Travelling with Baggage

“Life’s too short, babe.  Time’s a flying.  I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine.”  -Mimi, Rent   

I travel a lot so I’m an expert at stuffing more than you can imagine into my suitcase for long trips.  I also know that, in all reality, I can pack very lightly; I only need a bikini, a few sundresses, and my SPF 100 for any trip less than a week.  My carry-on always contains my MP3 player, Kobo, camera and Ultrabook because, well, we are living in a technological world and I’m a technological girl.  I also know that despite what all the regulations state, no one is ever going to weigh or measure my carry-on.  If my luggage gets damaged on flights, I know how to contact the airline for repairs.  If (God forbid) it should ever get lost, I keep a photocopy of my passport with my address and phone number written on it so I will be easy to track down. I am like a well-oiled machine.  I’ve got this baggage thing down!

I know people view me as a globetrotting free spirit… and yes, that’s true.  People wistfully say things to me all the time like, “I could never do what you do.” And then they put up roadblocks and hurdles to fulfill their own prophecy.  I’m hoping this blog entry can inspire people to tear down their roadblocks and jump those hurdles.  Don’t let anything hold you back from your dreams, whatever those dreams may be. 

Confession: Oh man, do I ever have baggage that cannot be checked or stored in the overhead compartment.  This suitcase has a luggage tag labelled “Pandora”, but let’s go ahead and open it anyway:  I have generalized anxiety disorder (with debilitating panic attacks) and obsessive compulsive disorder.  Whew!  That sure is some heavy baggage I lug around the world with me!

Most of the time, I’m fine.  These are things I’m very used to and I’ve been dealing with for most of my life.  Lately, I haven’t been okay though.  I got stuck in an elevator a few months ago on the 38^th floor and that triggered everything negative inside of me to come rushing to the surface.  Since then, I’ve been unable to shake this feeling that transits between moderate uneasiness and complete dread.  I have a silent freak-out every time I set foot in an elevator now (I live on the 39^th floor and my school is 8 stories high, so daily).  And there are these constant catastrophic “what if” scenarios running through my head about pretty much everything.  I’m living in fear of life and that is unacceptable.  I’ll be okay.  Yes, I feel like I’ve reverted back to my 18 year old tragic mess of a self, but I know this will pass. 

Panic attacks come at the most inopportune times.  Scuba diving, for example, is a very bad time to have a panic attack.  I liken diving to what it must be like to go to space.  The ocean floor is a giant expanse of unexplored vastness where you are removed from the world, feel particularly small and even experience gravity differently.  One of my favourite views is that of looking up at the surface from the bottom of the sea.  It’s incredible.  But not this time.  Last month in Malaysia, I was 25 metres down at the bottom of the ocean when a cold sweat poured over my body and a mini existential crisis swam through my mind.  When did the ocean become so darn big?  And blue?  I had no choice but to silently work through it as I swam along a coral reef.  (When diving, you have to follow a dive plan and can’t just pop up to the top whenever you feel like it.  The changes in pressure and air can make you very sick if you don’t follow protocol.)

These past few weeks, I’ve been consumed with the news of Malaysian Airlines flight 370.  The first few days, I just sat there and robotically refreshed the news on the internet.  It was very unhealthy.  Then I took two days off work because it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, ripping my heart out and I didn’t want to leave the apartment.  I don’t know if it has hit me so hard because I was already in a vulnerable state or because it is so literally close to home.  Or maybe it’s because I just returned from Malaysia a week before this incident.  I keep thinking about the families involved and what they must be going through and hoping it never has to be like that for my family.  I also keep thinking about what the passengers must have been going through.  I know that next time I get on a plane (in 3 weeks today), that regular fear that grips me is going to feel much more suffocating than usual. 

Aside from the situational and explainable anxiety, it has pretty much been the steady state of my mind for the past few months.  Even when I'm happy and the anxiety is not bubbling over, it is still in a gentle boil on the backburner, right below the surface.

But I’ll be okay.    

