the founding of New Zealand but is only observed by a couple regions that are in the northern North Island. There was a ton of stuff going on: the Ports of Auckland opened up to visitors and had a concert with fireworks, there was a giant craft market, a Busker Festival (it was almost as annoying/cool as it sounds), a regatta, a Maritime Museum Carnival, and a Māori canoe and dance festival.

As an anthropologist and boating enthusiast, I of course spent most of my weekend at the Tāmaki Herenga Waka Festival. It started at 7:00 am Saturday with a parade of waka (Māori canoes), and a pōwhiri (traditional welcoming) for the waka crews and the public. The hosts sang speeches in Te Reo Māori, then the waka crews sang their own songs and performed a haka. The whole ceremony took about 45 minutes, and ended with hongi greetings from each of the hosts to each of the guests. 
 
After the pōwhiri, there were three days of waka races, dozens of musical performances, and a kapa haka competition. I only managed to see one kapa haka by an urban Māori group, and it totally blew me away. Just like the cultural demonstration that I attended at the Waitangi Treaty grounds, I was brought to tears by the beauty of the songs, which all happened to be about the comfort that being able to speak your own language brings, and about the beauty and power of Māori women.

Other highlights: I ate whitebait fritter (like an omelette with lots of tiny fish cooked into it) on white bread, and hungi (steam baked sweet potato, taro, and chicken dish). I took a quick sail on a...creative recreation of a Polynesian voyaging vessel. Best of all, I had a go at paddling in a waka. After some drills on Māori paddling commands and waka protocols, our mixed crew of Māori and Pākehā manged to make a few laps of the marina without crashing into anything or making total fools of ourselves, so I call that a win!

In academic news: I had my first meeting with the advisors of the year, and I started to feel like we were closing in on a final research topic. Then someone remembered a recent PhD thesis that might have been almost exactly the entire project we'd been trying to do. So I read through that and it was a) really really bad, and b) not totally the same topic as I was thinking about. I went ahead and had some professional meetings to pick people's brains about the archaeology of Māori fishing and what collections there might be for me to look at. All of that was great. I've also spent a lot of time just reading background materials on overfishing, Māori archaeology, and Polynesian cuisine.

Last week I took myself out to Burger Burger, where the decor was so hipster and the burgers so good that I thought I must be in Portland. I think I'll be going there a lot when I'm missing the Northwest. This week I took myself out to the Gin Room, a super fancy cocktail lounge that I absolutely love. I got a gin and tonic with Sipsmith V.J.O.P. (very junipery over proof), which tasted a lot like juniper and made me desperately homesick for the pinyon and juniper pine forest in the Four Corners. So I think I'll go there when I'm missing all my friends at Canyon de Chelly.

Last thing of note, but definitely not the least: I bought my tickets to come home for a visit! I have to fly to Vancouver, B.C. for the Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meetings, but it turns out that all of the tickets to the area are hella expensive right now. So I opted to get a much cheaper flight to SFO and spend the weekend of March 24th in Marin. Then I'll catch a flight up to Portland, and carpool up to Vancouver with some of my best buds from PSU. After all that, Jess and I are going to spend a week or so together exploring Vancouver and Victoria, then my family is going to descend on Portland and we'll all hang out there for a while before I finally have to come back to Auckland at the end of April.

So. Freaking. Excited.

Auckland - Weeks 13+14 - Back to Work

-- 1/7 to 1/21/2017 --

With the holidays over and school officially back in session, I got back down to studies and worked my ass off these last two weeks. Knowing what lay ahead, I of course went to the beach. 

John and Sehui's friends Daniel and Gia (another Colombian/Korean couple) picked the three of us up at our flat on Saturday and drove us back out to Muriwai for my second trip there. We stopped along the way to pick up snacks, and then spent the afternoon playing with a frisbee (which was very ineffective in high winds) and body surfing in the narrow zone of waves actually covered by lifeguards. On the way back we stopped for strawberry ice cream at a rural farm. I really didn't like the look of the line, so I hopped over to a gelato shop next door that had some really creative flavors, as you can see in the photo. I decided to get a double scoop of caramel corn, and passion fruit cheese cake, which was far too much but also far too delicious for that to matter.

