The Road Not Taken

I spent last night at a pub quiz with my cousins Carmel, Karen and Clare and their respective partners and friends. Tonight will be a relaxing last night before I fly out tomorrow but it was nice to have a few drinks last night, pretend I knew answers to the questions and generally be reminded of the Hemel way of life.

It was good to meet some new faces, namely Clare’s friends Pippa, Jess and Lisa who made the evening all the more fun and by the end of it I felt like I had known them longer than one evening. In fact Pippa has recently returned from a 7 month stint in New Zealand so had a few suggestions for me. Added to the already lengthy list I wonder if 6 weeks will be enough time to go everywhere. I can extend the NZ part of my trip for sure but that will shorten my stay in Oz. We’ll see how it goes.

The quiz itself started off easy at which point I made the fatal mistake of saying how easy it was (hence the title of todays entry) which then came back to haunt me later as the quiz got harder and my contribution less and less (sorry girls). I think we finished 13th out of 30 or so teams which wasn’t bad. We were definately one of the more vocal teams in the pub which was of no surprise to me I hasten to add.

I have now got everything packed and this really makes a difference in terms of feeling like I am ready to go. The last week has been a long one or so it seems. A week from now I will have been in NZ long enough to figure out where I am going and also how to get there. I am pretty certain that I need to get with people who have a car and even hire one myself for a time should I need to. I have been in touch with someone who is buying a car when they get to Auckland this weekend, perhaps they may be a suitable travelling companion, at least for a short time perhaps?

Just a final note for my last entry before I leave. I may not get the chance to email everyone individually while away so please use the comments sections of this blog at the bottom of each entry with any remarks you wish to make, advice to give or just to say hi.

That said, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year and I will see most of you when I return in a few months time after “Nga Haerenga O Aku Moemoea”…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2004 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Pre-Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.