From Auckland to Wellington

Okay, so we can go ahead and classify yesterday (Sept. 29) as a day we'd like to forget. In a word, hellish. Let me start by saying that on the bus ride from Auckland to Wellington, one can't help but notice how green New Zealand is. Drove around Lake Taupo, the country's biggest lake where the average rainbow trout pulled from the lake is 4lbs. Useless trivia bit #1,338,457 in my brain. Thank you, Mr. Bus Driver. Luscious. Speaking of green and lushes...

I'm so smart, I went out for a beer on my last night in Auckland with Braveheart--the only Scot allergic to alcohol, by the way...I'm not kidding--and met a couple of Kiwi guys of ethnic Polynesian descent. I should've known right away that I couldn't outdrink a couple of ethnic Polynesian Kiwi guys. Not in this lifetime. Not in the next one. It's like trying to outairhead Paris Hilton or outcrazy Britney Spears--the laws of physics forbid it. Anyway, too many beers and then to top it all off, the coup de grace, a shot of some sort of black licorice liquer that makes me nauseous just typing the words. Friday night? Not good times. I guess digestion in the Southern Hemisphere works in reverse, too. I left 8am Saturday morning from Auckland, on the bus that takes souls to Hell, to make my voyage to Wellington. 10 hours and 45 minutes later, I arrived in Wellington, after spending the entire day thinking of ways not to throw up in the bus. Not good times. Here's to the bus trip that took almost as long as my flight across the Pacific. If ever there were a feeling to replicate a stay in Purgatory, this is it. The scenery? Terrific. The smell of bus? Not so much. Silver lining? Nearly 11 hours less I'm destined to spend in the Big Waiting Room in the sky, as I've already paid some dues down here. I'm officially 5 minutes of self-flagellation away from canonization.

I caught a cab to the hostel and walked into a 6 bed dorm with 5 other occupants who had already declared the room a disaster area and were apparently awaiting federal funds for cleanup. Unfortunately, I don't think New Zealand has a Superfund program (they're nuclear-free and wear it as a badge). The room looks as I imagine Kabul looked in the mid 80's, minus the wreckage of burnt-out Soviet tanks--although one of the British girl's suitcases was almost as big. Said hello to the Chinese guy who apparently hasn't moved off his bed in a few days. Or tried to say hello. All Mr. Social mustered was, "no engrish." I'm pretty sure that's Chinese for "welcome to Wellington, you capitalist pig." I couldn't find the words to say how much I was looking forward to exploiting the workers of New Zealand and that I have a bobblehead of Adam Smith in my bag. So, I bowed, said, "very windy," to which I got a smile and a grunt. He didn't try to kill me in my sleep last night, but one false move and I'm taking a boat to Taiwan and joining the Army there.

I proceeded to meet the manager of a group of restaurants whom I had forwarded a note to back in Auckland (thank you, Lonely Planet) for a chat about jobs. I walked in the "upscale lounge" (thank you, Lonely Planet), was greeted with red velvet and leather booths and immediately knew that I would have to flip the switch to "chic and sexy" to have any chance. Two traits I aspire to but usually fall woefully short of. I wore my best 11 hour Bus Smell cologne. He liked my resume--for another restaurant--and said he'd be in touch. Famous last words. We'll see.

Got up bright and early (again) to follow the Boston College game over the Internet. No plans today (Sunday) other than to eat and walk around a bit. Oh, and find a flat.

Hostels? Not good times. Oh, but it's all about the adventure, isn't it? Yeah, adventure. Sometimes adventure ain't all it's cracked up to be. At least not yet. Magellan said the same thing right before he was killed by natives in the South Pacific.

Okay, off to walk the streets of Wellington and continue the flat search. The wind here is ridiculous. It's mean. No face has been this numb since that woman had a face transplant. Donald Trump? No chance with that hair. The Olsen Twins would be swept away out to sea. If you stick your arms out at a certain angle and lean forward, I'm fairly certain you can take flight.

