Feb 22: Holy cow, can we start school yet?

It feels like much longer than five days since my last post. Not a whole heck of a lot has been going on, besides the sort of stuff that usually happens in the few weeks before school starts. I'm not bored. Much like my south island vacation, there is much to do and much to see, but it is all much less interesting. 

Ah, I shouldn't give it such a hard time. I had some Yum Chow the other day, which is this variation on Dim-Sum, in Chinese restaurants, except for they exclusively serve dumplings. Easily one of the most delicious meals I've had in NZ, and will go back sometime soon. And last night, a friend of mine from the dorm, a first year named Scott and I went to see the Broken Social Scene play at a place called the King's Arm Tavern. It was stuffed to the gills, and practically impossible for us to stand inside. There was a courtyard (with grass and picnic tables and potted plants!) to the side of the bar, and we had drink and danced in that direction. 

After the show, we were invited by our RA's to go clubbing with them, as it was their last night of summer school. But getting in was a pain in the ass, as the lines extended around the block, and apparently in order to go to a club you have to dress up: fancy club dresses for gals, alligator shoes for dudes, etc. So we picked up Scott's girlfriend at the club and walked back to the dorms. 

Yesterday I met a nice girl named Theora, an exchange student from Berkley, California. Today we walked over to the university and went to our exchange student's orientation briefing, and met another girl from Canada (Saren, anthropology student with pink hair) and Emma (I think that's her name...I know she's from England, and I have a tendency to think all English women are named Emma). 

We set up our internet, printing and photocopy accounts today also. The internet account is pretty obnoxious. You must pay for high-speed internet usage; 56k speed is free. I'd be keen to figure out why it's so hard to get fast internet over here. I hear it's just a lack of competitive providers, so the one or two that they do have just slack off. 

The best part about today so was walking past Albert Park and seeing people prepare and set up the Chinese Lantern Festival.  Took a lot of pictures because it's daytime now and I don't know how the nighttime photos will turn out, but head over to the FB page and see 'em. Seriously, they're so pretty, you should really check them out. 

All in all, quite a good day, but I'm ready like rock for school to start.

Lurv, Ems. 

Feb 18: Homesteading, buying things, new neighbors, sore stomachs.

I had arrived at the residence hall the day after it opened up to students moving in for the first semester. I didn’t see anyone in the dorms besides the front desk clerks. I didn’t anticipate meeting too many people, so I spent that first and second day shopping for my new cinderblock pad.

 

New Market to the left of me, K’ Road to the right…:

 

I headed across the street to a smoothie place to see if I could get directions to the closest place that would sell me a surge protector. I would have asked the front desk people, but as English isn’t their first language, it’s a little difficult to understand them. Met a nineteen year old kid who directed me to The Warehouse, New Zealand’s equivalent to Walmart or Target.

 

I don’t really understand why, but it seems most Kiwis I meet are pretty into The Warehouse. Ryan, Tash, and this guy all swore by it, saying you can find anything you want and it’s always super cheap. Which it is. It’s just a pain in the ass to find anything, and like Walmart or Target, most of the items are under stocked or stocked next to items that they shouldn’t be. For example, I wouldn’t think to stock the packaged cookies and candy next to the bleach and laundry soap. I know everything is in it’s own package and has it’s own seal, but it’s just one of those strong consumer preferences.

 

I made three trips there and back, buying a laundry basket, coffee maker, fly swatter, thumbtacks, tape, pencils, pencil holders, etc. passing the Auckland Domain and getting to know the New Market area pretty well in the process. The Auckland Domain is a very big, very green lawn at the back of which sits a big museum. It’s big enough to play three cricket games and a rugby match at once, and there’s an old-fashioned stadium and bleachers set up opposite the Museum as well.

 

New Market is a high-end fashion district, with lots of stores and a mall. The only thing that makes this mall worth mentioning is that on the second floor, in the farthest section, is the grocery store (which is called “Foodtown,” which I find hilarious.) Procured some essential food items, i.e. fruit, sandwich fixin’s and cereal.

 

To the right (east) side of my dorm is the Grafton bridge and then downtown Auckland. The bridge spans over an old, ancient graveyard and then turns into the Karangahape (or K’, as lots of people around here call it) Rd. The University of Auckland campus is about a twenty-minute walk south from here, but it (and the New Market as well) are easily accessible from the Link bus route. 

