arathoonabroad

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 15

In which Katie learns how to make water with her eyeballs, and spends a lot of time practicing her new superpower

Blubbering is the major theme of this final update, so bear with me.

Blubbering: that's what I was doing upon my reentry to Sydney. Blubbering and sniffling and snuffling, like a pathetic wet weed, sitting (of course) in Hyde Park and feeling generally sorry for myself. After almost a year "on the go," and a mere three weeks before my scheduled departure date, I had finally had enough. I was tired and homesick and sick of spending money and I wanted to come home right now right now right now!

"I got a letter from Wigs," said Mum, interrupting my flow just as I was working into a nice satisfying lather.

I hiccoughed, and gave a small squeak of interest. "Oh yeah?" I asked. "What did she say?"

Mum chuckled. "She says she thinks you're ready to come home," she answered.

Wigs wasn't the only one. Everyone I'd talked to in the past few weeks—every random stranger I sat down with at a hostel or next to on a bus or dived with off a boat, every person who I'd talked to for more than three minutes, even on my most cheerful and happy days, had said the same thing. "Sounds like you're ready to go home," came the refrain, from Germans and Norwegians and Australians and Canadians and Bostonians alike. Often I would blink in surprise, retracing the conversation and wondering what had prompted them to say that; I wasn't ready to go home yet, was I?

But by the time I'd got back to Sydney (a short stop-through to see former housemate Sarah's amazing art show) I'd realized that everyone was right. I was desperate to go home, desperate to eat burritos and hug my cat and spend time with my sisters; desperate to stop being seen as nothing more than a big bag of money to be sucked dry by hostellers and travel agents and tour guides. I wanted to talk to my mother without it costing twelve cents a minute, and I wanted to mention Craigslist and have people know what I was talking about. 

By my second day back in Sydney, with no plans made for where I was going next, I was freaking out. People started looking worried when they talked to me. I couldn't even warm my noodles with Chester (not a euphemism, by the way) without bursting into tears.

Moreover, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with my final week of traveling. I'd narrowed my options down to choosing between going to Fraser Island for 4WD adventuring or the Whitsunday Islands for relaxing cruising. The fact that both options would be swarming with drunken backpackers and the greedy types that feed on tourists made them equally unappealing. I had three weeks left in Australia, and I didn't want to do anything or go anywhere! Blubber! Blubber! Blubber!

"Go to Tasmania," said former housemate Amina.

So, I went to Tasmania. And boy, was that ever the right place for me. Hobart, Tasmania's capital, is beautiful—reminiscent of the northern part of San Francisco, and overflowing with roses and lavender. It was absolutely freezing cold, and the large, elegant hostel I was staying in had no heat, but this time around I had brought more than a jean skirt and tank top, so I was okay. The hostel was full of strange and wonderful people, a lot of them older and none of them drunken 18-year-olds. I spent most days wandering alone around Hobart in the chilled air, thinking my thoughts.

One day, while I was out wandering, I became the subject of conversation among my new friends at the hostel. According to later reports, grey-haired, elegant Derek eventually slammed down his mug and exclaimed dramatically, "Philistines! I bet none of you have even noticed—Katie is sad!"

"So what if she is?" retorted Linda, who got it. "Sometimes it's okay to be sad."

By the fourth day I was ready to do something other than wandering and thinking, so I hopped on a shuttle bus with new friend Dagmar, and we headed up north to a zoo that had been hazily recommended to us by the tourist center; a zoo where I fulfilled a lifelong dream and, in one of the happiest moments of my whole life, got to hold a wombat.

The wombat's name was Wally. He tried to bite my face. I didn't mind.

On the 9th I headed back to Sydney, calmer and less weepy, to spend three days with Dad. We had a lovely time, charging around looking at beaches and parks and eating fantastic food. Most of our experiences seemed to hinge around the opera house—we viewed it from our hotel window, competed to take the best nighttime picture of it, viewed it in its panoramic splendor from ferries, took a tour and learned about its traumatic childhood, and finally, in a culminating peak on Dad's final night, watched a ballet in it. Good stuff.

The tides of dismay were shifting within my torrid breast, however. Dad's departure signaled the start of my last five days in Sydney, which meant I had to start saying my goodbyes. Suddenly, leaving became a reality—and I found that, while I did want to go home, I didn't actually want to leave Sydney to get there.

I went to see Cousin Becky and meet her boyfriend Alistair. We drank some good wine, saw some kangaroos and parrots, and then I had a major meltdown and burst into tears in the middle of the street in downtown Scone. Quite embarrassing.

Returning to Sydney, I began the somewhat frantic business of trying to see everyone I loved to say goodbye in three days flat. I rushed backwards and forwards through Sydney, drinking and eating and not sleeping very much. By Thursday, my last evening in Sydney, I was haggard and exhausted. That morning I'd said goodbye to Chester, and had spent the rest of the day in floods of tears, trying to pack and run last-minute errands, and, I must admit, somewhat enjoying the melodrama of standing in the freezing rain at bus stops, weeping and overcome (my brain having the following conversation with itself: Man, I must look very dramatic and glamorous, standing here in yesterday's party clothes, mascara running and skirt blowing up around my legs! These people are probably thinking I've just ended some dramatic love affair… or else they think I have a raging case of conjunctivitis. Hmm).

At any rate, by Thursday evening I was haggard and exhausted. I showed up at six on my former doorstep with a bottle of cheap champagne in each hand. Former housemate Amina answered the door, looking equally shattered after her own awful day, and the two of us sat immediately down on the balcony to work our way through the bottles. There is nothing like cheap champagne to bring a girl's spirits up! Our morale bolstered, we made our way with Volker and former housemate Sarah to the Opera House, watched an excitingly-titled but unexcitingly-executed symphony ("Russian Fire and Fury," my ass), met up with a few friends for drinks, and then went home to our respective beds. Thus ended my last night in Sydney.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast with Dutch friend Manon in our hostel. It seemed appropriate to be saying goodbye to Manon last, since she was the first friend I'd made in Sydney, way back in May. After an hour of chatting and making vague plans to meet up somewhere in the indeterminate future, she gave me a big hug and put me on the shuttle bus to start the long journey home.

Homeward I wended. The bus and a plane took me to Auckland (I'd sent my gumboots back with Dad, just to be on the safe side), and then I boarded the plane for the long haul: New Zealand to San Francisco.

Here's a tip: when you're haggard and shattered and weepy and you just want to be left alone to wallow in your sadness, try not to sit next to a really friendly, cheerful Mormon who's just super keen to tell you all about the mission he's just completed.

I got home, still grumpy and sad, although simultaneously delighted to see my family. Still, I didn't really want to be back; I spent the next week sulking around the house, refusing to drive on the right hand side of the road, refusing to withdraw American money, and refusing to change my watch to local time. I didn't defrost for about a week. Then one day Mum, Rosie and I were driving in the car, me in the front passenger side with my arms folded grumpily, and suddenly Rosie leaned forward from the back and gave me a big hug around the headrest. I stiffened, prickly and unfriendly, and then a little voice in the back of my head—a voice that I'd been studiously ignoring for a few days—finally got through, shouting, "This is what you came home for! Start enjoying it, dimwit!"

So, I relaxed. And I squeezed her arms. And I smiled.

* * *

There's a story I love about a girl who goes over the rainbow, acquires a fantastic pair of red shoes, makes a group of friends who get her through thick and thin, and then leaves them behind, allowing them to fade into a hazy, colourful memory. Back in Kansas, she says:

"This was a real, truly live place. I remember that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful! But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody is, 'I want to go home.' And they sent me home."

I didn't mean to go to New Zealand, and I really didn't mean to go to Australia. I went because I had nothing better to do. I went to satisfy my Dorothy complex and Arathooon genes. I went because I wanted to know what it felt like to walk around on the underbelly of the planet. I went to find the point where my family ended and I began. 

Passing through customs on my way back into San Francisco, the official raised his eyebrow and commented, "You've been gone a long time, huh?"

"Yeah," I said.

"What were you doing over there?" he asked.

"I was trying to find myself," I answered, truthfully.

He chuckled. "And did you?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said with a smile. "Yeah, I did."

"Well, welcome home," he said, and stamped my passport.

Toto, I presume?

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 14

In which Katie becomes a woman of leisure, writes a book, eats too much, breathes underwater and licks an ant's butt

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Hyde Park, in the middle of Sydney, seems to be the focal point of my highs and lows for the past five months. I've cuddled and flirted and laughed on its benches on brilliant blue sunny days, and ended a relationship by the reflecting pool on a particularly gray grizzly drizzly day. I've sprawled on the grass glorying in my freedom and the beauty of the universe, and sobbed down the phone, pathetically homesick and weary, while wandering through the dappled light of the trees in the southernmost end. 

October the 2nd found me standing in Hyde Park, screaming and howling and raging at the top of my lungs, ignoring the outraged stares of passersby and being ignored by the elegant white ibises who picked their way fastidiously around my shrieking, shaking self.

The cause of this fury, as per usual, was darling Bossman, who had neglected to mention to any of us that this Monday—the last Monday I'd be working for him—was a bank holiday, and he wasn't opening the shop. I had arrived home at midnight after a fantastic but all-too-brief stay with Cousin Becky, and dragged myself out of bed at six so as to be at work on time, only to find the café dark and locked. I was overwhelmingly angry—not so much because Bossman was rude and disrespectful, but more because he was wasting my time. I only had a month and a bit in Australia left to me, I'd barely seen anything outside of Sydney, and here I was standing in this same park on this same street, raging and screaming, rather than driving around the countryside with Becky, looking at wild parrots and kangaroos and running over the occasional Bearded Dragon. I had had a day stolen from me, and I found that unforgivable.

So I finished out my final week and quit my job—hung up my sensible working shoes, passed my aprons on to the fresh new generation of waitresses, and burned the pair of trousers I'd worn day in, day out for five months.

Man, it felt good.

I spent the following blissful week living entirely on Sultana Bran, sitting in the kitchen chatting with my housemates and sitting in my room typing furiously away, attempting to get my novel finished. Much to my surprise, I succeeded in the latter aim. The "novel," if such it can be called, is nowhere near long enough and in need of massive revision, but 50,000 words are down on paper and a triumphant "THE END!" has been placed on the final page. I emerged with several days to spare before I started traveling, blinking in the sunlight and the 37 degree (Celcius… I think in metric now, it's so depressing) weather: happy, dazed, and significantly skinnier. My Sultana Bran diet was fueled exclusively by laziness and a hatred of washing pans, but it turns out it's a pretty effective weight-loss strategy as well.

Luckily, at this moment all my friends in Sydney realized that I was going to be leaving soon, and separately but simultaneously they all decided to feed me before I left. So, I had chocolate cake (somewhat disastrously constructed by myself) with Volker; shepherd's pie and apple crumble with the girls from work; sausage rolls in front of the opera house with Brenda, Mahendra and the rest of that gang; absolutely amazing home-made burritos with my housemates (Amina cooks a mean burrito); and, just to make sure there was no permanent weight loss, Chester (back from England) capped the feasting extravaganza by taking me out for deep-fried camembert and orchid-oil flavored hot chocolate.

Back up to my normal friendly round shape, I started my month-o-travels. First on the agenda was Melbourne, a visit that coincided (not coincidentally) with Wigs and Brian's arrival in that same city. How exciting to see them again! And how exciting to meet my Melbourne relatives, Annie and Michael and their lovely kids Emily and William. Those fantastic Findlays welcomed me, essentially a stranger with good credentials, into their home, fed and watered us and showed us the Melbourne they lived in.

Melbourne was great, full of good food and music, beautiful parks and cute Victorian houses; it was also, however, rather cold. This would have been fine, except that in my excitement to be on the road again, I'd decided that the way to travel light was to pack only one outfit: a short jean skirt and a black tanktop. Traveling with only one outfit is a stupid idea to begin with, and when that outfit is horribly inappropriate for the climate, it becomes downright moronic.

I bought some leggings, donned my wooly hat, and survived. Apart from being underdressed, my time in Melbourne was lovely; we saw the sights, did some gardening, went on walks and ate, and ate and ate and ate! Three full delicious meals a day, baby, a phenomenon my body hasn't experienced since I arrived in Australia.

Even rounder and friendlier, I headed way up north to Cairns for the big splurge of my travels: a 5-day PADI certification course involving three days on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef. Because, if there's anything cooler than learning to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, I have yet to discover it.

Well, yeah, okay, Zorbing; but that's it.

Now, my whole life I have been terrified of scuba diving, terrified of the idea of being under that much water and surrounded by that many hostile creatures. So, when friends of a friend mentioned a few months ago that they'd scuba dived, and I found that I was intrigued rather than horrified, I decided the time had come to embrace the opportunity. Moreover, my dear sister Rosie had just gotten certified back in California, and this meant that, for the very first time in eighteen long years, we would have something in common! A shared interest! The prospect of that steeled my resolve against any lingering anxiousness, and I booked the course.

So I went to Cairns, and I dived. Dove? Doved? Divid? Divined? Whatever I did, it involved me breathing underwater, which was pretty mind-blowing in and of itself. That first moment of putting your face underwater and trusting that your lungs aren't going to fill with liquid requires an counterintuitive leap of faith that takes more effort than you'd think, but one that feels, upon success, truly amazing.

The whole course, in fact, was truly amazing. The first two days were spent in the safety of the pool and the classroom, learning to deal with the gear in a safe way and memorizing a seemingly endless barrage of five-lettered acronyms. Scuba divers absolutely adore acronyms, it turns out, starting with the word SCUBA itself and utilized to outline every procedure from gear setup to entering the water to getting out of the water again, and covering all potential disasters in between. Moreover, there are acronyms within acronyms; for example, when checking that your buddy isn't going to die a horrible death underwater, you have to remember that Blonde Women Really Are Fun, and that the first letter, B, stands for BCD, which means Buoyancy Control Device or something like that, and probably has a catchphrase of its own along the lines of "Breathing's Cool, Dude!" to aid in the memory's retrieval of meaning. 

This means that when people ask you a perfectly simple question like, "What are the ways you can return to the surface, in order of best option to worst?" you first have to stand there thinking a fairly idiotic sequence of phrases: "'Bruce Willis Ruins All Films'? Er… 'Brunette Fun Women Are Really'? No, wait, it's 'No Air Can Be Bad'! Phew!" before you can answer the question. I anticipate the day when I meet a Great White face to face and float there, furiously thinking: "Sebastian Tank Bombed Miami And Sunburned Angry Walruses Wonder What Ian Did? What the heck does that stand for?" while the Great White munches nonchalantly on my leg. (Sharks only have one acronym—SAE, or "Swim And Eat," which stands for: Swim, And Eat.)

At any rate, the acronyms memorized and dutifully regurgitated onto paper, we loaded our BCDs onboard and set off for AUS's GBR to do our PADI certified SCUBA course ASAP. During the three hours it took to get out to the reef, I managed to get a wicked sunburn on the tops of my thighs, which made struggling into and out of a wetsuit four times a day for the next three days extremely uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable, yes, but so, so worth it. The Great Barrier Reef is stunningly beautiful, and we had somehow arranged to go on the first absolutely perfect weekend, weather wise, that they'd had for three months. The visibility was up to 40 meters, the water as clear as an epiphany and as still as bathwater. From the boat you could see dolphins and sea turtles on the surface of the water, or look straight down to the paper-white sand of the ocean floor, littered with the black, tubular forms of sea cucumbers doing whatever it is that sea cucumbers do.

