Weekends in Wellington, Part 2

Okay. So I'm now back in the USA. How do I pull this off? For some reason, wrapping up the last few posts of this blog seems like a daunting task. I know that I'll be glad for it in the end.

The weekend of July 23-25 was a funny one. I will name it "the weekend that did not go as planned."

Friday morning, I woke up and took the bus out to meet Kendall, who had to work that morning. our plan was to meet up at Animates, a pet shop. Simply put, we wanted to pet some puppies! Kendall had wandered into there at one point and they had a puppy pen, and when I heard that little tid bit, I added a visit to my to-do list. I arrived, and could find no puppy pen. The only pups that were there were behind glass (which, in my humble opinion, is a very sad place to put a puppy). Some were rambunctious, some were mellow, but all of them, when they saw a human approach the glass, would come running up, licking the window while wiggling and whimpering. Kendall arrived, and was bummed that the puppies weren't out and about. Fortune struck, however, because one of the workers there needed to change the papers on the bottom of the pen. Kendall and I volunteered to hold the two puppies while she did the task (tough job). The little dogs were so cute and calm once they were in contact with people!

Attached to the pet shop was a French cafe, La Cloche, that Noeline had pointed out to me on one of our many drives past, and so Kendall and I stopped in for a lunch. On the outside, it didn't look like much of a place, but once inside it, I really felt like I had been transported back to Europe. Camille said a few times that New Zealand was the child of Europe and America, for it seemed to have the best of both. I'm not entirely sure if that's how I feel. But that taste of Europe brought back so many memories from Belgium! I miss Belgium.

After a light, but satisfying, lunch, Kendall and I jumped back on the bus into town. Our plan was as follows: stop off at the video store, then cafe hop with our journals to enjoy some coffee and reflective time, and then head back to the apartment to build a blanket tent and watch the movies we picked out. This is the point where things started to not go as planned. As we walked out the gate of Maison Cabriole, there stood Allie, another of the American interns who was based in Hamilton and was in for a weekend visit. She was staying with the girls next door, but looked lost. We made eye contact, hugged, and Kendall and I showed her inside. Fifteen minutes later, after getting caught up on how things were going in her neck of the island, we all headed to the video store.

Sometimes, if things do not go as planned, I stop functioning properly. I know that makes me sound like a droid or something, but it's true. This was the case in the video store. With the additional company (not bad company, but unplanned company), my brain was somehow unable to process the act of picking out movies that I had been wanting to see for a while. With a selection put together, a less than satisfactory selection, I rented the movies. Kendall and I still were planning on cafe hopping; however, outside of the store, we mentioned heading off to a cafe while the other girls headed to the grocery store, and everybody decided to come along as well. We ended up in Fidel's on Cuba Street (yup, you read correctly) at the request of Indiana. Not as planned, and not a place I would have picked out, necessarily, but c'est la vie.

That night, Kendall and I did not end up making a blanket tent to watch our movies from. We did watch Mona Lisa Smile, if I remember correctly, before heading next door to watch Lord of the Rings.

The next morning, Kendall and I were again awake and ambitious at about the same time. We decided to head out to the Gardens (Kendall had yet to see them) and souvenir shop on the way. I grabbed Billy's souvenir (an All Blacks tee), we had a nice walk through the gardens, and then made our way to Sweet Mother's Kitchen for lunch. We ran into Indiana, Marlowe, Nikki, and Allie there just as we were finishing. I headed off to IPlay, the internet cafe, for a Skype date with Jesse and my folks. That night was more Lord of the Rings, which included me falling asleep on the floor.

Sunday, I went to church, then was picked up by Noeline for our lunch outing which I wrote about previously. The only addition I will make in regards to that day was the outing to Kaffee Eis for some top of the line gelato! SO DELICIOUS! That is when my addiction started...

And so ends Weekends in Wellington, Part 2!

On Being Back.

I know that I'm publishing this before I actually finish my posts about the last few weekends I enjoyed in Wellington. But I can't help it. The "coming home" reactions are so unique.

The travels will be detailed at a later time. But the emotions need to be written about while they're fresh, or they get lost.

I arrived home at roughly 4 am on Sunday morning. I slept for four hours (after not sleeping more than one or two on the flights home), and woke up feeling like death. Somehow, whenever I return from an international trip, I have a miserable cough, sore throat, and one eyeball that is red, oozing, and swollen. All in all, the first thing that my family and Jesse got to see was a wheezing, hacking pirate who lost her voice somewhere over the Pacific.

