29 posts tagged “travel”
I took a plane. And once I was in Morocco (Casablanca), I ran and then I took another plane (to Agadir). Sadly, my luggage is not able to run by itself, so it had to wait and wait and wait until someone would take it to the next plane which meant that it did not actually join me in Agadir. As my flight was already late in arriving and then I was later still coming out because I had to wait in line to report the non-arrival of my suitcase (travel light?), my anxiety levels were through the roof not to mention being really, really tired. I got snippy with my mom on the phone, I didn't have the patience to work out the cash machine and all I wanted was bed. But then I met the other woman in the van (to take us to Taghazout) who was just lovely and upon hearing that I didn't have any useful luggage except for the flip-flops in my carry-on, immediately cracked open her own suitcase and whipped out a bikini and a towel for me to use because as she said, "you can't not go surfing your first day!" Thus, my holiday was actually off to an excellent start!
This will be a brief overview and you will need to read other entries for a fuller picture of my trip.
There will be no photos bar one taken by Anna Harriott of one of the beaches. (and even then, I still may not post that picture, depends on my energy levels) I took one photo with my camera and it was of a dog.
I met some lovely people, ate fabulous food and slept lots. I came home with a fish sting, bug bites and sunburn, but lest you think that would put a damper on my having a good time, you don't know me very well, then. This is one of the few holidays I have taken where I was not there as a tourist, as such any souvenir shopping that happened was at the Agadir airport.
Morocco is beautiful, French is very useful there and the sun is very, very strong.
It's been a while. I had a great time at home and aside from a six hour weather delay at Charles de Gaulle which really threw me off, I can't complain about the trip back. The Air France staff on my flight from CDG to Geneva were absolutely lovely and even all the passengers (except for some of the children) were in relatively good humor.
I hit Ikea with G yesterday. That and the Super Coop were a bit of a letdown. I found almost everything I was looking for, but not before Ikea nearly got a black curtain rod shoved somewhere. Apparently, they have discontinued their single curtain rods, so you can now only buy them as a set complete with finials. I don't want finials. I only wanted just one more curtain rod because I am switching out the single rod brackets in my room for double. I have been doing my best to get over the "buy it when you see it" idea, but it turns out at Ikea, that if you don't buy it right when you see it, it will probably be discontinued.
On the other hand, I did pick up a "buy one get one free" selection of a really pretty bedside table lamp. I ended up keeping the small reading lamps I'd put on the frame of the bed, but the new lamps look really, really lovely. I also finally got a real overhead light for the spare room and I am currently sitting on a nice new Poang to match the one I got earlier this Fall. My feet are resting on the matching Poang hassock and I am very comfy, though not particularly productive.
Maria Tatar will be the bane of my existence. I have just ordered another copy of "The Classic Fairytales" because I can't find the one that I ordered in November. And that particular experience was my second attempt at acquiring the book. People at amazon.uk are living large, thanks to my idiocy.
On the upside, I have just booked my trip to Morocco. I have my flight and will be staying at the villa at Surf Maroc. I can't wait! Now I just have to start working on my pop-ups again so that I don't spend the week in sore muscle hell. I feel like I've gotten quite a bit done, but aside from changing light bulbs I can't come up with anything. Oh, I am using my new wireless keyboard and mouse and that is wow, very comfortable. So glad that I made the switch. It cleans up the mantel a bit (I'm trying to ignore the tea mug and books and other stuff) and in general makes life easier. I'm still working on how to make the characters on the screen bigger so that I can actually see what I'm typing from my chair.
I should probably get dressed for the day. I am buying new pillows. I hope. Fourth times the charm?
The joys of working with children. Children in their natural state tend to be very caring and love to share. Everything. Your speeding ticket, your pregnancy, mom and dad fight a lot and dad just moved out, their snack, their story, their germs. Now, I totally agree that some of this might be overshare, but probably not the ones you think. Hearing that a child's parents are separating usually explains A LOT of the child's behavior especially if it has been a major shift. The speeding ticket and germs are definitely overshare. The speeding ticket, well, that's just a cute story the parent would rather we hadn't heard, but the germs, truly, are over the line and yet they are what are most often and easily given away.
Not quite all of the eleven Christmas vacations I have had since I started teaching have I been sick, but I would say the odds are stacked that I will be sick. Throw in an international flight or two, and the chances are pretty good that by the time I get home, I will be a bundle of tired misery.
Unfortunately, my sister doesn't stock Bushmills or Coke Classic, so no cure last night, and for some reason, I'm pretty sure my mother might frown on my taking such a cure at 8:30 in the morning. Maybe tonight. So instead, it's off to the Mall (why not compound the misery?) and then to the hairdressers for cut, color, hands and feet. And if that doesn't make me feel at least a little better, I'm safe in saying that I'm ripe for the grave. Another early night tonight and I should be good to go for Christmas.
