Movin out

Hello friends and potential stalkers!

If you want to keep following my effed up thought patterns, or taunting me with viscous anonymous comments, follow me to my new blog: Get on with it.

I think that's the end of this one. I might be sneaky and update both, even though that makes no sense at all.

Letting go,
Lizzie

Aotearoa Top 9

This is the one you've been waiting for. My top 9 reasons why New Zealand is awesome. They may be a bit jumbled, but here goes.

9. The Metric System.
It just rocks. I have successfully lost my grip on the American standard system (or whatever it's called). The bad news is I still don't really have a good feeling for the metric system, so I'm kind of in limbo. Go ahead, ask me what temperature it is outside right now. I have no idea.

8. New words
"Mate" is a very useful and versatile word. "Sorry bout that, mate." "Good on ya, mate." Also try "bugger," or "Gutted." The accent is sexy and the words are fun.

7. Weather
It's just so damn unpredictable. They say to be prepared for 4 seasons in one day, and it's likely to happen. Take my friend Trine, for example. She learned the hard way that New Zealand weather is refuckindiculous when she hiked up a mountain and almost couldn't get down after a half meter of snow fell overnight.

6. Climate
Welcome to TEMPERATE RAINFOREST. The rarest climate in the world. Temperate=seasons, rainforest=green. One of the only places you can walk out of a podicarp rainforest onto a glacier.

5. Location, location, etc.
We are at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, next stop Antartica. As New Zealanders learn to love themselves more and more they have realized how special that is. The Northern hemisphere can stop lovin itself because this is where it's really at. It turns out Southern hemisphere species have a one up on interesting evolution, and many lines originate down here. Also, penguins are the shit! Isolation makes people go crazy. Kiwis are quite quirky.

4. The Treaty
I think maybe this is really #1. I'm not sure though. The Treaty of Waitangi is a deceivingly simple piece of the past that continues to impact the lives of all New Zealanders, both Maori and Pakeha. Pakeha Kiwis have sometimes expressed their frustration at the Treaty to me, but I tell them to look at what happened to our natives: something just short of genocide. As a result of the Treaty of Waitangi New Zealand is close (and getting closer) to a fully functional bicultural society. Hooray for colonisation in a post-America/Australia/more-humanitarian age.

3. Landscapes
We got fiords, pancake rocks, volcanoes, boiling mudpools, earthquakes, plains, mountains, every kind of beach imaginable...such a huge diversity in landscapes in such a small country. Only in New Zealand.

2. Bush
No, not W. It blew me away that I could travel half an hour away from Auckland city centre, the biggest city in New Zealand, and be in the middle of a rainforest. New Zealanders love being outdoors. Their bush is their heritage, and the Department of Conservation is working overtime all the time to save it. It is lush, beautiful and incredibly fragile.

1. Fauna
New Zealand's current ecosystems are more of the ruins of once great ecosystems than fully functional ones, but the surviving species are some of the most rare and unique in the world. From flightless ratites to an incredible array of seabirds to orcas to tuataras to the rarest penguin in the world, New Zealand fauna kept me in a constant state of awe. Learning about the plight of New Zealand's species (both extant and extinct) has been absolutely inspiring.

I don't really know why I did 9. I wasn't shooting for 10...I just thought of 9. In any case, my love for New Zealand extends beyond any list of reasons, no matter how long. I've been back for a week, and things still feel quite surreal. Did I really go there? And if so, why the fuck didn't I stay?

I can't wait to go back.

--Lizzie

Rollin in Birkenhead with the coolest family in New Zealand. 

My doing the "Nathan" dance. Chrissie lookin HAWT. 

Yvan hitting on Chrissie and her brother simultaneously. 

My only friend

It's the last day, and soon it will be the last minute, hour, second, I am in New Zealand. Not forever, though. I am coming back some day. I still have things to do here. Like, discover Northland, and hear kokakos calling in the Waitakere Ranges. But for now, I guess I'm off.

I don't have a choice about that, so I've decided to look forward to going home. But I can't escape the pain of separation. I'm sorry world, but I've been cheating on you. I'm in love with New Zealand.

Reflection on experience to come later.

So long Aotearoa.

--Lizzie

New Zealand, new knowledge

You didn't even know this many books on New Zealand existed. Well, they do. And they're all on my bed.

I am not a hippie.

The Environmental Patriot

He serves his country best

Who loves the land itself.

Not just the people sitting fat

And bland, sinking beers midst natural resources

They have messed.

Not just the shrunken babies dying

In the tired exploited dust

Derived down–degraded soil–eroded empires.

Not just the business men, developers

Of housing projects, purveyors of plastic cups, the just

Lawyers who emphasize

The equity of private enterprise.

Not the philosophers who insist

That human values far exceed non–human things

(Especially when pissed),

And scoff at those who see beyond

The work of men to Thoreau’s bond.

They coarsely jest

At him who loves the land itself

And serves his country best.

--Charles Flemming (1916-1987)

No sir, ain't no hippies here. We be patriots.

Up and atom

History of New Zealand Since 1945 (SOCI 217): Some general trends in New Zealand politics and population.

-- Maoris are getting louder
-- Politics are getting greener
-- The welfare state is getting weaker (well, nonexistant(chance for resurrection?))
-- New Zealanders are getting prouder
-- Auckland is getting browner
-- Nuclear is getting...banned-er
-- Kiwis are getting deader
-- People are getting older
-- Population is getting bigger

I might fail my exam tomorrow.