Here’s what I’ve learned from my decades of battling mental illness:

-Be patient with yourself

-Take a break.  That’s okay now and then.  But don’t let your whole life become a break.  You don’t want to end up like the Ediths of Grey Gardens.    

-It’s okay to allow yourself to feel anxious or to give in to the compulsions sometimes.  If you try to block those feelings, they just become even more persistent (like when someone says “don’t think about a pink elephant”… you know you’re going to).  But know when to tell yourself no.   

-Keep a sense of humour.  Humour solves everything.  Seriously.

-Find soothing distractions: mine are swimming, writing and chocolate. (Note to self: substitute chocolate with swimming more often or this will not end well.)

-Find support.  You don’t have to do this alone (unless you want to).  I like to be alone, but it helps to talk to friends about it now and then.

-There are going to be enough people and circumstances in life that try to keep you down or hold you back.   You shouldn’t be one of them.  I want to travel, explore and do everything, so that’s what I’m going to do. 

-Gratitude: appreciate the good things and focus on those, even if they are small in comparison. 

-Face your fears.  If you have actual, concrete things you're afraid of, just face it or you're giving the fear the power.  (Unless it's something actually dangerous, then use your common sense and don't do it.)  

  

-Live your life anyway.  Sometimes I just ignore how I'm feeling and do things anyway.  I have to, otherwise, how would I live my awesome life?

-It will pass.  It always does.   

I guess my point in all this is that travelling the world is not always as easy as I make it look.  I’m a mess right now.  But if I can do this, anyone can!

Embrace the world anyway!

Hair

I did my grade 6 speech on hair and I still remember my ultra-cheesey opening line.  I would like to start this blog entry the same way:

*Enter 11 year old child with enough hair to provide an entire nation with weaves*

"Classmates, parents, and teachers, I would like to talk with you today about something that has been weighing heavily on my mind: my hair!"

Return to present day:

I have never run into this in Canada, but in Hong Kong, stylists always rudely tell me that my hair is damaged.  It’s not (well, it wasn’t before they got their hands on it).  I have naturally curly hair.  Like, REALLY curly.  That means its texture is very coarse.  Coarse hair tends to be dry.  I’m just never going to have shiny, silky, Chinese hair… and I’m ok with that.  I usually like my hair (just not lately).  The great thing about my hair is that I can douse it in Moroccan oil, straighten it and then leave it for a few weeks.  Or I can let it dry naturally out of the shower and end up with fancy curls that people would pay good money for.  My hair is very low maintenance and rarely needs washing.     

I’m not a natural blonde.  (Shocker, right?)  The whole blonde thing happened as the result of a series of major changes in my life.  I guess I was just ready for a new start.  However, I did have more fun as a blonde and was not ready to give it up yet.  And it was certainly not my intention to chop over a foot of hair off my head, leaving me with an unflattering bob.  (Some people, my sister for example, look great with short hair.  I am NOT one of those people.  I hate having short hair.  It makes me cry!)  So, why did I do it?  Read on and find out.

Naturally, I'm a regular ol' Shirley Temple.

Salon Shaming

All you have to do is search “blonde in Hong Kong” on Google to find that salons here have no idea what they’re doing.  Even people who have worked in western countries for years manage to mess it up.  My very talented husband usually did my blonde roots at home, using salon quality products, NOT Blondissima.  Unfortunately, after my husband had to return to Canada for a while, I had no choice but to explore the lesser of the evils myself. 

I looked long and hard for a salon that didn’t have blonde horror stories posted all over the internet.  I settled on Tala’s Hair &Beauty Centre (now closed in Central, only in Sai Kung).  The idiot there managed to strip my hair of absolutely all colour.  My hair was white as the fresh fallen snow, but in patches.  He told me it looked fine and completely matched the rest of my hair.  The salon was closing for the night so they attempted to send me on my way saying that I could make an appointment to have it fixed the next day.  I refused to leave and the store owner stayed an extra three hours that night to fix that disaster.  She did a good job, but the result was severely over-processed hair because she had to dye over my entire head several times.  I also had chemical burn all over my scalp.  She gave me free products for the burn and I never went back.    

