Installment 2: Orientation continued…

When we last left our hero…

Day 2 in New Zealand.

Everyone was very jealous of me/ wanted to kill me, due to the fact that my 7 hr nap on the plane in conjunction with my wonderful 12 hours of sleep that night allowed me to be the morning person I can be when I want to wake up early! [also the reason for why my campers end up hating me every morning I wake them up at TASP….but I digress.]. Kai was served at the wonderful hour of 8^am followed by a fun “pub-less quiz”  at 9^am.

Fun fact: many pubs in NZ do pub quizzes on a weekly basis. It’s a fun time, where groups of friends create teams and go down to the local pub for some brews and a good time answering trivia. There is normally a draw for a prize at the end, and the winning team receives a set amount in bar tabs. Since all Butler events are alcohol free, their way of briefing us on NZ and its culture was through a fun pub-less quiz, where apple juice was served and they offered us a little of NZ culinary at it’s best: Chicken flavored crisps (otherwise known as potato chips). [I kid you not— they are REALLY chicken flavored.]

Part of the pub-less quiz, was a nice afternoon ROGANE. What is a ROGANE, you ask? It is basically an outdoor scavenger hunt encompassing a large area of land. It is a fun acronym starting with Rugged Outdoor, but I can’t remember the rest.

Any who, we ran around the grounds of the park for about an hour finding little targets and writing down their symbols on an answer sheet. The team that won (not my team…we came in 2^nd to last) received fun prizes, none of which I can remember, so they must have not been that good. It was fun, and it was wonderful weather, so it was nice to be outside in the sun. But DON’T forget to put on sunscreen! Due to the hole in the atmosphere that is wonderfully located DIRECTLY over NZ, the burn time here is 5-8 MINUTES!! So, I diligently put on my sunscreen every morning, 15 minutes before I went out in the sun, just as my mother taught me, and I never once got burned (the scar on my nose did get a little scorched…but no serious, fall-asleep-on-the-beach-in-FL-in-March-and-have-Nancy-take-care-of-you-for-the-next-two-days burns lol). We ended up coming in 3^rd overall in the pub-less quiz, but no prizes.

After the quiz more Kai and then some afternoon fun[I would just like to take this moment to say that all of the food the four days we were there was AMAZING! For them to be able to serve 40 of us in a timely fashion and have it be REALLY good is awesome. I would have to say it rivals Tabor food…yeah I know!...so props to the cooks at YMCA Shakespeare National Park.]

 

Afternoon fun included activities such as mountain boarding, rock climbing, tramping, sailing on a catermaran, kayacking, TTYS (time to yourself), and CYEFH (check your eyelids for holes). Wonder what I did? I of course went sailing with 10 other people on a good size cat, pictures on the flicker page [here]. Though I did laugh at the CYEFH. Mike, the head counselor at the Y camp, explained the last one to us like this: since the sun here in NZ is very bright, something that can happen after being in the sun for extended periods of time is that the sun can burn holes in your eyelids. The way to check for this is to go far away from everyone else, find a nice shady spot, close your eyes, and scan the insides of your eyelids for holes. It normally takes about 30 to 60 minutes to complete this task, but is necessary.”

 

So I’m not sure how that will transfer to all of you who were not there and did not hear him say it…but it was funny at the time and I thought I would share. [For all of you who didn’t get it, he was sneekly talking about taking a nap.]

 

The sail was great—definitely check out the pictures, I have some fun ones of everyone on the boat. Getting out was interesting; the counselor somehow got the jib halyard stuck at the top of the forestay and had to dry capsize the boat to get it un-stuck. I noticed this as he was towing the boat to the water, but it took him about 10 minutes to understand the problem and fix it, no help from me…the stupid Butler Orientation kid. OH WELL. We got out in the end.

 

After the first session of fun outdoor time, there was another session, where I decided to lay out on the beach and start on my base tan. After that there was a Maori briefing (pronounced Mow-ree) where we learned about the Powhiri we would be participating in the next day. A Powhiri (pronounced po-fir-ee) is a welcome ceremony between a Maori tribe and visitors on the tribe’s Marae (pronounced Ma-rye). There is a whole choreography to how the visitors enter the sacred grounds of the Marae and what is said, and so on, so we learned about this at the briefing the night before. Before the briefing, we learned two traditional Maori songs and also had to pick our two representatives to speak for the group during the ceremony at the Marae.

 

Traditionally, the Maori culture has held men and women as equals, however with some rules. During a Powhiri, the only women permitted to speak is an elder woman who speaks on behalf of the group (normally someone who is part of the Maori tribe, inviting the visitors in). The representatives who speak directly for the group must be men—women can only sing. However, the way the Maori culture keep things equal is that the women of the group/tribe vote on the two male representatives. So in true Maori fashion, the women of our Orientation group picked two male representatives. At the briefing following their election, they found out that they had two fairly long speeches in Maori to memorize by the next evening. Needless to say, both men were a little nervous, and not so grateful to have been nominated. But they both survived.

 

After the briefing, more kai, and some free time before bed. A few of us decided that we wanted to help out the kitchen, so we took the food scrapings out to the pigs that night. We watched them mow the food for a while, took a few pictures, and then decided that they smelled bad and that we had seen enough. I then went down to the beach and watched the sunset and took some nice ahtsy pictures of the beach and rocks and such.

