After Cairns, I flew to Sydney.  I decided to spend a little extra money and stay at a hotel instead of an airbnb since it was just a short stop in between flights.  The hotel I booked in Sydney is best described by its bar.  It’s the place that old low income men go to drink beer at the middle of the day.  They were delightful old men that wanted to ask me all about America and why in the hell did we elect Trump.  So, that conversation again while I waited for the manager to get back from a meeting to let me into the hotel which was above the bar/casino/restaurant.  If I wasn’t sick and exhausted, I would have left to find a new hotel as this one smelled bad and was dark and scary.  But, I just didn’t have the energy.  The restaurant was decent and an early morning taxi to the airport.

Australian immigration is fully automated.  You stick your passport in a machine and look at the camera.  It spits your passport out and then the gates open.  Done.  I flew on one of the giant double decker airplanes.  Just seeing the line of people waiting to board the plane was mind boggling.  How can that many people fit on one airplane.  I’ve flown on these before, but it’s still just difficult to fathom.

Landed in Auckland New Zealand!  The traffic leaving the airport was so bad that my taxi fare was $44 before even leaving airport property.  By the time I got to the airbnb it was $98, but the taxi driver was nice and only charged me $70.  My airbnb here is wonderful!  It is a beautiful old house with gorgeous gardens, a comfortable bed and nice hosts.  The husband loves to talk and talked my ear off talking about everything.  The room includes breakfast, but they made me dinner too.  I wouldn’t mind just not leaving the garden for 4 days.

My first full day here, I spent the morning trying to see if I could get my phone fixed.  It randomly decided not to recognize a cell signal.  Went to two repair places that couldn’t help.  I went to a phone store.  I could get a phone and sim card for $80 for the month.  That’s not too bad, but I couldn’t make a decision so I decided to wait a day.  Later I met up with a friend of a friend, Joel.  We went to the beach for a while and then up to one of the many volcano cones.  There are a bunch of old volcano cones here – not craters, just very very large hills with great views.  We also had dinner.  She is a very nice woman and we had a great time.  I got to see fireworks from the house I’m staying at – Christmas festival downtown – beautiful!

The second day, Joel and I went to the zoo.  Why not?  Since I seem to be on the world animal tour.  We got there in time to see Tasmanian Devil feeding and Penguin feeding.  All of the penguins are rescues.  I’m not sure, but maybe all of the animals at the zoo are rescues?  Some of the penguins were missing a flipper or had a foot that didn’t work.  It was sad to see, but delightful to know that the zoo was taking care of them.  Another treat was running into two zookeepers taking the pigs for a walk through the zoo.  They clicker train the pigs.  We got to pet them.  The meerkats were fun!  We saw a turtle trying to mate, but he had the wrong end of the other turtle.  There were many baby turtles so someone in that enclosure had it figured out.  After dinner, I was just exhausted.  I’m not feeling sick anymore, but I have sniffles and a lot of coughing.  I get tired easily.

I got a massage because my feet have been hurting so bad.  She said my feet problems were because of my tight shoulder.  Yea, I knew that.  My whole body is just screaming for help.  I know it’s from all I’ve experienced over the past year and how that ties to some of my core issues.  I’ve only touched the surface of processing it all.  For some reason, I can’t seem to process it.  I keep feeling like that will happen when I get back to Colorado.  I’m not sure what I’m waiting for.  The few times I’ve tried to process, nothing happens.  I also question why I need to process.  Is it possible to just drop the old story, the old lies without having to be emotional?  It seems like this should be possible at some point, but not yet.  I assume this is why I’m sick again too.  I’m just trying to see and do everything in a relatively short period of time.

On the subject of going back to Colorado, I have a plane ticket for January 4^th.  I can have my old job back.  I have a place to live temporarily.  I have a car although it might be in horrible shape.  I had planned to spend the past three months travelling and looking for a new job abroad.  Looking for a new job never happened.  I feel like it’s time to go back.  That doesn’t mean I can’t live abroad again.  But, I don’t want to do a job I don’t enjoy just for the sake of living abroad.  I did that, I learned a lot, and now I feel like it’s time to figure out how to integrate all of that.  So, I will go back to Colorado and regroup, process and start figuring out where I will live and what life has in store for me next.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore