Submitted by Katherine Pacer on the 2016 winter session program in New Zealand sponsored by the Department of Animal and Food Sciences…
The smell of a bonfire is embedded into my clothes from last night. As much as people detest that smell, hopefully I’ll take it home with me to have a little piece of New Zealand with me after I leave. The last weekend we had in New Zealand was spent in the quiet and sleepy beach town of Hokitika. My whole study abroad group gathered at sunset on the beach to have a final farewell. We made s’mores while recounting the great memories we’d made while abroad. The time Nick got attacked by a wallaby. The time Alexis fell out of the boat while rafting and you could only see her feet. The time we went swimming in the Pacific Ocean at Diamond Harbour and almost got hypothermia. So many memories were made, and so many friends were gained in only a month. We talked about too much to try and remember it all, but I’m sure we’ll never forget the way we felt being together as a group for the last time.
After storytelling, we took some photos of the stars. It gets so dark here that you can see almost the entire Milky Way. Everyone agreed, we’d never seen so many stars in the sky in our lives. It’s truly a unique experience, and a few of us even saw some shooting stars. It gives the feeling that you really are at the bottom of the world, so far from home and so far from civilization. The peace from a moment like that is surreal. It’s like when you come to the end of a good book, you almost want to live in that last moment before it ends. That’s how I feel about last night, that if I could I would live in that moment, looking up at the stars at the bonfire before having to come home.
A family, that’s what I’ve gained from my study abroad program. Not only in the students that came with me, but also the people I met along the way. New Zealand has really given me a feeling of a home away from home. I know that if I ever came back, it would welcome me again, just as it did before. I might not get another bonfire in Hokitika, but I’ll always have the family that I made.