 

Dormmates and Randoms:

 

“Random,” btdubbs, is Kiwi slang for strangers, i.e. “a random person,” or “random people.” It’s a pretty popular term, and I quite like it, and since my life feels pretty influenced by them, I think that’s how I’ll refer to this expanding group of unrelated people who keep changing my life on an hourly basis.

 

I also met up with a friend of Tash’s, Aaron, a photographer who lives in Auckland. He and his girlfriend Sofia hung out with me after returning my shoes (which I’d left at Tash’s house, and she’d asked him to deliver them to me in Auckland). We got dinner and they took me to a Jazz festival later on in the evening at the other end of Auckland. A whole park and three blocks of restaurants were closed off to traffic as heaps, HEAPS of people milled around listening to various jazz band’s set up around town. It was what I had imagined the Busker’s festival in Christchurch to be like: stalls of musicians, bands, playing blues, bluegrass, swing, reggae, and straight up jazz standards up and down the street. Old people dancing, young high school kids crawling all over the place, street vendors…it was nuts. Literally thousands of people. Dad, you shoulda seen it.

 

Sometime during my third day of dorm living, I shared an elevator with a first-year named Cory, a guy who made it point to say that even though he spoke with an American midwest accent, his parents were both Kiwi’s and he himself was a New Zealand citizen and had multiple family members all over the Auckland area. He’s a nice kid, and invited me and another foreign exchange student (Brahim from France) to his aunt’s house for dinner and a BBQ. He reminds me a lot of Richard, one of my best friends from Dallas. We bought memberships to the gym, which I believe will ultimately prove itself to be a wise investment. But not until after my abdominal muscles heal and cease to feel like Wolverine from the X-Men has gone to town on them with his shiny claws. Oh my God, I will never go that long without exercising ever again. It just hurts too much. 

 

I spent some time figuring out the bus system, which is relatively easy. I had feared the worse after hearing a lot of Kiwis complain about how confusing it is, but it’s really not that bad once you understand several things. Auckland is very small, in terms of it’s size and population (only 1.5 million people, and that’s more than a quarter of all of New Zealand.) Instead of having one public transportation service run by the city, as would be the case in America, there’s several bus companies servicing different areas. These companies all have their own routes. The Link bus, for example, is the bus line which route my dorm is closest to. That’s good for me, because the Link circuit goes to most of the places I want to go; the university, the grocery store, and the shopping district. Most bus stops even have electronic bulletin boards indicating how long it is until the next bu arrives.

 

In Other News:

 

-       Tash invited me back down to Hamilton for the weekend and I may have to take her up on it.

-       Finally heard back from Karolina, who is well and safe and looking for work in Picton.

-       Have talked to Matt several times, who’s been considerate enough to repost all those pictures I posted on Facebook to a more accessible site; will have more on that later.

-       I’m also posting more photos of my dorm and pic’s from the festival on FB. I have a feeling the one or two-sentence anecdotes and descriptions below the pictures are going to be more interesting than today’s blog entry.

 

Goodnight, guys.

Love, Em.

Feb 12: Strangers and swimholes, dinner parties and dancing

"A stranger's just a friend you haven't made yet!":

Smart, slightly paranoid girls like myself tend to hate that phrase. It demands that we ignore a caution so basic we would be idiots not to heed: men are crazy and sometimes they want to kill you for sadistic, possibly sexual reasons.

Despite spending essentially a month with a guy who was once a stranger and going to places for no reason than a friendly stranger suggested we head there, I was not about to let down my guard. As Matt's car drove away, I immediatly sized up the situation: Karolina and I are reasonably fit, and this guy--despite his huge biceps and 6-foot frame--is basically jsut a string bean. We could easily take him down if things got rough or seedy and we needed an out. I had already looked at a list of other backpacker's places in Hamilton, knew where the bus station was, and figured I could make do with just my orange back with my laptop and my purple purse if the chips came down and we had to run for it. Karolina had all of her essentials in her purse, I was pretty sure, so if ever one of us saw the knife or the roofies we'd grab the other by her wrist, snatch the bag with the passport and run like crazy down Queen street towards the train station.

But it turned out none of my brilliant get-away schemes ever came to pass. Andy, an out-of-work lawyer who had taken a year off to travel all over South America and some other parts of the world, turned out to be quite a stable fellow. Not just that, but he and his friend Natasha were simply the best, most friendly hosts and tourguides turned friends we could have asked for.

