I was feeling culinarily inspired this week (I wanted to cook!) so I made focaccia bread from scratch, and we had pesto focaccia chicken mozarrella sandwiches! They were quite delicious.
I also went to an event called "Te Rā Ringa Raupā: Reviving the art of the woven sail," which was a talk by two wahine, weavers who have woven rā (sails) for waka! Their story was amazing and inspiring, and there was yummy food like gochujang chicken and fried halloumi balls to snack on, too!
On one of the rainy days this week, I went to Chocolate Boutique Cafe. I am a huge hot chocolate fan, so this was the perfect place for me! I got a "denso" hot chocolate, which was more like chocolate pudding than hot chocolate because it was so thick!
One of my Fulbright friends who is also based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) knows someone who plays in a jazz quartet, and so we all went together to watch one of their gigs! My friend's friend plays lots of instruments, including the saxophone and the clarinet, and he is very talented, so it was fun to watch. The other musicians were also amazing - the guitarists' fingers moved so quickly, and the bass is always such a cool instrument!
I also went to "Polyfest" this week, an annual event where schools compete in different Polynesian cultural performances. Pretty much all of the performances that I saw had musical components! There are different stages representing different islands, so I watched performances at the Niue stage, the Māori stage, the Sāmoan stage and the Tongan stage. The students sang, danced, and used their bodies and weapons to make rhythms.
