Thoughts from Home

They say the only certain thing about studying abroad is that one day you will have to go home.

Well I’m home.  Back to my old life, back to routine and back to just being an ordinary girl from New Zealand. 

As soon as I hopped off the plane in Napier and picked up my bags from the airport quad bike (news flash – Napier hasn’t entered the 21^st century and still doesn’t have a bag carousel) I was slotted straight back into my old life. Like a lost puzzle piece finally found.  Or a line of code finally set straight I simply fell right back into an overly familiar routine. 

Waking up at seven, drinking coffee and walking to work in the cold.  It may not be frat parties and football games but it was my life for the past fifteen years.  

Although Napier may not have a bag carousel it trumps Pennsylvania any day when it comes to nature. The sea, the beach, the panoramic views of the bay five minutes from my bedroom. These were only memories from Central Pennsylvania but now they are my sights and sounds every single day.  I may be back to living in the middle of nowhere in Napier again for now but now I’m in the middle of nowhere with a view. 

The funny thing about being home is even though Napier hasn’t changed at all some things are so much more strikingly noticeable.

Like for instance that everyone wears black. Whoever said New Zealand is the land of the long white cloud should have said New Zealand was the land of the black puffer jacket. Children are wearing them, grandparents are wearing them - even I'm wearing one.

Sticking with fashion – did anyone in New Zealand receive the memo that it’s actually winter? League shorts, dresses and flip flops (oops, I mean jandels) don’t really do much to keep you warm. Yet, pair them with a puffer jacket and apparently, you’re set for the Hawke's Bay winter. 

Or what about our poverty?

Okay, whoa, slow down Caitriona.  What are you doing moving from fashion to politics in such quick succession!? Like a younger Shane Jones jumping from one political career to the next. 

But in all seriousness, I can’t remember being so shocked by the amount of poverty we have.  Abroad we love to show off to Americans about how much better we are – we have free healthcare! Low college tuition fees! No gun violence! But what about the decrepit state houses with mould creating streaks of black and green on their faded walls? The families who eat at Burger King because it’s cheaper than our overpriced vegetables. The alcoholism people embrace to escape their lives one night at a time. We don’t just have poverty in Napier, we have a poverty of spirits too. From an outsider looking in it’s downright sad and depressing. We should be asking some serious questions to our politicians about how such a liberal, well-off country like ourselves has come to look like this. 

These things and so many more have stood out like a sore thumb in the two weeks since I’ve been home. But I’ve also stood out more. 

I accidentally said mocha with an American accent at a café the other day – not used to the fact that people can finally understand me ( I used to pretend to have an accent so cafes didn’t give me funny looks). I day dream and drift to the right-hand side of the pavement.  An American tourist even stopped me in the street to ask where I got my freebie State College t-shirt from, going on to tell me her sorority at University of Nevada had printed near identical ones!

I learnt so many life lessons in the US but now I think I’m going to be learning the biggest lesson of them all.  How on earth am I going to survive without Starbucks!? Okay. I’m sorry I’m completely joking Mum. New Zealand coffee still beats Starbs anyway.

The biggest challenge of them all is going to be trying to incorporate every single tiny life lesson I learnt at Penn State and apply to my new-but-old life in New Zealand.  Whilst I’m not sure I’ll keep you updated about this next stage in my life I don’t anticipate it being anything but easy. 

 For now, this little back curser will move to the top of the page and press the orange update button one last time and this whole adventure will be officially over.

To my friends who I met at Penn State – thank you for everything and giving me so many wonderful, hilarious and beautiful things to write about. I know we will meet again and we will stay in touch. We may never be college students drinking $2 Long Islands at Pickles again but we have shared so many incredible memories together. 

To everyone who read this blog, thank you for sticking with me throughout this crazy rollercoaster of a party that was studying abroad at Penn State University. 

Caitriona

Back in the natural beauty of New Zealand !

No where to eat in Utah

Our last stop in our whirlwind tour of National Parks on the West Coast was Zion National Park in Utah. 

Like many foreigners, I had never heard of this park before but it was only at the insistence of my sister that we decided to visit.  And I’m so glad we did.  

Zion and Utah are beautiful – the landscape made up of an intriguing mix of green  trees and dark orange rocks that make up the deep valleys that traverse the state.  

Zion National Park is 45 minutes’ drive from St George, a small city near the Utah-Arizona border. Unbeknown to us when we booked but Memorial Weekend falls early in June and every man, women and their dog in Utah had flocked to Zion for the weekend of our visit.  This meant horrific lines for everything – an hour to wait for the shuttle within the park, no parking and hikes stacked to the brim with walkers.  

On our first day we did the iconic Angels Landing walk.  This is the most famous hike at Zion because you must walk along a narrow spine with a 1500ft drop on either side in order to reach the viewing point.  None of us managed to get the whole way along the spine.  For me it was just way, way too high not helped by the lack of safety cables on either side of the ridgeline.  My sister and Dad got further but gave up simply because there were lines of people queued up along the spine. They felt it was the path was getting too dangerous as some hikers were trying to push ahead of others. It was something of a miracle that nothing happened as hundreds of people on the path were an accident waiting to happen.  

