#Blog4NZ

Inspired by a twitter hash tag I wanted to add my thoughts on why you should love New Zealand. By the time you get to my blog you will have seen some of the obvious delights of the Land of the Long White Cloud.There is food, wine, beer, landscapes abound and more sheep than people and increasingly more stinky polluting cows.

For the past 5 years I have lived some metres from where Captain Cook set off for his voyage from London to find the collection of islands in the South Pacific. From this vantage point I have been able to see the good and bad sides of my motherland. I can't do a top 10 or even a highlight tour but to express the love I have for my country of birth seeps from my pores and suffixes my sentences.

Instead I would like to make some observations I have made of my people and my nation over these years looking from the outside in.

The People

New Zealanders have open faces. We smile at people with our eyes which is something I have never really seen in other cultures. This open expression on our faces welcomes engagement from strangers. We don't have hurt in our eyes just childlike inquisitiveness.
We don't have hairy feet and are taller than hobbits despite the brilliance of our film industry workers making The Lord of the Rings seem so real!
We are just a little bit racist. I hate this fact. But due to our isolation many New Zealanders have never seen a person from Africa let alone speak to someone who's language is not English. We have a changing population with many Oriental Asians making New Zealand home. Where I grew up in southern rural NZ our most exotic person was the Sri Lankan Maths teacher. It has always left me wanting to make friends with people with different coloured skin or a different accent so living in London's melting pot is where many of us Kiwis experience our slice of multi-culture.Come visit and help open the eyes of people by engaging with them on your travels
Our right of passage - or the Big OE aka Overseas Experience. Given our isolation we love to travel abroad. And New Zealanders can be found in all corners of the earth. Travelling or settled we like to experience life outside of our little country to broaden our horizons. In my family of 5 children we have all lived in Australia/Spain/England.
We like sports. Rugby manically, Netball fervently, cricket adoringly and anyone with a silver fern on their left chestical will invariably have the country patriotically fist pumping.
2 degrees of separation. It really is a small country. If we don't know your Aunty Joan in Te Awamutu she was probably our mate from Universities family Nurse.

Our Language
Our sentences are completed with Ah. I had friends from the US staying with me during University and my mother enquired if I had been in touch with the Automobile Association. The conversations went as follows
Mum: "Ah"
Me: "Ah?"
Mum "AA Ah?
Me "Ah"

Translation
Mum: "Joanne Mary Herring"
Me: "What?"
Mum: "Joanne, you have a membership with the AA don't you?!
Me: "Yes, of course"

Normally its just a matter of the sentence becoming a question ah? or a statement ah.

Another notable difference particularly with females is we accent up at the end of sentences making each sentence sound like a question.
We spell in Queens English and speak with less of a twang than our Australian Cousins

Our History
Settled by migrants the world over these islands represent we are only 171 years old as a nation. We have two national languages English and Maori. Maori has been taught in primary school's since the 1980's seeing a new generation of speakers.
NZ was the first country to allow Women the Vote. Thank You Kate Sheppard your modern marvel.
We are an educated bunch! 99% Adult Literacy rate with most people going onto Higher Education.
We have made enemies with our closest and most powerful allies because we don't like Nuclear and we don't like to kill Whales. They secretly respect us for punching above our weight (which we do principally)

Our Land
I am easily from The Most Beautiful Country in the World. I haven't been to every corner (yet!) but in any one country we really have it all.
Rainforests, Fiords, Volcanos, Lakes, Oceans, Seas, Flats, Mountains, Rolling Hills, endless skies, starry nights.

Let these images I have taken over the years (and one from my Dad in the 60's) of the landscape.

I hope you get to visit and share in its beauty