Because this trip is more than a getaway—it’s a reckoning.
bet
When I booked my flight, I wasn’t just buying a ticket to New Zealand—I was calling my own bluff.
For months, I had been talking about change. Dreaming out loud. Telling myself I wanted more—more meaning, more connection, more life than the one that looped on repeat. But underneath the talk was a quiet voice that kept asking: Are you really going to do it?
Turns out, I am.
This trip isn’t just about travel. It’s about testing a belief I’ve long held about myself—that maybe I’m not the kind of person who takes risks like this. That maybe someone like me doesn’t just pack up, fly solo across the world, and build a new rhythm from scratch. And now, I get to challenge that.
Settling Into the Slow
I didn’t choose New Zealand for adrenaline or city lights. I chose it because something about the pace of life there whispers to me.
I’m drawn to how the culture seems to prioritize connection over chaos. Local farmers markets. Neighborly greetings. Weekends that don’t feel like recovery from burnout, but something more like breathing room.
What I’m hoping to find is a way of life that feels less rushed—and more real. I don’t want to skim the surface of a country; I want to let it change my internal tempo. I want to learn how the locals live, not just where they go.
Chasing Flavor, Following Story
Food, for me, is never just food. It’s identity. Memory. Conversation. Culture.
And I am wildly curious about what New Zealand has to offer—from Māori hangi feasts to fish and chips on the beach. I want to explore not just what people eat, but why. What ingredients grow here that don’t grow back home? What flavor combinations show up again and again in family kitchens?
I want to meet people who grow their own herbs and those who know which café makes the best pies in town. I want to learn from the menus scratched on chalkboards and the grandmas who measure with their hands instead of cups.
If I can, I want to bring those stories back home—along with the recipes.
Finding Place Through Plates
There’s something incredibly intimate about understanding a place through its food. Not just what’s on the table, but where it came from—how the soil, the seasons, and the settlers shaped what people eat and how they prepare it.
My hope is to use flavor as a kind of compass. To follow it into farmers markets, out to roadside stands, maybe even into someone’s home if I’m lucky enough to be invited for dinner.
The more I eat, the more I understand. That’s the theory, anyway.
Testing My Limits
And while I’m chasing flavor, I’ll be chasing something else too: the version of myself I haven’t met yet.
This is my first solo trip. My first long-term journey. And it would be a lie to say I’m not scared—of getting lost, of being lonely, of discovering I’m not as brave as I hoped. But I want to move through that fear and come out the other side with proof: that I can do hard things, even when they’re uncomfortable.
I want to stand in the middle of a new town, halfway across the world, and know that I got myself there. That I made the plan, booked the flight, paid the rent, took the risk. That I trusted myself—and that trust was worth it.
Watch Me Go
I don’t know exactly who I’ll be when I return from this journey. But I hope that when I look back, I’ll see a version of myself I’m proud of.
I hope I’ll remember not just the meals and the mountains and the markets, but the mornings I didn’t feel brave and got out of bed anyway. The conversations I almost didn’t start. The quiet victories no one else saw.
This trip is a promise to myself. To be more present. To live a life that’s full of stories worth telling.
And maybe—just maybe—to finally believe that I’m someone who can do all this.
Watch me go.
