Adventures in New Zealand - Part I

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I had the unbelievable privilege of visiting the Land of the Kiwi for two fast weeks during our winter break from teaching. What follows is the first of a handful of posts that relate not only the sights we saw, but also some observations of Kiwi culture from this American's point of view. Hope you enjoy. I’ve just awakened from a dream.

My wife and I, at this writing, are sitting in the Nadi airport in Fiji, waiting for our Fiji Airways flight to Los Angeles. We have just spent two idyllic weeks in New Zealand, hosted by our long-time friends and former colleagues, Neil and Jill. It had been 12 years since we had last seen Neil and Jill, and over 24 years since we worked – and practically lived – together in Amsterdam.

I suppose Becky and I may be developing a reputation as jet setters. Both teachers, we often use our school breaks for international travel, and I suspect many quietly wonder how we can possibly afford such exotic adventures on schoolteacher salaries. The answer is not always the same, but in this instance it was primarily frequent flyer miles. (It is never a secret investment, a rich uncle or an inheritance.) I’ll expound on that in another post; in this one, I just want to rave about New Zealand.

We had done some reading and watched some television shows about New Zealand, and of course were captivated, like everyone else, by the scenery in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit movies. Shortly before we left the States, while looking at

Arangahake Gorge

some photos, I had told Becky not to expect the New Zealand countryside to be that green. Surely it had been enhanced by the photographer. Upon arriving in Kiwiland, my loving wife took great delight in proving me wrong. Whether in the rolling hills of the North Island heartland or the lush foliage of areas such as the Karangahake Gorge, the greens were indeed that green.

Ponga fern with "koru"

We almost thought we were on a Jurassic Park set, as the landscape is dotted with exotic-looking ferns called ponga. You will find the panga leaf on much New Zealand memorabilia, as it has become a national symbol. Growing out of the top of the panga can often be seen a stalk with a curved top. This young shoot, called a koru, is considered a harbinger of new life and, like the panga leaf, is a symbol that holds a special place in the heart of every New Zealander.

Neil and Jill met us at the Auckland airport and drove us to the northern suburb of Devonport, where we parked the car and boarded the ferry across the Auckland Harbour to the city center. The largest city and commercial capital of New Zealand is

Aukland harbo(u)r

a vibrant, cosmopolitan, and modern city that invited us to spend more time than we had. We did enjoy strolling along the harbor’s edge and taking in the sights, including a number of sleek yachts that had competed in the America’s Cup race.

Most of our Kiwi adventures were in the countryside and smaller cities. Neil and Jill have recently purchased a wonderful little house on the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of the North Island, about 40 minutes by car from the popular city of Tauranga. They are in the process of renovating the place, with a view of listing it on AirBnB and perhaps other listing services. The charming house is perched on an overlook called Tanner’s Point, where we awoke every morning to a beautiful view of the inlet, framed by the captivating pohutukawa trees with their red, wispy blooms and by the fascinating call of the tui bird. (The tui have two voice boxes and held my wife spellbound by their varied sounds, from gravelly clearing of the throat to full octave intervals to metallic tones a la R2D2.)

Part 2 coming soon!

Pohutukawa tree

Five Reasons to Spend Winter Break in New Zealand

Queenstown

1) It’s a great way to celebrate 30 YEARS of marriage to the same remarkable lady, who shares my wanderlust and curiosity.

2) It’s been our turn for years to visit our besties from Amsterdam days (1985-1990), Neil and Jill White, a Kiwi couple whose hearts have been to knit to ours ever since. Neil and Jill have just recently bought a place on the east coast of the North Island on the Bay of Plenty. How can a place with a name like that not be beautiful?

3) It’s just turned summer in New Zealand. Enough said.

4) New Zealand has been at or near the top of our bucket list for as long as we’ve had a list. The Peter Jackson films have done nothing to discourage that.

5) It’s a great way to redeem the MILES we’ve been saving for years. The only itinerary I was able to find using said miles was on Fiji Airways, so we have to spend a day in Fiji on the way down. Darn.

Watch here or on Facebook for updates and photos!

The Reason for My Madness, Part I

People often ask me how I came about my love for other cultures and languages. It has recently occurred to me that I have never written this story down, and yet it is one of the most defining chapters in my life. I was born in the state of Wyoming to Texan parents. When I was five years old, my parents embarked on an adventure that would change not only their lives, but would shape my own: they joined a missionary team bound for Perth, Western Australia. I was the second of four boys; the youngest was born in Texas just weeks before we headed Down Under. So with all four boys in tow, stair-stepped in height and age, we boarded a plane in Dallas. After two or three layovers (I remember Honolulu and either Fiji or American Samoa, and Sydney, at whose zoo I held my first koala), we landed in Perth.

