Settling in

Today I feel llike more myself after a couple of good sleeps, some good experiences and a few lucky moments. When I arrived in Auckland on Sunday I found that my luggage decided to go on a side trip leaving me devoid of clean clothes, tools and equipment for my projects. I was getting pretty stressed about it.

Monday morning had our group attending a powhiri held at the Waitara Marae(holy house) of the local Maori groups. The sun shone brightly on our group as we were gently brought into the ritual welcoming cermony. With much grace, generosity and humor from the local Maori elders we were introduced to their traditions, relationship to the land, sea and sky, history and philoshopy with songs, speeches, Q and A, and so on. It's hard to describe how special and magical this morning event was. We are all blessed.

Monday afternoon the baggage arrived intact!. Yaaayy.. clean undies. Yesterday I got lucky and found a shop in town that had some good raw materials for my kite building.

Over the last few evenings everyone has been introducing their art practice. Wow .. what diversity! My head is spinning.