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.