Perth-Australia

My memories of Perth are patchy. I remember there was no kindergarten, so I started first grade at five  years old. Because I had no American reference point as far as school was concerned, there were no major adjustments to be made. I also remember the tiny house my parents built at 1 Gill Street, and being such a voracious reader that my teachers had to look for more books for me to read. (I've spent my life trying to recover that love for reading. See my friend Jason Leonard's blog post on the subject at theunitive.com.)

The most shaping experience, however, was not living in Perth for almost four years, but the trip home to the States. For reasons that I can only speculate about now, as both my parents are deceased, they decided to "take the long way home." Rather than flying back the way we had come, they chose to return to the States by ship. Perhaps it was actually cheaper, in the mid-1960's, to sail rather than fly. Perhaps they simply wanted to treat us to an unforgettable adventure. In any case, what could have taken two days instead became a five-week odyssey that changed me forever.

We boarded the SS Canberra, a 45,000-ton liner now dwarfed by many of today's cruise ships. But it was almost brand new, and this 9-year-old thought he had landed in the lap of luxury. Meals for children were served separately, and we could order anything on the menu -- can it get any better than that? I have vague memories of crazy ceremonies that involved being dipped in ice cream and then thrown in swimming pools and men dressed up like Neptune at the crossing of the equator. But what branded me for life were the ports of call along the journey.

colombo-poverty

The first stop was Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, still called Ceylon at the time. I remember very little of the place, but what I do remember will forever be etched in my mind: as we walked along the dirty streets, among the beggars were children whose legs had been broken up behind them by their handlers, consigned to a life of panhandling. As they scooted along the dusty roads with their tin cups, I remember a melange of horror, helplessness and compassion as I tried to process what I was witnessing for the first time. Lesson 1 for the 9-year-old: there was great poverty and injustice in this world, and I could only be protected from it for so long.

To be continued...

Reflections of a White Man on MLK Day

MLK

Having recently watched the movie Lee Daniels' The Butler, Martin Luther King, Jr. was already on the front burner of my mind. Not long before that, I had seen Twelve Years a Slave, based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in antebellum America. My history students probably tire of hearing me say that to truly appreciate history, you must take the step of putting yourself in the place of the people in question. This same mental tool, one that sets man apart from the rest of creation, is a divine gift. It is imagination. I must at least attempt to imagine what life might have been like for the Jews under Roman rule, for example, or for  Copernicus and Galileo as they were postulating that the earth was round and that, along with the other planets, it revolved around the sun, while the vast majority of the world's population simply assumed that conventional wisdom was correct. Or for the first Europeans who set out to make a home in the New World, leaving religious and political persecution behind them in exchange for extreme living conditions and starvation for some. Or for the natives whose land these strange white men were invading and claiming as their own.

Or for the millions of black Americans who were born into a minority that was treated as second class, at best, for centuries.

The fact of the matter is obvious: we white Americans simply do not know, nor ever have, what it is like to be a minority.

Unless and until we exercise our imagination to peer into the world of the African American, or any other minority, we will be myopic and ethnocentric.

Someone recently posted a comment, or rather a question, on a Facebook post of mine about Nelson Mandela. He asked how South Africa is different because of Mandela's life. I sincerely hope his implication was not that this 95-year life had little to no impact on South African life. Though South Africa is far from reaching the ideals set forth for it by "Madiba," the elder statesman who left us not long ago, the consciousness of that nation is forever changed.

So it is with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Even though we as a nation have a long way to go before we actually live as if all men are created equal, we are different because of the peaceful war on prejudice and inequality waged by King and his courageous followers.

Imagine how much better it can still be.

A Giant Has Left Us

A giant left us today. Rarely has there been such a potent example of the non-violent protest of injustice as that of Nelson Mandela. During 27 years of unjust imprisonment, long after most of us would have succumbed to irreversible bitterness, he stayed the course and thereby maintained his voice. That voice continues to reverberate and must not be silenced.I'm reminded of the words of another giant: "This is a cause for which I am willing to die; but there is no cause for which I am willing to kill." - Gandhi

Jack, Clive and Aldous

While the world rightly remembers an icon American hero today, the deaths of two other culture shapers on the same day in 1963 are practically eclipsed.

