#flew in through Iceland since I’d always wanted to go and they have a cool layover deal for tourists

[elle-adventures]

Haha soz

so looks like I haven’t done an update since Barcelona, which was about 15 months ago.. 

A shit tonne has actually happened since that trip, I will endeavour to give as much detail as possible, but I make no promises.

Here we go:

Olivia and I flew into Paris and spent the first day exploring Paris, which was amazing. We did the Eiffel Tower, ate pastries and of course, went and got macarons from Laduree. We lasted 2 days before we finally exploded and it resulted in me packing my bags and flying back to Edinburgh. Olivia ended up doing the rest of the trip by herself, which probably wasn’t terrible. She really enjoyed being able to do her own thing. 

Edinburgh was a bit lame in those 2 weeks as Tristan was away on an army camp and Anna was away as well. I spent my days cooped up in Anna’s flat trying not to spend any money before jetting off to DC. I managed to kill a week (even though it felt like forever) and I finally hopped on the plane down the London before boarding another flight to DC where I did a layover in Iceland. It was a long, painful flight and I was so jet-lagged when I finally arrived into Baltimore Airport where Connor picked me up. Seeing him again was magical, I didn’t realise how much I missed him. We headed back to his place and I was trying so hard not to fall asleep. I felt awful because all I wanted to do was chat and sing and just enjoy being with Connor. We finally get back to his place and head out in search of food. I almost fell asleep eating my food, so we headed back to his place and I crashed around 10pm and Connor headed out to mates place in another apartment for a bit so I could get some rest. 

The next few days he showed me around DC and we visited the monuments which we beautiful. I would love to go back some day and do it all again. DC was my favourite state in America (so far). After a few days with Connor, I jumped on a bus up to Philadelphia to visit Aunty Liz and Uncle Arthur for a week. It was amazing to see them again, and see their house and see what their lives are like. They live in a really nice, quant suburban area of Philly where they are surrounded by woodlands and little coffee shops. Their house was beautiful and it was great to catch up with William and Alex as well. After spending a week with Liz and Arthur, I jumped on another bus up to the next state; NEW YORK!

So wow. New York was next level! Connor and I were staying at a hostel on the edge of Central Park, it was alright.. I’ve stayed in better places, but for the price of it, we couldn’t complain. We spent our first day walking from our hostel (north west central park) through central park and down in the centre of Manhattan to walk through Broadway and experience the real New York. One of the nights that we were there, we even went to a Broadway show - MISERY. One of my favourite books by Stephen King. The main character - Paul Sheldon, was played by Bruce Willis which was pretty cool to see him doing some live play acting. It was such a great night! The next day Connor and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and explored the back streets of Brooklyn. After quite awhile, we finally came across the hipster area of Brooklyn which was so cool (I did not feel cool enough to hang out there). It was full of guys with beards and top buns. It was surreal. I would have bought all the clothes if it weren’t for the fact that everything costed ridiculous amounts of money. That day was a lot of weeping, whining and window shopping.

From New York, Connor and I headed back down to Philly together to spend Christmas with Liz, Arthur and Alex (William was in the Canary Islands with his boyfriend). It was the most incredible few days, they loved Connor and Connor loved them. We all got drunk together on many occasions and spent our days playing board games and setting up the house for Christmas Day. After Xmas, Connor and I headed back down to DC for New Years where we ended up just spending it in his apartment getting drunk, dancing, and making ridiculous videos of ourselves! We spent the next few days just chilling, teaching ourselves to play guitar and eating amazing food. We rented a car and drove to West Virginia and it was the best road trip possibly ever. We sang and sang and sang. We stopped off at Shenandoah National Park and explored that for a bit. We eventually made it to Connors flat mates house, whose family we were visiting as there was a massive post christmas party taking place down the road. Holy shitting christ - this was probably one of the most surreal experiences of my life (other than the caving in Budapest). The house party we ended up going to was a lot of family friends gathering together in the massive, white estate looking house in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in Virginia. The wives were all perfect and the husbands.. well they weren’t so perfect. It was almost like stepping in the movie, The Stepford Wives. The children were perfection, we all got high, and they all sat around and sang beautiful songs and played instruments. Connor and I just sat back and enjoyed. It doesn’t sound like much, but you needed to be there to experience it. For them it was so normal, but my god, yeah surreal..

