I have come to the end [full stop]
Truly I didn’t think I would ever get here. When I wrote my first post back in February waiting to leave, I never really expected this day to come. I had expected that time would go on and that I would at one point return to Massachusetts en route to Marion, but it felt so far away…a distant memory that I would never have. But here I am sitting in the Wellington Airport waiting to go through security and board my flight up to Auckland to leave the land of the long white cloud.
It’s a hard thing to leave—Aotearoa. Once you come to this isolated island in the end of the world you never really leave it, you just become displaced from it. Like many real New Zealanders before me, I leave knowing that New Zealand has truly affected me and that I never will really leave it, because to leave it would be to lose it’s affect and influence, and I don’t think I ever will. New Zealand, the experiences, and the people I have met here, and the memories will always be with me…no matter how far away I am.
It’s a funny thing to think that this experience I have been thinking so much about for the past three years is over, that college is almost over! (Well not really…but still the end is way closer that I am comfortable with) But it’s also funny to think that my decision to come here almost felt nonchalant and yet it has had just a huge affect on me. When I was deciding on where to study abroad, nothing else really came to mind. It was like NZ was calling to me. There was no really decision to make, I was going to study in NZ it was just finding the right program. I don’t really even remember when I first thought about studying on the other side of the world, I just always was.
There is so much that I have learned about and fallen in love with in this country, it’s hard to think that I won’t just be coming back and returning to 32 U Clifton Tce. That mice and drafts are a thing of the past. If you had asked me a month ago if I would find leaving this hard I don’t think I would have believed you. I have become attached and I don’t really want to leave. Though, don’t get me wrong, sleeping in my water bed 48 hours from now will be very nice (mice and draft free…even heated!), but it seems strange that Sophie and Brendan won’t be home waiting for me with a pot of coffee steeping in the press.
I have become connected. I have started to make a life for myself here. Studying abroad is a cruel trick—just as you feel settled and comfortable in your new surroundings, its time to leave and you have to pack up and walk away from the life that you have become so comfortable in. Just last week a tourist asked me for directions and it was the first time that I felt comfortable enough to give them directions and not just say “sorry I’m a tourist too!”
I have met people here who I consider true friends and who I will miss desperately. It’s strange, it feels like I am at camp all over again, saying good bye to my international friends who I had become so close with over the past few weeks and who I felt I would never see again…except multiply a few weeks by a few months and that is how hard I am finding it to leave. Although I do know I will see my NZ friends at some other point in my life…it might not be back on this enchanting island, but it will be somewhere. As I sit here in the airport terminal almost two hours after I left my flat for the last time, AND I AM STILL CRYING!!! Good god I am such a girl sometimes….lets hope the Advil I just took will shake this stress headache that I am getting before we take off.
More to come from either Auckland or LAX…
No comments:
Post a Comment