Change in the pockets

Hello all!  It's been too long.  I write from a cozy plastic seat in a Burger King in the city of Blenheim.  The last time we were in Blenheim was back in early December (sounds like the last time I posted, also).  This is funny, because picking up from here leaves out our zig-zagging, backtracking tour of the entire South Island.
I don't have it in me to go through it all.  At least not right now.  Some memories and events will be brought up in discussions with friends and family, others years down the road when looking through journal entries or then-old photographs.  Needless to say, it's all been too eventful.  There are just too many funny or amazing things that have happened, and even my attempts to record those in my personal journal fall to the side due to the randomness of life.

In this time I've come to realize that living in the moment makes life move so slowly, yet pass too swiftly. Psychologists, doctors and other people of the sort have found that switching up your routine, learning or experiencing something new every day, as often as possible, "slows down time" for a person.  Your brain adjusts to the norm of the day and "fast forwards" things like morning coffee, showers, teeth brushing and the commute to work.  In this way, when we as people are dictated by rigid daily routines, it feels like we're losing our lives: the day just slips away because we're used to everything that happens.

New experiences stop you and make you think.  Time slows down.  This is the basis for why we adults look back on our childhoods and think, "Gee, Summer-time lasted forever..."  Life was new back then.  We knew nothing of the world, and couldn't coldly predict what was in store for us.  So, looking at things this way, people should be encouraged to experience new things regularly so's to not let life pass them by.

It's funny then how the idea of sleeping somewhere different every night and seeing new sights every day almost becomes normal if you do it enough.  Mind you, normal is used loosely here.

There's been a lot of change happening in our minds with everything lately.  It's strange thinking back on our original plan of WWOOFing for an entire year throughout New Zealand.  I remember telling people we would be aiming to have worked for 30 hosts by the time we were done. We've been here nearly half a year and we've WWOOFed 6 times.  The reason for the change is that the actual idea of traveling took over. We reunited with some old (and new) friends from our first host back in Auckland.  We met in Queenstown on March 1st and to this day we've continued traveling around, mostly by ourselves.

People come and go.  Our old group has disbanded now.  Some returned to their home countries and a few moved their travels to Southeast Asia.  Almost immediately after we all parted ways for good, Stacy and I bumped into and traveled with three of our German friends from our last host, Takaro Lodge.  I can't wait to talk about that place in another post... heheh.  I've got some gold there.  Then we bumped into them a couple other times. It's actually really cool seeing the same people again in random (sometimes very random) other places in New Zealand.  We're all here with the same purpose, so there's this unspoken commonness that we all share.  I like it.  Usually.  

So, quite a few juicy details and interesting bits aside, we're on our way into the Tasman region again, where we're going to try and work and live for a few months.  I also intend to begin weekly updates once we have a flat and regular, predictable internet access.  This stint of long waits between my posts is coming to an end, I promise that!

Next update in a couple days!

That is all.