notes from the road

The immense FREEDOM of traveling as a lifestyle is insanely cool. It hits me whenever I get on a bus; the sense of independence and possibility, the ease of going to a completely new place, it’s exciting and liberating. But it’s also a bus and NZ is fairly mountainous, so after about 6 hours of winding roads along the coastline, I felt like I was going to puke.

I’m back in Christchurch to catch my flight tomorrow. I finally escaped the northern part of the Southern Island (huh?) after 3 months. But even more exciting than that, I’m couchsurfing for the first time. (And yes Mom, I left the address with some friends before I got here.)

I’m staying with a guy named Eric from New Mexico.
- he’s been traveling around the world for the past 2 years
- the past month, he’s been renting a house with 4 girls (3 Kiwi’s, 1 Italian) and 1 guy (no clue where
he’s from)
- he’s headed back to the states the end of April
I give these details to underscore the whole traveling culture shpeal, where residents and travelers share apartments or houses and travelers often only rent places for a few weeks or months.

OK, the forgone conclusion of this whole blog should be that things are hard and I suck at doing them. HA.
Louis and I bought harmonicas a few days ago so that we could play the blues on the street and see if we could make enough money for a cup of joe ($3.50 each).
dundundundundu
got kicked out of my house
dundundundundu
had to live with my mom
dundundundundu
I lost my dog, my cat, and my mouse (well, really it was just my cat)
dundundundundu
and now I’m out on the street with only this song
yeah, I got the blues
the no house, no mouse, but a mom and a song blues
hahahahaha
BUT, neither of us could figure out how to play a blues riff to save our lives, so we parted ways with a promise to practice and meet up down the road.
Anyway, Eric showed me how to play notes on a harmonica. (Something I still haven’t mastered by any means – it looks like people just blow and wiggle their fingers, piece of cake right? Wrong.) And he gave me the music to Oh Susanna. I’m siked.
And even cooler than that, he tried to teach me how to surf this morning. The house is directly across the road from the beach (Pacific Ocean) and we threw on some wetsuits, grabbed some boards and hit the waves. Actually, the waves hit me and I fell… a lot.
I guess I have a few things to start practicing.

Some things that are exceptionally neat…
- Couchsurfing. Because you get to see what life in NZ is really like. For example, I’m staying in a suburb of Christchurch instead of the center of the city. And with NZers instead of Germans for goodness sake. It really gives me a feel of what it would be like to live here rather than just travel here.

- The girls that are flatmates with Eric are Christians and I got to go to a church home-group tonight (it’s Wednesday). And it’s just insane how many Christian events, groups, services, and people have kind of just found me – they just fall into my lap. Such a God thing.

- I’m becoming quite acclimated to NZ. I have a NZ bank account, video rental cards, grocery store discount cards, a NZ phone number (to a phone that actually full of numbers of only fellow travelers who also have NZ phones and I text back and forth with people daily), and I have a bunch of people to visit or stay with in a few cities. Craziness.

Anyway, I’m making tea (dinner. Yeah, I know, it’s odd…) with some of the girls from the flat (house/apartment) so that should be sweet as (cool).