1:44 a.m. on Wednesday, December 2nd. I've never been awake late enough to see the moon at this angle. Not much else to say except that I never ever want to leave this place. Knowing I only have a week left makes me sick to my stomach. It's not that I'm not looking forward to seeing my friends and family, to being back at UPS and wandering through Pike Place Market. I've just never really had to say goodbye indefinitely. Here's to firsts, I guess.

Shut

So I'm sitting in my apartment at 7:18 pm on Tuesday night listening to the Glee Cast version of "Bust a Move," wishing I actually could. I spent the morning souvenir-shopping at the Queen Victoria Market with two friends, and right now my spoils are strewn about my desk like some tasteless contemporary art exhibit. I just finished dinner--rice with my attempt at chili (basically some veggies doused with cumin and chili powder)--and I'm contemplating either loading another episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (I've rediscovered it and couldn't be more in love) or finding the tabs to a new guitar song. The problem there, though, is that I have yet to entirely master a single song. I think I have musical A.D.D.

It is now officially 16 days until I leave this extraordinary country. As the hours pass, I am becoming acutely aware of how little time I have left, the realness of the threat that my life here will very soon become a mirage. In the past ten months I have progressed through the entire spectrum of human emotions: I have woken up broken, I've been so anxious I couldn't sleep, I've acquainted myself with the blissful evenings of sitting barefoot on my balcony with my guitar and singing to myself. I have cooked and been happy with it, and I've charred more than my fair share of grilled cheese sandwiches. I met incredible friends, and when they left I met more. I have been absent for deaths and emotional crises at home, and for this I have been both devastated and relieved. I've gone surfing and caving and swimming with a whaleshark. I was hit by a car. I was hit in a car. I fell in love, fell out of it, and am now hovering somewhere in between. I have learned and taught and slept and jumped into a pool with my clothes on. I have gotten more from this country than I ever expected I would, and because of that, I can't imagine any moment that is not this one, with my balcony door tied to the white iron railing with a garbage bag, the ding of a tram on Flemington Road, my pant legs rolled up almost to the knees, wondering how long it will take me once I'm home until I close my eyes and can no longer see the streets of Melbourne transcribed in my mind like they've belonged there all along. Losing this place scares me. In fact, I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that aside from the death of a family member, nothing has scared me more. I think back on all those times I complained about being so far away, and I wonder what the heck I was thinking. I never had it so good. This freedom can't be replicated, and now it's almost gone. Just when I thought I had come to terms with perpetual motion, when I thought my endless cycles of self-reflection had landed me on the doorstep of acceptance, the city called me back to myself.

My lorikeets are back. I call them mine knowing I have no right to claim such ownership of wild winged creatures that shoot past my window in blurs of red and blue and green, but after spending so much time here it's almost as if I've raised them--or, more appropriately, as if they've raised me. They're here and it's just another sunset, but I feel like I'm living something for the last time, and I don't even know what it is. So goodbye, eucalypt shadows across the browned and brittle grass. Goodbye Yarra River, the vein of the city. Goodbye opals and wombats and Brighton Beach bathing boxes. You truly were a gift.

En Zed - Part 2

Of the 25+ hours of driving we did over the course of the week, I would say about 20 of them were in/through/around/underneath/over (insert preposition of your choice) vast chains of snow-hooded mountains. I felt like we were disturbing some sacred presence just by steering a car. The roads were clear, however, albeit absurdly curvy, and we only experienced about ten kilometers of snow-drenched avalanche zones.

When Sara and I were researching places to see in New Zealand before the trip, we stumbled upon a website advertising the Haast Blue Pools--a quiet glacial inlet (yes, despite the plurality of its name there was, in fact, only one pool) carved into the side of a mountain. The website called it one of the 100 Must-See Locations for Kiwis. Sara, bless her heart, thought "Kiwis" referred to the birds, not the people, and was perplexed to imagine a gaggle of kiwis flocking to the major tourist destinations of the South Island. "They don't have arms," Sara said, "they couldn't even take pictures!" Naturally, the poor wingless birds who could never become photographers became an immediate joke, and though no kiwis were spotted at/around/in/over (insert preposition of your choice) the Blue Pools or the woods through which the trail wound, it was still a stop worthy of its reputation.