I didn't take pictures while diving. For one thing, I wanted to focus on the moment and on getting used to not dying underwater; for another, my buddy, a headstrong Norwegian, had the extremely annoying habit of running out of air after a mere 11 minutes underwater, which would have worked out to a nearly $4-per-minute rental fee for the camera. (Since I think he had a bit of a crush on me, I couldn't even get properly snappish and annoyed with him, although I would certainly never date someone with such poor breath control.) Without the benefit of a photographic record, however, all the dives I went on have blurred into one seamless watercolor wash of beauty, with one moment from my last dive highlighting it all: two huge pillars of rock, covered with corals and anemones and the darting jewels of fish, that arched up towards the silvery surface of the water miles above; and me, swimming sideways through the narrow gap between the two, fish moving about unconcernedly, while fan coral stretched its lacey webs up towards me and the sun shone down in hazy beams. It was absolutely magical.

Happy and utterly exhausted, we motored back home on the fifth day and, after a dutiful exchange of email addresses and one last night out on the town, went our separate ways.

My separate way took me to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is the Road More Traveled By attempting to look like its more famous cousin; a tourist trap, it's true, but one that allows you to see where a tropical rainforest charges its way across the land and launches itself, lemming-like, into the Great Barrier Reef. It is the only place in the world where you can stand in two World Heritage Areas at the same time, and it is, despite the tourists, very beautiful.

The high point of my time in Cape Trib was the nighttime wildlife tour I took, and the highlight of the night tour was when, upon our guide's urging, I gripped a large, struggling green ant's head between two fingers and tentatively licked its backside.

It tasted like lemons, just like it was supposed to.

There was one other noteworthy moment on the night tour, and it happened when our guide left us standing in one clearing while he charged off into the black to see if he could find a dragon for us to look at. We all switched off our flashlights and stood in the darkness, giggling and shuffling as you do, and talking about the wildlife we'd seen recently.

"I saw a crocodile today," said one girl proudly. "Right at the mouth of Mason's Creek, just sitting there staring at me; he was at least two meters long."

My attention was caught. "I crossed Mason's Creek today, walking along the beach," I said jovially; "Maybe I waded right past your crocodile! What time did you see him?"

"One thirty," she answered.

I swallowed, a bit uncomfortably. I'd crossed that spot shortly before two o'clock.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 13

In which Katie uses 2,000 words to say "I was tired."

Thursday, September 21, 2006

There have been certain grumblings of the "are you dead?" variety concerning my lack of updates recently, and I apologize; hopefully this installment will both satisfy those grumblers and explain my (extremely out of character) reticence.

So. I actually managed to give up alcohol for a month, and here's the story of why. One week after my birthday, we accidentally threw the most awesome party ever. The excuse was the arrival of a new flatmate, the awesome Freya—so it was a "house re-warming" party. Our arrival time was set at eight, and the theme was "Heroes and Villains." At eight o'clock we four flatmates were sitting in the living room. Sarah had made the largest token to the party's theme, and was wearing an Astro Boy t-shirt and, most impressively, an Astro Boy pair of underpants on the outside of her jeans. Freya was dressed up as an evil version of herself, and I was dressed up as a not-evil clone of the evil version of Freya, which meant that we were both wearing cute skirts and glasses, but otherwise looking pretty normal. Amina appeared to be going as Amina.

"Did you invite anyone?" asked Sarah. A chorus of Not Really's ran 'round the room. "Me neither," she sighed. The party seemed a loss. I texted the few people I had invited and warned them it was dead.

And then people started arriving, and they didn't stop. The house was full of people. We’d purchased forty bottles of wine, and we ran out and had to go get more. My camera was passed from hand to hand, capturing people's costumes (most impressively a young gentleman dressed entirely in tinfoil). People we didn't know showed up. People we did know and didn't like showed up. Somebody's younger brother and his best friend showed up, refused to speak to anyone, and then passed out in the living room. We had Brazilians and Italians and Indians and Germans and more, but everyone drank like Aussies. At four o'clock my camera was full of pictures, we were full of alcohol, and we decided it was a really good time to go to a bar. So, we shuffled off to the bar, I broke a chair, and the rest is a blank until it was suddenly 8:20 in the morning and one of my newfound best friends was shoving his watch in my face and saying, "Aren't you supposed to be at work in ten minutes?"

Ah yes, yes I was. A special one-off Saturday job, shelving books in the bookstore part of the café. Still reeling, I leaped into work clothes and ran the whole way to the café, making it there in just ten minutes (rather than the usual twenty). My boss thought my showing up reeking of alcohol was hilariously funny, and I proceeded to shelve books, dwelling on all the stupid things I'd done the night before, for two hours. Two hours of silent book shelving in a silent café is a really good time to do some earnest reflection, and I'd done a lot of stupid things the night before. By the time I'd finished the last box of books I'd worked myself into quite a state.

"Come on, I'll shout you breakfast as a thank you," my boss offered.

"I can't, I have about twelve apologies I have to make," I said, and, brain now moving into hangover zone, I wandered home, collapsed on the sidewalk outside my house, dissolved into tears, and called my mother.

Not my proudest moment in Sydney.

So, from that day until the end of August, I went teetotal. Totally teetotal. This caused extreme consternation amongst my friends. I did prove very definitively that I am capable of going out without drinking; I also proved that it's almost impossible to go out and have fun without drinking, mostly because everyone else gets annoyed with your sobriety and spends the evening trying to get you to change your mind. Spending evenings explaining why you're sober is really, really dull.

Luckily, the flu that I'd picked up back in June was still around and getting worse, which meant that most of the time I was too tired to go out anyway. Some days I would come home from work at five, get straight into bed and fall asleep, wake up at eight and have dinner and then go back to sleep; other days I would pass out at 7:30 and not wake up until 7:30 the next morning. I'm not sure quite why it didn't occur to me that being sick for more than two months was a bit odd, but it just seemed to be one of those facts of life; I'm Katie, and I sleep for twelve hours at a time on a regular basis. The month of no alcohol dragged on, things ended (I think) with Marco, and then work took a turn for the worse.

The boss, bless him, figured out that he could pick on me—and pick on me he did. When he yells at Sara she yells back, and Kia set down boundaries early enough that he doesn't yell at her at all, but he soon discovered that with my tendency to a) internalize disapproval and b) burn banana bread on a regular basis, I could provide a useful outlet for the daily frustrations of café management. Day by day things got worse—to the point where the other girls were leaping in to my defense ("Don't speak to her like that!") and I broke down in tears on several occasions.

The breaking point came one Friday in early September. Late in the afternoon I found myself getting shouted and sworn at, top volume. The boss was throwing around a sandwich I had made and was so angry that he was barely articulate. I went into crisis-control mode, as usual, and solved the sandwich problem (there was no problem, it turned out—the sandwich was exactly what the customer had wanted). Then I spent the next hour cleaning and finishing my shift and getting more and more worked up. I was sick, and tired, and absolutely sick and tired of getting screamed at for no good reason.

The next day, shopping with Kia, I related the story. "If he treated me the way he treats you, I'd quit," she said frankly. I considered that option. I have enough money saved up for this trip that I could just stay in Sydney until I leave. The money from the café is great, but not a necessity. Why don't I just not go back to work on Monday?

But then, thinking it over that Sunday in our sunny garden, I had a far more liberating thought: if I have enough flexibility that I can quit, then I can also just behave any way I want to at work, and if I get fired, it's no big deal!

I can shout back!

I went into work on Monday eager for him to pick a fight with me. He was gonna get it! Anybody who throws a punch at me from now on is getting knocked out of the ring! Just you wait, matey!

And, of course, that change in attitude has meant that I don't actually need to shout back; bossman has stopped picking on me. The few times things have drifted back towards our old pattern, I've dug my heels in and gotten sassy, and then we go back to him treating me like a human being. The old adage about standing up to bullies is true, it seems, and I’ve emerged from the experience with a—potentially useful—thicker epidermis.

But I was almost too tired and miserable to appreciate my once-again enjoyable work environment. September had arrived and I was still sick, still in bed by eight o'clock every night, still knocked off my feet for days every time I drank alcohol (teetotal August having ended at last). I tried to go out for dinner with Brenda one night and felt so miserable I could barely stand. "You look like you're going to cry!" she said in dismay, and sent me home to bed. I had to get a taxi because I was too tired to walk the two blocks to the bus stop. I was too tired to go out, too tired to write. What is the point of being here, I wondered, if all I'm going to do is work and sleep?

At Mum's urging I went to get checked for mono, or "glandular fever" as they so quaintly call it here. (Shoutout to free universal healthcare, btw!) The doctor poked and prodded me for a while and finally said with a note of satisfaction, "Ah. You have an enlarged spleen."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"That means your mother is probably right," he said.

"My mother is always right about everything," I said glumly.

So they drew gallons of my blood and sent them off for testing, and then Cousin Becky arrived. 

Cousin Becky, one of my favorite people in the world, is moving to the Australian equivalent of Napa Valley until the end of the year, and touched down in Sydney first. So there's Becky, my big cousin whom I adore—and there's me, too tired and sick to show her a good time. Luckily, she was jetlagged and missing her boyfriend, so we were both able to be tired and miserable together. This somehow involved us buying extremely cute bikinis and lying on beaches for hours and hours, and then having lunches that consisted of wine and ice cream and dinners that consisted of phantasmagorically amazing seafood. Hey, if you're gonna mope, mope in style!

Becky left on a Sunday morning and I went straight to bed and slept more or less nonstop for the next eighteen hours (standard Sunday protocol at this point). On Monday I actually felt a little better. Tuesday even more so—to the point where I actually went out and had some drinks and got up to no good. Despite that, on Wednesday I was feeling, for the first time in months and months—practically normal!

That Wednesday was of course the day when my blood tests came in, and I slunk into the doctor's office feeling a bit sheepish. Here I'd just gone and gotten all these tests done on Medicare's dime, and just today my body was refusing to play the role required of it. Where was the drama, the lethargy, the I'd-rather-be-hit-by-a-bus misery? I have an enlarged spleen, damnit! I'm dying here!

"Nope," said my body, "Actually, I'm feeling pretty okay today."

So I was somehow unsurprised when the doctor explained to me that I don't actually have mono/glandular fever, at least not any more. (Glandular fever—honestly! What an archaic-sounding disease! Next they'll be telling me people still get scurvy, or gout, or the plague!) Very patiently he took me through all the different tests, all the different results that my gallons of blood had provided—and they all basically said I was a-ok. Even my cholesterol's pretty good, it turns out.

I tried to be enthusiastic, but I was still confused. "So, why have I been so miserable?" I asked.

"Sometimes, the body just gives out when it's being pushed too hard—when the patient is going out too often, or there's stress at work, or they're not eating the proper food."

World cup. Bossman. Cornflakes. Hmm. "Burning your candle at both ends?" I suggested.

The doctor looked at me carefully. "Sometimes I think some patients aren't just burning both ends—they're burning holes in the middle, too."

Point taken.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 12

In which Katie becomes a Spartan, dates a Roman, turns twenty-three and discovers the perfect food

Friday, August 04, 2006

Oh, bars, booze, and boys… after weeks of extensive partying, suddenly the World Cup ended and everything fell flat. Chester fled the country. It started to rain most every day. The bars were filled with boys who were there to pick up chicks, rather than boys who were there to watch football. Most importantly, the flu that had taken up residence in my head and that I'd been ignoring for over a month was getting worse, not better. I was always tired, usually cranky, and I never had any money. One day at work I was doing the usual sweep-mop-bring-in-the-dishes four o'clock routine when, giant bread knife in hand, my feet slipped out from under me and I found myself flipped on my back, legs sprawled everywhichway, gazing up at the kitchen ceiling.

My brain, which loves unsubtle symbolism, immediately piped up. "Get it?" said my brain. "Get it? You've become unbalanced! Your life is unbalanced, and now you yourself are physically unbalanced! Do you get it? Haha!"

"Shut up, brain," said my body. "Ow! Ow!"

"It's called symbolism," my brain explained.

"I said shut up!" said my body.

"Stop arguing, you two," I told them both.

Tommy, my lovely Thai workmate, came rushing over at this juncture. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Did you cut yourself?"

"Oh, yeah, the knife!" I thought. "Body?"

"No, no bleeding, just bruising, you're okay," said my body.

"I'm fine," I gasped to Tommy.

"Whoa, man," said my body, "That would have really hurt, if you'd stabbed me with a knife."

"But perhaps then you would've gotten the point!" my brain crowed, gleefully.

So, never being one to dabble in moderation, I abruptly gave up alcohol, boys, and staying awake past ten. I went to the pharmacist, read him out the list of all my ailments, and received various pills, potions, and orthopedic supports to cure them. I bought a horribly expensive pair of non-slippery shoes. I joined a gym, and decided to go five days a week. I only ate salad. When I had to go to the pub (for going-away parties and such) I brought a water bottle filled with a strange vitamin concoction and refused to drink anything else. I was the healthiest person in Sydney.

This lasted six days—that's almost a whole week! Then there was this party, and this delicious boxed wine, and this Italian guy named Marco… what's a girl to do? The party ran till the no-longer-wee hours of the next day, and ten o'clock that morning found us lounging in a park in the lovely golden sunshine, feeding seagulls. "Why are you in Sydney?" I asked him perfunctorily, because that's what you ask people in Sydney.

Marco waved a dismissive hand. "Oh," he said, shrugging, "I'm just here getting my PhD in Quantum Physics."

I mean, for the love of Pete.

So, I gave up giving up boys. But the exercise thing stuck, mostly. I manage to go to the gym about three times a week, and do a variety of classes with differing but equally vicious-sounding names (Body Pump! Body Attack! Get Down On Your Knees And Beg For Mercy And Then Give Me Fifty Pushups!). Moreover, my Irish friend Brenda moved back to town, and decided to teach me how to play squash.

At first I thought one day of squash each week would provide a nice break from the gym, during which my muscles could relax and rejuvenate. Then Brenda served, the ball came screaming at my face, and I ducked to the floor clutching my head and yelling, "Help!" Brenda shrieked with laughter. The rest of the hour saw me fall flat on my face twice, run into the wall twice, and hit myself in the ear with the handle of the racket once. Still, I went back the following week and improved slightly, and every week since has gotten a little better. I worried in the beginning that teaching an absolute beginner like me would be boring for Brenda, but she seems to take a divine delight in whipping me, cackling loudly when I trip over my own feet trying to hit the ball, and calling out cheerfully, "Fourteen-One, serving! This is the game point, you know!" The day she beat me twice in ten minutes she grinned the whole elevator ride back up to her apartment.

So, I was working out regularly, somewhat hesitantly dating an Italian, and hanging out with Brenda and boxed wine on the weekends, which is significantly cheaper than going to pubs. Things were looking up. During all this, however, there was The Barrista Drama playing out at work.

The Barrista Drama started on one cheerful Wednesday when our increasingly erratic, paranoid, drug-addled barrista flipped out, started screaming in front of the customers, called the boss a "[procreating] [female genitalia]," called one of the waitresses a "[mute] [procreating] [female canine]," and stormed out.

Thus ended the reign of barrista number one.

