Attempt

I realized I started this blog with all good intention of documenting the goings-on of my life, but then... well, life got in the way. That always seems to be the case. I am going to give it another attempt. I am at a conference where I got some valuable tidbits of information. And one of them was about blogging, and how important it is to keep a journal. One's thoughts are valuable and precious. They should be kept somewhere, to review as needed. But the trouble I seem to have is sticking with it. The advice I got today on writing was to write just as if you are writing an email to a friend. Well, I thought, I can do that. That is, if I don't view this as a "has to be perfect" journaling of my life, but instead, an email to a friend telling them about what happened today... well, that's not quite as daunting. The other advice/information I got was that it is important to journal things out so you can see where you've made mistakes before (sometimes even more than once) so you can either keep from repeating them, or learn what you did to get out of the situation. And I realized, when I read back through my other online journal, that is exactly what I saw. Mistakes I had made. How I worked through them. How major issues resolved themselves. Or closer to the truth, how I resolved them in my life. So I believe in the importance of journaling. I just need the discipline to do it. And the courage to do it honestly. What good is journaling if it is not honest? How will I truly learn and grow? So the challenge I present to myself is to be honest and transparent. I have discovered I need feedback on my journal. On my other online journal, the community has almost completely died. Consequently, there is no one left to provide feedback or thoughts on what I write. So I will try moving over here to see if that situation can rectify itself. So again, this is an attempt at beginning to journal again. As I begin a journey in an area where I will need life stories to draw from, I hope this will prove a good resource. I hope I make the time. I will promise myself to try.

Cape May-Monday

Today, we got to sleep in a little bit! Had a leisurely morning, coffee and breakfast out on the deck. Around noon, we headed out for our day's adventure -- a dolphin-watching cruise. I had found a Groupon for this at home a few months ago, so we decided to take advantage of it. We made it to the boat in plenty of time, and waited on the deck. Finally, it was time to board the boat. We got a seat up top where the viewing would be good. It was a pretty misty day, but we were hoping to see something exciting. And we did! Heading out, we saw some blue herons and their nests. And it wasn't long before we started seeing dolphin pods. Did you know dolphins weigh about 1000 lbs? They must be pure muscle! And a dolphin in the wild lives about 50-60 years, whereas a dolphin in captivity lives only about 5-7 years. I found that interesting. Finally, the dolphins starting appearing. At one point, they were surrounding us on all sides. The guide was calling out, "At 3:00, OK, now look at 8:00!", trying to give us direction on where they were! Then, he told us that if you make a lot of noise, they will sometimes come up and come closer to the boat. And it worked! We started yelling and clapping and banging on the side of the boat and they started coming closer and breeching! It was great. It was so incredibly hard to get pictures of them, though, because they'd only come up for a split second. Here's the best pic I managed to get:

 So that was our adventure for the day! We came home and had a casual dinner of burgers, fried potatoes and vegetables and hung out for the rest of the night. Watched Dancing With the Stars and headed to bed!

Cape May-Sunday

Today, we were up early (for a vacation) around 7:30. We wanted to get to Cape May Point State Park to do some bird-watching and monarch watching. It was pretty neat. There were birds that looked like swans swimming around the lake. I think they were actualy egrets of some sort, but I am blanking on their real name right now. But they were beautiful. We took a lot of pictures. Later in the morning, there was a demonstration of a hawk banding. That was great. It was a Cooper's Hawk. They band thousands of birds a season.  This was an interesting way to spend the morning.

We headed back to town and decided to do breakfast at the Pancake House. After that, we went back to the suite, then headed to the beach for awhile. We actually saw a few dolphins swimming out past the breaks. It was pretty cool!

We spent the rest of the day just relaxing. Dinner was nice. We decided to cook and have dinner on the rooftop deck. We made spaghetti with sausage and garlic bread, set up a beautiful table outside and watched the sun set while eating. We put some music on, laughed and talked and had a really nice dinner.

This is a really chill vacation -- we're not running around doing a lot of things, but we're enjoying ourselves. So another mellow day.

Question

Does anyone know how to change the name of your blog? I have determined this is more of a recap of travels than a recap of my life, so I wanted that to accurately reflect in the title of the blog. So, does anyone know how to do this?

Cape May-Friday and Saturday

So, vacation is finally here! And it is wonderful so far! Getting out the door Friday proved a little tougher than I would have thought. I guess I travel so much that it is a natural, no-big-deal thing to me to throw some things in a bag and go. But it's a little more involved for others, I guess. So, Cyn had to work for a few hours in the morning, which was fine, because our check-in time wasn't until 3:00 PM. But once she got home, it took forever to pack the car and get out the door. Not that I'm a light packer, but I didn't have 5 bags!! LOL! She got home about noon, but we didn't get on the road for a couple hours after that. We stopped at her coworker's house to drop off a gift of wine from Cyn, then got on the road. We ran into some terrible rainstorms on the way here. We finally made it around 6:00 PM.

