“The time has come, the walrus said,
to think of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–
and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
// Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
This post has been very hard to write. I’m sitting in my flat kitchen for the last time, waiting for my flatmates to come back so I can say my final goodbyes. Of course, they aren’t goodbyes, but more like see you laters… but still. This is a tough day for me. Leaving Dunedin is painful; I felt so at home here.
I hate it.
I have only been here for five months, but in those five months I’ve met some genuine and fun people, enjoyed a job at a busy and entertaining bar, taken walks through much of the surrounding region, drank coffee at most of the local coffee shops, and wandered aimlessly through all of the museums.
It took me a long time to get this far south, and now I don’t want to go.
But, as the walrus said, its time to think of many things, and in my case that involves thinking long and hard about what I want to do next. I had a plan, but thanks to the utter uselessness and lack of care on someone’s part, my job up north has fallen through and I’m in limbo.
It’s the most frustrating thing I’ve dealt with in a long time and I have been trying to put into words how I feel about this problem without using my extensive dictionary of foul language. It really sucks that this came about at the end of my time in Dunedin, when I was already planning on driving north. I had an itinerary in mind. I already knew what I would be doing and I was lining up a place to live.
And yet, when Immigration said they needed some more information, my former boss decided to stop taking my phone calls, answering my text and Facebook messages, and emails, and ignored my pleas for the remainder of the information. I am beyond angry. I’m hurt, I feel betrayed, and I feel anxious.
Hurt, because if she hadn’t wanted me to work for her, then why was I offered the job and why did she tell me that her and her husband had talked about it and wanted to sponsor me? Why did she begin this journey keen to have me back only to go radio silent over the last month?
Betrayed, because I spent almost $1000 on this visa. I took time to get a full medical, a police report from the FBI, and references from the States, all to upload into my application, only to learn that my former boss wasn’t putting in the same time and effort to prepare her own side to my application. All of this I had to learn from someone else who can’t give me any more information. My former boss still won’t speak to me.
Anxious, because I have no idea where I stand in this world. My visa expires in less than three weeks. My brother comes in four weeks and our friend gets married in five weeks. I have to be here. I’d like to be working as well, but I don’t think that will happen.
Where do I go from here? What happens now? All I know for a fact is that in less than two hours, I’ll be driving out of Dunedin to a new place. And I am slowly coming to terms with that.