The next barrista was small and bald, and had a squeaky little voice and crazy eyes. By the middle of his first trial week he was displaying similar erratic, paranoid, drug-addled problems as the last one, and our boss sacked him too. He has called the café every half hour since, alternately hanging up or shouting abuse or begging for a job. "I think we dodged a bullet on that one," says the boss. Maybe so.

Barrista number three got firmly hired after just two trial hours. He's polite, efficient, good at what he does, and doesn't appear to believe that the chef is plotting a coup to take over the café with us waitresses as accomplices. He's also a decided flirt. On his first full day, I came back to the lunch counter at one point to find workmate Kia pointing an accusatory finger at me. "You were giggling!" she said, poking me in the ribs a few times for emphasis.

"I was not giggling," I said. "I was not giggling! Anyway, so what if I was?"

"I knew it," said Kia, triumphantly. "He's just your type."

"He is not my type—why, what's my type?"

"Male," said Kia.

So unfair.

What else? Ah, my birthday. First thing in the morning there was a lovely package from home, with lots of lovely things from lots of lovely people. The hallway outside my bedroom was filled with balloons and the girls at work had bought me delicious bath goodies from Lush (mmmmmmm, Lush, my favorite). In the evening my burgeoning international band of friends (Scotland, England, Ireland, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan...) and I went to a club, and I'm told I had a really good time. From ten till two is a complete blank, but apparently I danced, drank, alternately accidentally insulted and then declared undying love to all my friends, called people and had long conversations with them, and quoted Shakespeare at great length. ("But I don't have much Shakespeare memorized!" I exclaimed when friend Mahendra told me about that last part. "Well, you did that night," he said, a little wearily.) All in all the evening was declared a success, and the following week has been filled with people suddenly laughing and then starting stories beginning with, "Hey, do you remember when you…" to which I inevitably have to answer, "No. No. Did I really do that? Oh man…"

On a final note, Cornflakes. Every day I walk past a grocery store on the way to work, and one day I noticed a box of Cornflakes on display in the window. "Mm, Cornflakes," said my brain, and all day all I could think was CornflakesCornflakesCornflakesCornflakes. 

The next day on the way to work I couldn't resist, and popped in to buy a box. $1.99! said the label. "Wow!" said my brain. I picked up the smallest box and took it to the counter. "That'll be $4.49, please," said the girl. "Isn't it $1.99?" I asked. "Oh, no, that's these boxes," she said, handing me the most enormous box of Cornflakes I'd ever seen. 

"So… the small one is almost $5, and the gigantic one is $2?" I asked. Yes, yes it was. I bought the enormous box, and took it proudly to work, where I set it on the counter and gazed at it lovingly all day.

"Now, look, brain" said my body. "I know that we all agree that a Complete Lack of Moderation is the governing factor and guideline for Katie Jane's life. And I know that you're probably thinking, 'Cornflakes! Cornflakes! Cheap! Let's live on Cornflakes forever!' But let's be sensible, just once. Is it healthy to live on Cornflakes? Is it practical? No. Just eat your way gradually through the one box and be happy."

"Good thinking," said my brain, nodding agreement. "Very sensible. I couldn't agree more."

So, the moment work ended I rushed around the corner and bought four more enormous boxes.

Now my first thought when I wake up is, "Cornflakes!" and my first thought when I get home is, "Cornflakes!" I cancel dates and postpone nights out with friends all so I can get home for one more delicious golden bowl.

There's no punch line here; I just really like Cornflakes. I haven't been this excited about something stupid since Zorbing (Zorb!Zorb!Zorb!). If only I could find a way to roll down a hill in a giant hamster ball while simultaneously eating toasted flakes of corn, I think my life would actually be complete.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 11

In which Katie is grateful for her existence—i.e. the sort of self-indulgent travel post I always swore I would never put up here... sorry

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Saturdays are the days when I know why I came to Australia. After a week of working and laughing, gossiping and passing judgment on customers, meeting friends intentionally or by accident on the street, drinking and eating, Saturdays are a delightful treat the universe feeds to me; I devour them in solitude, blissfully.

Here are the events of last Saturday, July the 1st, a day splendid in its similarity to those that have come before and those that will come after.

The night before, Friday, I hang out with Manon and Volker. We consume mounds of free food and wine and beer in my room, and, maudlin mood having descended and settled for the evening, I tell them all about how I am going to die alone and be eaten by Alsatians. "Live in the moment," Manon tells me. "Stop trying to control everything," Volker tells me. I roll my eyes at them. We leave at eleven for the pub, and I am German for the evening; the pub is full of Germans and Argentineans. Four hundred men, and I'm not attracted to any of them, somehow. It's liberating. 

I sit with my drink, on a rare and jealously-guarded barstool, and watch the match. Manon flirts with an Aussie; every time he turns his back she makes a sour face and shakes her head at me (this is not the love of her life). The Germans are very German, and united in solidarity; the Argentineans are getting drunk. Luckily they're friendly drunks, and get affectionate with the enemy even as the German team pulls itself together and heads towards victory. One Argentinean leans over to me from time to time, pushing the corners of my mouth upwards—"Smile!" he says. "Smile! It's only a game!" I smile at him, a genuine smile even, but it fades. 

When we (I'm part of this we, because I'm German for the evening) win, we jump up and down and shout happily; then I escape, feeling glum as soon as I start to head home. I stop in at a convenience store to top up my credit on my phone. The guy behind the cash register flirts with me, and I flirt back; flirting has now become knee-jerk. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he asks. "Yes," I say regretfully. After nearly twenty-three years on this planet, I have finally learned to lie. The man shrugs good-naturedly and gives me a chocolate from the jar on the counter. "For you, because you are beautiful," he says with a smile. I get home around four in the morning, respond to an inquisitive text from Chester in a stroppy manner, and go to sleep, feeling morose.

At 7:45 I wake up. It’s Saturday. I gaze out the window of my womb-like room, and see a brilliant blue sky. Saturday thumbs its nose at the freezing cold, rainy weekdays; it is smug in its warmth and dresses itself in sunlight. I smile, close my eyes, sink back into sleep. At ten-thirty I wake up in earnest. I leap out of bed, put on clothes (a skirt, because, why not? It's Saturday!), and head outside to put the week's laundry on the line. This is my favorite thing to do first thing in the morning, with the sun shining and cockatoos flying overhead while I pin up my aprons, signifying to the world that today, Saturday, I'm not a café girl. That done, I head upstairs to the kitchen. Housemate Amina is there, and we say our good mornings; there is a comfortable silence while I make breakfast (yoghurt, toasted granola and honey) and she stares out the door across the balcony into the gold-blue day outside.

This morning ritual over, I put my red shoes on and take them out for a walk. Just as I'm about to leave the house, Mum calls for our Saturday chat. I sit straight down on the sidewalk in the sun for my weekly dose of Vitamin D and maternal advice. Mum, bless her heart, has been giving me the same advice for over two (maybe over twenty-two) years; it comes in an infinite variety of different guises, but it all basically amounts to the same thing: "Get over it, babe! Let go of the side of the pool, let the universe protect you; and stop trying to control everything, because you can't." As always, this advice strikes me today as a revelation, as if I'd never heard it before. Today we are talking about men, about how I'm fed up with all of them and their inability to keep up with me. "Stop interviewing potential husbands," she says (for the thousandth time). "Go out and have fun!" I continue to complain and she continues to reassert, using different words but the conveying the same meaning: "Get over it, babe! Let go of the side of the pool, let the universe protect you; and stop trying to control everything, because you can't." My mother's love is infinite, and I know that she will keep repeating this to me, as often as I need to hear it, until some day I actually listen. And then she'll keep repeating it anyway, just in case I forget.

When the conversation ends, my red shoes and I head up Oxford Street, past all the gay bars and clubs (which are still going strong from the night before), towards the city. I stop in at my internet café and see to my delight that I've received emails not only from Zappos.com and the Body Shop (as usual), but also from real human beings, as well. I spend a happy forty-five minutes reading up on my loved ones' lives, trying to absorb and memorize the details as if I were going to be quizzed on them come November.

Next comes shopping. This is my guilty sin in Sydney. Cash-in-hand, it turns out, is a dangerous phenomenon; I set aside rent money as soon as I'm paid on Friday, but every week before the weekend is out I've spent the bulk, if not all, of my money on clothes, lingerie, chocolate, beer, books, and gelato. All my life I have been thrifty to the point of miserliness; in Sydney, the money my boss hands me may as well be on fire, given how quickly it burns through the lining of my pockets. Clothes! I am a sucker for window dressings, rushing psychotically through traffic to try on this dress or that shirt, which look so fetching on the mannequins and sometimes, amazingly, on me as well.

Today I buy three long-sleeve shirts (to combat the cold weekdays) on the cheap, and then spend an unknown period of happy hours walking through a massive lingerie sale Manon had tipped me off to, picking up lacy, filmy bits of joy and thanking the powers that be that I was born female. By the time I leave the stores it is 3:30, and the sun is starting to sink into the waiting arms of the tall buildings on the other side of George Street (central Sydney's main road). I examine my wallet and am surprised to see only $85 dollars left; granted, I'd set aside rent and some money for going out tonight, but quite a significant amount had still departed today into the Australian economy. Ah well; I decide that, once again, I don't have enough money to even consider looking at shoes (I've already uttered the phrase, "Well, what are credit cards for?" twice since moving to Sydney, a phrase I've never used before in my life and one that I don't really want to make a habit of using too often). Next week, maybe, I'll make it to the shoe stores. This week, it's time for some free entertainment, so I decide to walk home via Hyde Park.

Hyde Park is where I normally have my Saturday chat with Mum, lying on my back on the grass under a palm tree in the sun, watching pigeons and rainbow lorikeets fly overhead as if they were each as ordinary as the other. Last week a plane wrote the word TRUST in large letters overhead as we chatted, reinforcing Mum's message of love ("Let the universe protect you!") even as we argued about the vying merits of Beethoven vs. Mozart. The words dissipated into the cosmos as we hung up, and when she called back to deliver her triumphant parting shot ("And that piece was by Verdi, not Mozart! So there!") I smiled and wiggled my fingers at the last parting wisps. TRUST, says the universe. Some day maybe I will.

Today the church bells in the cathedral start hammering away right as I step into Hyde Park, and I let them pull me towards them. I'm thinking of the time when Christine and Jonathan let me come along with them to bell-ringing in London, but I'm not even really thinking—more sort of just remembering the feeling of happiness from that day, and allowing my brain to be empty and fill itself with the joyful cacophony of bells. I sit on some side steps of the church and listen for a while, tucked away out of sight of everyone but the pigeons and the rainbow lorikeets.

Wandering on, I'm smiling for no reason (the Argentinean from last night would be so pleased with me). A huge wedding party is taking pictures on the steps of the cathedral. "I'm happy!" I think, and the wedding party lets out a great big cheer: "Hooray!" Japanese tourists are taking pictures of themselves next to snazzy cars, and adolescent boys are riding skateboards in the sunken square to my left. I walk back through Paddington, past beautiful half-naked men who are kissing each other and holding hands and generally personifying love. The lights turn green for me whenever I get to an intersection. Tourists ask me for directions and I know the answers. I see graffiti and recognize it as the work of this crazy German guy Manon and I met on the other side of town walking home late at night last week. I'm still smiling.

My body decides it wants juice, so I buy a liter and a half and get into bed, and read for hours and hours while drinking all of it. Manon texts me; she's in love, and can we go to this one particular pub tonight to meet the guy? Of course we can.

I go upstairs and make dinner, and as I tinker and potter in the kitchen I'm having a conversation with someone in my head, and that someone asks, "How are you today?" and I hear myself answer, "I'm transcendent. I'm transcendent today." 

I pull the enormous dictionary off the shelf and flip through it, and somehow I know that "transcendent" will be one of the words in the top right hand corner that keep you orientated in the alphabet. It is, page 1493: training shoe - transcendent.

Transcendent (it says) : exceeding usual limits, surpassing; beyond the limits of ordinary experience… transcending the universe.

But that definition isn't quite right. Today—just today—I'm not "transcending the universe;" I'm allowing the universe to contain me, to include me wholeheartedly in its love and beauty. Tomorrow I'll probably need Mum to patiently remind me to let go of the side of the pool once again; but for today—just today—I'm floating.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 10

In which Katie becomes a soccer hooligan, and over-utilizes parentheses

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Apparently, the Aussies aren't really all that into football. You wouldn't suspect this, however, from the way they carry on about the World Cup. Night and day, all you hear around these parts is "Socceroos! Socceroos! Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!" East Timor is burning down to the ground, and that gets a little bit of attention in the news (as did Nicole Kidman's marriage), but everything else is soccer, from dawn till dusk.

Now, I know as much about soccer as the next American; namely, I played it when I was little, and I like watching it on TV because the players are generally good-looking and the Mexican commentators are funny. Also, I know who David Beckham is. 

This, apparently, does not cut it as far as making me a soccer "fan" in this part of the world. Not wanting to be left out of the excitement, I decided to throw myself into the festivities with enthusiasm. Stage one: the Dutch vs. Serbia game. Manon, being Dutch, suggested that I should come along with her to the game at a pub called "Cheers," where nobody knows my name. After an enjoyable afternoon and evening spent indulging in platonic male companionship with Volker and Ryan (the German and Irish guys from the second Glebe hostel), we met Manon at the pub, and joined the small contingent of orange-clad fans in the middle of the crowd. 

The game commenced, and drinks were bought and consumed. Taking note of my surroundings, I discovered one very important fact that was to alter my perspective of the game of football forevermore: During football matches, the pubs are absolutely packed with men. We're talking non-platonic men, here.

Some twenty minutes into the game, Ryan appeared at my elbow. I had been standing silently facing the screen, totally ignoring my friends, for some long minutes. "You're totally mesmerized by the game?" he asked, sounding a little skeptical.

I jumped guiltily. "Oh, yeah, I love football," I mumbled hurriedly, and then, with a bit more honesty, "…plus, there's a totally cute guy standing between me and the screen."

I pointed to the guy, who had curly black hair and a curly elfin smile. He smiled at me. I melted a little. Ryan snorted derisively. "He's gay," he said firmly. I considered this new angle on things, and thought it seemed plausible. I was disappointed, but ah well; I'm in the market for an Australian gay best friend anyway. So, when after the game the guy asked for my number so he could meet us later at the next pub up the road, I didn't even give it a second thought. I texted him my number, patted him on the stomach affectionately and said, "We'll meet you there!"

Now, considering the number of times I have gotten into trouble by assuming that straight guys are gay and relaxing my guard around them, you'd think I would have learned my lesson. But no. So, when Chester (that was his name—Chester From London) phoned me from inside the pub, I rushed down to meet him in a most un-coy/feminine manner, not wanting to lose my potential new shopping buddy. Chester sat me down next to one of his friends, a girl, and went off to get drinks. The girl declared, "I work with Chester at the hospital!" (eh? hospital?), and promptly gave me the whole scoop on his love life for the last two years.

"…and then they broke up about a year ago, and she went home," she finished.

My reaction to this was a simple desire for clarification: "You mean—he's not gay?"

"No! No way!" said the girl.

Interesting…

So, I sat and chatted with an increasingly inebriated Chester for a while, leaving my international band of friends to find their own way home without me. ("He's not gay!" I texted to Manon. "How can you tell? Did he kiss you?" she wrote back. "Not yet," I responded prophetically.)