Is there anyway possible I could convince anyone to go with me to Saskatoon for New Year's? Flights are four hundred bucks. Could I possibly sell this adventure?! Come on, there has to be someone out there who'll have a beer with me in Rosie's native place!!!
I make me laugh. :)
There's a website, blog, really, that I check in to read fairly often. I started reading it during the writers' strike and have continued. It's the screenwriter, John August:
Very cleverly named
He wrote the screenplay for Big Fish and a bunch of others. He recently produced, directed, whatever, his own movie the Nines which was a trippy, little affair well worth a view or three. You really can't go wrong with Hope Davis.
Anyways, I was just reading it this morning and I realized that one of the reasons I like it so much is the footnotes. He uses footnotes ALL THE TIME! Okay, not every entry, but since I rarely see anyone use footnotes in blogging (I tend to use parentheses, obviously), I find it endearing.
We are eating our way through the day at school today in lieu of getting together for a meal outside of school (who has time for that right now? I'm out three nights of five this week!) I made a casserole and felt very Baptist Church Lady bringing my covered dish to school today.
So, my cat threw up twice on Saturday. I'm not really sure what to do. I think it's that she's eating her food too fast, so I'm putting more food in her bowl, so that there's some left and she can graze instead of gorge, but if she's actually ill? I can't bring her home. My dad doesn't want a cat in the house even if it's healthy, so a possibly sick cat really wouldn't fly (literally, I don't think I could get a vet cert for her). She seems okay, otherwise, though she did sit in my lap last night even though there were other people in the room. My poor kitty. She may be a little nutty and not keen on people other than me, but she's my kind of nutty.
but I'm tired and can't sleep. Emjay is in Italy at the moment and had dinner at a restaurant Gracie and I bestowed our presence on more than six years ago.
I don't think we actually ate there. We might have just had a drink, but befitting the name of the cafe, they had live music and we stayed for the entertainment. Gracie will remember more, but I did take this picture:
Where do you want to go on your next vacation?
Submitted by beth.
I've been thinking a lot about this and so my big holidays are sort of set for the next couple of years. This February, I will apply for a summer school librarian position in my old school district. I had such an amazing experience, professionally and personally, when I did this a couple summers ago that I can't wait to do it again. This means that my holidays for the rest of the year here are pretty well taken up by working. I need to make sure that I have all my hours worked so I can have the summer. There is the Easter weekend, though, when the whole country shuts down, and I'm thinking of going surfing in Morocco. I've always wanted to make Morocco one of my big holidays, but I can start small, too. And they don't have sharks.
My next huge, non-working holiday? I think the summer after this one, I will find a hut on a beach in Costa Rica and surf for four weeks and eat good, fresh food, and lounge and maybe friends will come to visit me while I am there. I have never been south of the U.S. in contiguous terms (I've been to Hawaii), and it's been on my list for ages to go to Central and South America. I think this is a great way to start!
Sorry about the interruptions.
I had a wonderful couple of days before Gracie's wedding to hang out with her; running errands, hitting Starbucks, meeting friends and family and her soon to be in-laws. Gracie had made up these huge gift baskets for out of town guests and written lovely cards to go with them and I thoroughly enjoyed the contents of mine. I felt so appreciated and part of the celebration that it made the whole weekend even more special.
The wedding ceremony was lovely and followed by a great dinner and evening of dancing. I know I tend toward the unobservant side of things, but the amount of happenings that I missed made me wonder if I was at the same party as some of the other guests when I heard about the events at the brunch on Sunday. It was a beautiful evening with a little lightning and no rain on the roof of the museum. Gracie's dad has a floral shop, so the floral arrangements at her wedding had to be seen to be believed. They were so, so beautiful, truly works of art.
On the Sunday morning after, June and I went to brunch at this place in Pasadena that had live jazz (please don't ask me the name). I think I had eggs benedict but I don't really remember. (I do know that I ate eggs benedict at least three times in Australia and I'm pretty sure there is no finer way to serve eggs for breakfast) After which we went to Gracie's new in-laws for more food and to watch them open gifts. My flight wasn't until late Sunday night, so while Mass wasn't going to happen, I did have options.
I have some cousins in LA and I called one of them who said, "oh, you must call my mom!". So, I called her mom, my great-aunt and left a voice mail. I called again once I got back to the hotel and she said, "yes of course, come over". This is my mom's dad's youngest sister. I've only met her a few times in my life, but she's just one of those wonderful people that I love to be around. My grandpa's sisters all bake. And my great aunt's daughters all bake. My grandma baked and I think sometimes felt she had to keep up with her sisters in law. My mom, her sisters, my sister and my cousins also all bake. I used to bake. Now I have a crappy oven that doesn't heat consistently or hold heat well. Anyways, bitterness aside, I ended up arriving at my great aunt's while one of her daughters was visiting. I hadn't met this cousin before, so I had a lovely evening with my aunt, my cousin and my cousin's husband. And of course, dinner was fabulous!