We headed back to DC the next day and headed onto our next destination, Boston. Now, I can’t really say much for Boston. Maybe it was because it was our last state on the trip, or because it was fucking freezing, I don’t know. But neither of us loved it. We visited Harvard whilst we were there and it was pretty underwhelming. I can’t even recall what else we did there - we did stumble upon this cool comic book store. But that’s basically it. (I couldn’t even tell you how long we were there).

I flew home after Boston, and the first thing I did when I landed was call Anna and tell her I was craving Wings, and then I texted Tristan and told him the same thing. 1 hour later and I found myself sitting in Wings with my two favourite people, in my favourite cafe, in my favourite city in the world. I couldn’t have been happier. It was great to catch up with them and just seeing their faces again were great. I hadn’t seen either of them in 6 weeks. It was great to see Tristan again and know that we could be apart for 6 weeks and still have the flame. Especially because we had only been seeing each other for 3 weeks when I made the decision to stay in Edinburgh for a further 6 months. 

Tris and I had booked an AirBnB for my return as we wanted to spend some time together and celebrate our own little Christmas. We rented it up near Toll Cross really close to where Charlie was living. It was a really cute little apartment. I had gotten Tris a mug from the Friends store and he got me a copy of Child44 - my favourite book at the time. It was a lovely weekend with him.

I got a job pretty quickly at JLT - an occupational pension administrator company. It was lame as hell, but it paid the bills - well until Tristans mum asked me to move in with them about 4 months into Tris and I dating. I said yes and I was suddenly living cost free - which was great as Tristan had decided to come back to New Zealand with me in June. Not a lot happened in my last 6 months of living in Edinburgh. It was a pretty mundane lifestyle as Tristan and I were frantically saving for New Zealand and I worked a VERY mundane job. I saw the girls as much as possible, but after moving out to Dalmeny, it was pretty hard to see them most days. It was mainly in the weekends. I miss them all so damn much.

Tristan and I came back in NZ in June 2016, and we spent 2 months adventuring around the North Island and spending time with Mum and Nigel and then Dad and Drew. Tris had planned to only spend 2 months here as he needed to get back to Scotland for Uni and Army. I was OK with that at the time, and I am certainly OK with it now. I think I always knew that I didn’t see Tristan as a long term partner. Which is a shame - because I know that he saw me that way. I broke up with him about a week after he left. I realised that I didn’t miss him as much as I should have. Every time he called me, it felt like a chore to have to answer the phone and chat to him. So that was the end of that..

I got a job pretty quickly, working at Fisher Funds for a month covering a guy called Matt who was heading to America to visit his mum who was sick. The job was a crappy job, but I ended up making an incredible couple of friend through the job. Mainly - Helen. Helen has become one of my closest friends in Auckland and I don’t know what I would do without her. She is currently 6 months pregnant and I cannot wait to be ‘Aunty Elle’ and she has named me. I utterly adore her <3. Another couple of friends I have made from Fishers is Sarah and Matt. Both incredible and I love hanging out with all of them.

I last at Fishers for a few weeks but ended up resigning as there ended up being a bit of a complication as I outted them accidentally to the recruitment agency that Fishers was lying to them and avoiding paying recruitment fees.. so post that, there ended up being some bullying and I wasn’t going to stand for it, so I was OUT. I moved to Perpetual Guardian, which really wasn’t any better. It was a total bore - it was working in Wills, EPA’s and Trusts which could not have been more boring if i’d tried. Whilst working there, I got a call from Nuala from Hudson tell me about this new job at Network for Learning where I would be Admin/Receptionist in this really awesome tech company in Parnell. Well, you shoulda seen my face when I was offered the job after an interview the week before. I couldn’t have got out of Perpetual Guardian fast enough.

So,

Since June last year, Tristan and I ventured around the North Island together for 2 months, then I broke up with him a week after he left because I realised I didn’t love him anymore. I have jumped between 3 jobs since being back. I moved into Glen Innes/St Johns with Dad and Drew since being and home, and hopefully we will be moving again soon. Mum and Nigel live in Te Aroha and Olivia is killing it at The Raw Kitchen. Nothing overly noteworthy has happened over the past 10 months other than I now work at N4L which I love, living at home still, and am currently ‘seeing’ someone who I think is pretty damn cool. Hope he sticks around when he finds out how much of a weirdo I am.

Oh on a kinda exciting note: I have flights booked to Japan in August for a 20 days solo trip. Also, heading down to Dunedin/Wanaka for 6 days next week. Hopefully after that I will have some interesting things to talk about.

Ciao.