Oh, how I have missed Wellington! It will be good to be back, even if it's only for a brief length of time. I wonder if I will have the opportunity to travel up to the Kapiti Coast. I'm going to have to try. That place is so much a part of who I am, and come April, I won't have seen it for a whole three years! I don't know when I'll next be in New Zealand besides this March trip, either. In all likelihood, it'll be another couple of years unless Dad wants to give me a major present. So I must make my way up to the Kapiti Coast, even if it is just for an hour or two.
Honestly, I fear it may have changed beyond recognition. My father tells me major roadworks are being undertaken at MacKay's Crossing to build an overpass to replace the level crossing with the railway. Back in 2003, I found my old primary school to be changed so drastically that it was no longer the school I attended - everything I loved and cherished was gone. If there is one thing I want more than almost anything but know I could never have, it is to happily live out my days on the Kapiti Coast, circa 1992-94. To live happily in the house I grew up in, raising a family, spending the weekends operating the trains at Marine Gardens, working at the local university that exists only in my imagination ... nothing could really top that for me. I fear I will live the rest of my life outside of New Zealand, and that truly pains me. But as I keep telling myself, you never know what the future will bring.