Week 6, Learning English as a Second Language and Mastering the Hongi

I know you were starting to think they

didn't exist. Well here they are - Alice and Aaron,

on their two year anniversary today.
I promised to add a manly photo of Aaron after letting

his Project Runway viewing out. Here he is ripping two full flax

plants out of the ground with his bare hands.

At a Haiti Benefit concert featuring Little Bushmen. This guy

is mesmerized by the music, it was that good. Also, expect to

see this shirt a lot as it is one of the only warm shirts I have with me

Running along the beach towards Wellington.
At the marae with 100 students.

Sorry about not posting so that you could pass Friday at work reading about my exploits here, but I was busy finally getting a car and doing the hongi....

The car:

The model is the same as the last - a Mitsubishi RVR (because I couldn't get the awesomeness of a combo of 4x4, with a van door, and station wagon size out of my mind). This one is a bit older (1994), and its a bit more Momish in color (maroon), but it does have a sunroof and an alarm (hopefully no more thefts in my future) and I paid for it in my hard won cash from BoA. Walking down the street and then handing someone hundreds in cash was a bit unnerving, but that feeling went away as soon as I was singing Lady Gaga at the top of my lungs while reminding myself to stay left. I've really missed the sound of my own voice, as its not really acceptable to walk down the street singing aloud to my iPod. This also means exposure to the radio, which you may think is antiquated but if we've discussed rental radio before, you understand.

Learning English as a Second Language

This week I've been corrected on my pronunciation of Nissan and oregano, and the use of the word period to finish a sentence (this was accompanied by giggles, they apparently use "full stop") among other words. Isn't Nissan a Japanese word and lets just say oregano is an Italian word. And no form of punctuation should require more than one word (okay question mark, easy there).

As I may have mentioned previously, I'm taking Maori 101 in an effort to at least learn a little bit of te reo Maori so that I can hopefully offend the people I'll be conducting research with slightly less, by telling them how many siblings I have and what my favorite color is. People have told me the vowels in Maori are just like Spanish, so I thought perfect, this will be easy to pick up. Well, one thing people failed to think about is that Maori is of course obviously taught by Kiwi with NZ accents. In my class the other day, I was practicing my introduction (mihi) with a Kiwi dude in my class, and he kept correcting my pronunciation of the "o" in my Maori words and said, "Its like the o in pour", and I said "No, its like the "o" in your pour, but we pronounce the r". Later in the class, the instructor was trying to help us with the ng sound in Maori, and said its like the ng in singer, which Kiwis pronounce "singa". So I guess I need to learn English again, in order to learn Maori....

This past weekend, I went to a marae (a traditional meeting house of the Maori) for the weekend with another of my classes. At the marae, as I explained previously, you sleep on mattresses on the floor in a big room. Last time, I shared this sleeping space with Americans with sleep apnea and crying babies. This time I was with about 100 college undergrads. We were instructed to bring something of significance to us as part of our introduction. As we know, not much made it over here with me, other than about 50 tank tops and 5 containers of Old Bay, so I was at a loss of what to bring....

However I did remember to bring the sleeping pills. I've never taken sleeping pills before, and given my "issue" with sleep walking/talking, I was a bit worried about taking them for the first time while sharing a room with 100 people. But again, I was sleeping in a room with 100 people, so I decided the risk was worth it. I may have not been a good role model for the kids by pill popping at the marae, but while everyone else was complaining the next morning and exhausted, I was ready for more marae learning.

While I've still had no hugs, I'm excelling at the hongi, which is the maori greeting after the welcome ceremony. The hongi entails pressing your nose against the other person's nose and holding for a brief second. This is in order to share the same breath so that you're okay with one another, meaning not going to make warfare and that you're no longer "tapu". I think I'm good on hugs for awhile, since I'm hongiing away.

Next marae trip is in about a month. I will be doing three more before June. I'll either never need another hug again or become addicted to sleeping pills.

A few updates:

-Total Bret sightings to date - 3, one which included me walking directly by him on our street

-Still hanging onto my office

-In other school news this week I had to write an essay about my identity formation, and I struggled - who am I???