Okay so as of today I have officially lived in New Zealand for one month, high time I start blogging about it right? First and foremost I'd like to thank my sister Stevie for making and designing this blog for me, literally couldn't and wouldn't have done it without you sis. I could make a list of excuses of why I haven't started this before now but what it boils down to is that the past month of my life absolutely flew by, every couple days I wake up and get confused about where I am for a minute. Even this early in it's been such a surreal experience.
When I initially decided to start travel blogging I wrestled with how it was gonna go down, mostly because as a writer and a human life form, I'm really bad at telling stories because I want to tell the whole story. But a blog with play by play posts of my activities since taking off in Baltimore is neither doable or entertaining, so this might be rocky at first, for any of you that are actually reading.
Thinking back to actually getting here seems like it happened to a different person a couple decades back but here is what I can remember. It went by a lot faster than I thought it would, It took me 3 flights and almost 3 days to get here, I flew from Baltimore to Newark, a 45 minute flight on the smallest plane known to man, Newark to LA and finally LA to Auckland. All of my layovers were incredibly short so it was a pretty smooth experience. I definitely should have slept more.
When I arrived in New Zealand I was surprised by how I felt. This isn't going to be easy to explain but it just felt real as soon as I landed. I was in New Zealand, it was a fact. Here and there I forget it and then little things happen that remind me, sometimes it pops into my head during mundane activity and I'm like dude I'm folding laundry.... IN NEW ZEALAND. I've wanted this for so long and have done so much planning for it that it kind of surprises me that it ever really happened. But this is my life for the next few months so I gotta get used to it.
The first week or so I hung out with mostly other Americans because, well, that's all who were here. The campus was like a ghost town aside from Team America and the RA's. Most of the other Americans came together in a group called Global Links, they had been traveling around together for about a week and all knew each other which was moderately intimidating especially since I was jet-lagged as shit and kind of felt like a zombie. They ended up being wonderful people who I got to know over the course of that first weekend thanks to alcohol and my sparkling personality. Alcohol is a big deal here, I think I'm gonna make that a post on its own though. They helped me navigate The Warehouse, the closest thing to a Walmart New Zealand has, get a cell phone, and settle in to the major differences of our town, Hamilton from the US. We also drank a lot.
Really thinking back to that first week before Oweek started is weird because I feel so different now like another person lived those memories. Maybe that's what culture shock is about but I don't feel shocked just cultured and like I'm having a baller ass time.
More to come,
Frankie
No comments:
Post a Comment