Our destination for the day was the gorgeous tourist city of Queenstown, situated on the banks of Lake Wakatipu and skirted on three sides by the Southern Alps. In terms of scenery, I have witnessed very few things in my life that can compare to the craggy mountainsides that spilled into water. The flavor of the city itself, though (if you could call it a city) left a bit to be desired. There were too many souvenir shops and overpriced gourmet pizza restaurants, and way too many tourists. I know, I know: what can you expect from the adventure capital of New Zealand where people fork over limbs and vital organs for a jetboat ride or the chance to free-fall for 45 seconds after leaping from a moving aircraft? I was glad we spent the time there that we did--if nothing else, the ice cream was amazing--but I was ready to move on to the Fiordlands (those crazy Kiwis spell it with an I) the next morning.

From Queenstown we took a short drive to Lake Te Anau at the entrance to the Fiordlands. It was a tiny town and we got there several hours before our hostel's check-in time, so we got hot chocolate (the weather was miserable) and wandered through the wind and rain, past pharmacies and supermarkets and cafes and souvenir shops. There were advertisements for the film Up which was playing at Fiordland Cinema, but when we went to check the times we discovered that they're not actually showing Up anymore. We weren't interested in seeing animated guinea pigs shoot things with machine guns, so we wandered some more until we could check in to our room.

This isn't my most dramatic picture of boats on Milford Sound, but it's one of my favorites. I think I preferred that it was cold and rainy and misty. The inclement weather gave the fjord a mystery and magic that would have been missing in the sun. Our two-hour cruise was incredible--hundreds of waterfalls, some so small that they could have been single spools of white thread rolling down the mountainside. The captain said that the longest waterfall flows for over 560 meters, which is about 1,740 feet! We passed a colony of fur seals sprawled across an outcropping of rocks, and I saw a penguin (from a distance) waddle its way from the water's edge to its nest in the low foliage. Just like the Haast Beach sunset venture, every part of me was numb when we returned to the wharf, but it was definitely worth the cold. The Sound was stunning.

I'm including this just to give all you Americans a taste of what it's like to drive on the wrong side of the road (although now whenever I see an American movie or tv show and someone is driving, I get really confused about why they're in the right lane. I smell some major problems with me returning north. This morning on my way to the market I was envisioning myself pulling left out of my driveway, and for several moments I had no idea which lane I was supposed to be in).

So after leaving Lake Te Anau (this picture was actually taken heading toward the lake, so imagine the opposite), we drove eight long hours along the eastern coast(ish) back up to Christchurch. We stopped at several lakes along the way, mainly because we couldn't believe that water this color could actually exist in nature. This is precisely how it looked, though. Glacial mountain water. I was wearing a shirt that exact color, so pictures of me in front of this lake look hilarious. I found this specific shot reminiscent of Yosemite, aside from the hue of the water. It made me homesick for a life I haven't known in five years.

We had several more adventures before our 4:00 wake-up to head to the airport, but they were mostly adventures that didn't require the use of a camera. I'll end on this note: New Zealand was incredible. Big, small, wet, green, white, open, humbling, revitalizing, exhausting. I'm back "home" now, and in exactly three weeks from today I will be at the real one: my Home. It's as if time never seems to care what it does.

En Zed - Part 1

Prologue - a breakdown of this blog title:
-New Zealand = NZ
-N = En
-Z = Zed (no kidding--that's how they say it here)
-Ergo, En Zed = New Zealand (I'm reminded of the line in The West Wing when Josh believes the phrase "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" means "after hoc, therefore something else hoc." God I love that show.

