Trip to Palmerston North

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I'll start by saying that I am lucky enough to be staying with a Maori family. Its a pretty neat thing. My host mom is actually the “treasure keeper” of Maori culture at the local museum, so she's pretty in touch with her culture. In fact she often only speaks the native language to her children. Which is both a really cool experience, and slightly frustrating. But really its all good, I just keep telling myself they don't ever talk about me (probably a pipe dream). Another thing I should mention is that they're all about family. Like all family: siblings, cousins, parents, uncles, third cousins, step uncle twice removed on your estranged nephews side, doesn't matter. They're either your cuzzy, aunty or uncle, cause they're all family and they're all extremely close and important to eachother. Its really an amazing thing.

That being said, I can tell you all about my first weekend with my host family. I was invited along to my host moms cuzzy's house for her birthday celebration. It was a relatively small get together, good food, good drink and great people. It was a lot of fun. About 11 o'clock the ladies are all going out to the bar and they invite me along. So of course I decide to tag along. Little did I know the sort of night I was in for.

We started the night at a karaoke bar, meeting up with some of their family, only about ten of them. Now my mind had been lubricated enough that I was considering going up on stage to sing, and generally make a fool of myself. But after listening to these ladies absolutely rip apart everyone who went up there, I silently changed my mind. They seriously know good music when they hear it, or in this case bad music and are not afraid to express their true feelings. Really funny stuff.

After this we continued on to a couple more bars before we found one that was really poppin. Like full blown young persons dance floor seen. Not the typical place you'd find middle aged women. But low and behold there I was at this bar, dancing with three ladies in their 40's. Not a situation that I imagined in my wildest dreams. And not only that, but we stayed there till bar close, at 3am! So when the time finally came and we all got shuffled out of the bar, I expected that we would hop in a cab and head back for some sleep. Of course, this was not what happened. Instead we poured out into the street, and met up with about 40 of their nearest and dearest family and friends. It was absolutely crazy. This was not some sort of coordinated effort to see each other. There just happened to be that many people that they were mostly relatated to out that night on that street. And they were all so excited to see each other. Me on the other hand not so much. I got several glares from woman who thought I was some lost little white boy hittin on their aunty, until I was introduced at which point the air was cleared. And it really wasn't till then that I really began to understand exactly how big of a deal the genealogy (whakapapa) of their entire family really is to them.

Of course the night was not yet over. The fact that it was now 4 am and we were heading home did not mean that we were going to bed. What it meant was that it was time for a quick snack before pulling out the guitar, ukelele and song book. So we sang and played loud, proud, drunk and more than a little out of tune till the morning was young. In fact, the only reason we stopped at about 645 was because one of the daughters had been bitten by a spider and needed a little comforting. So not the greatest of ends, but still an almost surprisingly great night all in all.

The plan the next day was to get on the road my early afternoon. Buuuut this didnt quite happen. Instead we were invited over to the local lagoon for a paddle. And we ended up paddling around over there for about 4 hours. Just going around this little pond. It was a lot of fun, but I, thinking that there was no way we'd be there for more than an hour or a little more, didn't put sunscreen on. So of course, I absolutely fried. And since we'd been invited over to yet another family members house for dinner, we decided to stay an extra night. Fortunately I was able to make it back the next day in time to watch Madonna rock the Superbowl halftime show. Such a fun filled weekend.

As a note, Its quite the experience to watch the Superbowl in New Zealand. So strange to be watching it at noon, in an empty bar, without the good commercials and on a Monday. Not the setting at all that I am used to.