Spring, Parent Visit, then…The Trip

Hello All,

Winter is on its way out and I’m not sad about it. Winter was tough and maybe I’m just a mary but c’mon, it was freakin cold here. One thing that I enjoyed was being able to go skiing a grand total of 4 times during the winter, which I’m quite proud of. They were some fantastic trips too. One was a shotgun, no preparation trip in which I flew down to Christchurch to meet my friend Thomas who as already there with his wife, Julia. I luckily ended up taking the right buses out to the ski field and was luckily able to find a bed at a backpackers. We got out to the ski field on Saturday and Sunday and had a blast.

The next trip, which happened on the next weekend, was a bunch of people from work staying at a holiday home at St. Arnaud which is about 1.5 hours from Nelson. We only got up to the field for one day but it was a great one, full of powder runs. Gay took some nice pictures of skiing and the surrounding area (posted below).

But now winter is coming to a close and Gay and I recently did some proper spring activities like BBQing and hiking. Also I’ve been busy trying to plan a visit for my parents, which is going to happen in another month.

The Trip
January is coming up soon and that marks the year and half cut off we gave ourselves in regards to our New Zealand tenure. We both love it here and so when it comes to making plans for leaving we kept asking ourselves “why are we leaving??” “What’s waiting for us back home??” (that kind of thing)
So we went back and forth for awhile sometimes she would want to stay and I wouldn’t and sometimes the opposite was true. It’s not an easy decision and I don’t want to look back and say “shit, I knew I should’ve stayed in New Zealand a little longer.” The fact is that it just doesn’t feel like home no matter how hard I try and neither of us want to live here forever so why keep building on something that isn’t going to last? Also, I feel satisfied in that I did what I set out to do when I started this thing. Other factors have weighed in; Gay hasn’t exactly been thrilled with her job and it would be a drama to redo her visa situation if she were to change.
So needless to say we’ve decided to leave at the end of January and start our travels.

Now we’re talking more and more about “the trip”. And once you give something like that a name it starts to gain momentum. We have a concrete reference and it’s not just “…you know when we start traveling…” or “…you know when we leave Nelson…” which is how we vaguely referred to it before we made our decision. No, it’s now “The Trip” and we are continually giving this object shape as we talk about it and make plans.

It’s going to be sad saying good-bye to this place, but we still have a lot of time to make the most of it.


Pictures…
Here are some pictures of the ski trip to St. Arnaud. Al’s kids took a liking to me and Gay thought that was pretty cute so there’s a bunch of pics with me and a kid or 2. Some really nice pics of a walk in we took St. Arnaud the day after skiing.


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