My how life can change in a year. Ask me what I would be doing on July 1st, 2012 at this time last year and I would have told you that I would be in Boston doing some life changing internship. I said from the beginning that my goal was to study abroad my junior fall but even I did not expect this.
So as I sit here today, much has changed. I have been working my tail off catering again, just to earn a few bucks to spend while I am overseas. The glitz and glamor of a sweet summer internship went out the window pretty quickly once I established that New Zealand was the spot for me. But even that was never a given.
As I recall, my first choice was to study abroad in Prague of all places. But Prague quickly became Brussels which quickly became Edinburgh which quickly became Italy which quickly became....well you get where I am going with this.
So how did New Zealand enter the equation?
After finally deciding that if I got into the CIMBA program in Italy I would do it, I proceeded to get promptly rejected. Ouch. But as has been the case much of my life as one door closed another one opened, and I was accepted into Australearn. I knew a lot about the program already from my friends Roe Morris and Chris Haines, but their advice proved to be much wiser than most I had received. Chris and Roe had traveled to Australia with the program, as do most students that get into Australearn. But Chris and Roe advised that I not go to Australia and rather take a shot at New Zealand. A much smaller country, New Zealand is known for having more sheep than people. But I trusted their opinions and started to explore my options. Meanwhile one of my best friends, Walker Stinette, decided to join me, and we decided to go into the adventure together.
After much deliberation, we decided that we would go to school in Wellington at Victoria University. But as luck would have it, as the deadline approached, I found out that I would not be able to attend Victoria. Just my luck. I was faced with the decision of attending a small art school in Wellington, near Victoria and Walker, or a big state school in a different part of the country. In the end, I decided that I was going abroad for a change of scenery and a small art school just would not cut it. I decided to head three and a half hours north to Hamilton and attend the University of Waikato.
Still with me?
In a matter of months I had gone from Europe with the rest of the abroad student population, to Wellington with one of my best friends, to the farm land filled Waikato region with nobody else that I knew. I wanted a change of scenery and it seemed that I would most certainly get one.
In the end, I could not be happier with my decision. As Christian Wash told me, "all the cool kids go to New Zealand!" Everybody that I have talked to about my trip has said much of the same. I have realized that it is not an easy place to get to. When my Grandfather, who has been to seemingly every country in the world, has not been somewhere, you know it's tough to access. I have realized that if I want to go there, I would have to go now. So I am. The more I think about it, the better fit I realize it is. Ever since my CIT experience out west in 2008, I have craved another outdoor trip with a lot of hiking. Where better to go than New Zealand? And as I have grown to love the sport of rugby for the nine years that I have played, I now have the opportunity to travel to the Mecca of the rugby universe. How cool is that?
So here I sit, a mere nine days from departure. Although there are three other kids from Massachusetts on my trip, I do not know any of them. I have connected with one girl-a friend of a friend-but still feel like I know nobody. I have yet to start packing, and have two lists. The first is a to-do list, which seems to only get longer by the day. The second is a beer list, a compilation of all the beers that my friends have advised me to try. Additionally I have already started to get short with my mother-a sure sign that I am panicking. Throw in a trip to North Carolina, four more days of work, family coming into town for a visit and my sister leaving for Germany tomorrow, and I would say that the adventure has already begun. Not to mention that I have people to see and things to do. Yep, it seems that I am really prepared to leave in nine days. But I've done this fire drill before. Pack the night before I leave and rush out to the airport on little to no sleep.
But hey, you can always sleep on the plane right?
