OnBlueUnderCanvas

At the Dunedin airport nearly two months ago, Theresa and her boyfriend waited for me at the terminal gate. Taking my first strides onto New Zealand soil, I was comforted by the knowledge that the people of this island country spoke English.

I admire other study abroad students who venture into foreign countries where English can only be found on the lips of school children riding down the street, two to a rusty bicycle, hurling mild insults at American tourists as they fly past. Then maybe a trite more English between the Americans, already pissed off on account of having found themselves lost in the city labyrinth, confirm with each other how unruly and horrible these little brats can be in said foreign country. And the culture gap widens. Now, that might be exaggerated. I’m sure you could also find English at the local McDonald’s (since this substandard establishment has infiltrated every country to speak of) on styrofoam coffee cups warning you that the liquid inside is “HOT!”

Despite that, I like to think that I’m culturally open-minded. (But, I know I’m not above stereotypes.)

One day, when I’m up for really opening my mind, I’ll pitch myself into some place known to be mostly devoid of English, see what happens, and hopefully smile to myself after it’s over. I would not however, choose to live this English-less scenario for six months, not when I have to pass 12 credits of class to obtain a bachelor’s degree, and preferably not by myself.

Theresa appeared out of nowhere, utterly surprising me out of my travel-frayed wits. “Lauren! You walked right past us, loser!”
“Ha ha, yeah, I was trying to look for you.” After 30 hours of traveling, two layovers, a stopover, and four flights, my contact lenses had dried up my eyes, blurring my vision. “Thank goodness you found me.”
Standing beside her was, I assumed, the boyfriend. “This is Brodie.” Assumption confirmed.
Then, Brodie began asking me questions. I strained my ears to try to discern what was coming out of his mouth. I stared at him.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a second. Sorry. I didn’t understand a word you just said.” I was tempted to follow with, “Speak English, please?” but I didn’t want to come off as a conceited Yankee.
Theresa started laughing. “Oh you’re just like me when I first got here! I couldn’t understand the accent at all.”

The Accent. I had known about this insidious language concept, but hadn’t really thought about its implications until that moment. Even when having conversations back home with people who obviously spoke with the same American, Midwestern accent as me, I was often replying “What?” “Come again?” because I was slow to catch how they were pronouncing various words. And now, my hard-of-hearing + Kiwi accent? Bugger.

Brodie spoke extra slow for my sake, “Don’t be all hard out, you’ll get it sussed soon.”

WHAT?! What the heck language are you speaking? Not only was there an accent, but different vocabulary as well. This wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. Ah, but ‘piece of cake’? What about colloquialisms? Slang? Were there different Kiwi dialects?! I was bewildered.

Fortunately, I was in luck. In the following two weeks, Theresa volunteered all of her gathered linguistic knowledge from her year already spent abroad and filled me in on many of the jargon discrepancies between American English and Kiwi English. Comparably, of course there are much harder cultural hurdles to leap than idioms and accents, but overall learning to integrate with Kiwi culture has been pretty smooth. With Theresa initially by my side I probably, at most, saved some face and at best came across as a seasoned traveler and less of an ignorant tourist. It was still plain to see though that I was an American (which is another cultural chronicle.)

Since my arrival, I’ve been collecting various words and expressions used in the Kiwi vernacular. Some are quite similar to their American counterparts, a few strike me as silly, and one or two make me laugh. Here’s my list:

American – Kiwi
hood (car) – bonnet
trunk – boot
cooler – chilly bin
dinner – tea
line – queue (“stand in the queue”)
appointment – booking
shopping cart – trolley
receipt – docket
band-aid – plaster
period (of a sentence) – full stop
Jell-O – jelly
jelly – jam
fries – chips
chips – chips
rapids – falls
waterfall – falls
swim suit – togs (“I need to buy a new pair of togs.”)
vacation home – bach
second-hand store – op shop
whining – winging (“Quit your winging!”)
figured out/set up – sussed (“Is you schedule all sussed?”)
dead – flat (“The battery just went flat.”)

“Oh, I just can’t be bothered,” said Alice to no one in particular. Presumably me, since I was the only other person with her in the living room.
“You what?” I asked, perplexed.
“I have laundry to do, but I just can’t be bothered.”
“So you mean you don’t want to do it.”
“Well, I suppose, but. . .”
“So you’re just being lazy.”
“Well. . .” she trailed off.
I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“I just can’t be bothered!” she maintained.

