On Leaving

Hi all,
Gay and I are slowly marking things off our to do list. Strange to think we have about 1 week left and it's just starting to hit me. I haven't been sleeping well and it seems like I'm not going to get everything done in time. But I'm used to it already because this is the exact experience I had when getting ready to come to NZ.

Leaving New Zealand
My last day of work is next Tuesday, May 1st. Last weekend my co-workers threw a big going away bbq for me. It was a lot of fun and since all of my best New Zealand, and more specifically Nelson memories were with people I directly or indirectly work with, seeing everybody in one place made me do a lot of reflection.
Thinking about how I was before leaving San Francisco, I was fully expecting life in New Zealand to be; ok, not great and no where near as good as my SF life. Now, as I'm leaving NZ, it turns out that my experience here was better than I could've ever expected. Admittedly, it wasn't all happy times, but life never is and through it all I've met some great people and had some amazing experiences. All in all, it's going to be hard to leave this place and sometimes I wonder why I want to go back to the US; I mean with people getting shot in schools, Bush ready to take Iran and whatever else is going on with Alec Baldwin.
But the bottom line is I just never felt like New Zealand was my home. No matter how beautiful the landscapes and no matter how welcoming the people are; I could never stop feeling like I was a stranger.

Our Wedding?
Somehow, amidst all the stuff we have to do, Gay is able to think about and plan our wedding. She already has me looking at venues and rings and every time I open firefox i see something like "bergdorf dresses" in the search box. It's astounding really, I'm overwhelmed with tidying everything here and thinking about our trip and she's putting together a picture log of the cakes she wants. Anyway, apparently we're thinking late August '08 would be a good time to have the wedding.

Our Travel Itinerary
In case some of you are wondering or maybe some of you plan to be traveling in Asia during the next 6 months and want to meet up..the following is our itinerary:

• Bali
• Bhutan
• Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Loas, Vietnam)
• Japan
• China
• India
• Back to Thailand
• Back to New Zealand
• Back to USA

So we'll probably do one more post before we shove off. This Saturday is my last gig and should be a good party.

Jon