A couple days ago I failed to stop myself saying "cheers" when someone held the door for me. This may have marked a critical turning point in my time in New Zealand. My accent is still very American but I may be losing my power to keep annoying words like "mate" out of my vocabulary.
Last night I attended a class dinner for the fourth-year honors students at the Italian restaurant Etrusco's. All the honors students and their supervisors attended, and I was invited along because I've sat in on some of their classes and presented my research with them. It was a fun event and the food and wine were great. After dinner we went to karaoke, but unfortunately none of the faculty joined us.
This morning I saw a group of three expats getting their picture taken with my massive American flag in the lab window in the background.
This afternoon the Governor-General of New Zealand and Queen's Representative, the Honourable Sir Anand Satyanand, visited the Habitat House. He is supposed to be the patron for Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand but had never visited a house under construction before. He was accompanied by his wife, a couple secret service agents, a young Navy officer who planned his social engagements, and a few members from the Habitat for Humanity board in Dunedin. The Maori family greeted Sir Satyanand with a traditional greeting and song and Sir Satyanand responded in te reo Maori, which was judged to be quite good by the family. We had afternoon tea and Kyle and I got a lot of attention as the only student volunteers.
2 comments:
I'm curious: Are the Americans in New Zealand doing anything special for 9/11?
Dave,
Don't feel bad about using the word "cheers". It's an extremely useful word for a variety of situations and I found myself using it when I was regularly traveling to the U.K. But I agree that you should draw the line at using words like "mate" and "bloke".
Jim
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