We just came back from our New Zealand trip last night, and though I miss the terrain and the greenery and the shapes of the clouds, I realized that I don’t think I could ever live somewhere like that – at least, not in this stage of my life. It’s a great place to go for a holiday or have a wedding, but living wise, I think I would get quite bored after a while. I’ve been told that even in the North Island, which has the bigger cities Wellington and Auckland, things never get as bustling as they do in cities like Melbourne or Sydney, so eventually the idyllic beauty that is New Zealand would cause me to miss city life and run back to it. The population of New Zealand is just under 4.5 million people… and about 60 million sheep. While the sheep are cute to look at when driving by in a car once a while, I would likely start getting annoyed by them, even if they are quite tasty.

Now that I’ve been to New Zealand, maybe I will finally watch Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit especially now that I know what New Zealand looks like, and I know that this beauty has not been enhanced by clicks on a computer. .

Recently, I decided that cemeteries are a waste of space. That sounds very disrespectful, but this is how I look at it: the earth is for the living, and the dead – well, their time on earth has passed (I’d like to think they’d be remembered). The world population keeps growing, so if we keep building cemeteries, where will all the living live? Tonight, we took a ghost tour (in a hearse that was actively used for 15 years) in Savannah, GA, and learned that a considerable portion of the city is built on top of an old cemetery. About 600 graves are at Colonial Park Cemetery, yet 11,000 graves were originally in the area about four times as large. This is what I think will happen one day once we run out of space for the living everywhere else.

In New York, there is always a wait for everything – bars, restaurants, Philharmonic or Shakespeare in the Park, etc. Every Independence Day, New Yorkers wait from the early morning to camp out just to see the mediocre fireworks over the East River or the Hudson. In Charleston today, we walked to the Waterfront Park to prepare to watch the fireworks at 9pm tonight and saw no one else there waiting. In fact, no one really started coming to set up their lawn chairs until around 6 or 7pm! It suddenly made me realize how much more laid back the rest of the country is and how they realize it’s not worth spending hours on end waiting for any single event to happen. New Yorkers seem to think it’s the “in” thing to wait their entire life. There’s too much waiting and not enough doing.

We are spending the long weekend in Charleston and Savannah. As usual for our trips, I create two lists – one for things to do, and another for things to eat. Southern food must-eat lists usually contain these things: 1) barbecue (of that particular region’s speciality), 2) fried chicken, and 3) pretty much anything else that is fried. It’s only been one day, and we’ve already gotten through several items on the to-eat list: shrimp and grits, she-crab soup, and barbecue with fried green tomatoes. I already feel stuffed and as though I have had my Southern food fix, but we still have three days left. Maybe I have reached that point in life where eating heavy food repeatedly, even when on vacation, can seem overwhelming. I guess I just can’t keep up with the Southern diet…

I didn’t start traveling regularly until after I graduated from college and began supporting myself. The furthest trip distance-wise I took with family was down to San Diego. I wasn’t one of those kids who split her time between China and the U.S., nor was I the child who took round-the-world trips regularly and thought that to be a norm. Because my domestic and world travel began much later, it makes me even more grateful for the experiences I am gaining now – as an adult who hasn’t always had these opportunities her whole life. Every time I take a trip now, I get excited for the lead-up and constantly research, am ecstatic while I am away, and when I return home, I get antsy for the next trip and the next. I never want it to end and just want more.

I used to chase status on United because I thought having “status” just sounded elite. However now, I do not think “status” on United matters because despite my Silver status, they have never failed to disappoint me. Priority boarding? Worthless – half of the entire plane seems to board in Group 1. The hope of an upgrade? You wish. Today, one of the worst possible things could have been said to me by a United worker at check-in in Seattle. She disputed why I didn’t pay for my check-in luggage, and as I explained to her that one checked bag was free not only because of my status but my credit card, she stares dumbly at me and says, “How do you know you have status?” This statement is reason enough to quit flying on this incompetent airline.

Today, we visited Pike Place Market. The last time I had visited this famous market was in 2004. At that point, I had only visited two states outside of California and had never even left the country. Since then, I have visited 23 additional states, 12 countries, and lived in two other states. I have finished college, studied a foreign language abroad, and learned that Chinese food is more than just Cantonese cuisine. Between then and now, my perception of Pike’s market has changed. Then, it was enthralling, intense with its energy, chaos, and people in an inviting way. Now, it’s still intense, but overly touristy, crowded, and… expensive. I’ve come back with more knowledge of the world outside of the West Coast, and thus greater perspective on what the world has to offer. It’s amazing how your view of the same exact place can change over time as you get older and (hopefully) more mature.

Just about 40 minutes outside of Portland is the stunning Columbia River Gorge, land of infinite nature and endless waterfalls. As we did our hikes through the erratic rain and sunshine mix, I thought about how many amazing natural sights there are in the United States alone and how most of us will never in our lifetime have the chance to see even half of them. Some, like Yosemite and the Rocky Mountains, have national recognition, but others like the Theodore Roosevelt or the Columbia River Gorge will pretty much be unknown to the average person unless they seek them out. It makes me even more aware of how incredible life is and how valuable these moments experiencing newness are.

Rain is miserable, and there is nothing fun about it. I am no longer that 4-year-old girl who got so excited when there were huge puddles that I could stomp into when my mother wasn’t looking. Now, the only time I find rain enjoyable is when it is accompanied by thunder and lightning, and I am indoors and warm under my covers. So you can imagine my disgust when we reached Portland and it was raining on and off — sometimes hard, sometimes just drizzle. Yesterday, we even went hiking in the rain by the Pacific coast. Beautiful sights and smells? Certainly. Wet socks and clothes? Please, not again.