Go the Naki!

As of tomorrow, I am halfway done with classes at Vic. And band camp hasn't even started at Delaware yet. Bizarre.

I had another amazing, albeit rainy, weekend in the Taranaki region, on the west coast of the North Island. The main town is New Plymouth but the main attraction is DEFINITELY Mt. Taranaki, an active volcano which peaks at 2518 metres above sea level. During the heart of winter, it is extremely difficult to reach the peak, especially with the lack of gear that I have with me in NZ. Although it was quite misty for most of the time we were there, the peak did emerge from the mist on Sunday for about 15 minutes, allowing me to snap a few pictures.

We attempted to do some short walks around the mountain on Saturday, but heavy rain and even some snow kept us at bay. Instead we checked out Puke Ariki, a museum in New Plymouth that has exhibits about the history of Mt. Taranaki, Maori culture and New Zealand ecology. It was fun to explore for the afternoon. That evening, we headed to TSB Bank field for my first rugby match! Taranaki was playing Hawkes Bay, so it was a battle between the two places I've visited on the North Island! I had no idea what was going on, but it was really fun regardless. I think my favorite part was when a couple from India sitting in front of us turned around and asked us who was the better team. Our response was that we didn't even know which team was which. However, if was a great experience and only cost $5 thanks to my uni ID.

Saturday night we headed to a local pub where the team was celebrating their draw (better than a loss, and MAN what a comeback). On Sunday morning, we got an earlier start and headed around the coast, which was a beautiful drive. This was when Mt. Taranaki chose to appear through the clouds. We continued driving until we reached the guiding stone.

The story of the guiding stone is a Maori legend about two great mountains. As legend has it, Mt. Taranaki and Mt. Tongariro were fighting over Mt. Pihanga, the only female volcano. As the two volcanos fought, they spit fire and ash between the two. In the end, Tongariro was victorious and made Taranaki leave. Here's map to help you better understand:

Taranaki used the guiding stone to find his way to his current home on the West Coast. There are still some who will not drive their car between the two because they are afraid that the mountains will begin fighting again and spit fire across the North Island.

After the guiding stone, we travelled up the mountain to see Dawson Falls. But first we got slowed down by a herd of cattle walking down the road.

Once we got to the trailhead, it was only about a 5 minute walk to get to the falls. However, it was pouring rain. Pouring. However, it was well worth it. The falls were freezing, since most of the water comes from melting snow and the water was making an incredible amount of wind when it hit the pool at the bottom.

I'm so glad I got to travel to yet another absolutely beautiful part of this country. Stay posted in the next couple days for my travel plans for the mid-semester break.

Kia Ora,

Liam

Life as a Kiwi

It's been over a month since I departed from New York, but it feels like so much longer. After five weeks here, there are some things that I have become used to and some that I still find strange to adjust to. Something that I was a little concerned about prior to arriving was my living situation. It reminded me of freshman year, in that I would be living with people whom had never met, but in the environment of a house. However, after just over a month of living with Elizabeth, Kevin & Natalie, I can only hope that HKLZ house is as fun as ours here.

Elizabeth reminds me incredibly of Kathleen, with little bits of Heather & Danna mixed in. We both love to eat and I love to cook, so that works out wonderfully. We drink gross amounts of juice each week, but luckily found NZ's version of Kool-Aid, Raro, in order to save money. Elizabeth adds cheese to EVERYTHING that we eat, and I've started to do the same. The cheapest cheese here is Edam, which is a Dutch style cheese. It's surprisingly good with everything, even Chinese food. A favorite pastime of Elizabeth and I is sitting in the lounge and Skyping from across the room as the flat watches TV. Even though we've only known each other for a few short weeks, we already have inside jokes that can make both of us burst out laughing in an instant.

Kevin, aka DJ Whatevskies, has one of the most extensive iTunes libraries I've seen and is our regular DJ on Friday nights. He's also an incredible photographer and I'm really happy I was able to steal some of his work before he added a digital watermark. Kevin is our resident "old man" since he has begun drinking scotch (Drambuie) and can't wait to find a pipe to smoke.

Natalie has been missing a bit in my life, but when she's here, she always makes me smile. To describe her, I'd say she's half Heather and half Danna. We have very similar senses of humor, leading to plenty of laughs at any time of day. Natalie has gotten almost hooked on Shortland Street, the only New Zealand soap opera. I'm not the kind of person to sit down and watch soap operas, but this one is growing on me. We'll see. Natalie makes amazing eggless cakes, even though she doesn't think so. Thankfully, we both have similar political views, which makes our discussions of Parliamentary much more interesting (and less heated haha). I'm ridiculously excited to visit Natalie in Blenheim, the heart of New Zealand wine country, to visit vineyards with her and her family.

