Out of Time

I have three reasons for the title of this post.

First, we keep meaning to post stories and pictures to the blog, but we keep running out of time.  After we've gone through our daily routine here in Wellington, which often enough includes an after-dinner walk up to the Botanic Garden so the kids can play on the playground, we suddenly find it's 10 or 11 and time to go to sleep.  Then, we keep running off on our long weekends, on which we seldom even look at our computers.

There are additional obstacles to posting, especially the odd arrangement we have for internet access.  We're working through the Victoria University system, with fairly restricted accounts that include proxy settings that don't work with email clients or convenient tools like Picasa. So, it's difficult to upload the many pictures we've taken. And who has time to sort through the pictures? We may be posting them for weeks after our return.

The second reason for the title is that we have now passed the half-way point of our sojourn in New Zealand, and have the growing sense that our time is running out. Coming up is our last full weekend away from Wellington.  The following weekend we plan to stay around Wellington, though we may take the ferry across Cook Strait for an overnight in the city of Nelson. The weekend after that we fly back to Atlanta, and we know we'll feel a tug of regret for all the things we didn't get to do and see.

The third reason - speaking for myself here - is that I have the sense of having stepped outside of ordinary time. We've been here for nearly four weeks now, but it seems much, much longer than that.  There's an intensity and fullness of our experience here - traveling so much, seeing and doing so many different things - that time seems to dilate. A three-day weekend feels more like three weeks . . . though there still isn't enough time to do everything.  Ordinary life in Atlanta seems like a dream we once had.

What's all this we hear about winter?  In January?  Ridiculous!  Here, it's always been high summer.