Everybody's gonna love today, gonna love today. Anyway you want to, anyway you've got to love love me, love love me, love love...

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After travelling for 22 hours I landed in Los Angeles 3 hours after I began. The International Date Line is a marvelous thing. Right now I am sitting in beautiful San Diego in my beautiful girlfriend's beautiful flat. Summer is here, which is a far cry from the sub zero temperatures of Queenstown, but I'm not complaining. I stepped off the aeroplane into clear skies and a sunny 25 degrees, which my multi-layered travel attire did not suit. Ironically, I am going through worse culture shock coming home than I did when I arrived in New Zealand. I guess that, when I left, I was expecting things to be different and so took on the changes with zeal and intrigue. Coming back, however, is a little different. Things are familiar, yet foreign; comfortable, yet strange. I almost got ran over crossing a Santa Anna street because I was looking the wrong direction. I keep hitting the wrong switches in Nikki's apartment because the up ones are now on rather than off. Things taste different. It took me months to get used to the way milk in NZ tasted. There is only one flush option on toilets. The telly has a billion channels rather than 3 options. And everyone here talks to strange in that they sound just like me. When you travel over seas, American accents, aside from in movies, are an anomaly at best. Now people look at me strange when I receive change, smile, and say "cheers, mate!"

My last week in Queenstown was rather unremarkable in that it was about the same as any other week in Queenstown. I did begin to feel sad when I was out shopping for gifts and souvenirs because it made me realize I was actually leaving. I spent nine months trying not to be a tourist, so by not only visiting but actually purchasing things from the little Asian run gift shops was sure sign I was going home. It is amazing how many things they can get away with selling just by adding "NZ" somewhere on the product. And I bought one of each.

Work ended well having a particularly great night in our last week where, as a team, we achieved 17 signups for over $250. Just to put this in perspective, there were entire weeks in Christchurch where we did not achieve that many signups or that much revenue. I somehow managed to have a $90 night and a $100 night in the same week. Weekly target is just over $150. Not too shabby. It was a good feeling to end on such a high. I will truly miss working for Greenpeace, but, even more so, I will miss the friends I made through it. Some of my favorite people that I met abroad, and, arguably, some of my favorite people I have met ever, were connected to Greenpeace. Marcus is a role model and inspiration to me. Tom is one of the closest friends I have made over such a short time with someone. Max is one of the craziest people I have ever known, partying harder and longer than should be humanly possible. Each person I met at Greenpeace will forever be in my heart.

My trip roughly went as follows:
Awoke early on Friday morning to finish stuffing all my belongings (well, almost all. I left my tent poles behind...) into my backpack for one last time. I then hiked across town to catch the Kiwi Experience bus for the last time. We drove to Christchurch, stopping every couple of hours to take pictures and use the loo. I ate a meat pie for lunch, something that I probably won't be able to do again for ages. We arrived in ChCh around 5 pm, although by the time I got dropped off (I was the last one since I chose to stay at an inexpensive hostel on the outskirts of the city rather than pay literally twice as much for one in the Square. I ended up having my own room, fully made up, for half of what Base charges for a 12 bed dorm and no amenities. I hate Base.) it was almost 6 pm. I checked into my hostel and then decided to go for a nice long "goodbye New Zealand" walk around the city. I ended up walking probably about five or six kilometers before returning with a frozen pizza, cottage cheese, and a bottle of red wine. New Zealand has great wine. I watched part of The Insider while I ate my dinner, but was so knackered I turned it off half way through and went to sleep.

I awoke with an adrenaline surge at 8 the next morning, Chris Daughtrey's "Home" still echoing from inside of my dream. I managed a shower and few bites of brekkie before lugging all of my belongings across Christchurch to catch a shuttle to the airport. The ride was much quicker than I expected and I arrived well early. I checked in and sat down to finish reading "Life of Pi" which is one of the best books I have ever read. If you have not read it, please, do so. My flight from ChCh to Auckland was delayed, but I did not stress since I had intentionally padded my layover at AKL with a few hours to spare. We eventually boarded and, after a quick hour twenty, touched down in the scrotum of New Zealand.