We also went out to our friend Carlos' flat again for a little drinking, talking, and dancing. We were having fun and maybe being a little loud when a security guard came out of nowhere to charge the renters with a $150 fee for violating building rules that they had never heard of or agreed to. Carlos managed to talk him out of charging the fee, and we all left quickly after that before any more trouble could get started.

Once the work week started, I started scraping a bunch of fishbone data out of archaeological reports, learning the dark arts of Microsoft Access, and building a pilot database for me to use while I develop my thesis proposal. I stayed late on campus pretty much every single night, but by the end of the week, I managed to produce a decent map of all the fishbone assemblages in the northern North Island. I also ended up saying goodbye to our friend Steven who returned to Korea, went out for parkour, and went to a delicious ramen shop. I'm now resolved to go out to try some new food in Auckland once every week to make sure I still go exploring the city and don't get too overwhelmed with school.

On the next weekend I went out for coffee with another person who's working on fish for her PhD, though she's more interested in the fish that are actually still alive. It was really fun to nerd out about taxonomy and find another person excited about marine sciences, and I'm hoping we can hang out more and become good friends. 

Then on Sunday I went to Rangitoto Island again with Julie from grad school for a hike and picnic. I made orange rolls again in the morning (I didn't burn them this time!) and then rushed out to catch a ferry that ended up being full. So instead I met up with Julie's friends Clare and Alex at a cafe and got to know them while the rest of our group came across the harbour. We eventually got on a ferry that wasn't full and rode out to the island, where we climbed straight up to the lava caves, took a tour through them, and then hiked the rest of the way to the summit where we ate a lovely picnic.

This past working week I tried to get back to finishing up a journal article-length version of my Master's thesis, but I had lots of trouble figuring out how to write the conclusion. Fortunately I got sidetracked when Melinda asked me to start checking in with New Zealand archaeologists to find collections I might study for my PhD, and to do a bunch of reading ahead of a meeting next week so I can develop my research question a bit further.

I kept working on my readings late into Friday evening, but when I left I went out to join my flatmates at Latin Fest, a weekend long celebration of Latin American food, music, and culture. We tried to see a samba demonstration over the heads of a tightly packed crowed, thought about dancing salsa, and watched human foosball. There were also some great empanadas and alfajores, a delicious Argentinian cookie sandwich treat. When the fest started winding down for the night we went back to our flat, where an Argentinian couple gave us a lesson on Shakira's professional career and I bonded with Miguel from Colombia over Jethro Tull. 

And then I woke up on Inauguration Day. I was not prepared for how angry I felt when I woke up today. I've been trying to maintain as much optimism as possible that US citizens remain good people who will fight to protect everyone's freedoms and work to make the world a better place for the next generation, despite the new administration's immediate motions to make sure that privileges and power remain in the hands of only the few. But this morning all of my optimism was gone, replaced by a figurative and literal hangover. I found myself in a foreign country with sleeping flatmates and no one to immediately turn to and talk about my frustrations with. I felt isolated and powerless, and too emotional to even contemplate how many other people are even more strongly affected by this inauguration than I am.

Fortunately, I already had plans to attend the Women's March in Auckland, which provided a perfect emotional outlet and a truly uplifting experience. I've written up a brief description of my experience in a Facebook note, but I can't emphasize enough how loving and powerful the atmosphere was at the demonstration. This was an event that people brought their family dogs to, while 90 year old feminists rode in wheel chairs alongside toddlers in strollers in the streets of Auckland's business center without any police presence whatsoever. In general people did not really pick up any chants - it was not a protest (though there were a couple people shouting "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Donald Trump has got to go!" at the beginning, which is pretty weird to hear half-way around the world only 5 hours after he was sworn in) - but we did clap in rhythms as we walked and occasionally a cheer rolled through the crowd. 

