14/3/2012

Well my flight back to Amsterdam wasn’t until 5pm. Effie, a friend of Lesley’s, drove me to the airport. I was finding it hard to fight back the tears and when I was sitting at the gate, waiting to board, the tears just rolled down my face. I couldn’t stop them. I just didn’t want to go back.

I had a direct flight back with no overnight stopovers and I knew it was going to be a tough flight on the body. I prefer to break the journey with overnight stops but my return journey just didn’t have any and I think that’s why the price of the flight was so reasonable: 1200 Euros. I was willing though to do the direct flight back because I’m sure if I had stopped over somewhere, it would have cost me a lot more.

I flew from Christchurch to Sydney, to Bangkok, to Dubai, with an hour and a half stop in each place and then on we went to Amsterdam. It was tough going but at least it was easier going from east to west. By the time I got off the plane, all I wanted to do was to get horizontal on a proper bed and out of the artificial heat of the airplane. With all the stops, which I was glad of, (because it gave us a chance to stretch our legs) it took just over thirty hours to get back to Amsterdam.

I really didn’t want to come back. As I said in my blog from 2009, I would give my right arm to go and live/work there. I just feel that I belong there and it’s where I should be. I’ve totally fallen in love with the place. People ask me “what is it about the country that you love so much?” Well I could go on all day about why I love it so much. The New Zealand people are really friendly. I love the Kiwi accent, the way they pronounce their “e”s like “I”s, I find the Maori culture and language very interesting and would love to learn Maori, there is an endless amount of things to do there: winetasting, whale watching, bungy jumping, skiing, hiking, stargazing tours, helicopter flights over glaciers, bone carving workshops etc. I love the creativity of the people: there are so many excellent crafts people there, not to mention Weta Workshop, who are geniuses at what they do, the weather isn’t too hot or cold, it’s very green like Ireland, there are practically no poisonous animals there compared to Australia. I find it fascinating too that the country sits on top of two tectonic plates, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and geothermal areas. The only negative thing about the place is the damn sand flies on the west coast of the South Island! They’re ten times worse than the mosquitoes here in Amsterdam.

The whole place inspires me though and I have to get back there. I really do and this feeling goes deep. I can’t ignore how I feel and I’m going to do my best to achieve my dream of living/working there. I know it would mean not seeing family and friends in Europe and that would be hard for me to do but I know that if I got a suitable job there, I would move there tomorrow. I would also love to write about New Zealand and the Maori culture on a long term basis and maybe living over there, might make it easier to write about that and make some kind of a living from it. So watch this space!