• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

meet john gray

  • blog
    • Mindfulness
    • Running
    • Home
    • Travel
    • Photography
    • Technology
  • Writing Portfolio​
  • Images
  • About
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
You are here: Home / Archives for New Zealand

New Zealand

One Week In New Zealand

07/13/2018 by John 1 Comment

View across Lake Taupo of the volcanic peaks of Tongariro National Park

View across Lake Taupo of the volcanic peaks of Tongariro National Park

We have been in New Zealand for only a week, yet it feels far longer than that. Time seems to behave differently when you are displaced so dramatically in space; it bends and stretches, distorts, and elongates. Life in the states already feels like a distant memory, yet I know that as soon as I step back off a plane into some could-be-anywhere terminal back in the U.S., it will feel as if I never left.

What is there to say? Do you want to hear about our flight into San Francisco and our dramatic ascent up and away from the runway and having it explained nonchalantly by the pilot that there was “traffic” in the area? How about our business premier flight abroad Air New Zealand (paid for with airline points, not real money)? Sorry, not much to say about that because I was asleep for most of it on my seat that turned into a bed. Do you want to hear about how there are “four seasons in a day” here? Yes, it’s true. On any given day since arriving we have experienced some combination of brilliant warm sunshine, cold biting winds, rain of varying degrees from a light mist to a torrential downpour, and the occasional bit of hail.

 

Business class seat in lounger mode

Business class seat in lounger mode

I wish I could give you more than words. Words don’t justify it. I can’t make them as vivid as the slanted winter sun tinted landscapes of forested hills and pastureland we drove through after landing in Auckland. Words aren’t as dramatic as the snow clad visages of Mount Tongariro, Ngauruhue, and Ruapehu looming over Lake Taupo. My words can’t fully convey the kindness we have felt from so many people since arriving here, from the grocery store clerk who helped us set-up our new phone plan, to the friends we have know for 20 years, to the people we are staying with in Wellington, who were total strangers to us just a few short days ago whom we now can call friends.

There is much I will remember about our first week here, but one thing that struck me was a feeling I had driving through the countryside on one of the two-lane roads that pass for interstate highways here. It was a feeling of familiarity and comfort. It was the feeling of being home.

Looking down on Wellington from Mount Victoria

Looking down on Wellington from Mount Victoria

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: New Zealand, travel

New Zealand Here We Come

06/01/2018 by John 2 Comments

Our entire world is about to be turned upside down, literally. Summer will be winter. There will be a new set of stars in the sky. Temperature and distance are measured in a different metric and we’ll have to master driving on the opposite side of the road. We are moving to New Zealand.

There are so many conflicting emotions within us both. For me, there is excitement mixed with fear and dread. I dread the tasks that lie before us and fear that we’re making a terrible mistake. But I am excited as well. Excited to see what it feels like to spend an extended time in a country that is not my own. Excited to explore new places. Excited to see who I am there. And even excited to be a witness to the crazy weather of Wellington, the city that will be our new home.

Flights are purchased and the visa application process has begun. There is much sorting and purging ahead of us. It is a clean slate, a chance to cut away the remaining excess of the possessions we have clung to since leaving our full-time home in Asheville three years ago. It is an opportunity to start again.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Travel Tagged With: New Zealand, travel

Living in The Unknown

05/04/2018 by John Leave a Comment

Statue in Wellington New Zealand of a man jumping into the sea We’ve been out of work and out of an apartment for two weeks now. The car is littered with random shoes, bits of recycling that need to find a home, and pieces of clothing tossed into the back seat while speeding down the freeway as the cool mornings give way to warm spring afternoons. The road thus far has led from Chattanooga to Asheville, Nashville, Huntsville, Sewanee, and back again to Asheville. Soon, the wheels of the Matrix will turn north towards Philadelphia. We don’t know where or when we will have a place to call home again. We are living in the unknown.

New Zealand is so far away that it is tomorrow. That is where we are trying to go: into the future. But in the present, we lie awake at night in other people’s bedrooms wondering if we’ll make it or not. When the morning comes, we expectantly open our email to see if a job offer has landed there and breath a sigh of frustration when we see that nothing has arrived; another day of waiting has just begun.

I sat in the dentist chair yesterday with the hygienist sticking her implements into my wide open mouth, asking me if my wife and I were the “bicycle people”. And though I have not worked a bike tour in close to a year now and my bike is slowly turning to rust in someone’s basement, I grunted an acknowledgment that yes, we were indeed the “bicycle people”. She asked me if I knew how many people would love to trade places with us. I thought about all the sleepless nights we’ve had recently, the confusion over whether or not we are making good decisions, and our bank balance that for the foreseeable future will only be heading in a negative direction. Once her hands were removed from between my jaws and I could again use my full powers of communication to respond, I glanced up at her and said: “there are pros and cons.”

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: New Zealand, travel, Work

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 12
  • Go to page 13
  • Go to page 14

Primary Sidebar

Want to hear from me?

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework