Into the Wild City

What a day. It started with a trip to Newmarket, which is filled with lots of shops and foods.. and a coloooonial house :)

It was not too impressive for a shopping district. But maybe that's just me, because I didn't want/need to buy anything. THEN I WENT TO WATCH A COUPLE GAMES OF GOALBALL. This has to be the most amazing sport I've ever seen. All the players are vision impaired - but really it doesn't matter, because all are required to wear eye patches and blacked-out goggles. They can't SEE in this sport. It's a mix of soccer and bowling and basketball and volleyball... It looks like this:

Here is a video of it: http://img230.imageshack.us/i/cimg3672.mp4/. The players have to rely on sound and touch, and they communicate a lot with each other. So I guess you don't have to be visually impaired but it helps, since most likely you'd be better at hearing and feeling. There were 5 games scheduled between NZ and Australia (3 today, 2 tomorrow). Australia won all 3 today, so I guess tomorrow will just be practice for both teams. It looked brutal, sweat was flying everywhere and everyone took a beating. Afterward, I came back home and ate some of these:

Then, I took the bus for the first time. I was dropped off right in front of my bank, HSBC!!! The only one in NZ.

It was so convenient I decided to get some cash from the ATM even though I didn't really need any. Then it ate my card. FML.

But life goes on (it wasn't my card anyway). So I ate my dinner and went to a movie.. in a tiny little park in the middle of big ol' Auckland...in tiny little New Zealand.

 

 

Did you catch the words "Summer" and "The Polar Express" appearing on the same billboard? If you are like me you were probably too focused on the word FREE to notice. But it is almost summer here...and I am looking forward to it.

After that I caught the bus home and thought about the day I just had. Actually I thought about my day all day. Sitting by myself during the movie was OK, but not much else. I felt guilty for hogging up all the space (because I brought my big picnic blanket), but then I started to really feel not knowing a single person in this country or even the country itself. I don't know the streets, the people, the land, the water, or even the air. It made for a suffocating kind of feeling. But as I was walking home, I realized I should appreciate being able to go out at night, and being able to be in a country so foreign to me, if that's what I choose to do. The walk home was a little scary because it was dark and unknown, but I considered what it is like when you don't have your vision. Everybody has their own limits... it is fine and perfectly human. I think we should all embrace our limits, as Goalball shows we can do. But it is also important to learn and remember that not all the limits we feel are real...