Andy Let us leave our bags at his house that he was subletting and currently renovating. As he had a few more chorse to finish up, he invited us to check out the park and the lake, which was about an hours walk, and by that time he'd be done with one set of chores and would be ready to drop us and our stuff off at Natasha's (henceforth known as Tash) house.

Karolina and I spent the whole hour talking and making each other laugh and sizing up the situation:

"So do you feel scared?"

"Not anymore, he seems like a nice guy."

"Yeah, I really like that he's a lawyer."

"But he's also unemployed and spent a year traveling."

"Yeah, strange for a lawyer."

"But that kind makes me think he's OK."

"Me too!"

We walked around the lake and then wound up back where we started, and right around then Andy drove by in his car to pick us up and take us over to Tash's.

Unfortunately, she wasn't there, and Andy didn't have a spare key. SO we hung out for about 30 minutes, talking and such, and then he had more errands to do, so we walked off over to the other park and played there for a while.

"I feel really bad about this, shooing you guys off to parks!" he said. "We're going to have a great BBQ later, I promise, you'll love it!"

So we walked back to another park, got some soda, played on some swings, got dizzy on the carousel, talked about boys, talked about Matt, talked abuot the boy she left in Germany, and about an hour and half later we wandered back to Tash's house, wondering if maybe she was home yet.

We walked in front of the open sliding door and I saw a girl sitting in front of a computer and waved. She waved back. Yes! Oh wait! She still didn't know who I was!

"Hey!" I called. "Are you Andy's friend?"

"Oh! Yeah! Are you the little couch surfers from Germany?"

And then things went swimmingly from there. Andy came back and we went to the super market to pick up sausages and a salad for the BBQ, and we went back to Tash's friend's house, where we got a recomendation to head up to Waikato and see some springs.

We hung out and ate for about two hours, talking about the trip, where we were from, where we were headed, Texas, Germany, Hamilton itslef (which all kiwi's seemed to agree was a boring industrial town) and cracking jokes about everything.

We later went back to Tash's and had some more drinks, and more people ame over. Got to meet Tash's boyfriend, Chris, and her roommate, Dippy, and a bunch of other people who floated in and out for the whole evening. A few drinks and conversatios later, it was suggested we walk 15 minutes into town and visit a few dance clubs. Andy told us we didn't have to go, shouldn't feel pressured into going, etc etc. But Karolina and I looked at each other and both agreed we wanted to go, but only if the other person went. And so we did.

You! Me! Dancing!:

We hit up four clubs and stayed at two. Because there's not much natural stuff to do in Hamilton, like surfing or hiking or enjoying the fresh air, the city makes it up to its dwellers by having the most concentrated area of bars of all the New Zeland cities. They all esentially share the same courtyard area. Imagine ten houses sharing the same back yard, and that's kind of what it's like. And nobody's parents are home. It was like crashing a Prom Dance, and we had an awesome time.

The next day, we were supposed to get to Karolina's train at 10:00 and I was going to get to my bus at 10:10. But Karolina's train wasn't in commission, and so she decided to stay an extra day. I was starting to feel protective of Karolina, like and older sister or a cousin, and I wanted to hang out with her until I knew where she was going and how she was going to get there. So we both decided to wait until her train left Hamilton, two days later, untill we left.

The Best Hosts Ever:

So we spent the rest of that day going to Rotorua, where there's an abundance of sulferic springs and boiling mud. The steam's so big and thick and moist it rolls off of the surface of the water like cumulous clouds. The boiling mud pits looked like a caldron of which's brew. And all this we got to see for free, since ndy was a NZ tour guide at one point and knew all the best touristy places to go. We swam for free, saw the pits for free, and later that night, we swam in a second springs for free.

The second one was such an intense experience. We got there late at night, at about 10:00. Pitch black and with nothing but Andy's flashlight on his cell phone to guide us, we parked the car and walked about twenty steps to a big, shallow pond. We could barely see anything, except for the flashlight.

This particular spring was pecial because it was fed by one hot and one cold spring. The result was a lovely cool pool of water with intense and frequent pockets of heat, perfect for chilly summer nights in NZ.

It was amazing. wewere just four shapes in the water, talking, laughing, relaxing, getting sared every now and then from the shadows and the yelling possums. You couldn't see them, but you could hear them advance and shriek.

Later, aroudn 12:30 during the car ride home, Karolina and I sat in the back and the four of us passed around a chocolate bar and listened to music. At one point Karolina turned to me and said "I really love this moment." I felt very much the same.

Maxin' and relaxin':

The next day as designated chill out day: check e-mails, make phone calls, and head out to the Hamilton botanical gardens. Andy worked all day but Tash showed us the seven or eight country-themed gardens: the english garden, the american, the italian, chinese, indian, japanese, etc. So much fun, and so pretty considering it's a free park, open to the public and whatever events they want to throw. Even weddings. Tash's sibligns have all been married in each of the gardens, at no cost. So sarah, maybe we should jsut have the wedding here and fly everyone to NZ? Eh? Eh?

Later at home, Tash made gourmet pizza and Karolina made Polish Cake, which had a number of names: yeast cake, breakfast cake, bread cake...Super yummy meal, and good times were had by all.

The next day we went into Waikato and after about an hour of wandering around in the wrong place and walking for 30 minutes in an abandoned train tunnel, we found the spring's Tash's friends recomonded we visit at the BBQ. To get to it, we had to walk 15 minutes over two rope swing bridges and through a cave of glow worms--which, when yuo see them in a cave, emit little pin pricks of blue light and look like stars. Apparently they're just wormy slugs, but i tried not to think about that.

We landed in front of an amazing sight: two waterfalls, on coming from another cave, and falling into a perfect pond. We jumped off rocks and ate plums and cadbury choclate bars, and it was perfect.

So Long, Hamiltron:

That was yesterday. Today we woke up early to get to Karolina's train and to my bus, and I was almost as sad as when Matt left. We exhanged numbers and information and promised to see each other before Karolina's six months were up and my semester is over.

I made it into Auckland, safe and sound, and got to my dorm room and finally, FINALLY put my bags away and my clothes in a closet and fell into my bed, just soon enough to ignore the ugliness of the room. Cinderblocks, tiny windows, ugly carpet, etc. etc.

Today was a boring mix of nesting and buying things. I'm going to have to purchase an internet plan, look into my phone situation and figure out why I can't set up my voice mailbox, and abunch of other boring stuff.

Hopefully it will all pick up tomorrow. I guess a few down days can't be all that bad.

Feb 10th: The West Coast crawl; So Long South Island; The Fourth Chapter.

Leaving Queenstown:

We left the Crown Plaza around noon, reluctant to part with the thousand-thread-count sheets but ready to hostel hop further up the West coast. We took our time leaving Queenstown and visited several wineries before turning north. Had an amazing lunch at one, where we had a prepared three course lunch which included salad, salmon and pork belly, which is like if bacon and steak hooked up and had a crispy, succulent baby. Seriously, that good.

New Zealand, of course, makes a lot of wine, but it makes it mostly for export. We heard several times that there's no way Kiwi's could drink the amount of wine their country produces amongst themselves. Kiwi wine makers will also tell you New Zealand is famous for it's Pinot Noirs and the growing conditions here are perfect, as well as it's Pinot gris or chardonnay, I forget which. But it's white. And while those are all very fine, we found ourselves more partial to the rieslings, so we picked up a few bottles to send home. (Mom and Dad, if all goes according to plan, you'll have a pretty rad souvenir on your doorstep soon enough.) 

Greysmouth:

We sobered up with a cheese platter and more ice cream, and proceeded to head north to Greysmouth. We stayed, as is our steez, in a small town 30 minutes south of the city, which doesn't have a lot, we were told, except for shops and restaurants. We did find out that the original Montieth's brewery is in Greysmouth, so we continued our theme of drinking small portions of lots of alcoholic beverages and walking it off. Found a nice place for a pizza, ate pizza, proceeded back to the hostel where we made hamburgers. Quite tasty. 

After two nights at Birdsong, our hostel near Greysmouth, and after being told for the millionth time "You really should get a BBH card" from every backpacker, I finally caved and bought a subscription. Budget Backpacker Hostels is a network of nearly 400 hostels in New Zealand, with ratings and descriptions. You get a pamphlet with all the hostel information and a free phone card and $2-$4 discounts on each night you stay, and it's way, way more helpful than the Lonely planet hostel lists. For one, the people running BBH hostels are way more likely to point you in the direction of other awesome hostels. The old motel in Oamaru pointed us towards the hostel in Dunedin, and the people at Birdsong directed us towards this awesome place in a tiny town called Hector that wasn't even in the Lonely Planet guide. Totally worth it. 

