New Zealand at first sight
What is the first thing crossing your mind when you think of New Zealand? To me it is a memory of my best friend sending me a postcard from Hobbiton and telling me quite a bit about New Zealand’s astonishing landscape and her experiences while being abroad. I have never been there before nor have I ever thought about exploring the country until then.
However, I am not familiar with New Zealand’s culture at all. As I barely know anything about it, this course really is an introduction to me. Once again, the first thing I did when I tried to get familiar with New Zealand was googling it. Thereby, I came across some interesting facts that I would like to share with you.
Kiwi seems to be a major key word as it does not only refer to the fruit itself, but also to a (flightless) native species of bird. Even the native inhabitants are informally called Kiwis, which is pretty cute in my opinion. New Zealand once inhabited the world’s largest bird. Unfortunately, the early settlers hunted the moa to extinction.
The Maori are said to be the indigenous people of New Zealand, forming their own culture and a language that shares the same name. I find it really interesting that Maori is the official second language of New Zealand as it was forgotten from many people for a while.
I’m a big fan of harmless traditions, all the more I had to smirk when I read about the Maori’s traditional dances. One of them, the war dance that is known as the haka, is even performed by the National Rugby Team before each match.
There’s still so much to find out about New Zealand and I’m genuinely happy to learn more about it. If you are interested, here is an interesting list of 69 facts about NZ:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/things-you-did-not-know-about-new-zealand#.uuVw0VkPW
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