new zealand

Repatriation: Days 1-7

by Marian Schembari on December 9, 2012

The day I left New Zealand was a hard day. You should have seen me on the airplane leaving Auckland, face pressed against the window, sobbing like a little kid, taking in my last glimpse of the country.

Five minutes later I was fast asleep and the rest of the flight went without a hitch.

And then I landed in San Francisco and my brain went bonkers. Who knew reverse culture shock was such a bitch?

Day 1

Land in San Francisco. Desperately want to find a pair of earplugs to distract me from the influx of hash American accents raping my earballs. Meet my Airbnb host. Need food. Find a cafe that serves iced coffee without ice cream and a good bagel with cream cheese for less than $5. *swoon*. Try walking around the Mission District and miss 3 crosswalks because there’s no sound to notify you it’s time to cross. HOW WILL I EVER KNOW HOW TO CROSS THE STREET AGAIN?!?! (Hear the New Zealand noise here just skip to 0:53.)

See the Ferry Building. Meet my besties from Auckland. Have a bit of a cry and a hug. Go to Fisherman’s Wharf. Am terrified by the number of drug users and homeless people. Fear New Zealand has turned me into a wimp.

Day 2

Walking tour of the Tenderloin. Big mistake. Regret my decision immediately to move back to the States. Have a bit of a cry and a hug.

Rest of the day is filled with shaking my imaginary cane at too big cars, bad drivers, loud American teenagers and shaking my fist over the fact that no one seems to take debit cards. I MISS EFTPOS.

Call my New Zealand bank to close my account. Woman at ASB asks about my trip home, wishes me well and calls me ‘love’. Call my US bank. Woman at Wells Fargo gives me attitude, smacks her gum and tries to sell me shit I don’t need.

Realize I am slowly turning into one of those crazy ex-expats who can’t talk about anything other than living abroad.

Day 3

First day at work. Reminded why I moved here. Get a hug from the CEO and a myriad of other staff members. Start working right away and fall in love with the Couchsurfing offices and employees.

Day 4

Am astounded by the speed of the internet, both on my computer and phone. Am starting to remember the things I missed. Namely, grocery stores. Why, hello there Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. I love you.

Day 5

Friday night happy hour at work. Meet awesome people and hear traveler’s stories from around the world. Feel very, very lucky. Fall asleep at 9pm.

Day 6

Hike all the way from downtown San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge and to Point Bonita Lighthouse. Around 10 miles. The sun is shining, people are friendly and I walk with a girl who just moved from Berlin and a guy from France. Remind myself that this is a new adventure, just like all the other countries I’ve moved to.

Day 7

I move into my new apartment today. It’s finally real.

 

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Dear New Zealand

by Marian Schembari on December 2, 2012

My dear New Zealand,

Let me preface this letter by saying that it’s impossible for me to ever have the words to write this properly. I will never be articulate enough, smart enough, have a vocabulary big enough, to express how you’ve changed me.

I had a dream a few weeks ago where I returned home, left you forever, and lost a limb. Clearly, the thought of not being here with you makes me feel like I’ve lost a body part. Literally. How’s that for dramatic?

I can’t deny we’ve had our ups and downs though. (Okay, fine, I’ve sort of hated you. But isn’t that always the case? When we’re children we let our crushes know we like them by throwing a punch and running away? Which is I guess what I’ve been doing these past two years.)

But somewhere down the line I fell in love with you. I fell in love with the view of Rangitoto from my front porch. The fact that I only need to drive 30 minutes to be in the middle of sweeping forests. I fell in love with your laid back weekends, your friendly bus drivers, your safety, your trees so green they’re almost neon, and the fact that money here can be thrown in the wash.

During the last 730 days, I’ve spent all but 40 of them right here. (And, don’t worry, you never would have lost me to the Aussies.)

I worry that by returning ‘home’ it might feel like you never happened. I worry that the circumstances of my life might mean I never return. That I will probably quickly lose the habit of using single quotation marks, spelling words like ‘organised’ with an ‘s’ and adopting terms like ‘heaps’, ‘sweet as’ and ‘flash’. That within days I’ll have lost my kiwi-ness and start wearing shoes to the grocery store again.

