Good on Ya, Aotearoa!

Aotearoa (A-tea-air-o) is the Maori name for New Zealand.  It means "Land of the long white cloud."  When the clouds come from the west over the Southern Alps, they stretch for a long way with the tops of the mountains showing above them, so it looks like the clouds are long and thin.  We saw this striking effect many times in our travels across the South Island.

We are nearly all packed and have a short list of things to do to wrap up our time in Christchurch before Ian takes us to the airport after lunch.  We have started to do some reflection on our time in NZ:  Terry liked Lake Tepako best for scenery, especially the night sky (sorry, no photos of that):

I liked Hoki-freakin-tika and the west coast scenery the best:

But, trying to choose the best of what we saw took a long time for both of us--there was just too much to pick from.

New Zealand's other great natural resource is its kind and friendly people.  I have never been in a culture where everyone is so upbeat, smiling, polite, generous, and willing to help strangers.  The people in Christchurch have a lot of reasons to view themselves as unfortunate victims as they still struggle to get their lives fully back in order after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.  Most of them know that will not happen during their lifetimes, but they pride themselves in being a resilient, hard working people who can overcome many obstacles--even the most daunting of them.  At the university, what impressed me the most is how faculty, staff and students all made the initial efforts to get back to the business of teaching and learning, and three years later they are still carrying on in conditions that would have brought most American universities to a permanent standstill.

Right now we are busy with all of the logistics of wrapping things up here and getting ourselves and our luggage back home--there will be more time for reflection on the flights and in the first weeks back.  So, look for one more blog that will have our final thoughts and "best of" pictures from these nine wonderful weeks in Aotearoa.

Cheers,

Mike and Terry