But the long and the short is that several people who I saw as recently as Monday night are now back in America. Not me. When I booked my flight to NZ last spring, I planned to leave myself a few weeks at the end, and now I'm milling around New Zealand on my own for a bit. I've got a friend from my old school coming in from Australia in about 10 days, and we're going to travel around the South Island again during my last week here -- looking forward to that one. In the meantime, however, I had to find myself something to do, and today I finished my third day of work here on beautiful Waiheke Island.
Aerial photo of Waiheke Island, seen from the northeastWaiheke is about an hour's ferry ride from Auckland, and is a popular tourist destination. At the beginning of the semester, I spent a day out here tasting wine and causing trouble. At the time it was actually my first trip outside of Auckland... amazing how things come full circle in that way. Anyway, about three weeks ago a friend loaned me her World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) guide for New Zealand. The way WWOOF works, essentially, is that people with some sort of credibility as organic farmers or gardeners list themselves in the guide, and then wayward travelers like me contact them. And in exchange for four hours of labor each day, "wwoofers" like myself get free housing and food. I figured Waiheke would be a nice place to spend a bit of time, so I sent out a few emails to people in the WWOOF guide, and was able to work out an arrangement to work for a retired couple with a beautiful plot of land overlooking some mountains and parts of the surrounding ocean.
Another guy came out here the same day as me, and the two landowners have mostly got us cutting up and splitting firewood for their wood-burning stove. The lady of the house, a native New Zealander, does most of the gardening, while the guy, an Australian import, generally works in the yard with us. At about 4 in the afternoon, they're currently sitting across from me playing scrabble, but each has now regaled me with stories of their multiple world travels. Actually, in a revelation that stands a good chance of winning the M.R.I.T.T.I.A.I.S. (Most Ridiculous Illustration That The World Is Actually Incredibly Small) designation for my time abroad, it turns out that the guy, Trevor, has visited my hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY, and spent some time in the 80s sailing on the Hudson River sloop Clearwater with legendary folk musician and activist Pete Seeger. For anyone reading who I didn't grow up with, I actually went to middle and high school with Pete's granddaughter, and I met Mr. Seeger on several occasions when he came in about once a year to play his music for us. The Clearwater boat belongs to the Clearwater organization, a local environmental advocacy group founded by Pete. It docks in Poughkeepsie and is basically a Hudson River institution, putting on many educational programs while the organization works on the river's behalf and puts on an annual music and environmental festival. Like many other local grade school children, I sailed on the boat myself with my fourth grade class.
So you can imagine my amazement when Trevor revealed that he, too, had sailed on the Clearwater before I was even born. I guess he met Pete while traveling on a cross-country march for global nuclear disarmament -- they spent nine months walking across the US, which is pretty remarkable on its own. Just before the march was over Pete invited "anyone who likes music, or boats" onto the Clearwater and Trevor in turn was introduced to life along the Hudson River. 23 years later and about 10,000 miles from home, I'm now cutting and splitting firewood for his stove.
We both know this guyIn doing so I've already become quite well-acquainted with the combination of chainsaw and axe, which is awesome. I'd used a power saw this past summer before coming out here, but there aren't many things more fun than starting a chainsaw. In turn, there are few things more satisfying than driving an axe through a large log. Talk about taking out aggression.
Anyway, before I leave Waiheke I'll be working here for another week or so. They've got a couple of unused mountain bikes, so I've been doing a bit of that in my spare time. The house is about a 25 minute walk from the beach -- thats also been a nice means of unwinding once the workday is over. At some point in the next week, a couple Irish guys I hung out with over the course of the semester will be coming out here as well, which should be fun.
