The 3 (or 4) Month Lull

This always happens when I’ve been in NZ for about 3 months.  This time, I’ve been here 4 months before getting this feeling.  Maybe that’s slow progress?

After 3 months, or 4 as the case may be, the novelty wears off.  After 3 months, I start looking up airfare.  After 3 months, I really miss my mom.  After 3 months, I realize my body has been a little bit tensed up all this time and I’m a bit tired. After 3 months, I want to just “be” – on a daily basis – without “trying”.  After 3 months, I want to go home.

Let the Pictures Do the Talking

My last few posts haven't involved any photographs.  And who doesn't love photos?  I do. So this entry uses several recent photos to depict a bit of my life here in New Zealand. Some of the pictures I took deliberately with this project in mind.  For others, I realized after taking them, that they say a lot...

So here it goes.

I get to enjoy this view, from the Staff Club at the U of Otago, several times a week.  It's a quintessential Dunedin, NZ view. The oldest buildings on "campus" (a word that I rarely hear NZ'ers use but am seemingly unable to delete from my vocabulary!) are local icons, the green hills are good representatives of the landscape and the "tussocks" (the plants on the deck) are common both in the wild hills and in urban landscaping. Sun makes sitting outside the club particularly enticing and I realized it is one of my favorite spots in all of Dunedin.