Dreaming of... going back

I'm sure a lot of you have had those holidays where, a few years later, you find out more about the place you visited and start kicking yourself for not researching the place enough and missing out on those things... or you simply didn't have enough time to see everything you wanted to see.

Well, four years ago I went to the states for three months - I saw a lot - I counted about 25 states. But, I only spent one day in New York City and three days in San Francisco, two places I desperately want to go back to.

I was starting a tour in New York, so I had the choice of spending one day there and going straight to the tour, or spending about two weeks there before the next tour. If I knew then what I know now, I would have taken the two weeks. But, I was travelling by myself, and big city New York is a scary place for a young kiwi girl on her own. I was also not that interested in the city - I was never obsessed with Sex and the City or anything like that, I was more keen to go trekking through the desert and meeting Native Americans.

However, the one day that I had there now haunts me, simply because I saw the city at a glance, but I didn't really do anything. I took a double-decker tour bus around the city and got to see the empire state building, the edge of Central Park, Tiffany's and a bunch of high-rise apartment buildings owned or lived in by celebrities. I got off the bus where the Twin Towers used to be and had a look around the church across the road that serves as a memorial, and I took a walk around Battery Park and looked at the Statue of Liberty from afar... and then looked at the line for the ferry and decided not to waste half my day waiting.
I also went to Times Square during the day and at night... it freaked me out so much during the day I left as soon as I got there - there were too many people! Then I met up with some friends and went back that night and visited the M&M's store.

So although I did fit a lot into one day, it doesn't even come close to the things I want to see/do now... So on my next visit, in 2014, we're going to...

♥ See the John Lennon memorial in Central Park
♥ Take a long walk or cycle through Central Park
♥ Go inside the Empire State Building
♥ Take the ferry across to the Statue of Liberty
♥ See a broadway show - preferrably Grease or Hairspray
♥ Go to the Museum of Modern Art
♥ Take a stroll through West Village
♥ Watch a film at Film Forum
♥ Eat at Grimaldi's Pizzeria
♥ Have a look around Tiffany's - Or better yet, have "Breakfast at Tiffany's" haha
♥ Watch live music at Bowery Ballroom

Yeah, we might be there for awhile...

San Francisco was a different experience altogther. The tour I went on finished at LA, and most of the people on it either went to Disneyland or went home. I was tempted to go to Disneyland, but I decided that I would rather share that with Joshua or take our future children there one day - plus, San Fran was a city the hippie inside me had always wanted to visit, and it was a chance to wind down and just be by myself for a few days after meeting so many people over the three months and barely having a moment alone.

I managed to squeeze quite a lot out of three days in San Fran, so the reason I want to go back is not so much because I feel like I missed a lot, but more because I want Joshua to feel its amazingness and also just because I loved the place so much.

While I was there, I took a tram to Fisherman's Wharf, had a walk around, went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, took the ferry over to Alcatraz - which I did because dad told me to and I actually ended up loving it - went to Haight Street, the hippie centre of the Summer of '67, did some shopping in market street, ate a beautiful breakfast at Lefty O'Doul's diner every day, then finished it all off with a trip on a boat under the golden gate bridge at sunset (which was amazing).

So the places I want to go back to are:

♥ Haight Street
♥ Alcatraz

And the places I haven't been to/things I haven't done are:

♥ Cycle over the Golden Gate Bridge
♥ Eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp
♥ Go to Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf before dawn to see the sea lions
♥ Go to North Beach and have breakfast at Mama's (apparently the best breakfast in town)
♥ Go up Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill (it overlooks the city and has some awesome 1930s murals inside) then take the 400 stairs down
♥ Golden Gate Park
♥ The Exploratotium - Science Museum (This one's for Joshua)

Do you have travel regrets? Hankering to go back? Tell me yours in the comments below!

