Feb 25-26

Saturday, February 25

Today Josh and I planned to watch the Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival. Kapa Haka is a series of traditional Maori songs and dances. More info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapa_haka This event only happens every two years and it just happened to be in Palmerston North this year. This event sees different Maori tribes compete against each other for the national title. Basically, IT ROCKS!

The slogan for this year's competiton was, "200 years ago, the loser didn't go home." I think they used to kill the losers of these competitions! Josh and I caught the last 6 performances of the semi-finals and then returned the following day for the finals.

It cost $100 NZD total for the two of us to watch the event over two days. We considered it a good deal because we figured you might spend about that much to watch one or two perforances at a touristy type show with dinner somewhere. Here, we could watch various performances over two days. These were the best performers in the country since they had to pass regional competitions to make it here.

We thought the Kapa Haka was pretty cool. Especially when the men did the Haka part where they beat/slap on their chests/thighs, contorted their faces, stuck out their tongues, and yelled (sometimes with spears). This was the best part to us. Sure, some of the choir singing parts were neat...but the hostile parts were AWESOME...except you never knew what they were saying in Maori...and it could have been "Kill the White man." White people (European decent) are called Pakeha here. Basically, Maori means "ordinary or usual" and Pakeha means "different." Josh and I were definitely in the minority at the Kapa Haka Festival.

Sunday, February 25

Josh and I went to the finals of the Kapa Haka Festival. I was tired during/after the show so I went to bed early...like 7:00 pm early.

Monday, February 26

This morning, Josh called President Lindsey to see about getting a ride to the Takaro Readers program the following morning since I'd be taking the car to Home Direct early on. Josh got it situated to get a ride to Takaro School and then I'd pick him up at noon after my job at Home Direct and his volunteer work were over.

I was scheduled to start the temporary job at Home Direct at 5 pm today. I spent the afternoon trying to learn more Excel stuff so I didn't totally embarrass myself on Wednesday morning at Palmerston North Personnel. I left the house around 4:35 pm and drove out to the Home Direct warehouse which was on the north side of town (Josh and I drove out to find it the other day). Basically, it is an industrial area and the building itself has bars on the windows...not exactly a confidence builder for Josh or myself...but Josh still let me drive out there myself.

I made it on time and saw other people in the parking lot and as it turned out, they were there to work the job too. We met with the supervisor, a younger guy named Brit, and we waited for the rest of the workers to show up. When they hadn't, he had the four of us start. About 10 minutes into pulling pieces of metal clothing racks out of the back of a mini-van, the two other girls showed up.

So, as I was saying, the first task was to pull metal pieces out of the van and put them into organized piles on the floor. Next, we used the pieces to construct clothes racks (about 38 of them). Then, we got a quick lesson on how to use a hand held scanner.

There were three metal sheds along the wall in the warehouse. Each shed had a number on it that corrosponded to a Home Direct truck number. There was green tape on the floor to designate the area you should stay in for your shed. We broke up into three teams with two people on each team to unload the shed onto the metal clothes racks and onto a tarp on the floor for items like shoes, toys, pillows, and blankets.

Items emptied out of the shed, we scanned each item's barcode into our scanners. Then, we waited for the Home Direct trucks to arrive. During this break, we had tea (again, provided compliments of the company). I stood outside with three other workers and compared America to New Zealand. The two girls who showed up late (they were friends) stayed inside to talk.

The trucks were running late so we had about an hour break (nice). When the trucks did show up, we had to unload them...and they were full of stuff...toys, shampoo, pillows, clothes, shoes, etc. After emptying the trucks we scanned all the stuff....then it was time to go home. The two girls who were friends wouldn't be returning the following morning because they had class. Brit told us that we would have a busy morning the following day because the trucks had arrived late that night (great).

Driving home this night, it struck me: driving in New Zealand is just like driving at home. I feel totally comfortable driving here now. No big deal! When I got home, Josh had a glass of Diet Coke waiting for me. I hadn't called him to ask for it, he had just read my mind!!! Off to sleep (after 3 rounds of Scatergories).

Tuesday, February 27

Work started at 7 am so that meant waking up at 6. My life philosophy: waking up while it still dark outside is WRONG! But, I told myself it was only one day.

I got to work early, headed in, and Brit and other people were there (not the same people as the day before). Turns out, these were other Home Direct employees. Soon enough, the other three people I'd worked with yesterday arrived. More scanning, more hand counting to validate the scanned numbers. I think I impressed Brit with my counting accuracy when others couldn't perform that simple function accurately (yeah for me!).

Brit pulled me aside to count different orders that were in a closet and hand write the order numbers in a ledger...I thought he was going to offer me a chance to come back for future work...not so much. But, I still felt like I got a more "important" task (regardless if that is true or not).

Wrapping up the work, Amy (one of the girls I was working with at Home Direct) asked if we'd all like to have coffee after the assignment...sure, I'm all about making some friends here. We finished by loading up the trucks and we were done by 10:30...1/2 hour ahead of schedule so we got to go home-but then nobody wanted to go have coffee-whatever!

The other temp workers and I exchanged phone numbers to update each other about other temp jobs in town. Shane, an IPC student, said he knew the guy who ran English Outside the Classroom there and that he'd put in a good word for me. Interestingly enough, one of the other workers, Sarah, didn't have a ride home because of the bus and finishing the work assignment early...so I gave her a ride into town! Funny!

Later that afternoon, Amy called to say that there were temp jobs through an agency on Broadway. She'd gone in there after the Home Direct work and they sent her to a laundry to start work at 1:30 that afternoon! I told her I was meeting with PN Personnel the following day, but I'd look into that too.

I spent the rest of the afternoon cramming on Excel info. I passed another Excel test just barely. I also had been practicing my typing skills to get my words per minute up. In the end, I wasn't nervous about my appointment the following day, I just wanted to do well.

Also, Josh and I sent an email to the Rotary Amb. Scholar from India , Anand, and the other American Rotary Scholar, Fleetwood and his wife, Kim, to have coffee with us on Thursday afternoon at 4 pm.