Karolina | Toi Toi, Nelson

“Home for a person who loves traveling, and changing places, at the beginning I thought it was everywhere, or it was somewhere inside me, but then I was finding wherever I was going, I was trying to find something familiar, or something where I would feel very safe and happy.

So, I think home, it’s a happy place. Often I would look for home in the landscape, because I do love nature, and home would be by the lake with the sounds of the forest, just listening to the nature there, but then, slowly I found that actually home is where there are people who are around me, people with who I can spend the time, the people with who I would go to that lake, or to the nature, and to be with them and laugh with them. I think also, home, it’s laughing to tears, when you’re really happy and you can really connect with people, you feel at home. So, you can still travel. You can still be a nomadic person, but you can find the moment of laughter and the moment when you can sit with somebody and feel at home, by the lake, or the mountains. That’s for me, home.

I love the movement. So, if I’m sitting too much in one place, I feel unhappy. So, I go for a walk, I would go every day for a walk or every second day. I do have a dog, so I have to go for a walk, but I have little children, so not every day is the day to go for a brisk lonely walk. I will go with them, and show them nature. I think I learned that to feel at home, I need to go out. So, not necessarily being in a building, but actually moving around.

I was born in the North-east part of Poland, very close to Russia  in a beautiful part of Poland with many lakes, with rolling hills and lots of forest. It’s one of the oldest forests in Europe, growing nearby my home, and we did spend lots of time outside. I always knew that I wanted to travel. When I was five years, I told my mum that I’m going to speak another language, and I’m going to live somewhere else. She was laughing and sometimes when we are talking now, I will have the tight feeling of being slightly homesick. She will remind me that I always wanted to move. When I was traveling, when I was studying, I would choose the city the most far away from my hometown. Then, when there was an opportunity to go for a scholarship, I would choose the city which was the most far away in another country to study. When I wanted to travel, I went to the smallest island in Scotland, the most far away one, and then I met a partner who was a New Zealander. I’ve been in New Zealand now for maybe 15 years, and we do travel together. In a time like this, when you can’t travel out of the country, we really appreciate the beautiful nature which we have here in New Zealand, Aotearoa. Even if now, you really feel homesick, because you can’t go home where you grew up, we can find human nature, and between people and the place, we feel happy.”