DESTINATION: SOUTH

Wow! It’s been over a month since I last posted, a month of redesigning and rethinking this whole blog’s direction, and let’s be honest my life direction. So many screwed up pieces of paper later I stand here before you at peace with what I’ve decided to do. It’ll be a bit different to what my blogs been up until now. Don’t worry it’ll still be as raw and vulnerable as before but I’m hoping to make it more fun and light-hearted too just so it’s not constantly one big dmc. The big change that I’m really excited about (besides the design) is that each couple of weeks I’m hoping to share where I’m at with my faith, or what Gods been teaching me. I know at the beginning of all this I promised I wouldn’t try to shove my faith down anyone’s throat and I still stand by that. But different things that have happened over the past couple of weeks have led me to the conclusion that I’ve been too silent about my faith, pushing it back into its little box and not letting it take over my whole life. That’s so incredibly wrong. I was flicking through my photos a couple of days back and I came across a part of my friends’ testimony that I had taken a photo of because back then it whispered to my soul, however, when I read it the other day it fully convicted me. This is what she wrote:

" However, I know that even though I have been blessed by God with so many wonderful things I must not hold onto everything so tight like I did before and remember that it is important that God doesn’t become an afterthought, nor should pursuing a relationship with him become a burden."

Yeah, so that’s where my heads at currently, being less consumed by the world and its materialistic calls but once again humbling myself at the feet of Jesus.

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If you’ve been following my IG/SC adventures at all you may have seen that I recently spent a weekend down in Invercargill, best adventure of my life to date. And if it’s okay with you I’m going to spend the rest of this blog post reliving the highlights so that you can understand just how truly amazing it was.


About four months ago my family was blessed enough to receive an invitation to my cousin's wedding. Ideally, the whole family would’ve gone down, YEYA FAMILY ROADTRIP!! But unfortunately, due to NCEA and Cambridge not taking into consideration my family’s life events when planning their exam timetables, my brother and sister were doomed before the invitations were even sent out. Obviously, because they’re still young someone had to stay and look after them, a duty to which my father was too kind to volunteer as tribute for. So on Thursday 23rd November mother and I found ourselves in a metal tin can 3 bazillion feet above the ground headed somewhere south.






Leading up to this trip I was so so sooooo excited, not just because it was a whole week away from Maccas (we were only gone for three days but minor details) but also because Invercargill is my mother’s hometown so this trip meant that I could finally put pictures to the stories I had heard over my super short lifetime. Oh, and I got to catch up with my family who I barely ever see so to say I was beyond hyped for this trip would be an understatement. After being picked up by my uncle and cousin we started the tour of the town. I was introduced to the water tower that my mother swore shrunk (it actually grew) and drove past her high school. Then with me being the dedicated employee I am, we decided to check out the local Maccas just for the lols. SO SO FUNNY OMG they pretty much had exactly the same layout/architecture of where I work. It was so weird but in a good way. I do however now understand why people complain about their fries being soggy and cold, bleurgh, worst feeling ever. After that experience, we put our tour on hold and headed back to my aunty’s parents’ house to catch up with the rest of the family.



Somewhere between taking the kids to the pool and much hairstyling, the day flew by and before we knew it we were all piling back into our respective cars to head over to our living quarters for the next few days. On the way, one of my aunties needed to pick up some milk and food because priorities?! As it turned out the supermarket we stopped at was across the road from mum’s old primary school, so, being the good humans we are, we went over and had a little nosey. It’s been abandoned for quite some time so it wasn’t as good as I can imagine it was in its heyday but nevertheless we peeked through the windows at mum’s old classroom and she showed me where she used to play foursquare and where they did athletics and where the old confidence course was and then being the social media addicts we are we just HAD to take a selfie to show that we were there (her words not mine).
Carolyn reliving the good old days of four square

I could almost a mini Carolyn running around there; almost. After that, we headed to our temporary home to sleep and be almost given a heart attack by a cat, but that’s a story for another day. The day of the wedding dawned semi-cloudy but quite warm. I’ve been told my whole life that Invercargill is the coldest place ever and that there are icebergs in the sea. Well, Friday managed to dispel both of those inaccurate rumors. We resumed our tour visiting mums old house and street and reliving the good old days. We then took a quick journey out of town to the nearby Oteri Beach where mum is said to have spent the majority of her teen summers. Please note that this is where I finally understood what mums always meant when she says that Auckland doesn’t have real beaches. I’ll be a little nicer and say that the west coast probably is on the same level but Maraetai I don’t even know what you’re meant to be. We were greeted by sand-dunes taller than my future and the clear view of Stewart Island much more than Auckland’s ever offered.



We were looking out at the view and me being the ignorant Aucklander I am was asking mum what the different land masses we could see in the distance were. One I pointed to I thought may have been Stewart Island and Mum looks at it and said, “no it can’t be, it didn’t use to be there before.” Uh well, mum land just doesn’t appear in 30 years. Turns out it was Stewart Island and because my mum wears glasses she never saw the island in her childhood because what egg goes swimming with glasses on?! What can I say, you learn something new every day? Incredibly enough the water was super warm, honestly, if we weren’t pressed for time I would have gone for a swim. And unfortunately, we didn’t see any icebergs.





After the beach, our next stop was a lolly shop that my mum visited seven years ago when she was down in Invercargill and brought me some orange chocolate fish that I promise you I have dreamed of ever since. This shop was like a dream come true. Never mind the fact THAT THEY STILL SELL THE FISH they also had bags of straight black jelly beans and Red Hots and Pop-tarts and Reece’s Pieces and ahhh I was so so happy. However, my bank account wasn’t and my luggage coming back was more candy than clothes but that’s okay because what is life without sugar?

Then seeing as it was nearing lunch time we headed back to our temporary home to eat and to get ready for the wedding. The actual wedding itself was held in the Argyle Cottage Gardens, which is the most gorgeous place ever!!! It’s basically this whole property that’s designed to accommodate weddings and different functions and ahhh it’s so hard to describe so I’ve added in the link to their website which explains it better than I ever could.



After the wedding was over we all headed to the venue of the reception and once again it was just like stepping into something out of Pinterest! A couple of dances and many speeches later we all decided to call it a night and headed back to sleep and re-hype ourselves for the fact that when we woke up we would be back on a plane. Destination: Auckland.



We awoke to yet another warm, sunny Invercargill day and headed back to the main house to extend our farewells to the family that we had grown closer to in the whirlwind that was our three days south. I have to add in here that Invercargill definitely didn’t disappoint, it was actually way more than I had ever imagined it to be and this is a fact that was yet again justified in our quick visit to Queens Park  on our way to the airport. Very picturesque. Really wish we could have had more time to do a whole photoshoot there but I guess that’s a reason for me to head back sometime.



All in all, I reckon it was the most fabulous weekend getaway I’ve been on in a long time and definitely made me so much more pumped for spending just a short bit of my summer with the same crazy people when I finally escape to Nelson. 

Hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures as much as I enjoyed living them,
‘til next time
XO