Hanmer Springs and Maori Workshops

A while ago I finally watched all of The Lord of the Rings movies for the first time since being in New Zealand. It was fun to see some of the scenery I've been to, and the mountains of course are gorgeous as usual.


I have been going to a few Māori workshops to improve my awareness and understanding of the bicultural aspect of New Zealand. I wish these were mandatory for everyone, both locals and visitors. I'm sure I now know more about some of nuances of the culture than New Zealanders. And -- did you know -- New Zealand had a Declaration of Independence!!! I can't believe it took two years for me to find this out. Before the famous Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, a number of Māori chiefs from the North Island signed a declaration calling themselves The United Tribes of New Zealand. I was so impressed. It also changes how you see the Treaty, and how unfortunate that Britain exploited their power as a colonizer. A video we watched at one of the workshops reminded us that the translator of the Treaty from English to Māori deliberately changed one of the words because he knew the Māori chiefs would not sign if he used the word for sovereignty. It reiterates the power of language.

My tutoring has been going pretty well. I think the second time around you get the rhythm of how much you can cover in a session and which activities work better. I have also had a few occasions to teach, and that has been a stressful but good experience. Unfortunately, I've come to the realization that I've been spending too much helping others with various things or trying to improve the state of things that I haven't been able to get my own stuff done, so I'm having to make the difficult decision to be more selfish with my time so that I can get my thesis done. After the semester is over, I really have to dedicate myself to writing. We'll see how successful I am at saying no!

We finally went to Hanmer Springs for a short vacation, which is a kind of resort with a bunch of hot pools that is about 90 minutes north of Christchurch, so it's considered a weekend getaway. There were quite a few people there, but winter is not exactly a great time to go, because as soon as one gets out of the water, the wind is freezing. The second day, it was raining so we had to leave our towels all the way at the entrance. I would much prefer to be dry and warm. And let's just say that the super hot pools can make your blood pressure drop so you have to be careful upon coming out for your body to readjust... The town is fairly small and within view of the mountains, which were beautiful in their snow-covered glory.

stock photo of the pools - I didn't want to worry about my camera getting wet

 

Sydney's Blue Mountains at Katoomba

The cheap flights to Sydney are very early in the morning, so we had to get up before 3:00am to make it to the airport on time. Then, with the time difference, you arrive about the same time as you left, so your internal clock is confused. We took the train at the airport out to the Blue Mountains, but unfortunately there was track work that weekend so we had to transfer to a bus for the last leg of the journey. Once in the town of Katoomba (the biggest tourist spot at the Blue Mountains), we walked the short ways to Echo Point to view The Three Sisters rock formation which was lovely, then walked about a mile and a half to the downtown area to get dinner. We got caught in a thunderstorm and had to wait underneath an eave while lightning displayed above and thunder pounded and rain poured -- some of us were more enthused than others about that scenario!

The next day we went to Scenic World, which is the easiest way to explore the rainforest down in the valley of the Blue Mountains. It has the steepest railway in the world (52-degree angle), along with two cable cars: one that goes into the rainforest and one that goes across the valley and has a glass-bottom floor! The train ride down was pretty scary because it is so steep you feel like you're going straight down, but it was fun. It's like a roller coaster but without the drop. The area used to be a big coal mine, and the miners had it a lot worse back in the day when they took that trip in a dinky mine car. Taking the train back up was actually scarier I think, because you feel like your body is falling the wrong way and it feels very weird.

 

First Week of Work and Beware of Tomato Sauce

 First Week "Working" at School

Although working at home can be great, it can also be a curse and let time blob into expanses where seemingly nothing gets done. The postgrad seminars recommended trying to make a distinction between study and leisure time to let yourself not feel guilty all the time and to help keep the internet surfing at bay. So we went to school every day this week as if it were a regular work week and it seemed to work out pretty well. Once you're at your desk at your computer with all of your books surrounding you, it's harder to ignore the fact that you need to be working. Therefore, I felt very productive this week getting all of my quotes and notes entered in and catching up on a lot of admin things online. My to-do list is now enormous, but at least it's written out and able to be tackled. I also finished my first "old-school" SF book, one of the classics, Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

On Wednesday, a distinguished Cambridge professor, Dr. Anthony Hopkins, gave a lecture on the American Empire and argued that the U.S. did indeed have an empire much like the other European nations and that it is not right that historians, and especially U.S. historians, neglect discussing and analyzing the period 1898 to World War II as a period of American empire. It was a quite interesting argument and certainly shows how what Americans learn about their country is skewed in favor of the "independence and freedom" master narrative. He said that, contrary to the U.S. being extraordinary, it was a colony like other colonies and took about 100 years to shake off its colonial past, and only after that could it really be called independent and able to start amassing territory for itself (like the Philippines and Puerto Rico). Among other things, he also said that it was a mistake to keep referring to an American Empire today, because despite U.S. military might and cultural influence, the U.S. does not know how to effectively use that power globally (via wars, diplomacy, etc.) and it cannot claim to have the same power that, say, the British Empire once had in the world. It was well-argued (though perhaps hard to take it all in) and I wouldn't mind reading his final published book when it comes out.

Food

After the lecture, we went out to dinner with the professor, host lecturer, and several students. It was our first time in a Vietnamese restaurant but ended up being very similar to Chinese food. Everyone else was going to get a set menu for $30 a person, but we said we would prefer to order our own meals so the table got the set menu of $26 a person and D ordered crispy chicken ($8) and I ordered beef fried rice ($12). Our dishes were plenty of food and affordable, although the set menu price would have been the minimum at a typical non-Asian restaurant here. The only reason we can see that restaurant prices are so high is that minimum wage is so much more than we are used to (and probably food costs). Yet Asian restaurants are the most affordable. It is uncomfortable to have to discuss in front of everyone that you don't want to pay $30 for a meal because a) you can't afford it (or even if you could, you would rather spend it on something else) and b) you wouldn't eat most of the things anyway. But you do what you have to do and so we had an enjoyable evening and the professor and I complained about everything wrong with the U.S. and it was so refreshing to discuss politics with an intelligent British person.

I had my first ripe strawberry from my plant (after the actual first one was eaten by something else) and it was good! Can't wait for more. I also bought a bag of golden kiwis from a farmer's market and can't believe I never knew how delicious they are. I also bought green kiwis and they are good but not as good as the golden ones (plus, you can eat the skin of the golden ones). Highly recommend!

Word of warning about tomato sauce here: I bought a can of tomato sauce to use in a recipe, and it turns out that their tomato sauce is almost identical to ketchup. My food tasted way too sweet and we looked it up and found that you have to buy tomato paste instead. Bummer.

Hiking

I know, I know - we haven't been enjoying New Zealand's outdoors like we should. So I insisted we do a hike this weekend and start getting into the routine. We went on the Rapaki Track in the Port Hills for about an hour and a half round-trip. It was all uphill until we turned around, but it's lambing season so we saw lots of sheep and lambs and heard them bleating to one another. Some cows watched us lazily from the other side of the fence.