It was a grey and balmy afternoon when my friend Sara Davis and I landed in Christchurch, New Zealand (South Island), sleepy, starving, and ill-prepared to handle the unusually intense customs procedures that greeted us at the international arrivals hall. Evidently we were not seen as a threat to national security, though, and we caught our shuttle to Omega Car Rentals without a hitch. The driver might be my new favorite person in the entire world--when he saw "Pike Place Market" stenciled onto my canvas bag, he proceeded to rant about how the Pike Place doughnut holes are the best in the world. Why yes, sir. Yes they are.

We successfully navigated our way to our hostel with the use of three maps--each providing a close-up of a different region of the city--and only a handful of hasty U-turns). The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the charming Little England ambiance of Christchurch. Pale cobblestones lined outdoor mall avenues, and the Avon River snaked its way under bridge upon European bridge, past willows and manicured gardens with fountains and white-headed ducks that are not actually called white-headed ducks, but that's what I'm going with since I'm not up on the technicalities of New Zealand's native bird species.

After a late night (for no particular reason), we had an early morning: up at 6:00 for a 4.5-hour drive across the narrow girth of the island to the east coast town of Westport. Though this was where we ate and slept, it was not by any means our destination. The local cafe won the town some endearment points in my book for offering delicious homemade thai pumpkin soup as the day's lunch special, but aside from that, and the fact that the grocery store was called New World, and the four minutes of radio reception we were able to pick up along the main drag, Westport was not quite where the action was. Oh no. The "action" lay about 20 kilometers south, in the booming metropolis of Charleston: population 150 (plus about 70 sheep). It was here that we began our "Underworld Rafting Adventure," or what Sara fondly refers to as "Underwater Rafting" because "underwater is a much more common word."

It began on a bus. I feel inclined to mention this because it was on this ten-minute bus ride that we experienced the magical phenomenon about which I had been dreaming for weeks prior to the trip: we were forced to yield on the one-laned muddy gravel road for a herd of sheep. A herd, I tell you. Thousands. And by thousands, I mean probably twenty. It was like watching an army amass. Not that I've ever seen an army amass, but I imagine it would look a lot like twenty sheep barreling down the road. So anyway, the sheep passed (sadly), and the bus took us to this adorable train named Dorothy. We were taken on a slow ride along the eastern flank of the Nile River and through a primeval forest with giant tree ferns that made me feel like I had suddenly been transported to the set of "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves." You know, I've never really thought about it, but that's an incredibly disturbing film concept.

We suited up--wetsuits, socks, rubber-soled booties, wetsuit jackets, life jackets, webbed flipper gloves, and hard hats with headlamps--grabbed an inner-tube, and trekked up 119 wooden steps to the mouth of the Nile River Cave. I'd never been inside a cave before, and I didn't know how my evil claustrophobic alter-ego would handle the darkness and cramped quarters, but it was actually huge, and I maintained complete control of all of my many conflicting identities. There were only a handful of times when we had to bend down significantly to fit underneath the low-hanging ceiling, and about half of those times, little vertically challenged Sara didn't have to bend at all. We explored the two upper levels of the cave which were teeming with stalactites and stalagmites and this incredible giraffe-pattern that seemed to be wallpapered to the arching limestone walls. At the third and lowest level--the level of the "underwater" river--we climbed onto our inner-tubes, turned off our lights, slipped on our webbed glove paddles, and tilted our heads back to see millions of glowworms dangling in masses from the ceiling. It was one of the most unreal, breathtaking moments of my life.

The next morning we let ourselves sleep in until 6:30 before heading off for another 4+ hours of southward coastal driving. Our one major stop for the day was at the Pancake Rocks on Dolomite Point in Punakaiki National Park. (You can imagine the fun we had butchering the names of all these places. At one point we passed Lake Pukaki, and because we'd been wrong with the pronunciation of practically every other location in the country, we decided on "poo-cocky." I have no idea if we were remotely close). The rocks were awesome--heavily eroded limestone that formed layers when the sea pushed through a series of vertical blowholes during high tide. Sara and I agreed that the spectacle would have been greatly improved with some high-quality Vermont maple syrup, but I suppose they were okay without it.