This is a problem, right?

Gee, Steph... I didn't know you were on Firefly!

Again, through a lot of research, I found another salon:  Paul Gerrard.  Now, I don’t usually like getting a blowdry finish in a salon because unless you use a roundbrush and know what you’re doing, you’re probably going to make me look like a clown.  So, after the first time at this hair salon, I left with my hair in a wet ponytail.  By the time I got home, I couldn’t help but notice that my roots were sunshine yellow.  How had I not noticed this in the salon?  So I called them and had to go back in the next day for a fix, which involved not just toner but more bleach.  Hmmm, double bleaching the same hair… that sounds healthy. 

Ruin my hair once, shame on you… Ruin my hair twice… shame on … Dame Edna?  Thinking they’d now know that they need to leave the bleach in longer, I returned to Paul Gerrard because I was just too afraid of what might happen in yet another new place.  I returned only to find the place abuzz with news of Dame Edna coming to town and hiring a hairdresser, MY hairdresser, before her show that evening.  That’s right.  I had been double-booked with Dame Edna.  Now Dame Edna is a funny lass, and I can see myself getting a hair-do much like hers when I’m an old lady.  However, on that day, her makeup and purple locks (wig?) took precedence over my sad blonde roots so my giggling, fanboy stylist disappeared without actually communicating anything about me to the other stylists.  Someone promptly confused me for Dame Edna and turned my hair into an orange and yellow disaster by rinsing my bleach too early, despite what I insisted.  Consequence: another round of bleach over the same weakening roots.

In case you have lost track, there were now three severely weakend, double-bleached sets of roots growing out in my hair.

Dame Edna thinks I look ridiculous

Luckily, at this point, my husband came home and we went back to doing my roots in our living room.

Long hair, don't care!

Enter the Brunette

Though those sections of my roots had long grown out, the most recent of which was near the tops of my ears and the first ones near my chin, those strips of hair were feeling weak and weird.  When I’d wash them, they’d get an almost elastic-like texture and when my hair was dry, they felt brittle.  I decided that Tala’s Hair & Beauty Centre and Paul Gerrard had done so much damage that it was time to give my poor hair a break.  I contacted a stylist friend from home who did an excellent job coaching me on exactly what store-bought shades I could use, with the limited selection here, to go from blonde to brown without going green.  She did an excellent job.  (Thanks, Cerah!)

After the job was done, I was pretty pleased with it.  But within hours of being a brunette, my hair began to fall out in large chunks in the EXACT spots where the weakened roots had grown out.  When all was said and done, I looked like a ragdoll who had been ravaged by rats after being forgotten about in the attic for years.  I knew I’d have to get a cut.  I went to a salon that I had come to trust with scissors (though I’ll never trust anyone in Asia with bleach again).  They salvaged what they could and confirmed that those former roots were horribly damaged, courtesy of the Tala’s Hair & Beauty Centre and Paul Gerrard handiwork.

Immediately after the salon.  This is the only time my hair ever looked both short and respectable. 

Note the ironic beer that I clearly needed after such an ordeal.

Never before have I felt so much like a Disney princess.

The Aftermath

I hate, hate, hate, HATE my hair short.  I try to put on a smile, but somehow that only makes my hair look more stupid.  Short hair is just not me.  Luckily, I’ve been using organic horse shampoo (yes, you read that right… horse shampoo) and it’s making my hair grow out shiny and quickly.  (I’ll be “best in show” in no time!)

In the meantime, I’m running into problems.  The biggest problem is that my hair is defying gravity.  I talked to my mom and she said that my hair did the same thing when I was a baby and just growing it in for the first time.  I’m sure this look is adorable on a toddler, but it’s soooo not good for a woman in her 30s!

The other problem is that Hong Kong is a VERY humid place.  This transforms my ordinarily springy curls into complete frizz that makes me look like I’ve just touched one of those electricity orbs in the science centre.

Gravity, Schmavity.

