Rugby!! (and culture)

Rugby is the national sport of New Zealand, and as such it is a very big deal here. As you may or may not know the Rugby World Cup is currently being held in New Zealand. This means that there are multiple rugby games being held on most days, with about 7 or so games held in Wellington throughout the month long event. One of these games included the US and Australia, which I (along with almost all of the other Americans studying here) decided to attend. Now as most of you are probably now wondering, yes, the USA does infect have a rugby team. Before the World Cup we were ranked about 17th in the world, well behind the All Balks (New Zealand), the Wallabies (Australia), and the Springboks (South Africa).

Going into the game we expected to get annihilated but Australia (ranked 3rd in the world), but we didn't care. This is probably the most patriotic I have, or will ever be. We all bought flags and US colored things, and some of us painted our faces (I didn't go that far). It was great to also hear all the Americans in the Stadium actually sing the national anthem, as apposed to just standing there and listening to a singers rendition of the song.

The game started our really well, we held our own against the Aussies, especially when you consider we decided to play our B team to have the best chance to beat Italy in the next game (which we ended up loosing as well, sad day, but oh well). Australia scored the first try, and took a 5-0 lead, and then scored another shortly thereafter, making it 10-0. Then we scored a try and we all went crazy! We now had momentum and got within about a metre of scoring another try to tie it, but they stripped the ball and promptly ran the length of the field and scored again. We never really got momentum back and the final score was 67-5. The result was about what we elected, and it was still great fun for all, there were many more US fans there than I thought there would be due to the fact that all the Kiwis at the game were supporting the US. It was really fun. If games were not so expensive I would totally go to heaps more, but oh well.

Next Sunday the All Blacks (number 1 in the world and the home team) play Canada in Wellington so that should be a blowout but really intertwining. Wellington will be rocking afterward. Rugby is a great sport and you guys should really check out some replays of games and I can explain the rules to you when I get home. It looks confusing but is actually… well, kinda confusing. But that's not the point... once you watch a bunch you just understand.

The National Museum (Te Papa) also is having national days for all of the teams that play in Wellington, US day was crap, with all the "best" parts of US culture highlighted including cheerleaders, cowboys (like the Texas kinda, not the cool kind), and some country-line dancer stuff (however, there was also a fairly good jazz band that I actually liked which is saying something cause I'm not a huge jazz fan). Canada day is next Sunday so I'm going to go to that and be Canadian for the day (big surprise there eh?) and Scotland day was last Sunday and included bagpipes and a gala (but I was busy and couldn't go).

So all in all, rugby is a great sport (WATCH IT) and so much multiculturalism in Wellington is amazing. Seeing fans from around the world wearing their country's colours and singing songs (the South Africans were heaps of fun) makes me want to travel so much more. Also, the All Blacks have been touring around between games, talking with and answering questions for fans and doing signings. US sports teams, both national and city, need to be more chill and fan friendly I think, although it is harder in such a big country like the USA. I just wish the US would be more accepting of multiculturalism like this.

If you are interested the site for the Rugby World Cup is here. Go there and watch some highlight videos. :)

School Projects

As I mentioned before, the grading system is quite different here, with only a 50% needed in order to pass, and anything above an 80% being a A (just over a 70% gets you a B+). Now while this may seem like it would be much easier to get good grades the amount of effort needed to for an A is much higher than back home, so it works out to where I'm getting the same letter grades as I would back home, while I put in about the same amount of effort (albeit slightly less cause I only need to pass these classes to get credit back home). A lot of my classes have required me to do some fun (and/or complicated) projects, so I'll briefly explain a few of the better ones now.

My intro to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) class has been great thus far. I've learned the basics of how to make maps and use various layers to create a very specific map with exactly what I want to be shown. I have also created two maps thus far, one showing the income distribution of households in the various districts in the Greater Wellington region, and one depicting where in Wellington someone with a long list of requirements (such as being within a certain distance of bus and train routes, CBD businesses, Victoria Uni, and a northern facing slope) could potentially live. I still have to make two more maps, which are due in a few weeks and are quite involved. For these I will show where the best location for a landfill in the region would be using Raster processing for one and Vector processing for the other.

My Environmental Perspectives of New Zealand class held an environmental conference on campus and we were required to produce group posters to present. My group focused on the issue of 1080 in New Zealand. New Zealand has a huge problem with invasive species killing endemic birds (as New Zealand does not have any native land mammals) and 1080 is used to help control there numbers. It is a neurotoxin that is made in the USA and shipped to New Zealand where it is formed into pellets, sprays, and baits and distributed by the Department of Conservation into the wilderness. Sometimes it dropped in by planes (similar to how fire retardent is airily dropped). This is great for keeping native bird populations strong, but it is very harmful to mammals including pets of people tramping (hiking) in the forest. There have been many debates over the use of 1080, with one side claiming it does not remain in the environment for long and is very water soluble, and thus is not dangerous to humans and the water system. After looking at all the research available our group decided that while 1080 is not a great choice it is the best thing available to the government to control possum populations and should still be used, until a better alternative is produced.