Other than my living situation, Aotearoa has some cultural differences that I've really come to love and others that I'm still working on understanding.

New Zealand has a tradition known as the "sausage sizzle" which basically means a grilled sausage served with grilled onions on bread spread with butter and topped with tomato sauce. (Side note here...tomato sauce is NZ refers closest to ketchup...its a little less sweet and I definitely prefer it to Heinz). Sausage sizzles are absolutely amazing and are available often in the quad for free or one dollar. Healthy? No. Delicious? Yes.

I mentioned both Tim Tams and pies in my last post, so I'll take some time now to explain them. A Tim Tam is a wonderful cookie that is extremely popular here in New Zealand. The best way to describe it is an Oreo wearing a chocolate blanket. There's also the notorious Tim Tam Slam, which involves biting off both ends of the cookie and using it as a straw for a full glass of milk. Delicious.

Referring to a pie here means a meat pie, that is eaten as part of a meal. They come in a huge variety of flavours. My personal favourite at the moment would probably be steak and cheese. Last week I made my first traditional Kiwi dinner; Peas, Pie & Pud. I grabbed a picture of it for this blog. It was a really good and I'm sure I'll repeat it before I leave.

As for other culinary endeavors, cooking on my own is amazing and I really am learning to cook on a budget. I don't think I'll have to buy meat again until October since I recently visited NZ's version of Sam's Club, Pak'n'Save and stocked up on chicken, steak and shrimp. Fish and chips is huge here and I'm going to have to get that again soon, because the first time I was really happy with it.

Some things I'm still getting used to here include:

• figuring out which way to look for oncoming traffic when you're crossing the street
• the spelling of certain words. I really don't want to lose points on a handwritten assignment because I spelled centre wrong
• the way Kiwis text. its rly hrd t0 rd a txt whn its ritn lke this
• The accent. I love it. But sometimes I have NO idea what's going on. For instance, when Natalie says beer, it sounds like beeah and when she says bear, it sounds like beeyah. Very subtle difference. So when she told me she was going to dress up as a cute, cuddly beeyah for a Canadian themed party, I was trying to imagine how a Molson could look cuddly.
• In the choir I joined, the way that they talk about crotchets. Yes, I know a crotchet is a quarter note, but when they keep saying it, I can't help to giggle.

Finally, I'll leave you with a list of some Kiwi slang that I'm picking up, so you all understand me when I get back =)

• Kia Ora - Maori for hello, goodbye, how are you and basically any other kind of greeting or farewell. Similar to Ciao or Shalom
• Sweet as - Really sweet. haha by adding "as" to an adjective, you are saying its really ----
• Biscuits - as in the UK, this means cookies, but only crunchy ones. Chewy cookies are cookies. And in case anyone was wondering, explaining what an American biscuit is to someone who has no idea is so difficult, but I think Natalie got the idea eventually.
• Jandals - flip flops
• Oz - Australia, with whom New Zealand actually has quite the rivalry with.
• The Ditch - the Tasman Sea, which separates Aotearoa from Australia
• Hokey Pokey - Not the dance we all did in Kindergarten, but instead a flavour of ice cream that incorporates bits of toffee-like things. Really tasty.
• Zed - The letter Z. All of their websites end in .co.nz and every time they say a website on TV it gets me.
• Uni - University. They abbrev here a lot.

That's all for now...I'm heading to New Plymouth this afternoon, so I'll be blogging on that next week, which is the halfway mark for classes. (what?!) I'll leave you with a picture I got from Kevin of the three Americans. Natalie was home for the weekend :(

Kia Ora,

Liam

Left Side of the Road

Last week at about 4:00AM Thursday morning, I booked a car online for the weekend. My flat mate Elizabeth and our across-the-street neighbors Emily, Lauren and Aron decided it would be awesome to get out of the city for the weekend, but it wasn't until late on Thursday that we decided on a destination - Hawkes Bay. After some car rental issues we ironed out on Friday morning (only Lauren is 21) we packed our silver Nissan sedan and I got behind the wheel and got ready to drive on the left side of the road.

So weird.

