You can't have it all.

Where to begin. So much has happened in the last 5 months. I love New Zealand. My career is really taking off here. Of course I have had my moments when I was scared about money, friends, drinking too much, the American stereotype, missing home, missing family and friends, finding a place to live, and pretty much everything you can worry about. This is the biggest step I have ever taken in my life, so of course there is a lot of hurting, scariness and of course growing.

I have committed at least 3 years to living here. This will be a good step for my maturity, depth of meaning in my life, understanding of the value of money, understanding of the value of friends and family, etc.

This country is a beautiful place. People are friendly and I think since the country is so small, there is more of a sense of brotherhood. However, I am finding that even though people are friendly, it doesn't mean that they want to be my friend. I suppose you could say the same for a lot of cultures, so this is not the fault of NZ.

I have made 3 really good friends since I have been here. I have made several other friends, but none of which I call on when I am having a bad day. The hard part is that all 3 of my friends are transplants. Holland, France and Canada. This month I will be losing 2/3 of those people. One of which is my boyfriend.

Oh yeah, I finally want to tell someone significant that I've fallen in love with them and they're leaving in 4 weeks. Awesome timing. I never thought that I would meet someone who gets me, respects me, is intelligent and makes me laugh and who I find so attractive inside and out. I am so pissed that our relationship doesn't have more time to grow here. Of course, there is the possibility of a long distance relationship (which I swore I would never have). But I don't want to put stress on him and myself to keep in touch while we are both leading our busy lives thousands of miles apart. I have enough pen pals at the moment. I just feel like part of it will be, out of sight, out of mind" and we will slowly forget how incredible we are for each other.

I love him. I haven't said it yet. I am kinda waiting for him to say it, since I am afraid it will hurt too much if he doesn't say it back. That, and I want it to be said at the right moment because this is the first time I think I will truly mean it in the way they talk about it in the movies. Right now, at this moment, I can see sharing my life with him. I want to do so many things with him, simply cause my life is better lived with him than without him. He likes me for qualities that I want to be liked for and when I am having a bad day, just being near him lifts my mood exponentially. It's just so effortless being with him, and yet I think he makes me a better person without even trying. Fuck.

Hopefully my busy career/education will keep me busy enough so that I won't have time for loneliness. Get this, I just got a job teaching criminology to over 150 people starting the end of February. I have never taken a criminology course before, but I taught Soc of crime and deviance. I haven't read any of the course work yet, but I think it will be fine. I love getting up and performing in front of people, so I am sure I will make it work and they will love me. It will be nice to finally have somewhat of an income. Along with that, I am working on a research assistantship in the pharmacy department about the awareness and opinions of direct to consumer genetic testing in NZ. It is a pretty rad project which will get me published, so that's pretty neat. Oh, and of course, I am applying for my PhD here. Hopefully by next week I will have my application submitted. I am pretty sure the Soc department is pretty gung-ho to have me here, so that will be cool. I want to do it on consumer controlled medication due to Direct to consumer advertisement of pharmaceuticals and the vast amounts of medical information on the web. I wanna look at the discourse of diagnosis and ultimately the shift of doctor-patient relations. I hope they like my idea, if not, I hope they accept me anyway, cause PhD ideas are always changing anyway.

Woah this is becoming longer than anticipated. But, I feel a little better. Perhaps I should get on with writing in here more regularly.

Cheers!