De Facto Opt-Out

Last Saturday I had dinner with my friend Cherie. We were talking of this and that and when we parted ways I said I guessed I’d see her next week. “Yes,” she said. “You’re coming round ours for Thanksgiving.” Turns out she has a very lovely American flatmate who was really into the idea of doing a dinner: turkey and pie and sides and everything. I volunteered for mashed potatoes (for fifteen!) and had a really fun night.

It was the first time in a couple of months that I’ve heard so many American accents and I was surprised to hear that it took a little getting used to. Some of the other non-Kiwis there (from England, Belgium, and Brazil) told us, the Americans, that we were very nice indeed, not like the stereotype at all, and we all just sort of shook our heads and laughed because what do you say? The Belgian girls said she thought the best kinds of Americans are the ones you meet traveling because they actually care about the world around them. I thought about some of the other American tourists and travelers I’ve met who have made me cringe and keep my mouth shut so that I wouldn’t be identified with them, and wasn’t sure what to think, especially since I think I often (frequently?) embody the “loud” and “not terribly informed about the rest of the world” parts of that stereotype. We got off that topic pretty fast, in the end, and spent the rest of the time, when we weren’t talking about the weirdness of putting pumpkin in a pie, talking about how we’d got to New Zealand and how long we were staying and how much we love it here in general, and that was a little less awkward.

Most of the foreigners there had decided to stay or had already stayed for three or five or ten years. Two of us were just on working holiday visas but everyone else had either already become a resident or was in the process. I asked one girl if she still identified as British, after having been here for a couple of years, and she said yes, but not the same kind of British she used to be. “I belong here,” she said, “not in London. That wasn’t right for me, but this is.”

Tomorrow I’m going to switch out my return ticket back to the States. This was always the plan; when I bought the tickets this past February I had to buy round-trip to satisfy my visa’s requirements, but Air New Zealand doesn’t book tickets out over a year in advance. I just got a sort of fake return trip so that I’d have something to show at customs when I got here, knowing that I’d have to pony up the fifty bucks and get it changed before December 7. And part of me, too, was frankly glad to have a de facto opt-out date. People told me, while I was losing my mind right before I left, that I could always come home if I didn’t like it here. It was weirdly comforting to have a plane ticket that backed that statement up.

I just found out the other day that I’m eligible for another year’s visa. It would give me a couple of options, I guess. I think my job would like me to stay for at least another year, but even if I didn’t, I could still travel around a little more than I’ve been able to thus far. I want to spend some more time in Australia and lately I’ve been thinking of going to Southeast Asia, possibly—possibly!– with the abovementioned Cherie. But that’s all still speculation at this point. Anything can happen between now and then, and how can I know what I’m going to want to do this coming August, when my (first) visa is up? How will I know if I want to spend another year in the Southern Hemisphere; how can I possibly make a decision about that, like, tomorrow afternoon? I haven’t been homesick at all since I arrived, but what if all of a sudden it hits me after I’ve made a whole lot of other commitments and plans?

I could stay pretty easily, I think. I wouldn’t say I have any really super close friends here but sometimes it felt that way in Seattle as well, and I definitely like and trust everyone I’ve met here very much. I support myself nicely and am making Wellington more and more mine as the days go by. And as far as traveling goes, I’m already here, you know, and part of me knows how I am, part of me knows that if I don’t do everything I want to do in this part of the world now, this year or the year after, then I won’t ever get to do it. I would probably have very good intentions of coming back one day but we all know how the months slip by and all of a sudden it’s 2013. I may never come back to New Zealand once I leave and I can so easily imagine kicking myself later for not taking as much advantage of everything I could when I had the chance. What’s worse, I can also imagine the day when I stopped kicking myself, you know, like the day I decide that it doesn’t really matter, that New Zealand was fun and all but it was years ago and I have other responsibilities now, maybe next year.

Of course in other ways I know that the longer I stay away the harder it will be to go back. My friends at home and I still love each other, I believe, but just as the novelty of my being here has sort of worn away with each day and week and month, so too, I imagine, has the novelty of my being gone for them. It’s becoming harder to stay in touch with some people–not because we don’t like each other or care about what’s going on in each other’s lives, but just because we can’t be part of each other’s lives in the same manner. That will only get worse the longer I stay–I guess it’s quite possible that if I am here for two years instead of just one I might not have people to go home to.

“It’s really different when you know you’re not going home,” said one of the other Americans to me last night, and I nodded even though I don’t really understand. I wanted to ask that English girl how she knew so surely where she belonged, if she just had to live a certain number of days here or if there was a precise moment when it all became clear or what. How am I going to figure this out? Is there another opt-out date coming up or should I just…should I just go ahead and do something else instead of going home as planned?