Wow. What crazy times we are living in. Many lives have changed significantly and many lives have been lost.
These are terrible and trying times. And, while all of the new events that have recently happened in the midst of COVID, I’m just starting to catch up and process everything from the past two months.
One Saturday in March I woke up to an email from St. Scholastica asking me to come home immediately. This wasn’t a complete surprise though, because at the end of the school day Friday I was on the phone with the Dean of the School of Ed. who was wondering if I’d received the message yet. I left the school trembling, and that was the last time of my stay that I was at Waiphāhīhī.
At first I was angry. My parents were supposed to arrive in a week and we were supposed to be spending a luxurious weekend in a condo in Mount Maunganui. After that, I had a fun-filled-weekend planned in Auckland. When I got that news, Tim was supposed to be coming over in a month’s time and we would come back to the States together. I haven’t shared in this blog yet, but that week we were going to elope at the Cathedral Cove in the Coromandel Peninsula. We were going to feast at Hobbiton, get a couples massage, bathe in a Polynesian sulfur pool, and go skydiving on Lake Taupo. In that next month we had so much excitement planned, and it was all being ripped away.
On that Saturday, I tried to fight to stay. At the time, there were just 5 cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand. I reached out to the college, then went on a three-hour hike that I had planned up Mount Tauhara. The hike was exhilarating, one of the best workouts of my life, and the view was oh-so-worth-it! Little did I know that would be last full day in NZ. When I came back, I got the message from the college telling me that if I stayed they could no longer support me and, in turn, there was no guarantee that I would get my degree.
To heighten my anxiety, that Saturday there was word that the NZ prime minister was going to release the strictest travel rules in the world. One of Kristine’s friends heard that they were going to cancel all of the flights that evening. My NZ supervisor told me that I shouldn’t even change my flight until the PM’s announcement so I wouldn’t be stuck with a ticket that was no longer valid. At this point, my anger about leaving turned to yearn to just get home. I was a great big ball of anxiety at this point with all of these rumors and forecasts that I called the Global Student Teaching director for her professional advice. She said she doubted everything would change that dramatically, and negated my supervisor’s advice to not even get a ticket. She told me to change my flight before the PM’s announcement so that I would beat the rush of other people changing flights, and to get the soonest flight I could. When I called my airline, there was a flight to leave that evening and I was almost tempted to take it. Instead, I took a flight to leave at 9:30 am the next day, just about 24 hours after I had received the news. Ultimately, the planes didn’t stop flying that night, the PM had just set a rule that anyone entering NZ had to quarantine for 14 days. That evening, Kristine threw an impromptu going away party for me and we all got “bloody drunk.”
Beforehand, my return date from NZ has changed multiple times. It all still frustrates me because I had done exactly what my supervisor had asked me to. Right before leaving, my supervisor had accidentally told me the wrong room and board cost, so my expenses for this were now going to be an extra $50/week than I was planning on paying and had budgeted for. Once I got there, I found out that I wasn’t needing to stay as long as I was told to, due to some miscommunication between the university program and my supervisor. So, I changed my flight.
After that, I called to extend my visa waiver. I applied for a regular visa 3 months ahead of time, but wasn’t getting it, and I was supposed to leave for NZ in a week. Apparently, the immigration rules had changed just a few months ago and there was a backlog in applications. So, right before I left my supervisor told me to cancel my visa application just get a visa waiver and extend it when I was there. When I called to actually do this, I found out that extending a visa waiver isn’t even a thing and that to stay longer than 90 days I would need to apply for another $150 visa. So, we had worked it out that I would leave with Tim finish my last two weeks of student teaching in the States, because he would be departing on day 88 of my stay. All of this misleading information cost me $600 in unnecessary flight change fees and an unnecessary visa fee. The Global Student Teaching program refunded the $300 placement fee for all of my troubles, but I’m still disheartened by it.
