haere mai! welcome!

So the last couple days have whirled by, and it's all a bit foggy because of sleep deprivation. But they have been fantastic, nonetheless. The city is really amazing, it's so beautiful. It's got sort of a California feel because there's green everywhere you look, there's coastline, and everywhere you walk seems to require hauling up a ridiculously steep hill. Seriously, these hills are going to take some intense getting used to, but at least my ass is going to be killer when I get home. Yes.
Even the architecture looks much like San Francisco, the homes are designed quite similarly. So as I walk around I start to feel like I'm in the States but just some crazy beautiful north western part of it, and then I see a bird. The birds here are what make me remember how far away I am. They're all so interesting and exotic looking.
This morning (after falling asleep at 8 last night) I woke up at 6 thanks to jetlag. I made some Dunkin' Donuts coffee that I'm glad my mom threw in my suitcase last minute, and went out onto our back porch where the sun was rising and there were all these small fascinating birds. This is what one of them looked like. He kept fanning out his tail and closing it so it's like this big flashing light in the trees. This the view from our porch at sunrise. It's very cold in the morning, but it was so serene.

I had a strange dream last night that I was hanging out with friends in Austin and someone said,"Hey Maggie I thought you left for New Zealand yesterday. What are you doing here?"
and I said, "Oh I don't know" and I woke up and I had no idea where I was until I realized that I had, in fact, gone to New Zealand the previous day.

Today was orientation for international students so I met people from Ethiopia, Germany, Finland, and all over. That was really fun because they discussed cultural differences to know about, and apparently the verb "to root" is a slang term for "to have sex with" and so saying that you "root for ____ sport team" is an awkward thing to say and should be avoided.
The coolest part of it all, though, was a bus tour around Wellington, they took us around town and then up to the top of Mount Victoria right outside of the city where I had to following stunning view of this beautiful city.

Tonight I am having dinner with my neighbors (basically a street full of houses containing American exchange students) and then I'm going to brave the cold to join David (a kiwi i met in Austin) and his friends at a bar for some quiz game they're doing. Should be fun and I'm excited to hang out with some locals.

The Long Haul

I’m writing now from the number 2 terminal in LAX (the most poorly planned airport I’ve ever been in, impossible to navigate)and I’m about to face boarding for my god-only-knows-how-long flight to Auckland. Which I’m not thrilled about because I got impatient just on the 3 hours ride to LA. Groan. BUT it is 4^th of july and as we were flying into LA at sunset, you could see hundreds of fireworks exploding over the city. That was fantastic and I will fly on independence day in the future. Also, i had to exit the airport and catch a bus to change terminals (stupid) and then go through security AGAIN. And I couldn’t tell if the security guy was harassing me or flirting with me or what. But he took my passport and kept saying that it wasn’t me, and I kept saying it was, and then he was like, “oh born in Japan?” and tried to impress me or test me with a little Japanese, to which I replied that I didn’t speak Japanese and that I was only born there. But all through arguing with me he was grinning at me and then he told me that it was a great picture of me and told me to have fun. And this was the guy whose job is to see if you have metal on your body, he wasn’t even the passport check guy. Sketchy as helllll.

Then I was famished and ran into the most overpriced burger king I’ve ever been to in my life and headed to my gate. The international terminal is by far my favorite terminal. I’m listening to so much French around me because we’re right next to the AirFrance gate. Oh I miss it, but the little kiwi flight attendant over the loud speaker’s voice is super adorable, so that’s nice too.

Thanks everybody for the well wishes before departure, you’re all wonderful and I’m looking forward to seeing you all again when I return. I’m going to run and change my voicemail message now before I don’t have service for the next 12 months. See you on the other side!

