Hiking, Hakas, Hail, and Star Wars

We've been to a couple new places around Christchurch recently. I also found out about a project called Christchurch 360 Trail that is working on a kind of hiking/biking trail around the city that goes into different kinds of terrain and can be broken off into chunks. Our walk in Bottle Lake Forest Park turned out to be more rocky than we hoped and is really more suited to biking than walking. Many of the trees are growing to be harvested, so the scenery wasn't that memorable.

Sumner Beach was pretty and the weather was nice.

  

I attended the annual Maori Graduation Celebration (Hui Whakahonore) which is a more intimate affair than the regular graduation (which takes place in a stadium with hundreds of graduates in multiple ceremonies), although Maori graduates also participate in the regular ceremony as well. The smaller setting allows Maori families to perform a haka if they wish when their graduate receives their certificate and pounamu, or greenstone, necklace. I had never seen a haka before, and it was a very unique and emotional experience. They originated as war dances but are now used for special occasions and ceremonies. Some people (mostly men) rhythmically stomped their feet and shouted, while other people sang or spoke to their graduate. You could feel the energy in the room and it was so much more than the mere clapping or whooping that I'm used to!

I have been doing Christmas baking and bringing a taste of American treats here, although I've had to make substitutions because some ingredients aren't available here (no Chex cereal!!). For a country with such a diverse group of people, the suggested Christmas desserts in the newspaper and ads seem limited to a couple items, and they like to put fruit in everything. The British influence is still trying to hold out I guess.

The big event lately has been the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII: The Force Awakens. We went to a midnight showing and being in New Zealand finally meant being ahead of the game -- it showed a day early here so with the time zone difference, we saw it almost two days ahead of everyone in the U.S. It was good and thankfully not the prequels. We did a marathon of the despecialized original trilogy beforehand so the references and nostalgia were nice and fresh. We will be seeing it again this week to catch what we missed the first time! We went to a bookshop that specializes in science fiction because I was looking for another copy of Dune to lend out to people I've been telling about it, and I ended up finding one copy buried underneath several boxes of not-yet-priced books, as well as a set of the Star Wars books (I already have these back home but wanted to re-read) and a dozen other science fiction books, many from the 70s so I can see what was popular at the time. I stumbled upon several Frank Herbert short story collections that I couldn't resist, even though I'm not researching those technically. The most interesting was probably the book subtitled Understanding American History Through Science Fiction which features short stories sorted by various social studies themes and discussion questions for students. 

The weather also unleashed one of the worst storms I have ever seen, with a massive hail storm that brought tons of hail and wind and thunder and lightning. It decimated a lot of our plants in the garden and elsewhere, with the leaves shot through with holes. When it cleared up the first time, I went out and poured warm water on the strawberries to melt some of the ice bath they were sitting in. Then another round of thunder and lightning and rain came later. Crazy weather here!

NDF Conference in Wellington and Education Seminars

The National Digital Forum Conference up in Wellington was surprisingly very good. It was mostly surrounding what is going on in digital projects by the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector, which I normally view as being stale. It actually has some really interesting things going on, even in New Zealand! Before one meeting, a guy at my table was on the subject of  how cats were ruining the native wildlife and birds here, and I said there was an easy solution: just have indoor cats like we do in the U.S. He seemed to have never thought of this before. One fun part of meeting new people is meeting Dune fans and trying to convert others. I convinced two women who are science fiction fans but hadn't read it yet (mostly because its length is intimidating) to add it to their list. I’m pretty much a Dune ambassador at this point. 

I checked out the National Library's little exhibit on the 1975 Maori Land March while I was there. In short, a large group of Maori led by a 79-year-old woman, Whina Cooper, marched the length of the North Island south to the capital, Wellington, to protest the loss of Maori land. Petitions of support were circulated, and I thought how real and concrete these seem in contrast to today's online petitions.