Aside: We were told that the police chose not to have a strong presence on the ground because 'women are safe.' This is, on one hand, both true and positive. The majority of the marchers presented as women, and I truly believe that destruction and violence are never useful tools in a democratic society. It's also much nicer demonstrating for human rights without having to face down people in riot gear. On the other hand, the idea that women are 'safe' is incredibly paternalistic, demeaning, and untrue. Women are powerful people who will upend the world with sufficient organization and motivation. Never doubt that.

In the end, the restrained character of the demonstration only underscored the people's power all the more. Everyone was absolutely self-assured in their righteous purpose, and united in the conviction that people of all genders, able-bodiedness, ethnicities, orientations, cultures, and religions should have equal rights, equal pay, and safety in their lives. After marching from the US consulate to Myer's Park and listening to four amazing women speakers, the demonstration ended on a very high note when Lizzy Marvelly, editor for the young feminist website The Villainesse, told us that "The future will be hard won. But the future is bright, and it is feminist." Then all 2000 people gathered together for a selfie, and we dispersed.

Afterwards, I was still feeling tightly wound and unable to deal with my frustrations over the new administration. So I did what I always do in such situations and took a walk. I went out to the harbour and stared at boats for a while, then walked back towards the city center to try out some other foods at the Latin Fest's second night of celebrations. This ended up being a very lucky choice. First I got Colombian empanadas, with a free one included because they wanted to get rid of the less-presentable ones. Then while I was eating the delicious empanadas my grad school friend Olivia who had been demonstrating capoeira earlier ran into me and introduced me to her friends. Third, her friends gave me free beer. And finally, I got to do some bad salsa dancing to live music.

I have a suspicion that dance will be a powerful form of resistance over the next four years. There is also something brilliant about having such a joyful time celebrating Latin American culture with immigrants and visitors to New Zealand on this US Inauguration Day that dissipated all remaining ill feelings I had from the beginning of the morning. I know we still face terrifying threats to social justice and peace, but I am also happy knowing that so many people in the new administration would hate how much fun I was having tonight.

Paihia and Auckland - Week 12 - First Days of Summer 2017

-- 1/1 to 1/6/2017 --

With my summer holiday quickly coming to an end, I went on a little trip northwards to Paihia in the Bay of Islands. After taking the morning to edit photos from 2016 and start the new year with a clean slate, I hopped on a bus for a four hour ride through Northlands.

On the bus, I passed:

• An ad in Warkworth with a photo of wild kids and arguing parents that said, "Need a Vasectomy? Buy Local and Support your Community!"
• A bad car accident involving a van that rolled, with first responders just arriving.
• Sheepworld! New Zealand's sheep and wool centre! 
• The WWI village exhibition near Waipu.

In Paihia, the bus dropped me off at the ferry terminal literally across the street from my, where I had amazing views of the bay. I checked in and met Faith from Singapore, who was on the same bus and staying in the same room as me. She went for a walk and I went to find some food at a fish and chips shop downstairs. 

After eating some nicely fried snapper with chips, I went to find some groceries, but that search turned into a long walk along the beach, up to two different lookouts, and then inland and into the forest to a much higher overlook. It was so nice to be out of the city and in a place where the jungle is only a few minutes away. 

Back at the hostel, my new friend Faith offered me some of her extremely sweet Australian dessert wine. I guess she wasn't a fan of it, because she left the bottle with me when she left for bed. I stayed up chatting with a Swiss guy, and then went to bed reading a trashy knockoff of the Hornblower series about the British age of sail that I found in the hostel's library. 

Apparently that desert wine had an effect on me because the next morning I struggled to wake up, get up, and get out the door. I decided to just find a quiet, shady spot on the beach and read the trashy sailing novel, but once I got moving I didn't want to settle down and get stuck again. So I kept walking north along the beach, up the next beach over, and then across a one-lane bridge to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, which is one of the places I specifically came to Paihia to see.

