OK, so apparently I was too busy having fun in Canada to write.. ahem. A bit shameful really, isn’t it. But now I’m back, and hopefully better than ever!

So strange to be home in Wellington, where everything feels odd yet wonderfully familiar. It is, of course, exactly the same. After almost a year in a foreign country, it’s me who’s changed.

It’s an interesting exercise looking back over my old posts. I still care about the same things: writing, poetry, cats, squirrels, shoes. Some of my writing is shocking, some of it I’m proud of. My excitement about going to Canada seems incredibally naiive now. Not that I shouldn’t have been excited. It’s just that I had No Idea what I was in for. The difficulties and joys of living somewhere other than your home. Where everything you do, the way you speak, what you want to eat, how you walk even, is different. No, I’m afraid I don’t know how to walk on three feet of snow, kindly don’t laugh when I fall through it onto my butt!

I’m thrilled to be back in Wellington, it such a wonderful city and Kiwis are very special people. Unfortunately it means I am conducting a long distance relationship with the love of my life. LOML is Canadian, and will be coming to NZ sometime in the very near future. It’s pretty much going to blow his mind. Ontario, where he has spent his whole life, is land-locked and totally, undescribably, agoraphobically flat. Wellington’s mountains and beaches will be as foreign to him as the moon.

I’m job hunting and settling and staring about me with wide eyew right now. I am sure the old routines will come rushing back as thought they never left.