By six in the morning we were leaving the last pub, and I had learned the following facts: 1) he's a doctor, 2) he's thirty-two, 3) his three desert-island bands are Guns 'N Roses, The Beatles, and Queen (yes please), and 4) he's a thoroughly, convincingly heterosexual kisser. Furthermore, even while extremely drunk, he was still intelligent and interesting to talk to.

Which meant that when, eight hours later, I found myself on a date with Michael (the charmer mentioned in the last update), whose response to "What's your favorite movie?" was, "Um… You ask the hard ones… Well… I do have a certain fondness for American Pie 2," I had to fight the urge to call up Chester and ask if he wanted to marry me right then and there.

I fought the urge, and was rewarded with a date.

The date was not a rousing success.

For one thing, he showed up twenty minutes late, which had me wondering if I was getting stood up for the first time in my life. When he did arrive, the conversation was fine but the body language was all off. After an hour I had to leave to pick up Jemma and Kyle from the bus stop, and he had to leave to go home to sleep so he could be awake at 5 for the football ("Bloody football," I thought, and then, "Oh, no, wait, right, I love football…"). We left the pub, he gave me a peck on the cheek, and I went to pick up Jemma and Kyle. "How did it go?" they asked, all eager anticipation--why is everyone so keen for me to fall in love?

I sighed. "It was nice," I said, "But I'll never hear from him again. Oh well."

At the café, we girls discuss our love lives at top volume and in graphic detail all day long. Fortunately our customers, barristers and lawyers and accountants all, are far too busy and important to pay attention to us. Since the main requirement for working at our café is being female and cute (it is, of course, terribly wrong to hire people based on such criteria—but it's good for the ego when you're selected by them), there’s always a lot to discuss. Syndey is a remarkably good place to be young and single. I have literally been picked up while walking to work at seven in the morning—and yes, I gave him my phone number, because I like to reward initiative (we see so little of it in the States). Analyzing each others' incoming text messages from various males makes the time spent at work fly past most enjoyably; occasionally we take a short break to serve some coffee.

Thus, the girls at work have heard that same phrase, "It was really nice, but I'll never hear from him again. Oh well," several times in the past two weeks; namely, every time I've been out with the one they refer to as "The Doctor" (to separate him from the slew of others with less auspicious titles, such as "Bad Date Boy" and "The Guy Who Got Your Number At Seven O'Clock In The Morning"). "Why would he keep asking you out if he's not interested?" they ask. I never quite have an answer, but it doesn't relieve my anxiety on the subject.

But I seem to have strayed from the point of my update, which was soccer. I have watched a whole lot of soccer in the past few weeks. Jemma and Kyle were in town for a few lovely days, and I dragged them to an Aussie match; they seemed underwhelmed, but that was perhaps due to the fact that we were all too broke to buy beer. One day we opened the café at 4:30am, at the behest of some of our most valuable clients, so that everyone could watch Australia achieve a triumphant draw (allowing them to go on to the next level). That meant an eleven hour workday, and what did I do that evening? Went out to watch more soccer.

Granted, I still am not quite up to speed ("Manon! Why does that one guy get to wear all red?" "He's the referee, Katie." "Oh! That explains a lot!"), but I'm getting there. I find myself swearing loudly before I even realize the words are coming out of my mouth—soccer is a game that lends itself to a lot of swearing. When boys shout to me at two in the morning as I walk home to bed, "Who do you support?" I respond without thinking, "England, of course!" and receive scandalized looks in reply.

Alright, I've got to finish this now and take a nap before the Australia game tonight (at 1AM). I'm fighting off a cold and should probably just get a good night's sleep, but what the hell—it's only once every four years, right? Right.

Plus, I love football!

(Parenthetical Post-Script: We lost. Or rather, we had it stolen from us, those bastards! In the ninety-third minute! Oh, it was sickening. Whenever football comes on the TV at work we have to change the channel, now, or everyone just gets too upset.)

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 9

In which Katie becomes gainfully employed, is attacked by wild animals, and successfully pretends to be an extrovert

Saturday, June 10, 2006

There were two reasons I went to the strip-club interview, and I believe they say a lot about my personality. Reason number one: “Well, that job would probably give me something to write about.” Reason number two: "She said I'd need closed-toe black shoes. I don't have closed-toe black shoes. If I went for this interview, I'd have to go shoe shopping!”

Shoe shopping was undertaken; an astronomical sum was plonked down to acquire a pair of black Pumas, a shoe I've always coveted but have never quite been able to justify buying. Hoorah, new shoes; I like this strip joint gig already.

After mistakenly trying to barge my way into the peep show rooms upstairs, an endeavor that got me yelled at by a greasy-haired man in a polyester shirt, I found myself in a basement filled with low chairs and the requisite long stage and pole—empty; the stripping wouldn't get going for another hour or so. I was half an hour early for my interview. I perched gingerly on one corner of the stage, and tried not to think about who had writhed there recently. A cute young girl dressed in all black (with black closed-toe shoes) asked if I wanted a drink; I declined, and mentioned I was waiting for Julieanne. "Ah!" she said. "You're going to work here too?"

"Maybe," I said.

After much waiting I was finally allowed to speak to somebody in charge—not Julieanne, who never appeared, but a beautiful and enormously buxom lady with long blonde hair. She was boiling over with barely-contained soft round femaleness, and if even I couldn't tear my eyes away from her cleavage, I have no idea how anyone more testosterone-fueled ever could. "Here's how it works," she said in a matter-of-fact manner. "You don't get paid, you work on commission. For every drink you sell—beer or wine or cocktails—you get fifty cents. You pick up a little receipt from this packet for each drink you bring out, and at the end of the night you collect money for them. But the real way to make money is to get guys to buy you bottles of champagne. There's a $100 bottle, a $200 and a $300 bottle, and you get half of that money for each one you sell. I make around $800 a night." She looked at me doubtfully. "I'm not going to lie to you; it can pay really well if you're good at getting guys to buy you drinks, but if you're not, you won't make any money."

Oh dear. I did the math and, ruling out the champagne idea, realized I'd need to sell around 25 drinks an hour just to make minimum wage. I surveyed the establishment. Three cute, black-clad waitresses hovered near the bar, keeping a watchful eye on the four men who were sitting and watching the stage despite its absence of strippers. The instant one of them finished his beer a girl was by his side, smiling cheerily and suggesting he buy another drink.

"We don't really need you tonight," said the blonde bosomy lady, "But you could start Tuesday if you want."

I thanked her politely and said that I'd think about it; then I climbed the stairs, got out of King's Cross, and chuckled the whole way home, glancing down every now and then to admire my new shoes.

Those new shoes got a workout in the days to come. The morning after my strip-club interview, I had a brainwave: bookstores! It all started with my mother's intriguing suggestion of "How about doing something you might actually enjoy somewhat?" Fueled by the idea of trying to sell 25 drinks an hour, I set to work on my résumé, making it bubble with enthusiasm for books (not that that took much effort, of course). I printed off several dozen of those and hit the streets.

Same story as before. No one was hiring in the bars or in the clothes stores, and no one was hiring in the bookshops, either. I walked miles and miles every day, a long list of all the bookstores in Sydney in my hand, and left a résumé at every place that would take it. Everyone was very friendly but very firm; there was no need for me, sorry. This was the off-season; I should try again in September. September! My money was running out and the wealth of books that I looked at but could not afford each day wore my spirits down at an incredible pace. Bubbly Katie was running out of bubbles.

It was while trying to find one obscure bookshop that I found myself in a café that also sold secondhand books. I wandered in and looked around to see if the books had their own marketing division that might want to hire me, but no. Disheartened, I walked back onto the street. A handwritten sign in the café's window caught my eye: "Help Wanted, P/T or F/T." I turned around and marched back into the café. A man who looked like he was in charge was standing behind the cash register. I walked up to him, slapped my hands down on the counter, and summoned up my last bubble.

"What can I do for you?" asked the man.

"I need a job," I said with a smile, trying to keep the note of desperation out of my voice.

The man laughed. "We all do, babe. Do you have any experience?"

"Nope." Oh God.

He nodded. "Good, that's what I'm looking for. Tentatively, tentatively, you start Monday. Give me your number, I'll call you Thursday to confirm."

I reeled in shock. "Seriously? Bless your heart!" I exclaimed, gave him my number, and got the heck out of there before he had time to change his mind. I was so jubilant that I went straight home, had some bad sushi and spent the next day and a half throwing up.

* * *

There is an absolutely enormous cockroach on the wall above me as I type this and DEAR LORD it just fell and landed on my bed! And it's making its way towards me! Aaaah!!!! Go away! I'm sitting with all my blankets piled up at the very end of my bed, shaking my pillow at it, and it's not taking the slightest notice of me. Now it's disappeared under my mattress and is making a suspicious clicking noise. Are cockroaches supposed to click?

…which brings me to the subject of my housing situation.

Actually, my housing situation is pretty fantastic, apart from the cockroaches (and I quite like cockroaches, as long as they keep their distance and don't try to get into bed with me; sort of like my attitude towards men, actually). My flat mates are lovely, cute funny and interesting…

…wow, is that another cockroach or the same one? They sure manage to make a lot of noise for their size…

…right. Cute, funny and interesting. The two I've seen the most of are Sarah, a ceramics major, and Amina, a painter. Their art fills the house; Byzantine-inspired religious-themed paintings are propped on every surface in the living room and tiny delicate white ceramic birds swing between the poles of the banisters on the staircase. It's pretty great. My room is down in the basement, large but dimly lit, and close to the shower room and the outside dunny (how Australian am I? So Australian). Furthermore, in a house that is often empty and has no VCR, internet or cell phone reception, I frequently find myself sitting in my cave on my thin foam mattress, bored enough to write. In fact, I've written stacks since coming here, even going so far as to renew the attack on my novel, which was sadly abandoned for the libretto months ago and had been sitting, reproachfully staring at me, ever since. Now it is well fed, sleek and shiny and well groomed once more; this, too, is pretty great.

So, housing: check! Job?

There's not much point in describing the mechanics of what it's like to be a café girl; those of you that have done it know what it's like, and those of you that haven't have seen it in movies and on TV shows (I am so Rachel from "Friends"). I forget spoons, I drop lasagna, I get yelled at for making the food people order when they change their minds and decide they want minestrone soup after all and "that's what they ordered to begin with." Overall, I love it. I'm finished every day by 4:30, and the café is only open Monday to Friday, so I have evenings and weekends free. The pay is minimal, but it's paid in cash and we're allowed to eat food—breakfast lunch and dinner, five days a week, and take stuff home for the weekend. The food is yummy. The café is within walking distance of my house and right across the street from a cheap Internet point. My workmates are jolly and friendly, and our boss, a swarthy Grecian tyrant, is hilarious and great when he's not mad at you. I get to wear a cute apron. From noon onwards we play music, and during the slow points of the day you can take a casual glance around and discover just how many people know all the words to "Ice, Ice Baby." What more could a girl ask for? Granted, our pension plan is a jar with a sign reminding people that "tippers make better lovers," and our worker's comp programme consists of the boss yelling "be careful!" when we clean the meat slicer, but still. It's pretty great.

So, job: check! Friends?

I took a much-needed 2-day break with my Dutch friend Manon last weekend; we went to the Blue Mountains and hiked and ate delicious meals and saw wild parrots (black cockatoos, Jennie!). The Blue Mountains are really actually blue, it's pretty incredible. It's not so much the mountains themselves as the air that hangs between the mountains and you; apparently the menthol from all the eucalyptus trees fills the air with a colored haze. Scientific explanations aside, the effect is just magical. We had a good time, and returned refreshed.

Yesterday, Manon turned 30. The two of us went and got some Tapas and then hit the bars. Drinking, dancing, flirting, and so on; you know how it goes. At two o'clock in the morning I was at the bar getting some water (because I have done my Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate and now drink one glass of water for every glass of alcohol I consume). So, there I am, and I fall into short conversation with the extremely inebriated fellow at the bar next to me, during the course of which he offers me one hundred dollars to go back to his hotel room, presumably with him in tow. Affronted, I took my water and headed back to Manon, her new friend Geoff, and my new friend Michael.

"That guy over there just offered me $100 to go back with him to his hotel room!" I said indignantly.

Michael looked offended too. "That is not right," he said decisively. Then, thinking about it, he continued: "I would have offered you two hundred." He pointed his finger at me for emphasis. "At least." 

Ah, there, you see? Chivalry is not dead.

I have a date with him this coming Monday. Hey, what can I say? I'm a sucker for an accent!

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 8

In which... ugh

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Glebe, a lovely bohemian district to the west of Sydney's CBD, is pleasant and friendly. 

The Glebe YHA, however, is not. Many alliterative adjectives come to mind when I think of my stay there; dark, depressing, desolate, dank, dungeonesque all trip lightly off the tongue. The lights in my room didn't work. The people staying at the hostel were for the most part friendly but distant, generally traveling in groups or in couples and not looking for companionship of even the most temporary nature. 

I started hunting for houses; every day I would go on my search, and every day I would come back, tired and worn out, to a dark, depressing, dungeonesque room. I made friends with one girl, Manon, from the Netherlands; she was awesome. That improved things dramatically. Unfortunately, I then went out with her one night and accidentally made out with a guy who was also staying at our hostel, a chap from England who I'm sure was a lovely person really but who I never needed to see again, ever. The next morning I woke up to my dank, desolate room, and thought, "Enough. Flee."

So I fled.

The next hostel, four blocks down the road, was considerably nicer. My roommate the first night was a German girl named Pia. We chatted for a while; I asked her what she was doing the following day.

"Oh, I'm not sure," she said in her lovely German accent. "I thought perhaps to go to Bondi beach, or maybe to the Sue."

I didn't know what a Sue was, but I nodded intelligently.

The next morning it was sunny, and Pia had decided: she was going to the Sue. Did I want to come? Why yes, I did. The daily grind of house hunting was wearing me down at a rapid pace, and I thought maybe it was time I saw something of Sydney other than the inside of strangers' flats. I called Manon (the Dutch girl from the first hostel); did she want to come sight-seeing with us? Why yes, she did, where were we going? "I'm not quite sure," I confided as Pia left the room; "I think we're going to something called 'The Sue.'"

"Ah! The Sue! I have been wanting to go there. Yes, I will come," said Manon in her lovely Dutch accent. We met up and the three of us hopped on a bus. Now, having feigned knowledge of our day's events, I found it difficult to backtrack and ask exactly where we were going. My subtle interrogation on the subject revealed two things: it took a ferry-ride to get to the Sue, and there might be a platypus there. That last piece of information was enough for me, and I sat in a quiet, contented state of expectation for the length of the bus ride.

It wasn't until we got to the ferry building and went to buy tickets that light dawned: Oh! We're going to the zoo!

Sydney is a lovely city, it really is, quite staggeringly beautiful, especially around the water's edge. There are rainbow lorikeets in the trees and everything here seems bathed in a heavenly white glow; buildings shimmer and sparkle and twinkle at you in a most friendly manner.

Those are the things you don't really notice when you're schlepping around trying to find a place to live and work. Despite the many frustrations, disappointments and massive setbacks entailed, it turned out that finding somewhere to live was the easy part. Once you got someone on the phone who wasn't crazy, and made an appointment, you were shown a room that was generally decent, and were told that if you wanted it you should speak up now before it was gone. I found a lovely little place in the Haight district; here it's called "Paddington," but it's definitely the Haight. Just like at home, it's right next door to the Castro (you think I jest ?). 