November 22, while John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were riding in an open convertible through the streets of downtown Dallas, I was headed to school as a 2nd grade student in Perth, Western Australia. The same day, Clive Staples Lewis was in his last hours in Oxford, England, having been in and out of the hospital for two years after kidney failure and a heart attack. Exactly one week before his 65th birthday, CS Lewis collapsed in his home and died a few minutes later. Lewis was arguably the greatest Christian thinker of the 20th century. What sets him apart from other literary and theological giants is that his impact on culture was multidimensional: his fictional series, The Chronicles of Narnia, has captivated adults and children alike the world over. Lewis's nonfiction on the Christian faith was an unusual blend of head and heart, melting the hearts of cynics and expanding the depth of understanding of the faithful. His life cast a very long shadow, both in his generation and those to come; unfortunately, his death went largely unnoticed.

A few hours earlier the same day in Los Angeles, another intellectual giant of his generation, unable to speak, asked his wife for an injection of LSD as he lay on his deathbed. His legacy stands in sharp contrast to that of Kennedy and Lewis, but perhaps no less impacting. Aldous Huxley's existential questions caught the attention of millions of readers, but as 20th century angst began to take hold in the Western world, it was his landmark novel, Brave New World, that became required reading for an entire generation of high school students throughout the English-speaking world.

What Makes a City Great

I lost count a long time ago of the number of times  I've been to Paris. Having lived in Europe for 12 years, then made regular visits back to the Old Continent since moving back to the US, they all start to run together -- to a certain extent. The wonderful thing about a world class city like Paris, however, is that there are limitless new things to discover with every visit.

For example, I had never been inside the fabled Opéra Garnier, home of the national ballet and opera companies. The opulent decor is reminiscent of the Versailles palace, and my friends and I relished the thought of kings, queens and emperors  for generations sitting in those seats and witnessing some of the world's greatest performances.

Every time in Paris, or Rome, or London (among others), I find myself asking what makes a city great. The afore-mentioned cities are indisputably three of the world's greatest, and arguably THE greatest in Europe. Why is it that tourists flock to these cities by the thousands? Having spent time in all three of these, with the full intention of further visits, I see a common thread:

Creativity.

Hanging out at "Les Berges"

Cities the size and age of Paris, London and Rome must continuously reinvent themselves, not only for the obvious reason that the infrastructure must be able to bear the staggering growth rate, but also in order to maintain a sense of vitality, a collective sense of bien-être. Otherwise, any city could virtually collapse under the weight and strain, as indeed some seem close to.

Every time I'm in these cities, most recently Paris, I marvel at the creative energy that goes into maintaining this collective sense of well-being, this je ne sais quoi that makes people proud to call the city home. This was my first time in recent memory to be in Paris in the month of August. For several years now, the city of Paris has been hauling in thousands of tons of sand and creating a small beach on the right bank of the Seine, complete with palm trees, chaises longues, snack bars and music. Weather permitting, every night sees a beach party with dancing, crêpes and plenty of camaraderie. And it's not a drunken, out of control fête; the feel was downright family friendly.

Modern art at La Défense

A little farther west, in front of the Musée d'Orsay, an area called "Les Berges" has been created for outdoor relaxation and togetherness. Hundreds of square beams, not unlike railroad ties, have been used to create various kinds of sitting areas, platforms and picnic areas, along with fun and creative activities such as monkey bars, mazes painted on the spongy asphalt-like surface, or giant chalkboards actually inviting grafitti. People of all ages could be seen, from family birthday parties to friends enjoying a leisurely picnic with a bottle of wine, from lovers taking a stroll to cyclists, skateboarders and roller bladers taking advantage of the open space.

In front of the famous Hôtel de Ville in the 1st arrondissement, beach volleyball courts occupy the large square, and players by the hundreds sign up for a time slot.

It is no secret that Paris is a great patron of the arts; but creativity goes far beyond art, and from this writer's perspective, it is heartwarming to see a city government that continuously works to create an inviting place to be -- not only for its millions of annual visitors, but also for its residents who, for whatever reason, can't be at the Côte d'Azur in August.

The Debate Continues in France

Sacré Coeur

It is no secret that the French have always been fiercely proud of their language -- and rightly so. It is truly one of the most beautiful languages spoken. Sometimes the debate has reached comical levels, as when the purists refused to call Sony's groundbreaking Walkman by its English name and instead invented the word balladeur (literally "walker"). Now there is a move among certain elements to offer more university courses in English in order to attract more bright scholars from emerging countries such as India and Brazil. This does not go down well with those who are concerned that, taken to its extreme, English might actually take over as the lingua franca of the French Parliament itself. Not likely, but it will be interesting to see the outcome of this latest episode in the battle to preserve la langue française. 

Senioritis of a Different Sort

Old Chinese man

I've been musing a lot lately on the way we view aging and the elderly. Perhaps this is because I've been in a number of conversations lately where I was the oldest person present; at one time or another comments were made implying either pity or embarrassment for me, as if my age were a disfiguring disease.

