New Zealand

My brother and his wife are expecting their first baby (first grandchild on this side!) end of September/beginning of October. My brother is so sweet - but you would never guess that from the number of guns and guard dogs and pepperspray and defense/assault moves he knows/has. In thinking about my brother and what type of father he'll be (uh, protective...duh), I started thinking about an afternoon in my life when CYP wasn't even around - but he still managed to be sitting directly next to me, making me cry with laughter.

I went to Australia for six months for an exchange program in college. After finishing the school year I still had a month of time to travel about - I chose New Zealand and Japan. New Zealand was amazing and gorgeous, but I wasn't ever taken in by its charms for I was really sick from traveling for so long, and was sort of homesick for my friends in Australia, and my family in the States, and was all by myself...I hadn't made many plans prior to arriving in NZ - thinking my incredibly general plan of locating a place to sleep and way to get around would be easy to maneuver - to be fair, I was planning on spending most of the week in the backcountry, tramping about in the Tongariro National Park. I spent the entire plane ride puking, the entire time in the customs line trying to pretend I wasn't sick so I wouldn't get quarantined, and then did in fact manage to store some of my gear in an airport locker, locate a hostel to stay in for the night, and eventually find transportation to the National Park to begin my trek.

It's a long week - I'm so sick I can barely hike, stumbling and falling, and generally disturbing anyone who passed by me (all in all, about 8 people for the week), I got snowed in on top of a (non-active) volcano, and ate all of my food almost immediately (starve a fever, maybe?), leaving just a can of spaghetti and a box of cookies to sustain me for the rest of the week. At the end of my allotted time on the mountain, I managed to get myself down the trail again and to a little lodge where I tried to not offend anyone with my unshowered body and hungry eyes (not the Patrick Swayze kind, either) and then, after that, I found a bus that would take me back to Auckland.

I have to laugh when I think about the impression I must have made on the Kiwi's because of this bus ride I took. Although I was freshly showered and wearing clean-ish clothing, no one ended up sitting next to me for the entire ride. Why, you ask? An attractive young American who looks friendly enough who couldn't find a seatmate?

Well, because an ABBA song was playing when I loaded myself onto the bus. I smiled, thinking about the painful expression that my brother would have had on his face if he were forced to listen to this. Then, the next song was also an ABBA hit...and the next...and it turned out it was an ABBA CD and that REALLY made me start giggling to myself thinking about him and the agony this would be causing him...and then, once the number of ABBA songs continued to rise, I realized it was the ABBA BOX SET...and I can't stop laughing - so the bus has been stopping and picking up more and more people, and it's filling up. getting really crowded, but no one wants to sit next to me - as I'm giggling hsyerically - snorting and coughing and wheezing, all because I can see my brother's features twist in pain as he listens to all of the greatest ABBA hits - and I wish I could tell these very sweet and completely terrified passengers that I'm not insane, I just hadn't seen my family in months and months and was thinking about my brother and wishing he were traveling with me.