I burst out laughing. Her Kiwi accent, a pleasant mix of British proper, Aussie lilt and the Canadian “aye”, cracked me up. It seemed to me that she was merely employing a euphemistic excuse for resolved indolence. Yet, she spoke so decorously that it seemed more a righteous justification than a flimsy excuse.

This phrase, “can’t be bothered”, embodies Kiwi culture. If there is a task to be done, it’s not that a Kiwi is slothful and just “doesn’t want to do it.” It is the task that’s the demanding whiner, I dare say that the task is even shaking its metaphysical fist, shouting at the poor Kiwi, yelling to be completed. A Kiwi leads a lifestyle founded on leisure; the existence of a task threatens to interrupt that relaxation. One could even conclude that the villainous task is making personal threats to the Kiwi.

Now, we Americans, hard-working, task-driven, money-making achievers that we are, look down on those who “do nothing”. We’re expected to be efficient, we’ve got to produce. Time is money. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve been struggling with this time equals money issue since I began college. All of a sudden, after arriving on campus, chunks of time dropped in my lap. I had so much time I didn’t know what to do with it all. If I read a book or watched TV, I always felt like I was wasting time. I’d ask myself, “Is this getting me somewhere? Is reading this book helping my career?” It was so ingrained into the fiber of my mind that if I wasn’t doing something to further my education in my future profession, I must be wasting time. So in addition to working a few hours a week and keeping up good grades, I managed to fill up my time with fairly useful activities, each culminating in a small round bullet point I could then list on my resume, the resume that will eventually get me the job. But what if I don’t want to live to work? Kiwi’s certainly don’t.

I started reading Gone With the Wind last week. I spend probably an hour or two every day absorbed in the collapse of the Confederacy and King Cotton, and the endeavors of narcissistic green-eyed Scarlett to restore her extravagant pre-war lifestyle that had been filled with dresses, dances and boys. This charming literary classic isn’t any substitute for a history course, but it reveals a personal story from the opposing team, another look at southern slavery, one that wasn’t all lashings and slave cruelty. The South possessed an interesting culture, a lifestyle that went up in flames in the wake of the Yankee army.

I haven’t made any money reading this book. I doubt it would do me any good if I put it on my resume. It has, however, given me a small new perspective on the world; no one can put a price on that.

Last Thursday I was standing in the kitchen, boiling up some water for a cup of mixed berry tea. Glancing at the red wall clock across the living room, 8:28 struck me as an important hour.

I screamed with glee, ââ?¬Å?Greyââ?¬â?¢s Anatomy is on!ââ?¬Â
ââ?¬Å?Oh it is, aye!ââ?¬Â laughed Alice.
On the couch, Libbie snickered at my outburst of animated enthusiasm.
ââ?¬Å?Quick, flip the channel,ââ?¬Â which wasnââ?¬â?¢t a hard task; if it wasnââ?¬â?¢t on one channel, it was on the other. Yep, we had two channels. The credits of Super Nanny had just begun to roll. ââ?¬Å?YES! We havenââ?¬â?¢t missed a minute.ââ?¬Â

This past spring semester at MSU, I had borrowed Grey�s Anatomy season�s one and two on DVD from my friend Sherry and downloaded most of the episodes from season three off the internet. I was watching an episode nearly every other day, which was a significant struggle considering my wildly packed weekly schedule. I couldn�t quite finish season three before I left for New Zealand; I would�ve been completely up to speed and ready for season four this fall, save four or five more episodes.

I sat my tea on the coffee table and sat myself on the floor, cross-legged, in front of the box. The preview came on, and the twinkling, chiming theme song graced the sound waves, ââ?¬Å?Greyââ?¬â?¢s Anatomy. . . on TV en zed.ââ?¬Â I never understood why they showed a preview right before the show began, it seemed rather redundant. But never mind that ââ?¬â?? my favorite show was on.

