Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are

I am very excited to see that the hit counter for this blog has tipped past the 500 mark (and only half of those are me checking in throughout the week, I swear!). So thanks to all of you for stopping by and reading. And on that note, this week is national de-lurking week in the blog world (thanks Nanette at Say It Don't Spray It! for the info) so if you've been reading please leave me a comment to introduce yourself and leave me a link to your blog or website if you have one. I love getting a glimpse into other people's thoughts and lives.

Transformation Vacation

Before Paul and I left on our trip to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago this summer our friends and family were intrigued. After all this was not your typical vacation.

“You’re going to walk how many miles? For fun? Why?” they asked.

The trip we were undertaking involved walking nearly all day for five and a half weeks under the hot Spanish sun, braving bugs and blisters and waking up at 6am and sleeping in creaky old bunk beds with a room full of snorers. We had to carry everything we needed on in our backpacks. This might sound like a nightmare for some, but from the first time my friend Matt told me about the Camino I felt a magnet-like pull to take this journey. Besides the fact that I really wanted to visit Spain again, I was seduced by the idea of taking on something that was difficult and outside of my comfort zone. I liked that it was something Paul and I could do together and wondered how it would shape our characters and bring us closer together. There was a big allure to having hours at a time to think while walking through parts of the country that not many people ever get to see and by the prospect of meeting new friends from all over the world.

I have always been of the opinion that the trips worthy of spending those hard-earned vacation days on are those that have the potential to change you in some way. For some that means quitting your job to vagabond around the globe for a year, building an orphanage in Kenya, bringing books to children in Cambodia, following the path of your ancestors in Norway

or hiking an ancient pilgrimage across Spain. For others, place can be secondary to the people involved on the trip. Some find themselves transformed after undertaking even a small activity that pushes them outside of their comfort zone.

While some of us would be perfectly content selling everything we own and zigzagging across the globe, I think it’s important to note that the search for change and growth can manifest itself in totally different trips for different people. Transformational travel can also come from spending 24/7 with your husband or parents or best girlfriends, meeting someone from another culture for the first time or discovering how much different other parts of the world are, yet how much they’re the same.

If I think back to the most memorable trips I have taken, the moments that really stand out are not those spent sitting by the pool or taking an afternoon nap (although these activities might represent a huge paradigm shift for people who are on 24 hours a day and rush to answer their crackberry at 2 am). I think about the things that have expanded me as a person. Things like the meals I shared with new friends from all different countries on the Camino, taking that first step backwards to rappel down a waterfall in Costa Rica, learning to navigate the streets of Washington, D.C. all by myself, walking 31 kilometers in one day with a killer foot injury, learning to ski after being completely terrified with the encouragement of Paul and my brother and sister-in-law, drinking new wine straight from the barrel before it was released to the public, growing closer to Paul after understanding more about myself, or trying octopus cooked in its own ink after mistakenly ordering chipirones instead of champinones.

Want your next trip to be a transformation vacation? Here are some tips.

Think back…
to your favorite travel moments. Ask yourself what made them special. What do they have in common? Did you try something new? Face a fear? Get to know the person or people you were with in on a different level? Get totally lost in a new culture? Live out a dream? Think about the ways you can you incorporate these types of experience into your next trip.

Challenge Yourself to Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone
This can be anything from finally deciding to try out an adventure sport –bungee jumping, hang gliding, white water rafting, rappelling to visiting a place where you don’t speak the language. If you always travel solo, bring along a friend or family member. If you don’t have travel companions, so what? Take the leap anyway.

Put Your Personal Limits to the Test
These can be physical limits, mental limits or social limits. Hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. Pick up your backpack and hike the Camino de Santiago. Climb a mountain. Bike across Europe. Stay in a tiny cabin with your whole family and toys that make noise for a week. Talk to the people around you. I like to choose trips where I can share the experience with new people. People can enrich your travel experience much more than place. If you are really brave, give Couch Surfing a try. If you are the kind of person who needs constant noise and stimulation, go someplace that challenges you to become comfortable with silence and meditation.

Play
Go ahead, act like a kid. Being somewhere new can let you reconnect with that uninhibited, uncensored part of yourself. Eat 3 scoops of gelato for breakfast in Florence. If your heart screams, “I want to ride an elephant!” do it! Sometimes instant gratification can be fantastic.

Reflect
Sometimes you don’t know how significantly a trip or experience has changed you until you take the time to meditate on it and write about it.
Keeping a journal or a blog can commemorate your experience and be a much more meaningful reminder of your journey than a miniature statue of liberty tchotchke. If you aren’t a writer you can still keep a reflection journal in other ways. At the end of the trip make a play list of all of the music you listened to on your trip that will trigger memories. If you are an artist, keep a sketchbook. My husband is an architect so he keeps a sketchbook with him on trips and draws the layouts of the buildings we stay in or sketches the old beautiful churches. He’s built up a really special collection over the years that triggers detailed memories for him.

