Wanaka

Spent the last week or so in Wanaka, in the midst of the southern alps. For those of you familiar with northern NH, it's sort of like the Bartlett to Queenstown's Conway. Very pretty surroundings, not too built up yet, though it seems to be starting down that direction.

Here's my week in review (today's Monday the 6th): last Sunday, arrived in Dunedin for the Fringe Festival and hanging out with various peeps. The festival was a bit of a disappointment except for an event or two, but I had fun anyways. Tuesday I drove up to Wanaka via the Otago heartland, where much of NZ's fruit is grown. Arrived in Wanaka around 5 in the evening, saw most of what the downtown had to offer in an hour or so, and hung out at the hostel.
The next morning, drove about 15 minutes to my next WWOOFing location. As I pulled into the driveway, this woman in her late 50s looked rather bewildered to be seeing a car pulling in. Got out of the car, held out my hand:

"Hi, I'm Tim!"
"...Am I supposed to know you?"
(this after I'd emailed her (Ruth) several times and called her two nights previously - found out later something similar had happened to the other WWOOFing guests)

After we'd worked it out that I had indeed called and that she had a spare bed, she showed me to the first task, where Anselm, an 18 year old French guy was working pretty diligently. She was micromanaging him something fierce and muttering at me about him, knowing that his English wasn't all that good. I ended up staying despite my instincts telling me to run.

In addition to Anselm, I met Mick and Sharon, an English couple from Birmingham. Ended up going on a few hikes and having a few beers with them, not to mention going along with them to the movie theater/cafe (something which really needs to exist in NYC) to see Benjamin Button. Enjoyed hanging out with all of them, and made the WWOOFing experience much better than it would have otherwise been - for on top of the various complaints I had about Ruth, she ended up "needing my bed" a few days earlier than I'd planned on leaving. Good thing my trip plans are flexible :)

This week has kind of put a lot of thoughts in my head as to what I want out of life, where my priorities should be, and all that - which is exactly what I'd hoped for when I started out on this journey. What kind of importance do I want to place on my career? Do I have any desire to settle down somewhere, whether in NYC or elsewhere, or do I want to travel around as much, working in various places when money gets low? Not sure, but I've had a quote from Esther Dyson bouncing around in my head in the past week: "Always make new mistakes." - which is exactly what I'm hoping I'm going to be doing in the next few days, months, and years (and I hope the same for all of you, dear readers!)