I'm trying to rock this afro-esque do.

Hairmageddon 2013 for the win!

And then there's the comments...

Drunk stranger on the street to my friend who looks great with short hair:  Wow, your hair looks awesome!

Drunk stranger on the street then turns to me:  Ewww, yours… not so much.

In my head: I know!  I've been looking at my beautiful friend all night.  I don't need you to tell me that!!!!!  Besides, it's raining!

~~~

Someone upon looking at my passport:  That girl was hot… what happened?

In my head: Is 'hot' a visa requirement for Scotland now?
~~~

Co-worker, after I spent hours straightening my hair and spent the night with a toque on my head: 

It looks much better that way.  Less is more.

In my head: Really????!!!!  You think I have actually been TRYING to look like a cat in heat on a stormy night?!

~~~

Well-meaning friends: You’re still so beautiful!

In my head: Well, thanks... that's really sweet, but no thanks… your pity makes me uncomfortable.  Tell me that again when my horse mane grows past my shoulders.  But until my hair concerns itself more with Newton’s Law and less with Murphy’s Law, I just don’t want to hear it. 

2016 Update:  I got pregnant in late 2014 and it turns out that hormones were the magical elixir my hair needed!  It grew so fast and is back to normal now, but I'm still in Asia so, therefore, still brunette.  However, I've found an amazing British lady, Becky Flynn, who does keratin treatments in her home.  My hair is now relaxed and silky all the time, straight out of the shower.... absolutely no effort at all.

#wokeuplikethis

NaNoWriMo

You may have noticed it is no longer November and that means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWrimo) is over.  The goal this month was to write 50,000 words towards a novel.  A lot of people want to know about my experience, so I will answer some frequently asked questions on here. 

So, how did you do? 
 

Well, it depends on who you ask.  If you ask the people who make the NaNoWriMo rules, they’d say I failed miserably.  I wrote a mere 21,000+ words.  However, I feel like November was still a success.  My novel may not be (anywhere near) finished, but I’m really happy with how it’s going so far.  I’m still full of excitment and momentum and I will definitely keep going with this.  I have new, more realistic goals of seeing my novel completed and through a first edit by the time I return to Canada, mid-July.  (For anyone who is eagerly counting the days until my return, that would be 218 days.)

Day 1: A blank computer screen, citron and framboise macarons (a new love I acquired in Paris this summer), "Beethoven's Last Night" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra and a Batman clothespin ordering me not to procrastinate (sorry, Batman, I think I let you down!)

That's still a lot of words... any tips?

I’m very grateful for the extra push that NaNoWriMo gave me because I have never made it this far into a project before.  

Sitting through intensive writing sessions with others helped me to focus.  I'm not typically one who "works well with others" but this seemed to work for me.  I guess it is because everyone was side by side, but in their own little world.  It helps to be able to get encouragement from friends, especially inspirational friends like Shannon Young who have done this before and become REAL authors.

Disconnecting my WiFi helped me to focus even further.  The internet is a distracting place… there are too many cute cats out there.  Luckily, I was directed towards "Written? Kitten!", where my writing was rewarded with a cute cat for every 100 words I wrote.  Even though I didn’t meet my goal, I wrote more than I ever could have imagined and still saw a lot of cats. 

I found that I definitely work better away from home.  A Starbucks will be opening about 5 minutes walking distance from my house later this month.  My husband bought me a thin, lightweight Asus Ultrabook for my birthday in October.  My Ultrabook and I have plans to frequently haunt Starbucks in 2014.

A group of eager Hong Kong writers at a write-in (photo credit goes to someone else at the write-in, but I can't remember who... sorry!)

What is your inspiration?  

When I first decided to do NaNoWriMo, I wasn't sure what to write about at all.  I have a few projects that are (half-heartedly) on the go already so my initial thought was to finish one of those, but I wanted a fresh start.  I've had multiple requests for an autobiography, but that just didn't seem right for NaNo. 

I was getting ready to give up before I even started when this idea popped into my head out of nowhere.  Within about ten minutes of frantic typing, my mind had spun an entire story!  (Of course, the story developed much more after those ten minutes.)  

