Am I really leaving so soon?

I started this post more than two weeks ago, after my last day of classes, during what would have been the sad culmination of four amazing months here in New Zealand.

But I could not finish it. As I began thinking about all the amazing things I had done, and had left to do, my heart yearned for more trips, more adventure. Over the four months my traveling style has evolved from sightseeing road trips to popular but easy "Great Walks", to more difficult and off-trail winter tramps, and just recently to climbing and alpine mountaineering. How I wanted to have just another few weeks under the guidance and experience of my kiwi friends, to refine my skills and learn more about these new activities.

But clinging even deeper to my heart were the friends I had met here, the Kiwis, the Dutch, the Czech, and everyone in between. For weeks my Dutch friend had been egging me on to change my flight. "Just another month!" she would argue with me with a smile. Another friend seemed positive from the start that I would surely stay longer, and was really quite surprised when I hadn't made any attempt to extend my stay here. "I really had you pegged as a natural Kiwi," she told me, "I took it for granted you would stay."

But I had stuff to get back to at home, and though the last four months here were among the best of my life, I seemed to have no desire to make it longer. It was almost just so perfect that I didn't want to risk a minor setback tarnishing the perfect record of New Zealand I had so far had. It's funny, and I am happy it turned out this way, that while many of my Arcadia classmates are flying off next week to Fiji and Australia and Raratonga, I realized I have no desire whatsoever to lay on a beach somewhere in the pacific.

This is my home, and it is the people here that have made it so. No tropical paradise can compare to that. So I sent in my tickets today, and changed my flight to July 28th, just a day before my Visa runs out. In the next month I hope to pack as much in as possible, for even though New Zealand is so tiny, and even though I travel every weekend, there is still so much to see and do.