Ciao for now! Go BC!

E Noho Ra Auckland

"Goodbye, Auckland."

I squeezed in a (free) half-day tour of Auckland yesterday. There are two major bus companies here who cater to the backpacker and they both offer free day tours of the city as a chance to sell you on their bigger trip packages around both islands. This is a backpacker-oriented country in that most of the people who arrive here are young and eager to forge their own unique path through the country. That naturally means that everyone I've met thus far is a transient--each has their own timeline, their peculiar to-do and to-see list; hence, their own path. Many come with friends, some alone. A lot of English and Germans make the long trip.

Auckland is a beautiful city, even if it lacks the charm you'd expect upon landing at its airport. One of the first things the bus tour operator said to us yesterday was, "get out of Auckland." Indeed.

My dorm-mates and I (all 6 of us--three girls, three guys) went out for a quick drink last night. As everyone is on a tight budget, one drink at $7 NZD (nearly $5USD) is all anyone can afford at this point. Do you know how hard it is for me to have just one beer? It's like a heroin addict being satisfied with one cigarette. Ain't happenin'. But the budget is as flexible as Mr. Tin Man prior to Dorothy's arrival. So, one drink it was. Everyone arrived at the same time, so we're all a bit jet-lagged. That means, in bed by 9pm, up, showered, and ready to go by 7am. Two of my dorm-mates left for the northern part of the north island this morning and my Scottish buddy--who I had recite to me lines from Braveheart--is likely leaving tonight for Christchurch on the South Island.

"You can take my life, but you will never take my freedom!"

So, though Auckland has one-quarter of this country's population, it's time to leave it behind for now. I'm off to Wellington tomorrow morning for an all-day bus trip to the country's capital. One-third the size of Auckland, it reportedly boasts more charisma, more flair, and more charm than its larger counterpart. We'll see about that. Anyway, we'll be job-searching in Welly, hoping to find something that can get me out of a hostel and into a more normal living arrangement. Quickly. Living out of a bag? Not so much for CT. Contrast that with my Scottish buddy ("every man dies, not every man really lives"), who has actually slept on the roof of an American truck stop because he was too broke to afford a hostel during his worldly adventures and too wet to sleep on the recently-watered truck stop lawn. I guess if you want the experience badly enough, you'll do just about anything to make it work.

I would be on a plane so fast...

Well, that's about it for now. I'll be in touch from Wellington. Here's to a job...

CT

Kia Ora from Aotearoa

Kia Ora!

So, after a 4 hour, 15 minute flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, a 9 hour layover at LAX, and then a 12 hour, 15 minute flight from L.A. to Auckland, I am now officially in New Zealand.

And I'm tired.

And, truth be told, homesick.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the hardest part of this whole process was not deciding to make the trip, but to make the trip with the knowledge that I know NOBODY here.

I have yet to see much of Auckland as I was busy for a couple of hours today attending an orientation from the company that sponsored my Visa--tax information, bank account information, travel, activities, weather, geography, etc. The first thing on my list to-do is to check-in to the hostel and then open a bank account. The moral of the orientation story was not so subtle: get out of Auckland. Pick a place to visit, if you like it, find cheap accommodation and stay for work. Daunting, if you think about it. Showing up in a foreign country and sauntering away from the big city to the more pastoral and quaint parts of the country. Again, knowing nobody.

I've also got to brush my teeth.

So, now that I'm actually here, what am I thinking? Well, there really shouldn't be any mystery to this: I feel today the same way I felt when I landed in Prague. My mind is saying, "what did you do?" I'm naturally homesick, because I'm out of my comfort zone. I miss my family; saying I was going to miss them was only words back in Atlanta.

And I'm tired. I'm 16 hours behind where I was yesterday (or was it two days ago?). I had hoped some food would help me before I showed up for the information session, and so I had a sausage McMuffin from McDonald's. It didn't work. I hate this feeling.

