Inspiration

Having recently read a blog about a couple who met while travelling, I have been inspired to write my blog (when I remember to keep it up to date which with my hectic life seems illusive at times) about how we met, how we made it work and our life together now.

Settling back into English life still has its difficulties, even now after being back well over a year, but for the purposes of this blog I intend to fully let myself go back to remembering our Kiwi lifestyle and live in the hope we will return to the land of the long white cloud one day soon. I think once you have spent so much time travelling, and I mean more than just a few weeks, the experiences change you and you become a different person. I know I'm not the same person anymore and I have my NZ experience to thank for that.

Coming up to spending our 3rd Christmas together, the first time we met I never would have imagined things turning out this way. I went to New Zealand determined to get away from everything, everyone and especially relationships. Having had a series of failed attempts during my university years, I decided that after graduating I deserved some 'me' time and would make this trip about what was good for me and not to please some boy I was dating.

So I bravely headed from Hong Kong to Auckland, hopes high and boys out my mind completely. I had only been in the country a few short weeks when I met the person who was to change my life forever. Hindsight is a great thing, but I don't think there are many things I would change about my time in New Zealand, and the things I would change are ones which were out of my control anyway. Meeting Johannes is one of those things I wouldn't change for anything.

I have already blogged about whipped cream times, and I wont go into further detail about that but being friends first helped and hindered our relationship. Would we spoil our friendship? What would happen if things didn't work and we still had to live together? What if it did work and then we had to leave each other to go back to our normal lives, after all NZ was only a working holiday, and for me, only 6 months. But after some time thinking and talking about it, it was obvious we couldn't stop feelings happening so we gave in and decided to see how things went.

I don't think there was one person in that hostel that thought it was anything more than a bit of fun and not at all serious between us, but that couldn't have been further from what it was at all. So to the pessimistic views of our fellow travellers, we continued to work, live together and make each other happy. We both held down 2 jobs, both of us working in the hostel we lived in, whilst I worked nights in a Chinese restaurant and Johannes in 4Square for the extra money which would fund our travels around the South Island, Fiji and Tonga.

The rest they say is history.