steep paths and muddy knees

This week has been packed. I had planned to do a group hike today, but I woke up at noon still exhausted and realized I really need to REST, take a break. Also the weather was nasty... probably without that factor I wouldn't be able to sit still and get my homework done.

      First thing's first, and this is something I forgot to mention in my previous posts but is such an important apart of my life abroad. Lorna, my host mom, is an amazing cook. Whenever I come home late/tired/ famished there is always an amazing (and HUGE) meal waiting for me. Lorna is originally from England it's a lot of meat and potato style dishes, my favorite so far being perfectly seasoned lambchops and scalloped cheesy potatoes with veggies. BIG portions of everything (but hey, no complaints) and she worriedly always asks me, "Oh Lara, are you sure you've had enough?" at the end of every meal. If it wasn't for all the hiking i've been doing, I probably wouldn't fit into any of my clothes by the end of this semester. Another good eat is kumara, a NZ staple crop that tastes like combination of sweet potato, chestnut, and squash. I'm also doing a very serious scientific study on what is the best chocolate bar down here, and it requires me to consume as many different varieties as I can over of the course of my semester and sometimes RETEST brands to make sure it wasn't just a fluke- all of this is for science, obviously. All of this food talk was making me a bit hungry so I just went to the kitchen to scout out some snacks, and there were warm homemade shortbread cookies waiting for me on the counter with a note from Lorna encouraging me to consume them. I love her, it's a good life.
     My teaching internship was great this week. The students are very friendly (and funny). I get a lot questions like "Do you know Nicki Minaj? Drake? Ne-yo? Taylor Swift?" "Do you like San Francisco? New York? Boston?" haha it can be challenging to keep them focused, but it also means the kids are more willing to ask me for help so that they can sneak in some of these questions to the conversation. My favorite moment of the week, by far, was when I was sitting on my bus, headed out of town, a few of my students walking on the street recognized me through the window and shouted LOOK IT'S HER!! HI!!! HEY!!! and were waving and running after my bus as it pulled away. It just made me laugh and so happy to be working with these kids.
     There was something this week that bothered me. One of my classes was learning about tectonic plate boundaries and the teacher, in her powerpoint lecture, only used examples from the United States (San Andreas Fault, subduction near Aleutian Islands, etc). Not to nerd out too much here, but there is subduction going on right beneath Auckland!! There are transform boundaries to the south that rival the San Andreas! NZ has much more interesting tectonics than the US, why would you not take this opportunity to incorporate material more relevant to the students' lives? One student said to me this week, "America must be so exciting, I bet you miss it" and to that I said something like NZ is such an amazing and unique place, many Americans come here and never want to go home... I'm positive you guys have a lot more exciting stuff than we do. And that last statement is true, I've met about five Americans so far (all teachers, but not all from Lynfield College) who moved here because they felt the kiwi quality of life was so much better than in the States. My point is, these kids already have a strong fixation on American culture and I think it's the schools job (also my job when I design lesson plans) to help them appreciate where they live, not just about the places that the media tells them are important. That same teacher also told her class that the Grand Canyon in the USA was a continental divergent boundary (that two tectonic plates were pulling apart here). No, just no... the canyon was carved by water. This teacher did mention to me that Earth Science was not her strong suit and I was welcome to teach a few lessons when I was ready.
     Continuing the topic, everyone I meet has an opinion to share about the USA. While waiting for my bus, a nice conversation with a hungarian guy got a little awkward when he asked, "So why are you waiting for a bus? Shouldn't you just get in your SUV or Hummer? Isn't that what Americans do?" Another time, whilst I was buying some late-night candy in a busy convenience store, the chinese man who worked there asked if I was voting "No-bama" and informed me that the only way America was going to solve it's economic problems was by waging war with China. Okay... interesting. After my friends are dropped off at their houses, I have an extra 10 minutes alone with the driver in the taxicab until I get to my town, and this period always evolves into a serious political discussion about America. My first driver was from Afghanistan, and was more interested than critical of the States. A driver from another night was Greek, and asked me a lot about the upcoming election candidates and how the economy was over there. A lot of my American friends on the trip have been asked about 9/11 (especially with us being over here for the ten year anniversary), but i've yet to encounter this. As the Global Education office promised, I'm learning so so much about my own culture through this experience.
    Wow, okay I wrote all that and still haven't gotten around to talking about anything I did this week. Here's a few things I can summarize quickly

Polynesian jewelry at Otara

• Kiera (the other American student placed at Lynfield College) and I went to the student Jazz Concert one night. There was an incredible amount of excitement and talent, my favorite part being when some young audience members got up on stage and starting dancing with the performers. One girl put dollar bills down the singer's top, which I found out later was a something Samoan family members do to each other at events.
• Went to the Otara Markets that are known as a hub for Pacific/Polynesian culture. Bright colors, beautiful bone/shell/greenstone carvings, island-y dresses and music...