I trust I'll feel better tomorrow. Today is the very epitome of "culture shock," even if New Zealand is every bit as Western as any other country that falls under that designation. Today is the day I keep asking myself, "okay, now what?"

And the only answer is to take baby steps. Open a bank account. Find a job soon. A flat. Acquire a sense of normalcy, a routine in which I can rely on others who are in a similar position as me.
Decide if it's Auckland or somewhere else. Do NOT think that this feeling will last very long.

I've got to go check-in to my hostel and find the right branch (for "migrants") for my new bank.

CT

The Fear of the Unknown

Almost to a man (and woman), the first thing people ask when I say, "New Zealand," is "why?"

Sitting here the night before the trip, I think ahead to what a four hour flight to L.A., followed by an eight hour layover, then a 12 hour flight to Auckland will do to my sense of adventure. To my body odor. To my general distaste for people. But I then force my mind to jump back into my Lonely Planet: New Zealand and I begin to believe again that I HAVE to do this.

Why New Zealand? Because it's probably one of the few places that people who have travelled the world HAVEN'T been to. Because the landscape is breathtaking. Because the people are nice. Because I'm American and don't want to have to communicate in anything other than English. Ha. Because it's the adventure capital of the world. There are literally dozens of different things that you can do to risk life and limb and live to tell (or blog) about it. Because the evil Sauron was defeated so it's safe for me to go. Because I have to get out of my comfort zone. Doing so is one of the few ways that I can actually learn something about myself. I'm not talking about Seven Years in Tibet self-awareness; simply, little things about flexibility that I can use later on when I want to commit an act of road-rage.

I don't know what I'll be doing in terms of a job, to answer your question (see my parents hyperventilate, see them reaching for brown paper bag). Not yet. I won't know a soul when I get there. I'm anxious, nervous, scared, excited, and hopeful. I imagine it's like going to the Prom. With a blind date who is "outgoing with a nice personality."

People tell me that I'm courageous because I don't have any plans once I arrive (besides finding a job--see parents calming down). For me, however, courage should be reserved for acts of selflessness, because it's so easy to be selfish in a world (or country) designed increasingly to satisfy our demands for convenience with every transient desire. I'm not courageous. What I am, if you ask my parents, is demented. Or lost. One of the two. Probably more the latter than the former. But I'm really not lost, either. I know what I want, and what I want is to see, to explore, to experience...in short, to live. For some, that means picking the kids up at school and driving through traffic to get home for dinner. For others, it means flying to the other side of the world.

Life is about timing. And this chapter in mine needs to be written NOW, if for no other reason than the fact that I have outstanding warrants for my arrest and I need to leave the country immediately.

Just kidding.

(The real question would be: what would your friends' warrants be for?)

I'm off to bed. It's going to be a long day tomorrow. I'll be in touch from the other side of the unknown.

I can't wait.

CT

A Crooked Path to Somewhere

Hello. That's me on the left. For anyone who got lost on the Internet looking for porn and who doesn't know me, I'm C.T.

Do you like my bucolic photo? Better yet, do you like my neck plant?

Okay, to be fair, if this were Dances With Wolves, you could call me Smiles With Back Flora. But then you'd have to invite me in to your teepee and give me two donkeys, your white woman and a share of the Little Bighorn Casino.

To prove how Teddy Roosevelt I am, please, fear not Global Warmers, vegans, and horticulturalists of the world: I've had the plant surgically removed from the back of my head and it is now resting comfortably with other ex-neck plants in a Northern Virginia townhouse. Tell Chief Ten Bears that I'm quite sure somebody from Mexico is tending to its every need as you read. It coexists symbiotically with the tonka.

Speaking of plants, I'm a blogging seedling, a virgin, if you will. Oxygen deprived and sated with carbon dioxide, I've begun a blog, light-headed and headed overseas. Why does the world need another blog? It's like Frodo needing another awkward man-hobbit stare from Rudy as the latter professes his platonic love for the former in the shadow of Mt. Doom (wait for the connection...). Just as we squirmed when those two held eye contact for about 17 seconds too long, you're probably squirming with the thought of another self-centered, emotionally myopic, and parochial blog.

