Home!

Here's where I started crying:


Man. I can't believe I'm home. I'm ready for it but it's overwhelming. I don't know what to do with myself. Like, where do I even start???

I bawled my little head off when Kathy picked me up from the airport. It was just seeing a familiar face and that feeling of home right away. The life I left 6 months ago no longer exists. It's so strange. I'm teetering between complete terror and absolute excitement. I have no job, no apartment, no partner... everything is different. I keep telling myself that it's all going to be okay and that things will fall into place for me. Adrienne has made it her personal mission to find me a place (so sweet!) and has already found me a house to watch for a couple of weeks. It's nice to know I don't need a place until July. Save some money!

So, it's my first day back. I woke to this:

Kathy's girlfriend, Heather, made me a pot of coffee this morning. I guess this is how Kathy lives now, with Heather bringing her coffee in bed, taking out the animals (there are 4 dogs here currently), and bringing her laptop to her so she can wake up slowly perusing the internet. I certainly never did that shit. (SCORE Kathy!) I am happy to be the lucky recipient of overflow!

After crawling into the garage that housed my car for 6 months (the door is broken, so Kathy had to go in through the window), my baby started up right away! I was fearing the worst- jumper cables, flat tires, rats in the engine... So now I just have to get my tabs renewed and I'm off for a haircut (CAN'T WAIT!) and some apartment hunting. I look forward to a lunch from Seattle Deli (holla!) and seeing what, if anything, has changed about my favorite city while I've been gone.

I'm home. Crazy business!

The End Is Near...

Wow. How long has it been now? Days just run together and weekends don't mean anything. I know it's Wednesday because we're being picked up from our WWOOF sites and rejoining the group today. Otherwise, I'd have no clue. I'd better get back into the swing of things, though, considering I only have TEN DAYS LEFT of this journey before getting back to the real world. I decided to not go to Australia because I really didn't want to book-end this trip with so much alone time. It's been 24/7 with other folks and I need to hang with some buddies. So, I'm making a pit stop in San Francisco to hang out with Michael for a week or so before heading back to Seattle. It's his birthday so it's perfect! I leave on the 5th from Auckland where I'll enjoy a flight with Natalie, Hannah and Monica to SF. Baby steps to independence!

So from here we head to Dunedin. The next ten days will be spent working on our final projects. We have one paper on a theme that struck us throughout our ethnographic research (mine will be on the power of words) and a final presentation on our research question (mine is "New Zealand" as a commodity. But until then... what have I been up to this last week plus???

Abel Tasman was pretty magical. We had a couple of days free from assignments or class (which was a nice treat!) so we just enjoyed the park. It's gorgeous. All jungley and oceany. You'll see the pictures. We had a group party night, called "Disco Galactica", that was pretty fun. Everybody dressed up in silver and did crazy hair bits and I made a special dance mix that all of four of us danced to. (But it was the BEST four of us!) Carissa took the bag out of her boxed wine and wore it (it was silver!) and people did wine-bag stands, like keg stands. Monica and Rebecca grabbed some sharpies and started doing temporary tattoos, including a "Snoop" tat for Annie. We ate fajitas (a treat since there is ZERO Mexican food here) and boiled our asses off in the fireplace-heated room. It was a great night full of giggles.

All day Amber was complaining about missing snuggling with her boyfriend. Once her belly was full of wine she turned that complaining into a mission: a mission to snuggle with the only available boy, Wilson. She kept asking, "Where is that boy?!?!?" and poor Wilson, recovering from possible strep-throat and jacked up on codeine, woke the next day to the only proof that cuddles actually occurred. This photo:

The next day we drove to Westport (I think) and stopped off to see seals on the way. We stayed at a place called the "Tripp Inn" (haha) and I bought some tights to combat the cold. Those same tights were rendered useless the next day when they were bitten through by sand flies all through the knees. WTF? They bit through my tights!?!?! And while we're on the subject, we can talk about the umbrella I bought in Dunedin that turned inside out at the first gust of wind, then I promptly fell in a puddle while investigating the damage as my whole class looked on. I also slid onto my butt on our hike to the lake-on-an-island-on-a-lake-on-an-island and got mud all over my skirt and grass-surfed twice to the Elvis knee looking at penguins. (Yes! I saw penguins!) NOW my fellow travelers see how clumsy I really am.

On our way to Franz Joseph we stopped by the pancake rocks, so called because of their stacked nature, and enjoyed more unbelievable scenery. We got our first peek at the "Kiwi Experience", a twenty-something party bus, in Franz Joseph. For the first time we had to seriously battle for space in the kitchen of the backpacker. Making grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for our group of 17 was a nightmare.