On a more positive note, I’d like to reflect on my weekend alone in Wellington, just a week before my sudden departure. I have never felt more alive than I did that weekend. I left immediately after school to catch a 4 PM bus for a 6 hour ride south. I like to make conversation with people who are willing while I travel, and listened to the story of one woman who made this bus trip every weekend to visit their husband since they had jobs in different cities. The ride was some the curviest, hilliest, motion-sickness-inducing roads I’d ever been on. Nevertheless, I felt liberated. For the first time in my life, I was on a bus with foreign strangers on my own to do whatever I wanted for a weekend, two-hemispheres away from friends and family. I journaled, “day-to-day, living in NZ has a normal feeling to it now. This is my life. Taking a step back, it seems surreal.” At the half-way point we took a rest stop, I bought an NZ Pale Ale and a beef stick and snacked on that as I walked around a BP service station to stretch my legs.
Earlier that day, I got an email from Elizabeth Warren that she was suspending her presidential campaign. I couldn’t even read the whole email. I’m not usually interested in politics but I had never resonated with a politician’s values so much. Now our nation has Joe Biden and Donald Trump as our presidential nominees. It just blows me away that our country is so populous, full of intelligent, brilliant, and creative minds; and these are the two presidential nominees that we are left with. Before this, I had high hopes in all aspects of life, and this was the point where my hope slowly started to deteriorate.
Fittingly enough, at the time I was reading the book called Everything is Fucked, which is a sarcastic book that makes an attempt at being intellectual. I was also binge watching the cringey Netflix series, called Love Is Blind. It’s a pretty bad production but also humorous in how ridiculous it was.
When I got off at Platform 9 in Wellington, I made a b-line to the convenience store to grab some hard ciders for the night before off-sale stopped at 10 PM. I still had a buzz from my rest-stop pale ale and wanted to keep that buzz going. I knew that my hostel was very large as well so I wanted to maybe meet some new people. At the register of the convenience store with harsh florescent lighting, they refused to sell me alcohol because the only IDs accepted to buy alcohol are NZ IDs and Passports, and I left my passport in Taupo. I thought that this mishap was going to ruin my fun for the weekend, but fortunately, other bartenders didn’t care I had the wrong ID or didn’t even ask to see it. A man in line offered to buy the alcohol for me, but the cashier overheard him and wouldn’t allow it. We walked out of the convenience store getting to know each other, but unfortunately he was asking too personal of questions so I parted ways.
I got settled into the Waterloo Hostel, recommended to me by Kristine. It was late at night and I was talking to Tim on the phone in the hallway next to the lounge. As I was talking on the phone, I walked through the lounge in my pajamas to get some 1 AM snacks. The lounge wasn’t full of people but there were a couple large groups. When I walked back through the lounge a Scottish man stopped me in mid-conversation to call me a “stupid fucking bitch.” I walked away immediately, appalled at what had just happened because I had absolutely no interaction with him until he got my attention, I hadn’t even looked his way before. But, for the most part, I was pretty unfazed by it. Tim heard it all because I was still on the phone with him, and he said that I should still tell someone about it. Right after that, a hostel worker just happened to walk by the hallway, so I had just let him know about the man. The worker walked into the lounge and said that he would take care of it, so I felt a bit better.
Shortly after that, the worker, the man who yelled at me, and the rest of his friends came out. The man threatened to fight me, standing just inches away, while his German friend tried to settle things down by saying “it’s not worth fighting a woman, she’s weaker than you,” while his other female friend criticized me for saying anything about it. While all of this was happening, the hostel worker essentially just stood back and watched. The Scottish man then yelled at me, “Have you ever stayed at a hostel before? It’s just hostel talk, it’s no different than me calling you a cunt!” I sat on my bench while they looked down at me, my expression deadpan. Finally, the hostel worker gave the man a warning to kick him out, apparently, somebody else had complained about him as well, and asked him to go back to his room. After the group left, I told the hostel worker, “I’m so, so incredibly sorry, I didn’t want to cause a scene or any trouble.” The worker said, “No, no, it’s ok. It’s your right,” and left. I went to my bed, on the top bunk with 19 other roommates, and silently cried myself to sleep.
