I haven’t flown alone in a long time, I forgot how beautiful it feels. It is a surge of independent feelings.
My flight from Minneapolis to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Auckland, NZ, then Auckland to Taupo, NZ totals 19 hours and a full 24 hours with layovers. It’s been grueling.
Even just going through an airport feels like an adventure in and of itself — to me it has a futuristic feel and with so many people from different walks of life all occupying the same vicinity. People that are just about to develop memories and situations that will shape them majorly or hardly at all, people who are needing to travel for work, and those trying to escape work for a bit. Along with that the people who are coming back from their trip feeling either exhausted, invigorated, or somewhere in between,
But honestly, I’ve had a pit in my stomach the past couple of weeks just thinking about this trip. Mostly just anxious symptoms that I haven’t been able to pinpoint. And the past few weeks have been a whirlwind because of a close call getting my visa worked out and having to say goodbye to my friends and family. I never imagined the feeling of emptiness i would get by saying goodbye to my fiance for a few months, we’ve been living together for a bit over half a year, and I haven’t left him for an overnight since now. I know that other people have to be separated from their loved one for much longer than that, involuntarily, so I’m trying to remain in high spirits and live in the present moment as much as possible. I applied to student teach abroad just when we started dating, not having any relationship plans or specific reasoning why I wanted to student teach abroad. I just did it. And we went with it.
One of my first goals when I get there is to buy a bike to get around the city for the semester. After one day to get settled in, I’ll be starting the school day at 8:30am. The school that I’ll be working at is just a 10 minute walk from my host-mother’s house. But in spare time I want to expand beyond my host-mother’s house and the school I’ll be working at, so buying a bike, as long as Taupo’s roads are bike-friendly, has been my main thought concerning my short-term future. I also want to pass my student teaching and the long paper I’m suppose to complete about my student teaching, but I hardly know what to expect from that.
Other than that, I bought a travel/info guide for NZ for a sense of preparedness but haven’t hardly looked at it yet. I usually like to go into travelling blindly. (Or partially-blind.) From my understanding Taupo is a small city, though I never cared to look up the population. And most of New Zealand is supposedly pretty rural, though they have a lot of tourism activities.
I’ve heard New Zealanders (known as Kiwis) eat quite a bit of lamb, so I’m giving up on being a vegetarian. Food is a part of people’s culture, and I know that I would miss some of it by not eating certain dishes. The label can be a bit constrictive, though usually more so for some family and friends that think about it and bring it up much more often than I do. I still don’t intend to eat very much meat at all — ever since I’ve been a vegetarian I’ve felt much healthier — but life is all about balance. And balance shifts over time.
At my desk job at college one of my bosses asked me if I was keeping a blog during my travels. It hadn’t crossed my mind until that moment, so I have her to thank for that! I’ve had other people ask since that moment a couple of weeks ago. I’ll be writing my highs and lows along of not this trip but also beyond it. This helps me share with others and also helps me process it along the way for undiscovered bits of understanding of myself and the world around me.
Just about to board for my final flight, ciao for now!
josie's musings 