On our second day we chose to walk to the more secluded Observation Point directly opposite the Angels Landing viewing point.  The views from this walk were spectacular – with a great view looking back towards the valley, the rock slowly changing from red to orange starkly contrasted by the dark green trees on the valley floor below.  We took pictures on a very nervy cliff edge (as can be seen by my get-me-out-of-here grimace) and ate hummus and pita bread under the shade of bam brushes. 

Speaking of food you’re now probably wandering how the title of this post relates at all to what I have written.  I promise you I wouldn’t downright lie to you like that. Maybe what this post should really have said is “ nowhere to eat in Utah on a Sunday”. 

The Church of the Latter Day Saints still plays a huge role in society in Utah and this deep-set Christianity is reflected in the opening hours of shops and restaurants.  This meant that on Sunday evening almost all the restaurants in St George were closed. Even Jimmy Johns and Subway were closed.  With no food at our Air b’n’b we were forced to seek solace not with the church but with St Georges only restaurant open on a Sunday. We gave up on the 1 hour 45 wait for a table and ordered take out from the restaurant instead, and this still took an hour !

We spent out last night in Utah on our whirlwind road trip around the states eating burgers and watching James Bond.  But you know what, there was no other place I wouldn't have been at that moment.    

Vegas took my passport

She shoots, she scores … oh wait no she doesn’t score.  She loses badly. And when I mean lose I mean she gets robbed. Despite what my Dad may think my passport almost certainly got STOLEN  in Vegas and I was left in Nevada with no passport, no ID and with the very real prospect I might not be leaving USA in a week. 

How’s that for a dramatic beginning for a blog post.

I remember I once wrote on this blog about how proud I was for not losing anything whilst being in the USA.  Well the ceasefire between my objects and myself ended in spectacular fashion when not one, but both of my passports, my drivers license and some cash got stolen from my bag in Las Vegas. 

To be frank I was certainly not acting like the safest traveler – carrying my wallet in my backpack which only fastened magnetically, putting all forms of ID in the same bag and then having the sense to walk around Vegas with the bag strung loosely on my back. 

We’re still not entirely sure what happened but I had the wallet when we entered the hotel lobby and it was gone by the time we had reached the top of the elevator. Hotel security was quite hopeless – they got very uptight when we asked them to review the CTV footage and were very reluctant to do anything about it. 

What that meant was that I had to first call the New Zealand embassy in Washington D.C and then the New Zealand consulate in Santa Monica to organize an emergency travel document so that I could travel back to New Zealand the following week.

These bad boys don’t come to cheap though – $500 NZ for an emergency document if you pick up the document from Santa Monica, Los Angeles.

So apart from losing my passports what did I think of Vegas!?

Not much. Personally, I didn’t like the atmosphere that permeated the strip – alcohol, sex and gambling.  Images of bikini clad women who ‘wanted to meet you’ lined posters, buses and trucks. Even the waitresses at the pool in the hotel were required to wear bikini’s whilst they worked.  Along with this people drank yard glasses filled with margaritas on the street and smoked in the hotel. 

It’s also important to talk about safety in Vegas.  Yes, I might be slightly biased since my passport got LOST STOLEN but truthfully out of all the places I’ve been in the USA it was where I felt the least safe.  Walking around off the Strip at night felt dangerous – if anything were to happen there was literally no one around to help.  It is also quite telling of a place when Uber drivers ensure they drop you off right outside a restaurant and tell you to be safe every time to exit.

If you were to spend all your time in the hotel, pool and bar you would feel relatively comfortable but actually getting out and seeing the sights (particularly those not on the Strip) felt unsafe for two young girls.

All in all I don’t think I’ll be running back to Las Vegas. 

This may have been somewhat of a more negative post but hopefully my last couple of days in the USA will be much better!

The best hike I've ever done

 Ironically I really didn’t want to do this hike at all.

 After walking for eight hours the previous day the last thing my aching legs wanted to do was to be strapped into a pair of snow shoes and dragged up yet another steep hill. Especially a hill which was technically closed. 

Yep, it may not sound enticing to begin with but hiking up Centennial Dome at Yosemite National Park was nothing short of mind-blowing. 

I think it is important to note here that my Dad (who had joined Jess and I after our stay in LA) is a madman who utterly ignores any sign that says “this trail is closed”. Yep, he’s that guy. The guy you watch from your car going for a run in a rainstorm or wearing shorts on a winter day.  He believes nature is a force to be reckoned with and that nothing, nothing can stop him. 

Anyway, saying this when we arrived at the start of trail a park ranger sign stated the trail was closed due to snow and lack of path visibility.  A sign we simply swerved around.  That’s not to say the park wardens sign was not true. It was. When we couldn’t find the path to begin (because of the uh … snow) I put my foot down at crossing the waist deep river and we turned back until we found a bridge.

 After traversing for some time on the path we reached the bottom of the final hill leading to the summit of Centennial Dome.  Now this hill was pretty tough, especially when you throw in some snow, sore legs and the stomach clenching drop that fell away to one side into it.  Jess and I were almost on our hands and knees crawling up slowly to the top.  But wow, the summit was certainly worth it! With 360 degree views of the park and half dome ( the most difficult peak to climb in Yosemite) it was jaw droppingly stunning. 

Going down was even harder than going up as we tried to fall flat on our faces and roll down the mountain. On second thought this might have been a good idea !

So yes, this was quite possible the best hike I’ve ever done that I didn’t want to do …