If you go, you should know, it matters not where, but why.

Nearly four months have passed since I first stepped foot onto this little island nestled in the Pacific. Four months and I’m still hesitant to form an opinion of it and my time here. I suppose I learned early on that this would be a time of self-discovery, of personal experiential integration, and something like that is bound to result in a little internal conflict. Kierkegaard’s words ring in my mind: “It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.”

It was probably a poor decision to come here to work, intending to make back all my money, starting at practically zero. I should have come here to travel and moved on. I’m working 70 hour weeks now, run ragged by the time I reach my one day off [glamorous Mondays], stuck in the one city in New Zealandeveryone says to avoid, pulling in just enough funding to get me home. Were I staying, it would be fine, but since I’m facing a nasty exchange rate upon moving back to the States, my blood and sweat money will be out the window by the time I reach New York. I minor hurdle really, because I refuse to believe any money could be squandered on traveling… but I’ll admit this is not quite the life I intended when I bought a ticket to laid back NZ.

I’m living the most normal life I’m likely to ever live. I have two jobs, I have a car, I live in a big house in the suburbs, I pay taxes, I get stuck in traffic… I keep house for Karen, then I keep house at the restaurant, then I come home and keep my own house. I’m in training to be the world’s greatest housewife, which is a shame since I’ve got all those pesky ambitions. It’s just another one of those things I never saw coming, and it’s infinitely fascinating in retrospect.

Still, I was never one to wallow, and I am keeping my focus primarily on the positive. Logistically, Aucklandserves my purposes better than any other city here… the jobs pay the most, and the weather is the best, especially in the summer. I also absolutely adore my jobs. Karen and I have become fast friends, and the La Zeppa crew keeps me laughing endlessly. Just the other day, Karen took me up to this restaurant called Elevation, tucked into the lush hills overlooking the whole city and its stunning cerulean coastline, which I’m convinced changes color everyday. We ordered a couple of delectable desserts and spent an hour in the warm midday sun, chatting and taking pictures. I marveled in the greatness of my day job and sighed contentedly. And even though we were horribly busy and understaffed later on at the restaurant, which lead to me washing glasses all night, I still had big fun with my friends the whole night through, and made enough tips this week to keep me away from my bank account for a while [which is much more of a rarity here than back home].

I’ve also never been one to miss out if I can help it. I took three weeks off over the holidays and made as much of it as I could. This year was my first hot weather Christmas, which means I kept waiting for it to snow, but gave up and went to the beach instead. It didn’t feel like the holidays at all (when you don’t follow the religious or materialistic side of Christmas, it all falls to family, and since mine is a hemisphere away, it didn’t feel like much of anything, really). I ended up spending it with someone else’s family… a friend of my flatmate…. and though they made us feel welcome, it was still rather weird. Still, it was lovely of them to invite us and better than nothing at all.

New Year’s was great, though. Ten of us got together and drove to Mangawhai, a popular beach town up north, and stayed in a little chalet for two nights. We chose a bar with live music for midnight, BBQed, beached, surfed, kayaked, and jacuzzied… everything I’ve never in my life associated with January. It was gorgeous and heaps of fun.

Once we got back, I immediately jumped in my car and got on the road for some North Islandexploration. Prentice and I headed down to Taupo, the biggest lake in NZ, with crisp water and snow covered peaks in the distance. We went quad biking, which was dirty rainy kickass fun. When we were warned that those who had learned on two wheel bikes tend to have more trouble than those who had never quad biked at all, I didn’t believe it… until I ended up with two wheels spinning in the air, cursing my motorbiking days in Thailand. I got it eventually, though.

We met up with Russell and Julia, a couple from Wellington who had hitched to Taupo and who I had contacted on CouchSurfing beforehand. The four of us grabbed some dinner and hit the hot tub at our hostel, which we shared with a Scottish guy who [it turned out] not only used to live in Edinburgh, but reckons he used to get thrown out of Sandy Bell’s all the time by Josh, my best friend and former flatmate who used to work there. How incredibly small is the world?

The next day, Prentice got on a bus Auckland bound while Julia, Russell and I took off for Wellington. During the drive, we took a 15 minute scenic detour around a canyon that ended up lasting two hours because backroad NZ will swallow you whole. It was Lord of the Rings the whole way, and stunning, but after an hour we were desperate to find the main highway again, the massive sign for which I had somehow managed to completely miss. It astounds me how good I still am at getting hopelessly lost, even after two years of traveling. It makes things more interesting, though.

Wellington is a cool city, really bohemian, and it gave me the culture fix I’ve been craving. I spent most of the day in and out of museums and galleries. Te Papa, the national museum, is a must-see. Remember that colossal squid they caught a few years back? It’s on display at Te Papa, along with everything else you could possibly want to know about New Zealand. I saw an exhibit on Da Vinci’s machines, as well as a phenomenal display of Stephen Martyn Welch’s work at the Portrait Gallery [http://www.portraitgallery.nzl.org/press/smw.html]. Julia and Russell were gracious hosts, and I got some great NZ travel advice from their flatmate Craig and Juliet, his Canadian-turned-kiwi girlfriend.

After that, it was a whole lot of solo driving around the most beautiful windy mountain passes, around gorges and canyons, along shorelines, through rocks and trees and… I gave up taking photos after a while. I drove up to Gisborne, which is the eastern most part of NZ before the dateline, so the first place to see the sun. I camped on the beach and woke up to see the first sunrise in the world. Fiona and Mary, friends of Karen’s and two of the coolest people I know, let me use their beachfront batch as a campsite and cooked me a beautiful meal. I couldn’t have asked for more.

From there, I drove up to Hot Water Beach, where during low tide you can dig to thermal pockets and create your own hot tub in the sand. It was gorgeous and wonderfully relaxing, though I wish I’d found my sunscreen in the morning, instead of after a day of sunbathing in direct ozone-layer-less sunlight. I camped there for two nights before deciding to head home, but not before a quick stop in Coromandel Town for a railway ride through the mountains, up to a magnificent view. After that, I was sunburned, it was cloudy, the tide was out, and my car had just clicked over the mileage it should have hit in April and was beginning to make funny noises. I decided it was time to go back, and I was greeted with 40 kilometers of solid traffic and every red light in the city. I love you too, Auckland.

Once home, though I still had a few days before my psychotic schedule started up again, I was pretty unmotivated to go anywhere or do anything, so I spent it genuinely relaxing, plowing through books and touching the movies I hadn’t had time to look at since October. It was much needed.

When I returned from my trip, I was greeted by a pile awaiting me at the door… packages, letters, envelopes of all sizes, not to mention an inbox full of emails and messages upon popping open my laptop. The generous outreach of all my family and friends from every corner of the globe overwhelmed me and warmed my heart. Belated Christmas. Real Christmas.

I’ve since survived my first week back at work and I must say, it’s actually really nice to be back. As I said, I love my jobs, and besides, I’m now officially on an eight week countdown. I can do anything for eight weeks.

I’ll be finishing work on the 13^th of March, then exploring the South Island for three weeks, which is supposed to be the most uniquely beautiful place in the world. After that, it’s off to Australia for two weeks for the sole purpose of seeing Josh, then to LA, and from there making my way slowly east, back to New York, visiting friends along the way.

Time is flying, or it has lost all meaning, or both.

It doesn’t really matter, anyway.

xo

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.”