This week was my first time working at the Enjoy Public art gallery.

I helped prepare the last details before the opening of the exhibition. Here is a description of Yona Lee’s work.

“Enjoy Public Art Gallery is very excited to announce a major installation by Yona Lee. Drawing from previous works where the artist utilized steel rods to explore formal ideas relating to line and space, Tangential Structures is a work that incorporates an impossible dichotomy. Steel rods cast in such a way as to evoke movement and fluidity hang from the ceiling at Enjoy, loosely flung over rafter beams and looping playfully through the space. The very temporary gestures – careless loops, waves, curls and hooks – are at odds with the cold, hard qualities of the steel, creating contradictory material behavior that behaves improperly to the forces of gravity and logic. Within this structure, Lee has also incorporated various quotidian objects, such as baseball caps, wine glasses and coffee cups, which are employed to reference different aspects of ordinary rituals and everyday habits. The project intends to take the viewer on a journey through the installation that triggers their own understanding of various spaces, particularly those that are marked by the slick, yet very ordinary, language of commercial display.”

I got to know a lot of volunteers and people often came to me for more information or just to talk about their impressions and feelings about the work.

On Tuesday, I went to the weekly tramping meeting and presented the track we did last week. It was the first time I had to speak in front of so many people! As always the meeting was followed by tacos for dinner. It is a very friendly and relaxed time: we all go to the market together, buy things to prepare tacos and go to someone’s place and cook all together.

As it is the last week before the mid-trimester break I was wondering where I could go and decided to travel with a French girl, a German one and another one from the Netherlands. We would go on a road trip on the east cost of the south island!

On Friday I went to a rugby game. How can people go to NZ without watching one live?! The game was Wellington (Hurricanes) against Perth in Western Australia (Force).

The atmosphere was really relaxed.

Before the opening there was Maori music and then a woman came on the field dressed in typical Maori dress.

The Force didn’t have so many supporters compared to the Hurricanes.

I’ll let you imagine what was happening when the Hurricanes were scoring and when it was the Force! Anyway Wellington won: 22 to 16!

Next game: France v All Blacks in June!

I just come back from a one week break and knowing that I will have another break in 2 weeks makes it harder to go back to studies.

As I have to do a two month internship, I was looking for a place where I could work for minimum one month as I already had a one month internship in London. The difficulty is that on my Visa, it is explicitly written that I can’t work as I am here as a student. I had a look at the volunteer job I could do in wellington. In fact there are many but the problem is that they hardly correspond to my studies. They are generally linked with conservation areas. For example, planting trees and to me it was not the best way to improve my English.

                At my last badminton class, a friend told me that he was working as a volunteer in an art gallery on Cuba Street (an artistic street) and that I should try entering using his name. I reached the person in charge of this gallery and met her. She seemed to be very pleased to have someone regularly.

http://www.enjoy.org.nz/

My job will be to help installing the exhibition, to welcome the public and to answer questions about the exhibition. Modern Art is not a domain I am familiar with but I was told that I would get easily into it.

On Wednesday Stafford, the hall of residence I am living in, organized a cultural quiz for everyone. A very good way to get to know people you often see in the elevator!

On Tuesday, I went to the weekly tramping meeting to know more about the trips organized for this weekend and decided to sign up for a weekend trip in the national park which is one hour from Wellington. I didn’t really realize the consequences… I just took it as a kind of challenge. We were two groups of five people doing this trip. The first one was doing it in two days and a half and mine in two days. I was with two Americans, one German (the leader) and a guy from Sweden.

On the first day, we walked from 9am to 9 pm. The biggest tramping day of my life! It started quite easily with some small up and down and then for 3 entire hours it was only up-hill: 1531m high!

Remember that we were carrying our bag for the week-end! When we arrived at the top, I had a sudden impression to be in the middle of winter: cold, wind and rain! But you can’t imagine how extraordinary the view from the top was!

From this point there was no track and the visibility was not good so we had to use the compass to find our way!

At 5pm we went downhill. And at 6pm it was dark so we had to use our head torch, real adventure and still with the rain and the wind! It was so great to see that until the end of the day, no one ever complained, always chatting and making jokes even the last ones!

Arrived at the hut we had our best hours, eating our favorite tramping dinner: nachos, discovering our feet state and our wet things!

The Sunday was more “relaxed”: different propositions depending on people’s motivation. With two American girls and a kiwi one, we went to the Rocky lookout. Just 600 m high in two hours, almost a walk compared to the day before!

We finally all met at the end of the day and had a Turkish dinner.

…tomorrow, class at 8am at Kelburn campus! (the one uphill)

Now that I am settled, I created my little routine and begin to become a common student with her lectures, her essays, her tutorials…

                I find all my lectures really interesting especially the one of management. This lecturer is a bit hyperactive and that is why it so interesting. The Human resources class is not so exciting, there are even some students who leave before the end of the class. A big difference compared to France is that students are really respectful towards their tutors (never speak during the lectures) but on the contrary they can say hello to them, call them using their first name, arrive late and leave before the end of the lecture… This behavior is quite hard to understand from a French student.

                As my school wants me to do an internship I went to the career hub which is a team of adults who help you find a job or write your CV… They gave me some ways to work as a volunteer but when I showed them my resume I made during my English class in France, they made me understand that it was not the right way to write it at all and that I should rewrite it, nice!

During the weekend, I went with the tramping club to the freshers.

We left on the Friday afternoon to go to the Waihine Gorge, the next day we walked during about 4 hours and camped at the Totara flats and came out at Mont Holdsworth.