The house was inhabited by three convivial art students. I wanted to live there; they wanted me to live there, but they wanted me to move in in about a week's time. Fine. I liked my hostel; the week would give me time to find a job in a bar, right?

Oh, Katie, you naïve little thing, with your bright eyes and your ever-so bushy tail…

Now, staying in my new hostel amongst the Germans, the Israelis, the Americans and the Kiwis was a chap named Ryan. Ryan was in a similar spot to mine; he'd just arrived, planned on staying for an extended period of time (emigrating, perhaps), and wanted to get bar work. He was also red-headed, Irish-accented and had a working knowledge of Metallica and Guns 'N Roses, which made him an infinitely pleasant companion as far as I was concerned. He had two things going for him that I didn't, however: an Australian passport and ten years experience in bars. Okay, well, whatever, right? As I pointed out to anyone who would listen, I, you see, am bubbly. That makes up for any lack of experience, yeah?

So, we set off to get our certification. In order to work in bars in Sydney you have to jump through a series of rather expensive hoops. The first of these is your RSA, or Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate. This is basically a 6-hour lecture detailing the dangers of drink. We snuck out half-way through for a beer, so I don't know how much impact it had. The second is the RCG, or Responsible Conduct of Gambling certificate, which details the dangers of games of chance, particularly concerning the "Pokeys," electronic slot machines, which are apparently a huge problem in Australia. Okay, so, twelve hours of my life gone, $160 poorer, but I'm all certified and ready to find work.

There is no work. None. In all of Sydney. Resumes in hand, I walked for miles and miles each day, sticking my head in doors and bubbling at people left and right; nobody needed help. Some places wouldn't even take the CV to keep on record; most places took it with a doubtful, "well, maybe…" and a polite but not optimistic "good luck." May, it turns out, is the off-season. I had thought that fewer backpackers would mean less competition for jobs; in actual fact, fewer backpackers means no jobs at all. As if to prove this, Ryan, with his ten years of experience, was still in the same boat as me—a boat that seemed more and more like it had maybe sprung a leak.

Lest anyone think that I was narrowing my field too much, let me assure you: I had broadened my horizons dramatically. My CV had flown through the doors of clothes shops, shoe shops, book shops, data-entry temp agencies, and every bar or pub in Paddington. No-one had even the slightest interest in me, a fact which, narcissistic Leo that I am, took me somewhat by surprise. A sample journal entry: "So, how are you supposed to get experience if no-one will hire you if you don't have it? Meh! I'll just hole myself up and write. All day, every day. Or else I'll read my '7 Habits of Highly Effective People,' become amazingly effective, and then get a job. Or else I'll blow my head off with a sawn-off shotgun. Except I wouldn't know how to get a shotgun; I'm not even qualified enough to commit suicide in this town!"

I was in danger of moving from "bubbly" to merely "chipper."

But Saturday, the day when all the jobs were listed in the newspaper, was going to be a good one, I could tell. I got up early; I made breakfast; I settled down with the paper.

I got to know the phrase "min. 3 yrs. exp. req." very well.

In all the ads on all the pages, only one didn't mention experience as a prerequisite; in fact, it even suggested that training would be provided. What the hell Archie, I thought. I phoned that number, left a message with “Julieanne,” and made a mental note to call back later in the day.

To my surprise, Julieanne called me back herself.

"Hello!" I said, rather shocked and very pleased. "I read your ad in the paper!"

"Yeah!" said Julileanne cheerily; so far so good. Then, just as cheerily, she continued: "So, are you comfortable with nudity?"

"Hell yes," I said, without missing a beat.

And that is how my one and only Sydney job interview came to be conducted in a strip club in the heart of the Red Light District.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 7

In which Katie composts, blows glass, joins a nunnery, and moves to Australia.

Friday, May 19, 2006

So much for gloating about the weather. As soon as Daphne left, a cold front settled on New Zealand. Possibly this would have been manageable, but unfortunately part of Brian's home-renovation whirlwind had removed the fireplace, leaving a gaping hole in its place. No heat at Wigs's. It was very cold. Being the lucky dog with the electric blanket I at least had the pleasure of a warm bed, but from dawn till dusk, it was very cold. Cousin Mike flew down and confirmed: it was very cold. Mike of course has no fat on his bones to keep him warm, but I have it in abundance and I was still (you got it!) very cold.

Still, it was marvelous being back "home," chasing the unwanted ducks out of the chook house and chatting with Butter the sheep like we were long-lost sisters. I jogged to warm myself up, took a hot bath every day at noon, and piled on the layers and complained a lot, all of which helped keep my core temperature high. Wigs, determined to do her part in this process, threw a lot of tasks my way to keep me moving. One fine Monday Mike and I were assigned to the compost heap; we were to remove all the useable compost from the bottom of the pile and layer it over the dug-over vegetable patches. Composting in the cold is a lowly task for a rockstar, but Mike put on one of his younger brother's castoff holiday sweaters, clenched a cigarette between his teeth, and attacked the pile with grim fortitude.

The glass-blowing workshop that I had signed up for back in February was canceled at the very last minute, much to my extreme disappointment. Knowing how upset I would be, however, the kind people at Chronicle Glass Studios offered me an amazing compensation: 4 hours of individual lessons. Hell yes! Now, I have always secretly suspected that I am an undiscovered genius at many things: opera singing, truck driving and glassblowing are high on the list of things that I will someday be "discovered" for and launched into international stardom. Back in February I even looked into the three-year degree for glassblowing that was offered in Wanganui, so sure was I that this would turn out to be my calling. Turns out, glassblowing is not my destiny. Fun, yes, and rewarding, yes (when you finally get the stuff cooled), but not, ultimately, what I want to do all day every day. For one thing, it's really bloody hot. More importantly, however, I find the gleaming, spinning glass at the end of the rod so beautifully smooth and beckoning that it requires most of my stamina to resist touching it (even though at times the heat radiating from the glowing blob can scorch the skin from several inches away). If I blew glass for a living, one day I would give in to temptation and place my hand right on the molten globule, and regret it immediately. Still, it was a fantastic experience and I now have several extremely useful paperweights, for all my paper-weighting needs, and a collection of somewhat Dr. Suessian glassware. My favorite glass, a light-blue G&T tumbler with a somewhat starboard tilt, has the distinct advantage of a built-in alcohol meter; if you've drunk enough that the glass looks straight, it's time to stop.

Moving the glassblowing lessons meant that Uncle Biv and Aunt Mo were able to come up for Sunday tea, during which we ate extremely delicious and calorific food and laughed and laughed and laughed.

* * *

People who know gumboots know that my gumboots are good gumboots. Green, solid, and adorned with decorative buckles, my gumboots gain me more compliments than most other items in my wardrobe combined. So, when Sister Sue, head nun at the Jerusalem convent, said, "Those are great boots," I merely smiled with smug satisfaction.

"I know," I responded in my customary manner. "They were my 21st birthday present from my aunt Penny. She also gave me an egg slicer and a dyslexic wooden duck."

"Why?" asked Sister Sue.

"Because she knows me very well."

Sister Alisi, Sister Sue and Sister Anna-Maria live at Jerusalem, a small holding in the hills an hour or so's drive out of Wanganui. I went up with Noel, a friendly chap who delivers mail and newspapers to the people who live out of town, early one Wednesday morning. Sister Anna-Marie, who is 89 and still as sprightly as a sparrow, greeted me and showed me to my room in the 100 year-old, empty convent. The three nuns slept in a little house up at the top of the hill. Their house was equidistant between the convent I was sleeping in and the grave of James K. Baxter. 

Here's a tip for any English majors out there that are traveling to NZ: Yes, you have heard of James K. Baxter, NZ's greatest poet. Any other answer is wrong, wrong, wrong! Luckily, I had already learned this lesson prior to arriving in JKB's old stomping grounds; Jerusalem is the site of both the house where he started a commune, and his grave. Yes, I had heard of James K. Baxter; I had a small book of his poetry and prose tucked in my bag, just to prove I wasn't fibbing. When I woke up at 4am one night unable to get back to sleep, I even read some of it.

My time with the nuns was brief, wet, and pleasant. It rained fairly continuously the whole time I was there, but I still managed to get some gardening done, though not as much as I would have liked. The sisters were wonderful; Sister Alisi is funny and bold, Sister Anna-Maria is an inspiration to us all, and Sister Sue is a lovely, gentle woman with a backbone of steel—just my kinda gal. Even gardening in the rain wasn't that unpleasant, thanks to some lovely NZ birds called Fantails, which flit around gardeners in the most cheerful and friendly manner, and seem to adore both a light rain and the bugs that fill the air when you turn over compost. There was only one moment of peril, when I was ushered out onto a bridge by Sister Alisi and made it some distance before realizing that there wasn't much in the way of "handrails"—more sort of "empty air waiting to be tumbled into." Whoops! I backed off the bridge slowly, while Sister Alisi cackled gleefully behind me.

* * *

After my return from the convent I had only a few days left in New Zealand. Wigs, Brian and I had many feasts to celebrate the end of my stay with them, and Wigs tried to cram in all her last-minute teachings in her grand effort to domesticate me (in my time here she's taught me useful skills, like "how to wash a dish," and "how to hang clothes on a line," that had previously eluded me). Ice cream was made; recipes were scribbled down; must-read book lists were exchanged; and then suddenly I was on a bus for Auckland. Leaving Wanganui was terribly sad, and probably would have been sadder if I'd really realized I was actually leaving this time; I've been through Wanganui so many times now (I've done the length of the North Island six times since I've been here—not terribly efficient, really) that it didn't really click that this time I wouldn't be coming back, at least not for a long while.

I spent one night in Auckland and then two nights saying goodbye to Mandy and family; on Thursday morning Mandy drove me up to the airport and I boarded a flight to Australia. 

* * *

Australia! This time around I declared everything I could possibly think of, from my gumboots (thoroughly scrubbed) to the wooden box that holds my chess set. The lady didn't even look at my bag; "Yeah, that sounds fine," she said, and waved me through. I found the shuttle stop I was looking for, got hustled onto a shuttle filled with friendly Kiwis and Germans, and was whisked away from the Sydney airport and into the CBD. To my irritation the shuttle didn't take me to my hostel as promised, but instead dropped me off in the middle of town and told me what bus to take.

I waited for that bus, clambered aboard, forced the poor driver to give me 8 dollars change, and stood quietly stewing on the back stairs by the exit. People got on, people got off, and Sydney whizzed by, but I paid scant heed; I was too busy trying to figure out if I was on the right bus. Eventually I decided I was, and relaxed a little. As we neared my stop, a guy in a rugby shirt stood up and offered me his chair. I said thank you, and we talked for a while; here for six months, hope to get a job, never been to Sydney before, how about you?

"I'm here working and studying," he said.

"What do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a chef, but I'm training to be a masseuse."

Ha. "You're the perfect man!" I exclaimed.

"I suppose I am," he said. The bus stopped. "I hope you enjoy it here in Sydney," he said with a smile, and got off.

I just might, I thought.

I managed to get off my bus eight blocks too soon, and had to hoof it up the road, bags in tow, but I was still smiling. A magpie glared at me from someone's front yard. "What a pretty bird," I thought absently, and then it occurred to me: I'm in Australia. Everything's deadly here! That magpie is probably more poisonous than King Claudius!

Then my brain did a little rewind, and repeated the first part of that:

I'm in Australia. I'm in Australia!

...what the hell am I doing in Australia?

No, wait, back to: I'm in Australia! Woo!

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 6

In which Katie and Daphne form a band classically trained to rock your socks off, ward off a demon, use their music to incite a riot of the people against City Hall, emerge into the rubble and chaos that remains after this riot and agree to lead as two kings, only  then Katie sends Daphne off to check out a fictitious Idaho potato famine and in Daphne's  absence demotes Daphne to the status of "Duke," and so Daphne and Katie poison each other's drinks and that's where the CD ends.

Or:

In which Katie and Daphne clean toilets, drink alcohol, meet people, avoid getting murdered, go hiking and kayaking, see a dawn parade, drive on the left, and say the word "crap" an excessive number of times.

Monday, May 01, 2006 

 Let's face it: after Zorbing (Zorb! Zorb! Zorb!), the rest of life seems merely a hollow nothingness, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. You find yourself picking disconsolately at your sushi, thinking, "You know what would improve this eating experience? Somehow incorporating the use of a giant hamster ball into the consumption process." Breathing seems hardly worth the bother. "Life," you sigh; "Don't talk to me about Life."

Still, somehow Daphne and I found the strength to go out partying two nights in a row, made friends with various locals (a shout out to Anthea, possibly the nicest person in the world, and Glen the raft guide who accidentally stole my soul), failed to break into the hot pool late at night, and eventually found ourselves on a bus to the hilariously-named town of Matamata.

What's in Matamata, you ask? Well, for one thing, Hobbiton. But since the tour of Hobbiton costs fifty dollars and basically involves looking at places where sets used to be, Daphne and I resisted the temptation and went to the folk music festival instead. Here we met up with Mandy and her two eldest kids, Geni and Jack. Mandy, going above and beyond the call of duty again, had brought a tent and mattress for Daphne and me, and the five of us formed a little camp. Mandy slept in a cabin made from an old horse trailer, and I decided that this horse trailer-turned-home was all I wanted in life, and that as soon as I could I would purchase one, fix it up, and live in it for a number of years. (Katie: You've just received a horrifyingly expensive education! What are you going to do next? Well, Bob, I thought I might become a vagabond and live in a horse trailer? That's sure to please my father!)

In lieu of paying admission to the festival, Daphne and I had agreed to clean toilets, which we dutifully did each day. Cleaning toilets: not too awful, but certainly not fun. The worst part about it, though, was the group of obnoxious ten-ish-year-olds who clustered in one of them every day, staring at us rudely and leaving disgusting things for us to find—wrappers stuck to the mirror, soggy piles of wet toilet paper on the floor, and so on. 

On our penultimate day of cleaning they were being particularly awful: hanging about and gawking at us, and then one entered a stall and sat there obstinately, so that we couldn't clean it, even after all her friends had succumbed to our vicious glances and left the room. "Hey, April!" she shouted to one of these vanished friends. "April! April! Listen! Who am I being?" Then came the sound of her blowing up a balloon. Daphne and I looked at each other, and I pushed a broom under the door and rattled it at her. "April! Check it out! Who am I being!" she let the air out of her balloon so that it squealed, and laughed, and started blowing it up again. "Who am I being, April?"

"You know you're the only one in here, don't you?" I asked, voice dripping with disgust.

"Yeah," came the whiny, defiant voice, "I don't care." And she continued blowing up the balloon and letting it out. We gave up on doing her stall, and gathered up the supplies. 

Now, the supplies have two parts: one person has to carry the box with all the cleaning fluids, and one person has to carry the big yellow bucket with the broom and mop handles sticking out of it, which is quite unwieldy. Daphne grabbed that bucket this time, and as I held the door open and she passed through it we saw that all the other obnoxious little girls were standing just on the other side of the door, in the next doorway, cluttering it up and still gawping at us rudely. There was not enough room for Daphne to get through, and they weren't planning on moving. Fed up, we barged through anyway, and just as Daphne rounded the corner, THWACK! the handle of the mop, which was sticking out behind her, smacked one of the girls in the forehead. "Dude!" I exclaimed, a bit taken aback. "Are you okay? Daph, you just hit this girl in the face!"

