Kia orana from Rarotonga - Going International
Kia orana Everyone,
This is a little message from Paradise here in the Cook Islands. On Thursday Young Animators were lucky enough to hold our first International workshop here in the Cook Islands at Tereora College - The National College of the Cook Islands. We were hosted by Tiffany Andrews the media teacher here and though we didn't have a huge amount of time it was amazing to see how much the tauira ingested and ran with the concepts.
Luggage
But lets rewind for a second and start with with traveling and more importantly "packing", traveling internationally provides it's own logistical problems so for anyone that has gone oversea's and had to take work gear of any sort it really is a new experience. You have to think of weight, necessity and impact, "do I really need that piece of equipment", "what can I do without" and what are the "nice haves" compared to the "necessities" Unlike my friends in photography who are primed to enter the depths of the amazon with their hard-shelled, ruggedized travel gear I wasn't quite as well prepared and to be honest didn't need to be.
My biggest issues were weight and size, a ruggedized container is amazing but it's also heavy and while my gear has a price tag attached to each of the pieces, buying luggage that costs more then the resources I'm placing in them doesn't make much sense. I instead settled for a warehouse stripped plastic bag with a 90+ capacity. Which was stacked with systema containers and a few lose resources.
Lose plastic bag 200grams,
Containers filled with resources 23.1 kgs.
Which put me spot on my weight limit. If you don't already have one bag scales are a tool you shouldn't be without. They're a cheap piece of equipment that takes the stress out of traveling.
Workshop
I met Tiffany briefly before-hand who I had been lucky enough to be put in touch with by a mutual friend/whanaunga (Te Kowhai Ohia) that was living over here.
After a hectic week in New Zealand organising workshops around the country it was good to get out from behind the desk and be in a class. Tiffany came down and collected me & Andrea my sister) who was assisting me and drove us up to the college. Tereora is situated on a small rise next to the stadium in Nikau and over looks the rugbyfield.
We were greeted by the bustle of students as they headed to their next class and unloaded our resources I was glad to have someone to show me around when I started to setup. The tauira here were a breath of fresh air warm easy to deal with, shy but great. We ran a cut down version of our programme skipping to the stage and setup of camera's lighting rigs, green screens and props. The work was fast and furious given the time we had but it was an enriching experience for everyone.
I look forward to heading back there and catching up with the media class here at Tere ora College.