Long time, no see! It’s been such a busy summer and Tim and I have tried to live in the present moment as much as we can. We’ve had one of the best summer’s of our lives (well, as good as it can get while being safe and considerate in the middle of world-wide pandemic).
Back in December, we signed a contract to move and work at the American School of Kosovo for the 2020 school year. So, when our lease for our apartment ended in June, we moved in with Tim’s parents for a few months to help us gradually minimize our material goods and to live cheap for a bit. We spent the month of June planning our wedding and working a lame job painting apartment walls with a bunch of lowlifes. This really made me reflect how much my time is worth and the value of money over happiness. We really wanted to make some extra cash over the summer, but it wasn’t worth it to work a painfully awful job.
Three weeks later, we spontaneously walked off the job, got married at the end of that month, and honeymooned, which you can read about here. Two days after getting back, we turned around to take a spontaneous trip to the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana. We visited relatives & family friends, dry/wild camping, and visited the magnificent Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. We met some new people at our campsites, like a 70-some-year-old hippie who did headstands in the gravel and told us all about Burning Man Festival.
On our last night at the campsite of our final destination, Glacier, our car got broken into. Someone literally smashed open a rear-side window and took a lot of our belongings. Thankfully, our necessities were in our tent, but we still had about $500 in goods stolen. This brought to my attention again that material goods don’t matter, nor does owning things that are expensive. After two weeks of wild camping, we just wanted to get home. So, we drove 20 hours through the night with the wind-noise of our crash-wrapped window in the background.
Coming back from that, we got ready for our move to Eastern Europe and we golfed a lot (I was antsy being a caddie for Tim and loved the sport so much I picked it up myself).
On August 13 we packed up four bags of checked luggage and traveled for 18 hours with flights and layovers to get to Pristina, Kosovo. The flight went smoothly, except the gate assistant almost didn’t let us board the plane in Chicago because he didn’t believe we were allowed into Kosovo. After 15 minutes of dispute, talking to the gate assistant’s boss, and proof from the U.S. Embassy, we boarded.
The night we arrived some workers picked us up, showed us around our fully-furnished 2-bedroom flat in the city (which they provide for us), gifted us with groceries, and took us out to eat! The food here is amazing, especially the meat (which makes me thankful that I am now a retired vegetarian). Our flat is actually a two-story-house. We live on the second floor and another American teacher lives below us. We also have a gorgeous balcony, as well as patio furniture and a grill.
The lifestyle isn’t a huge culture shock. We have all the amenities that we did at home. Actually, this apartment is a lot nicer and spacious than Tim and I have ever had! We live at the dead end of an alleyway so we feel very safe as well. The city is very compact, so we can walk just about anywhere we need to. Like, the grocery store is less than a five minute walk away. There is also a lot of life in the city. There is a popular street that is also very close to our flat that is jam-packed with beautiful restaurants and cafés.
But, Kosovo is still considered a developing country. There is construction and new buildings going up everywhere. Including behind our house. So, during the day on Saturday is was pretty noisy. But, on our second day here, Sunday, I woke up before Tim and it was quite. There was the quiet sound of children in the background and birdsong. I felt so light and alive that I literally yelled out the window “Hello, Europe!”
If you’re new to my blog, you can read my intro page here and subscribe at the bottom of the home page.
Hello, welcome! I thought I’d write another introduction post since it’s been awhile. A lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same.
Call me Josie. I’m currently living in Pristina, Kosovo with my husband, Tim. Most people don’t know where that is, so here’s a brief overlook of the country and a picture.
I’m teaching middle school science at the American School of Kosova. The school hosts us in a two-bedroom flat right in Kosovo’s capital city.
This isn’t my first adventure, though! My first significant travel experience was when I was 17. I took my first plane ride half-way around the world (all by myself!) to stay with my heart-sister in Germany for a month. That gave me the urge to see more. Then, I studied abroad in Arizona/Mexico, Tanzania, and Guatemala with some great groups of people. At the beginning of 2020, I finished half of my student teaching in New Zealand before the world pandemic spread rampantly.
In this blog I plan to write not strictly about traveling, but also my passions, thoughts, and musings, if you will.
I feel driven by passions of yoga, tea, books, sustainability, and a better world. Along with that, my husby (a word coined by me; short for husband, pronounced hus-bee) Tim, is my everything. He currently teaches fourth grade with me at ASK. Before moving to Kosovo together, we met, lived together, and got married in Duluth, Minnesota.
I’m from Midwestern Wisconsin. An only child raised by working and caring parents, a cheese maker (yes, very Wisconsin) and a school bus driver. My grandmother has my heart.