Less than thirty six hours later, I moved back into my room on campus. I had not had time to pack properly, and so am now living out of a laundry basket of the clothes that I washed from my suitcases from New Zealand. I have one bowl, two spoons, two water bottles, oatmeal, a half gallon of milk, and some breakfast bars in my cupboard. Training starts at nine in the morning, and goes until nine or ten at night every day for about the next two weeks. Let me assure you that I am not complaining - I love being an RA. I am just stating the facts.

Being back on campus again so soon after New Zealand makes it feel like it never happened. It's like I left campus yesterday, had a dream, woke up, and picked up right where I left off. I find myself resenting it all, stewing over the fact that my summer in New Zealand is suddenly over.

I felt like a ghost there, and now I feel like a ghost here. Just kind of mixed up, I suppose. Unsure of where I belong. Unsure of where to go from here, of how to utilize the recent past in the immediate future.

Of Lasts

This morning, I took bus 83 out to Alicetown for the last time. I saw the old man in his red coat and glasses, and the younger man with his blue coat and glasses, and the young Maori man with neither coat nor glasses, all for the last time today. They don’t know it, but I bid them farewell.

I brought a round of coffee to the office folks this morning for the last time. Two with just milk. One with milk and sugar. Last time.

I’ll sit at my desk for the last time today. My little desk around the corner, out of sight of everybody where I’ve spend hours looking up information for Noeline. The last time.

This week at the office has been odd. It’s strange to know that something is coming to an end when it feels like it’s gone on forever. When it’s normal. Monday was very busy with all of the tasks that accumulated on the front desk since Thursday. My last Monday. Tuesday afternoon, I went into Wellington with Noeline to a meeting with the Road Safety Trust people. It’s funny that I am ending where I started – the Road Safety Trust meeting was about school bus safety. My last meeting with her. I was impressed during the appointment about the cost of change. Tenacity begets change. Hopefully, I have started the process of acquiring the ability to be tenacious.

Today, as a farewell, the office is taking me out to lunch at La Bella Italia. If only the meagre presents and cards that I got for them can show how thankful I am to have gotten to know them, this organization. I don’t feel like I truly “get it” yet, this place and its mission, but I started to.

This will be my last post while I’m still in New Zealand. For the next two days, I’ll be enjoying more lasts – with Kendall, Amanda, Camille, and everybody else from the Wellington gang that still remains. I’ll finish relaying my stories about Weekends in Wellington, complete with pictures, at a later point.

But first, I’ll have to complete my lasts.

Weekends in Wellington, Part 1

It’s odd for me to have crammed so much travelling into the beginning of my time here. If I were doing things my way, I would have eased into things. I would have taken my time exploring Wellington, the epicentre of my adventures, and then radiated outwards from it. But if I would have done that, then I would have missed out on travelling with others. So, while there was an explosion of excitement, and then quiet after the storm, I have enjoyed it.

With this internship, I have enjoyed a four day work week. Friday the 16th of July dawned, I slept in (although my body usually wakes me up earlier than I want it to on days off), and in the early afternoon headed out to get fitted for a costume for "Dames, Dolls, and Gents" casino night, an event that Kendall was putting together for her internship. She needed volunteers, and I wanted to help out. As a part of it, Amanda and I were dressed up as flappers and would be serving as Cigar Girls. Wes and Adam were also a part of the evening, and so we all headed out with Kendall to the costume shop. More to come on this in a post in the near future, I promise.

Since it was a nice day out, most of us stayed out and explored some of the city. Kendall and I ended up wandering through the “Old Bank” building. At one point, it was a bank (go figure) but was going to be torn down. However, it was discovered that the ruins of one of the tall ships that brought settlers to New Zealand lay beneath the foundation of the building, and so in the end it was preserved and converted into a shopping centre. I misunderstood the end of the story, because I thought that the ruins of the ship were still visible to the public. I told Kendall this, and so we went inside seeking to see some wreckage. It was like a city within a city, filled to brim with interesting but tiny shops. We found an ode to the tall ship in a glass showcase with a few rotted pieces of wood and rusted metal. Bit of a let down, really, but we saw it nevertheless! Perhaps the oddest part about our journey into the building is that we emerged from underground several blocks away, and had to backtrack a bit in order to find Adam, Amanda, and Joe, who were sitting at Starbucks. We walked around for a while, but headed back. Amanda and Joe split off from the group, and I decided to introduce Adam and Kendall to a café I was shown by the girls from my church here. It’s a part of the theatre where Return of the King was premiered, and I didn’t know if they knew that yet or not. Adam did, which was a bummer, but we still went in and had some coffee.

Saturday morning, Kendall and I found ourselves awake at about the same time and decided to head out to a small hole in the wall type restaurant for breakfast called Joe’s Garage. It was delicious, and was a good time of getting to know each other a lot better. When we got back from that, I texted Wes to see if he wanted to go out on a hunt with me for a movie we’d been talking about finding. We ended up going to several different stores before finally finding A Goofy Movie. Who knew!

The big event of July 17^th, however, was going to the All Blacks rugby game against South Africa. I was so excited! There were nine of us sitting together, the perfect number for writing out on our cheeks, with one letter per person, ALL BLACKS.

It was amazing as we took the bus to the stadium to look out the windows and see the river of people along the sidewalks headed to the same destination we were. The atmosphere was charged as we arrived and made our way to the stadium entrance. Now, I will say only one negative thing about Kiwis. Overall, they’re lovely people. However, get them in a grocery store or, in that case, in line for tickets, and all bets are off.

Once inside, we made our way through the bowels of the stadium, heading in the general direction of our section, hoping that we wouldn’t miss the rugby team throw down the gauntlet by performing a haka. Camille and I somehow got separated from the rest and were the first to emerge into the seating area. Having paid a small fee for our tickets (labelled row MM), we expected to be in the nosebleed section, and so we headed upwards. However, we noticed only a row M, not MM. I asked a gentleman sitting nearby if he had any idea where we were sitting. He pointed down! We were the second row from the field! It was awesome!

I think rugby may be my new favorite sport. It has such a great pace! The All Blacks creamed the South African team (YEAH!). All around, it was a great night! On the way home from the stadium, we talked. Indiana, Marlowe, Wes, and I got separted from the group and ended up playing on a playground for a while, until it started to rain.

On Sunday, after church, I met up with the gang at the farmers market down by the water, picked up some fresh veggies, and then Kendall and I set out to climb Mt. Victoria (it's quite generous to call it a mountain, actually, but Hill Victoria just doesn't have the same ring). It was a beautiful day for it! The beginning of our walk took us through a cute little neighborhood, at the end of which we found a bike trail. I cannot imagine biking up that - it was so steep and muddy! Our only imperative was to keep going up, and as a result we found some pretty interesting paths to take us there. At the summit, there was a nice memorial and explanation of all the international politics that surround the frozen continent of Antarctica. We looked around for a while, then headed back down to the city.

Again, having only the idea that we needed to go down somehow resulted in us finding new paths. Perhaps my favorite finds were identifying the silver fern along the way, and finding a cute little swing that overlooked the city. A funny little tidbit about the swing - Kendall and I only got to use it after a group of about six Indian men finished with it (and Indian meaning Indian Indian, not Native American Indian).

It was a great weekend in Wellington. The cool thing about this city is that even if you don't leave it, adventure can still be found.

Again, I wish pictures were possible right now...but internet difficulties mean that those will have to come at a later date!

Cheers!

Expectation: (noun) an expectant mental attitude

I'm on a bit of a definition kick, aren't I? Hope you don't mind...but I like it. Without further delay -- Rotorua!

I like my sleep. Too much. I have gotten into the bad habit of snoozing the alarm on my phone. Sometimes, I turn it off because I get annoyed with it. Such was the case on the morning of 9 July.

My plan was to catch the bus to the airport at 7:11 am or so. My plane left from Wellington to Rotorua at about 8:30 am, but security for domestic flights in New Zealand is essentially non-existent, and so arriving obnoxiously early to the airport is not a necessity. All was well. Until I woke up at 7:05.

Thankfully, I had laid out my clothes the night before. Thankfully, everything was ready to go (except Norbert…he was MIA). And thankfully, another bus to the airport came to my stop at 7:26.

I knew the second I walked out the door that it was going to be a rough flight. Wind. So much wind. As the plane taxied out onto the runway, it had to wait for another plane to land. Even just sitting on the ground, the plane was being buffeted by winds, rocking madly. I trembled for the entire duration of the flight, which was thankfully only about an hour long. And, of course, I would be sitting by the emergency exit seat. All I was thinking was about how I would react to having to help the flight assistant should the plane return to the ground prematurely. It wasn’t the worst flight I’ve been on turbulence wise, but it was also far from the best.