Getting to Hector:

We got a recommendation from the people at Birdsong to hit up a place in Hector called The Old Slaughterhouse. The only snag, she said, was that the hostel couldn't be reached by car. You had to park your car at the bottom of a hill and hike your way up ten minutes. We called to make reservations and the guy, David, said he could pick our stuff up on his small four-wheeler if we could hike up the trail, but not to worry, because the ocean views would be worth it. 

So we left the next day, waking up around 7:00 in order to see the the Pancake Rock formations, a unique formation, the only one of it's kind, and the pancake rock blow holes, which shoot water like geysers at high tide. Unfortunatly, high tide was sometime around 9:00, and we were two hours away. Matt was a real champ about this, as I wanted to get there early to make sure we didn't miss the blow holes, a phrase not many people are keen to hear. 

Pancake rocks themselves are very Dr. Seussian in nature. They look like the goofy towers in his made-up citys, all layers and full of windows, peaking at peculiar points, and in general don't make much sense, but are pretty fun to look at, as it's the same kind of feeling I think you'd get if you were to walk through a picture book. But it was cold, rainy and window, so we passed through it pretty quick. 

We got to the Slaughterhouse around midday after stopping for a killer breakfast at this yellow cafe run by an American from South Orange, New Jersey, who moved to New Zealand and decided to start up her own cafe when she realized there was nowhere to eat. 

(Side note: It's a lot of fun to meet foreigners in New Zealand, as we've all got our favorite foods we miss and love to cook. You really get a feel for it in the hostels, watching people make their favorite pasta dishes or cooked vegetables or whatever. Matt loved to point out that every german we met missed yogurt and german bread so much, and almost everyone had their own favorite bread recipe.)

So we get to the old slaughterhouse, and this intense mountain mad rolls down to greet us. He's super friendly, ties our bags to the bag of his four wheeler, and totes them up the side of the mountain, and we head up the hillside, with nothing but our good faith to tell us we'd see our bags soon. 

The path zigzagged and hairpinned the entire way up, and ten minutes later we were looking at a completely secluded compound of about three wooden cabins. We learned that David had built the entire place with help from his sons. A former sheep shearer, this is how he lives and spends his time: tending to back packers and keeping up the place, which is goregeous. Reminded me of Dad's friends on Whiteby Island in Washington state. 

We spent the day taking a five hour walk to see the waterfalls, then got dinner. But we didn't make it back before dark, unfortunately, so we had to walk that ten minute hike up the switchback trail in the dark, with nothing but iPods to light the way. We would be scared, but we were pretty used to this sort of thing. 

I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes!:

Unfortunately, we bagen running out of time. We ran our next couple of travel plans by David, who said we'd never be able to do what we wanted to do in the amount of time we had. At that point, Matt had two days till he had to leave, and we still wanted to see the Golden Bay and Able Tasman Park. He figured he could push his flight back one more day and buy some time. So we shimmied up north and stayed at a place called Shambala in the North part of the golden Bay. 

We picked this place because we had yet to stay in a one of the Eco-friendly hostels. Curious to know whether or not we could survive on solar power and dying to know what a biodegradable toilet looks like, we booked two nights. 

Oh man. The bugs were everywhere. I love the sounds of cicadas, but the boom of these bugs was so loud that we had a hard time talking to each other. New Zealand only has one poisonous spider (and it's not even that poisonous; it won't kill you, for example, but your limb may swell up), the Whitetail, and we saw our first Whitetail near our cabin. And it turns out that a biodegradable toilet is just Hippy for Litter Box. (Sarah, you know that particular brand of litter you love, Feline Pine? It's a lot like that.)

The best part of our stay here was the Mussel Inn, a hippy bar that brewed its own beer and had wicked awesome mussels. Also saw an awesome be-dreaded hippy chick named Lauren Kate sing and play guitar. She did an amazing cover of Radiohead's "no alarms, no surprises," literally so good I stopped where I stood and had to listen. Matt bought the albums and got one of them signed, thus making the Hippy's day. 