Thanks for reading this far! Let’s keep in touch. There is a nifty subscribe button at the bottom of the home page to get new postings (& nothing else) sent to your inbox.
Along with that, feel free to email with questions, comments, or your own musings at josephinesteller@gmail.com
I’m a planner. We had talked through every particular, minuscule feature to make sure our day was perfect. I even knew what day Tim was going to propose to me, because we talked about it. I don’t like surprises. I didn’t even want an engagement ring because I wanted to break away from old, patriarchal aspects that are entrenched in our society’s wedding traditions. But Tim insisted (and sometimes I love to be a hard-core, internationality-observing feminist, but other times it’s just too exhausting and easier to pretend to be blissfully ignorant). I am so much of a planner that Tim and I bought our wedding bands before being officially engaged because we knew that we were getting engaged the end of November, and I was leaving for New Zealand in January, where we would get married in April.
One lesson I learned is that you can’t plan for everything. Once I suddenly returned home in the middle of March, we were mopey from the inactivity of quarantine and our sudden change of plans. We went about our days going through the motions. Plus, our NZ wedding planner refused to give our $500 deposit back, despite the unprecedented times and the fact that she had done hardly any planning yet. We tried to stay in the best spirits we could knowing that other people were, and still are, in far worse positions. Also, after 2 months of being back I made a dispute with the card company we paid our planner with. She wrote a long email about how disappointed she was with us, but eventually gave us our money back. Tim and I wanted to do something soon, because we had a lot planned and wanted to get married before life got in the way. We couldn’t do a destination elopement like we hoped because of the pandemic, so we had to invite the most important people in our lives: my parents, my grandma, and his parents.
When things slowly started to open back up in May, I saw an Instagram post from an old co-worker who now does photography full-time, who was looking to get more into elopement/adventure weddings. (CC Boyle Photography) Not only would Cece photograph our wedding, but she would help plan and give suggestions — as much as our NZ wedding planner was doing for us. The final cost of our entire wedding would be half the cost of our original wedding.
I felt life come back to me. After meeting with our Cece, everything started to come into place. Within just a few days, we had the main plans for our wedding already set. We toured a few places up the shore to refresh our memory and to set specific spots in mind. We chose to take some wedding portraits at Palisade Head and have our ceremony and dinner at Tettegouche State Park. The few weeks and days leading up to it, we were completely stress-free.
Tim and I savored this special time by making keepsakes of our wedding together, like a custom table runner, table settings, “Our Love Story” chalkboard, ring pillow, and little vow books. I never thought that I’d ever be into doing little frilly wedding stuff like that, but it was actually a great bonding activity for Tim & I, we had never done crafts together before!
For whatever reason, I also thought it’d be really romantic for us to make our own food for our wedding day (plus I’m cheap!). So, we designed our own cheese platter, looked up an easy baked chicken alfredo recipe, and I made my semi-famous homemade cheesecake. (we kept the food warm at the state park by heating up bricks and wrapping the bricks & pasta towels and putting this in a cooler. Sounds weird but this method is used by catering companies a lot)
Another lesson I learned is that I am an OVER-planner. We thought through every second of the day that it went great, even though not everything goes as planned. Tim and I never thought our pictures would look so good, my grandma married us (we got her ordained online in less than a minute), and we honeymooned in Grand Marais in a secluded cabin.
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.
I’ve been here for 5 weeks now! The time has flown by.
I feel so comfortable in my classroom. I start teaching full-time this week, though I’ve been nearly full-time teaching already. I took up responsibility pretty quickly in my classroom because that’s just what felt natural. Some days are overwhelming, but most are amazing! I really feel like I’m in the best profession ever.
To give you a better image of the day: Kids start each day with an hour of play. Twice a week during that play time I go to what is called “bush school,” where we walk a small group of kids to a forest and just let them run around, explore, and build. After morning tea, we have an hour of literacy, which is taught in small groups while other students do independent work, such as a big book activity, work on handwriting, or reading with a buddy. Then, we have math groups, which follows a similar model. In the last hour of the day, we teach the arts or fitness. My school follows a model called “play, eat, learn.” And students do, in that order. There are three sessions of play, three eating sessions, and three learning blocks each day. Kids are really responsive to it. And I feel like I’ve seen children more in their natural habitat here. Kids walk around the classroom and school grounds barefoot. Kids are creative.
Meanwhile, I’ve been making slow progress on my portfolio. After commentary and lesson plans, my portfolio is going to be about 40 pages long, single spaced. Thankfully, I’m about half-way through it, but finding time for it is difficult. Even though the school day is only from 9am-3pm, teachers get no prep time during the school day. So my typical day is more like 8am-4:30pm. Plus, there are extra commitments that are compulsory for teachers, like working an evening dance for the kids, parent-teacher conferences, volunteering at a community triathlon for kids, or going to evening board meetings. I’m very tired by the end of the day, but also very happy.
