Today is a rather auspicious day, being the 11th of December, being exactly one month away from the 11th of January, being the day I arrive in Auckland for the very first time.
Oh. My. Gracious.
The closer it gets to my departure date, the more intensified my feelings become. Not too surprising, I suppose, but I feel like a human rollercoaster- I'm alternately terrified, excited, anxious, excited, sad, excited. Most of the time it's a combination of all of the above. Like I said, rollercoaster. I guess it's a good thing I like rollercoasters; but I guess it's a bad thing they make me kinda sick. Ah well. Here we go. "Jump and the net will appear" and all that.
As sort of a final little trip, Mum and I went to New Hampshire for a long weekend and had an absolutely blast, as we always do. We went on an amazing Canopy Tour at Bretton Woods. It was one of the very coolest things we've ever done: hiking through the woods, sliping and sliding down icy little hills (I gave up halfway through and scooted down on me bum), rapelling from platforms in the trees, rope bridges through the treetops, gorgeous views of the mountains all around us and a series of nine (count 'em, nine) zip lines! Absolutely incredible. The next day we went skiing, letting really try my hand at it and face my fear. Turns out I'm pretty good at it. Also turns out that I hate it. Like, hate it. Like, loathe it with every fiber of my being. I'll settle for drinking hot chocolate in the lodge. We stayed at the Mount Washington Hotel on Sunday night and it was beyond beautiful. It's got this grandeur and old-world feel about it that can only be achieved from a building with that kind of history. We went home on Monday after a lovely breakfast accompanied by views of the breathtaking mountain range, which, in my mind, equals up to a really awesome weekend.
And here we are again, facing ten days left of work (hooray), less than three weeks until I leave Boston (quite the opposite of hooray), and less than one month until I leave the United States of America (we'll go for a mix of both hooray and non.) My little duckies are lining up nicely though. I have nearly everything I need- a plane ticket to LA, a sexy silver water bottle, and accommodation in Fiji are among my recent aquisitions. Still to get: an international drivers licence. Oh yeah. The lovely and incomprable Jayne (my friend in Auckland who is an absolute angel and letting me stay with her until I figure things out) has said she'll take me driving on the other side of the road!
I sort of feel like an electric eel: I have all of these currents of energy and adreneline coursing through me pretty much all the time. Don't get me wrong, I'm super excited and I know I'm about to embark on the biggest adventure of my life. So far.
It's just getting my electric-eel-bum out the door that's the hard part.
*Olivia
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost
