Instead, all my doubt smashes into me the minute I’m on New Zealand soil.
I’m alone in a foreign country with a finite amount of money to my name. I only have a backpack with some random shit I didn’t need to bring. Outside the large windows it’s summer. My head is in winter. I quit my job to do this. I may be doing this for a girl I don’t really know.
I’m an idiot.
I don’t know how long I sit like this. Maybe minutes, maybe an hour. I only raise my head when I feel someone sit down on the chair next to mine.
It’s an older, heavyset man with a bushy beard, a baseball cap on his head. He’s got a stuffed Kiwi bird in his worn hands and twirls it around.
He catches me staring and gives me a knowing look. Just add a twinkle in his eye and a pipe in his mouth and he could be fucking Santa Claus.
“Jet lag is a bitch, aye?” he says in a gruff Kiwi accent.
I nod. “I guess you could say that.”
He narrows his eyes, sussing me out. “Where ya from, mate?”
“Canada,” I say, turning my backpack over so he can see the freshly affixed Canadian flag patch I placed on it.
“Where in Canada?” he asks.
“Vancouver, British Columbia. West Coast.”
“Where in Vancouver?”
I raise my brow. “Uh, in the city, near downtown.”
“Where in the city?”
“Commercial Drive?” I say, as if the truth isn’t the right answer.
Finally he smiles. “Love that area. My cousin lives on Broadway, near the Drive. Last time I went was just before the Olympics.”
My mind is blown. First person I talk to in a foreign country and they pretty much know exactly where I live. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
He’s watching me. Then he says, “Small world, aye?” Suddenly his attention is caught by a load of passengers coming through the arrivals area. “Excuse me, my granddaughter is here.”
He gets up and I watch as he greets a young couple and their little girl in a pink dress. There’s a lot of hugging and tears and he gives the girl, his granddaughter, the stuffed Kiwi bird. She hugs it, delighted, albeit still shy around her grandfather. The reunited family leaves together, looking happy as pigs in shit.
I’ve never felt more alone. And I know the feeling will only get worse if I don’t get up. I need to get to the backpackers in the city, I need to unpack and sleep and take comfort in the idea that the world is small. It’s something I can handle.
I go outside and wait for the next airport bus. I have a moment of panic when I realize I never got any New Zealand currency out from the bank machine, but it turns out the buses here accept credit cards. I hold my breath, praying there’s enough room on the card for the twenty dollar ticket after all the plane tickets I bought. There is.
Throwing my backpack in the bins at the front, I find an empty seat and take a moment to get a grip. I feel discombobulated, like a gumball bouncing around in a gumball machine. I feel like I’m in a dream, like I’m here but not here at the same time.
By the time the bus engine roars to life, my leg is jumping up and down to a restless beat. I’m anxious, nervous, worried about things I’m not even aware of. But when we pull away from the curb and chug down the road on the wrong side, I’m hit with a thrill. I’d forgotten that everyone drives on the left here.
Suddenly, a mere bus ride turns into a novelty. It trips me out, going against everything I’m used to. It’s foreign. It’s exciting. I’m not at home. I’m elsewhere.
I’m free.
Bright fields of French lime and forest green fly past the window, dotted with cows and sheep. Cars zip down the highway with names I’ve never heard of before, like Holden and Peugeot and Daihatsu. Everything is so much the same and yet so different. It hits me, smacks me, time and time again, that I’m not in motherfucking Kansas anymore.
I feel high. It’s the jet lag. It’s the lack of sleep. But the unknown is all around me, and kilometer by kilometer, I am falling in love with it.
By the time the bus winds along narrow suburban streets, well-kept houses, and yards filled with lush, subtropical foliage and bright flowers, and then through downtown Auckland with its concrete and glass buildings, my body is fighting a war between the need to explore and the need to close my eyes.
The bus drops me off near my hostel, the Sky Tower Backpackers, located across the street from the famed tower, a building so tall that it puts the CN Tower to shame. It makes me nauseous to crane my neck back and stare at the top, and even more sick when I see a tiny person jumping off the top and descending it while attached to wires, like they’re rappelling some cliff, not a thousand-foot-tall structure among city streets.