I’ve been working hard, but I’ve been working in paradise. This past weekend my host mother was going to Napier so I hitched a ride with her for the town’s art deco festival. I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time, went to an ocean spa to relax in some hot baths while meeting some new people, visited an art museum, went shopping, ate some amazing food, and watched a bunch of different street performances. Travel can be so cheap because hostels are so prevalent in the country. My hostel in Napier was just $30US for the night, with free breakfast. Plus, I met and shared a dorm with people from California, Auckland, and Wellington. I’m staying home this weekend, but planning another trip to Wellington for next weekend. And, in just two more weekends, my parents will be leaving North America for the first time to come visit for a week.
Relationships have always been a big part of my life. It has defined me. Looking back at myself, I find the relationships I’ve been in remind me of the values, maturity, and position I was in at particular points in time of life.
For example, just a few years ago I thought I had my life mapped out. I wanted to eventually have a traditional wedding, settle, and have a children of my own. Now I want the exact opposite. I was sheltered in part by a closed minded attitude and a small Wisconsin town. Catapulting myself into a college that was a bit of a drive away slowly pushed me to change… seeing my opportunities and the world around me with fresh, wide-open eyes.
I started dating when I was 14 and have only been single for a few totaling months since then. When I was 20 and fresh out of a nearly four year relationship, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Being with someone was a huge part of my identity.
I’ve always been better at having close friends rather than a lot of friends, and these qualities of focusing so much appreciation towards one person rather than a lot of people has shone through in my relationships. It’s almost like a nonchalant obsession. I don’t do it purposefully and I’m not clingy. But when I’m with someone, my partner is my best friend, period. I’m the type of person that needs time away from others to recharge. But when I really jive with someone I can easily spend every second of the day with them.
I’m an emotional person. I can cry without having a concrete or rational reason as to why. Sometimes my feelings can be easily hurt. Emotions can be a real pain in the ass for me at times. Yet, sometimes I can surprise myself with stoicism. I know that I chose this time away and I think that helps me cope lot. Even though the circumstances are different than when I signed up to leave, I invested in myself. If I was in such a devoted, fun relationship by the time I decided among my student teaching options as I am now, I probably wouldn’t have done this. So with that, I’m glad that my relationship with Tim came later on.
He is my boyfriend, partner, fiance, significant other… whatever the hell you want to call him. I find the use of gender neutral labels incredibly refreshing but I also fumble on the options of labels to use.
Finishing school in a few months makes 2020 a big year for me. Nearly two years ago, I decided that my plans for after college were to teach internationally or join the Peace Corps. I didn’t want to be in committed relationship… I just wanted to have fun! It’s was one of the main reasons I ended my old long-standing relationship. I used to think the dream I had would stop me from being with someone. And that’s still true, but now I know that it depends on the person. Now, this dream has turned out to be an integral part of my relationship, in concerns to our future.
I thought Valentine’s day away would be hard. But honestly I forgot about the holiday until Tim told me (he was so thoughtful he even remembered a day early, since I’m living a day ahead of him). After working at school, where elementary classes don’t celebrate the holiday at all (completely opposite to the States), I went to the beach right away to bask in the fierce sun rays. When I came home I had the most beautiful bouquet of flowers that I’ve ever seen in my life at my doorstep with the most heartfelt note on it, a note that I plan to keep forever. I gawked at my flowers while baking a frozen pizza. Drinking wine and eating pizza, my housemate and I binged To All the Boys I Loved Before and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. By the time we watched two movies another day was done, passing by so quickly.
School has finally started and just like that the first week is already over! I feel so comfortable in my classroom and love the children that I’m working with. And although I was skeptical about the collaborative classroom model, but now I have fallen in love with it. Noise is hardly a problem, even though it’s open wall classrooms. There is so much support, and it’s helpful that the three teachers in my classroom are so kind and have high expectations for me. I love that I get feedback from three people, with three different perspectives. Along with that, in NZ, you have the kids all day long. Students don’t leave for specialist for a prep time. So not only do you teach Math, Reading, Science, and Social Studies; you also teach Music, Art, Phy Ed, and STEM.
Luckily with the collaborative model, we can tailor our teaching to our strengths. Today I started teaching dance. My cheerleading has come in handy for this! Students got to pick between dance, drama, or music. So most of the kids in my group are super interested and motivated.
