I would just like to say thanks to my parents, my god-mother, my girlfriend and of course my professors Dr. Beissel, Dr. Morris and Dr. Greinger for all of the hard work and effort you put into this program and helping me fund for this trip. I would have not done it without each and every one of you. You have made this a trip of a lifetime and a trip I will be talking about for years and years to come. This will help me build in my professional goals because I want to coach a team someday and one of the guest lectures talked about how to coach a team and how to find a system within the team in order to become successful for all ages. One of the many things I learned from this trip in a sport culture is being open to growth and trying new sports that you thought you would hate but to actually try the sport and interact with other people was really a great skill to learn. On this trip, I knew of people but I really only had one friend on the trip going with me. Now, I have gained 37 new friends that I will cherish for a lifetime. I learned how to interact with each other in a social atmosphere but also in a classroom and professional atmosphere. Throughout this trip I was engulfed in the New Zealand culture from learning when to say cheers, mate! to always being polite and not saying just a flat out no. I hope to keep the politeness that I learned from this culture and incorporate it back into my own culture. Also, my educational goals were met by just traveling to another country and expanding my experience as much as possible before I get interviewed for PT schools.

The sporting culture of New Zealand is a lot different than the United States. One of the big things that I learned about New Zealand sporting culture was the age of when you are done the playing the particular sport. In America, the sport you have always loved playing is done after high school. However, in New Zealand, you can still play for competitive club teams till you decide to stop playing. You rarely see that in America, the only sport where I can think of still playing competitive sport is fast pitch baseball. Older men can play longer for that sport but those are really the die hard baseball players. That aspect of the New Zealand sporting culture I think is my favorite because even when I get older I can still play for a club soccer team or a club baseball team. For example, I was done high school freshman year for baseball and immediately had to go straight to beer-league softball in the summer.

Also, Ian pointed it out that I haven’t really thought about until the final day but New Zealand deals with the same issues as the United States does with the same type of popular sports. For example, cricket is having gender issues in regards to pay and broadcast revenues just like soccer does in America with gender pay. Also another popular sport in New Zealand that is having problems the same as America is rugby because the amount of concussions that are happening and this results in the participation numbers dropping for rubgy. This is just like football in America and how there are concussions worries and is causing the participation numbers to drop for youth football. This challenged my views on the sport because I never thought about other countries having the same issues as America does with our sports. I liked this challenge but it made me think about my culture and how we can make change to our society. I thought playing club sports till whenever you die was the most challenging this to grasp because now I want to play sports that I have enjoyed all of my life but now I have to stop playing sports I love once high school was done.

New Zealand, a population of approximately 4.5 to 5 million people in the nation that was founded on hard-working blue collar, hard nosed people. This is a small nation that is ten times smaller than the population of California. So this is kind of crazy that people have so much national identity and national pride. They pride themselves on sport and has rallied the nation every time they are on the national stage whether that be the Olympics or world cups. The thing they are most proud of though is rugby. I remember from the saatchi and saatchi meeting that Daine said that if you don’t have any friends then you play rugby. Rugby is so big here and its their national pride especially around the All Blacks team. The All Blacks are the national rugby team and has won the past two world cups for Rugby. The success and the tradition with the All Blacks rugby team has put New Zealand on the global stage and put them on the map in terms of recognition by people in other countries. Every person has played rugby at some point in their life and say it’s their favorite sport. Rugby gives the nation sometimes to pride themselves on and brag to the rest of the world at something so physical with a small nation of just 4.5-5.0 million people. A

To talk more about sports in New Zealand, the Olympics mean so much more to them than it does to Americans in the Olympics. New Zealand pride themselves on winning gold medals because their funding increases for their sport. American Olympic sports gets funding either way.

From what I noticed as well is that kiwis are way more active than people in America. Everyone is always out doing stuff whether it be hiking, biking, tossing a rugby ball or just plain ole walking around in general. I noticed about myself that I don’t walk around or do any of those kinds of activities when I’m at home and people just seem happier here than in America. Also, people from New Zealand are so much nicer than the people in America. Every interaction that I had with a kiwi was so pleasant and so pleasing to talk to. Every one is so nice and loves to have a general conversation with you.

I am so happy to have been given the opportunity to be part of the New Zealand culture for 3 weeks. This has been an amazing experience and want to come back here soon so I can learn more and more about the sport and culture of New Zealand. I’m going again if given the opportunity because it was the trip of a lifetime getting the meet nice people, learning about new sports, and new cuisine. Cheers!

One of my favorite lectures of the trip was such and such talking baseball in New Zealand. She has a tough job especially with trying to recruit kids to go from the norm of playing cricket to playing the American sport of baseball. New Zealand has a national baseball team called the Diamonblacks and one professional sports team in Auckland. However, softball is more prominent in New Zealand and get way more funding in for the sport compared to baseball. Baseball gets about 60,000 NZD. This is not a lot of money to try to support and let alone build the sport. The funny part about the funding for the sport is that a lot of the money comes on betting on baseball.

One of the biggest struggles that they had was finding field time and getting enough fields to actually get a park to commit to baseball as well as develop kids into becoming a good baseball player in which the kid can build a career pathway. In America, when you go to a park, the park would be filled with baseball fields but the parks in New Zealand includes nature walks and one field and its a cricket field.

This doesn’t help build the participation aspect of the game and what I heard from the lecture was that the game is too boring with having a 9 inning game. During the lecture, she mentioned this new game/form of baseball that just got started and introduced that really intrigued my mind was called 5 baseball. This form of baseball was formed to increase participation and allows you to play absolutely anywhere in any type of area. This game is 5 on 5, 5 inning baseball game and all you need is a ball. This helps the demographic for kids This design of the game reminded me of the kickball games I played at recess in middle school. This sport was used to drive participation but I think it can be a form of an actual sport. This game reminded me of a fast paced T-20 cricket match. This game is smaller in regards to the field of play because it looks like just the infield of a normal baseball diamond. The most interesting part of this game was the batting compared to baseball because in baseball the opposing team controls where the pitch goes into the batter but in 5 baseball the batting team controls the pitch because they pitch it to themselves. This is strange to me and I am still trying to wrap my head around the batting for 5 baseball instead of the opposing team pitches to you.

Overall, I still want to try this game out and give it a go but I am curious to see if this actually improves participation and whether it would be successful because this 5 baseball just got started about give or take a month ago. I hope it does because I love baseball and I hope the game progresses world wide and I hope the New Zealand culture keeps playing baseball because it was the first that I originally enjoyed as a kid.

Back to my previous post, my Uber driver recommended me getting a carving of this Maori art. I was confused on why this art carving was so important to society. So in response to this answer about finding an artifact about New Zealand, I wondered like why they are so important to this culture. However, Erik and I went to many stores walking all over Wellington especially Cuba Street and Chordney place trying to find a store with a carving of an artifact that represents New Zealand. Finally, right before we had to walk to the Wellington Phoenix facility, Erik and I went to this little store that said just for men. Erik and I were a little skeptical because we wanted gifts about New Zealand. However, in this store we found New Zealand artifacts and these carvings were magnificent so I had to give it for my girlfriend and my mother.

The history was for the Maori that it was a tradition, a skill and a tradition. The reason why the wood carving are so important to Maori culture was because the “forest that supplied the treasured material have played an important role and respect to the Maori culture” (100% Pure New Zealand) These artifacts have played an impotant role because it shows the first people who arrived on this island first. Im just going to put this out there but there seems a lot similarities to the Disney film Moana. These designs that were made were from elaborately carved decorations from the prow of the waka wich means canoe. This also resembles the Moana movie about canoes and moving away from the structured river and defeated Tahiti which is an Island actually away from New Zealand.

From what I noticed in New Zealand culture is the designs; even the flight attendance have some sort of design that represents New Zealand culture. They are always covered in some sort of design and I always wondered what the designs represents.

Back to the original story, I found a Kiwi wine bottle opener and a hand crafted kiwi designed double twist carving. I wondered what this carving was because I thought I would buy it for my girlfriend who loves Moana and it looks like the fish hook that it represents in the movie. The reason why Maori carvings were so important were because they were made out of greenstone which was symbolized as strength as well as beauty. They call this wood carving whakairo rakau. They get the wood to carve the wood from the trees called the Kauri and totara. These carvings respresent New Zealand culutral values and represent the original Maori culture and heritage. The values that it shows when carving one of the Whakairo Rakau are patience, dilligence, and an intuition for organic material. Doing this type of art helps the maori keep their heritage and teaching lessons that will carry on for a lifetime.