My novel is inspired by my summer trip to Scotland and Ireland.  (Posts on these countries coming soon to a blog near you!)  I arrived in Europe having only the vaguest notion of leprechauns, faeries, selkies and giants.  I returned to Hong Kong half-believing in magic and otherworldly creatures after being enchanted by folktales.  I swear, I caught fleeting glimpses of these mystical realms as I was hiking in hidden fields or sitting atop jagged bluffs.

Pictured below is the exact spot that is the main inspiration for my story. 

The Faerie Pools in Scotland, August 2013

What is your novel about?

Pretend this is the back cover of a book:

"He shall suffer such things as destiny wove with the strand of his birth that day he was born to his mother"- Homer, The Iliad

  

This is the tale of a real-world tragedy, on sacred faerie grounds, that has unprecedented consequences in both worlds.  To restore their home, the faeries pledge to take the first-born daughter of Natalie, the only human remaining on the accident scene when they arrive.  But when Natalie gives birth to twins nine months later, she begins to hatch a plan. Despite twisted minds and twists of fate, her family runs. But can they ever truly escape what is lurking right below the surface? This is a dark story of fate, free will, love, lies and an intermingling of worlds that will leave you questioning reality. 

I'm keeping the synopsis a bit vague for now because I'm not sure exactly how much I want to give away.  There are multiple layers, worlds and surprises in store!  I'm not sure what genre to place my novel in.  Despite all the faeries, it is definitely not fantasy.  I also don't have a title.  These are the little details I'll work out later.

And to finish things up, I'll leave you with this super creepy (and beautiful) faerie song I found on Youtube and listened to on repeat through much of the month.  There was a particularly scary moment when my computer restarted at 3am and restored all my tabs in Chrome... the Youtube page refreshed and the song started playing automatically.

    

A Ridiculous Ode to Cheese

Confession #1: This is not an entry that can be classified under “Travel Blog”.  Sorry!

Confession #2: I love cheese.  A lot.  Too much.  Now, yes, cheese has an amazing taste, no one deny that.  But I’ve realized tonight, after reflecting upon cheese via a thread on my friend Hollie’s Facebook status, that cheese is oh so much more than a sharp bite of extra calories on my thighs.  I think I have an emotional relationship with the dairy food group.

So, my love affair with cheese… it all began as a childhood crush when I was 7.  I remember that lunchtime walk home from school, in the bitter Canadian cold, (you know, in those days before global warming made us all subtropical) looking forward to my dad’s world famous grilled cheese sandwich.  He would cut thick slabs of cheddar or marble cheese from a brick and grill it between the bread, with heaps of butter.  I remember kicking the snow off my boots on the threshold of the front door and running into the kitchen to my dad’s ready-waiting frying pan.  His sandwiches were always grilled to perfection, never burnt, never cold in the middle.  Every morsel of melting deliciousness warmed me from the inside out on those cold winter days. I don’t know why I didn’t just bring a packed-lunch to school like everyone else.  It would have been much easier on my parents.  But I’m glad I didn’t.  So artery-clogging.  So perfect.  Great times spent with my dad.   

When I got a bit older and was at that baby-sitting age, I had the privilege of “baby-sitting” one of my best friends, Amanda.  It wasn’t so much work as it was play (but I kept a good eye on her!  I was responsible!) and we opened our own celebrity restaurant.  Imaginary Michael Jacksons and Elizabeth Taylors dined in our establishment and the menu specialty was fried cheese (as that was all I could cook).  I discovered fried cheese by accident because I sucked at making grilled cheese.  Fried cheese is when the cheese slips off the side of the bread and just bubbles up in the pan, then turns hard when removed from the burner.  Amanda and I eliminated the middle man and just threw a bunch of cheese in the frying pan.  For a more ‘adult style’ version of fried cheese, use haloumi and squeeze a lemon over it.  I had this for supper last night. 