The weather in Wellington was absolutely opposite from the weather I encountered when I stepped off the plane in Rotorua. Sunshine greeted me and I was happy to be back on solid ground. I met up with Kendall, Amanda, Adam, and Wes at our hostel (they had all left the previous day), dropped off my bags, and then we headed out and about! They signed up for a day at a mud spa thing, which I passed on (didn’t really want to pay to play in mud). But we had the whole morning before us! Kendall and I got coffee at Starbucks (normally, I avoid Starbucks and venture to locally owned coffee establishments). In celebration of the new Twilight movie out there (Eclipse, I think…I don’t really keep them straight or care for them all that much), that particular Starbucks had three drinks in honour of the different characters. I tend to side with team Jacob, and so I got a Hot Jacob (chocolate and mint). Lovely drink!

We walked to the lake, watched some birds swim around, played on a playground for about a nanosecond, went into a few gift shops, sorted out our rental car for the next day, and then they left for their mud time. I, on the other hand, was quite excited to have some time to myself to wander. And wander I did!

Most of my afternoon was spent in the Government Gardens. It was free to get into and I got to see plenty of the geothermal activity that has led to Rotorua registering on the tourist radar. Bubbling vats of mud and smelly water. Check.

Given that introduction to the experience, I really greatly enjoyed my stroll. I think at one point I wandered too far and trespassed into a homeless man’s nest (not really a home if he’s homeless, plus it was tucked away in a patch of scrub brush), but it was all a part of the adventure. He wasn’t there, but his rubbish was.

Anyways, I found a trail that wound along the lake front and past more vats of bubbling mud. As childish as it may sound, my imagination sometimes does run away with me. I fancied myself a young Maori woman, taking a walk away from the village. I can imagine that it did happen, that at some point in time a young Maori woman did indeed venture along the same water front that I did. Perhaps she was seeking solitude to sort out her thoughts, like I was. It helps that the vegetation in New Zealand makes me think that I have travelled through time to some point in early history.

I sat and wrote in my journal for a while. It was at this point that I realized something very important that I do not think I have fully mentioned yet in this blog: I had not been expecting much from this trip to New Zealand. I knew that it would be a nice trip, that I would see some fantastic things, but the novelty of international travel had grown dim. I have lived abroad before and I guess that I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new. As I sat on that bench in the scrubby foliage, looking out at a cloudy lake, I decided to start expecting. Growth. Knowledge. Wisdom. Direction. Expectation.

That walk around the lake took me a few hours, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It was so nice just to be outside, not in a rush, thinking, processing, observing. When I got done, it was just about the right time for me to go and pick up our rental car for the next day. Now, in New Zealand they drive on the left side of the road. I was so nervous, but as it turns it the adjustment was not a difficult one to make. I have only ever driven a non-American made car a handful of times, and this was one of them. I parked the little blue Toyota in a free parking zone, and would later move it out in front of the hostel once free parking opened up there after five pm.

Feeling very relaxed, I decided to head back to the hostel for a nap until my travel companions returned from their mud bath. Before I knew it, there they were in all of their sulphur-soaked splendour. They got cleaned up, and shortly after their return we headed out to a traditional Maori dinner experience thing.

We got picked up in a shuttle by an older Maori gentleman. At this point, I met Claudia, who was staying at the same hostel as we were and was picked up for the same event with us. She is from out side of Munich in Germany, but had been working in Australia for about nine months. As a wrap up to her time abroad, she was spending a month travelling New Zealand. We sat together at dinner. Before the meal (called a hangai, I believe), we were taught a brief song in Maori that I wish I could remember, and shepherded out to the river where the warriors would arrive. By that time, it was dark out, and we stood in cold anticipation by the banks of the water. From around a bend, an orange glow grew in intensity, and a boatful of Maori men dressed as warriors emerged. They unloaded, and we followed them to observe and learn about some of their traditional music and instruments, agility training, and ultimately, a haka.

The food was delicious – cooked in the ground and everything! Potatoes, chicken, lamb, sweet potatoes – a regular smorgasbord comparable to Thanksgiving dinner. Afterwards, Wes, Claudia, and I were taken on a tour to see some of the Rainbow Springs at night. The water was crystal clear, which belied their depth. Little glow worms were aglow in them, and rainbow trout (introduced to the area, of course) lazed about in the icy waters. The highlight of the evening was being taken into an enclosure and encountering some real, live Kiwi birds. I was expecting them to be about the size of a tennis ball, but they were probably cat sized. The way they moved was amusing. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is to have you imagine a burglar with his loot hunched over and trying to walk through fallen leaves without making a sound (picking up his feet high and delicately). Awful analogy. Oh well!