I woke up at 8 AM and took a cold shower because the hot water wasn’t working. At 8:30 AM, I hopped on the Wellington Cable Car up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens. What I love so much about NZ is its nature. When I took my school kids to some woods to play one day, one of the children found a fluorescent blue ladybug. Their plants, animals, and insects are so mystical, it feels to me like I’m walking around Jurassic Park when I’m in NZ woods. I walked for a long time to try and walk off a big headache, drinking and eating the Coke and Cheetos for breakfast, which I bought from the vending machine last night.
After that, I went down the cable car to walk over to The Beehive, which is NZ’s parliament building. I had a reservation for a free hour-long tour of the building and learned how NZ’s government functions. To be honest, government is not very interesting to me (and it didn’t help that the tour guide was a drag), but it was cool to see how their’s functions quite differently from the States.
After a very extensive tour, I stopped at a café to rest my feet for a little bit. In this single day in Wellington, I managed to stop at five different cafés to have a cappuccino, pastries, or french fries… I was on my own and wanted to spoil myself! After that, I walked along Lambton Harbour and viewed a dragon boat race that was going on. It felt exhilarating to be in a city again. I had a delicious summer salad hard cider at Mac’s Brewbar, a restaurant right on the harbour.
After that, I walked to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa, a giant museum that explores the country’s history, art, and culture. I walked around for about 4 to 5 hours in this museum, reading about the country’s struggles in World War I, native plants and animals, as well as the many invasive species that have taken over NZ, traditional Māori tattooing, called Tā Moko, which leaves the skin with textured grooves, and so much more…
Then, I ventured off to hike up Mount Victoria. Just getting to the access point was exhausting because I had to walk up many, many flights of stairs of walking reserves. On the trail, the uphill was so steep I was afraid of slipping numerous times. At the top, I met a family from Canada who had relatives in NZ, who I talked to for quite a while. On the walk down, I was pretty hungry but found a trail that led directly to a beautiful sand beach on the ocean. I changed in the woods quick. (I wasn’t planning to swim, but luckily I had everything on my back: a pair of clothes, swimsuit, soap, and contacts.) Walking into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, I felt so free. I did whatever I wanted that day on my own time. I laid on my back, floating on the salty water, looking up at the blue sky as I gently moved with the waves.
On my way back to the city, on the harbour I was planning on making a b-line to a restaurant, but I stumbled upon NZ’s annual pride festival and had to check it out. I watched a parade of various businesses supporting pride and also listened to NZ’s prime general governor Jenny Shipley speak, standing just 10 meters away from her. After that, there was a drag show and an after party. It was so cool to see how everyone dressed, and just how happy and expressive everyone was in general. The sun was setting as I wore a glow-stick necklace and danced with a group of people I had just met to Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music.”
As my energy simmered down, it was 10 PM and I still haven’t eaten. I had this fancy seafood restaurant in mind that was right on the harbour, called Shed 5, but the entire restaurant was already booked out for a wedding. I went to the closest restaurant near it, one not so elaborate, called the Crab Shack. As I sat outside on a gently lit patio I listened to the ocean waves and downed some fried fish and light beer. I got friendly with my waitress, who was an English woman in NZ on a work visa. She gave me a blanket to cozy up with, and as she cleaned up the patio for the night, we shared each other’s life story. The English woman had a very bad break up, and moved to NZ to escape, not know exactly what she was going to do here… but ultimately got a job as a nanny for an American family and part-time waitress at the Crab Shack. After we talked for a while, she told me that her work visa was about to expire and that she was moving back home. She said that she loved my personality, so she offered me a job of taking over her nanny job in June. I was so flattered but had to decline because Tim and I are moving to Kosovo, a tiny country in Eastern Europe, in August.
