The Rest Is Yet to Come: This place sure has a lot of sheep.

Well hello, Auckland.

Aimee warned me that it would feel pretty absurd and overwhelming to come back to a developed nation. Bangkok and Manila certainly had their large pockets of decadence, but somehow the wedge drives deeper here in New Zealand. Department stores, supermarkets, loads of restaurants. But the biggest difference is that everybody is speaking English. I'm not used to being able to approach anybody with virtually no language barrier. My habit of simplifying speech into child-like, terse phrases is a thing of the past. I can eavesdrop on conversations. I can talk to people freely and they can talk to me. I guess the key word is *can*. Even though the potential is there, it's not like we're all breaking into song about the marvels of communication and how great it is to speak English. As nice as it is, the other side of the coin is that everything feels a bit too homogenous and too familiar. While the population in New Zealand is predominantly European, the people seem to embrace the local Māori roots and history. This adds a cool spin to the whitewashing that usually occurs in any given former colony. It seems like more of a cohesive equilibrium rather than an overwrite.

Nicole and I spent almost two weeks with our friends Lianne, Brendon, and their parrot, Albie. I used to live with L&B in Santa Barbara, back when I had the easy life of a college student for the second time around. Brendon landed a job teaching statistics at Auckland University, sparking their move to NZ over two years ago, around the time I graduated.

As with most things in my life, coming to Auckland signified yet another bittersweet moment. It's a bit of a relief to no longer be on the road, but this also means I'm inclined to stagnation. I need a plan of action, but being a homebody for a while looked pretty dammed good. I suddenly had so much more free time, especially while Lianne and Brendon were at work during the week. I filled this with nothing particularly interesting: walks around the city, copious video gaming, cooking. Well, that last one was more of a revelation. Having a kitchen kicks ass. I made so many smoothies and veggie stir fries. Glorious! There was something strangely appealing about living out that domestic routine again. I even enjoyed washing the dishes, stacking them back in their homes. I even noted a few familiar plates from our previously shared home. Warm thoughts! Also, they took my old bed to Auckland after we all moved out. Talk about a familiar place.

Over the weekend we took a trip together to the Coromandel peninsula. This place has some pretty cool volcanic activity going on, which seems to be the theme for New Zealand. Being the end of winter season, it's still pretty cold outside. But we lucked out with some clear weather while visiting the beaches. One of the beaches we visited happens to be situated 2 kilometers above a cooling vein of magma. The water seeping down gets heated to about 170° Celsius by the vein, then being forced upward and reaching the surface at a temperature of about 64° Celsius. That's about 147° Fahrenheit. The Hot Water Beach makes for quite a spectacle; many visitors dig out their own hot tub sized holes in the sand to guide the hot spring water to various collecting pools, mixing them with cold ocean water to find that perfect temperature for lounging around. I wonder if the houses nearby tap into this heat source at all.

Our time in Coromandel is short but sweet. We have a few late nights of answering intriguing hypotheticals from the Book of Questions, as well as watching Mrs. Doubtfire for some Robin Williams nostalgia. I was delighted to find so many raunchy jokes this time around that went over my head as a kid. I'll never forget his performance on James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio. The crazy, silly caricatures he generates on the fly are so unusual and compelling.

Coming back to Auckland, things kick into gear with a potential lead on a job. I accepted a position as a volunteer instructor at YMCA Wainui Park. (Staff training started as I write this, but I'll get to that later.) I was suddenly stricken with all sorts of new feelings, mostly in the form of debilitating anxiety and excitement. Having only heard about the camp in passing, not to mention never having worked with kids, I had only the slightest vague impression of what this commitment would entail. I was suddenly afflicted with a frenzy of self doubt, and a host of other complicated emotions that I can't really figure out. A lot of the trepidation also stemmed from the impending reality that I was to part ways with my comfort zone. That comfort zone came with me everywhere I went, and reciprocally I followed it everywhere it went. And that zone was my friend Nicole.

Over the last few months I fantasized often about what traveling solo might be like. There were times that my mind had trouble getting over any trivial spats and tensions that arose out of living with a person, day in, day out, all while dealing with a gamut of challenges from painstaking discomfort to mind-numbing boredom. There were times that I thought I'd be better off doing my own thing. I'd be able to seek out things I wanted to do, and nobody could stop me!