After retrieving my bag I hopped on another shuttle, this time to take me to the international terminal. I checked in there, making sure the nice lady behind the counter put a note in the system to seat Matt next to me when he arrived and checked in. She did. Sweet gal. I then went and paid my departure fee (yes, that's right, they charge you $25 to leave the country. Lame.) and proceeded through security. I then entered the land of duty free and bought even more presents and souvenirs. I spent more on gifts and goodies than I did on everything else in Queenstown cumulative. Oh well, you only come home from a nine month long excursion to NZ once, right? I then noticed that my tummy was rumbling and saw a beacon of light over the ridge past some shops. Burger King called to me like Mecca wooing from the East. I could not think of any other place that seemed more fitting to eat my last meal in New Zealand. I survived on BK when I arrived in Auckland. It was both an homage to home and NZ in one delicious saturated fat infested triple cheeseburger, large chips, and Lift. While I was sitting enjoying my last supper, Matt heard the call and arrived to me. We sat, chatted, laughed, and tried not to cry until it was time to head to our gate. Qantas was also running late, so we didn't board until over an hour after we were meant to, but I didn't let it get me down. I knew Nikki would still be waiting on the other side of the aeroplane door once it opened again. Unfortunately for Matt, he had a flight to catch in LA to get to Chattanooga, which does, in fact, have an airport, not just a choo choo, and every second counted for him. I'm still not even sure if he made it.

This plane was older than the one we flew to New Zealand in and the entertainment system was not nearly as good. That is to say that this flight felt about a million times longer than the one in November. There were only a handful of movies, most of which I had no desire to watch, although I did end up checking out Zodiac and The Dead Girl. Both were good, but I was really hoping for some zany mind numbing Will Ferrell humor in Blades of Glory as the Qantas website and magazine promised. Alas. I also watched some tv shows and played crappy royalty free video games. The one thing I didn't do was sleep. The food was fine, though not nearly enough. The flight attendant even forgot to give me my dinner, so everyone around me was eating and I was stuck in the middle with a growling tummy. After waving my arms in the air to no avail, Matt worked the buddy system to our advantage and got people to pass forward the message that I needed food. I finally got my meal and consumed it in record time.
Some hours later we landed. The whole flight runs together in my mind now, but it was long and uncomfortable. LongLegs McGee behind me decided to stab me in the back repeatedly with his knee caps throughout the flight while his counterpart, Restless McShift-in-her-seat rocked back and forth all flight in the seat in front of me which is where my telly was, so I had a hard time watching the screen since I was either moving toward it to try to focus or dodging out of the way so it didn't break my nose. If you can dodge an economy class headrest you can dodge a ball.

At around noon or so on Saturday (a few hours before the flight takes off...) we landed in Los Angeles. This is when the waited gets hardest because you are so close but still so far. You have to queue to get off the plane, to get to customs, to get your bag off the conveyor belt that goes slow enough that it takes ages for your bag to get to you, but fast enough that as soon as it does and you realise it is yours you end up chasing it half way around the carousel, knocking over old ladies and children before heaving it off onto the foot of some dude 8 times as big as you (not so hard in my case) who is even more jet lagged than you and fails to see the humor of the situation. We finally deplaned and caught the shuttle off the tarmac to the baggage area. Being an American I breezed through the first customs counter. Matt's bag came relatively fast, which was good since he needed to run for his gate. My bag came after what felt like an eternity or two and I headed up to customs area number two. Ha ha, number two... anyway, that was an even bigger joke. He took my declarations form and asked me if I had any food. I decided in a split second that crisps and Anzac biscuits didn't count and told him no. He waved me past and I hoofed it up to the area where Nikki was so patiently waiting for me. We didn't say a single word for about ten minutes. She teared up and I smiled bigger than I have in nine months. I threw my bags down and we hugged in the middle of the crowd like a deleted scene from Love Actually. My hair is now longer than hers, which is a strange role reversal for us, but I love her haircut and she says she likes my lack thereof.

We drove South, toward San Diego, which I believe is an old German term that means... never mind. We stopped for lunch and walked around holding hands in the summer sun. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory beckoned us to purchase some caramel apples, so we did. We then finished the drive to San Diego, battling Saturday afternoon traffic. The evening was a nice relaxed reunion where Nik and I talked and cuddled and watched telly. Around 10 pm I finally passed out after being up for 33 hours.

Today has been mostly recovery oriented. I'm pushing fluids and checking emails. Later I think I might nap. We'll see, I'm not sure if I'll have enough time between relaxing and chillin, but I might try to squeeze one in. That is, of course, assuming that my lunch time "sit-back-and-do-nothing' ends on time.

The next two weeks are going to be spent here in San Diego where I plan to relax and take it easy with Nikki (when she's not saving lives at the hospital...). I also plan on seeing my family in the Santa Cruz bay area for a couple of weeks. My good friends Andrew and Joanna are getting married on the first of September, so I'll be flying back to New Jersey a couple days before that. Those of you in the NJ area: less than one month till I get there and I want to see you! I am so stoked.

This may well be my last mass email since I am now going to be an ordinary American doing ordinary American things rather than tramping across a country many of you may not even have really known existed before I left (heck, some of you still seem to think that New Zealand is a part of Australia...). But, I do not want to lose touch. Facebook is great and allows people to stay in touch pretty easily. Holler at me.

In the love of Christ,
Daniel

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