42 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
42 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: "Aotearoa - Day 1"
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category: [Aotearoa]
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date: 2021-10-31 00:59:00 +0200
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---
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I still vividly remember my first day in New Zealand.
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I'd swapped seats with a Kiwi family on the flight from Bangkok to Auckland and thus had the priviledge of spying the Northern Island from afar.
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I remember my heart soaring with disbelief when finally seeing the green grass of the landing strip with my own eyes. That's when it kicked in - this is *real*. I have made it to Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.
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After landing, I bought a SIM card and awkwardly exchanged the 100$ my grandfather gave me with broken English, and managed to work out the EtfPos into buying myself a (very expensive!) bus ticket to my hostel.
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I hiked with all my heavy packs way uphill to my hostel - I made it around 12:00 - and instantly went for a shower and off to town I went.
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<sub>My first image from New Zealand! I got better over time</sub>
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Under the pretense of going shopping for groceries and an A/C, I decided to wander randomly towards the sea to get a feel of the city.
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That's when I discovered my first surprise of the trip - cities in New Zealand are, more often than not, amazingly ugly. I ended up stumbling in random ugly allies, unsure of where to go nor what to do, simply remembering to head back to the shopping center near my hostel when I finished with... whatever that was.
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I felt... dissapointed. I felt homesick. Did I really go this far out?
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<sub>It's not that bad, is it?</sub>
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I somehow wound up in the tranquil Albert park, and that's where my mood picked up and it really sank in. I sat down and wrote my first journal entry of the journey - I was *really* focused on having food and water and not dying. It took a while for the survivalism to go away...
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Jetlag *really* kicks in after 34 hours and a 12 hour time difference - getting back up from that bench was seriously difficult!
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That day, I figured out the rhythm that would follow for the rest of my journey - I went to my first Kiwi supermarket (self checkout and fabric bags, baby!), made my first hostel dinner (nondescript rice with vegtables!), and had the second best sleep of my life.
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I honestly think that was the most difficult day of the entire trip - it is incredibly scary realizing how alone and how far away you are until it happens.
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> No doubt there shall be a process
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Was the concluding remark in my journal. A process there was!
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<sub> I knew I picked the right destination encountering *this* almost immediatly after leaving the hostel. </sub>
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