Remember how in my last post I was complaining about having a bad day because of my room switch? Well, I entered my room thinking "ok, this is really not that bad of a situation, I'm going to welcome it with open arms."
And guess what? Fate took care of the rest. Turns out they overbooked the room, so I ended up being switched again to room 206 which was basically empty except for this very talkative 76 year old man from Australia. We introduced ourselves and shortly realized they we were going to be on the same bus the next day, so we decided to make a day of it. I got up at 6 am and went down to the kitchen and he made me a bowl of porridge (oatmeal) and tea and chatted a lot about farms he'd worked on and how much he liked milk..
It was a four and a half our ride with him, since he got off at Paihia and my stop, Kerikeri, was 25 minutes north of there. It was quite pleasant, he did a lot more chatting, going on about Australia and the NZ landscape. I learned a lot from him. And all the while I stared out the window at some of them most incredible landscape I've ever seen. I really didn't know that these types of places existed outside of jurrassic park movies. TONS and TONS of rolling hills, some filled with jungle landscape, others totally rural, for the sheep to graze.
At our parting he told me that I was an amazing girl, very nice and that traveling at 18 was such a brave thing to do but I'd be fine, he could tell that I'd do well.
I made it to the hostel and met my new family! A bunch of folks all between the ages of 20-33 (as usual, I'm the baby). We all put in some money for a BBQ that night and during the day the girls painted their nails (me included) green, except for the thumb, which we each put our flag. Everyone was quite impressed with my flag, though it doesn't quite have 50 stars...
Once dinner was ready, the beer was already flowing quite heavily, the music was bumpin, and the people were socializin! It was heaps of fun!! All in our nice little Hone Heke Hostel Lodge, which has a nice covered outdoor pavillion with big long tables, a pool table, a ping pong table, x-mas lights hung up on the ceiling, and a pretty nifty sound system.
It's been a lot of fun getting to know everyone, and even though it's just been pouring rain for 3 days straight, it has been nice to just sit around the tables playing cards, inserting myself into these peoples' lives. :p We really are like a big funky family. Oh and I'm getting much better at pool and table tennis!
I'm enjoying my time in Kerikeri so far. They even have a nice lil farmers market on Sundays that i can go to and get the best hotcakes ever. Still just waiting for work... but I've applied and should be hearing back in about a week or so.I hope you all know that it is not glamourous work by any means, most likely working in a packhouse doing really shitty work for really shitty pay. But hey, it's a lot of money really quickly. The sooner I rack up 2000 bucks, the sooner I can head out to more adventures to Hamilton, Blenhiem, Franz Joseph Glacier, Dunedin, Milford Sound... it's such a big world. Taking 4 years out of my time to explore hurts me, but I know university will be a good investment. I just have to grit my teeth and get through it so that I can get back out on the road.
New Zealand, you lovely place, you've shown me how strong I can be. And I no longer fear the unknown, nor do I fear being alone.
P.S. My last day in Auckland I was feeing lonely and went to the park and just laid down, hoping maybe someone would come talk to me, but knowing that even if no one did (most probably), life was still good. Optimism, open to the fates and all that. And what happened? A guy came up and started chatting with me! He's from India and could tell I wasn't from around here and wanted to learn about my country. Very cool.
Ok, times running out.
My love is sent!
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