When I went to the meeting where they introduced this weekend, they told us that it was going to be something really easy, that it was even ok to wear snickers. I was pretty relaxed because I was used to going tramping almost every summer in the Alpes but in fact it was not so easy at all! The big difference with the Alpes is that New Zealand is composed by a lot of small mountains so you always have to go up and down on the contrary to France where when you go up it’s for 3 hours and then you go down. We even had to use our hands to go up and down! I am still wondering how my flat mate managed to survive, it was her first tramping trip! However I decided to join the club and the next trip is… on the south island for the Easter break!

For this trip we had to carry our own food for the 3 days. Some people forgot it, others brought meat to cook but with the heat it began to smell and others just brought peanut butter they could mix with anything: bread of course but also cereals, carrots or just some spoonfuls for lunch depending on people’s tastes! I was really impressed by the fact that the nature conservation is really important for the kiwi students, they were carrying the trash from the 3 days until we came back.

It was my first time outside Wellington and the landscapes are so amazing.

It looks like a huge garden with palm trees, reeds… it can be so dry and a few meters further very humid!

                It was the first event of the tramping club and it went really well: there were about more than hundred students (about 1/3 kiwi people, 1/3 Americans, 1/3 exchange/international students)! And it was really a great way to meet other students and now I always meet one of them by going to the university or to my lectures!

                On Tuesday I went to a quiz organized by the French club. There were about 6 teams of 5-10 people. The different topics were architecture, gastronomy, geography… My buddy had composed our team, she chose 4 French students: she likes winning! I can’t consider myself proud of my culture: even for some questions, the kiwi students could answer and not me… that is interesting to see what they first learn about the French culture! But we still managed to reach 2^nd place!

                I spent quite a few hours at the library these days to study on my assignments and I have to confess that the view from the 6^th floor of the Kelburn’s library is probably the best you can have in Wellington! 

If you want to have an idea of how the campuses look like:

This week was the first week of class, it began with an economics class at 8am and then a human resources class at 1:30. Those two classes were in two different campuses. The first at Kelburn which is at the top of a hill and the other at the sea level! For the moment, I don’t really mind walking 30-40 minutes to go to class but I think that when it’s winter, I will take advantage of the free bus tickets given by the student association ;)

In addition to those two classes, I also chose a management and an international business class. In general, it was pretty easy to understand because the professors don’t have any strange accents and I know already most of the concepts but the international business class was run by a Chinese man who has a really big accent, hopefully everything is written on the Power Point!

It is pretty interesting to see the differences between the French and the Kiwi classes:

• although computers are allowed, I would say that 10% or even less bring it
• no one chats during classes
• If you are late it doesn’t matter. At the international business class that lasted two hours, a guy even arrived 10 minutes before the end, as if it was normal!
• If you don’t like the class or you want to answer your call, you can leave whenever you want!
• Except some classes, they usually last 50 minutes.

So I had only lectures but next week I will also have tutorials that are with 15 other students made so that we can discuss with the professor about the lectures and explain our point of view. I realized too late that we had to register for them and got the worst time schedule ever!

This week was also the one when students present their clubs. I was really impressed be the number of clubs that exist: around 30. All very different from the others: sport, religion, politics, humanitarian, cultural, those that defend theories (gender and others), feminist, entrepreneurship, about health…

There are so many sport clubs: X55, fight do, power, oxigeno, yoga, pilates, swiss ball, pump, step, zumba and all the team sports… except one: tennis!

I decided to register to three different clubs: tramping (hiking), badminton and business entrepreneurship.

On Tuesday, while Tommy was making a Japanese dinner, the fire alarm rang. Like the other we thought it was an exercise so we joined all the students on the street (occasion to discover new students) but we saw two fire trucks arriving that made us realize that it was no exercise! We learned later that it was due to students who had lit candles in the corridor… They may have paid a 1200 NZ $ fine!

On Friday, as we had no classes, Tommy and I went to the Zealandia Park. By going to the bus station, we saw people cuing. People wearing yellow tee-shirts were distributing pies and flags. We had no idea for what it was but took one of each and went to the bus station.

It was only at the end of the day that we realized the Hurricane, which was written on the flag was a rugby team. In fact, they are buying their fans for the rugby game that was in the evening!

The aim of Zealandia is to create a place with only animals and plants coming from New Zealand without all species coming from overseas that disturb their growth and development.

At the exit, we realized that there were buses bringing us directly to town. The driver was very nice and we began to talk about his work. He told us that he had rescued two birds whose wings had been cut. So he was taking care of them until they can fly again. We were really surprised and asked what kind of birds they were… pigeons!

When we came back we decided to get a mac flurry. We were very surprised to discover that they are totally different from France and Japan. The possible flavors are caramel, double chunk cookie and chocolate. We then enjoyed the sun and chatted for more than an hour about cultural differences, very interesting!

This week I had the opportunity to discover even more students with the exchange’s students club and with my buddy. The nocturnal life is really different from the one in France!  

Good thing to know: what do Asian people think about French people?

While we were walking, Tommy asked me this awkward question: “what do French people think about Asian (good and bad aspects)?”

I answered quite typical things like all Asian people look the same or they are always taking lots of pictures even of the silliest thing ever…

And then I returned the question and here is the answer:

“French people are way too proud about their culture and their big History but they seem to be intelligent because they can speak other languages”

I was very surprised because for me, French people were seen as the worse people for languages! I can reassure you: you are not seen that way… !