Pacific Specifics

  I smile because I am positive. I can't help myself. Being mad and sad just aren't my style. I caught up on all of my pictures of my travels, on Facebook. But now, I have to write. Today would have been good, if I hadn't come home from church cold and sleepy. The sun came in through the window and then I passed out. Still getting used to Polish nights. My brain has been shot ever since I struggled to wake up. I have to time travel and go back to my Danish adventures. Perhaps tomorrow. Before or after my hope of going to visit a big Jewish cemetery. Cold or not, I have my new scarf and hat to give me courage.   I was telling someone today: one of the reasons I blog is to stay positive while I write. My many many journals have too much whining in them. Writing here keeps me focused. Today we found a church to go to, it was so nice, out of 30 people a few spoke English. My 2 favorite questions were: Where are you from? And what brings you to Poland?   Where am I from? How...

  How can it be 2:30pm already? It's only 6:30am in Costa Rica and Cedar City. I am not a morning person. We need to organize. At 10am we left to buy some groceries, and I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. The grocery store is close by, a quick walk. Unless you take the long way there, to check out the neighborhood. Then the store was pretty big and crammed with weekend shoppers, all navigating the aisles around each other. I was ready to be done, but we were mocked by the olive oil. We couldn't find the section of the store with cooking oils. We looked once, as we did our other shopping. We circled back around twice, wondering how we could have missed it. Then Ron left to look for it. Then he returned and I left on the hunt. I finally found it, right by the entrance in the fruit section. We got back in the door at 1pm. I was too tired to eat.   I have family history to do, if only I had a clue what I was doing. But I must do something, anything every day. The sun came out, I gu...

  I need to go back in time. 3 weeks, to be exact. In the mean time I'm going through the history of Poland, to get a feel for half of my ancestors. Assuming that since they were in Poland in the late 19th century, chances are good they didn't go to far. I'm going on a trip to see some Lodz history, wish me luck. Then I can come home and blog some more. I've been doing family tree research all morning. It's a major rabbit hole. Ask one question, learn 10 answers to questions you didn't even think to ask yet. Answer one question, and 10 more pop up. First and foremost: Why didn't these Polish people talk about their past? At least my Danish side has been settled in one place, and stories have been written. Names have been taken down. My cousins from Denmark know where they came from in much more detail than the Polish side. That's good though, I have one side to pursue and the other side I just have to translate to English for my benefit. I must find a ...

  I'm getting dizzy, the world is spinning so fast. Time to slow down. 3 weeks ago we left Costa Rica, went to San Francisco, then made a pit stop in Toronto, Canada to transfer planes to Copenhagen. Then after 2 weeks we took a bus to Sweden, caught a ferry to Poland, and we have been in 3 cities in Poland. Whew.   Where to begin? I haven't had the needed combination of time/internet/space to write. I can tell you about today. The one day with the minimal amount of reflection before writing. All of our kids are 8-9 hours behind us in time. We get to do everything first. It's 11am for them and 7pm for us. Weird.   We didn't travel much yesterday, but it feels like I finally have jet lag today. I did almost nothing, and it took me all day. We are settling in! Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it really is. We have been living out of other people's houses for 8 months. Wonderful people, mind you. But a little privacy goes a long way. I miss my God given right t...

. WARNING. If you travel a lot, or don’t know me well, this detailed report may not be as interesting to you as it is to my Momma, whom this is dedicated to. 4.3.2017 Was a good day, but bad sleep. 4.4.2017 One full day left in Samara. Which means, of course, that in the middle of the night the power went out for half an hour or so. Which woke us up because it immediately became too hot with no fan to move the air around. Pura Vida, baby: explain what it is. It also means that during the day the water went out for 6 hours. It was announced, but we missed the announcement but there was no missing the surprise of no water for daily activities. I went for a bike ride half way down the beach with Ron, then we were just turning around and a good friend was there on her bike. She wanted to go swimming. I said sure. First she wanted to bike to the farther end of the beach, for a good place to swim. It was worth it, there were few waves. We swam quite a ways out. It was the far...

I love my writing group. The assignment this week was to create a character and use textures. This one is based on a true story ( I was there). The iguana facts are true too.   His name was Jose, but he has gone by Lucky Luigi as an iguana. He always had extraordinary luck. For better or worse. He thought in his next life he would become a vulture. Stinky and feathery, and flying so high in the air the land animals would kink their necks to find him. But he woke up as a hatchling. He thought he could work with that. Lizard skin has a fascinating smooth, stippled texture and shiny glazed finish that comes in an enormous variety of colors. But no, he was an iguana with overlapping scales. He never had horny epidermis before, so he supposed he was amused.   He felt special to have a photosensory organ on the top of his head, a third eye. It was supposed to be a rudimentary retina and lens to help him detect predators stalking from above. He wished it had worked on Wednes...

  How do you pay your water bill? In the 3 years and 2 places I lived in Cedar City Utah, I never had a water bill. I mailed a check in Apple Valley, California – we bought our water from an Indian tribe that had the water rights. When I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada – I paid the bill online. Here in Samara paying the water bill is a small adventure. It’s a short walk down dirt roads. In the rainy season it’s all mud and puddles. In the dry season it’s all dusty and the sun is bearing down on me.   The first time I paid the water bill was the first day I woke up in Costa Rica. I saw my first iguana on the road there. A few months ago I had to walk in between 4 cows that decided to settle down for an afternoon nap on the road. They weren’t asleep, but they didn’t get up. Thank goodness, they were huge. With horns.   Today I saw 3 iguanas right as I walked up to the tiny office. This office is so ramshackle. Is that a word? It didn’t autocorrect me, I guess it’s a w...