There are 6 types of symbols that are carved that represents different meanings to the Maori culture. The 6 symbols are double twist, wheku, matua, manaia, tiki, and koru. The twist is meant to represent the circle of life and the circle having no beginning or end which in better terms means eternity. The wheku is a symbol of a secular idol and not a religious idol but this is meant to represent ancestors of the tribe. The Matau represents strength, fertility, abundance and respect to the sea. This is supposed to be regarded as bringing good luck to the people who are traveling over water. The Manaia is the spiritual guardian and it is supposed to be the protectors of evil. Apparently at death, the Manaia is supposed to guide the lost one to the ancestors up above. The Tiki represents the first man in this culture and is meant for a person who has great knowledge and strength of character.

Sources:

Farmer, S. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved January 23, 2019, from https://www.newzealand.com/int/feature/the-art-of-wood-carving/

Earlier today on our way to the Wellington Phoenix headquarters, our group took an uber over to the HQ. Wellington is a small capital, but in my opinion hard to get around by foot since there are so many steep hills and my legs are dead from soccer the other day that I thought an uber would most benefit not only me but the group I was with at the time. The uber was definitely the move because our uber drive named James was a great dude. I noticed he had a 4.99-star rating and was known for great conversation so I knew I had a chance to chat it up with this guy.

I had to take the back seat of the uber because there was four more people went with me so we had to squeeze into a tight car. James didn’t mind that we were all packed into the car. Its always fun to chat with uber drivers from a foreign country and get to know about their life and for them to get to know about your life as well. I started the conversation off with the usual “Where are you from?” and he responded with “Wellington and that he has lived here all of his life.” He then asked us where we were from? and we responded with America. He then talk right away about gun laws because he asked us if we see anyone around here carrying guns. We responded with a no and then he talks about everyone being on the news in America being shot and killed especially school shootings. He then raised his voice and said its so wrong when he hears about people killing kids on the news about America. We all agreed and it got me thinking about gun laws and how people need to stop shooting other people for the simplest things.

I got him off that topic and then we started about what he does for a living. James is currently an uber driver but also owns and makes craft beer with his buddies for a scottish beer. I then asked James what were his recommendations for Wellington and what we should do here for our time in Wellington. He told us to walk down the waterfront and go the malt house because it has the best selection of craft beer here in Wellington. The funny thing that happpened next was, our group asked him about what food place that we should go to? He said that Southern Cross which we aleady went to the first night of our trip here in Wellington.

Finally, we asked James about football and the Wellington Phoenix (United Kingdom style) and he said he used to go all the time with his buddies and drink beer and yell and scream but now he doesn’t go a whole lot because “they have been playing like shit the past couple of seasons.” We then followed the conversation and said that they haven’t been defeated in the past 9 games. James chuckled and said that he might to bring his buddies back and convince them to come watch some of the games again. This was funny to me because when we went to go visit the Wellington Phoenix headquarters the main guy said that people won’t come unless we are winning. He also said that winning is everything for this sport in Wellington. The previous statement that James made above correlated well with what the marketing director for the Wellington Phoenix said. At the end of our conversation, I asked what I should get as a souvenir that represents New Zealand culture and James responded with some kind of Maori carving, a gray stone necklace, or an All Blacks rugby jersey which I just purchased two of the three.

Thank you James for the uber ride and dealing with my questions!!!

Queenstown actually was behind the California gold rush exhibition back in 1848. Queenstown’s gold rush was back in 1862 when a couple of Maori workers, one named Jack Tewa. Jack was going through the city of Arrowtown, he found some gold deposits in the arrow river. Soon after, he started telling his two friends about it and his two friends found a good deposit of gold. Since there was a gold rush all-around the world, the mining workers fled from Australia and California to Queenstown in search of some more gold to be found.

There was more than 1000 people/miners to work on the gold mine and try to strike lucky to find some gold. The two main places where the miners worked was an 8 mile creek and a 12 mile creek. The way the town started reeling in an actual population was the people started opening up bars, homes, restaurants and stores all because of the gold mine that was established thus establishing Arrowtown and Queenstown.

One of the largest deposits of gold is in Queenstown and its called the Shotover River. This was the river I went white water rafting in last Saturday. The rush was short lived in Queenstown because the miners rushed to the other gold deposits on the South Island. However, during the miners time in Queenstown, the miners had to make a road in order to get down the mountain and into the mine and river where the gold was. They built this road called Skipper’s Canyon. This road took them 4 year to make and develop so the miners can move in and out of the mine. This road is the most dangerous road in the world. Since most of the miners left for another mine, the government had no money left really from the gold and needed to hire workers in order to find some more gold down in the mine. The government hire over 5000 Chinese workers to travel to Queenstown and work on the mine which was hard grueling work for the miners while the other Chinese workers either worked in the mine, builders or gardens.