Daphne doubled around. "Oh, did I?" she asked in a excessively sweet tone of voice. "Oh no, I am so sorry, let's look at it. Hmm, no mark, I think you're okay." And she turned around and left, with me hurrying after her.

Once we were out in the fresh air I started to laugh. "You hit her in the face!" I chortled. "Man! I can't believe that happened!"

Daphne looked at me, and then said quietly, "I did that on purpose."

This shocked me to the core. "You what? Naaaah, never—you, you did that on purpose?"

"I did that on purpose. Little brats, wouldn't get out of my way? I didn't mean to hit her in the face, but I meant to hit her."

Daphne strode onwards, while I stood a moment, utterly awe-struck. Every time I think Daphne has achieved the highest pinnacle of amazingness, she does something to show me she's only just getting started.

The next day there was a large and smelly smear of poop on the seat of the very last toilet we had to clean. Daphne scrubbed it without complaint; all she said was, grimly, "Well, I guess she got her revenge."

Aside from toilet duty, the music festival was a pleasant experience. We learned to Irish dance, sang Joni Mitchell and Weird Al songs with our awesome next-tent-neighbor Laura Quinn, sat in on some instrument workshops, and ate and ate and ate and ate. Man, did we ever eat a lot. I had hamburger after hamburger, and here's a cultural note for you: in NZ it's normal to put beets on your burger, and I must say it's quite a pleasant addition. 

Finally, after a brilliant last-night concert, the festival ended and we all packed up to leave. Daphne and I had the good fortune to catch a ride with a lady named Monica, who drove us all the way to Wellington (an extremely unpleasant ten-hour drive, due to traffic) and then insisted on putting us up for the night. "Are you sure you want two strangers sleeping in your house?" we asked dubiously. "Yes, yes," she insisted; "When I first got here all the Kiwis were incredibly generous towards me; I feel I have to pass on the favor." 

Out of sheer gratitude we resisted the cliché of stabbing her in her sleep and stealing all her worldly possessions. The next morning she fed us, drove us into town and dropped us off. We dumped our luggage, went shopping, and then met up with Cousin Cleo for a kebab lunch (here’s to you, Abrakebabra!). 

Cleo seemed well, and showed us how the DJ booth in her flat was coming along; it's almost finished now, and looks shockingly professional and cool. "I want to live HERE!" Daphne muttered to me. "Join the club," I muttered back.

* * *

"What do you want to do in the South Island?" asked the incredibly helpful lady at the information center. By this point, Daphne and I had sussed out exactly what we were doing in New Zealand. "I'll tell you what we want to do," I said confidently; "We want to take pictures of ourselves looking cute in front of spectacular scenery so that the people back home are jealous, and we want to do it without exerting too much physical labor or spending too much money." 

"Sounds good," said the lady, and laid out an itinerary for us. The plan was this to spend the night in a Wellington hostel, party with Cleo, and head down to the South Island the next day. Unfortunately, the Rolling Stones had gotten into town one day before us, and EVERY SINGLE HOSTEL was booked up. "Crap!" we said, and booked a ride on the ferry to the South Island that evening instead.

Now it's time to tell you the story of how James saved our lives. You may recall the night I spent in Auckland briefly falling in love. I feel also perhaps I should use this moment to record the following conversation, which might clear up any misunderstandings:

Mum: Well, Katie, I'm just glad you had a one-night stand. Katie: [shocked] Mother! I didn't have a "one-night stand!" And besides, we were in a hostel! Where would we... y'know… "stand?" Mum: Oh! Oh. Well, what was it then? Katie: It was a "fling." Entirely different, and not nearly so seedy.

Back on track: Well, in that Auckland hostel room were three boys we ended up befriending: Stu, who was Scottish and perpetually either hungover or in the process of getting hungover, the infamous English boy Sam, and James, from Kentucky. James, when we met him, was jetlagged, and not in tip-top shape, but he did his part: came out, had some drinks, chatted, and then disappeared at some point to go, we assume, to bed. Nice guy, we thought, Cute, but quiet; and didn't think much more of it. 

But then! In Rotorura, home of the Zorb (Zorb! Zorb! Zorb!), we saw him at the hostel bar. "Is that James from Auckland?" I asked Daphne. "It is!" she said. She went over and said hello, and then we wandered off for a while, chatting and making friends. 

About halfway through the night Daphne came over to me. "Dude!" she exclaimed. "I just thought to myself, I'd better go make sure poor quiet James is okay, and look!" She pointed, and I saw, much to my surprise, that James was surrounded by several beautiful blondes, who were all hanging on his every word and laughing uproariously at his jokes. "Holy crap!" I exclaimed. "Good for James!" I went up to him and gave him the thumbs up.

"How you doing, James?" I asked. James looked at me with cheerful frankness.

"I'm so drunk I can't even move!" he said merrily.

"Good on ya!" I said. Later still I came back with a large glass of water. "Here, drink this," I said, motherly. "It'll help your head tomorrow."

James sniffed at it. "Hah!" he said. "This coming from the girl I saw coming home fully-dressed at six in the morning in Auckland!"

"Oh James," I said a bit mournfully, "You know too much. You'll have to die."

"I can't even mooooove!" he crowed.

And then! There we are in Wellington, just having discovered that the Rolling Stones have stolen our hostel, packing to go to the ferry, when we hear from our right, "Hello girls!"

You guessed it, James again. "James!" I exclaimed. "You realize you're going to end up marrying one of us now, right?"

"Yeah, probably," he said. Meeting up with people you've already met is a fairly common occurrence when you're on the backpacking circuit, but every time it happens you feel like you're meeting up with a long-lost best friend. The three of us headed to the ferry together, and somehow managed to pick up another American. This American, a fellow who went to school in Eastern Oregon, talked to me earnestly and at extremely great length about his love for Lord of the Rings and his personal opinions concerning the Odyssey versus the Iliad (apparently the Odyssey is better). James only withstood about three minutes of this before excusing himself and disappearing. On her way to the bathroom, Daphne saw him flirting with some cute chick with a funny accent. "James!" she said. "You abandoned us!"

"Ha ha!" he responded sympathetically.

At the end of the 3-hour trip we said a polite goodbye to the Odyssey fan and made our way to the gangplank. Here's where things got a bit alarming. A tall, pale, wild-eyed man who'd been sitting near us on the ferry came and stood next to Daphne, and followed us down the gangplank. Noticing this, Daphne slowed down; the man slowed down. She sped up. He sped up. The whole long way down he stared creepily at us and matched our pace, one step behind. When we reached the bottom Daphne pulled me sharply aside so that he would get sucked forward with the group, and told me what was happening. I looked over to the luggage carousal; sure enough there was a wild-eyed man staring directly at us through the crowd of people. He didn't blink or look away. "Crap, you're right," I said. I looked again. He was still staring. "What do we do?"

Just then, Daphne spied James, waiting patiently for his bag across from the creepy man. "Let's go hang out with James for a bit," she said, and we made our way over to him. The creepy man watched us the whole time.

"Hey James," said Daphne, giving a big friendly smile, and then, still smiling, said in a conversational tone of voice, "We're going to hang out with you for a bit till that creepy guy over there goes away, okay?" James looked a bit confused; I think he thought we were talking about the Odyssey fan. "Sure, whatever," he shrugged. As soon as the creepy man saw that we were with James, he turned around and walked abruptly out the door. Daphne and I breathed a little easier.

We walked with James out to the dark parking lot, and then he hopped in a van with his foreign chick and left us to walk to our hostel. The walk was a bit scary ("I really think James could have been a bit more gentlemanly and walked us to our hostel," huffed Daphne; "I don't think he understood what was going on," I soothed) but we made it unscathed; obviously showing that we had a male on our side had done the trick.

So, that is how James inadvertently saved our lives.

* * *

In the South Island we did the Able Tasman walk, which means we were driven to a beautiful crystal blue bay, got picked up by a boat and driven across some beautiful crystal blue water and deposited by another beautiful crystal blue bay, so that we could spend the next three hours walking through lush green vegetation past—you guessed it!—beautiful crystal blue bays. Each one was more spectacular than the last, most beautiful thing I've ever seen, blah blah blah. Look at the pictures and weep, kiddies. 

[]

Following that we did a day-long kayak around the Marlborough Sounds, which were very beautiful but a bit repetitive; in the spirit of that I did some sort of repetitive-stress injury thing to my elbow and was in significant pain for quite a while. We got good pictures, though, and that's what counts.

After that Daphne's month was nearly up, so we rented a car and I, being awesome, drove on the left-hand side of the road all the way from Wellington to Auckland. We stopped in at Wanganui for the night, and then got up at 5AM to attend the Anzac Day Dawn Parade with Wigs and Brian. Silently we crept through the morning dew to the car, settled in quietly, buckled our seatbelts. Brian turned on the engine, and suddenly the music of The Have came blasting out at a hundredbillion decibels. 

Brian reached for the CD player and then, instead of turning down the volume, flipped ahead a few tracks. "You have to hear this one!" he bellowed. "Gosh! This one's new! I like it!" I bellowed back. "What?" "I like it!" "What?" This is why I love Brian and Wigs; I've never met such freakishly supportive parents in my life. They listen to Mike's music on fairly continuous repeat, and it doesn't occur to them that 5AM might not be a good time for rocking; for them, any time is a good time for the music of The Have.

The Anzac (Australia-New Zealand-Army-Corps) Day parade happens every year, but this year was The Year of the Veteran, and 3,000 people turned out in the dawn for the ceremony. The beginning, with me standing right behind Wigs on a hill in the cold listening to bagpipes, was a bit too much like Grandpa's funeral for me, and I bit the inside of my cheek viciously for a time because I don't like crying in public. The ceremony was lovely, though, and seemed to have the right amount of respect for those passed mixed with the deep longing that maybe some day the need for war will be at an end. Here's hoping.

After that, Wigs stuffed bacon into us and then set us on the road. I drove and drove, stopping only once for food, and made it to Auckland with both of us intact and the car only missing one hubcap—quite good really.

Several days of partying in Auckland ensued, in which Daphne and I made friends with various girls from our hostel room, and I utterly failed to get Cousin Mike to come out with us so that he could fall in love with Daphne (my clever plan from the start). 

On our last night together Daphne and I went to see The Have play with two beautiful busty blondes in tow (Caroline and Vicky, both from England); The Have were fantastic and Daphne bought a t-shirt. Then we four girls went back to the hostel bar, flirted and got bought drinks and generally had a good time. At three in the morning I was in McDonalds with Vicky, discussing her love life and eating revolting chips and milkshakes. We stumbled back to the hostel, still chatting, and then the elevator door opened and spat me out on my floor. "Oh!" I said. "Crap! I—bye!" "Bye!" said Vicky from the elevator, also looking a bit confused. I still haven't gotten used to this whole best-friends-for-a-night business that hostels engender. How do you tell someone all the details of all your breakups and then never see them again? The doors were shutting. "Um… Caroline has my number, I think!" I yelled. "I don't have Caroline's number!" said Vicky with consternation. "Crap!" I said. "Crap!" she said. "Well, bye!" I said as the doors shut. "Bye!" I heard from within.

Five hours later Daphne and I were in the hallway hugging our own goodbyes. She was off that night for exotic foreign parts, and I was hopping on a 9AM bus back to Wigs's. It was a terribly depressing moment, but the hangovers helped distract us. 

"I'm not going to bother being sad," said Daphne firmly; "I'll see you soon." "And we'll write a lot," I affirmed. "I'll walk you down to the front desk," Daphne offered. "Nah, go back to bed, it'll make me happy that at least one of us is asleep," I said. We hugged again. "I love you, dude," she said. "I love you too, man," I said. And then we turned and went our opposite directions.

* * *

So there I was, hungover and sad, standing in the rain at the busstop, and Paul Simon was crooning in my ears: "How long you think that you can run that body down? How many nights you think that you can do what you've been doing? Hoo, now, quit foolin'."

Too right, I thought, and got on the bus for Wanganui.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 5

In which Katie falls in love, sings underground, rolls downhill, and actually writes a post about something other than emotional angst

Monday, April 17, 2006

Mandy, the incredibly warm and lovely tree-hugging goddess-type woman from whom Mum inherited Mandeville Garden Company, is taking me on a native seed collecting tour of her area. 

We barrel around curves, stopping frequently and abruptly to leap out, gather seeds from beside the road—cabbage tree seeds, tea tree seeds, prickly seeds, smooth seeds, seeds that need to be digested by pigeons, purple seeds, white seeds, blue seeds, seeds the size of my thumbnail, seeds so small you can barely see them. The sun is shining. 

Finally we see the plant that's eluded us so far—a flax, perched high on a boulder, in a spot that many would consider to be unreachable. For Mandy, nothing is unreachable. Towing a somewhat reluctant Katie behind her she scrambles over sharp rocks, calling out a warning about wasp nests ("But how will I know where they are?" "You'll know when you step on one!"). 

Just as I've resigned myself to scaling a sheer boulder, Mandy looks at a tree growing out of a crevice and her eyes light up. "This is an [extremely long Latin name] plant! These grow everywhere in San Francisco, but I've never seen one in the wild here!" 

She sends me back down over the sharp rocks and potential wasp nests to grab a new seed container. By the time I get back up she has wedged herself so deeply down in the crevice that I can't see her, but I can hear her voice, disappointed—it's a different plant, a different extremely long Latin name, not worth collecting. But the cool green air has given her a chance to think, and she's remembered that there might be a flax plant in a more accessible location just around the bend. We don't have to climb the boulder just yet.

Sure enough, two curves later there is a huge flax plant growing right on the side of the road, huge and beautiful and purpley-brown. We get out, pop open the seed pods, which look like miniature bananas made out of dark brown leather, and the seeds are perfect: black and shiny, like the wings of insects. Mandy shakes one of the long stalks and the seeds come raining down over me, sparkling black confetti landing in my hair and down my shirt and in my mouth. I'm in New Zealand, and New Zealand is all over me.

Later, Mandy and I throw exorbitant handfuls of shimmery black flax seeds over a recently constructed roadside bank, filling the empty space with the promise of things to come. We laugh, delighted with our subterfuge, and it feels like the universe is laughing with us.

***

Daphne, the little minx, discovered that her life was a void without me and came to join her far-flung friend in New Zealand. Mandy's family welcomed her as they had me—with open arms, good food and a lot of pots that needed weeding. Thus, Daphne spent her first few jetlagged days planting flax, repotting flax, and generally getting rather sick of flax.

After several days of this, the two of us headed to Auckland for a one-day break—and what a break we had. Determined to cram as much as possible into our short stay in the city, we set off to tick off all the boxes on our girly checklist: stops in the pharmacy, the beauty salon, the bath goods store, the shoe stores, the clothes stores… and so on. The highlight of this was when, blood sugar levels running low, I literally brought an entire dressing room crashing down on my head, our signal that maybe it was time to put some food in me. Finally, having exhausted ourselves and our pocket books, we headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out. We ended up in a bar with three guys from our hostel room, and I spent the next nine hours out on the town falling briefly in love with one of them, an English boy named Sam who was ever so sweet. Finally, at six in the morning I crawled into my bunk, trying hard not to wake up Daphne (who had gone to bed at a sensible hour). By ten I was dragging my stuff down to the reception desk, too wrecked to even leave a goodbye note for the English boy, and by two Daphne and I were heading back to Mandy's, me a little heartsick and violently hung over.

