Lost in Translation

After my very own long dark night of over 12hours blissful sleep, I woke to my first morning in New Zealand. Determined to keep up my fitness that I have worked hard to achieve at Regfit in the UK I dragged my jet-lagged backside out of bed and across the road for a session of DRILL, a boot-camp that runs at various sites across Auckland. The locals were all super friendly, and the instructor, Kelly, was perfectly happy having a Brit-member for the week. The session, although slightly different to back home, was good fun and a good workout. In the course of the hour I learnt three things; firstly that while in the UK you have 'Stomach Down!!!' shouted at you as an instruction to drop to the floor on your front and jump (or stagger) back to your feet, in New Zealand you are instructed to 'do a Californian'. Secondly that while a half sit up whereby you move your hands from thighs to knees and back is known affectionately at Regfit as 'Dirty Old Man Sit-ups', in NZ they are, rather disappointingly, known by the less comedic term 'Little Crunches'. It is my mission this week for the UK version to catch on! My final discovery was that Burpees are still Burpees (damn!), and if you are unfamiliar with what these are, I advise you to count your blessings – at Regfit there is no such thing as too many!

Later on I laced up my walking boots for a stroll up the local volcano, Maungawhau, or Mt Eden. The climb up begins after only a few minutes walk along quiet residential roads, and soon curves steeply up the side of the mount. Mount Eden is named after George Eden, the earl of Auckland, whose name was also chosen as the name of the original capital of New Zealand – Auckland. It was once the site of a Maori pa, or settlement, and the crater at its heart was considered sacred, tapu, by the Maori and has the name Te Ipu Kai a Mataaho; the food bowl of Mataaho, the god of things hidden in the ground. After some forested track and a bit of tarmac I reached the summit of the 196m extinct cone volcano, Auckland's highest point. The panoramic views from the top were wonderful, and I stayed at the top for a while before taking a turn around the crater edge and returning back to the hostel.

the city, from Mt Eden

Back at the hostel I met a French Polynesian who would be sharing my dorm that evening. We exchanged names, which proved a lengthy process. My name proved pretty difficult from a pronunciation perspective for him, but after 10 minutes of repeating, spelling – in both French and English – and me humming the Beatles when things got desperate, he finally got it. “And your name?” I enquired. “Joyce”, he replied. Too tired to go through the rigmarole again, and knowing few songs with Joyce in them, I decided the best option was to say “ah OK, nice to meet you” and hope I would never have to refer to him by name again. We spoke a while and soon discovered we had snowboarding in common, both of us enjoying the sport but neither of us being particularly skilled at it. That, however is where our common interests parted. “Joyce” informed me that he is a surfer, but had forgotten his wetsuit and was here only for a night whilst he organised going back to French Polynesia. He went on to tell me how much he loves smoking weed, and how he doesn't respect the law, before announcing the conversation was over as he was feeling terribly angry. This announcement, coupled with his previous opinions on following the law concerned me slightly, until I realised we had another lost in translation moment on our hands. “Joyce”, it turned out, wasn't angry, but hungry, having a terrible case of the munchies!