Losing control and taking it back

It's two months today since I made my last trip from Masterton to Stokes Valley, this time with a trailer fully laden with all that is material in my life. It was a change that I had hoped for for a long time and finally my chance to live my "real life" instead of what I felt had become my "temporary life".
I should have expected it, having gone away for a long period of time and come back twice in my life, but it still took me by surprise. "It" is hard to explain with simply a word or a sentence, hence why I'm writing a blog post about it. Yes, it's a bit personal, but I hope by writing about it, I can help myself as well as others who have been in a similar situation.
"It" is that horrible, crushing feeling you get when you leave everything you know and love - get out of your "comfort zone" if you will - come back, and after a month or two of euphoria, rediscovery and general happiness about being back, you realise you're back where you started and life is now routine again.
I first experienced this when I came back from Australia, where I was an exchange student for three months. Although, I had an Australian exchange student come to stay with me for three months after that, so it was after she left when it began to kick in. At the tender age of 15, my life was all about friends, being cool, and fitting in, and going on that trip disrupted all of those things. Three months is a long time in a teenager's life - enough time for your group of friends to either replace you or close the gap in the circle, leaving you on the outside - and even though I had made many friends in Australia, I had to accept that I would lose contact with a lot of them. But I missed them a lot.
I wasn't very "cool" and I never quite "fitted in" at my school here, so going to Australia and being the foreigner was great because, all of a sudden my host sister's friends were my friends, and there were a lot of them. But then I came back and my small group of friends had carried on without me, closing the gap, and I never really got back in, choosing instead to form close friendships with a select few people who I valued far above "being cool".
Then there was my three month trip to the USA. This time I was leaving behind a whole different life, as I had made it to that age (19) when you finally start to appreciate how important family is and "fitting in" becomes the ridiculous concept it is. Job wise, I hadn't quite found my way, so I was temping - mainly because I didn't want to commit to anything before going overseas. I was in a new relationship, one that I knew was for keeps, and one that I've now been in for five years. He knew from the very beginning - I think I even mentioned it on the night we met - that I was planning on doing Camp America, as I had been for years, so he knew what he had signed up for.
After two months of teaching art in the sunshine every day in the middle of nowhere, then a month of travelling - sleeping in tents and hostels and seeing things I never thought I would get to see and experiencing things beyond my wildest dreams (you haven't lived until you've laid down inside a massive, red cave-like rock in Monument Valley and heard a Navajo Native American play the wooden flute, its sound bouncing off the cave walls with acoustics as good, if not better than any theatre) - I came back to where I started: temping with no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
Although my New Zealand world had not changed much - my family were trucking along well and my relationship was strong - I had changed. And there's nothing more frustrating than when you've changed but the world around you has not. But you can't leave that life because the people you love are in it. It took a long time for me to put my extensive travel ideas on the back burner and focus on carving myself out a career before travelling again.
And carve out a career I did, which brings me to my next journey. I ended up studying journalism after meeting someone who had been one through my temp work, thinking "I could do that", and starting the course the next Monday. After the course I was offered a job in Hastings on a community paper and after talking it over with family and Josh and, after agreeing it wouldn't be forever and I could always come back if it became too hard, suddenly I was leaving home for the first time, moving into a flat with people I didn't know which was four hours away from home. Six months later I was on the move again, this time to Masterton, which was to be my home for a year.
In February I finally got the break I had been looking for and I was able to come back home to Wellington, and moved back in with my parents until Josh and I can move in together.
I love my wonderful supportive parents and my lovely Stokes Valley home where I grew up, but yet again, I'm back where I started: living with my parents. And I have changed a lot over the past 18 months, and lately, since the excitement and euphoria about being back has worn off I'm afraid of losing the new qualities I have gained by being out in the big wide world all by myself. It's easy to say that you leave home a kid, being bossed around and told to do chores and argued with, then you come back an adult and you should be treated like a flatmate, but that's simply not true. You're always your parents' child no matter how old you are, and both them and you end up getting back into the routine that is parent and child, even if you have been cooking your own dinner, buying your own groceries, getting yourself out of bed and off to work in the morning, for the last 18 months.
I guess I became a little selfish over that time, because I only had myself to look after and when I went home to visit, I was centre of attention. Now that I'm back, the attention has shifted and "that time when Sarah lived miles away" has all but been forgotten, and my life revolves around a lot more people than just me. I'm not saying I don't like the shift in attention and the demands of more people in my life, it's just that it's a lot to get used to. It's also hard to stay strong so that I can keep those qualities I've gained and my general outlook on life - my new, positive outlook on life where anything is possible.
So this week I've slipped. I've given in to the old, negative me and become this stressed out, irritated, frustrated person that I once was. But this time, instead of being content in my self-pity, I'm fighting back, refusing to be pulled down into that familiar, strangely cozy black hole.
There's a lot to be learnt from experiences such as this. Patience is the most important thing to have, a quality that comes from knowing that there will be more adventures to come, some of which will be scary and risky, and will sometimes have you wishing you were back in your snug routine.
Yes, it's a cliche (I know, not exactly shying away from them today - "beyond my wildest dreams"? yeah... couldn't help myself), but the most important thing to remember is what's most important in your life: People. Wherever you are in the world, be it New York City or lowly old Masterton, it's always the people you miss. So instead of obsessing about what the next step is going to be, I'm trying my best to sit back, employ copious amounts of patience, and enjoy having the people that I love close by.

The Girl in Times Square review

This was a good book, although not quite good enough to be in my top ten. It has all the trademarks of a favourite Sarah book: It’s set in New York City, the main character is an artist, there’s tragedy and death, and there’s a love story. But I almost forgot to write this review – I’ve read a whole other book since finishing this one, and I think a true sign of a good book is one that you continue to think about long after you’ve turned the last page, which was not the case here.

While this one was good, it didn’t blow my mind. And while I was glued to it in the last couple of chapters, part of me just wanted to finish the damn thing.

The characters were good, the drama was good, the setting was good, but in the end I felt a bit let down – it was an ending that made the whole book seem like it didn’t have much point, and a hell of a lot happened.

It’s quite hard to explain my feelings about this book without ruining the ending for those of you who want to read it, and if you do want to read it, don’t let me put you off – this is just one person’s opinion; it just wasn’t really for me.
I love Paullina Simons' books, but often they leave me with an empty feeling at the end – except for her Tatiana and Alexander series, that blew my mind.
But Tatiana and Alexander’s story was a lot different to her other books and it makes me think maybe she’s just better at writing the intense, heart-breaking love story set in the midst of history rather than modern thrillers with a bit of romance thrown in.

*Above picture: "Kissing the War Goodbye" by Alfred Eisenstaedt