Continuing our drive toward Haast, we made a quick pit-stop at the two major glaciers--Franz Josef and Fox--that each lead guided tours up through the ice. I had wanted to climb one, but Sara wasn't too keen on the idea. We settled on looking at them, which wasn't quite as exhilarating, but a heck of a lot less cold. As we approached our car to leave, we got almost to the driver's side door when we noticed a movement inside the vehicle. Then we noticed a hand. And a face. And then Sara looked down the parking lot and noticed our car. If anything, this trip cemented the utter awkwardness that is my existence. To make things worse (because really, if you've already embarrassed yourself, why not rub it in?), I pulled Sara away from this other person's car with the other person inside it and said--a little too loudly--"Sara, that's not ours. Walk away. Walk away fast." I'm frequently alarmed by the magnitude of my own awkwardness.

And since we're on the topic of idiotic Olivia decisions, I find it fitting to include my suggestion that evening of driving five minutes from our hostel in Haast--our Haastel, as we called it--to the beach to each white chocolate Tim Tams (heavenly biscuits) and watch the sunset. About the only part of that plan that was successfully executed was the setting of the sun. I hadn't anticipated the sub-zero hypothermic winds. The sheep didn't appear ruffled, so I figured it was no big deal. I think I took about an hour to thaw, and that was after weathering the cold for just under three minutes. Add to that the crazy showering system at the Haastel that required $0.50 for seven minutes of hot water, and after inserting my coin into the box and turning on the tap, I quickly realized that no hot water was going to be released from that showerhead any time soon. And all I wanted was for the blood to return to my digits. It eventually did. The next morning.

Here There Are Universes Underwater

Springtime for Hitler and...Melbourne

Well, spring has begun to settle itself into the landscape here. As the sun makes more and more appearances, I can tell time by the elongation of shadows across my balcony, and it's starting to feel like my stay here is coming full-circle. The flowers had long since died when I arrived in Melbourne in the height of February's fever, but when I step outside my apartment there's a feeling--a breeze, the faint scent of dry earth and lemon myrtle and eucalyptus--that takes me right back to where I was the moment I landed. It's the same but different. I'm the same but different.

All over the city nature is beginning to realize the color of itself. Before I came here I never enjoyed the smell of wisteria because the giant vines that crawl up the side of our house (and into the guest room--as in...through the window) always overpowered every other scent in the yard. Now, though, because I'm so far from home, I don't mind it so much. In fact, I might love it.

I've been going on a series of long photography walks through the residential neighborhoods near my apartment and campus. Parkville, which is located just across Royal Parade from the University of Melbourne, is full of gorgeous architecture and curling iron railings and gardens literally spilling through and over their fences. The streets were quiet and the characters ceaselessly amusing. The highlight of my experience was most assuredly a young boy (probably around age eight or nine) dressed in all white, riding down the footpath on his razor scooter screaming the lyrics to "Hey There Delilah" at the top of his prepubescent lungs.

I think in another life I had lemon trees, because every time I see them I'm overcome by an inexplicable nostalgia for a time that I don't remember. I wish I lived in a citrus-conducive climate. While I love venturing to the garden for a handful of snap peas or cherry tomatoes or plump blueberries, I think plucking a lemon or an orange dangling above my head would be so much more satisfying. However, I could do without the palm trees that always seem to accompany the citruses. I never knew it before I came here, but I don't really like them. I feel like they're a cliche of themselves, and especially in a city like this that is so modern and metropolitan and frindy (frigid and windy), I find them to be severely out of place.

You can't tell from this photo, but just beyond the sand and sidewalk is a grassy park bisected by a tree-lined pathway. It's called University Square and it's right across the street from the main campus entrance. I spent the afternoon studying there the other day, and it felt so strange being back on the grass in the sun in a place I hadn't been since my friends were here in the fall. I'm almost gone and I still miss them. I don't think I'll ever stop. There's something about meeting in a foreign country that makes you family in a way nothing else can.

