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.