This is something that varies from one culture to another. Most of us are aware that in Eastern cultures the elderly are treated with more respect than in the West. Their life experiences and lessons learned along the way are considered, of all things, an asset and not a liability. It is a given in Asia, as well as in most African cultures, that a family will care for aging family members in return for having been raised by them. In the West, this is so often absent that the death of several French senior citizens due to neglect during a heat wave a number of years ago brought it painfully to the light.

I'm not naive enough to believe, however, that the grass is COMPLETELY greener on the other side. Many families, while providing food and shelter for their aging parents, secretly resent that their resources are being drained or that their parents are ungrateful. That said, it would not hurt us, in the West, to learn something about honoring our elders and the road they have walked. For my part, I've resolved to wear what is left of my gray hair as a badge of honor.

Bilingual Benefits

A recent study shows that bilingual people are able to switch tasks more quickly than monolinguals. This actually comes as no surprise. The ability to switch gears and refocus on another subject or task at hand seems an almost indispensable skill these days -- certainly in my world. What I find tragic is the fact that thousands, if not millions, of immigrants to the US, Britain, Australasia and other English-speaking countries ceased speaking their mother tongue with their children once they arrived on new shores. So many children of immigrants I've met are now monolingual because their parents wanted (them) to fit in in their new host culture. As a result, these children have been robbed not only of a valuable asset in today's world, bilingualism, but also much of the cultural heritage of their home country.

The good news is that it's not too late! Whether it's going back and relearning the old language or learning a new one, anyone can develop a second language that will benefit them in oh so many ways -- including the ability to multi-task!

Musings from a Museum

Steenwijk Christ Martha and Mary

In his book, Windows of the Soul, Ken Gire talks of how the most ordinary circumstances and the most mundane experiences can become extraordinary if we are paying attention. I had such an experience last Saturday, when I visited one of our local art museums with my wife, two sons and grandson. Following are some random musings:

• I have been to many of the finest museums in the world, and still find myself in awe of the fact that I really am looking at the original painting, or the real object, that was created by hands just like mine hundreds or even thousands of years ago. This time I was marveling at some of the masters from the Dutch Golden Age, including the master himself, Rembrandt van Rijn. What struck me in particular was their uncanny understanding of light; it's as if they were able to capture in time something so ethereal and transient (perhaps evasive is a better word) that it's like stardust. The reproduction above does next to nothing to convey the astounding depiction of light in van Steenwijk's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. And hardly a brushstroke to be seen. One thing that also sets the Dutch Masters apart from other Renaissance and Baroque painters is their portrayal of ordinary scenes and people, shedding the obligation to paint Biblical scenes or portraits of monarchs and nobles. This is likely due to the Protestant Reformation, having firmly taken root in the Netherlands, which taught the sanctity of all aspects of life, not only what is deemed religious. (The flip side of this is that Protestant churches were stripped of countless priceless works of art under the austere interpretation of the Calvinists.)
• I love to people watch at museums. Some snapshots that caught my eye: a young father and his barely-teenage son remarking on the art, the son sharing some of what he had learned in school about the techniques used here; a 40-ish man joining an elderly gentleman (easily 80 by my estimation) for a morning at the museum. There was an obvious bond of friendship between the two men, and it reminded me that souls need not know the limitations of age difference. I am fortunate enough to foster deep friendships between people much older and much younger than I, and believe we are only enriched by transgenerational relationships.
• The innovative work of Camille Utterback was a source of wonder for all of us, including my almost-two-year-old grandson. Her use of interactive technology, combined with whimsical creativity, is not only entertaining but a reminder that we are constantly interacting with our surroundings.

I came away feeling a rich man, probably because I was awake enough to be paying attention -- which, I must confess, is not always the case.

The Richer For It!

Treasure Chest

My youngest son is writing a paper for his college writing class. He chose as his topic the value of travel abroad. I suppose he came by it honestly — he was born in Switzerland, raised by multilingual parents with an international outlook, and spent five months in China after high school. Although he is an art major, he is continuing his study of Chinese at his university in the US, with a native speaker as his main professor. Totally without any prompting on my part, he chose to quote from my e-book, How to Learn a Foreign Language: 7 Tips for Making the Daunting Doable:

“When you learn a language, you gain access to a key that unlocks untold treasures.”

In my son’s case, some of those treasures are insights into Chinese culture and relationships with Chinese people whom he wouldn’t have met had he not undertaken the study of this fascinating language. He does not consider himself superior to those who only speak one language; he considers himself richer. His life now has an entirely new dimension and holds whole new levels of experience and opportunity.

The same can be true for you!