Once we got out of the city and onto the highway, it was a much less stressful drive. The most difficult part of driving was keeping my eyes on the road because the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. We saw the sunset on the Kapiti coastline, which is just north of Wellington and then continued the rest of the drive in darkness. After stopping in Palmerston North for dinner at a Subway (where they do NOT have American cheese and the turkey has no preservatives), Aron took the wheel and drove the remaining two hours north to Hastings, a small city just south of Hawkes Bay. We had "booked" a hostel just before we left Wellington and at about 9:45, we located the Sleeping Giant. Apparently, though, this hostel is not frequented by backpackers. Instead, it is a hub for migrant workers. After we saw one of these workers polishing his gun in the lounge, we decided it would be best to find another place. Luckily, there were a few to choose from and by 11:00 we had settled into our home for the night, opened a bottle of wine and planned our weekend.

Saturday morning we headed towards Napier, a centre of this region. However, when we saw a sign for Cape Kidnappers, our plans changed and we turned off the main highway to see what many guidebooks have referred to as a must see for this region. These coastal cliffs are home to the largest gannet colony in the world. What's a gannet? I didn't know either...but here's a picture:

Unfortunately, I didn't take that picture. The hike out to the gannett colony takes about 5 hours round trip and since it's the middle of winter, the colony is rather sparsely populated. However, we did get some gorgeous pictures of the scenery.

We then loaded back into the car and finally arrived in Napier. After exploring the city and finding a new hostel to stay in, we drove out to two vineyards on the outskirts of town. Hawkes Bay is one of the largest wine producing regions and is the oldest in the country. We visited Mission Estate, the oldest vineyard in Aotearoa and Church Road, a sister vineyard that was the first in New Zealand to produce a red wine, Cabernet Sauvignon. We took a tour and dd several tastings at Church Road and then headed over to Mission for more free tastings. I bought a few bottles of white that I hope to bring home without having to pay a customs fee. Mission also had a sweet bottle of Syrah, which typically I don't even like but would consider shipping a case to the US. With the Hawkes Bay vineyards under my belt, its Malborough next. This is the true heart of New Zealand wine country and luckily where Natalie (my kiwi-mate) lives. Her parents have offered to drive us around the vineyards there and I can’t wait for that. Here’s a picture of Mission Estate.

And here’s a Cuve from Church Road.

This large fermenting tank holds enough wine for you to have one litre a day for 60 years. I want one.

Following the tastings, we went grocery shopping and returned to the waterfront lodge, where I made steak, corn, potatoes and a blue cheese sauce for dinner. The best part of this? $6 each.

Sunday morning we headed south again to the small town of Havelock North which is at the foot of Te Mata Peak, a 399 metre tall hill. We tramped to the top and saw spectacular views of all of Hawkes Bay as well as the Mt. Ruapehu, the tallest mountain on the North Island and featured as Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The views were absolutely incredible and the landscape we tramped through was just a beautiful.

Following the top of the mountain, we headed down to the redwood forest at the base of the mountain. On our way, we found a sweet cave on the side of the hill, where you could see so many shell fossils that showed how this mountain had originally been part of the sea bed. We sat in the cave overlooking a valley, eating steak sandwiches and drinking the Syrah that I had bought the day before. What an incredible day.

We followed this amazing mountain with a trip to Ocean Beach to watch the sunset. It was cold, but totally worth it. It really reminded me of spring break in Myrtle this year. A bunch of friends on the beach having a good time.

We conserved money that night by eating ramen noodles with eggs for dinner. Add on the cookies (Tim Tams…more about these later), milk & bread and dinner cost us each $2.50. And that’s NZ$.

We had to leave Havelock North early Monday morning to make sure that we were back in time for classes at noon. Leaving at 6:30, we saw the sunrise over the mountains while driving, stopped for pies in Palmerston North (more about pies later too) and arrived safe home in Wellington at 11.

I don’t think that I can pick a favorite part of the weekend, but it was so awesome to get out of the city and explore this country a little bit. It was a completely spontaneous weekend full of good friends, good food, good wine and good times. In two weeks I’ll be heading north again with a bigger group of people and I can’t wait.

This country is slightly smaller than Colorado, and it seems like I’ll never be able to see it all. Which is making me realize how big the world is, and how much of it I’ll probably never see. But I’ve got enough trips planned before I leave the country and then I’ll be adding Australia and Fiji to the list, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

I’ll put up the rest of my pictures this weekend, so stay tuned for them.

Kia Ora,

Liam