I’d never regretted learning Spanish until Tahiti. I arrived in March of this year, where I planned to spend three weeks working on a black pearl farm on a remote atoll named Ahe. But when I reached the island, its coral ring tucked away in the northeast corner of French Polynesia, I found only four … Read More
It’s easy to get caught up in the logistics of travel. Rental cars, hostels, activity bookings, highway routes…the list goes on of everything there is to keep track of, not to mention getting various other ‘life concerns’ taken care of. On the eve of my departure from Wellington, about to spend a month traveling the … Read More
People have come and gone But the land remains steadfast Bindings of people, and the land Is our history. * * * The treaty today Every year on the Saturday closest to Waitangi Day, thousands of young Kiwi expats flood into London Underground stations and ride the Tube on the infamous Circle Line pub crawl. … Read More
“Rugby is New Zealand’s leading spectator sport and ranks as one of our leading participant sports. Each year, more written words are generated on the subject of rugby than on any other single sport…Leading players are popular heroes…Rugby enjoys huge status in the national psyche.” – Alan Turley, Rugby: The Pioneer Years In all its … Read More
In the early days of the new year, the sixth of February loomed like a golden opportunity I didn’t quite know what to do with. It is, above all, Waitangi Day – as New Zealand’s quasi-equivalent of Fourth of July, it more or less celebrates the signing of a treaty which made the country official … Read More
“It’s like we do nowadays, but slightly different.” – A ten-year old tour guide at the Colonial Cottage Museum Among the various new holidays I found on my calendar this year – ANZAC Day, Boxing Day, and the Queen’s Birthday, to name a few – I was perhaps most intrigued by the idea of regional … Read More
“In the past, what had mattered most in any long train journey through an interesting landscape was the motion, the privacy, the solitude, the grandeur.” – Paul Theroux, Gravy Train: A Private Railway Car There’s something about the prefix “trans-,” something about the myriad words it often precedes all carrying that same sense of wonder … Read More
“In whatever part of the world they may be, the first thing British colonists think of is to find a habitation for Justice.” – Frederick Whitaker, superintendent of the Auckland Province, upon the laying of the foundation stone for the present Auckland Supreme Courthouse in 1865 There’s nothing like a prince to draw a … Read More
As a first-year university student, one of the first courses I enrolled in was PLCP 101, otherwise known as Intro to Comparative Politics. Over the course of the semester, Professor Schoppa took us through a study of countries such as Britain, Canada, Germany, and Japan, looking for what their governments had in common, what they … Read More
The famous cities of the world all have their famous buildings, those landmarks so often reproduced on coffee mugs, keychains, and countless other kitsch. Chicago has the Sears Tower, London has Big Ben, and any image of the Eiffel Tower is without a doubt from Paris. And so coming to Wellington, New Zealand, I was … Read More