Ian’s Postcard from Auckland

Ian Zhuang is currently completing a yearlong exchange at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is studying a Bachelor of Science, with a focus on Physiology and Statistics.

Why did you choose the institution and location of your overseas program?

Auckland is the centre of New Zealand – the cultural centre, economic centre and financial centre. As a city, it’s a combination of Melbourne’s weather and Sydney’s terrain.

What was your experience when you first arrived at your overseas study program?

I had been to New Zealand before, but I had never been to the North Island where Auckland is. I had been a lot to the South Island so I wanted to choose North Island for something different. North Island from my perspective is similar to Victoria and Tasmania in geography. It’s more grassy, so there’s good golf.

People make jokes about New Zealand being Australia’s seventh state, but being here I don’t feel that. Kiwis have their own identity and New Zealand has a very strong Polynesian culture which you don’t see in Australia. For example, you can see many Māori marae, there is even one right next to my dorm on campus.

People from New Zealand are calmer than Australians, maybe due to the cold weather!

One thing that is vastly available in New Zealand is pie – both savoury and sweet. I ate a lot of bacon and egg pies.

What was your biggest culture shock moment?

There’s definitely been culture shocks. The biggest one has been meeting and learning about Māori and Pasifika people, they have been very welcoming and passionate about their culture.

I took a Māori subject called Te Ao Māori: The Māori World. As an Asian, an Australian, having lived in China, this subject was about forgetting who we are and looking through a Māori lens and learning from a Māori perspective. It was a very interesting course. Looking from this perspective, I understood a lot of the social issues and social tensions.

The first marae I visited was at the University of Auckland. The meeting house at the marae is called Tānenuiarangi, named after Tāne, the Māori god of the forest who brought three baskets of knowledge from the heavens to earth. So it makes sense because university is a place where knowledge is produced. Our lecturer took us to the marae for a lecture and we were introduced to each god and ancestor.

What was the highlight of your overseas program?    

Travelling around New Zealand. I went to the Bay of Plenty in Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay. There was a lot of Māori culture influence in Bay of Plenty, including some Māori majority towns, I hadn’t been to anything like this before. The people are super welcoming, you will enjoy a Māori style dinner, do rafting, skydiving, surfing, you can see the Māori areas where they would praise their gods and ancestors. That was the most interesting experience. We went to Māori land, where the top of the mountain is a sacred place – tapu – meaning it cannot be touched, so we could not visit that area. When we went to a volcano for tramping (hiking), we were told we could not take any rocks. Our tour guide was Māori and he told us “you can leave your footsteps, but please don’t take any rocks away”.

Because I got a driver’s licence and a car, it was easier to go around and see New Zealand. I also went to the Polynesian Spa, Wellington, Taupō river and Mount Taranaki. However New Zealand is not that big, so if you don’t have a car, you can sign up to one of the university clubs, they often give you a $50 voucher and you can go on a trip where the bus and accommodation will be organised.

What is one piece of advice you wish you knew before you went on your overseas program?

Even if you think Australia and New Zealand are very similar, they are still not the same. Assuming they are the same is very offensive to Kiwis. The biggest piece of advice I have is to be prepared to appreciate, embrace and celebrate the differences in the cultures, this is the purpose of exchange.

One thing I did to make the most of my exchange experience was to choose subjects not available at UniMelb. Māori is a very good one. The other two subjects I took are famous at Auckland, they deal with the Language R (a type of programming language), because Language R actually originated in New Zealand. I joined a variety of student clubs, including the tramping club and 180 Degrees Consulting. Through the consulting project, I did a project about how foreigners can interpret Māori and Pasifika knowledge. We had a really diverse team and were coached by someone on the ethical board in the Arts Faculty at the University of Auckland.

What is next for you?

I want to study Honours at the University of Melbourne, but I’m also interested in statistics and data analysis. I enjoyed doing the two statistics subjects at Auckland, they helped me a lot with analysing data for my consulting project. I think it’s a really useful skill to have, for future research as well.