But after a while, I realized that Nicole wasn't holding me back at all. She was just an easy scapegoat for me to pick out, a seemingly simple explanation for why I wasn't getting what I wanted out of traveling. But once this devilish little thought made itself known, I was able to slowly combat it with a more sensible outlook. In actuality, I myself am the only thing holding me back from getting what I want out of this experience. Part of it stems from my tendency to exalt expectations, romanticizing how much I can actually accomplish. I idealized the notion that traveling alone would enable full agency, complete autonomy. It would certainly have new challenges, but it would also mean starting over in some sense. I'd have to figure out how to pick up the slack I'd inevitably create, no longer able to divide the tough stuff between two heads. And that day will come eventually, but I'd also quickly realize how great it was to be sharing this whole thing with someone first hand. Our minds are often in different worlds, but the moments when they come back together are what it's all about. Hitting a stride, being dorks, making each other laugh. Even as just a thought experiment, it makes me pretty sad to imagine having all of these stellar, irreproducible moments with nobody next to me to turn to, to say, "Did you see that shit?!", to howl like fools—to make our own comical universe as seen from our little vessel. Usually that's the sort of idealized relationship people save for somebody they're going to marry, but I'm pretty lucky to have it with one of my friends.

To distill that, I'd say that any thoughts of preemptively parting ways were quickly snuffed out with this realization: it's going to feel like it's moving too fast, and then I'll wish it never had to end.

And that's where I am now. Of course it's not an ending in any dramatic sense. Nicole is still sending me pictures of all the good California things: climbing with Julian, eating nachos with Jeff, consequently filling me with a fierce, envious rage (that I shall take out on her next year).

But leading up to that inevitable goodbye, I found myself strangely inert. I pulled the trigger but couldn't fathom the consequence.

It's not always the case that the emotions well up in a timely, efficient matter, let out all at once then neatly contained thereafter. And being the sorts that we are, different wavelengths and all, Nicole would muster out something sentimental only to have me draw a blank in response.

I can imagine it like a tsunami. When a seismic event is triggered offshore, the impending oceanic waves can sometimes be very deceptive. It's like I came down to the beach to find the tidal recess way below its usual mark. In fact, the shore now stretches out for hundreds of feet before touching water again. A host of life that never touches the stuff is feeling the atmosphere for the first time. The world looks alien, out of place, but compelling all the same. I'm tempted to go out and explore this anomaly, to see all these things that have now come to light. I don't know how long it'll be like this, so I just watch for a while.

While that's going on below the surface, the examination of the ocean/emotion, I have nothing I can really say in those moments, nothing that comes out in this shared reality. Mouth agape, I'm in a fringe world.

But days later, without warning, the tidal wave comes, submerging me in a heap of murky water. Shit I still can't comprehend. But luckily my friend is still there to put her hand on my knee. "There, there." I don't remember if anyone said it, or if I just thought it, but this makes me sputter out a laugh. It's moments like these in which I truly feel like my mother's son. I may not cry at the drop of a hat, but I can identify the same tendencies bubbling beneath the surface.

This was a hard good-bye. My body was clenched tight with tears and headaches and all. But this friend is my lifeline, and I take a few desperate hits from her backup regulator. I'm swimming in the tsunami, submerged in all my fears of whatever this upheaval is going to bring. It's too much to handle alone, I keep thinking. I avoid eye contact, thinking it might send me over the edge. I'm still breathing somehow.

And it's gone for now. I'm back on shore, and the damage isn't as bad as I imagined it. Meaning, I've been away for a week now and I think I can manage the separation anxiety. With global communication, we're not even that far apart. Imagine what people had to endure back in the day when it would take weeks for just a letter to go through, or weeks to cross the ocean.

So what next? Well, this blog has always served as an outlet for my ramblings, a way to make sense of things. I'm glad it could also serve as a place to cope with some difficulties, too. If there's any goal I want to set going forward, it's to use all of the informal knowledge I gained while traveling and put it to use in new ways. I want to surprise myself, and the first step was saying, "Guess what? You're not going home just yet!" Oh how I wanted to come back, to see everyone, to do all those things I said I would do: drink beers with my buds, play all the video games, hike every day. It hurts a little not to give in, but the mentality I want to cultivate will help me to deal with that pain. This longing is self inflicted, but in a good way.