Week Four - Off Balance

When my Sydney assignment was initially approved, back at the end of September, the arrangement was for 3 months. But nearly every day leading up to the trip, something changed affecting the duration of the stint, so nobody really knew exactly when I'd be coming home. We'd booked my return flight for 3 months out, because it was pretty easy to modify and that's the longest my visa would let me stay. And we'd booked my housing for 30 days, through Nov 10th, and could easily extend, depending on the circumstances. As Nov 10th quickly approached, the amount of variables affecting my timing seemed to increase exponentially, causing me a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. In short, this was a rough week. This weekend's weather was also rainy and cloudy, leaving me zero motivation to get outside and explore. Mental exhaustion.

But by Friday, I had enough conversations with my colleagues to give me the control I needed to figure out my return plans. Words of wisdom: only you can control you. And with all those variables at play, it took me several hours in front of a computer to decide that I would stay working in Sydney for two more weeks, My last day in the office will be 24 Nov. This gives me sufficient time to wrap up this portion of my job and manage the US portion. And (arguably more importantly) will give me enough time on both ends to take 5 days of PTO the week of 27 Nov. I'm going to New Zealand! I spent countless hours researching guided group tours to places in Australia and New Zealand to figure out how to use my accrued PTO days. Ultimately, I picked Wild Kiwi's Southern Voyager trip for the following reasons:

• Trip dates and duration worked pretty well with me work schedule
• Demographically, the group is for those in their 20-30s and not for single seniors (so many trips for those types!)
• I haven't heard one negative thing said about NZ from all the people I've chatted with about traveling
• People have also told me the south island is better for beautiful naturey things, which is my kind of place. I don't have enough time to see the whole country, so I will prioritize.
• Two of my Austin friends will also be in NZ around this same time... it's a long shot, but there's a chance we can meet up.
• I get to go to another country and get another passport stamp
• As much as I want to see all of Australia over the next few weeks, I also have a job that happens to have two offices here, so it's not outside the realm of possibilities for me to someday get to come back. And, I may also have time then to see more Aussie stuff.

Anther big factor with my indecision on when to leave and where to go was knowing that by going to NZ, I would not have enough time to go see the Great Barrier Reef. This has been a huge bucket list item for me since about grade three when I learned about it. So to solve this problem I decided that I've been working enough 10-12 hour days to stop feeling so guilty about taking 1/2 days of PTO and just go for the weekend. Thus, TWO trips booked! I'm flying to Cairns next Friday after work to see the reef and see the rainforest. I'll return on Monday morning to be in the office by about 12:30pm. Done and done.