i am undressing the walls and learning the difference between sheetrock and humans.
living as a tumbleweed, the souvenirs collected in my cartwheels have turned this room into a scrapbook of myself. with two days left in this country, i have learned:

1. there is no better way to remember who you were than by sifting through your untouched junk drawer.
2. if you want to know who you are not, take note of everything that does not make it back into your suitcase.

in scrolling through the 500+ photographs of my trip to the south island of new zealand, it is hard to discriminate which pictures to post and what memories to make public, which are for the world and which ones i want to tell you over some sort of beverage. some parts will inevitably fall in the margins of my notebook, but you should know this: every route was the scenic route, and when the mountains were too thick for radio reception, we sang our way through it all. and i will never forget the way it made me feel.

i want to write a poem for the seashells that get thrown back.

nica & i, two little ladies from new york who ironically met at a pizza party new zealand, are travel addicts. with our money and time in new zealand dwindling down, we are itching to see as much, for as little as possible, before we cross date lines and time-travel backwards into the US. that is where couch surfing comes in. this worldwide website is sort of like the facebook of furniture, where people create a profile for their sofas and offer them to travelers in hopes for the karmic return of a spare cushion when they travel as well. the couch surfing domain does not ask your typical survey questions, but pries “what is your philosophy on life?” “what is one amazing thing you have seen or done?” and “what are the types of people you enjoy?” apprehension about staying on a stranger’s lazy boy is disarmed as couch hosts are rated and comments are provided by people who have stayed with them before. offer your couch to a world traveler for free, ask of them in return only to share their experiences with you and maybe some chocolate. (i think this concept could change things for the better. need a place to stay? forget hotels.  hostels, and spending money. surf a couch, ride the wave of generosity and unique experience.)

for the homesick
who some days count the sunsets
instead of paint them

it’s june in new zealand, that is to say, this whole experience goes by very fast.

Every student has to take a 2 week long 5 hour a day intensive Czech language course. It is a lot to absorb but 100% necessary. Your brain will be fried by the end of the day but it’ll help you get by and you’ll receive 3 credits. (I believe SUNY schools, at least Purchase, grades you abroad on pass/fail and the grades won’t hurt/help your GPA. But check with your registrar) This all happens in the first weeks you are there before classes start. Normal classes meet once or twice a week for either 1.5 or 3 hours. They aren’t extremely hard and all of them are based off of Czech culture in some way. There are art history, literature, history, cinema studies, economics, and politics classes. It is really interesting to see how different the viewpoint of the Czech Republic is opposed to that of the US. Most of the midterms and finals are essays that are somewhat open ended so you can write about what part of the class interested you. The classes I took were Czech for Everyday Use, Alternative Literature, Music and Culture, Czech Art and Architecture and Czech Surrealism. All of the professors are native Czechs but teach in English. 95% of the other kids in the classes are other American students from your program. I have no Czech students in any of my classes and it is relatively hard to meet them. There are a few international students in each class which does mix up the class a bit. My one critique of the classes is the lack of student diversity. I was hoping I would be the odd man out because I was American but this wasn’t the case.

i spent my rent money on an impromptu plane ticket to samoa. eleven of my travelling companions and i stayed in “fales,” which are open huts with thatched roofs and blinds made out of coconut leaves.

we slept under mosquito nets (note to anyone who travels to a south pacific island: do not sleep with your arm outside the mosquito net. you will wake up with thirty bug bites. on your elbow.) we were literally just a few steps from the most beautiful beach.

samoa, although it looks like the perfect paradise, had a lot of unexpected imminent dangers. not only was our sweet flesh a feast for mosquitoes and the sun’s oven, but we had to beware of what tree we sat under because of the impending doom of falling coconuts. this was quite difficult to get used to!

but as much danger as coconuts had to offer, they also produced the sweetest milk.

the samoans try to live an ecologically friendly life. at night there are very few lights, and the resort was lit by lanterns instead. that makes for beautiful sunsets, and even more incredible stars.

another way that samoa has “gone green” (before it was popular) is that they collect rainwater for their showers and faucets. every day i bathed in an outdoor shower which is just about the most incredible thing ever.

there was even a sweet waterfall not too far of a drive from the resort.

and quite possibly the most gorgeous water-flowers ever.

the resort provided free island breakfasts which usually consisted of some sort of egg, coconuts, starfruit, tangerine, bread, and an exotic bean or rice or banana porridge. since i was broke having spent all my money to find paradise, i seldom ate, that is to say, i very much appreciated the complimentary breakfast. what i also loved was dinnertime, not because i filled my stomach, but because of the island boys i made friends with that sang and played guitar. they put a samoan spin on contemporary songs that are popular in the states and their creative energy reminded me of being back home in new paltz.

my favorite night in samoa was my last one - spent on the beach with the island boys pictured above and all my fellow world traveling friends.  we placed candles in the sand, played guitars, drums, sang, and my friend bea from spain and i even presented the group with a song we had written together about our week’s vacation. i even got to do a little bit of spoken word poetry for the cypher of ecstatic friends.

we were free in samoa. it will always be skinny dip and moonlight in my heart.

The school that I am a part of is named Charles University and it was set up by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in 1348. Yes, 1348. It has history that predates our country by several hundred years. It is an urban campus consisting of dozens of individual buildings all across the city. I’d be walking down the street and look up to discover a new Charles building. They are everywhere. My favorite feature of these buildings is their architecture. Since there are so many buildings they range in styles throughout the centuries. There are school buildings that are from Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classicism, Functionalism, and Soviet designed buildings. This fascinates me coming from a school designed in the 1970s.

i would advise that before coming abroad, you get a job. two jobs, even. and you save up a ton of money. cut out everything extraneous from your life - manicures, driving to places you can walk to, coffee, cut it out - and use that money for your travels. nothing is worse than being broke while abroad. you feel absolutely trapped. especially when you get a notice tacked to your door that says if you do not pay $2000 in 21 days you will be evicted. so actually — there is something worse than being broke in a foreign country— its being homeless. so definitely don’t do what i did and blow your entire rent money on an island vacation to samoa — that would be stupid. and in other words, incredibly worth it. but seriously, studying abroad is a lesson in responsibility and independence, fiscally especially. make smart choices. budget. and save… so that you can do stupidly beautiful things, like go to samoa for a week with all of your equally broke friends and you can drink from coconuts and other once-in-a-lifetime things.

i love the diversity of the landscape in new zealand, and that everything i essentially need is in walking distance (if you don’t mind some hills).

10 minutes from my flat is the botanical gardens (free):

15 minutes from my flat is the culutural and artsy city, capitol of new zealand, wellington:

there is ridiculous grafitti everywhere!

35 minutes to the waterfront:

and just an hour walk to mount victoria. so much beauty everywhere, no straws big enough to drink it all up.