First Day of School :)

January 6, 2011

Today was our first day of classes, but so much different from any other first day I’ve experienced before. Reasons why?

1. We go to school in a church building. We had an opening/welcome in one of the classroom, and then went into the cultural hall for the rest of the day.
2. My teacher was Maori! Carol Anderton is our Literacy teacher from the Cook Islands. She is wonderful—so friendly, welcoming, knowledgeable, and you can tell she just loves children and education.
3. We learned some Maori songs (waiata) and even a Maori dance! We sang the 12 Days of Christmas New Zealand style: Pukeko in a Pongo Tree
4. We played a stick game/song: te rakau
5. Instead of going through the syllabus, rules, and expectations, we were introduced to New Zealand as a country, Auckland, the food, the language, the people, the culture, the education system, etc.
6. When she introduced us to the traditional foods of New Zealand, we got to sample many of them: golden kiwis (yellow on the inside instead of green and suuuper sweet), meat pies (puff pastry filled with meat and gravy instead of fruit), marmite (yeast spread like vegemite except marmite is from NZ while vegemite is from Australia), L&P (famous carbonated lemon drink), and kumura (NZ sweet potato that more like our regular potatoes except much sweeter).
7. We learned about Morning Tea, which happens every school day morning around 10. It’s recess time for the children and morning tea for the teachers. They all gather in a staff room, drink tea, coffee, or milo (pretty much hot chocolate), eat a snack, and socialize. As BYU students we’ll be in charge of bringing morning tea (bringing food) once before we leave. Our professor said they like it when we try to be “cute” and bring American food.

Needless to say, it was a great first day of school. When we talked to our host family about it, they said we probably knew more about New Zealand now than they did!

Now it’s time for a quick Maori lesson. Some of the words we learned in school today, but many of them are part of daily conversation and we’ve had to ask what they are:

• Togs: swimming suits
• Rubber: eraser (as in something that “rubs” out your mistakes)
• Power point: power outlet (they didn’t know what our PowerPoint presentations were)
• Jandals: flip flops
• Kiwi: a native white New Zealander (we were telling our host mom Sheryl how we ate a golden kiwi today and she gave a real funny look until she realized we meant we ate a golden kiwifruit.)
• Kai: food (our Professor, Carol, said that New Zealanders always laugh when they hear about an American naming one of their children “Kai”)

And, for your enjoyment, a picture from our swimming adventure:

We are so lucky because our host family has a swimming pool in their backyard! It was such a treat to relax and cool off in the pool :) Anna went in to grab me a towel to dry and came back with this lovely hooded pirate towel. When Sheryl (our host mom) saw me with it she ran inside to grab the pirate flag. Yes, I realize I look absolutely ridiculous, but hopefully it will make you laugh :)