It's New Zealand Time! (almost)

As my next and final trip approaches, I've been reflecting a lot on what the hell I'm doing taking a year off, why I did what I did, and what I got out of it.

The problem in the beginning was that I never really decided why I'm taking a gap year. My rationale was always, "Well, I could go to college, or I could do cool shit for a year and then go to college." It was a no-brainer. I didn't seek to save the world, find myself, become one with nature, make tons of money, or accomplish any other specific goals like travelers sometimes seem to have. I couldn't even think of a blog thread, something to make all my posts coherent. I was entirely directionless, so choosing where I'd go and what I'd do was tough.

My plan ended up being a cocktail of trips, of experiences, I thought might be "good" or "fun" or "rewarding" or...something. Yoga teacher training was the practical one. Now I can make money anywhere I go as a trained professional even if I lose my day job. Thailand was the "save the world" approach, and I left knowing that I changed the lives of 60 or so Thai babies.

New Zealand's classification is probably "finding myself" with an itty bitty side dish of "partying on the beach with foreign boys." But to be perfectly honest, New Zealand came about after discovering the existence of zorbing last summer in Switzerland. We never got a chance to do it in the land of cheese and chocolate, but some combination of wanting to zorb and a profound respect for whoever came up with such a preposterously genius idea made me fixated on New Zealand.

Zorbing

There are lots of different gap year options within the plan to "go to New Zealand," many of which were expensive and chaperoned gap year programs. I, however, wanted to be unsupervised and not broke afterwards. Somehow the Kiwi Experience website popped up in my Google searching, a travel company that runs hop-on, hop-off bus trips. It seemed perfect: I could meet other travelers, get guidance from Kiwi Experience, and still have total freedom to do as I pleased (any given pass lasts I year, so I could theoretically stay at a given stop for a night, a three weeks, or ten months). So, after a convincing powerpoint and much negotiation/begging, my parents approved a Kiwi Experience lack-of-plan plan (that was, if I called my mother every day and assured my father I'd apply sunscreen religiously).

Here I am, six months later, with a Kiwi Experience bus pass and a one-way plane ticket to Auckland. I absolutely cannot wait. I don't know what kind of trip it will be...hopefully an everything trip.