And now we get serious. When I was 19, I became a very strict vegetarian (except for that time a certain roomie vengefully drained beef grease into my ‘textured soy protein’.  I’m glad we can all laugh at that now).  At that point, I stopped eating cheese with rennet in it.  For years, I read labels and became more and more disappointed in my cheese choices.  Microbial enzymes just weren’t what they are now so I ate less cheese for a good half decade or so.  (If you don’t know what rennet is, I’m not going to tell you.  I don’t want to be directly responsible for ruining your dinner.  I’ll let Google take care of that.)  During this same time, I was living in Quebec.  Something went awry with the French-English translation during a Dial-a-Cheese by phone type of thing and I ended up with $90 of fromage on our doorstep the next day!  Mon Dieu!  Au revior, weekly budget!

When I started to eat cheese again, I noticed a change.  A horrible, gut-wrenching, gaseous change.  It seemed that in my non-dairy phase, I’d become lactose intolerant.  I still am to this very day.  My body had stopped producing the enzyme that digests lactose.  To be officially declared as such, I had to have some testing done.  This involved days of fasting (literally days of eating NOTHING) and sitting around in the lab at the hospital.  It turns out, I was never able to officially take the test because my body was never able to purge itself of all the lactose.  They declared me lactose intolerant based on that fact alone and suggested I never touch cheese again.  The good part about all this was that my waiting around at the hospital gave me ample time to spend with my grandma in her last days. She was one floor down, in the cancer ward, and I cherish that time we spent in the hospital together.  I love my grandma dearly and if it weren’t for my horrible stomach cramps, I wouldn’t have had that extra time off work to spend with her.  Those days were worth all the lactose-induced pains I will ever have in my life. 

A few years later, after my first year of working in the real world (right before finding out I was laid off from the real world), I booked a trip to California.  Well, “booked a trip” is a loose term, as it involved me taking the train across the country to meet my girlfriends and then staying in hostels from San Francisco to L.A.  (and, oh, what a time it was!)  California was obviously where all of my dreams were going to come true.  So, one rainy night in Kansas, our train’s navigation system got struck by lightning (come on, are you really surprised…. this is me we’re talking about) and we got stuck in a cornfield or something for a day.  The train quickly ran out of vegetarian friendly meals and left me only with a large amount of Babybel cheese.  It was my first time having it (these were the expensive, wax-coated slices of heaven I could never afford at home) and man, was it delicious.  I spent the next 24 hours or so stranded in a train car with people who had been strangers to me the day before.  I drank beer and ate those colourful wheels of glory while bonding for life with Jersey, Cuba, and Pok as we all made our way westward, listening to Simon and Garfunkle’s America. What happens in Kansas stays in Kansas.

And now, for some refined times.  *Cue the classical music*  My childhood besties and I can’t resist a good dinner party.  And a good dinner party must include fondue.  About once a month, throughout university and beyond (until careers and life scattered us across the globe) the very same girls that I’d played hide-and-seek with as children, showed up at my door bearing dessert squares, fruit platters, and a multitude of dips from around the world.  But the centerpiece of it all: a cheese fondue, homemade, by yours truly.  That’s right.  I painstakingly mixed wine, flour, cheese, and whatever else went into that concoction.  I stirred it patiently while it turned from a gloopy paste into the perfection where we dipped our vegetables.  After fondue, we would always have a karaoke session in my basement.  That was the significantly less classy part of the evening, but no less cheesy.

And that brings me to this summer.  My husband and I had a remarkable time travelling through Europe (and I have been very negligent in blogging about it… only 2 countries out of 6 so far, I believe).  Living in Asia, I just don’t each as much cheese as I used to.  It’s not a staple in their diet here (and it shouldn’t be a staple in mine).  But in Europe, oh, it is the very lifeblood of civilization.  Cheese flows through their veins!  I guess my lactose intolerance had kind of slipped my mind.  On our cruise in Norway (my first cruise), I was surprised with the richness of the food.  We had to stop at the next port to buy Lactaid.  Back home, it’s around $12 CDN for 100 pills…. in Norway, the same amount cost nearly $100 CDN.  