Auckland from the Maori Perspective

So today was day 2 in Auckland and we took a tour of it with Maori people as our tour guides. Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and from what I learned today, they're prettyyy cool. It was really interesting learning about their culture and their history and hearing them speak in their language a lot throughout the day. I wish I could remember all the names for everything but they are difficult for me to pronounce and would be impossible for me to spell and are therefore pretty hard to remember everything unfortunately.

The first thing we did was go to this really cool crater thing that used to be a volcano I think and also used to be a Maori village. I'm pretty sure they were saying that all the big hills around used to be volcanos, and they were all villages of different Maori tribes. They compared them to wedding cakes because they have basically like different layers which was built by the tribes as a defense mechanism for when other tribes would attack. They would attack on one level and if they conquered it, they would climb up the hill and over the next fence to the next layer to try to conquer that one so eventually they'd make it to the top and conquer the entire village. Pretty cool. The crater in the center of it was I guess formed by the volcano, and it used to be okay to run around in it but now there are signs everywhere says don't enter the crater, so they took away the fun lol. I really liked walking around there though and learning all about the history of it.

Then we went to the Auckland War Memorial Museum to learn some more about Maori history. This was pretty awesome too. I learned all about different parts of their culture. We also saw a Maori cultural performance and saw some of their traditional dances along with various fighting moves and things. It reminded me a little bit of Hawaiian dances and things at some points, but it was also very unique in other respects.

Then we ate lunch and headed out to the wilderness. =) We took this super long windy bus ride up this mountain, and I totally thought we went up most of the way but I guess we must have gone down just as much because we ended up at a black sand beach and I'm pretty sure beaches can't be like, at the top of a mountain haha but I was extremely confused... It was really pretty though and I ended up playing touch rugby on the beach with a bunch of the other people which was really difficult and tiring and confusing at first, but probably a good thing to get to know since New Zealand is a rugby kinda country.

Then we drove around some more and then hiked to a waterfall through the rainforest. This place is incredible and has everything from awesome nature and adventure stuff to city stuff to sweet history and man made awesome stuff I love it. The waterfall itself was really pretty and the path there was pretty sweet too. On the way back we learned all about different plants and stuff and heard a story about the Maori creation of the Earth which was pretty awesome.

Overall, this place is absolutely incredible. And if South Island is more is even better than North Island for nature and adventure stuff, I'm going to love it even more once I'm there. I really hope the next 5 months are like the past 2 days in terms of nature and things, and I can honestly already say that I absolutely picked the right country to study abroad in. =)

- They have outlet switches here...I thought my converter didn't work because I plugged something in and it wasn't charging and then I realized there was a switch, most likely to help conserve energy. So cool, why doesn't America have this kinda stuff?
- Also, the outlet almost broke my hair dryer as soon as I turned it on just because they use a different voltage here than we do, so I turned it on and I immediately thought it was going to blow up...
- I forgot to mention yesterday that my roommate for orientation, Claire, is also a redhead from Maryland. So hilarious.
- I wore boots out to dinner yesterday. It's July and it's cold and I'm wearing boots. Ridiculous.
- I heard my first New Zealand song - it's called take me higher by j williams. I liked it so that's a good sign. Even though most music I've heard here so far is American.
- The time difference still kinda sucks. I get super tired at like 6pm and wake up naturally at like 545am lol it's obnoxious.
- The calories and nutrition facts on foods are weird here and I don't understand what they're saying. I'll work on it.
- They have crazy food here...like chicken flavored potato chips. They tasted a little like ramen noodles and overall pretty decent.
- When we were learning about the plants in the rainforest I ate a leaf that tasted like lettuce, and then put another kind of leaf in my mouth but didn't swallow it since we weren't supposed to and it kinda made my mouth numb. Apparently that one can be used for lots of medicinal purposes.
- I also found out that gingers in Australia are called ranggers...which comes from orangutan. I don't like that.
- I also saw a cat today and it made me happy =) and I thought of Tina. Miss you Tin.
- We had fish and chips for lunch with these awesome sweet potatoes that are native to here and they were awesome, especially when dipped in this awesome garlic mayo type dip. We saw a bunch of little pits by the crater that we used to do something with those sweet potatoes.
- I worked out a little this morning because I was naturally awake so early. Kind of hilarious, and I'm such a weakling. But if I'm hiking and walking and stuff throughout my time here as much as I have been in the past few days (which I am absolutely planning on) then I better be in shape by the time I leave.