For class we did the glacier tour and got to hike up this amazing chunk of ice. Our guide was bad-ass. For her lunch she pulled out of her bag: two oranges, a kiwi, an apple and a banana. I've never seen anybody eat like that. She also told us how she went into the military at 16 and had spent the last year living on the beach with her dog. She used a pickax to make steps for us in the ice and hacked at chunks to clear the way through crevices. When demonstrating how to put on our cramps, she deftly pulled those straps tight with one quick flick. Oh my. I had a total crush until she said she was TWENTY. Dear lord.

(Pearl, our guide, and the group)

Wanaka and Queenstown were polar opposites of each other. Wanaka was this gorgeous lakeside resort town with lots of lake-related activities. We went on an eco-tour with this crazy guide who reminded me of Robin Williams, minus the caffeine. Our hike led us to the top of an island in the middle of the lake. At the tip was another lake... A lake on an island on a lake on an island in the ocean. Queenstown is the adventure-capital of New Zealand. The town reminded me of Whistler. Obviously skiing is a big thing there. Some of us went bungee jumping (it started here) and all of us went on a jet boat over the Overshot river. It fun. Annie was telling us our itinerary for Queenstown: "...jet boating then we'll meet at the gondolas where' we'll take it to the top and have dinner overlooking Queenstown. Then we'll see one of the Maori cultural performances. They have a place up there where you can get drinks, too." I asked her if CHID was going to ask us to marry it afterward. What an agenda!

(Lake Wanaka)

(The lake on an island on a lake on an island...)

After Queenstown we went WWOOFing for the last time. I had the pleasure of staying in Palmerston with Allison and John, a young couple who had just moved from the city to the farm a year ago. They are still working on learning how to farm and freely admit they don't know what they are doing. They were lively conversationalists and avid readers of books to my taste. She even works at the local library! I loved these people. They had Scottish highland cattle (they look like cows with emo bangs), chickens, sheep and used to have pigs but they, um, made them dinner long ago. We ate beef tongue, lamb, smoked pork, and various dishes using all the veggies from their garden. I also learned how to make chutney! The time on farms is really inspiring me to cook more and try my hand at canning. I also got to plant beans and dig up carrots.

I asked them a burning question about Christmas, thinking it must be weird to have a winter holiday in the middle of summer. Indeed it is. Christmas songs don't make sense here with all of that "weather outside is frightful" stuff. And he said that Christmas dinner is about eating all the food that's going to rot over the winter, but in the summer it doesn't quite work. Pumpkins are around in the spring here, not in the fall, so Halloween is a bit awkward, too. John said it's weird to have Easter, which is about rebirth and renewal, in the middle of fall when everything is dying. Also, the time where the chickens lay the most eggs is in the fall and few in the spring but everything related to Easter (cakes requiring tons of eggs and Easter egg hunts) comes from a time where you're supposed to have an abundance.

Oh my! Does that bring us up to speed? By the time I finished this blog entry, I finished my paper as well. That was painful. Our last week here has all been about finalizing school stuff. Now I only have two more days until I leave. I can't believe it's all over! Now I'm starting to stress out about finding an apartment and a job back home. It's been nice to not have to worry about these things but now that reality is knocking on my door, I'm freaking! Please keep your fingers crossed for me that I find a cheap, awesome place in my same neighborhood. K?

We have final presentations tomorrow then a big farewell evening on Friday. We all fly out of Dunedin on Saturday morning, back up to Auckland then part ways. Some people are continuing their travels (Wilson goes to Vietnam and Liz to Australia), some are staying behind to be reunited with their honeys before showing them everything they've seen here (Amber and Annie), some are hanging out in Auckland, WWOOFing or simply heading home on different flights (the rest of us). I got my first bout of sadness when driving to penguins (oh, yeah! I forgot to tell the story about penguins! They were so cute and so close. I love them. I wanted one, of course. We all did.) and realized it was the last time I'd be driving through these rolling hills, spotting sheep and cows, watching clouds go by and seeing the sun's reflection off the ocean behind. I'm going to miss that. I'm trying to hold out on a complete tearful breakdown until the last night. Then I can blame the wine. For getting in my eye. I mean eyes.

A Few Of My Favorite Things...