Now, as many of you know, falling temporarily in love—or falling in love, period—is not a habit I indulge in terribly often. I found the ensuing heartsickness quite unpleasant, I must say, and the whole thing made my former routine of emotional chastity seem quite sensible (though not very exciting). I moped. For several days. I sighed forlornly and frequently, and listened to James Blunt on tragic repeat. Daphne, stalwart friend that she was, put up with this with admirable fortitude, and after a few days I got over it and cheered up. Crisis averted! Thus, science fact: Katie is capable of interacting in a romantic manner with a human male without it ending in either dragging boredom or horrifying disaster. Who knew?

More flax; more hanging out with the three youngest Villacortes (Daphne in a wondering voice: "I actually like John and Mandy's kids. I actually like them! I never like people younger than me!"), more flax, still more flax, and then Daphne and I decided that perhaps it was time we left the ever-so-comfortable womb and found some exciting scenery to take pictures of ourselves standing in front of.

First stop: Blackwater rafting. To do "the cave thing" in New Zealand, one goes to a town called Waitomo. There is little reason other than the caves to go to Waitomo, let me tell you. We arrived a day early and wandered around, getting more and more creeped out. At a loss for what else to do, we we walked forever along a deserted road, then turned into the area that houses the Hobbit Motel. There was no one in sight. We looked at the giant airplane that people can sleep in, the railcar, and the two rooms set into the hillside with round doors (the hobbit rooms, obvs). Still no people. 

After much walking, we reached the top of the hill where the reception area was. A sign, which said "Petrified Pig," was sitting on what appeared to be a large lump of wood. We walked inside. Behind a giant counter sat a woman, who smiled and said nothing. Daphne and I walked past her into an absolutely enormous dining hall with hundreds of chairs, which was completely empty and silent. Over everything hung an enormous sheep's head made of wood. The room echoed with silence. 

Daphne and I backed out of the dining hall towards the reception desk. "I have to know how much it costs to stay here," muttered Daphne, and then smiled at the lady behind the desk—the only person we'd seen besides ourselves in hours. "How much would it cost to stay here for a night?" asked Daphne. The woman looked up and tapped her pen professionally against the register. "I'm sorry, we're all booked up," she said. 

On the way out we nearly got run over by a tour bus; it entered through the gate, circled around, and then the driver stuck his head out of the window and shouted, "Do you want me to take a picture of you two?" We said no. The people on the bus stared at us silently. The bus driver offered again. We said no again. The driver pulled his head back in, headed out the gate and back the way he'd come. "A fully-booked hotel that's entirely empty; a tour bus going nowhere… what is wrong with this town?" Daphne whispered to me. I didn't have an answer.

The following day made it all worth it, though. We originally decided to go blackwater rafting entirely because it had a cool name (it's like whitewater rafting, only it's black because it's in the dark and it's BADASS!), so we picked the cheapest option that mentioned glowworms and didn't mention abseiling, which is shimmying down a long bit of rope into an abyss, and not an activity for me. 

My first experience with caving, in a lava tube in Oregon, was one of the worst experiences of my life, but when I wwoofed in Ireland one of the hosts decided that caving was compulsive, and I discovered that caving is great if the guide is competent, there are things to look at, and you don’t get several miles underground before discovering that you’ve gone the wrong direction and there is no exit (take heed, first Oregon trip). So, I was excited about the prospects of floating on an inner tube in an underwater river, but not too hopeful about the whole thing, especially since we'd bought the cheapest option.

We officially had our socks blown off. The whole thing was fantastic, even though the guide—who does the tour twice a day six days a week—was little jaded ("This is the part where I scare them… this is the part where they tell me about their home towns…"). We climbed over rocks and through tunnels, slid down muddy banks and examined stalactites, waded through gushing rivers and swam in deep, cold, still water. Approximately halfway through we jumped onto inner tubes and floated down a river, gazing up at the starry sky of blue glowworms twinkles, and sang Amazing Grace into the echoing chamber. It was magical. Even the knowledge that glowworms are actually the maggots of the Fungus Fly and create their light by converting their excrement into energy through the use of digestive enzymes couldn't spoil the moment.

So, blackwater rafting: check. The next item on our list was ZORBING. Daphne and I went to Rotorura and Zorbed—mightily! Oh, how we Zorbed! Oh, the Zorbing that was done by us! Zorb! Zorb! Zorb Zorb Zorb!

Zorbing, for those who have not yet encountered the phenomenon, means rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable hamster ball filled with water. I shit you not. As soon as I read the word "Zorb," the only word listed under the letter Z in the index of the Lonely Planet guide, I knew that we had to do this thing called Zorbing (Zorb Zorb Zorb!). Since Daphne had officially picked the blackwater rafting, she was somewhat obliged to join me on my quest for the ultimate activity (Zorb Zorb Zorb!), but as we stood in front of the ten-foot high plastic ball and the guide encouraged us to "jump straight in, arms in front like Superman," she looked a little dubious. Dutifully we jumped straight through the hole into the warm water inside the ball. The guide stuck his head through the hole. "Now when I hit the ball three times, you have to walk straight out over the edge," he said cheerfully, and zipped up the hatch. "...Really?" said Daphne in a small voice. Boom! Boom! Boom! went the guide's hands on the outside of the ball. "Let's go!" I exclaimed. We stood up, walked two tentative steps towards where we thought the edge might be, and suddenly the ball took off, barreling down the hill at a ferocious pace, as Daphne and I squealed and shrieked and tumbled around, legs tangled up like spaghetti. It was

FAN

BLOODY

TASTIC!

I highly recommend Zorbing (Zorb Zorb Zorb) to one and all. There's one coming to Tennessee soon, and then Vegas. Anybody wanting to do a road trip that culminates in 30 seconds of Zorbdom, just let me know.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 4

In which Katie is socially awkward for an extended period of time.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

I’ve long harbored a fantasy wherein I travel the world, sleeping on the floors of various relatives, never actually getting a job, never actually figuring out what I want to do with my life, but being such a charming pleasant and amusing houseguest that nobody minds my imposition. In the end of March, I decided to put this plan into action with the members of my own generation of relatives, starting with my two eldest paternal cousins, Cleo and Mike.

So, Jemma, Kyle and I arrived in Wellington, and had the requisite look at Te Papa (New Zealand's national museum). Te Papa is very interactive--lots of buttons to push and earthquakes to be simulated, and various rather snobbish computer consoles that prove you actually know even less about Maori culture and language than you thought you did. After a couple of hours we tired of this, and, it being about five o'clock in the evening, I decided perhaps the time had come for me to figure out where I was sleeping that night. I tried Cousin Cleo; no answer. I tried hostel number one; no vacancy. And so it went.

After twenty minutes of trying I was getting a bit desperate, and I was almost out of phone credit. Kyle, Jemma, and Jemma's cousin were all standing around waiting for me to figure it out so they could go. Just as I hung up on yet another hostel, my phone rang. Hope soared. "Hello?" "Hey, Katie, it's Cleo!" Ah, Cousin Cleo, whom I had not seen or spoken to in four years. "Cleo!--can I sleep on your floor?" Mentally, I kicked myself. How about a "Hello, how are you, I hear you're not fourteen anymore" first?

Luckily, Cleo is more gracious than I am. She said Of course, and offered to pick me up. So, working myself into a fit of guilt for my imposition, I sat, morosely eating a peanut butter sandwich in the rain and looking hopefully at all passersby. 

A girl walked past, and I admired her shoes. Hot pink with white polka dots, they stood out against the grey of the rest of the world. Suddenly, the pink shoes were right in front of me, and I was looking up at Cousin Cleo. "Katie?" she said, a bit hesitantly. "Holy crap! You're gorgeous!" I blurted out.

At some point I will get the hang of "Hello, how are you," but this was obviously not the day.

Cleo was decidedly gorgeous, and, it turned out, friendly and funny, too. She lives in a huge apartment with a seemingly endless stream of amusing flatmates. Said flatmates were all involved in a massive project to build a soundproof DJ booth in the middle of the living room, and the place was utter pandemonium. I loved it.

Darling Cleo, who was preparing for a test worth 20% of her grade, insisted I sleep in her bed. I insisted I sleep on the floor. She pointed out that there was no floor, it being mostly taken up with bed (or, in the living room, sharp bits of metal that were waiting to be turned into a DJ booth). I conceded that this was a valid point, but still thought I could find a way to sleep on the floor. Cleo put her pink-shod foot down, and I realized I was battling a power more mighty than my own. I slept in her bed, gratefully but guiltily, while she slept in a different room with a friend.

Day one I spent blissfully holed up in the Wellington library, which is looooovely, working on my libretto. In a fit of optimism a few weeks back I'd promised Jonathan I'd have the damn thing done by the 31st of March, and the deadline was looming large. Coming home, I managed to get massively lost; to my delight, one of Cleo's flatmates, Mike, came to my rescue and then took me on a tour of Parliament to watch Question Time. Question Time is just as awesome in NZ as it is in the UK--lots of shouting and harrumphing, and one of the MPs even got kicked out of the room for speaking out of turn. Very funny.

Day two I couldn't even look at the libretto, so I went out into the rain to do the Touristy Wellington Thing instead. The Touristy Wellington Thing, as done by Katie, entails: Getting lost (again); Taking the cable car to the top of the hill (short but pretty); Looking at the cable car museum (so I could say I'd been to transportation museums in four countries and two hemispheres); Wandering around in the cold rain on top of a hill (very Brontëesque); Walking back to the city (wet, cold); Getting lost (again); and then Holing up in the city library once more, reading about how to make soap (handmade soap for Christmas this year, y'all).

Despite my having kicked her out of her room, Cleo did just fine on her test. On Friday night she went back to Levin, I moved into a hostel, and Jemma, Kyle and I went to a rugby game. Rugby is awesome. Post rugby, we drank. Drinking is awesome too, but the Kiwis can't make a Long Island ice tea to save their lives.

****

Saturday morning I made my way at the crack of dawn to the train station, to take the most beautiful train journey of my life. Aside from small commuter lines, trains in NZ are designed to be more scenic than speedy, and this particular journey took twelve hours .We went over several beautiful ravines, but the best part was the huge giant corkscrew tunnel that spirals all the way down through a mountain--dug entirely by pickaxe and shovel back in the ancient past. Incredible.

If there's anything better than taking a beautiful twelve-hour train journey, it's taking a beautiful twelve-hour train journey and then getting picked up by a rock star. Cousin Mike, drummer for The Have, was sitting patiently outside the train station waiting for me when I galumphed my way into Auckland. He grabbed my bag (this is always the moment for me when I think, "Damn, maybe I should have left War and Peace at home..."), and then informed me I'd be sleeping in his bed while he slept on the couch. Damn! The "I'm-taking-over-your-life" guilt had rather dominated my time in Wellington, and I'd made a vow with myself not to be so annoyingly apologetic about everything in Auckland, but here I was, being forced back into the lap of luxury. "No, no, no, we had an agreement--I'm sleeping on the couch."

Mike looked grim. "I know what's happened on that couch, and who's thrown up on it."

I started to reconsider. "Oh," I said lamely, and then, with a bit more spirit, "Still, I could sleep on the floor, or maybe the couch would be fine..."

"No cousin of mine is coming all the way from America and then sleeping on that couch," said Mike firmly, and I resigned myself to guilt.

My few days with The Have (well, the 75% of The Have who live in one house together) passed in rather a slow, enjoyable blur. All I could really concentrate on was the libretto, and I spent most days sitting on the (smaller, non-contaminated) couch, occasionally referring to my rhyming dictionary, and smiling vaguely at the various people who wandered through. "Do you want to go out or... see Auckland?" the various people asked. "Oh, no, no, I'm fine thanks," I responded.

Mike's band/housemates were incredibly tolerant of this strange, unfocused American permanently slumped down in their living room. They cooked me food, practiced their new music (which is awesome, by the way, although I was afraid to tell them so because I'd already confessed that my musical proclivites run towards Meatloaf and Everclear, and thought my vote of approval would be more discouraging than not), and spent a lot of effort explaining to me why various bands were crap, and which ones were fun to tour with.

Finally, early in the morning on the 29th--two days before it was due, take note!--I finished the bloody libretto, put a definite "THE END!!!" at the bottom, and then, brain refocusing for the first time in days, realized how much I was intruding on these people. 

Crap! said my brain. Crap! Crap! Crap! How annoying am I? How annoying have I been? I went through the list. True, I'd bought lots of beer, and true, I had half-heartedly made a spaghetti dinner one night--but mostly I had been sitting around taking up space for days and days, while poor Mike slept on the couch, exiled from his own room. In a panic, I threw everything into my bag, called a hostel to make a reservation, and dragged all my stuff into the living room. "Hey!" I said to Mike and Peter, who were sitting on the (larger, contaminated) couch. "If I take that bus at the bottom of the hill, it'll take me right to town, right?" They smiled and affirmed. "Okay, well, thanks for having me, bye!" I said, throwing my bag (Damn, maybe I should have left War and Peace at home...) over my shoulder. The boys looked confused.

"Are you leaving?" asked Mike.

"Oh, yeah, I think it's time for me to go." Having had no more than twenty percent of my brain switched on to the real world for the last week, I had no idea how annoying I had been, and this made me confused and awkward. "Haha! It's been great! Okay well thanks for having me, bye!" and I fled, pausing only to shout--from the outside pathway--"Oh, and say thank you and goodbye to Brody for me!"

So, that is the story of how I reintroduced myself to my long-lost cousins. The experience has put paid to the idea that I could just crash on the floors of relatives for the rest of my life. For one thing, not all of them have weeding to do to make the stay less of an imposition. For another, none of them will actually let you sleep on the floor.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 3

In which Katie battles the wilderness, and then all her relatives flee the country.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

"What are these lumps in the bread?" "I think they're seeds, Biddy." "What seeds? The seeds of destruction?"

Biddy and I escaped the weeding and spent five days at Uncle Biv and Aunt Mo's beautiful house in Levin--five days marked by peace, tranquility, and delicious food. There was, however, one moment of peril, from which I was glad to escape with my life. On a pretense of "showing us the farm," Biv lured Biddy and me into the heart of the Otaki wilderness. High up a mountain we went, on a long windy road, to view his collection of trees--pine trees, to be specific; more than 85,000 of them, to be even more specific. After lulling us into a false sense of security by giving us a tour of his woolshed and dutifully plucking a few feathers for Biddy off of some rather indignant guinea fowl, Biv casually suggested that we might like to go and see a little bit of the bush. Of course, we foolishly assented; what could possibly go wrong?

When first I came to this country, I was under the impression that, as far as flora and fauna were concerned, New Zealand was like Australia with the poison removed--a harmless, defanged wilderness. I was about to be proven wrong. We were happily trundling along the windy lane, taking pictures of Not-Quite-Silver-Ferns-But-Jolly-Similar, when suddenly Biv screeched to a halt and leapt out of the car. "Do you see this?" he asked, wrapping his sweatshirt sleeve around his hand and carefully pulling a branch of something prickly over to us. Biddy and I leaned back. "This plant is called Bush Lawyer, and it's a devil," Biv explained. "The thorns stick into you and it's impossible to untangle yourself. It's an awful beast." And that was not all, for as we continued on our way Biv pointed across the road and said, "Can you guess what that is?" We gazed up at the plant, a six-foot tall bushy green thing, and could not. "That," said Biv impressively, "is a stinging nettle! People have died from falling into stinging nettles in this country!" He spoke with pride, as if scorning all lowly English stinging nettles for merely providing mild agony to the shin regions.

