Pacific Specifics

My skin is a whole new level of brown. I think I'm back to where I was when I left. It's like the color of the hair on my toes has changed. Let me explain. I have such fine and light hair that I never noticed before. Now I have blonde hair on my toes, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know everyone has hair all over, but it was easy to avoid thinking about it until now. I see the hair because it now contrasts with my darker skin. I don't know what to think about all this Vitamin D. I do not like putting on sunscreen. It's completely unnatural. Every time I've worn it, at some point my eyes will start stinging like mad. Not a good feeling. And no, I don't put it near my eyes. I think it's when I touch my arm and then touch my eyes, that kind of thing. Wearing long sleeves is just too hot and miserable. Reading about skin cancer from the sun is it's own kind of miserable too. I was born with the genes that let me do well with long cold winte...

  Oh man, I haven't snorkeled since we left Costa Rica in April. I'm still a beginner. Right now it's 2:21pm and I can not remember the last time I was this tired, physically. Maybe after some of those bike rides in Macedonia. Even walking around London all day was not as tiring as snorkeling for a few hours.   Ron, of course, says he's not tired and it was just another snorkel trip. Wish I had been on so many that I could be so blase about it. We had to ride our bikes to the beach, and down the sandy beach, with the flippers and gear in my basket. Then we parked the bikes and walked to where the reef was. Then we did a lot of walking on uneven rocks, which a whole lot trickier than I imagined. The water was maybe calf deep. It was easier in the places where it was waist deep, then I didn't weigh as much (technically, thanks to the effects of gravity in water) and it was easier to keep my balance when I couldn't clearly see where I was putting my foot down.  ...

   Have you ever driven yourself to the brink of sanity because you don't know if you are thinking too much, or feeling too much, or some wicked combination? And you feel like anyone but yourself? Thank goodness for the butterflies whose winged flight kept me grounded. Just when life seemed a bit dark and all too mysterious, the butterfly season came upon us. Then I saw that butterflies are mysterious too, so it's okay for things to be mysterious. Sometimes it feels like I truly do not understand Life much, like I am Supermanwoman and some evil dark alien lord is making me juggle with Kryptonite.    There is always that point of debate - if I create my reality then how come sometimes I really don't appreciate it enough? Between comparisons to heroes tight body suits (complete with capes), and with butterflies - well I might just get out of the other side of this strange place that my mind goes.   Superman is not real, but he can be real amusing. Butterfli...

 I just had some of the best chocolate cake of my life. A friend of ours has her own bakery, and Ron asked her to make a chocolate cake to celebrate our return to Samara. Once I've eaten the cake it's gone. But the memory lives on.   Last night was wild and crazy good cake and a crazy wicked storm and crazy horrid itchiness from mosquitoes. The thunder started in the distance around 2pm. It wasn't very impressive, enough to keep me out of the water, but not from going on a walk on the beach. We went for a little walk around 6pm, arriving back as it was finally getting dark. We were a tiny bit nervous on the way home, there were constant flashes of lightening, just brief illuminations of the clouds in the sky. Maybe I couldn't see many bolts of lightening because it was going from cloud to cloud. As the sun set and the light faded the flashes were more apparent. I was glad I didn't have a seizure disorder, because it was constant.   We arrived back right before t...

  I always go back to that expression: Go to your happy place. I did a google search for "go to your happy place" and it turns out that wikihow has a 10 step process laid out with pictures. I glanced through it, but I think I've mastered the process on my own already. And that was before I arrived on the beach on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica in the tropics. Getting here sure improved things though! For the rest of my life I will always have these clear images of the happy moments and beautiful images of Samara beach.   Paradise isn't Samara beach though. It's deep relaxation and profoundly peaceful moments. I'm just glad I'm back here, instead of having to look at my calendar on the wall of tropical islands. I really believe that having those beaches to stare at every day of the year is part of how I got here. Do you want to go somewhere? Surround yourself with the idea. Get the calendar. Name your dog after the place. Have your passwords on things be ...

2016 September I was in 2 countries. The U.S. and Costa Rica. October I was in Costa Rica and the U.S. November I was in the U.S. and Costa Rica. December through February I was in Costa Rica. March I was in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. April I was in 7 countries. Costa Rica, U.S. Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Poland. May I was in Poland, Hungary, and Macedonia. So far in June I started out in Macedonia, then England, now the U.S. Last Monday we made a new friend, my hairdresser was super cool. He was frustrated that we all met the day before we were leaving. We got 3 hours of sleep, and then headed to the airport. We arrived in London at one airport and then took a train ride for a few hours to our hotel by the airport in West Sussex.  London was amazing for several reasons. One is that I could read all the signs around me. It was like a flood of information that I wasn't used to, since we had been in countries with foreign languages for over 2 months. It was wonde...

  Why do we insist on putting a numerical value on everything? There are 60 seconds in a minute. 365.5 days in a year. When I'm traveling my days are numbered. I counted down to Costa Rica last August. I counted down to Denmark in March and April. Now I'm just counting (counting up, maybe?) We arrived back in Samara on Wed the 28th. That is Day 1. So today is Day 5.   Coming back to Samara is like deja vu all over again. Everything about it is so different. Not just the sights of the verdant green tropical landscape and towering trees and lush vegetation. Not just the feel that surrounds me with the warm and humid air that I love. Maybe also heightened by the fact that I can peel off all the layers and lounge in a bathing suit all day. Add to that the warm sand under my feet, and it's a far cry from the boots and long socks I was wearing in Denmark and Poland. Then it's also the way it sounds here. A few minutes on the back porch is like an hour of zen meditation with ...