The cost of living in that beautiful country…. Ugh, I don’t want to talk about it.  In Ireland, the go-to appetizer on every menu was deep fried Brie.  I easily lost a year of my life to poor eating in Ireland.  In Scotland, I ordered a blue cheese and onion sandwich, thinking those would be the subtle accents atop the lettuce and tomato on whole wheat.  Oh no, I ate a year’s worth of blue cheese between two slices of bread.  And thankfully, I had my toothbrush.  In Holland, we ate cheese, dipped in spicy mustards, while catching up with dear old friends.  In France, it was fancy Champagne and cheese beneath the Eiffel Tower for our two year anniversary.  I really overdid it this summer.  I swear, by the time we came home from Europe, I had such an aversion to my beloved cheese that I thought I might even be pregnant.  What else could cause such a hatred of an otherwise adored food?  Not so, but I guess you really can have too much of a good thing.

And thus ends my ode to cheese.  

England: A Journey to my Past

I’ve never cared much for history lessons (unless there’s a juicy conspiracy theory involved).  I have vague recollections of charting Ferdinand Magellan’s course on a map with a partner in grade 6, but other than that I’m not even positive I took a history class in school.  I figured this wasn’t my great loss; history is often a biased account of events with too many convoluted names and dates.  And we don’t really seem to learn from it anyway. 

Oh, England, sweet motherland, you changed my mind!  Nothing could have prepared me for the sentiment I felt when I first set foot on the ground of the country in which my heritage is based.  I felt like I’d come home to a place I’d never been.  These feelings stayed with me throughout our time in England, surprising me with misty eyes at the site of thatched-roof cottages and rolling landscapes alike.  I found myself completely enthralled in all the stories and drama surrounding the castles and royal families of yesteryear.  Every single guide we had in England was just incredible and brought it all to life for me.  However, my appreciation for England goes much deeper than that.    

My grandma was from England.  She died 8 years ago but there is still not a day that goes by where she doesn’t cross my mind.  My grandma and I were very close and she was my hero and inspiration.  If I can someday grow to be half the woman she was, I would know I’ve lived a worthwhile life.  She had such a vivacious spirit: as a retired nurse, she continued to volunteer at the hospital until she herself became the patient, she raised 7 kids on her own, travelled the world even in her 80’s, overcame odds time and again, and she was selfless… utterly and completely selfless.

I’m sure most people have lost someone close to them, so this is probably a very relatable sentiment: I hate that I can’t share stories with her and tell her everything I’ve done in these past 8 years.  I hope she’d be proud.  In England, I was able to feel connected to my grandma again.  Knowing I was walking the same streets she used to walk brought me a sense of both comfort and awe.  I felt like my present and her past were colliding, outside of the constraints of time.  

My grandma and dad on their last trip to England (left).
Me standing in the exact same place this summer (right).

The White Cliffs of Dover

Stonehenge at sunset

The medieval village of Canterbury.

Me at the Roman Baths.

My husband and I posing with Tower Bridge (my favourite bridge).

Norway: Land of the Midnight Sun

This summer’s Euro-trip was beyond amazing.  I had lofty goals of coming home and writing a new post every day until I covered each country we travelled too.  That’s not going to happen.  Sorry.  I’ll do my best, but it’ll probably take a few weeks, unless I’m feeling particularly ambitious.  People keep asking me which country I liked best, but I honestly can’t decide.  Whenever I start to come up with an answer, all the memories of the other countries come flooding back and I have to start figuring it out all over again. I think the only real answer is the same answer people give when asked which of their children they like best (what kind of question is that!): all of them, because they were all special for different reasons.

The first part of our trip was a Holland America cruise to Norway.  Cruising is definitely a different sort of experience from the way we normally travel, but I think it was a well-deserved taste of luxury.  Before leaving Hong Kong, I even had a gown tailor-made for formal nights.  (Formal night was wonderful, but felt a little less upscale when I asked for the mocktail menu and was subsequently handed the kiddie menu from which I proceeded to order and thoroughly enjoy a fruity little number called the “Taylor Swift Magic”.)  All in all, the cruise was great.   The food was good, the scenery was amazing, and the nightly song and dance shows were outstanding.

