Team NZ Trip

Kilo-topia!

So now that we have safely arrived back in Canada.. been to Vancouver and sort of gotten back into the swing of things here in Oakville Ontario, we have decided to make this blog a ‘doggie-blog’.  We recently adopted a Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever mix from SOS Dog Rescue in Quebec http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=14590005

in case you guys forgot who he was… :) So since we arrived back from Vancouver it’s been Kilo-riffic.  For the first week we basically had to follow him around at all times… he is a big fan of picking up shoes and carrying them around.  It’s fairly easy to take them away from him, but it’s funny.  He has this lovely habit of waking up and whining/barking at 3-4-5am in the morning that is fun… but mostly we will just post pictures so you (aka. Laura Bandy) can see him grow!

Good Night and Good Luck

I can still vividly remember my first night in Auckland…going down to the food court below the theatre, feeling a bit sorry for myself because I was kind of lonely, but wondering what these 10 (well, now 7.5 months) would hold for me.  I gotta say, I have not been disappointed and I’ve come along way since then!

During the first month I kept having this re-occurring dream that I was back home, and in my dream I was thinking “but- I still have 9 months to go, now I have to fly all the way back to finish my time there”.  It’s weird, but I guess I ‘knew’ that my travels would take me home earlier than I thought.

But I’m so, so glad I came here, and I’m also glad I’m going home.  I don’t quite know how I’m feeling about leaving- it changes from minute-to-minute (seeing as it is 308am I’m in a bit of a fog) much like my trip itself.  There were points I was loving it, and there were points that I couldn’t wait to get home but I’m so glad I took this opportunity and decided to just go to another country.  This whole concept seemed so big before I came, I actually thought- fleetingly- what if i chicken out and don’t go???  Now it seems like nothing to fly to the other side of the world on your own… how your perspective changes especially meeting people who are doing even more ‘daring’ things than you are.

But one of the things I hope to take out of this trip is (a lesson I continue to learn) that I can adapt.  Nothing like doing that half-way round the world trip to learn this, but even if there are some growing pains, us humans are pretty good at eventually getting back on our feet to keep marching through life.

Like I said before I’m unsure about how I feel- this being the end of the trip, I won’t miss hostels, and sharing a kitchen with a bunch of people, or a room…but I will miss waking up each day with the possibility of seeing something new.  You should travel. But my big trip, the trip I had been planning for such a long time, is coming to a close.  I don’t feel sad, but I feel it deserves some pause, and to be given some thought.

I could repeat what BF said about NZ being beautiful- but I think you get the idea from all the pictures we posted.  Thanks for following us through this journey, it was so nice to see that people care about what we are doing here on the other side of the world.  It made me feel less alone.

Now onto new challenges and adventures, including cooking a turkey in vancity, re-habbing my knee, deciding just what I want to do professionally in the future, and just this evening BF and I submitted our first application to adopt a dog  http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=14590005 I hope by showing this to you guys it doesn’t jinx the application process- we are also looking at applying to adopt this dog as well http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=14761217&mtf=1 so it just depends on who approves us first etc.  But, anyways there is a lot to look forward to when we get home, it’s weird that I’m nervous to start the rest of my life.

I’m just so happy I got to travel in New Zealand for as long as I did, I wouldn’t change a thing.  Thanks for all the support guys.

Good-bye from New Zealand!

Take off eh

This is the end, my only friend the end.

Well it’s 2:40am New Zealand time and we’re just a couple hours away from heading to the Christchurch airport for our flight home. We’re mostly packed aside from a few things. I have to say the whole situation is quite surreal. We’ve packed up our room so many times that it’s become quite routine, only this time instead of loading up George and heading off to the next town, we’re heading home.

I’m going to miss New Zealand a lot. It’s a georgous country, and I highly recommend it to anyone (if you can stand the flight). I’ve never seen a place that seems to have every kind of landscape and environment packed into such a small area. They have mountains, plains, deserts, rainforests, valleys, and even some arctic. The wildlife won’t kill you and the ocean is almost always within a stone’s throw.

Having said all this I’m not sad to be leaving. I’m looking forward to the next step, there’s plenty to be done back home and the cool thing is just because we’re leaving New Zealand doesn’t mean we’re loosing anything. I still have the experience of tossing myself out of a plane at 15,000 feet. I can still picture that sevengill shark gliding towards my mask, and I still remember the feeling of brushing my hand along the side of a stingray as it glided over my shoulder.

The trip wasn’t all rosey, there was stress, there was poor pay and early mornings. There were times George wouldn’t start and times when all we wanted were the comforts of home, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

I want to publicly (as publicly as this little read blog can allow) thank everyone who helped me get here. Mom and Dad obviously if it wasn’t for your help I never would have even been able to have gotten on the plane, and Nannie and Granddad, you guys helped me more than you can know. Obviously there are plenty of others who have helped me in countless other ways, but time is short so for now I’ll just have to say thank you.

Christine’s going to jump on for her final New Zealand post now. So this is it for me.

So goodbye for the last time in New Zealand.

Weird.