Week 20- Many Partings and New Beginnings

First thing on Monday morning, Charlotte, Mathias, Eemelie and Marlene returned from their venture north and we all had breakfast together which raised my spirits. At this point all my roommates had moved out so I have the whole place to myself. There was gear everywhere as the group decided what could be left behind after their tester week. They were headed for Wellington in Eemelie’s car (which is now working again) and then Eemelie will take the ferry across to the South island while the others fly to Queenstown. As Marlene will be back for next semester she also had to take her stuff to store it in a storage locker for the summer. Eventually everything was sorted and we all ate lunch before Charlotte, Marlene and I walked to the Chocolate Boutique in Parnell. It was Jack’s 18th birthday so I wanted to get him some fancy dark chocolate. In the end, I got him two bars, one of which was a specially made 100% cocoa bar. I can’t say I thought it sounded particularly appealing but hopefully an experience nevertheless. By mid-afternoon I had to say goodbye to Mathias and Charlotte which could well be for the last time.

I went to my physio appointment and he was definitely more positive about my injury than I initially was. For the time being I was to ice it and be kind to it. We then worked out how I could keep my fitness up while the leg recovered. I headed to the gym and began my single-leg rowing workout on the rowing machine. Very determined to be back in time for worlds. I popped into Jack on Queen Street to give him his gift and then headed home. Mark very kindly asked me to join him and some friends for quiz night at the Empire Tavern the next day. It was probably the best organised quiz I have been to with all the questions on several screens so we didn’t have to rely on listening to the quizmaster. Strangely, I seemed to do particularly well on the tennis and Children’s books/tv/film questions!

I had a second helping of physio followed by single leg rowing on Wednesday before resuming my cleaning and packing process as I was moving out on Thursday. It is quite incredible how much stuff I had managed to accumulate, along with five bags of food which had been left by my previous flatmates. One of which reappeared on Thursday, used the toilet and left without saying a word (a flatmate not a bag of food). Once I was good to go I read my book ‘Open’ (the Andre Agassi autobiography which I would highly recommend) until Clare came to collect me shortly after 20:00. We loaded all my gear (I seemed to have far more than was reasonable for a student) and drove it to their home on Queen Street.

Friday was my third helping of physio and single leg rowing and I definitely felt I could see improvement so I was feeling more positive. I then spent far too many hours trying to plan more of the minor details for my Australia traveling such as our exact car route, what we wanted to see, when to see it, where we would stay and also our great barrier reef experience (We decided upon an overnight trip which I’m very excited about). Come Saturday it was time for our move to Waiheke (an island off Auckland where Mark and Clare have a batch). Of course, there were jobs to be done first. Mark had a load of gravel (2 cubic meters) delivered to the back of their Queen Street home to be compacted around a large lip in the concrete which was causing cars to bottom out. We spent most of the morning shovelling gravel, compacting it with a compactor Mark hired (basically a heaving vibrating lawnmower with no blades or wheels), then repeating. Happy with the finished product we returned the compactor, quickly packed our things into the car and headed to the ferry (I followed behind on my bike). The ferry trip took about an hour and twenty minutes to reach the island with a permanent population of 8000 but a Christmas population of 50,000.

Once on the island I cycled the 6km to the batch (very encouraging considering my leg). The plot of land is basically an area of bush on a steep hill on which they have built a platform with two garden shed type structures and then a third hut further up the hill. It is a little slice of paradise. I can only think of Swiss Family Robinson when I am there but a little more sophisticated with power sockets, running water, a fridge, a barbeque, inflatable spa pool and shower (admittedly the shower isn’t currently working). On top of all this, it is only 400m from the beach. We did a few small jobs, sorting and weeding, before Jack arrived and we went to the beach for a swim.

I was going to have to work a bit more on Sunday to earn my keep so I spent most of the day painting the huts with wood preservative and fetching and carrying when needed. I did my best to ignore the mosquito bites on my hands (I had covered everywhere else so they had attacked the only available Irish skin) and went to the beach with Jack in the afternoon to throw a frisbee and have a swim. After dinner, all four of us went down the beach for a walk and a swim. Apparently, the sea is 4° warmer than normal and the tide was a king tide (meaning it was the highest of the year) which was caused by the ‘super moon’ (basically the moon being very close). This meant it was gorgeous to swim in and we were treated to the most amazing moon and brilliant red sunset.

You can see all the photos from the move here.