  

  tube tanks at the aquarium

  it was a lot of fun and quite a few people i went with said they would be interested in going back again. 
• After class on Friday, we went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World which is like a crazy Antarctic themed aquarium where you can ride "Snowcat" cars through the penguin exhibit and walk through the shark/fish exhibits in tubes so that they swim all around you.
• Scored tickets to a Rugby World Cup game at Eden Park, Aussie vs Ireland!! I updated the end of my last rugby post with photos and info on this night if you want to see more. 
• This video was shown in one of my classes, it perfectly captures the New Zealand/Australia rivalry and the accents are totally adorable. 

Also Here's another

Most importantly is all the hiking I fit in this week: three volcanos total. My teaching internship gets out around 3:15, which is perfect for fitting in a hike before I head home for dinner and homework. 

Te Kopuke, once a Maori fortress

Friendly St. Johns cows,
grazing in the crater. 

Scoria/Basalt that has
 eroded from the slopes

On Thursday I set off to climb Mt. Saint John (Te Kopuke) and Mt. Hobson (Remuwera) located in western part of the city. I was determined to climb both of these volcanoes in the same afternoon because they are "sisters", and by that I mean they were formed from the same hotspot in relatively close time periods. If you can imagine, Mt. Eden (from my previous post) would be the "big sister", the oldest eruption from this chain and she is trailed first by Mt. St John then by Mt. Hobson to the east. I got off the bus at Mt. St John but I couldn't find an obvious hiking entrance to the summit. I did find a sketch, very steep, very muddy grass trail near somebody's private yard that I decided was my best bet. The only 
problem was that, because I just came from teaching, I was still wearing a dress and nice shoes, but hey, I gotta do what I gotta do. Barefoot, slipping and sliding everywhere, I climbed up that trail on hands and knees using the shrubs and rocks to pull myself up. It was a terrible route to take, especially since I found out later that there was a paved access road about 100 ft from this trail, but at the same time it was incredibly fun. I emerged sweaty at the summit with muddy, cut up knees and was rewarded with a killer view of the volcanic crater filled with cattle. I walked around the volcanoes rim, sandwiched between Eden to the west and Hobson to the east. I found some exposed scoria cliffs and collected cool samples of basalt (volcanic rock, most of it cooled in the air before it hit the ground and therefore has big air pockets and twists like rope). I even climbed down into crater and pet one of the friendlier looking cows who was obviously used to having visitors. All this time, I could see a massive storm brewing in the distance and knew I would be a good idea to catch a bus and save Hobson for another day. But good ideas aren't my specialty, so I embarked on my next mission, with Bob Dylan and CSNY keeping me company on my iPod.

The towns and roads between the two volcanoes had long walls
made of basalt- quarried from the ancient flows. 

From the top of Hobson, view of Rangitoto.

     I arrived at Mt. Hobson just before sunset. Unlike St John, there was a lot of vegetation left on the slopes here and the path felt like walking through a tropical rainforest- with beautiful views of Rangitoto and downtown Auckland. I walked and talked with an older man who was out exercising his border collie, and the dog ran circles around us- herding us through the park. I watched the sunset over Mt St John, I watched the planes soar towards Auckland Airport, I felt the strong winds and gentle rain of the storm come in and engulf me, I felt very free and alive. There were cattle all over Mt. Hobson as well, and I had to be really careful when I was looking at rocks on the slopes that they were actually rocks. Just a little FYI, the big rectangular pits you will sometimes see on the volcanos are not naturally formed; they are Maori food storage pits (especially for kumara). Additionally the terracing on the slopes of the volcanoes is also Maori earthwork so that they could reside on the flat surfaces. Anyway, at some point I realized I really needed to get going with the storm and night setting in and followed a new path down the mountain. There were some big, dark cattle blocking the path at one point head butting eachother/ fighting and, because I had seen other people walk right though them earlier, I wasn't bothered by their presence. But I think these kiwi-cows didn't like my American accent or something, because one starting snorting at me and stomping its hooves... which is terrifying just so you know. If you've never been snorted at by a cow then you do not get to judge me... so yeah when I was about 15 feet away it started walking in my general direction and I just booked it up a steep slope where I felt safer. So while I was talking to the cow and asking it why it hated me, some runners went by... right past the evil cattle and they survived. This gave me new found confidence to try again, but NO. I got snorted at and chased again so I had to scale this steep muddy slope to get around the cows... the whole time talking aloud to them and telling them they can't just go around treating people like this. Anyway, I made it home, muddy and exhausted and happy.

Chillin' on the slope,
being held hostage by some Mt. Hobson cows

I climbed Mt. Roskill on Wednesday, and again I hiked barefoot feeling very hobbit like with the long blades of cool grass between my toes. I found a cliff of compressed scoria that held my attention for a half hour or so. There was also a location where a large tree on the slope had fallen, and its displaced roots had exposed an inch thick layer of compressed, very distinct tuff, or volcanic ash from the last eruption. I didn't have my camera with me for this hike, but I know I'll do it again in the near future and have more to say. 

Whatungarongaro te tangata toi tu whenua: 

People, love, treasures come and go, but the land remains