This class also required me to write an essay about another environmental issue in New Zealand, so I wrote on the transportation system and its future. I found that the country is following in the footsteps (or tyre treads) of North America and needs to invest in alternative forms of transit like buses, trains, and light rail service. I also compared what Auckland might look like in the future to St. Louis, Missouri and Vancouver, British Columbia. I found the research I did on it quite interesting.

Anyway, that's enough on this topic for now, as school is not all that I've been doing here.

New Zealand Politics

A few weeks ago I toured the New Zealand National Government building in Wellington. It is called the Beehive because, well… one of the main buildings looks like a giant beehive. Inside on the top floor is the Prime Minister's office, under that are various other ministry offices, meeting rooms, and the lobby and gift shop. In the building adjacent rests the House of Representatives and other meeting rooms.

The Parliament (Legislative Branch) only has one house, unlike the two in the US and the UK. It originally had two houses, but the Senate was abolished in the 1950s because it had little real power and just waited money and time (limiter to the House of Lords in the UK parliamentary system). Election are coming up in a few months in New Zealand, and the current National Government is expected to hold onto power. The election system in New Zealand uses the mixed-member proportional style, where you vote for members directly in the districts, but also vote for the party, which then chooses more members form party lists. This allows multiple third parties to enter Parliament which would otherwise not have a say in government (such as the Green Party of NZ). There will be a referendum during the November elections allowing the population to potentially change this set up. I was also able to sit in on question time, which only occurs in the Parliamentary system. This is a period of time where the opposition parties can ask the party in power any questions about the policies on the docket and the direction the country is going. The discussion usually starts fairly civil, but turns into a yelling match that is quite funny to witness. The "debate" seems very disorganized, but it allows the government to be much more transparent than the US style. This is also used in the UK and Canada (and I have sat in on Question period in the British Columbia Parliament this year). So that is the New Zealand Government in a nutshell, a very small one at that.

New Adventures

Sorry this email has been so long coming but with school and travel I have been swamped. Anyway, enough of the excuses and on to the actual information...
New Zealand is amazing! I love it here so much, and I can see myself returning to Wellington again to live. Wellington is much like a mix of Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR, and Bellingham, with lots of artistic people all over the city playing music and painting (gratify is all over, but it isn't associated with gangs, just really neat art). School is similar to back home; however, it is simultaneously harder and easier. The grading scale sets and A at anything above about an 85%, but they are much stricter about grades so hardly anyone gets an A, and a B is very very good. Thus far almost all of my assignments have received marks of around the A-B cut off point (even though it's an 80%) so I guess I''m doing alright. Another interesting thing is that there are tonnes of international students here, almost all of my friends thus far are American (and two Canadians), and most of my professors are not Kiwis as well. I have a British, American, Irish, and Kiwi professor, and have talked to a few others from around the world.
In one of my classes we have to make a poster for a conference on campus in two weeks time (similar to the poster I had to make in Pat Buckley's Borderlands class). Our poster is on the toxin 1080 which is used in New Zealand to kill possums, which are a major problem here. It should be interesting when it's finished. My class about Antarctica is going really well, and I've learned a lot about the continent and climate change, and almost all of my past Huxley classes have helped me understand what the professor is teaching us. I'm also in a class about globalisation which is very interesting, especially learning about it from a non-US perspective. It's rather refreshing actually. My final class is a basic GIS class, and I just made my first map yesterday. The class is very interesting, but quite difficult so far. Once I understand the computer system more it should get easier though.
Now on to travel...
We just finished up our mid-semester break where I traveled around the North Island for two weeks with some North American friends. We saw almost all of the island, and I took heaps of pretty pictures. It was a great time, but we all got a little annoyed at each other after being cooped up in a small car with the same people for the two weeks. I posted a bunch of the pictures I took on a flickr account, the URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianfaulds/ . We rented a car for the time, and I drove a fair amount (it's on the left side of the road here) and now it feels natural it have the driver sitting and driving on the "wrong" side. Also there aren't many stop signs here, they are all "Give Way" or yield signs and round abouts so you never really have to stop. It's great!
Finally, the Rugby World Cup starts this Friday so the entire country will go crazy shortly. I'm going to go to the US-Australia game on September 23rd. Hopefully we won't get annihilated, but it looks like we will. It should still be fun though.
Well I guess that's about it for now, but I will hopefully have a bunch more to talk about shortly.