My time in Sydney.

The last few days I have done the following: 

- Taronga zoo

- Cinema to see Zootopia 

- Got very wet

- Walked quite a lot

- World's worst cat cafe

- N2 (liquid nitrogen) ice cream

- Met up with my friend Luke

- Bough my teaware (expect photos) 

I think that's it, I've not done everything I'd planned to, but it rained quite a lot and I sort of kept running out of time. 

I'm not happy, I'm surviving, that is my goal, just to get through it all. Sometimes something is nice, like the sun today, but I'm quite focused on getting home now and that's my right, to feel that way. I don't have to like everything, I can hate the whole holiday if I want and not learn a single lesson from it to boot. But that's not the case, I am growing a lot as this is a challenge and it takes a lot of skills to negotiate it emotionally, so it has great value, but I don't know if I'll return to Sydney, at least not for simple enjoyment.

I do have a day and a half left though and I'm certainly still open minded about enjoying myself.  

Welcome to Sydney

I miss Wellington, I miss New Zealand, but I really miss Wellington. I wrote an emotional outpouring earlier on that very subject but it went a bit rogue and now I don't know if I will publish it.

I am in Sydney and all I can think of is spiders. Spiders on walls, in shoes, in my tea, climbing out of the air con and creeping into bed with me at night. I'd forgotten this feeling from last time. I am on high alert. 

This morning I got up and went out, anxious yes, but just getting on with it, without procrastination, good! Only, less than an hour later the rain was down to my socks, through my bag and my raincoat, down my back, through my trousers, under my arms. I was not as rain proof as I'd imagined and it felt like a low blow. I had to come back and put my clothes in the dryer. It's hard enough to get out of the house, but I managed it and it doesn't feel right that I should be driven back inside by something as elemental as the weather. It's going to be twice as hard to get back out now that half the day has slipped away and my boots are unwearable, what about my 'rain proof' plans? Do I perservere or do I see some sense and change them now I have less time? ...and we're back to the question of 'what do I do? What's most important?'. It rained yesterday, but today was an opening of the heavens, the streets turned into rivers and people huddled everywhere, the fear of it has knotted my shoulders with tension that I haven't yet managed to release, the sky is a huge and white, overcast now but no longer raining and my clothes tumble around, slowly drying. I am shaking from the imagined cold, it is over 20 degrees but my mind has told me it is freezing and so it must be true. 

The spiders only come in when it rains, it might even rain spiders next, I don't know, it's all spiders and rain here in australia. 

I've got my rose tinted, nostalgia glasses on, I really wish I was soaking wet in Wellington instead. 

Where's the Diazepam?

It's 5.15 and I just woke up to the sound of rain hard on my window. I now have to get up, pack, take a taxi into the city and stand in that rain before travelling on coach and then ferry for ten and a half hours. Why won't New Zealand stop following me? Everywhere I go, New Zealand seems to be there too! Where's Britain? Where's my bed? Where's my Diazepam, right, I'm going to need that.