Three weekends ago, while in Queenstown, I watched my first Greyââ?¬â?¢s in New Zealand. Staying at Theresaââ?¬â?¢s boyfriendââ?¬â?¢s parentsââ?¬â?¢ house, I was the ââ?¬Å?friend of the girlfriend of the guyââ?¬Â of the parents of the house, and feeling rather disconnected and lost. Not directionally, mind you, I knew I was in Queenstown, on the South Island, in New Zealand in the southern hemisphere. Aware of my place only made me feel more alone. I felt trapped too, a guest in someoneââ?¬â?¢s house who I didnââ?¬â?¢t know, whose customs I wasnââ?¬â?¢t acquainted with. Trapped literally as well, for a blizzard had just swept into the mountainous tourist town, rendering my car useless as any means for escape. No phone or reliable internet, and isolation was complete. I was keenly on the lookout for anything that would remind me of home. That evening in the family room, an ad with the familiar twinkling jingle caught my ear, and on the TV happened to be the very episode that I had left off watching back home. . . How absolutely lucky!

Since then, each Thursday I excitedly looked forward to 8:30. My tea warming my hands, I knew it superbly silly, but I felt like I had just met up with some familiar friends who had been waiting to tell me about their week. Yes, yes, of course everything they quipped, gossiped and laughed about with each other was only the product of a clever group of writers in L.A., sitting around a table, fabricating some good drama. But, it really was great writing, and it made me feel at home.

A miracle happened today: a PC computer at the campus library read my memory card without error! Hence, I was able to upload the following anectdote which I wrote two weeks back while still travelling on the South Island.

Theresa and I were marveling the bright turquoise water of a small river that was rushing its way over rocks and boulders. Theresa then made an interesting comment about the weather.

“Did you know that they don’t have lightning in New Zealand?”
“Really? That’s strange. How do you know, maybe you’ve just never seen any.”
“Well, I don’t know about the North Island, but I know there’s none on the South Island for sure. I’ve talked to Kiwis about it.”
“Wow. So do they even know what lightning is?”
“Well ya,” she said, laughing at me. “Sure they do.”
“So kinda like we don’t have clean water but we know what it is?”
“Yeah like that.”

After leaving Queenstown on Sunday afternoon, our route lead us to the West Coast, which the guidebooks tout as the most rustic, wild, and untouched region in New Zealand. One main road takes you through this territory, SH6, which hardly lives up to its ‘highway’ classification. The road twists and turns madly through temperate rain-forest, with no shoulders to speak of less you cut one bend short or swing another too wide. Along a 300km stretch only a couple of other vehicles passed us. We were really far away from anywhere.

We drove through open valleys, along charming creeks and over rolling hillsides. We passed a group of reindeer grazing in a pasture. Snow covered mountain peaks towered on either side of the valley, dwarfing our tiny Toyota. This was the definition wild. Truly, unspoiled planet. Looking at all the landscape sweeping by the car window, I was in awe that mankind hadn’t hunted down this precious piece of Earth and ruined it already before I got here.

At 7:30pm, nearly two hours after sunset, we reached the town of Fox Glacier. Any place that doesn’t have a grocery store, or even a gas station, shouldn’t really be allowed to call itself a town. We’ve found so many of these so-called ‘towns’ along our trip.

“Did we pass Harhihari yet?”
“Yeah, didn’t you see it? It was about 5km back.”
“You mean the couple shacks and that 4 car parking lot?”
“I think one of those shacks was the visitor’s center.”
“Visitor center for what?”

The next morning, we took a self-guided walk to the Fox Glacier. Ropes blocked off the end of the trail, which stopped about 100m before the glacier face. The Fox was a big huge flow of ice, frozen (excuse the pun) dead in its track, looking ready to crash down into the valley before it. Here and there you could see blue colored ice in its crevasses. It was fairly impressive. After taking some photos, we walked back, got in the car and started driving out of the park. On the way out, a sign next to the road marked where the glacier’s terminal face had been 50 years ago. Two kilometers later, another one: “In 1887 the glacier was here.” It had obviously melted massive amounts in the past century. There are a lot of reasons why a glacier advances or “retreats” (melts), but it seemed to me that it had melted a lot in recent history.

Was this unspoiled Earth? On second thought, I don’t think humans had to even step foot on the West Coast to launch environmental sabotage. Through global warming, we’ve managed it from the other side of the world.

(P.S. New Zealand does in fact experience lightning. Theresa needs to get out more.)