Te Reo Māori

Nau mai! 

I woke to the morning sunrise in my eyes. Not the worst way to wake up…though, it was only 6:25am. Itching to look outside, I got out of my cozy bed and glanced out of my cabins glass sliding door. The view was truly amazing. The sky was lit with pinks, reds and oranges and there were dark grey clouds. I wanted to stay up longer and watch the sunrise, but the urge was too strong to go back to bed.

My alarm woke me at 7:30am. I quickly brushed my teeth and headed to the kitchen for breakfast. There was a large bowl of fresh citrus fruit, so instinctively I ate an orange as part of my meal.

Classes started today! We covered introductions into what we would be doing and where we would be going for the rest of the semester. It is nice to be back into the familiar setting of a classroom. Ria briefly went over the main focus of the EcoQuest program: to create an environmental that is more sustainable than the last. This was one of the main aspects of this program that made it so unique.

Later in the day, Marie came into the classroom to go over some last minute program policies and how to go about planning weekend adventures. She gave us many pieces of paper that included when our expected breaks would be, how long and where they would be and possible things to do in the area.

Right before 10am, Marie stopped everything we were dong and explained "New Zealand tea time"; everyday at 10am and 3pm the entire country of New Zealand comes to a hault, grabs a cup of tea and socializes with whomever is around them. It was clear this was something that was going to be practiced at EcoQuest.

For several hours after lunch, Jono and Ria taught of single vowels and consonants, pronunciations of words and phrases and numbers in Māori. This was a very repeat-after-me type of deal. It was amazing to hear how quickly everyone was picking up simple phrases, including myself. I found it interesting that the vowels in Māori were the same pronunciations as in Spanish. Taking 6 years of Spanish, this made it easy to begin learning this unfamiliar language.

Our culture lesson ended a few hours before dinner. Mary and I decided that we wanted to go and explore the beach a little more. Knowing how many shells and sand dollars we collected last time, we grabbed our trash bucket from our cabin and brought it with us. 2 hours later, our trash bucket was full and we were talking about how nice it was to have a day that was based on the country that we were in. One of the things I love most about this program is that though I will be learning material related to my major, I will also be learning about the culture that I flew 20 hours to get to. And I can't wait to learn more.