Epilogue & Colophon

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-TS Eliot

This time I was prepared. Landing in Fiji felt very familiar, yet it's been 3 weeks since I was here. In customs, the men in their flowery shirts serenaded the new arrivals with their guitar and ukelele, just like I had heard several times in my visit to Nadi some weeks ago. I was ready for the soft-spokenness of the people with their thick accents. I was ready for them to gently hassle me as I walked through duty free. I was ready for the kids and teens to be joksters, slightly rambunctious. I was ready to not be able to understand what anyone was saying.

With just seven hours in Fiji and nowhere to drop my bags, however, I decided to stay in the airport. I guess this had the advantage of protecting my NZ chocolate from Nadi's 32C heat but no more exploring for me this trip.

This trip has been unbelievable. Looking back at the last few weeks, it's certainly been the trip of a lifetime. 

From a naturalist standpoint, I've swam with sharks and seen high peaks. I've hung out with penguins and watched mountains cry into the sea. From the bush to the beach there have been mammals, birds, and reptiles to marvel at. I've smelled sweet eucalyptus after the fall of rain, felt the heat of the summer sun, and scooped snow out of my boots.

Culturally there was a lot to take in too. I got only a tiny taste of Fijian Time, not to mention the scant glimpse of Maori and aboriginal tradition. I pondered whether post-colonial New Zealand and Australia are more British or American.

Central to this trip's plot has also been gaining the opportunity to reconnect with my friends. If one can believe it, about a quarter of my life has passed since I saw them last. Reconnecting was so good - we've all been shaped by work and life experiences and have much to reflect on. I hope it's not another decade before we cross paths again.

As for those life experiences, I was struck by a small exhibit at the State Library of Victoria, which showed some artifacts from Covid. An embroidered mask. A display of pavement dots for indicating social distancing. A handmade wellness kit from one friend to another. Australia (Melbourne especially) had extraordinarily strict isolation measures - how could anyone know how to handle it? Well, we all handled it together, apart. It's interesting upon reflection that people in Melbourne were prevented from seeing their next door neighbors, and yet I, living in New Jersey, felt great connection to the experiences of the people here. Everyone across the globe was alone, together. My friends went through it - and so did we in the States.

The thing is, you never know what will happen in life. When will we have another Covid-19 or other society-altering event? The people we meet and things we learn must never be taken for granted. On this trip, I've been so grateful for Granola. Grateful for the time we had together in Oxford and grateful for keeping the friendship going. Grateful for the strengths each of us brings to the group and for the fun of road tripping together. Hopefully next time I'll see them in the States, but who knows! Maybe I'll have to make a repeat trip to the antipodes before too long (quite a few people were encouraging me to do so)!

***

Sometime this trip, I surpassed 100 "career" blog posts. What started in 2008 as a means of keeping connected to family from my Vienna Study Abroad has turned into a life project. I don't get to travel as much as I used to as a student, but hopefully these ramblings provide others with amusement and introspection alike.

Most blog posts take two to three hours to write. Often, I write them at day's end when everyone else has gone to sleep and I am left to battle off my own sleep. Unfortunately, many are stream-of-consciousness ramblings: the main goal is to get thoughts on paper. But I do tend to keep a list of activities on my phone as I go, in order to help me remember some of the finer details. Sometimes I can't get to the blog until a full week after the events take place. This leads to vagueries and omitted details, even with my phone notes.

I confess, I often struggle with finding the balance between "advancing the plot" and relaying interesting side-stories. Part of the goal of the blog for me is to capture everything I saw and did, but I think the little observations and stories are what give life to each trip. I hope to avoid letting the posts drag, but I'm not a writer, so colorful, nuanced, and concise prose isn't my forte.

I also acknowledge that the blog posts are poorly researched. I snag details from wherever I can get them (tour guides, museums, and random people), but I rarely have the chance to fact-check or fill out the gaps in my understanding. Sometimes I do consult Google and Wikipedia but most of the time the dates and data should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. Also make unit conversions on the fly by estimation, for simplicity.

All this is to say thank you for reading! I'm sure if (when) I read back through my blog one day, I'll find these posts to be excruciatingly poorly researched and written, confusing, and jarring in their prose... and yet I've left you to sift through that mess. It's not easy being a reader, sorry I'm not paying you enough!

But still, these journeys and adventures have been a great privilege. I'm thankful that through the technology of this blog, I've been able to share it with you in (kind of) real time. I hope you've found the posts fun and funny, enlighting, engaging, and of course interesting. And, of course, I hope you'll continue on this journey with me for the next 100 blog posts.

For even though I am saving my precious chocolate from today's blazing sun, you can be sure I have not ceased my exploration yet.