Again, this is University Square without the grass. I don't think the wisteria is blooming anymore--neither are the cherry trees for that matter--but I love knowing the kind of beauty that can exist in a place even when that beauty has crawled into hibernation.

These little spiky poms remind me of the berries that grew at my elementary school in the strips of bark and dirt between the playground and the buildings. They would grow yellow on the bush, then turn a sort of fiery orange-red as soon as they fell. Next to "Indian beads"--tiny colorful plastic cylinders that bulged at each end and for which my friend and I would hunt religiously during recess--the pom berries were the next best find, albeit more plentiful.

Apollo Bay (aka If You've Ever Lost a Sheep, I Guarantee You it Wound Up Here)

For the first week of my spring break, an Australian friend and I spent five days in a small town called Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road, sandwiched between koala-populated Lorne and the Otway National Park. Getting there was probably my favorite part (don't tell Mish!), as it was my first time on the V-line (intercity/interstate) train, followed by an absolutely gorgeous 2.5-hour bus ride along the curving cliffs of the Great Ocean Road. It was the same road down which my orientation was held for semester one, and it was wonderful--albeit a smidge heartbreaking--to see all the places I'd been with my friends at the beginning of my time here, back when they weren't my friends quite yet. We passed the beach where I'd learned to surf, passed the Surf Museum and pizza restaurant where we'd gone on our first outing, passed the entrance to Camp Eumeralla--the boyscout camp where we ate and slept and grew into family.

Apollo Bay is a quaint little hamlet nestled along the coastline at the base of miles and miles of green waves of "paddocks" sprinkled with sheep and the occasional white horse that looked like it was straight out of a load of bleached laundry. The town is spread along the length of one main road. Side roads run perpendicular to it but don't really lead anywhere. Everything is on the main shot: the cafes and restaurants, news stands and ice creameries, real estate agencies and souvenir shops. Mish and I spent the majority of our time in town (our cabin was about a 20-minute walk from the excitement so once we neared the shops we were generally there for a while) sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside The Bay Leaf Cafe sipping our coffees (and by coffee, I mean Mish had coffee. I, of course, did not) and watching burly surfers strut along the beach with their boards wedged under their arms as storm clouds shot in from the west. These clouds were the product of the same storm in South Australia that unsettled enormous plumes of dust in the outback that blanketed Sydney and parts of Queensland in dry, powdery red.

Convinced that we were in a different location along the GOR where my friends and I had previously seen a koala resting in a tree right next to the road, I went on a three-hour walk to find the abovementioned koala. Yes, I expected to see the exact same one. Because we were not, as I had suspected, right outside Lorne, I never found my koala. Nothing but waterlogged sand and gigantic puddles and half-crushed snails and signs that read "Beach Access" with arrows pointing in both directions. It was a very nice walk, though, even without the wildlife spotting.

The majority of our stay was meant to be dedicated to writing, but as you can probably guess (and for most people who are reading this, you've already heard this so it's no surprise) I did zero writing. Actually, that's a lie. I copied part of a Skype conversation I'd had with a very intelligent and humorous friend and pasted the quotes into a new Word document with the intention of using them as the basis of a story. That didn't happen. Instead of writing, I went on walks. A lot of walks. I took my camera down the beach, down the road, to the marina, into the grocery store, into the hills. Mish christened me a "camera whore" until I pointed out that if I were a camera whore, I would be using multiple cameras.

Random fact 1: this clothesline is called a Hills Hoist and is entirely Australian. You can't really see it very well, but it has four poles sticking out horizontal to the ground and the line is strung like a spider's web between them. It's brilliant. Random fact 2: In addition to the Easter bunny, Aussies also have an Easter bilby. Check it out: http://www.itsnature.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bilby.jpg. I want one. So badly. Christmas, perhaps...?