Okay so I’m now sitting at my gate from Auckland to wellington and I’ve got some time to kill so I thought I’d jot down how crazy everything has been. Got onto my flight to New Zealand (which ended up being 12 hours rather than 18 like I had thought, lucky!) I had a window seat which ended up being useless since it was dark for the entire ride. So, I wish you could have met this guy I was sat next to. He was this crazy old man who talked to himself FOR TWELVE HOURS. And he smelled. You know how you look at some old people and you just make a mental note to never smoke ever? This guy. He couldn’t figure out how to work the tv, and I tried to help him a couple times but most of the time he just watched mine over my shoulder with no sound. And he didn’t have much of a grip on the idea on personal space. The first 4 hours I was debating with myself how to get him to stop sleeping on my arm, but then I just kind of got used to it and didn’t care. He also had on this crazy hat with all these signs hanging off of it about how he is a world traveler and listed how many times he’d crossed oceans and how he was a “world champion and proud of it!” he also had cards he’d Xeroxed with the same information about him being the “world’s amazing working man” that he left on the tables and seats and stuff. At one point he started repeating to himself, “we’re wretches. Wretch. We’re wretches. Wretch.” It was a hell of a long flight. i have had about an hour and a half of sleep in what, the last 40 hours? I don’t even know. I have lost track of time and entered this weird zombie state (which I had anticipated). It’s down here out the window but it feels like 4 in the afternoon and I’m all flipped around. Good news is it’s about 50 degrees in Auckland and it feels lovely. I know because I accidentally gave myself a self-guided walking tour of essentially the entire airport. (I finally swallowed my pride and went to the nice old lady at the help desk and she said, “oh you’re in the wrong airport. Go to the building next door.” Great, Maggie. I made it to my gate though, obviously, and had about 20 minutes to kill so I decided to seek out some breakfast. I came across a little coffee counter, but all they really had were these weird lemon cupcake things so I just opted to skip food and have some coffee (4 dollars for what can’t be more than 8 ounces, thank god for the exchange rate).

Anyway, I’m trying not to let this whole entry be a bitch fest but I’m wearing new boots which are totally blistering right now because of all the airport circling (with approximately 100 lbs of luggage in my hands to boot!) and I’m exhausted and grumpy and this whole day has been one huge pain in the ass.

To be a little positive, here are some things I’m thankful for:

1. Sneaking my coffee past customs (suckers!)

2. Neither of my first 2 flights crashing to the ground. Always a plus.

3. How attractive the boys seem to be here so far.

4. The sun is out!

5. No missed flights!

6. Cofffeeeee

7. I’M IN NEW ZEALAND! AHHH!

Alright, actually this is amazing (that's the view from our window) and scratch all the whining. I love it! Updates soon!

Pure New Zealand

This is a hell of a long commercial, but it's got some breathtaking images of NZ. Take a look!

Ready or Not

"In this great future, you can't forget your past."

Since it is 2:45 in the morning, it is technically Friday, which means that I am technically leaving for LAX tomorrow afternoon. Then on to Auckland and finally Wellington where I shall be residing for the next 12 months of my life. Eeeek.
Everyone's been asking me the same question, "Oh aren't you excited?!" Of course I'm excited, I knew I would be. What I did not anticipate, however, was how nervous I actually am. Very, very, very anxious. Sometimes when I'm driving or sitting in a restuarant or washing my face, my stomach starts to twist into knots and I remember how absolutely scared I am.
Which I find very odd because
A. I was never nervous before parting for Belgium
B. I really don't have much reason to be, because what I went through last time was surely much harder than what I am facing because of the lack of language barrier, my 17-year-old naivety, and host families.
But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that Belgium is precisely why I am so nervous. Because I went through that and I know what 12 months away from home is like, and how hard it can be. I remember those days where I just laid on the floor and wished so hard to be home, if only for a few hours of precious familiarity.
It's not that I'm nervous about being there, it's that I'm nervous about what I'm going to miss here.
Today I finished packing all of my things that I don't need today and tomorrow morning, and then I headed to the post office where I paid $60 to ship 200 red Solo cups to Wellington. I didn't have room in my bags and I need them for "The Great American Beer Pong Tournament of Champions" which I will be hosting shortly after my arrival. (Over 30 or just out of the loop, click here). You can't find these red cups in New Zealand, nor can your find beer pong, so I thought that this would be an excellent way to proclaim my arrival to the country. I'm going to be Wellington's Van Wilder. Not really though.
Then I went to Dallas with Travis and my parents and had dinner with some family. That was very much enjoyable and I will miss my family. I'm preeeetty lucky.
I spent the late evening with some very good friends, and said goodbye to some who were leaving today for Austin. The goodbyes are tough and I've never been very good at them, so I was kind of down after that. I dropped Ben off and then I was cruising around my neighborhood a little bit, on the empty dark streets with the windows down. The cool breeze and Bob Marley combined to provide the perfect environment for a summer night.
"No Woman, No Cry" started to play, and as I stared ahead his reassuring repetitions of "everything's gonna be alright, everything's gonna be alright" were exactly what I needed.
Bob Marley is always right. We're all going to be fine. Life moves and it's beautiful, and it takes us places we never anticipated. But I think that right now, I am ready for this next chapter, and I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Won't you join me?