cute little village near Eidfjord, by my husband

Norway was magical.  It was misty and cloudy the entire time, but that added to its mystique.  The clouds loomed low over the mountains and the water ran deep through the fjords (300 metres).  Most of the time there was a light drizzle, except when we were sea kayaking… that’s when it poured sheets of rain.

Cruising includes a lot of planned activities.  Usually this is not really my style, but after a very hectic, stressful last little while in Hong Kong, I was ready to sit back and have someone else do all the work.  There were excursions on land to explore the quaint little Norwegian towns, onboard a ship activities like Scattergories competitions (I won!),  and even a Dancing with the Stars theme night (I auditioned and didn’t make it… quite glad I didn’t because those judges were mean).

Beautiful view, by my husband

Amazingly, in Norway, I learned two important lessons about living in Hong Kong: 

1. If you are lucky enough to live in Asia and be able to get most medicines super cheap over-the-counter, do so.  Don’t wait until you are in one of the most expensive countries in the world to buy lactose pills for $98 CDN per box.

2. If you can’t read the sign posted at a store, don’t just guess.  Ask.  Use Google image pictures, wild arm gestures, and that handy language translator app you likely have on your phone.  I didn’t do any of these things.  That is how I ended up with a $5 CDN windbreaker that I thought was a bargain raincoat.  And then, that is how I subsequently ended up in a kayak with my icy, drenched jacket stuck to my skin for three hours.

kayaking, before the heavy rain

The most fascinating thing about Norway was the light.  We didn’t see the sun the entire time due to all the drizzle, but whether it was noon or midnight, it was equally light; the sun set after midnight and rose again around 3:30 am.  In winter, it is the opposite and they barely get any light.  One of the most amazing sites I’ve ever seen in my life (and unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of it) was when we were sailing back to England from Norway.  Shortly after midnight, we went up to the top outside deck to take a look around and enjoy the stars.  Out on the open sea, there was nothing but blackness around us in three directions.  However, as we looked north towards Norway, we could still see a dome of light on the horizon. 

Norway is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.  

view from the ship

Euro-Itinerary

Another school year is almost done, but this year I'm not going home.  That's sort of a bittersweet feeling.  I miss everyone and wish I could see my friends and family, but the reason we're not going heading to Canada is because my husband and I are about to embark on a five-week European summer adventure.

On Friday morning (Thursday night for those of you in N.A.), we're boarding a plane for London.  I'm sure I'll write multiple entries on the different legs of our journey once we return, so I won't bore you with all the details now before they even happen.  I'll just give the brief rundown for now, in order.

1. Norway: a cruise with Holland America.  This will be my first cruise and I'm really looking forward to it!
2. England: London, Dover, Bath, Stonehenge, Lacock, Canterberry, Leeds, and HARRY POTTER STUDIOS!!!  Mostly, we will be based in London and doing daytrips.
3. Ireland: renting a car and driving in a large circle around the country, including the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula.
4. Scotland: an adventure bus tour for people 35 and under.  We'll be travelling around the whole country and I hope to get a picture of the illusive Loch Ness Monster.
5. The Netherlands: pretty much just hanging out in Amsterdam
6. France: We'll be spending our two year anniversary in one of the most romantic places on earth... Paris.

We're getting from place to place by train, boat, bus, car and plane.  Mostly train though, as it is Europe and that's the romantic way to travel.

On our flight back to Hong Kong from Paris (August 17th), I'll be hitting a milestone: 100,000 kilometres travelled by air!

So this may or may not be my last update for a while.  This week is looking mighty jam-packed with last minute preparations and then we wont have the internet again until we reach Ireland.  At that point, I'll probably be enjoying our vacation and not blogging.

Have a great summer, everyone!!!