{"id":150,"date":"2020-07-16T15:08:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T19:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/?page_id=150"},"modified":"2021-12-21T13:48:43","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T18:48:43","slug":"we-make-such-a-pair","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/2019-winners-2\/2019-writing\/we-make-such-a-pair\/","title":{"rendered":"We Make Such a Pair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Cierra Farst | Media and Culture, Creative Writing | Class of 2022
Education Abroad Program<\/strong>: ES Abroad Auckland Direct Enrollment – Auckland, New Zealand, Fall 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prize Winner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

My human claimed me from a Burlington shoe rack back in January. It\u2019s October now and together we\u2019ve seen so much. We went on vacation, took a trip to a state we\u2019ve never been to before, she made it through her first year of college, and I learned how mud can really do a number on my appearance\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment I rest under a bed in Auckland, New Zealand, in a room that has become my human\u2019s temporary home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arrived\nin July, when the skies were cloudy and the rain never failed to say hello. I\u2019m\nalways fond of the rain; it keeps me clean. But I could tell my human wasn\u2019t as\nenthused. She\u2019s meant for the sunshine. And one day, she got it. She was so\nexcited that she took a bus to St Helier\u2019s Bay, and I came along too. She\ncarried me as she let her feet sink in the sand and let the water touch her\ntoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got some\nwater on my toes when we traveled down south. I met the edge of a lake and\nstudied the colors of the rainbow found in a waterfall. I kept my human\nbalanced on an occasionally swaying boat, kept her protected from Queenstown\u2019s\ncold, and left her to dance on the warm carpet of a place she was falling in\nlove with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we\u2019re\nat university together, I get to learn too. Once we wandered around The Clock\nTower, her taking notes and pictures, and I gliding on colorfully tiled floors.\nBut most of the time, we journey from class to class with a backpack on\nshoulders, phone in hand, and me on foot. She scribbles away on notebook paper\nin lectures while I greet my fellow shoes underneath the tables. For lunch, we\neither sit on the benches or sit in the aisles of the library, her reading a\nrandom book and I counting the titles on the shelves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I\ndon\u2019t eat, my human loves to. Queen Street and those surrounding it have a\nvariety of culinary wonders for her to explore. She\u2019s had Korean pancakes and a\nbubble waffle cone. She\u2019s watched a bowl of fettuccine get mixed into a cheese\nwheel of Parmigiano Reggiano. She\u2019s feasted on pumpkin soup, lamb, and\nraspberry chocolate cake in the Sky Tower. She\u2019s done late night McDonald\u2019s\nruns with friends and ice cream strolls along the harbor. Countdown has become\nour most visited spot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had to\npick one shared passion between me and my human, it would be our fondness for\nwalks. We\u2019ve walked down Queen Street and Quay; crossed the bridge to\nNewmarket; trekked to the top of Mount Eden. Sometimes we have a destination in\nmind; other times we just walk. More recently, we\u2019ve been hopping on the buses\nand trains, giving us even more ground to cover. While she looks at the map of\nthe train lines and stops, I gaze at the patterns on the seats. They remind me\nof seashells, a whole wave of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we\u2019re\nin the apartment together after a long day, I rest as she continues moving.\nI\u2019ll watch her type away on her computer or jot down words on a sticky note.\nSometimes she\u2019ll follow along with a ballet tutorial on Youtube or she\u2019ll play\nmusic. She started listening to Italian music too, in the hopes it will make\nher a better learner. She adores movies and TV shows, and at least one or two\nNew Zealand programs have caught and kept her attention. I\u2019ll see her scroll\nthrough pictures on her phone, smiling. Although we have only been here for a\nfew months, the images on that phone contain many memories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often, when\nI catch her staring out the window, I can imagine how she must feel. Instead of\nlooking at frozen images on postcards and the internet, she\u2019s here now,\nwatching as the picture moves and breathes. I think occasionally she feels as\nif she\u2019s in a dream. I don\u2019t blame her. After all, traveling has been a dream\nof hers ever since I met her and before I even knew her. She\u2019s half a world\naway from home right now, and my intuition tells me this won\u2019t be the last time\nshe is. I just hope the next time she is, I\u2019ll be the one keeping her on her\nfeet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cierra Farst | Media and Culture, Creative Writing | Class of 2022Education Abroad Program: ES Abroad Auckland Direct Enrollment – Auckland, New Zealand, Fall 2019 Prize Winner My human claimed me from a Burlington shoe rack back in January. It\u2019s October now and together we\u2019ve seen so much. We went on vacation, took a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":59,"menu_order":17,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-150","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}