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As they say, there comes the age where you are thrown out of the nest. Approaching the last half of my seventh form year at St Hildas, the dreaded "what are you doing next year?" question was pestering.
I had my answer small and straight. Au pair in Barcelona.
Two days before Christmas last year, I had fallen from my Otago nest to my plank bed right in the heart of Barcelona.
Just 100m from Gucci and Jimmi Choo. Instead of being a schoolgirl with no responsibilities, I became an au pair to Miquel (7) and Anna (8).
I get them up at 7am and drag them down to the bus stop.
After seeing them on to their school bus, I am free to do anything such as Spanish classes or as I am now, my TEFL English Teacher's certificate, until 5.30pm when they get back from school. I speak English to them for an hour while they have afternoon tea and relax a little before they do more homework than I did my entire seventh form.
Their Mum gets home from her work at a Catalan private art foundation at about 7pm, then she helps them with the homework I haven't managed to do ... whether I have forgotten how to do maths or it is Catalan grammar ... she makes sure it gets done.
I help to make the very simple dinner which is lucky as I seem to have inherited my mother's ability to cook.
I only work Monday to Friday. Wednesday nights the children spend with their dad so I have another day free.
Routines and daily requirements vary from family to family but generally about 30 hours a week.
With pocket money and free board and food, it's really not a bad way to fall at all.
My year was looking good after a three-hour stress-fest driving to the Pyrenees on Boxing Day, where I practically had my first white Christmas - whether everything was going so fast that it was white, or it was actually snowing, I still do not know.
My appreciation of the scenic drive faded after we witnessed a car flip four times right in front of us.
It took out the entire concrete of the road sign, with two children in the back seat.
Luckily, everyone was all right but my stress levels were definitely peaking during the rest of the drive in the snow.
Not only are there the perks of the world-class ski resorts, being on the door step of the Mediterranean beaches, riding camels in Morocco, or popping to France for lunch (to find that everything was closed), there surely are the struggles - having had to change family, trying to open a bank account, getting lost or the constant harassment from eldery men who think its entertaining to make comments about every girl that walks past.
Besides all of that, the biggest obstacle is definitely the language.
My minimal Spanish on arrival made things a bit tricky, let alone the tongue of Catalunya, Catalan.
Catalan sounds like someone threw Spanish into a blender with French and Italian and added lots of ts and xs, and voila.
The bilingual culture gives Catalunya something to be proud of.
Most of the Catalans think it is a bit ridiculous but we're in Catalunya, so we speak Catalan.
Being a non-Catalan speaker, I see the frustrations: going into McDonalds and the whole menu is in Catalan.
Something I think New Zealand could achieve with Maori.
The translation of baby-sitter in Spanish is kangaroo. I think it fits brilliantly.
Except when I meet the children's friends and they try to make me carry them while jumping, attempting to fill my job description.
Despite the disappointment when I tell them that we don't have kangaroos in New Zealand, the thrill of mentioning Hobbits ... now that's a different story.
Having never used the underground metro before my trip here, trying to do it solo took me over a month - walking instead outside in the rain - until I finally gave up and practically risked my life doing so.
I have only been stuck in the door once, which was quite thrilling. We have just hit summer here.
I try my best to keep out of the muggy underground by using the Bicing system.
The 400 or so bike ranks around Barcelona make it rather accessible and easy to use.
For a small annual subscription you get as many 30-minute sessions as you can manage.
It even runs all night on Friday and Saturday which can top off a night out quite nicely.
I have to say, I am very pleased that I don't drive a car here. Even with my appalling parking skills, there are just no free parks.
Although the locals make a park anywhere they like, which involves putting on the hazard lights and blocking two or three cars in their parks who toot until the driver comes back so they can be let out.
Apartment life is very different from home.
We don't even have an elevator in our six-storey apartment. Luckily for me, we're on the first floor.
The closest thing to grass is the children's dying olive tree on the patio out the back, which everyone on the entire block can see on to.
And while eating outside we can hear all the domestics going on in the 100 or so neighbours' houses.
And always picking up on the latest gossip. Every suburb has its own market, so there's never a shortage of fresh fruit and fish.
The price of food here seems a lot cheaper than the rest of Europe.
June 24 is the day of Sant Juan (St John). The day of fiesta (public holiday, they seem to have one at least once a month), follows a night of nonsense.
I spent the night down at the beach with probably close to half of Barcelona's population.
On the corner of my house, the road was closed and a bonfire had been made, at which all the neighbourhood kids were throwing fireworks and petrifying the neighbourhood.
Down at the beach, bars for almost every genre of music play until the sun comes up.
Once it was light, the police cleared everyone off the beach to do the clean-up while the early birds went for their morning swim.
As for the summer holidays, three weeks with the family dozing by the river in a town with a population just half the size of St Hilda's, that did not have a single person between 12 and 30, was probably the easiest money I have ever made.
The only down side was that my sunglasses broke and I had to resort to buying a gossip magazine that came with free sunglasses from the local newspaper store.
Luckily, no-one was there to laugh at me looking like a bug in my animal skin printed fly-eyed glasses.
I would be lying if I said it has all been easy. But at the end of the day, I have to remind myself how incredibly lucky I am to be able to experience this.
Being thrown out of the nest to Barcelona isn't really that bad after all.
As for the return back to my nest on the opposite side of the world, I'll get there soon, once I have finished my year of thinking.