But you’ve changed me. And I hope to God that never leaves me.

With you, I’ve become exactly the person I want to be. I am more patient, more laid back, more adventurous, more active and more me.

During the last 730 days I’ve made friends, lost friends, made money, had no money. I’ve been a friend, a girlfriend, a partner, an employee, a cupcake-maker, a marketer, a CouchSurfer, a hermit, a traveler, a hiker, a loner, a student and a teacher.

So on the day I finally leave you, please know I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the last 730 days anywhere else. I may be from America, but I grew up here with you. And for that, I will be forever grateful.

Here’s to hoping we cross paths again,
Marian

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The Best Thing I’ve Done in New Zealand

by Marian Schembari on October 17, 2012

I’ve lived in New Zealand two years and it wasn’t until this weekend that I did The Best Of All Things.

One of my besties here, Amanda, worked on a farm in Ponui (home of New Zealand’s only feral donkey) studying kiwis (the birds, y’all). This weekend she invited some friends to stay for the weekend. After only 24 hours on the island I decided I would never leave. (Spoiler Alert: I had to leave.)

We arrived in a rickety boat. Our cabin was run down, had no heat and a phone system that operated like Morse code. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

We barely had time to settle in that night before Amanda walked us through pastures, up a mountain and through the bush on a kiwi hunt.

As soon as we left the house we came across a little blue penguin. A penguin. IN THE WILD, GUYS. The penguin (christened Herbert) was running around in the pasture when a cow spotted him. The cow immediately lumbered up and the bird – terrified – just stood there. The cow would inch sloowwwly forward, Herbie would twitch, and the cow would jump back. This process lasted five minutes; a stand-off between the tiniest blue penguin and a giant, hulking cow.

As soon as we started walking again we came across a kiwi. IN THE WILD, GUYS. These things are hysterical. They’re fat, only come out at night, can barely see, make an absurd amount of noise and can’t fly. He looked like a very fat man with very short legs. I love that this is the national icon of New Zealand.

Eventually we found our way to a lookout: a small ridge looking over the island, the water, then Auckland in the background. We sat without stars or moonlight, staring over our city. Five foreigners, from three different countries, all strangers less than a year ago. Sometimes I forget just how lucky we are.

We then made our way to the base of a gully, which is where we found glow worms. GLOW WORMS. IN THE WILD, GUYS. These bad boys were so big and so bright we could see them even with our flashlights on. (You can pay $150 to see glow worms in Waitomo, or have A-Cakes show you around an island in the middle of nowhere New Zealand where they litter the trail like stars.)

I slept like a baby that night. I haven’t slept so long or in so late since before my course and it felt amazing.

After breakfast the next morning we met Buster, the chicken Amanda saved when it was just a chick.

Amanda gave us a tour of the wool shed, walking us through the process of shearing a sheep. We all got to stamp wool, making our feet covered in lanolin and (literal) shit. My toesies have never felt lovelier.

Amanda also showed us how to shear a sheep using our dear friend Helen as an example. I think Helen was secretly pleased.

We walked along the beach that afternoon, buried our feet in the sand, splashed in the water and played explorer on a docked boat. What could be better? Oh yeah, yoga with a view of the water. THAT HAPPENED.

We practiced our sun salutations on the beach while the sun came out from the clouds. The boys relaxed with a beer with the chickens. I filmed a top-secret video for CouchSurfing, read while it rained and walked up to the top of a nearby hill to look out over to the Coromandel.


And then this happened:

I don’t even have the words anymore.

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Can someone please tell me what America is like now?

by Marian Schembari on September 28, 2012

I haven’t been home in two years. Haven’t seen my brothers or my best friend. Haven’t had a real apple pie or tasted my grandmother’s cooking. Two years.

TWO.

EFFING.

YEARS.