There was more. "Lupines," said Biv gloomily, pointing. "I'm so allergic to them they've put me in the hospital, and they're everywhere." And, when I jumped out of the car, "That's a deadly nightshade by your foot." I looked down in horror at the terrifying little plant that towered almost a full centimeter above my ankle. "They're everywhere too."

Then, with a distinctly mischievous look in his eye, Biv announced: "Oh dear. It seems I have forgotten the code to the last gate. You two stay here while I just pop over this mountain and ask the neighbor what it is."

Off he strode. Biddy and I leaped back into the safety of the car. The sounds of twittering birds and sadistically swishing plants filled the air. I rolled up the window. The sun sank a little. The air in the car got hot and stuffy, but we did not dare open the doors.

"What happens if he doesn't come back?" asked Biddy.

"I'm afraid we'll have to chop off your leg and roast it," I said sorrowfully. Biddy didn't seem to mind, as her ankle was swollen and causing her grief anyway.

After about half an hour Biv returned. Clearly, his plan to dispose of us had failed, so he had to drive us home, hopes shattered. Still, I now have a healthy respect for the New Zealand outback.

Proving that New Zealand has not changed me too much, I've approached my new- non-vegetarian lifestyle with a typically complete lack of moderation. I am outrageously carnivorous now. I can scarcely go two days on end without bacon, and have tried all manner of other charred animal flesh: cows, sheep, chicken, quail, and deer have all fallen into my mighty maw. The concept of being able to eat everything on a menu--rejecting things only because I don't like them--fills me with a new delight. I feel no guilt, I feel no squeamishness. In Wigs's field there gambols the fluffy white sheep Butter, whose former friend Einstein I eat on a regular basis without the slightest compunction. Sometimes as I look at Butter, sweetly munching on grass, I think happily, "Oh, sweet little sheep--if I wanted to, I could rip your head off its neck and feast on the gory innards that leak out." On my gloomier days all I have to do is remember that this Thanksgiving (if I'm back home) I will get to eat Real Thanksgiving Turkey, and I cheer right up.

Biddy's last week in NZ was spent back at Wigs's house. Together we stripped a little wallpaper and avoided weeding, and generally did Not Much aside from complain about how much work we were being forced to do. Jemma—my sophomore year roommate, and the only person in the world who can look sexy while wearing a combination of socks, sandals and shorts—and her boyfriend Kyle, showed up to keep us entertained (and take me out for St. Patrick's Day debauchery). In the final days, Wigs threw a few lovely tea parties so that the people who had met Biddy could come and enjoy her company one last time. At one of them, Biddy was handed a glass of one of her favorite drinks, Campari with soda. The rest of us had tried Campari early on in her trip, and found it to be possibly the most bitter and revolting stuff ever devised by human hand. I'd rather drink pigswill, frankly. Much to our surprise, Wigs's friend Glenda had not only heard of the drink but liked it. Biddy waved her glass magnanimously at Glenda and announced, "When I go home, I'll leave you a present: a half bottle… well, a quarter… well, an eighth of a bottle of Campari!"

She is a frequently maddening woman—picking away for hours at wallpaper, for example, to clear a space that could be cleared in a few minutes if she would just allow the removal solution to sit for long enough. Her cigarette butts litter the garden, and, while she did eventually stop calling Wigs "Joan," her nickname for me stuck, and we all took to calling me "That Girl." Still, as Wigs, Brian and I clung to the chain-link fence and watched her little form climb up into the aeroplane and away, tears streamed down my cheeks without the slightest regard for avoiding cliché. My constant companion of the last month is gone, and the gods only know when I'll see her again.

After Biddy's departure, the rest of us dispersed. Brian took off on a business trip. Wigs packed for Kenya. I myself am currently hitching a ride to Wellington with Kyle and Jemma, sitting in the backseat of their wonderfully derelict and now somewhat overloaded Mazda. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in Wellington, and I still haven't told cousin Cleo that I'm coming; I have no place to sleep lined up, no idea of how long I'm staying in town, and no idea what I'm going to do with myself during the day.

I guess the traveling part of my trip has finally begun.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 2

In which Katie weeds; Biddy arrives; Biddy weeds; and all is well with the world.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

I covet Wigs's life. I long to be assured that some day, eventually, I will be living my own version of the life she leads.

Her house is tiny, and it is in utter chaos. This is not due to untidiness, but is instead due to Brian's proclivity for tearing everything apart and rebuilding it. He is currently in the rebuilding stage, which means that there are pre-deck beams of wood sticking out of the ground at knee-whacking height, a hole in the wall where there once was a fireplace, a mound of bricks in a corner of a room that is otherwise empty except for an ironing board, torn-up linoleum on the floor of the kitchen, and giant mounds of lumber in the yard. The perpetual view of Brian is one seen from the waist down, way up a ladder, while intense hammering filters down through the new veranda roof. There is one small television, no kitchen gadgets, benches at the kitchen table that have an alarming tendency to upend and deposit you on the floor, lots of laughter, and miles and miles of really good books. I absolutely adore it.

The backyard has four chickens who are supposed to be there, two ducks who aren't, a sheep named Butter, a raised vegetable patch, and an orchard accessible only through a honeysuckle-covered gate. It also has weeds. A lot of weeds.

Luckily, I am not the only weeding wwoofer in the Tweed household. Three days after my unexpected appearance came the more-anticipated arrival of our Mad Aunt Biddy.

Biddy is rather ancient and has started shrinking, which means she is almost as short as Wigs now. "It's horrible," she said gloomily at one point, "To be down amongst the pygmies at last." She has lived on at least four continents and tells the most marvelous stories of her various adventures--you can have a lot of adventures in eighty-one years. She calls Wigs "Joan," calls me "That Girl," and calls Brian "That man over there." She speaks of her rheumatism, corns, arthritis, and the deafness in her ear without the slightest respect for avoiding stereotypes, and one day accidentally gave her set of false teeth to Wigs as a present.

I will admit to feeling a bit of trepidation about her arrival. I can play the respectful and obliging great-niece like a pro, but I was worried that looking after her all-day-ever-day, while Wigs and Brian were at work, would get tiring. I was fretting unnecessarily. Biddy stomped into the house with her cane, her plaid pants and her purple cardigan, settled herself in as quickly as I had, and started weeding with me early the next morning. "I can't sit idly and watch That Girl slaving away on her own," she explained when Wigs protested. We have a nice routine going now: three or four hours of weeding in the morning, followed by an hour's lunch; then Biddy takes a nap while I write (or nap, depending) and then we putter about doing various odd things until Wigs and Brian get home.

Weeding is great fun although neither of us will admit it. We both moan and groan and huff and puff about all this work that Wigs is "making" us do, like two little girls playing at being Cinderella, pre-ball. We chat while we weed, but as Biddy is rather deaf and I'm always daydreaming about life and love and librettos, we talk rather at cross purposes most of the time. For example:

Biddy: [pulls up flowers accidentally] Oh dear. Katie: Mmm? Biddy: They're not going to give me any lunch at this rate. Katie: You reckon it's time for lunch? Biddy: What is Wigs going to say? Katie: Ham and Cheese sandwich, probably. Biddy: She'll be very cross with me. Katie: [catching on] We don't have to tell her, you know. Biddy: We'll tell her they're my birthday flowers! Katie: Good plan!

or:

Katie: I'm so glad it's Friday! Biddy: ...a spider? Katie: What? Biddy: What? Katie: ...What? Biddy: You're so glad you're a spider? Katie: I'm so glad it's Friday! Biddy: Oh!

or sometimes:

Biddy: I need a hat for my bottom. Katie: ...What did you say? Biddy: I need a hat for my bottom! [mimes putting a hat over her bottom.] Katie: [thoughtfully] Yes, that's what I thought you said.

My favorite weeding moment came as we tore into the ground near the sheep's paddock. "Oh dear," said Biddy loudly, pausing from her usual mad pulling of weeds. "Oh--Oh dear."

"What's up?" I asked idly, yanking on a particularly stubborn buttercup.

"Oh, spider, oh, come back you silly thing," muttered Biddy. Looking up, I saw a particularly large and ferocious-looking brown spider circumnavigate her thigh before heading directly up and diving into the apparent safety of her crotch region.

"Oh!" said Biddy, brushing herself off rather frantically now, "Oh! Spider! That area is none of your business!"

Doubled over with mirth, I was not the picture of the professionally dutiful and obliging great-niece; nor was I any help in removing the spider from her person.

We all spend much of the time laughing, often to the point of tears. "Do you know," Biddy said the other day," I don't think I've laughed at all in the last three years. Nothing has seemed funny. And now look at me!" It is as if a dam has burst. Sometimes we will just be sitting at the table chatting, and Biddy will suddenly go silent and then start shaking with laughter, hand clapped to her mouth or over her eyes. Wigs and I stare at her bemusedly and then, helpless to resist, start to laugh too, and the three of us sit there, silently shaking, barely able to breathe. Most of the time we never find out what set her off in the first place.

We have gone to a paper marbling class, to cooking classes, to the beach, to the shops; but my favorite moments have been at that kitchen table, shaking silently and gasping for breath.

[arathoonabroad]

Chapter 1

In which Katie arrives in New Zealand and is nearly deported right back out again, but manages to dodge customs and make it to Wanganui to successfully surprise her aunt; then she eats bacon

Saturday, February 18, 2006

[]

the cat does not approve of people leaving for adventures in far-off lands

The thing is, I didn't actually mean to go to New Zealand. Yes, okay, I earned the money, bought the ticket, told everyone I was going, launched an elaborate plan to trick my Kiwi relatives into picking me up without knowing it, packed my bags, loaded into the car and headed merrily towards the airport; but it wasn't until I saw the sign for the international terminal whizzing over my head that the realization of what was about to happen truly hit home.

My boldly intended "I'm going to New Zealand!" came out rather a meek and confused "I'm going to New Zealand?"

"You are going to New Zealand," my mum confirmed, crisply.

"You can't believe you're going?" inquired my sister from the deep rear of the van.

"Why am I going to New Zealand?" I asked

"Because you couldn't think of anything better to do, I think," said Mum.

"Doesn't that somewhat smack of a lack of imagination?"

"Perhaps."

"You couldn't think of anything better to do than to go to New Zealand?" asked Rosie.

"I think it's a basic Arathooon impulse," Mum explained, raising her voice to include Rosie in the conversation. "You're at a loss for what to do, so you go half-way around the world to see if it looks any different, to see if you're a different person over there." She cocked one eyebrow at me. "You'll have to tell me if it works."

"You've done it once," I retorted, "Did it work for you?"

"I didn't; I just followed an Arathoon who was doing it," Mum replied.

"Well, and he turned out to be a different person than you thought in England, didn't he?"

"Yes," said Mum shortly. "There's your terminal."

"I'm going to New Zealand? Why am I going to New Zealand?"

* * *

Hugs, kisses, the yawning gape of the International Terminal, a wistful look at business class as I strode towards the very back row of the plane, two movies and eight fantastic hours of sleep later, I was in Auckland. I stood conscientiously just before the customs area, eating my last Clif bar so that I wouldn't be lying on my form, and then loaded my bags onto the x-ray machine.

The purse and the backpack came through just fine, but there seemed to be a problem with my suitcase. "Excuse me," said the man behind the controller, "But are those… gumboots?"

My heart sank a little. I briefly considered being one of those Americans who didn't know what "gumboots" meant, but decided that this probably wasn't the time to try to be cute. "Yes," I said.

"Have they been used?"

"Yes, but never on a farm."

"We're going to have to look at them." My heart sank even further; it was just occurring to me that they probably had mud on them.

They did. Lots of it. And straw, and grass. "I am not happy about this," said the scary man who had been sent over to interrogate me. "Follow me." He left me at the desk of shame and disappeared into the bowels of the building with my gumboots and my passport. All around me, signs warned that my muddy golf shoes would get me an instant $200 fine, and I should probably clean them before I got here. Yes, I probably should, I thought regretfully.

The scary man came back, and stood grimly before me. I shrank a bit further. "We have been looking at your boots under a microscope, and we have found—" he closed his eyes for dramatic emphasis "—a mite."

"This mite be the end of me!" I refrained from saying. Instead, I said, "Oh," as apologetically as I could—and I was feeling pretty apologetic. It had not been my intent to overrun the New Zealand islands with a vicious breed of English mites.

In the end, the man decided to let me go with a warning, gave me a totally justified lecture about the pride New Zealanders have for their country, and handed me a pamphlet that said in large, unfriendly letters across the top: DON'T GET CAUGHT RED-HANDED! "Read that pamphlet carefully," said the scary man, sounding suddenly jolly and friendly; "I designed it myself!" I confirmed that it was beautiful, picked up my now sparkling clean boots, and went to get on the bus for Wanganui.

* * *

The eight-hour trip from the north end of the north island to the south end of the north island was beautiful but unremarkable, although we did at one point go through the town for which Wal Footrot plays rugby, a fact that excited me greatly. 

5:16pm found me waiting at the bus stop in a great turmoil of anticipation. For those who weren't in on the joke, it should be noted that my poor aunt Wigs was laboring under the misapprehension that, rather than picking up an eldest niece, she was in fact picking up an American Wwoofer named Jennie Alexander who was planning to stay for two weeks. I'm not quite sure how she arrived at this mistaken conclusion, but it may be something to do with the fact that I wrote to her from the email address Jennie.Alexander@gmail.com, and said I was an American wwoofer named Jennifer Alexander and could I please come stay with her for two weeks. Knowing that Wigs and Brian were building their deck, I dropped in the fact that I had worked in construction (couched in some delightfully misspelled words, to put them off the scent), and they gladly took the bait. 

Thus, as I stood waiting at the bus stop, I was a bit unsure of my reception—whether I would be joyfully welcomed, treated to the sight of Wigs's van doing a sharp U-turn and leaving me to fend for myself, or, perhaps the most intriguing prospect of all, completely unrecognized and forced to play the role of Jennie Alexander until such a time as I could humorously reveal myself.

I needn't have worried about the last. As soon as she pulled up to the curb and before she'd even seen my face Wigs had recognized me; she came bounding out of her car and over the pavement shouting, "You rat! You rat!" and then threw her arms around me and gave me one of the biggest hugs I've ever had. So that settled the question of what would happen when I got to Wanganui.

* * *

The question of What Happens Next, however, has come rather to the forefront now, and since my plans ended with, "Get to Wanganui and fool Wigs," I don't really have an answer for people. One of the main reasons I bought a ticket for NZ was so that when well-meaning people asked, "And what are you going to do next?" I would be able to answer, "Go to New Zealand!" It has been rather a shock to the system to find that here, that convenient end-all conversation stopper no longer functions. I am back to looking a bit lost, smiling bemusedly and mumbling something incoherent about opera librettos and dying in gutters staring at the stars. Which is, really, where I started. As depressing as it might be, perhaps I am the same person in New Zealand as I am in the rest of the world.

But then again, this morning I had bacon for breakfast. Bacon! 13 years of vegetarianism down the tubes with one delicious slice. Take that, universe!