My Holidays Unwrappped

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a safe and fabulous time ringing in the New Year and rest of the holiday season. Its hard to know where to begin. It seems like I had about 3 weeks worth of activity packed into my last week! In true Me fashion I am a little behind on some things since Christmas- blogging, cleaning since I have spent most of my days and nights at the in-laws this week with my visiting brother and sister-in-law and nephews. and I am happy to report that I actually ordered my Christmas photo cards yesterday that will now be known as "Happy New Year" cards... or perhaps "Happy Martin Luther King Day" or "Happy Valentines Day" depending how long I procrastinate on writing the letter to go with them.

Paul and I had a great Christmas despite my previous anxieties. He loved his big mystery present which was a handmade wooden bookshelf that is actually big enough to hold his oversized architecture books.

And I could hardly keep from jumping up and down when I opened my graduation/Christmas/birthday gift from him - a shiny, new, incredibly fast MacBook Pro laptop. It is so wonderful not to have to delete a file every time I want to add a new one!

My mom was incredibly generous and went overboard with presents as usual, although she swears this will be the last time (we've heard that before but I think she actually means it this time) and suggested we all go to Maui for Christmas next year.



The arrival of Michael and Jenny (my brother and sister-in-law)'s Christmas card announced the upcoming arrival of a new niece or nephew! They came down for a week to visit around New Years and we re-enacted Christmas once again.

And I turned 29 last week (although it seems like a month ago!). Only one more year left until I enter the next decade, but for now at least, I am embracing my age. I've had a great 29 years. I have a great family and great friends and I am living out my career dream as a University teacher for International students and have been blessed with many opportunities to travel and see the world in out of the box ways and participate in the community around me. 29 is not so bad and I don't think 30 will be either.

Tis The Season

...For everything Christmas and all of the parties and gatherings that go along with it. In the last few weeks I have been to both Paul's and my work holiday parties, a "Hootenany" Christmas sing-a-long,

Christmas cookie and fudge baking at my mother-in-law's (we managed to keep at least half of our original batches from burning or mistakenly using the recipe on the page before the intended recipe), a last minute get together with former co-workers and Christmas at my Dad's. So far Christmas 2007 has not been overly stressful, but I shouldn't speak too soon. We've still got two more Christmas celebrations to go.

I made the task of wrapping Christmas presents much more enjoyable by dragging my laptop upstairs to watch my old Sex and the City DVDs and preparing a very healthy breakfast plate of chocolate Christmas cookies, fudge, and cheese and crackers to nibble on between wrapping and trying to keep my cat, Shakira, from chewing all of the ribbons to death.

My biggest stressor this holiday season has actually been trying to find the perfect present for Paul. After looking in every conceivable place both online and in person, last week I started to freak out that I hadn't found anything. I did get a bunch of little things that I know he'll like but nothing big. And then I found it. Something he mentioned that he would really like. Something beautiful and unique and very good quality. And then I looked at the price tag. Yikes! Something expensive. I agonized over this decision for days and finally went back to the place where I could find it and found it was not exactly as it had seemed. Hmmmm. Return to freak out mode. Luckily, yesterday I was able to find something not only better, but also something that will take a little less of a toll on the pocket book. I just hope Paul will like it as much as I did. Want to know what it is? Sorry, you'll have to wait until after Christmas too.

Shaking Up the Routine

Travel is something that I can always count on to give me a new perspective. When I am stuck in a rut and can’t seem to get out of a nightly routine of sitting on the couch watching Tivo-ed episodes of Ugly Betty and the Amazing Race I sometimes get depressed. While I am comfy snuggled up under my blanket on the couch with the scenes flashing before me, sometimes I feel like there is so much more out there I could be doing. So much I could be learning, even small things that would greatly change my life and make a much larger contribution to my happiness than keeping up with Betty Suarez.

I think about the experiences I’ve had just a plane ride or car ride away when my routine is totally shaken up: stomping on a barrel full of warm squishy grapes that stained my feet purple for a week,

getting a glimpse of the actual John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence,

eating dinner with a Korean woman and a Brazilian woman in Spain who have somehow become friends without even speaking a common language,

picking up my feet and letting myself zip line across the rain forest through a cloud even though I was terrified,

choosing to walk across nearly the entire country of Spain for my summer vacation.

I think travel gives me back that childlike feeling of limitlessness. Before being saddled with all of the rules and social pressures of adulthood (“Don’t do that! You could get hurt, get messy, spend too much money, too much time, etc.”) dreaming the impossible and expanding our experience was our number one priority. Lost in a new place without the comforts and routine of my home life I feel free to take more chances, do the things I’ve always wanted to, be the person I’ve always wanted to be.