I'm having problems getting pictures to show up in my blog, so until I fix that here's some simple text for you!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things:

Lots of great things happened in the van. We played Botticelli often (a guess-who-I'm-thinking-of kind of game). My favorite quote came from Annie, "Is this person a little bit limp?" (Nope. Not Raggedy Ann!) We also had crazy snack time where we'd make a stop for cookies and pass around our loot. Tim-tams and Chit-chats are the best but then I also loved "100's and 1000's" which are like iced animal cookies but in round shapes. Wine gums, coconut chocolate thingies, various ice cream bars... Mmmm. And then there's always Rebecca to offer raisins. Nobody ever wants raisins, Rebecca. Sorry.

Then there was the time that Dave filled the other van with regular gas, not diesel, and everybody had to get out and wait for it to get towed, drained and refilled. Oh, lordy. There were also lots of discussions regarding van politics. The blue van always wanted to switch up the rosters in the vans and red van always wanted to stay together. Annie was always trying to figure out ways to make things better and had asked us for our input. The fact that the red van was always ready to go on time and the blue van would by 10, 15 or 20 minutes behind was a particularly hot topic. Our suspicion is that it's because Dave is always the last to finish gathering his own things and doesn't push people to get moving. Akina suggests, "Hey Annie? Do you think... for future references... you could ask Dave to, like... switch his way of thinking?" Round of laughter. See? THERE was the problem.

More about Dave. He loved to say these phrases over and over and if I never hear them again I will be a happy camper: "Consensus means you can live with it!" "Does this speak to...?" "Does anybody have strong feelings about..." and "Oi" which is a cross between an "oy" and a "hi". We're making hm a "Consensus means I can live with this T-shirt" shirt before we go.

"NOPE. Doesn't exist." When playing Scattergories Carissa was particularly upset about a word I had denied so sought revenge on the next word I played under "Things With Tails". I said "nightingale" to which the normally quiet Carissa loudly replied "NOPE." and then insisted nightingales don't exist. Nor have tails.

"DJ HOONAW?" At a bar in Queenstown over "teapots" (which were drinks served in teapots... duh.) Liz inquires about the DJ spinning that night, "DJ Who Now?" but in a thick ghetto drawl so it comes out DJ Hoonaw? I immediately say I want a t-shirt with this on it.

"What the fuuuuck?" Akina has the sweetest high-pitched, whiney girly voice and she loves this phrase. Especially funny was when we were on our way to see hooker seals and sea lions and she says, "What the fuuuuuck? I just want to see some fucking peeeeeenguiiiiiiins!"

"You got two friends, I got two friends." In Paihia Alice met some guy who was going to sell her some weed. She had to meet them at their truck and grabbed me and Carissa on her way as back-up. Alice, so sweet and giggly and innocent, adopts her best tough-girl voice and says to the guy, "What? You got two friends, I got two friends." with a little shrug and swagger.

The Camelpak. Katie has been lugging around this Camelpak (water bag in a backpack with a hose and mouthpiece so you can drink while you hike) all through our time here. She's taken it to every tourist spot, event, lecture, whatever for the last two months and I am so sick of seeing that fucking backpack and that fucking mouthpiece with it's annoying slurping sound wherever we go. It's been a point of discussion for some of us. She took it to parliament! How thirsty are you????? The night before hiking the Franz Joseph glacier, Katie raises her hand and asks if it would be acceptable to bring her Camelpak. Hiking. Up a glacier. Why she decided to ask THIS time instead of before any other place we've gone, I'll never know. Liz squawks, we all start stifling giggles, Carissa starts crying from laughing so hard and Amber tries to cover it up by saying she has the "sleepy ha-ha's". I die.

Amber tells a story from her last WWOOFing site: "So I'm woken up by this bright light in my face. It's Alice with her headlamp on. I'm like, oh crap, was I snoring or farting or something in my sleep?? Then I'm so out of it I mumble something and turn over and get the full story the next day. Alice heard something in the night and turned her lamp on to see what it was. It was a mouse eating crumbs off Wilson's chest while he slept."

Wilson, peeing. He has the world's smallest bladder and has no problems peeing wherever there's a patch of grass. Amber and I were outside of the backpacker in Nelson and he comes running outside and stands on the lawn, whips it out, sways from side to side to get the full range of ground coverage, puts his head down, grunts satisfactorily and then runs back inside to finish his drinking game. Please not there was an actual bathroom inside the backpacker. He has no problems continuing a conversation while he steps to the other side of the fence, or rocks or car or..., while he does his business.

And one of my least favorite things? The hills! There are insane hills wherever we go and we always manage to stay in a backpacker at the very top of the steepest one. This is particularly painful when we've just had big dinners with lots of drinks and then have to lug our full bellies up, sweating and panting the whole way, to our beds.