I headed to the airport afterwards to discover that my flight was delayed and that they couldn't confirm me on the ATL-IAD leg. This plane ticket was a mess. When I booked in January, it was a direct flight from Dulles to LAX. By March, crappy Delta had gotten rid of that route and I was now flying through Atlanta. I called and pitched a fit, so the fellow re-booked me on a flight out of Reagan (in which I learned the hard way the difference between direct and non-stop; let's just say that I was on a direct flight by way of, oh yes, that would be Atlanta) and the return was changing planes in Atlanta. So, my flight left late, arrived not as late as I thought, I sprinted between terminals, raced to my gate, to discover that the gate agent had nearly given away my seat as it was unconfirmed. Thankfully, he didn't or I probably would have thrown up on his shoes (I hate running, especially with a carry-on). I made it to breakfast with Kristel in Virginia right on time. Thus ending a fabulous weekend in Los Angeles. I'm not saying I would move there, I'm not saying I wouldn't, but it certainly is a place worth visiting more than once, especially since I've got such lovely family and friends out there.
If they have started as they mean to go on, then their lives together should be long and full of food, drink and dancing.
I had never been to Poland before, so I kicked off my first time in the country with a traditional Polish wedding. What better way!
Her family is as lovely as she is. And there are a lot of them! She has all sorts of cousins and brothers and aunties and uncles. Asia also has a quite a few good girlfriends from high school who came out for the wedding, including one from New York.
The day itself is set up a little differently from an American wedding. I was chatting with Tomek (one of many men named Tomek this weekend), her fiance, before I left her parents' house for my hair appointment and he explained what would happen before the Mass. He and Asia would meet at the house, dressed for the wedding to receive the blessing from both sets of parents. Then they would take photographs for a couple of hours and then they would head for the church. They were getting married at the town Cathedral. Apparently, this was a busy day for weddings because as one wedding Mass ended with the couple walking out of the Church, the next group of guests were filing in. There is no bride or groom side of the church and in fact, Tomek sat in the left hand seat and Asia on the right. The parents come in and sit with no fanfare or escort and then the bride and groom walk down the aisle together.
After the Mass, in which the bride does not get kissed by the groom, the couple receives everyone's best wishes, gifts and flowers outside the Church. Many of us then boarded a bus and we were shuttled to the restaurant for the reception. The tables were long and groaning under the weight of platters of food and bottles of soda, juice, wine and vodka. We started off with a champagne toast to the couple and then even more food started appearing. There were five hot courses served throughout the night. Asia's aunts and cousins had baked some fabulous cakes and pastries that were on a separate, help yourself table along with coffee, tea and fresh fruit. In addition to the drinks on the dinner table, there was more alcohol by the coffee and an open bar. And there was wedding cake. No one was going home hungry.
Periodically throughout the evening, everyone would sing the couple a song wishing them at least 100 years of happiness. And then we would all drink. Sips are perfectly acceptable (rather than the whole shot of vodka), a concept I wholeheartedly embraced as the restrooms were down a flight of stairs. Going down stairs are not my strong point at any time.
The band was fantastic. They were a little more jazz oriented in style than rock, and it really suited the evening. Everyone danced. A lot. I, Iwona, at whose house I was staying, and another couple who were also staying there called it a night at 3am. Asia said she got to bed at 6.30 am. I cannot imagine what I would be like if I had stayed out until then.
I am so glad that I could be there to celebrate Asia and Tomek's wedding. And I can't wait to visit Poland again!
Sidenote, skip if you're not Catholic: Receiving Holy Communion in the Polish Catholic church was a very different experience. As an American (and given the lines here in Geneva and other places I've been), I am taught that if I have committed a mortal sin, I cannot receive the Eucharist until I have been to Confession. But venial sins are themselves forgiven by the Eucharist. In Poland, you must have gone to Confession in order to receive the Eucharist. Out of a hundred or so people in the Church, I would say maybe twenty received Communion. And how you do it is totally different from the way I've seen it anywhere else. Asia's cousin, Iwona (who was my absolute savior in terms of cultural explanations and translations) asked if I wanted to receive Communion. I said, yes. I followed her and we crossed to the other side of the aisle and knelt on the floor. The priest came along and gave us the Host on our tongues. No hands allowed. I have never received Communion like that before. (okay, I've done the no hands version, but kneeling? an uusi kokemus) And then I realized that this was not a whole group experience and I was mortified that I had committed a huge cultural faux pas, but where I come from, as long as you're not in a state of mortal sin, you don't pass up an opportunity to take Communion.