Thursday I start teaching math. Thursday I’ll also be full-dive into my edTPA, which is essentially an over 30 page written response portfolio showcasing my math lessons to prove that I am qualified to receive my teaching license. After I get this done, I can focus my energy in being present for my student teaching and fine-tuning my skills.
—
On Saturday I went with my housemate, Mikki, on trips to two different cities. Mikki is undeniably herself. She wears big glasses, floral dresses with black New Balance tennis shoes. And she loves Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. So we went to Hobbiton! We woke up at 4:30 to get a ride with one of Kristine’s friends who could drop us off at Hobbiton en route. To be honest, I only watched the first Lord of the Rings movie when I found out I had a placement in NZ. But I had an appreciation for the movie, with it’s soothing music and beautiful scenery, but I had even greater appreciation for the actual Hobbiton.
It’s like walking into a different world. There are so many intricate details to the set that it looks real. Even more impressive, everything is built to permanent building code, because after the success of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit filmmakers knew that fans would want to come and visit the outdoor set. As an added bonus, they give you all inclusive hard cider and beer at the end of the door in the Hobbiton pub.
After eating lunch at the most amazing Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to, we took a bus to the city of Roterora. We rented a private sulfur pool at a Polynesian Spa for the night. It was actually cheaper to get a private pool rather than the public pools because we only got the one sulfur option, rather than being able to go into different sulfur and acidic pools. With our skin feeling soft and muscles loose, we checked into our hostel. It was our first time ever staying at a hostel. I love how communal it is. For $16 each, we got beds in an 8 bed dorm sleeping with people from Guatemala, Columbia, Germany, and Idaho.
The person from Idaho greeted us right away because it was obvious that we were new to hostels. As we heated up our leftover Indian food in the communal kitchen, she sat with us and told us all about her journey. She is 52 years old and was stuck by herself in a three bedroom house and was feeling at loss for purpose in life. So she sold her house on a whim, most of her belongings, and paid off her debts. She put money aside in a high interest savings account for retirement, a rainy day, whatever. But then she still had plenty to travel all over Europe for 9 months. In Europe she backpacked, went to multiple West End performances when she rented a flat in London for a month, and went to several bar crawls. After that, she came directly to NZ to travel the islands for 6 weeks. She already has a job lined up for when she’s done, but instead of going back to Idaho she’s going to work in Anchorage, Alaska.
Lights out at 10:30pm. I slept amazing, regardless of my $16 bed for the night being hard as a rock. After eating at a Korean restaurant for breakfast, we got on the city bus to go to Rainbow Springs Nature Park. The park houses mostly endangered and threatened plant and animal species of NZ. We even got to go to a Kiwi bird hatchery (but couldn’t take pictures!) After walking the trails for hours, we went back to the city center to get on a bus back home, feeling tired and fully content. Our weekend getaway cost each of us less than $150 in total, for everything. Mikki and I are hoping to go on trips about every other weekend, but our priority is getting our portfolios done as soon as we can.
The new school year in New Zealand is about to begin! This past week I’ve attending professional development at my school, Waipahihi-A-Tia. The first moment I walked into the Waipahihi, a new teacher, named Monique, swooped in. She is beautiful, calm, and was to be professional flutist for 15 years. She has helped me survive by explaining all of NZ’s education acronyms, along with her rich knowledge of NZ in general. To my luck, she’s one of the 3 teachers on our teaching team.
But, the first day I was incredibly overwhelmed. Everyone around me was new to me and everyone at the school already knew each other from last year. New Zealanders seem to be very social, taking 20 minute breaks for tea time and 30 or more minutes for lunch, all talking dynamically together in their large staff lounge. Overcome with emotions from new stimuli, worries about fitting in (even despite my instant connection with Monique), jet lag, and all the differences from home, I actually cried a bit on my 15 minute walk home the first day, After that big day, I have been so happy to be at this school. As an added perk, one day after professional development, they served all of the teachers wine (yes, they were storing alcohol at the school!).
At the training, I was able to learn about new research findings in ed-psych, math, and learning through play. My team is embracing learning through play so much that they are allotting the first hour of our school day, each day, to simply be student-led play. This week I also helped set up our classroom and plan for the week ahead, where all 3 teachers plan all of their lessons as a group. Within 3 spacious open-wall rooms, including an extra enclosed room for the teacher-aid, there will be 3 teachers (plus me), 1 teacher-aid, and 63 students . The teachers are constantly re-grouping these 63 students by their interests and needs. I’m really curious to see how it works in action.