Part of me doesn’t understand how that happened. I am not that person. But, here I am, and it’s been two and half years since I’ve lived in the United States. Two years since I’ve been home at all. I had no idea that when I came here it would be so permanent. But once you arrive in New Zealand, it’s like an entirely different planet. It’s my love/hate relationship with this country… The fact that it exists in its own little bubble separates it from the rest of the world. World news doesn’t matter. Movies, foods, fads, are all decades behind. But, of course, if it weren’t for this isolation it wouldn’t be the spectacular, charming, awe-inspiring country that it is.

Which is why I’m torn about going home. I won’t be here forever. And as my time winds down, my visa runs low and my homesickness gets ever greater, I wonder what being American really means.

When I first moved abroad I couldn’t wait to get out of the States, but I also couldn’t stand how much negativity we got as a people and as a country. While the rest of the world doesn’t hate us as much as Americans think they hate us (read this post), there definitely isn’t a sweeping positive feel-good vibe about the Great US of A.

How is it possible that I feel so homesick and so sick about returning home? Is the States even my home anymore? What is it even like?

The longer I live away, the more I realize how easy it is to hate on America. I’ve based my entire knowledge of Americans on four things in the past two years:

  1. Foreign news reports
  2. Popular culture that makes it’s way over here (movies, bad TV shows that happen to get international syndication, and celebrities famous for nothing i.e. Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber)
  3. American tourists
  4. Facebook status updates from people I haven’t seen since high school

These four things have made me think of Americans as:

  1. Violent
  2. Shallow materialists with an odd sense of humor
  3. Loud idiots with no sense of direction
  4. Obsessively crazed about politics and either very strongly conservative or very strongly liberal

How can I have possibly forgotten what Americans are actually like? How can I possibly have let non-Americans so fully influence my opinions of Americans? And why am I so suddenly terrified about a simple Christmas visit?

Because, if anything, Christmas is when there is nowhere else I’d rather be. I want the white lights and the snow and the New York City trees. I want the big family dinners and the eggnog and the Frank Sinatra Christmas carols. No way in hell I can do another BBQ Christmas with carols from the 1980s, Santas wearing Bermuda shorts and garish lights on palm trees.

But here I am, two years since leaving home, and completely unaware of where home actually.

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The Blogger’s Guilt No One Talks About

by Marian Schembari on September 25, 2012

I recently wrote a post for Brazen Careerist about how neglecting my blog helped me accomplish some big life goals. The content of this post is so important – so near and dear to my heart – that I need to re-mention it.

Go here to read the full post. In it, I discuss what prompted a two month hiatus on this site, despite having worked so hard to get it to a certain point, as well as the life goals I’ve accomplished because I haven’t had to worry about posting every day.

What I don’t talk about is the guilt.

I’m at work by 8am every day and stay until 5 or 6. I rush home, then hop into class, where I stay until 8 or 9pm. I rush home again, then frantically shower and make dinner. Which is a bloody mission because I’ve had a slew of health problems recently, meaning my diet is severely limited and every meal is this major stress. Then it’s 10pm and if I want any sort of sanity I need five fucking seconds to myself before collapsing into – thankfully – a dreamless sleep.

But every day I want to blog. There is so much in my brain you have no idea. I love the online community and I love everything writing has opened up for me. So I wanted to keep it going. But with finally getting my yoga teaching certification (squeal!), work, couchsurfing and my health, there was never enough time for it.

So I let it go. But I never did it officially. I never gave myself permission to let it go, even for a while. Every day I wanted to be the kind of person who could fit in a post during her lunch break or whip something up first thing in the morning before work.

But I see so many other bloggers who just had babies sharing updates the day after they gave birth. And apparently if you sleep at night you’re doing it wrong because apparently to be successful you can’t ever rest because if you’re not working you have to be working on a side project.

Maybe I’ve been in New Zealand too long, but the thought of working when I get home from work AND teaching makes me want to kill myself. I want a life. I love blogging, but I love going out into the world more. I love taking epic walks on the beach in the Coromandel or flying to Australia for the weekend to visit my childhood best friend.

When I DO get time to myself I love going home and curling up in bed with a fantastic book more than I love reviewing that book. (And on that note, I really do owe you a dozen book reviews.)

My point isn’t that I want to abandon this site. I couldn’t. What I do want is an understanding of how people do it! Is it even possible?

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