Unfortunately sans Professors Roger + Virginia Clarvin.
On our morning run, Terence and I found an awesome little trail through the Auckland Domain called the ~Lover’s Walk~ (mmmmm) and Anna, Abbie and I went on another little jaunt through it this afternoon. Nice spot to run - if only it was a longer trail! I’m already sick of road running and we’ve only just started.
Here’s a pic of the trail I found online, since I didn’t snap one on our run(s). It has a super-long footbridge and a little waterfall, too! Very Jurassic Park-y.
Māori Studies 130 was awesome. Learned some more vocab to add to my personal dictionary and some of the more basic underlying tikanga (underlying values) in the Māori world. What was really striking to me was the professor’s comments about pepeha - ways of expressing identity in an introduction using geographic locations, ancestors, and places of spiritual value. The professor challenged us to think of our pepeha, regardless of descent. Coming from my euro-mutt heritage and having lived in several states in my life, it was hard to name where my roots were. I couldn’t even begin to think of what my mountain, river, meetinghouse, ancestor, or region of identity would be. Could my mountain be Cahuenga Peak, looking over the city where my parents met, but my river the Charles, thousands of miles away where my current home sits? It’s so similar to my family’s dialectal nuances as well - we have roots everywhere but nowhere. A midwestern vowel here, a west coast lexical item there, all the while using ‘wicked’ as an intensifier. Somehow my idiolect, and probably my siblings’ as well, averages out to a variety of cities I’ve never even visited because it doesn’t fit any of the born-and-raised molds. Is it even possible to have a multi-regional pepeha in the grand scheme of things, or worse, none at all?
That’s it for cross-cultural questioning + deep thoughts. Ka kite anō! (see ya later)