—
By the way, I figured out my bike situation. Kristine has a friend who was so kind to borrow us her and her husband’s bikes on the weekend. So with Kristine away for the weekend, Mikki and I rode off for what would be a nearly 8 hour bike and sight-seeing expedition. We had no idea what we were getting into. We weren’t expecting it to be so long, or as gnarly as it was. Our destination was Huka Falls. Google Maps gave us directions to the entrance of Huka Falls, where, from there, are an abundance of trails.
But at this nature reserve, they don’t want you biking on the walking paths, so they have trails for biking. But the biking trails aren’t gentle, they are mountain biking trails — rough with tree roots, sharp S curves, steep inclines and declines; most of the time all three of those at once. We endured these trails for at least two and a half hours before making it to the actually falls.
On the way back, we were exhausted and stopped in a field to read under a tree. Currently I’m half way through Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming. One tree that we came across was so incredibly tall and wide that if you get the whole tree in the picture frame, you can barely see me standing under it.
We also ran into a scenic outlook to stop and take pictures of the view of the city. This little city has continued to impress me with how much there is to do within a close distance. On our way back, as we were riding along the lake, our hot and sweaty bodies took a quick dip in the water, fully clothed and all. I’m already sore, but I won’t long this little adventure.
Again the flight was grueling. I don’t sleep well on planes, so I got about 2 hours sleep within 48 hours. I got in Taupo about noon on Sunday and went to bed at 9:30pm to get accustomed to the 19 hour time change as quickly as possible.
When I got picked up from the airport by my host mother, Kristine, I tried to get into the drivers seat because they drive on the left in New Zealand. I always find it so surprising how such subtle little differences can throw me off a bit. I knew very little about my homestay before coming, so I was both surprised and very glad to meet another student teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota that is staying in the same house with me. Her name is Mikki and we have already gotten to know so much about each other! With my host mother, Mikki, and myself we have quickly become a family of 3.
Once I got my suitcase in my room, ate lunch, and after a shower, we immediately went to the beach. It is so bright here. As in UV. During their summer, NZ has some of the strongest UV rays in the world. I was sweating like no other because I went from 15 Fahrenheit temperatures to 85 Fahrenheit; along with the metabolism adjustment of no sleep and a drastic time change. Luckily, like Lake Superior, the lake is very chilly and great to cool off in. The lake is also wonderful for swimming because the water is crystal clear. It’s a dream.
Then, immediately after the beach we came home and Kristine had some visitors over from Hamilton, New Zealand. So during this social gather I just gorged on wine, cheese and crackers. Ok not just that. I sat in the circle and listened to try to understand what they were saying. And, already the accent sounds very normal to me.
–
Kristine is a social butterfly. I’m an introvert and anyone I’ve ever lived with (parents, fiance, roommate) has also been more of an introvert as well. So it’s definitely a different environment for me (again, in a good way). Taupo is a city of about 30,000 and every time we go out she bumps into someone she knows and talks to them for anywhere between 5 minutes to half an hour. Even while I’m writing this Kristine is on the phone talking to some friends and she has been talking to them for an hour already. Ope, she just switched to a phone call with another person.
At first I could hardly understand what my host mother was saying because of the strong accent and different terminology. A garage is a “garret,” a swim suit is a “bather,” along with so many others. I’ve learned that virtually all people from Taupo also have a lisp along with their accent.
Kristine is a grandmother of 9, but she looks like she’s hardly aged.
She also has lovely background music that’s almost always playing on the household stereo.
–
After eating a late dinner at 8pm I was finally able to unpack my organize my room before a very deep sleep.
Then I naturally woke up around 6:30am. I woke up and in my head I had to remind myself that I was in NZ because everything had been such a whirlwind the previous 48 hours.
My room is small and the whole house is in general but we spend most of our waking hours outside. My room leads directly to a patio. Kristine doesn’t have a dining room table because we have at all of our meals on the patio or in the backyard. I love the outdoors, so I’m thriving here because we have done virtually everything outdoors.
My first full day, after breakfast, we spent our morning and afternoon with a married couple that Kristine is friends with from the UK. We first went to a coffee shop, where the seating was picnic tables on the beach. Then, we went for a long walk on the lakewalk before a late lunch picnic on the beach.
After that, we went shopping. I bought a SIM card for my phone, where I’m getting 15GB per month for the price equivalent of what I pay for my 1/2GB plan in the U.S. I also bought a big hat because both teachers and students are required to wear hats during recess to teach children to be “sun smart.”
After that, we went to the beach for a really long time to swim, read, and sunbathe. Within a nearly 24 hour time frame, I had been to the beach 3 times.
I haven’t hardly had a chance to breathe until just now when writing this, which is great because I feel like I’ve been able to adjust very quickly. Just like that, it’s already past 10 pm and I need to go to bed. My orientation day at school starts tomorrow!
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 