In the morning, we set out in our rental car towards Waitomo Caves for an adventure that I still didn’t quite understand. I had been told about it all on Friday, and all I knew was that we were going to be wearing wet suits and that we would be in a cave at some point. I was eager to test my driving skills, and so nominated myself as driver. Nobody contested my decision, and so after a few anxious kilometers of figuring out which way I was going, our journey was underway. Let me tell you, I adored that morning! At first, the fog and winding roads were intimidating. I was nervous with all that I had heard about slick roads on our previous trip to Milford Sound, about how the roads tend to ice over at night. But seeing the sun rise over the rolling countryside was magic. Even though everybody complained that there was nothing to see, I was in heaven! Just thinking back on it makes me happy. I just love the feeling of a fresh new day, especially one full of adventure and the unknown.

It took us a few hours to drive out to our destination: a business dubbed “Rap, Raft, and Rock.” We signed our lives away then headed out with Mike, our guide for the day who smelled of cigarettes and looked somewhat like a drug addict. Not a creepy, under the bridge drug addict. More of a rock and roll drug addict. We stopped off to get changed into our wet suits, the smell of which still haunts me. Imagine wet fabric, combined with the body odor of hundreds of different people. It was special. But something about being in an outfit that was skin tight just made me feel like prancing around. Sometimes, you just have to dance.

Back in the van we went, in our gumboots (rain boots), helmets, harnesses, and wet suits. Mike drove us down back roads and through sheep paddocks. We ended up in the middle of nowhere, no cave in sight. He led us to a fence where we could practice our abseiling with ropes tied to the fence posts. It was at this point that I started to get a little nervous. Abseiling is essentially the act of lowering one’s self down by letting the supporting rope slip through one’s hands. Butterflies!

After a few practice rounds, we were off, down stairs built into the hillside, and on to a little platform.

Recall what I wrote earlier about my new-found expectation for growth. That day presented me with one of my defining moments on this trip. But first, I need to digress and provide some background.

I don’t consider myself to be a brave person. Not a thrill seeker. But it is for this reason that I greatly admire my good friend Emily. She is so fiery, so adventurous. And I, being so calm, have desired to find that fiery side of myself. I have sought bravery, courage, resilience. The first time I can remember it surfacing in myself, that spark and fire deep within, was in Nicaragua last summer. We were taken to a stunning beach on the Pacific with the intention of letting the group of us experiment with surfing. Everything started out well enough – the real surfers were awesome in teaching us what to do. But everything changed when I ended up on a short board, rather than the long boards everybody else was using. As I learned later, short boards are much more difficult for beginners to use. For most of the afternoon, I was struggling to even catch a wave to ride it into shore, let alone stand up. Greatly discouraged, I considered just giving up and sitting on the beach. I stood waist deep in the ocean and glared angrily at the waves that were rolling in, and resolved to not let the ocean get the better of me. It was a small moment of triumph, but a grand one at the same time. I only caught one wave that day, and was so surprised that I didn’t even stand up, but that sense of victory was awesome, and that discovery of resolve even more so.

Now, back to abseiling, I ended up being the first one to go down. I didn’t really want to be, but that was just how it worked out. Mike strapped me in, calling me forward as “Sarah, the brave one.” That phrase will echo in my mind for a long time. He gave me brief instruction on how to swing out over the gorge we were going down into, and I didn’t hesitate. “Wow! Going right into it!” he exclaimed as I swung out.

At that moment, I learned what 88 feet high looked like. But there was nothing for it – I lowered myself down slowly. Nothing went wrong, of course. At the bottom, I found myself in awe of how beautiful and green that part of the cave was. Cool waters rushed past me, and in my solitude at the bottom of the hole I admired my surroundings. Soon enough, everybody else was down with me, we had collected our inner tubes and removed our harnesses, and began walking upstream into the cave.

We quickly learned that our gumboots all had holes in their soles. Why that was, I don’t know. I think that mine may have also been a bit small. No matter. There is something spooky about being underground, thinking about the tons of earth resting just above one’s head. As if that wasn’t enough, one of the key elements of caving is to crawl through holes in the rocks. I didn’t know whether or not I was claustrophobic, but I decided to go for it. It wasn’t bad. Not the most comfortable thing in the world, and not something I relished doing. More than once, I thought for sure that I was stuck. But I made it. Poor Adam was assigned by Mike to help me out as the exit way was about a meter off the surface of the water. I felt like I mauled him in my desperation to free myself from the rock. Sorry Adam.