Even though travel can be the catalyst we need to break ourselves away from our routines in order to try something new, these activities I’ve mentioned above all have something in common that I don’t need to leave my hometown to find. The rush of giddiness doesn’t come from jumping off of a high rickety platform and almost dying, but instead from stretching myself. Its seeing the line in front of me between what is comfortable and easy and what is risky and scary and dancing right over it.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop traveling. I love it way too much. (In fact I already have plans for a ski trip this February with a group of friends, and I am hopeful that we will get to take a trip to Macau and Hong Kong this summer). But in the coming years I want to bring some of the excitement and newness to my life at home. I really want to seek out ways I can participate in my community and live with that traveling spirit right here at home as well as on the road.

Writing on the Wall

The building where I teach 2 of my classes this semester is pretty old. Not beautifully old, made of aging red brick, rich in history with ivy crawling up its sides like you’d see at some New England University. Instead, this building is 1970’s mod style old, complete with peeling stucco. And like many buildings that pass their prime in Las Vegas, it is scheduled for implosion (well, at least destruction of some sort) and rebuilding in the coming years.

One of the interesting features of the 2nd floor ladies room in this building is the writing that covers the walls of the bathroom stalls. I don’t think it has been cleaned for years because I have some hazy recollection of seeing it when I was an undergrad at least 6 years ago. Reading through some of the strange comments the other day, such as a debate over whether or not Jesus was in fact black, I got to wondering what possesses people to write on bathroom walls and how they choose the subject of their bathroom stall graffiti.

The bathroom that sticks out in my memory as being the most actively filled up with comments was at my favorite college hangout Tom and Jerry’s. Sadly, the place is now a Laundromat or something like that, but during my college days, every Tuesday night it was bursting at the seams with underage college students with fake IDs for dollar drink night (perhaps that’s why it was eventually shut down). It was the first bar I ever went to. The floor was always sticky with spilled drinks and packed with everyone I knew at the time. Being thoroughly liquored up with a continuous stream of $1 Captain and cokes or beers, it seems like a brilliant and pretty obvious idea to write on the bathroom walls. Especially when so many other people already had. Most of the writings at Tom & Jerry's were to the tune of Anthony hearts Melissa 4-ever or Natalia is a skanky b**ch and she better stay away from my man. I’m pretty sure I added own my comments at one point.

However, I’m a little more curious about the people who scribble on the walls in the middle of the day at school. Are the authors bored? Are they looking for a forum to express themselves? Who are these people that write on the bathroom walls anyway? Are they rebels? Just ordinary, everyday students? Are they (gasp!) professors? I can just imagine Ira Glass doing an interview with the people who write these comments for This American Life.

There is one bathroom I refer to as the F*** Jesus bathroom. The dialogue in there goes something like this:

Jesus was black.

No, he wasn’t. Jesus was white.

What color is the sand when you wet it?

I have it on good authority that Jesus is purple.

Jesus was Jewish. Cleopatra was Macedonian. Stop rewriting history.

F*** Jesus. (This comment is now scratched out.)

Mmm-kay. I find it funny that their choice of topic for defacing public property is religion.

This made me think of something written in a bathroom wall in the University I went to in Spain. I wrote it down one day after returning to class because I thought it was funny. It said:

Nunca corras detras de un tio ni un autobus.
Llegara otro en un ratito.

Translation:
Never chase after a guy or a bus.
There’ll be another one along in a minute.

I've Come a Long Way Baby!

My half marathon was yesterday and I am happy to report that I actually ran across the finish line to complete my 13.1 mile (about 21 km for my friends on the metric system) course. I kept thinking as I was plodding along, if only my high school gym teacher could see me now. I was that girl who was "sick" or suddenly struck with a case of debilitating cramps every time we had to run the mile in PE. If those excuses didn't work I would puff and wheeze through it, sure that death was imminent.

Yesterday, I didn't think I would die even once! That is not to say that it was easy, I think I just had a change of heart about the whole running = torture or death idea. I walked a great deal of it, but Ashley and I did the whole course together and talking and laughing about the running Elvi and the guy in the pink tutu and fishnets and the run -thru wedding chapel made the time and distance go by pretty quickly. We finished with a time of about 3 hours and 30 minutes which was quicker than I expected. Ashley, being the 4 time full marathoner that she is, who actually runs all the way through 26.2 mile courses, I would normally not be able to keep up with her speedy and well trained pace. Because of a calf injury she was taking it easy and went along with my slow and steady pace.

Even though I am extremely sore and shuffling around like an old lady today I am really glad I did it. I even got a cool medal and a t-shirt to prove that I made it through.