There were some interesting seminars at the university. One was a Digital Humanities seminar on the issues surrounding preserving, storing, digitizing, and dealing with copyright for all of the old university radio shows and music still stored on cassette tapes. Two others were on the Education Campus and featured Professor Antonia Darder from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles . She spoke on decolonizing the body in education and how we are doing a disservice to young people by enforcing the mind/body split and pretending that education is only about their cognitive abilities and not the rest of their physical selves. Immobilizing them in rows of hard desks and viewing teachers as technicians rather than pedagogical leaders is hampering a development of empathy and whole selves. I had never heard of Paulo Freire before, but I am interested in now checking out his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Professor Darder also was the keynote presenter at an Education Symposium where she elaborated on her notion of what is needed for critical leadership for social justice and community empowerment in today's world. She ended with reminding us that the Western mentality is a conquest mentality, making everyone believe that everything has to be big to be worthwhile. But she said local, small acts can have great impact and translate bigger. She was a really passionate and inspiring speaker, and I'm glad I had the chance to hear about different ways of thinking about education.
 

Dr. Antonia Darder in her lecture on decolonizing the body in education

In other news, we were invited for dinner at someone's house where we tried some new foods: parsnip and leeks. We brought American-style buttermilk biscuits which were happily scooped up. They taught us how to play Mahjongg, which was great because we had just bought the game at a garage sale that morning and I have been wanting to learn so I can play with my Chinese friends. Apparently it is so addicting that it is banned in Chinese universities so the students don't get distracted.
 

leaving the South Island

my 6:40am flight was mostly businesspeople (men) in suits

view of downtown Wellington - weather stayed mostly nice

one conference presenter had a Dune reference on his slide - sweet!

sighting 1 of neighborhood cat in Wellington

sighting 2 of neighborhood cat in Wellington

sighting 3 of neighborhood cat in Wellington

Parliament building in Wellington is called The Beehive

Wellington airport has lots of Lord of the Rings stuff hanging

I beg to differ: insulation here stinks

leaving Wellington at 8:00pm

returning to Christchurch

Happy New Year 2015

Happy 2015! I hope to explore lots of New Zealand this year.

The package from my family arrived with a much-welcomed array of goods. There was a veritable bounty of shelf medications like allergy medicine, cold/flu liquid tablets, motion sickness pills, and pain relief pills which would have been a fortune here or not available. This would have been enough on its own, but there were also some Christmas gifts and food from home which we enjoyed.

We also received our IRD numbers from the government so they can take out taxes. Yay. If there's anything to be excited about here, it is that one of my favorite numbers is the last two digits.

I made a goal of finishing all six Dune books before the year ended, and so I wrapped up the sixth book on December 30th, just in time. Reading them all together in a short time period meant that I could notice changes in style, character development, themes, and other things which was nice. Now comes the harder part of synthesizing all of my observations into the PhD proposal. Basically, I have to outline what my argument will be and what each chapter of the paper will focus on. I also have to provide a literature review, meaning an analysis of what has been written about the topic so far and what I think I will do to improve upon current research.

I also just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) yesterday. It was not what I was expecting and seems a bit out-dated now that we have so much more information about our solar system than we did then. There were virtually no women in it, and it got really weird at the end. I continue to be surprised by how different the short classics are from Dune. The lack of world-building is so apparent, and the intent and goals of the writers seem to be very different.

We had a nice New Year's Eve with a live music concert in the central park sponsored by the city council. There were country, rock/funk, and Celtic bands who provided good music and energy to ring in the new year. There is an interesting tradition of having the "archwizard of Canterbury" cast a spell for the new year. He seems to be an equivalent to our old Father Time. There was also a sweet fireworks show right above our heads - the closest I've ever been to fireworks. Debris was even raining down on our heads!

D's jalapeno plant on the porch finally has some peppers ripening red. It has been fun to watch them grow and hopefully they are worth the wait.

We took a day trip to Akaroa, which is about 90 minutes south of Christchurch. It was a nice drive and a cute town, although it was overrun by tourists from the docked Princess Cruises ship. It was quite hot out, so we had a packed lunch in the shade and checked out the farmer's and craft markets. We also visited the Barrys Bay Cheese factory which still makes cheese the old-fashioned way. We watched workers spiking big cheese rounds with long metal sticks which will leave air holes and create the blue veins in blue cheese. D bought some 6-year aged cheddar cheese and garlic cheese. Both are good, and the aged cheddar is super intense!

strange "field" of trees on a bare hillside