I Left My Heart (And Stomach) In The South Island:

The next day we left from The Golden Bay and just barely, barely, by the hair of our teeth, as Matt put it, made it to Picton to reach the ferry. The train left at 2:25, and boarding time was 1:30. We walked the boardwalk after dropping off the rental car and loading all of our loose bags and such at about 2:20. The whole thing went off nearly without a hitch, until Matt looked up at me and we realized that in my haste to pack up all the loose items in the car--iPods, wallets, socks, etc--I'd forgotten to pack the Nintendo, which I'd been playing with in the front seat and left in the glove compartment. 

"Shit," I said. 

Matt kept a level head (mind you, he kept said head the entire trip to the ferry--as I'm freaking out and convinced we're not going to make it and that we'd be better off paying the $200 fee to board the car or ditching it in the parking lot instead of returning it to the rental station, he reminded me that the worst that could happen would be we'd just catch the next ferry and stay in Picton for three hours. No big.) and called the car station and arranged it such that the car rental guys could leave the game boy with the next ferry headed to Wellington, and we'd pick it up later.

The game boy incident turned out to be not the least of our worries. Upon arrival, we realized that the car rental places were closed for the most part, and the only one open had one manual stick shift left. So we had to catch a taxi to the airport to pick up a rental car there. And we got our car, we decided to check out what looked like a great malaysian restaurant, highly recommended by the Lonely Planet, only to find out that it no longer existed. 

Although it was a tough night in Wellington though, we stayed at one of the nicest back packer's places we've been, with more killer views, just outside Wellington, and with an amazing Mediterranean breakfast place close by that had some of the best food I've had in NZ. 

Driving North:

Unfortunately we couldn't stay in Wellington long before heading up to Raglan, a surfing town an hour west of Hamilton, New Zealand's largest inland city. And it was in this hostel where we met some more amazing Germans, stayed up late to talk and made plans to surf the next day, before Matt had to leave, for real this time. 

I was pretty wiped out from one day of surfing, so the second day, the one we were to spend surfing with the Germans (Karolina, Tobias and Stefan) just Matt and the two other boys decided to surf. Karolina and I spent three hours sitting on the beach and talking about everything I haven't been able to talk about with a girl for the last four weeks. We both had been traveling around with people we'd met in New Zealand, And Karolina decided to part ways with the two boys, who wanted to stay in Raglan surfing for another ten days. She wanted to get to Hamilton so that she could go down to Wellington, which was lucky for me because I wanted to go to Hamilton too. Matt and I were able to offer her a ride and in exchange she was able to offer me a place to stay for the night while I planned a bus trip to Auckland. 

The Last Road Trip, For Real This Time:

The drive to Hamilton was awful. Once it was over, it would mean that my time in New Zealand with matt would be over, and I wasn't ready for that to be over. What with four days of goodbyes, niether of us really felt like ourselves anymore. 

Karolina and I were staying with some people she met through a traveler's networking website called couchsurfing.com. After paying a fee to join, users can meet hosts who will open up their homes and sofas to people traveling who need a place to sleep for the night. It sounded weird, but Tobias and Stefan had done it before and known people that had couch-surfed all across Europe, and Karolina had done it twice before with good results. 

So this was the car trip. I'm in the passenger side, and next to me is the guy I've been traveling with for three weeks straight, the guy I've been hanging out with every hour of the day, flying by the seat of our pants across the south island of New Zealand, planning every day as it begins and falling asleep convinced that Today was the Best Day. In that back seat is the girl I've been hanging out with all day at the beach, who is funny and smart and charming and sweet, and who I'm leaving the boy in the driver's seat for. A girl with a whole knew set of adventures. 

We drove up to Andy's place and Karolina got out of the car. I picked up my purse from the floor of the car and stopped.

"I hate this. This sucks," I said. And what I'm really thinking is that I can't believe how quickly everything has happened, how much has happened, and that it wouldn't have turned out like this if I hadn't missed that train in Picton. "I can't believe it's over."

And Matt said something he said to me a day or so earlier. "This is chapter four: first you arrived in new zealand, then you arrived in the south island and then you met me," He said. "I'm not sure how the fourth installment begins, but this is where it does."

I nodded, I got my things out of the car, gave him a last hug good-bye, and watched the car drive away. 

To be continued.