The reason why I wrote about this was because I love history and I heard about the guides on the white water rafting trip talking about the history of the Shotover river and why this road called Skippers Canyon was formed. The fun fact of the day was that originally people didn’t come to Queenstown in order to do all of the amazing, high adrenaline sport; they came to look for that precious gold that we all know and cherish. Queenstown was a gold rush town. Maybe they should create a rugby team there called the Queenstown 62ers after the gold mine that jump started this town into what it is today.

Sources:
Queenstown’s Gold Mining History. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://www.queenstown.com/discover/history/gold

I have to start out and say that Queenstown was one of the most beautiful city. If there is one city I want to make it back to, it would be Queenstown. Nothing can beat the breath taking views of the mountains surrounding you and all-around the city. The locals weren’t kidding in other cities that we visited when the locals said that Queens-town is amazing and you can literally do anything in this town.

So what I first started out doing for my activities for the weekend was a luge ride down the moutain with spectular views. Sadly, I focused on more of the view part and not passing other people so I ate some other people’s dust and got taken out by Jackson. However, I started to get the hang of the luge and started taking people out including my professor Dr. Adam Beissel. The gondola ride was impeccable and was great start to the best weekend of my entire life.

On Saturday, I decided to wake up and jump off of a bridge, bungy style. That was the most terrifying experience of my life. A group of us did the AJ Hackett company bungy jump that is 43 Meter jump.It was the Kawarau bungee jump That was the most terrifying experience of my life and Im glad I did it. The bungy was literally the sketchiest thing in the world to me because I didn’t trust the cables that were attached to my ankles. the cables consisted of one black cable tied to a towel. Looking down at the water was the most amazing yet terrifying experience because number 1, im about to jump off of this bridge but also, the water here was one of the most beautiful things to look at because its so blue. Im not going to lie but I had the most confidence going into the jump but going into the jump I did not have any confidence whatsoever. I totally messed up the jump but I was the only one out of the group to touch the water from the jump.

The same day I went white water rafting with another group of people and all I can say is that the water was one of the most refreshing things in the world. The Go Orange company took us down the river in rapids class 3-5 in the non-stop rain. The best surprise that we had on this trip so far was getting to take a ride on the most dangerous road in the world. The bus driver was booking it around these cliffs that made the bus look like it was about to fall off the edge. The best part of the white water rafting trip was that I got to command the front of the boat in the middle of the cave. Overall I highly recommend the trip and completely worth the money.

On Sunday, we had to wake up at the break of dawn to go onto one of my favorite things to do so far abroad. A group of 22 of us went on a canyoning adventure. I thought it was one of the coolest things because we got to jump off of a six meter jump into a tiny pond. I was more scared of jumping into that pond than the bungee jump. Our group swam through the river, climbed over rocks, repelled down a 200 meter rock wall, did flips in the little ponds and zip-line through the valley of one the rock walls. The water was so cool but it was a good wake up call and start to my day. I highly recommend doing the canoying trip if anyone reading this, makes a trip to Queenstown anytime soon. In conclusion, I fell in love with Queenstown. I cant wait to go back and hopefully make another trip back when its the winter time to ski and snowboard.

On Thursday, a group of us went to one of the few main breweries that is based in New Zealand and is one of the popular brands of beer. The five of us took a tour of Emerson’s Brewery. If any of my followers want a fun fact about Emerson’s Brewery is that they don’t export their beers to other countries because they do not pasteurize their beers which means their beers would become rancid on a boat being shipped to another country. This fact was really upsetting to me because in my opinion I think this was the best beer I have ever had.

Emerson was founded in 1992 by Richard Emerson. It originally started in a garage door with only 500 mL. They moved through 4 more different places in New Zealand and now at their current location in which we went to. The current place can hold eight million mL but actually they are doing only three million mL because of the production and Emersons is still growing. When it first started Richard Emerson didn’t have enough money to afford glass bottles so Richard Emerson had to use plastic bottles to ship it out to distributors. The plastic bottles are still a thing today and you have the option to pick whether you want a plastic bottle or a glass bottle. Also, they are the only 500 mL bottle to do that type of bottle in New Zealand.

