Kiwi'd

Last Post State-Side

Now is as good a time as any to record what I know of New Zealand before I actually set foot on New Zealand's soil. Or, more accurately, now is the last time I get such a chance. One of the vital characteristics of a good ethnography is knowing where the ethnographer comes from, what their background is, and thus what their bias is. For that purpose, and so I can laugh at myself later, I will write.

What I Knew About New Zealand
Finding information on New Zealand was a task I found to be quite difficult. Surprisingly so, actually, since I never particularly thought of New Zealand as an elusive country. Granted, when my quest for knowledge began, I didn't know much about New Zealand. The reason for me choosing to go abroad there were few: I wanted to go somewhere in the Pacific. I've been to Japan and China before, but I don't speak either language and thus I couldn't go study there for a semester. So I looked farther south to the English speaking Australia and New Zealand. The University of Otago had a painless application process, meaning no teacher recommendations required, so I applied and was accepted.
Being accepted put me in a pickel. I could summarize what I knew of New Zealand in the palm of my hand. I knew that many motion pictures and tv shows were filmed in New Zealand, more specifically Xena, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and recently King Kong. I knew it was an island, and, unlike many Americans, I knew it was not a part of Australia. There was a particularly awkward moment in my Geoarchaeology class last semester... this class was team taught, and one of the profs was Australian. After I telling the American-prof about my plans to study abroad in New Zealand, he encouraged me to go and speak with the Australian prof to see if he had any friends over there. I knew this was much like asking a Canadian if they had a pal in Texas, but the Australian prof was gracious enough to just politely decline knowing anyone in New Zealand.
What else did I know? I think I knew that kiwis (the bird) were from New Zealand. I thought the island (yes, 'the island') was colonized by Britain, much like Australia was. I also remembered something vaguely about penguins. I learned quickly, before I even had a chance to research, that rugby was very important down there because the moment I told one of my friends that I was going to New Zealand she, a rugby player, started going on and on about some team called the 'All Backs'.
Yes, I realize that if you are even remotely informed about the sports world, I just made you wince.
Needless to say, I wasn't going to go to a country with this kind of knowledge. I needed to learn more, if only to be a respectful visitor. I didn't want to be one of those Americans who just rushed into a country. That isn't to say that you have to know everything about a country to be respectful of its culture. It's just to say that I didn't want to go in completely deaf and dumb.

Learning About New Zealand
So here's the deal. Even with this tool called the 'internet' and this haven of knowledge called 'Borders Books', I am still not doing much better than I did before. I have been searching for months, and am only adding to my knowledge bank day by day.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to share this wickedly awful experience I had with one of the 'Culture Shock' books. If you haven't encountered this line of books before, it's a series of books that supposed to be written to introduce the average Joe (from all over the world, not just the US) to a country. For instance, I picked up 'Culture Shock New Zealand'. After reading the entire thing, I came out with some valuable knowledge.
1) I will not have servants when I go to New Zealand. Kiwis (as New Zealand people are called fondly) are all about the equalitarian society.
2) There are a lot of sheep. And cheese.
3) Kiwis. Love. Rugby.
4) Kiwis are very do-it-yourself.
5) The indigenious culture is the Maori, who came to the island by boat from somewhere out in the Pacific. The European-based population is primarily from Scotland, and dern proud of it.
And...that's pretty much it. Not very useful, all in all, for a student.
So I turned to the internet. Wikipedia was marginally helpful, clearing up some of the basic information. I found a livejournal community about New Zealand, and the people there were helpful in answering some of my questions...or rather, the five or so people who are in that community were helpful. I found for the most part that it's hard to find Kiwis on the internet. They just don't exist in the same cyber communities as I'm used to dwelling.
And I purchased two more helpful books to read on the plane.
But I still feel like I'm going in blind. Sure I may know that the Hokey Pokey icecream is something I need to try, or that there are only two species of poisonous spiders which constitute New Zealand's entire 'dangerous animal population', but what do I really know about the culture?
I think the difficulty is that there are so many characteristics that are shared between New Zealand and the United States, that it's going to be difficult from this distance to tell the difference. Once I get there, I'm sure I will be overwhelmed with the things that set the US apart from New Zealand, and vice versa. I surely know that I'm going to sound ridiculous.

Particularly if I don't sleep during the 24 hours I'm travelling.

Here's to seeing you on the flip side.

posted by Hoot @ 1:44 AM