I have noticed that everything around here smells fantastic because of all the lush, green flora. And along with the abundance of plants comes the loudest insects I have ever heard, and a variety of very peculiar sounding birds. The Tui bird has a wide range of vocal abilities, as I have learned, some of which are beyond human hearing abilities. Tui is the Maori name and the bird is native to New Zealand (Aotearoa). It is known in English as the Parson Bird because of a small tuff of white feathers under its neck that resemble a parson's neck piece. Khali told me that if you were to tell someone in Maori that they are a Tui bird it is a big compliment because it means you have a good singing voice. Tui is also the name of a large NZ brewery. I see these little birds all over campus.
I believe the other bird I hear is a magpie. It is a nasty sounding bird. If I were to imagine what a terradactyl might sound like, that is what it would sound like. I will be sitting in my room doing work or taking a nap and all of a sudden I will hear this awful screech and see just the shadow of a bird fly by my window. I swear those things are out to get me.
Yesterday in my Food and Eating class we talked about sustainable food systems and food regimes. It was pretty interesting. We discussed the idea of "food from somewhere to food from nowhere, " as in knowing exactly where your food came from or producing it yourself to having it appear "magically" on the shelves of a supermarket. We talked also about the future of water and she put up some virtual water contents for different things. For example; In a single slice of bread there is 40 litres of water, in a single sheet of paper 10 litres goes into making it, in a pair of leather shoes there is 8,000 litres, and in a 150g hamburger there is 2,400 litres. I thought some of those were pretty surprising!
Last night I did my laundry and it started to torrential downpour out of nowhere, so that was fun! I also found out that there is apparently an Iron Man competition in Taupo this weekend while we will be there. It should be interesting!
Today I had a 9:00 tutorial for my Treaty of Waitangi Treaty in NZ Society paper. It was over in the Maori studies building. We were in this room that is used for Maori welcome ceremonies (i think, I have to clarify this next time) so we all had to take off our shoes and sat on these cushions on the floor. So that was really interesting. Just a little bit of background, the treaty of Waitangi was a treaty signed by most of the chiefs of the different Maori tribes and the British Crow. The British Crown had already recognised the Maori as a sovereign state in NZ, so therefore in order to colonise NZ a treaty had to be signed. It could not simply be occupied. IT is very controversy because it is debated that the Maori were mislead and that the translations of the treaty into Maori have a completely different meaning than it does in English, so therefore the Maori did not know to the full extent what it was they were signing. That is pretty much what I will be exploring further in this paper.
Aroha. (the concept of love in Maori)
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