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It's no secret that people loosen up around alcohol -- that's why President Obama tried to tamp down the recent racial controversy between the white cop and the black Harvard professor by inviting the two for a White House "beer summit." And for better or worse, it seems that there's a lot of cultural exchange associated with drinking. Whether sitting around shooting the breeze or sharing one another's varied drinking games, for college kids from different countries this seems to be especially true. Some of the other American guys and I hung out a bunch the past few months with a group of freshmen New Zealanders, and we each did our best to further this tradition in the waning weeks of the semester.
In the Kiwis' case, it became a lot easier for us Americans to explain the game of baseball once we introduced to them via the drinking game of the same name. This game, as opposed to the actual sport, is modeled after beer pong and involves an arrangement of four red cups in a line on either side of the table. Like in beer pong, players split into two teams, with the team that is "up to bat" taking turns shooting at the cups. Front cup means a single, second one back is a double, third a triple, fourth a home run. For each cup back that is made, the other team has to drink the total sum (i.e. the full four for a home run). While this is going on one player from that other team stands behind the cups that are being shot at -- if the ball hits the rim of the cups and is then caught by the opposing player, it's an out. If the player shooting misses the cups altogether, it's a strike. Three strikes is an out; three outs and the other team bats, just like in real baseball. The score is also kept the same way, and if a player hits a cup and gets on base they can advance as many bases as the next batter who hits a cup. If you've got time, lots of beer, and you're feeling really adventurous you can play nine innings, but frequently the game doesn't quite last that long.
In any event, the New Zealanders could not get enough of this game. At every turn after we introduced it, it was all they wanted to play. When I ran into one of the kids at Burger King late last Saturday night, he told me that they'd even played it on their own that night. But this banner example of the sharing and adoption of different cultural traditions wasn't just a one-way street.
A few nights before, one of the Kiwi kids had mentioned off-handedly that we should all play possum before everyone went home. Curious, my friend Joe asked what differentiated the apparent game of possum from the animal that hangs from trees and is hated throughout New Zealand for decimating the local plant life as an introduced species.
Turns out it's a favorite pastime of some New Zealanders to climb trees. Me too. I'd never thought, however, to include drinking in the equation -- if anything that seemed sort of dangerous. But as New Zealand is blessed with many large trees with thick, low-hanging branches, the Kiwi kids explained to us that in possum, the entire group of participants climbs a tree, and no one is allowed to get down until they have consumed a personal case of beer. If you have to use the bathroom, you'd better find a stable branch. First one out of the tree wins.
Upon hearing of it, Joe and I made it a priority to find some time to play this interesting game. We did end up playing possum last Friday night -- Joe, me, and three of the New Zealanders. In practice, the game wasn't all that much of a game. We basically all just found comfortable spots, played some music from a portable radio, and sat around talking and drinking. It wasn't really all that different from sitting around drinking beer in somebody's living room, except for the fact that we were all sitting in a tree. When all the beer was gone, we climbed down, safely for the most part, although Joe took a bit of a spill. I can't remember who "won" -- to be honest I'm not sure we were even keeping score at that point.
Anyway, that's possum. Between that and baseball, it was easy this past week to feel a bit like a trader from a bygone era, exchanging ideas and traditions with people from far-away places. A couple Saturdays ago we got three Americans, an Irish guy, and six New Zealanders together and played a game of American football, followed my first ever game of touch rugby. Rugby was cool -- it's New Zealand's national sport, and after watching it all semester I finally got to play it for the first time. The Kiwis liked football. I'm used to playing pick-up games in the US, where there's an intense power grab on almost every play for who gets to be the quarterback. But I soon realized that one way to get around that is to play with a bunch of kids who can't throw a spiral. We taught the Kiwis the rules, but we made sure not to teach them too much...
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I'll probably try to write at least one more post in my last few weeks here, but this one's long enough already. To whoever may be reading back home, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. If there's one holiday I'm extremely bummed about missing, that would have to be it. Next year I'm eating twice as much turkey.
I'll leave you with a collection of miscellaneous photos I've put together from various recent outings:
Random Auckland Pictures (facebook)
All the best!
Cheers,
Matt
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