In the early 19th century, Māori and Pākehā (literally non-ordinary people, i.e. Europeans) relations were strained by the introduction of muskets, bad behavior on the part of Pākehā, and competition among European empires for control of New Zealand. After some Māori declared independence as the United Tribes of New Zealand in 1835, a representative arrived from England in 1840 to negotiate a treaty with Māori at Waitangi. Hundreds of Māori rangatira (chiefs) agreed to cede governance of New Zealand to the English Crown (but not any rights to lands, resources, or sovereignty) in exchange for the full rights of British subjects. Waitangi is therefore the site where both of New Zealand's founding documents were created.

Today, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds are the site of an amazing museum that documents both sides of the ongoing negotiations between Māori and Pākehā. It also sports a forest reserve, the world's largest and fastest war canoe, a museum in the house where the treaty was signed, and a traditional, but totally unique, Māori meeting house. I took a guided tour of the grounds, and wound up attending a 'cultural performance' at the meeting house, which was, for some reason, an incredibly emotionally charged experience for me. 

After receiving a challenge to determine our intentions, watching the dances inside the meeting house, and listening to their uplifting songs, I needed a break, and wound up walking back out to the beach and reading my trashy sailing novel in a shady spot near some tidal pools. Later in the evening, I sat out on the wharf listening to people play on a public piano in the cool and calming sea breeze. Perfect vacation zone.

My trashy age of sail novel also served another purpose: I was getting amped up for my own sailing adventure on Tuesday morning! I picked up my tickets the wharf first thing after waking up and rode a ferry across the bay to the town of Russell, where I watched the schooner R. Tucker Thompson come into the harbour under motor power. Even after it docked at the pier, I just happily stared up at it with a stupid grin on my face until they let the passengers board for a day tour of the Bay of Islands.

The Tucker was a bit of a deja vu. In many ways it was like a mini version of the wooden schooner Bill of Rights that I used to live on in Southern California. When we boarded, the crew told us we could participate as much as we wanted. I knew going into this trip that I could never get as much sailing experience as I wanted, so I wasn't too disappointed when they didn't call on me to help raise the sails. Instead, I just put on a harness and went to hang out on the bowsprit and in foremast crosstrees. When I came back down from the rigging, we were served scones with jam and cream in the shape of an anchor.

Our trip took us out to Motuarohia Island, where we anchored in the small bay with about 15 other vessels. The captain set up a rope swing off the bow, which was the perfect way to start a swim. The crew also took us ashore on a motorboat so we could snorkel in a lagoon, or go climb the top of the hill for some outstanding views. Back on board we were served grilled chicken, potato salad, and greens, with hearty bread and butter. The trip back to shore was far too quick, and I really wish the Captain hadn't turned on the engine so we could take our time getting back, but I guess he had a schedule to keep or something. 

After the sailing adventure, I took a hike up the hill from Russell to visit a flagstaff that started a war when a Māori chief destroyed a British flagstaff four times to challenge the Crown, which was not respecting the terms of the treaty relationship. I got a bit confused on my way, but spent the time appreciating the birds, cicada shells, and stick bugs that I met along the way. From the top of the hill, I watched the Tucker head out on its evening sail, and then I went back down to take the ferry back to Paihia. 

Wednesday was my last day off from school, and my last day in Paihia. I took full advantage of both and spent the morning reading for fun. Then in the afternoon I went out on a hike through the bush to Haruru Falls. The trail took me through some fantastic mangroves, and on the way back I spied tons of shag nests hanging up in the trees along a river. The falls themselves were okay. In the evening, I hopped on another bus that took me all the way back to the city, which suddenly felt really big once again. I've been back to work on school stuff this Thursday and Friday, gathering up information that I'll hopefully be able to use for my PhD thesis.

It was amazing to take some time off and go sailing up in Northlands. It was also really dangerous too; now I keep thinking about living on ships, and running away from school to go sailing full time. Maybe I'll just have to find a crew that I can volunteer with in my spare time.