This is basically what the sky looked like for the duration of our stay. I think Zeus knocked over the blue food coloring. And the water was freezing. And not just the water--everything about this vacation was cold. Mish had failed to mention that the cabin did not come equipped with sheets or blankets, and when I showed up at the train station without a sleeping bag, she looked at hers, shrugged, and said, "We'll make it work." Supposedly you could rent blankets from Reception, but we kept forgetting to check. As a result, freezing Olivia was forced to sleep underneath the mattress pad. Laugh all you want, but you would have done the same thing. A mattress pad with Mish's fleece "dressing gown" (nightgown) spread out on top. Very classy.

Apart from our frequent walks, we spent an unhealthy amount of time eating chocolate and popcorn and watching episodes of House, CSI, and Law & Order: SVU on my computer in the cabin's kitchen/living room. On the rare occasions when the sun would make an appearance, we sprinted down the hill so fast that anyone witnessing our mad dash probably thought we feared the sun would burn out the next day.

Apollo Bay has a tiny little marina with a disproportionate amount of crab traps. Those fishermen could have supplied the entire U.S. naval fleet with cages (that is, of course, if the U.S. Navy took up crabbing as a side business). The wind was so strong that I had to steady my camera on any nearby post or cement wall or anything stable just so I could get a focused picture. The sand was whipping so fast and so sharply that I seriously thought it had scratched the lens.

On our final evening we trekked up the road to Mariner's Lookout (signs spelled it with both one and two Rs and Mish and I argued over which it should be) as the sun was falling. It was a steep and exhausting but relatively quick hike, and the view was stunning. The GOR follows along the edge of all those cliffs in the distance--it's one of the most incredibly beautiful roads I've ever ventured down. I won't say it is the most incredibly beautiful road because doing so would mean cheating on my beloved Orcas Island, but it's definitely up there. It's touched by something wild, this road and this town and this entire country. Touched by something raw and savage that stuns and awes and erases your vocabulary. It's this wildness that left me vaguely uncomfortable the whole time I was there. I missed the quietude of Orcas, the sheltered streets and softer tides. And unlike the ones at home, I think the sheep here are out for blood.

20 Things I Wish I'd Known Prior to Arrival in a Foreign Country

20. Words like "cute" and "precious" would be endlessly mocked by my Australian friends.
19. Whipped cream would exist in all places except the grocery store.
18. The library would evidently discourage studying on weekends, as it closes at 5 (which is generally before I even realize that I have work to do).
17. A large portion of my television shows online would be unavailable to audiences outside the U.S.

16. I'd have to mortgage my parents' house to pay for a bottle of lotion that actually helped with dry skin (don't worry Mom and Dad...I didn't!)
15. "Nose Goes" would be horribly misconstrued by my favorite tutor to suggest that I was volunteering to lead a class discussion on my definition of radical fiction.

14. I would not have access to an oven.
13. I would not be able to bake cookies. See 14.
12. If I wanted a chai or hot chocolate on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, I would have to make it myself because there would be no cafes open to make it for me.
11. An almost-hot sunny afternoon would transform into a full-on apocalyptic thunderstorm in approximately four seconds.
10. Pancakes would naturally adopt the consistency of flabby skin.

9. Australians would swallow the article in an average sentence--as in, "I'm going to hospital" rather than "I'm going to the hospital"--and then deny such a nuance of their speech.
8. Buying a piece of ginger would cost me my first-born. Because I do not yet have a first born, I have taken out an IOU. I now owe my own flesh and blood to a squat Italian vendor with a lisp at the Queen Victoria Market.

7. Milk would be labeled in terms of its projected effects on your physique. (Non-fat = skinny; whole = full).
6. The phrase "Who do you root for?" would suddenly turn dirty.
5. My today would be everyone else's tomorrow.
4. In terms of cars, Elf was right: the yellow ones really don't stop.

3. My cat would not recognize me through my Skype webcam.
2. It would take me six months to locate the cage-free eggs in Woolworths.
1. There would, unfortunately, be NO kangaroos hopping up and down the sidewalks in the middle of the city.