Week One - We have arrived!

So here we go….

I had two goals for this trip:

1.        To get in the best shape of my life
2.        To write about my experiences.

I have been working on item 1 this whole week, and now it’s time to start on number 2. What I really want to do is document how I feel throughout this adventure. It’s not enough to document what I did, I want to have a truly honest account of what it felt like to take a year off and some of it I will want to gloss over, but I’m going to try really hard not to.

One thing that I expected was to somehow feel different once my feet hit NZ soil. I know it was a silly thing to have expected, but there it is. This was nothing compared to the panic that I felt on day 3. I started feeling completely restless and anxious and not sure if I had just made the worst mistake of my life. Mike and I talked it through and it basically comes down to this: I am very goal oriented and as my dad says – “ a soldier needs to be kept busy” What I’m trying to say is that now that I suddenly have all of this free time on my hands I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Mike warned me that this would happen, and I did set goals (as seen above) but on day three we were still in Auckland, and in a hotel, and everything felt very temporary and I haven’t been doing very many active things. I have noticed that every day now, I’m restless until I exercise. I seem to crave it. I’m not really sure why this is. In the default world, I am not a huge fan of physical activity. I do things because I have to, not because I like it, but out here, in a place I don’t have to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, I can’t function properly without giving my body healthy dose of punishment. I still haven’t figured out why this is.

I am not sure if I will need to keep my mind more occupied, that remains to be seen, for now the body occupation is getting it done for me. I plan to do more writing (the blog, maybe some short stories) and hopefully the challenge of that will be enough.

In terms of the body, things are much better, if better means that I have a great opportunity for improvement. I had assumed that the fact that I can walk 6-8 miles a day would prepare me for the type of hiking that I would be doing here, but I was very very mistaken. What both Mike and I have discovered is that hiking in NZ is quite a change from walking around flat Chicago, or flat Burning Man.  Our original plan was to go on a 3-4 day hike right off the bat, but after going on a day hike with Olichka, we both realized that we would have to work up to carrying backpacks.

Since we left Auckland on Monday our days have the following components: sleep, hike 2-4 hours (feels like uphill both ways) buy groceries, drive to campsite, eat dinner repeat. We also do pushups first thing in the morning. Mike wants to add P90X to our morning routine, but so far we are having problems setting that up. Guess who has two thumbs and is not really upset about skipping p90X in the mornings!!! That’s right, this gal!!!

The other thing that I wasn't expecting was how much I was going to miss all of my friends. I think about them all the time. Before I left, Olya gave me a little necklace with a fox on it (to remember the foxes) and I find myself playing with it all the time. I think she knew what she was doing when she gave me that little fox. As I start falling more and more in love with NZ, that necklace is a constant reminder of the family and friends that I have in the states. It’s my tie to everyone.

Mike also noticed that I think and talk about work a lot still. I don’t think that I do, but I’m sure he notices it more than I do. I do need to find a post card for them. They asked for one and I need to find a good one. I also find myself wondering if my position has been filled yet. When will I be able to let go?

Hiking in New Zealand is amazing. I feel like I’m really doing something good for myself. The hikes are hard for me and at the end of a really steep uphill sometimes I feel like I want to die, but I love it. It’s so green here. It seems like colors got magnified. The weather is unbelievable too. The other thing that I love is the sheep. They are everywhere. You can hear, see and smell them on every hike. Outside of Auckland everything smells like childhood at the dacha: flowers, grass, and farm animals. I have flashbacks of going to the nearby village with my grandma to buy milk so fresh; it’s still warm from the cow.

Weird observations about NZ so far:

•        Sheep are everywhere
•          Conservation parks look like prisons (they have hard core gates to keep out all rodents since they eat bird eggs and are very destructive to the indigenous nature
•          Butter is very yellow – Olichka explained this: cows here eat grass, not corn and grass has beta carotene in it, so the butter looks different
•          They don’t just drive on the left, all of the escalators are inverted too and they walk on the wrong part of a walkway. I spend my time trying not to bump into people too much

I also wanted to thank the Fishlins and the Balbekova/Bayliss household for their amazing hospitality. You guys are amazing. Olichka and Steve get a double shout out for picking us up at the airport at 6am on a workday J