When we went around the tour, the brewery currently has 20 different beers but have six beers going on at all times. The most famous beer is the NZ pilsner. The NZ pilsner is 65% of the production for the brewery. Another fun fact that I learned from the brewery that the porter there uses roasted malt and the difference between a porter and a stout is that the porter when held up to a light give the porter a dark red hue to the body of the beer and the stout doesn’t.

Last Friday, Our group took a trip to Eden Park and watched a T-20 cricket match. This cricket match was different then most cricket matches. Usually, some cricket matches take about 1 full day. However, this cricket match lasts 3-4 hours which keeps the younger crowd more interested in the game and allows more participation for the younger crowd. The difference is that the T-20 cricket matches only allow 20 overs and the day-long cricket match allows 50 overs. This means that the T-20 cricket match will have 6 bowls per over and have only 120 bowls per team. This amount of bowls means that the players will be more risky on trying to get runs, so they are more aggressive at the plate.

Being aggressive at the plate allows for batters to “swing for the fences” more and causes them to hit more 6s but also cause them to get out more quickly. What I noticed at the game was that the players were swinging for the fences and causing them to score the 6s. Everytime the player hits a 6, it resembled a lot like homerun derby to me in America. The crowd would go crazy and jump in the air and high five everyone. However, when the players hit a simple ground ball and got a run for the team then the crowd would be relaxed and calm in the stands. It reminded me a lot like homerun derby especially when I went to the Reds homerun derby when they hosted the All Star Game.

These players at the game made it look so easily at the game. So today when we tried out the cricket batting, it was harder than it looks and my game was similar to my baseball game on hitting conservative and hitting line drives and ground-balls. For me, I would be more appropriate to play for the T-50 cricket games. The hardest part about hitting the ball was when the ball bounced too high off of its normal bounce and jam me up at the plate. I felt like today I was trying to swing for the fence just like everyone else was. If I were to live in New Zealand and were grown up on the culture, then I would have probably played cricket because I love baseball and love making diving catches in the outfield just like the T-20 test cricket players were doing at the game. In conclusion, I believe Cricket was the most fun sport we played and learned so far over this entire trip. It was fun with a lot of action and excitement much like how they make the home-run derby back in the states where people scream for excitement when the ball goes over the fence and their team score an unusual six in which our friends all wanted to hit today.

Doctors on strike!!!! NO WAY!!!! You would think you would never hear this on the news. However, in New Zealand starting today and ending on Thursday, 3300 junior doctors are going on strike that is across the nation. This news is crazy because its about 80% of the workers walking away from the stresses that is of being a doctor for 48 hours. Also, the doctors are going on strike for another 48 hours starting on January 29-30th as well.

The reason why the doctors are going on strike is because the doctors “are still working 10 days in a row with a couple of 16 hour shifts at a time on a couple of days within the 10 day period” (Williams, 2019). In the picture below, its a picture of certain citizens and doctors on strike and protesting about giving the doctors better structured hours that offer flexibility because non-tired doctors = less mistakes = safer patients. Originally, doctors didn’t have flexibility with their hours and went with the one size fits all approach. This did not help doctors and this policy wasn’t meant for the doctors’ office nor hospitals. The DHBs are in a battle with the largest junior doctors union, the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association. The DHB want to give safety to their workers, so they say… but giving them 16 hour work days is not the way to do it. All of the union wants to do is want greater flexibility among other parts of their work so they can strengthen their work and give greater/more productive periods of rest.

This is big for the society of New Zealand because this strikes has 80% of the doctors walking out of the job for 48 hours. However, the hospitals said that they will have enough doctors to cover the shifts lost for that time but this is a big deal with the doctors and the relationships within the union and DHB. Some of the patients that had appointments would be postponed except for the patients with acute care but most will probably have to call and reschedule their appointments which could take more days/weeks to figure out. This affects patients across the nation and gives panic across the nation because what if there is an emergency that needs to be taken care of quickly. I thought this was interesting because I want to work in the medical field at some point in time and think that if doctors are not wanting to help heal patients then this means that this issue needs change. I am personally would be on the side for doctors working less hours and less days of work. This helps the doctors get some rest so they could keep their focus during work and make sure there precise steady hands be on point.

Williams, K. (2019, January 14). Junior doctor explains why tomorrow’s nationwide strike is necessary. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/109904576/junior-doctor-explains-why-tomorrows-nationwide-strike-is-necessary