We encountered some wildlife in the caves. And by wildlife I mean two eels and glow worms. Now glow worms are funny things. They don’t poop. The glow we saw was essentially burning feces. Who knew poop could be so lovely? It was like looking at a night sky when we turned out our headlamps.

We black water rafted (basically, tubing in the dark) for a while, taking us past the opening where we started and then down stream further into the cave. There were two more opportunities to crawl through holes in rock. I passed on one, but did the last one. We admired some more glowing poop, enjoyed some chocolate and some kind of hot drink that tasted an awful lot like heated up Gatorade, and then made our way back out of the cave.

Getting out of the cave was another moment that presented an opportunity for me to push through as the only method to leave was to rock climb. I had never done it before, and was excited to give it a go. It’s harder than it looks. At one spot, I had no idea how to keep going. I realized there how much of a quitters attitude I have, because if I would have had my choice I would have called it good. To spite that, I didn’t entertain the thought any further, and of course made it out just fine.

Our drive back was uneventful, but still pleasant. We tried an alternate route back to Rotorua, and found our way just fine. That night we met back up with Claudia for drinks, and exchanged stories about our days. I really liked her! Next time I’m in Germany… ;)

Sunday was departure day. Kendall and I made breakfast (brekkie, if you’re a Kiwi) for everybody. Somehow, I always manage getting on different travel accommodations that everybody else. My bus to Wellington left a few hours before theirs did. However, it did give me the opportunity to journal some more and have some nice time with my thoughts. The bus went past the mountain that Peter Jackson based Mt. Doom off of in Lord of the Rings. Too bad Frodo didn’t know about the Intercity buses.

For a lot of reasons, Rotorua was one of my favorite weekend trips. Our group dynamics were excellent, there was a nice balance of peaceful reflection and adventure. Very nice indeed!

And so concludes the last post about my out-of-Wellington excursions. But not to worry. My weekends in Wellington have been most enjoyable as well! More on that soon!

PS - Unfortunately, no pictures! I have them, but am having some internet difficulties! So, those will have to go up once I get back in the States.

An Obligatory Weekly Internship Update...

Week 9

Is it possible that I have already worked at this place for a whole nine weeks? That's more than two months!

Is it possible that I left about ten weeks ago already?

Is it possible that at the end of next week, I'll leave New Zealand, perhaps never to return?

This last week, I have enjoyed a change of pace in the office. On Monday and Tuesday, I sat up at the front desk, answering phones, sorting the mail, that sort of thing. I needed that change. It has been nice to get out of my little corner.

I’m afraid to say it, but I almost think that I enjoy the managerial side of office work. Administration. Things like that. Knowing the ins and outs of an organization, making it run. I wish I was more familiar with the way things work here, but what can ya do?

Today, I helped to format the bulletin that goes out nationwide. That was pretty cool, but really easy. I learned some things about using styles and formatting on Microsoft Word that I was unfamiliar with before. I think that accomplishing that task gained me some points with Craig, the only one in the office whom I have yet to make some sort of a connection with. He’s the editor of the whole thing.

I’m looking forward to finishing up and heading home.

The Extraordinary Moments of Every Day Life

It’s baking carrot cake and biscotti late into the night with flatmates, singing loudly and into invisible microphones to Garth Brooks and Pat Benetar songs.

It’s when a friend manages to catch the same bus home with you and both of you grin uncontrollably because you’re excited to have company.

It’s another friend presenting you with a necklace that reads “So barefoot we shall go,” saying that it reminded her of you.

It’s playing on playgrounds at night, and then happily walking home in the rain afterwards.

It’s inside jokes.

It’s accidentally and literally running into the All Blacks rugby team while out on a jog with a friend, and deciding to get the sweaty t-shirts we were wearing at the time signed by as many of the burly players as we possibly could.

It’s being all alone in the apartment and deciding to take a hot bath, all the while singing as loudly and as long as I want without having to wonder if I am bothering anybody.

It’s going out for gelato two nights in a row.

It’s having a picnic on the balcony, complete with wine and cheese.

It’s an e-mail from a loved one back home waiting in your inbox.

It’s looking at pictures with flatmates and realizing all that we have done together.

It’s staying up too late talking about life. About who we are, and how we became that way.

It’s drawing pictures into the condensation on the windows of your apartment, then sitting there with a hot cup of coffee, listening to Simon and Garfunkel, and looking at the moon.

It’s all those unexpected moments when, simply put, you’re happy to be alive.