 

Day 3 in New Zealand

 

Our third day in NZ was filled with most of the business stuff they had been neglecting to tell us. In the morning we had just one (2 hour) briefing, where we met with our Student Rep. from our perspective university. Rebecca (the rep for both Victoria and Massey students) told us all about the fun stuff we could do in Wellington and what to expect and where the great coffee was, and so on. She also told us our housing at that point and went over what our schedule would be like once we got to Wellington and left the nurturing hands of the Butler staff.

 

More kai and then it was packing and off to the Marae. We left with some time to spare, so Mike (remember him, the head YMCA guy) took us on “Mike’s magical mystery tour” of Auckland. Our only stop on the tour was to the tallest point in Auckland. It’s a dormant volcano with BEATIFUL views of the city. Again, check out the pictures. After that short stop, we had another quick stop at a gas station/ souvenir shop (however no one had made dosh easily accessable…thanks Mike) (dosh = money), before a short tour of downtown Auckland, and then it was off to the Marae.

 

The powhiri was so moving. During our entrance on to the Marae, as part of the ceremony the whole group stoped midway to take time to remember those family members who have died or were unable to be present with us. Maori culture believes that when you travel somewhere you take with you all of your relatives and friends both dead and alive, and that they are as important to meet as those people who stand before them, so a moment of reverence is given to allow visitors to “bring” those people with them onto the Marae. It was such a special and moving moment for me, and it really caught me off guard. I did not expect it to affect me as much as it did, but I was very happy I had that moment of memory and memorial for myself— especially since I was not able to make it out to Nevada to visit my family before I left.

 

We stayed on the Marae that night; they cooked a traditional Hangi for dinner. Basically they dug a pit, filled it with coals and food, covered it back up and let it sit there under the dirt for a few hours and then dug it back up for us…I forgot to bring my camera, but I am in the process of trying to get some pictures from it off of fb. After dinner, a group of traditional Maori dancers came and performed for ys. Of course, participation occured and there is a great picture (that I will be getting at some point) of my participation. It’s floating around facebook somewhere for those of you who can find it. But the boys were also asked to participate in a traditional Haka (pronounced Ha-ka) or war dance. The dance was traditionally performed by warriors before a battle to intimidate the other side. So they bang their chests and slap their legs and bulge out their eyes and stick out their tongues to look as grotesque and scary as possible to psyche out the other side. Today, the All Blacks (NZ’s Rugby Team) perform a Haka before each game (for any of you who have seen that or want to YouTube it). It was really funny to watch the boys try and perform a Haka. They did pretty well, considering the amount of direction they got before hand. After some much needed embarrassment, the group preformed an actual Haka for us. The entire evening was a wonderful introduction to the indigenous people and culture of this land. After the festivities, we got ready for bed and listened to our elder tell us the history of the Maori people; from ancient religion to the colonial settlers arriving to the issues of today’s society. However, she had a very soothing voice, and some of us were still jet lagged, so most people fell asleep. But it was a really interesting lesson. We slept in the marae, which is a sacred building with carvings on the outside, and inside is a memorial to all who have passed on in the tribe. Pictures and portraits hung on the walls, but since it was sacred grounds we couldn’t take pictures inside, just of the outside carvings.

 

Day 4 in NZ

 

We had breakfast at the marae (not as good as dinner) and then we were off on another installment of Mike’s Magical Mystery tour before being dropped off at the airport. It was another “beautiful day in paradise” (as someone I know would say), so we stopped at a lovely beach called Sunset Beach on the West coast of the North Island for about 2 hours. Sadly, that was the only stop on Mike’s Magical Mystery tour, so by noon we had to say goodbye to our Orientation friends who were staying to study at the University of Auckland, and then we grabbed a plane to Wellington!

 

The plane to Wellington was actually a lot larger than I had expected. I thought we would be taking some small puddle jumper type plane, but it was actually normal size (3 seats on either side of the plane)—a nice surprise. Once we arrived in Wellington and got our baggage, we were divided up by housing and shuttled off to our perspective homes. At Everton, I was placed in temporary housing (which really annoyed me….no unpacking for Marjorie…EVER), but met some really nice Kiwis (New Zealand people…not birds and/or fruit). Once I was settled (a little) I met back up with Butler people and we went on an adventure in Wellington to find a little Italian bistro where Rebecca was collecting the group for one more meal on Butler, and a guided trip to the Wall-Mart of New Zealand (The Warehouse). Dinner was good, the warehouse was a necessary stop— I bought a blanket, sheets, and a pillow so I didn’t have to spend another night in the sleeping bag (using a mummy bag that is good to -30 degrees Fahrenheit gets a little sticky in muggy, fairly summery climates). Then the group went out to a local pub for our first night in Wellington. Yes for those of you who have been keeping track of the days ….it was a Tuesday night. But that is pub quiz night anyway, so plenty of people were out with us! It was a great first night in Wellington, but it was sad to leave our other Orientation friends behind in Auckland. The Wellington group was larger; the majority of the kids at orientation did go to Victoria (about 25 of the 40 of us at orientation).

 

Here ends the rest of my orientation story.

 

No witty comments for tonight; funny though, that this post is just as long as my previous post about my arrival to New Zealand. Oh well! I talk a lot…you should know that by now!!

Next time we will hear about the fun adventures exploring Wellington and then it’s off to the south island for a wonderful weeklong road trip.

 

~Marjorie