Welcome to my blog!

In short, it's a question for which I have no answer. What I do know is that like Frodo, I'm off to New Zealand in one week's time. Whereas everyone's favorite hobbit was all about saving Middle Earth, I have a more selfish reason for going. I can. I'm lucky. I'm lucky because I've made pretty decent choices on this crooked path to somewhere and I have a supportive--if not apprehensive--family and wildly encouraging--let me know when you have a couch--friends. "There and Back Again" was Bilbo's title to his book of adventure with dwarves and wizards and dragons in The Lord of the Rings. It's time for a sequel, I thought, only this time we'll add an addendum: "There and Back Again: With No Misspellings."

Or "CT in NZ." Whatever.

Okay, so I'm just like every other person in the Western world as it seems the entire Western world is blogging. In fact, I'm pretty sure Constantinople fell because too many people were blogging on their parchments and not enough were watching the hundreds of thousands of Turks marching up to the gates. I might be the last person not currently living in Burma or North Korea to have a blog and if it weren't for Don, I most certainly would be. But now's the time...

What makes this one unique, you ask? Well, I'm not that unique, to be honest. I don't think most people are. Oh, everyone has different tastes and opinions and idiosyncrasies and predilections, but people's emotional constitution is, I think, essentially very similar. The other stuff is window dressing. Life is fairly simple, we simply make it unfairly complicated. You've heard the saying, "I'm unique. Just like everyone else?" Well, I'm probably just like everyone else. I'm just in a unique position as I'm 16 flight hours away from the other side of the world--the Land of the Long White Cloud, the designation given to New Zealand by its original indigenous people--the pygmies. I mean, Maoris. Yes, I'm late for my cultural sensitivity class. Regardless, it should be an exciting time as I'm out to prove that not all Americans are inward-looking, self-absorbed, philosophical neanderthals. Some of us are just self-absorbed.

One reason I enjoy history so much is because it provides an escape for the mind. We're usually pretty taken with the day-to-day routines of our lives, so history for me is akin to jumping into a binded paper wormhole to be transported back to the very environment I'm reading about. It's a roundabout way of saying that truth is actually stranger than fiction and history allows me to lead a double life, so to speak. At least in my mind for a brief time. But now, I feel like I'm actually jumping into the history book with this trip. There's a sensuality to New Zealand that evokes in me romantic thoughts of isolation amid a geographical paradise. I'd be willing to bet that the 12 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland will reinforce that sense of isolation.

The extent of my blogging conceit is limited to a desire for others who care about me--and for whom I care a great deal--to share a little bit of my adventure. And to convince you to come and visit me. The Vegas line on the over/under for number of visitors to see CT in NZ is currently .5. That's right. One-half of one person. Even 18th Century slaves got 3/5ths in the Constitution. All of this means that only one person needs to visit to bring Vegas to its knees. Remember: big risk, big reward.

"Hello. That's me on the left," thus begins one of a google of rather anonymous and eponymous blogs that weaves together to form the tapestry of our probabalistic quantum blogging universe. This blog is indeed a very small--a quantum--thing to share. In reality, it's pretty insignificant. But besides perhaps providing free accommodation (or directions to a hotel), it's about all I can do from the South Pacific.

I have no illusions of writing grandeur nor do I aspire to write about some sort of contrived self-discovery. I'm going to New Zealand because I'm curious. I always have been. About different people, cultures, and geography. I like doing something different, sure, but I've learned as I've gotten a little older the extent to which I dislike regret. And I would regret it if I didn't go (more on this in the next post).

Maybe New Zealand won't be that place I have envisioned in my mind's eye--the country constantly talked about as one of the most beautiful in the world. Maybe it will. Either way, I'm hopeful that you too can be transported, if only for a few minutes on occasion, into the adventure that is Aotorea.


C.T.