When I realized that I was down to my last month, I decided to seize the day as much as possible so that I could have every Wellington experience possible for me. At the same time, once I had the realization that after my time here I'm going to have another two months of insanely fast-paced travel, I got pretty lazy. It's been a very eventful and very relaxing month, and now all I'm feeling in sadness at an ending and extreme gratefulness to have had my time here at all.
My time in New Zealand is rapidly coming to a close. I think when I look back on this year I will see it having two very distinct halves: my time on the South Island (and some of the North Island), with nearly nonstop travel and new people and experiences every day, and my time in Wellington with my Dwellington family.
When I realized that I was down to my last month, I decided to seize the day as much as possible so that I could have every Wellington experience possible for me. At the same time, once I had the realization that after my time here I'm going to have another two months of insanely fast-paced travel, I got pretty lazy. It's been a very eventful and very relaxing month, and now all I'm feeling in sadness at an ending and extreme gratefulness to have had my time here at all.
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Every culture has a conception of itself. Chicagoans, for example, consider themselves big city midwesterners: hardworking, down to earth, friendly, unpretentious, and way better than New York. Those new to the city learn about it's characterization pretty fast, and to a large degree, all native and new Chicagoans try to live up to this ideal. The same can be said for every other city and country on earth.
New Zealand is a tiny, rural island at the end of the world, and this feeds very directly into New Zealander's conceptions of themselves as local-orientated, community centered, creative do-it-yourselfers. New Zealand is far away from the infrastructure of the world, which means that there's opportunity to create in a way that just isn't as practical for people from other counties. If something goes wrong, you can't call a handy-man to fix it; New Zealanders know how to do things themselves. On Saturday, my roomie Federica and I went to Havana Coffee Roasters for a tour and tasting and learned all about the history of coffee in Wellington. It won't surprise anyone to discover that both Havana and the greater Wellington coffee scene plug right into the local, community-orientated, and creative New Zealand story.
Wellington continues to be pretty glorious! Many of the exciting events I referenced in previous posts have now come and gone, but there are still quite a lot of fun activities upcoming. I'll only be in Wellington for another 6 weeks now, which is just insane, so it's also time to start paying attention to my Wellington and New Zealand bucket lists!
So what have I been doing?
(Done June 20th, July 4th, and drunk August 4th and beyond!)
My AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING friends Sarah, Adel, and Shannon bought me a gift certificate to make my own beer at The Occasional Brewer in Wellington. They have all of the equipment and recipes, and they'll help you through the process but you do most if yourself. I decided (after a LOT of thought) to make a blonde ale. It's going to make 40 liters, so we're going to party at the hostel when it's done! On June 20th, off I went! I started the day by meeting Eugene, my helper for the day. He'd prepared the correct amount of grain for me and started heating the water, so I was ready to jump right in. The recipe is different for each beer, so the couple next to me that was brewing a Pale Ale did a lot of different things. Food in New Zealand is expensive. There's no way around it, as long as you're one of those humans that eats. It doesn't make a lot of sense for a country that grows so much food, but that's capitalism for you-- most of the food grown in New Zealand is exported, which makes it prohibitivly expensive for everyone back home. I can buy a NZ apple for cheaper in Chicago than I can in New Zealand. A week worth of fruits and veggies takes up a huge part of a weekly budget.
Capitalism, in a strange and sort of terrible way, has also been my savior in Wellington. Wellington has a few major fruit and veggie markets every week, and my market of choice is the Harbourside Market next to the Te Papa Museum every Sunday. I mention capitalism in this because this market definitely isn't a farmers market. I'm relatively sure most of the food is flown in from Asia. It's mostly food you want to eat sooner rather than later, and I'm sure it's pesticided like crazy. But... it's cheap. SO CHEAP. How is it cheaper than food grown in New Zealand?? Riddle me this. I could probably find similar prices if I went directly to farms, but the actual farmers markets are quite expensive in Wellington (validly), and the grocery stores are even worse. But at this market, I can pick up the whole weeks worth of food for $12. Or maybe $18, if I buy some meat from the (wonderful, local, ethical) butcher that's on site. SO CHEAP. So, for travelers like me and for the broke people of Wellington, it's probably worth playing into the ridiculous ridiculous RIDICULOUS system in which we all live, as much of a shame as that is. I suppose those of us who know and do nothing are an even worse part of the problem than those who don't know. But. $12 at the market versus $50 at New World.
(Originally from July 4th/5th)
I decided this year that it was simply impossible to let the 4th of July pass un-celebrated. Mostly this is because I'm in a hostel with people from tons of different nationalities, and I wanted to share a bit of American culture with them- but also, partially, it is because I am in a hostel with tons of people from the UK and I thought it was hilarous. >:) Also, because I'm still a little homestick! I decided to "plan it", for as much as I did any planning, for July 5th since there was a major Rugby game on the 4th, and also the 5th in NZ is the 4th back in the States! Step one was explosives.
(Originally from June 27th)
Way back in Nelson I stumbled across a beautiful, glorious, and super expensive chocolate from a company called Wellington Chocolate Factory. I was very tempted to spend the money and get some, but in the end couldn't bring myself to do it. It was too much of a risk when I didn't know if I was going to like it for sure! But then I found out that they offer tours of their factory in Wellington for only the price of one of their bars- and you get to taste all of the different kinds, and learn a lot, and get a hot chocolate at the end! A group of 8 of us from the hostel (Me, Daisy, Amy, Martin, Carla, Lamara, Ana, and Hannah) decided to go on July 27th. I learned SO MUCH.
(Originally starting from June 15th)
So, Kara and Jordan are finishing posting their blogs about their trip through NZ before heading home, and I'm continuing my life in Wellington! (Expect a massive drop in picture quality. :( ) I'd like to keep a running update about what I'm up to, but we've decided to keep the blog in chronological order. So what I'll do instead is keep a running update on this blog, and then continue in a real-time way when all of our catch-up posts are finally done! In the meantime-- if you had asked me after my first week in New Zealand if I could ever live in a hostel long-term, I would have literally died from laughing so hard. Which makes it all the more disturbing that I have chosen to spend my four months in New Zealand at The Dwellington. It's probably not even the cheapest option for housing, but although I could pay slightly less and have my own room, it makes sense to stay here for the wonderful community! |
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October 2015
AuthorsLizzy, Kara, and Jordan are spending a year traveling and working in New Zealand. Share our adventures and keep in touch! Categories
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