Adult Under Construction: Welly, Welly Good in Wellywood

It has now been four weeks, almost to the minute, since I arrived in Wellington. I can look back on a successful month: I'm in my third week of work at a job that gets more comfortable by the day, my apartment and flatmates are a major improvement over the hostels I spent my first two weeks in, and I have slowly but surely developed a pretty solid core of friends here. Even the weather has improved dramatically after last week's historically bad storm. So now that I'm getting comfortable, I figure it's about time I made some broad cultural observations about the differences I find between life in North America and New Zealand. Bear in mind, these are just things I notice and certain to be over-simplifications.

One thing I constantly notice is that New Zealand is a small country in many senses of the term. It only takes an occasional glance at a newspaper (which I get free at work) to be reminded that this country's population is a only a little over 4 million people. I remember moving from the US to Canada and finding that Canadian casualties in Afghanistan received far more attention from the Canadian press than American ones did in the US. It makes some sense when you compare the population sizes and military commitments of the two countries. The same trend holds here. With less than a quarter of Canada's population, the recent death of a Kiwi soldier in Afghanistan - one soldier - was above-the-fold headline news for a few days here in New Zealand.

I noticed something similar when I met my friend Bernie, who is a Kiwi from Dunedin. We sat next to each other watching one of the Tri-Nations rugby matches. Soon after finding out he was a Kiwi, I found out he had a second cousin on the New Zealand team! Nor was the player in question, Andrew Hore, completely unknown to me - he had recently left his club team and said something in an interview about how returning to his farm didn't seem like such a bad thing. I thought, "typical Kiwi." Little did I realize I'd be meeting a member of his extended family within a few months.

Being such a small country, I can live in its capital and not feel overwhelmed by it, this being the largest city and first national capital I have ever lived in. Sometimes I'm surprised to find the grocery store crowded and need to remind myself that this is a city of over 400,000 people. But living in a "big city" has its advantages: one of my coworkers was able to tell me about being at the world premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," and yesterday I walked right past Orlando Bloom and his wife on my way home. I didn't realize what I'd seen because I was too busy convincing myself that it wasn't possible. By the time I realized it was possible, he'd disappeared. I think I was so surprised at the idea of having a celebrity encounter - you don't have too many of those in North Bay, ON - that I didn't even consider that it actually could be someone famous.

My Kiwi flatmate Marcus has told me New Zealand is one big community, and I can see what he means. At my level, I find that work has a very communal attitude, where no one is really more valuable than anyone else except by virtue of experience. People here tend to be fairly relaxed and friendly, although not unnecessarily talkative, which I appreciate. But general statements only describe so much, so here's one very specific thing I've noticed: I have heard more Kiwi women talk about flatulence than Kiwi men. At work the other day, I overheard a conversation two women were having about foods they enjoyed, and one of them dismissed something because "it smells like farts." Without batting an eye, another woman jumped in and added, "you know what really smells like farts? Pea and ham soup." In North America, the word "fart" alone is enough to cause giggling and even uproarious laughter, and I can count on one hand the number of times a woman has brought it up with me in conversation. But here it is apparently not an issue. It's a good thing they were talking in Kiwi accents - "smells like farts" becomes "smills like fahts" - or I might have just burst out laughing on the spot.

But as usual, it is the natural environment that intrigues me most. I have recently begun to work the Wellington waterfront into my daily routes around town, as it affords nice views of the harbor and the Wairarapa hills across the water. And today Marcus and I hiked to the top of Mount Victoria, east of the center but still very much in Wellington. The views were astounding, and allowed me a much better sense of where I am on a map.