Now, I have been back home longer than I was in NZ. Being reunited with my fiancé was the best feeling in the world and it’s so nice to know that all of the future adventures in my life will be with him. When I got back, I was required to self-quarantine for 14 days. This quarantine period has reunited my love for sewing. Since I’ve gotten back I’ve made six dresses and skirts for myself and for other people. I got some scrutiny sewing dresses rather than masks in the middle of a global pandemic, which is understandable. But at that time I needed to make something pretty for myself because I was in a bit of a funk with everything that happened. Over the past two months, I’ve kept coming back to try to write this post, but mentally I could not do it. Luckily with today’s technology, I was able to schedule a telehealth meeting to get back on a low-dose prescription of an anxiety medication that I’ve been on-and-off of since high school. Looking back, that anger that I had over getting sent back turned into gratitude because Waiphāhīhī primary closed and moved to distance learning a week after I left, anywho. Luckily, I was able to finish off the weeks that I needed in my student teaching by helping my cooperating teacher from last fall with her distance learning.
After the quarantine time frame, I got a job working at Target to help with the financial burden of the flight change fees to get home early (which the school eventually partially-reimbursed me for) and to help kickstart my goal of paying off my student loans by the end of the summer. Working at Target has really been wearing on the soul, however. It hurts my heart to be feeding the prosperity of a big corporation rather than a local business. Along with that, it is incredibly wasteful how many single-use plastic bags Target goes through each day, or how many plastic plants people buy for home décor rather than real plants!
Along with that, Tim and I were lost on how to get married. We were planning to elope at the beautiful Cathedral Cove in April. To add to that, our wedding planner refused to give us our deposit back. It hurt. A month later, we made a dispute with the card company that we paid her through. Our wedding planner sent us a very long, nasty email… but eventually gave us our money back. Finally, about a week ago we just started to make new wedding plans at Tettegouche State park for the end of June. We’re just going to have our parents there, my grandmother will marry us, and we will have a photographer. That way, we are abiding social distancing guidelines of keeping gatherings under 10 people. After that, we will have a humble honeymoon weekend by renting a cabin up the shore of Lake Superior. Now that we are planning a wedding again, we couldn’t be more elated and things start to feel normal again.
As for teaching in Kosovo, things seem as if they are going to go pretty much as planned. The head of schools at the American School of Kosova expects the year to start business as usual. Although, the worst case scenario is that we wouldn’t be able to move over right away and have to start the year with distance learning. Currently, Kosovo’s borders are still closed, but the neighboring country of Serbia just opened, so we expect that by late August we’ll be able to move to Eastern Europe. I couldn’t be more excited that my first year of teaching I’ll be teaching middle school science, since it’s my favorite subject. Tim has been wanting to teaching younger grades now, so he’ll either be teaching 2nd or 4th grade, the school hasn’t full decided on elementary placements yet. On Saturday, the lease of our first little apartment ends and we’ll be moving in to live with Tim’s parents for the summer. We’ve already started to minimizing as many belongings as we can to prep for our big move. The school is paying for us to fly over and giving us each 2 checked bags, but we want to have as little as possible in storage while we’re gone. When we’re over there, the school is also giving us a fully-furnished 2 bedroom apartment to live in, so we won’t have to worry about housing.
The future looks so bright for the both of us and I have to pinch myself that this is real life. There have definitely been bumps along the way, but I think there is some beauty that comes out of hard times and struggle. It’s important when times are hard to look at all of the bright things ahead. People are tense right now because there is so much unknown about COVID-19, we are all exhausted from being quarantined, everyone is going about it in very different ways, people are suffering, and there are incredibly differing viewpoints about it. I see it every day working at Target. I’ve seen gloves and masks littered everywhere around my neighborhood, which doesn’t make any sense to me because if you are kind enough to wear a mask to protect others, you should be kind enough to protect the environment.
Worst of all, just this week, there’s the news a white woman unjustly calling 911 on a black man in Central Park, the racial and socioeconomic disparities of the now over 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in our nation, and the murder of George Floyd. It’s heartbreaking, unacceptable, and white people have and need to use their power to change it. Currently, Tim and I have donated to organizations that combat racism, as well as looking into other ways that we can get involved. I feel anxious and unsafe enough to be a woman in this world, so I honestly can’t imagine the hurt the black community is feeling right now.
During times like this, we need to come back to our core values, stay positive, and do our part. We need to be kind and courteous to one another, look over the wellbeing of humanity and our earth.
josie's musings 