I’m sitting on the
beach just outside Auckland. A forty-five minute ferry ride brought us to
Waiheke Island, and even in the middle of a New Zealand winter, I couldn’t ask
for a more pleasant scene. It’s a great place to cap off my first week here,
and even though most of that time I’ve spent jetlagged and culture shocked, I’m
thrilled to be in such a marvelous country.
My journey began with
my parents and one of my sisters dropping me at Hartsfield, where I caught my
initial flight to San Francisco. As I sat waiting to board the long flight for
NZ, I thought I’d feel overwhelmed by the thought of leaving the US for the
next year. Instead, I felt worry from trying to make sure I found the right
gate—and then amusement when I saw that the plane was covered in an obnoxious,
giant poster for The Hobbit movies.
What a way to leave my homeland, huh? After enduring the grueling thirteen
hours in the air, I finally landed, breezed through customs, and met my host
family.
I’m living with a
wonderful family in Auckland; the house is a short drive from the city’s
center, a short walk from a bay, and one step from a lovely park. The weather
has been sunny for most of the time I’ve been here, but it started raining as
soon as I bought a camera—and the sun reemerged when the camera’s batteries
died a couple days later. Sorry—this picture came from a Google Images search
and not my own photographic talents. That said, I have seen some stunning
sunrises and sunsets since I’ve been here—perhaps I’ll snap one of my own someday.
While I haven’t seen
that many sights, per se, I’m continually saturated with new sights, sounds,
and experiences. The vegetation is mostly green, even in winter; the buildings
are rarely over two stories high, except for downtown office buildings; the
water is everywhere I turn, and filled with boats. On the whole, I’m getting
used to my environment, but I still catch myself looking around slack-jawed.
The biggest and most obvious adjustments have
been the roads and the accent. In case you didn’t know, they drive on the left
side of the road here, which threw me the first few days but has been surprisingly
comfortable to embrace. Well, maybe not quite embrace—I’ve only driven a couple
of times in the city and in the wop-wops on Waiheke—but it no longer feels all
that strange.
As far as I know,
I’ve avoided bringing disgrace to America through words or action. I’ve been
trying to catch onto terms so as to not offend others and to not make a fool of
myself, and I’ll compile new vocabulary for readers to learn along with me.
- Kiwi – a New Zealander. Like the bird, not the fruit
- Give way – yield. A very important driving term on their roads
- Flannel – wash cloth. And they’re not even actual flannel!
- Biscuit – cookie. They would refer to our biscuits as scones, but I’ll teach them about real biscuits before I leave
- Wop-wops – rural back country, full of pleasantly challenging driving terrain
- Maori – indigenous people of NZ
- Te Reo – the Maori language
- Kia Ora – “hello.” One of the few Te Reo words I can both spell and pronounce
- Hongi – Maori greeting where two people press their noses and foreheads together. I’m still not sure if this is a real thing or a joke they tell tourists.
Conversation,
however, is still sometimes a struggle. The first few days, I thought my ears
were still adjusting to the altitude changes of flying, but then I realized
they were adjusting to listening to a bunch of Kiwis. I’m employing my
hard-of-hearing grandmother’s tactics of pretending to understand folks most of
the time, then admitting I have no idea what they said only when I can tell
they need an intelligible response. I feel a bit silly constantly asking others
to repeat themselves, and it’s particularly challenging to decipher the speech
of the small children in my care. Alas, I still find ways to communicate (maybe
I’ll convince New Zealanders to use “y’all”), and I’m sure I’ll soon have
little trouble understanding those I encounter.
Despite
the many adjustments I’m making (and will continue to make), I’m excited to be
embarking on this spectacular adventure for the next year. I agree with the
sentiment that a tourist sees what he has come to see, whereas a traveler just
sees what he sees. I want to travel because I want to have authentic experiences
of life in another country; being an au pair in New Zealand is hopefully the
first of many opportunities to live abroad. These newsletters will describe
what I encounter overseas and how I interpret another culture, and I look
forward to sharing my experiences with everyone!
—Lenora
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