Monday 28 December 2009

Fun...mucho fun

It seems to become a tradition; once in a while I will do a big update instead of tiny ones here and there. Life has been eventful, too much fun playing outside and no rest for the wicked. Or at least no time for computers. Obviously...

The last 3 weeks I have been spending my evenings on a circus course...which was totally exciting. I have to refer you to Patrick's blog for some fun movies...

Christmas has been spend with Patrick's family in Palmerston North. His aunt Mary has taken us in her house and we spend the last 5 days meeting the family, eating nice food, drinking delicious wine, having good chats, playing lots of games and doing some sight seeing. And we laughed a lot: Mary has a great sense of humour (and she doesn't mind some crazy people like us!)

It was also about time to put some effort in my lovely lonely blog: some Maaike stories and kiwi pictures! I think there are about 10...'Lekker leesvoer'... And after today I will be on a proper long holiday with my mother: travelling around the North Island, showing her why I love NZ that much!!

And finally, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a healthy, happy and an amazing 2010. I hope to see you in April/May (if not before...!)

Sunday 27 December 2009

Work...

Work is challenging and joyful good, but just amazingly busy...I suppose to finish my contract mid 2010. I wonder. I mean, I will have it done, but there might be more… Or not: all fun and games (true kiwi expression!) In the meantime, since I was asked, I wrote an article about embedding literacy and numeracy into Adult Community Education (ACE) programmes. Literacy and numeracy is my thing, I don’t really know much about ACE. If you would like to read it, click here. Good thing is that I already got one teaching contract out of it. Not that I have time, but hey... U vraagt, wij draaien...

Thursday 10 December 2009

Maori

One new and exciting thing I picked up since my last post, is Maori class. I know I’m a true language nerd, however, doing a class 6-9 on a Thursday evening made me feel a bit hesitant. Being the only non-kiwi made me aware that I would probably have the least prior knowledge to the language. How wrong could I be. On all levels!
The classes are in Maori style, so we start off with Karakia (prayers), Waiata (songs) and some meditation. Then the 3 hours are basically full of interactive learning with practising in pairs, doing songs, learning vocabulary while doing ‘haka’ like movements, doing hand/foot coordination and clapping rhythms while learning word combinations. We do games, we push each other, moreover we have fun. Lots of fun, it is totally cool. We are a very supportive team, I think!

Our group is interesting and you can sort off divide us in 3 categories. First category are people from Ngai Tahu descent (South Island tribe) who never learned Maori and now they want to learn it. Some youngsters and some wiser older people. Secondly, there is a big bunch of primary school teachers: Maori language and culture is part of the curriculum nowadays, so they feel the need to improve their language skills. And lastly, there is this group of random people who are just keen on learning Maori. I’m one of the random ones...

On an educational level it is very interesting to see how Hoani, my teacher, teaches. He is good at what he does. And honestly, the diversity is massive!! Some people have a huge bank of vocabulary and excellent pronunciation (mostly the Maori participants) and then you have me: nil knowledge nor pronunciation skills. You have people without any education and people who are highly educated. You have linguistic freaks like me and you have the rest of the group who are monolingual all their lives (Kiwi’s are basically shocking at learning languages) and barely understand the concept of how languages are constructed. The fact that I don’t know kiwi songs, is an immense shock for some.

But we have found our merry ways in it. If we start a song the entire class has their eyes (and ears) on me and starts laughing because I sing whatever I think the tune is...I attack my fellow learners with a zillion questions ‘ what does x mean, what does y mean’ and they are not surprised about even the most simple question: they know I have no basics. Then again, sometimes the English speakers find the pronunciation very hard, I find it easypeasy because I have that thing for languages. If sentence structures are completely not like English, the class struggles, I’m comfortable with it. Since I have always learned languages by the use of grammar and textbooks, Hoani sometimes gives me some grammar to please me. If Hoani doesn’t get the English grammar, I explain how it works. Or like Hoani says: I teach you Maori and you can teach me English. And he says that with the biggest grin on his face: he thinks I’m hilarious...little language nerd...

So yes, my Maori classes are really superb. Having exams every 5 weeks is quite full on, but they are very accommodating. You do them in pairs, lots is verbal and you never fail...just not yet achieved...!