Our suite/apartment is on the 3rd floor of an old Victorian mansion. Which means, we had to lug all the aforementioned luggage up three long, steep flights of stairs.  But once we got everything in, and got to look around, it is beautiful! Two beautiful bedrooms with antique furniture in each and a pull-out sleeper sofa in the living room. Two full bathrooms. A nice living room and kitchen. And a fantastic rooftop deck, where we can look out over all of Cape May. It is beautiful! So, we unpacked and decided to hit the grocery store for essentials. Got back around 9:00 PM, made hot dogs for dinner, watched a little TV and crashed! Cyn picked the turret bedroom, and it is beautiful in there. The only non-antique-y thing in there is the digital flat-screen. I tried to stay up and talk for awhile, but before I knew it, I was asleep! Can't blame me, by this time, it was going on 2:00 AM. I had set the alarm on the iTouch for 7:30, as we wanted to get up in the morning to go to the Point for the bird-watching.

Next morning, got up with the alarm and had coffee out on the deck with the Cyn. Apparently, Ishy had had a hard time gettng to sleep the night before, so she couldn't get up. So no trip to the park this morning, Fortunately, the park does the bird watch all the time, and the hawk-banding we wanted to see was also happening on Sunday. So no worries there, we had a nice leisurely morning. Two, three cups of coffee on the deck. I went in eventually and made eggs and toast for breakfast for Cyn and I. Ishy finally managed to wake up, poor thing and we decided to walk into the town center, buy some tour tickets and do a little shopping and walking around. It was a little drizzly out. We bought tour tickets for a historic ghost tour and a tour of the estate of Emlyn Physick. We bought some souvenirs, tooks some pictures and walked around some more. It was a really nice, relaxing day. We had lunch at a mock old "soda shoppe" (the most expensive lunch ever!), and headed back to the suite. Had short naps, chilled for a while, then headed back out a little before 7:00 for our tour. The tour was really interesting, and the estate was neat. This neat thing happened. While we were standing in the foyer of the house, the bottoms of my legs kept itching like something was tickling them. It felt like hair or something, like I had a loose thread on my pants. But it was both legs. Then, the lady conducting the tour tells us that the man that lived there loved his dogs and that sometimes the spirits of the dogs haunt the house and people can feel them rubbing against their legs! She hadn't even looked at me the whole time, and hadn't noticed me. How weird is that?!

We had a late dinner at a restaurant on the mall and headed home for bed. Once again, set the alarm for 7:30 AM to attempt to get up and see the birds again!!!

South Africa -- Days 16 & 17

We woke up this morning, Saturday, for our final day in South Africa. We had some final errands to run this day and wanted to get started. We had breakfast of cereal, toast and (real) bacon and headed out the door. We were going back to Steven and Toa’s. Mom and I had been looking for fabric to take back with us for friends and had been largely unsuccessful. Toa said she knew some places she could take us. We got to their house, packed up baby Zawadi and were off. The first place Toa took us was to a very Black shopping section that had all kinds of hair stores and other such things. Mom immediately saw some fabric she liked, but it looked very expensive to me. When Mom went to pay, the lady informed us her credit card machine was down and we would have to go to an ATM to get cash. Thank goodness, because that bought me a little time to do the math in my head. Once I converted the rands to dollars, I determined that Mom was about to spend over $200 on fabric for a friend’s daughter. I know this was not what she had in mind. I let her know that, and she of course did not want to do that. She asked Toa if we could check out the other place. We drove there, and this place had much more reasonable fabric, and a lot of prints. We each picked out a bolt of fabric and were happy with it. Jess got a gold with brown in it and I got purple with browns, as well. We stopped on the way home to pick up some soup for lunch and made our way back to Steven and Toa’s house. The guys had gone out and run some errands, and then stopped by Hooter’s for some wings. So we had lunch of wings with lamb and lentil soup with crusty bread. After that, we had to get going, as our departure time was coming up.

Since we were on an international flight, we had to be at the airport 3 hours early for check-in for our 9:40 flight. We got back to Mart’s, finished up our packing and ran back out the door. We got to the airport right around 6:30 – perfect timing! One mishap in the airport. Mom’s carryon bag was a little overweight. My checked bags were under, so the guy said to put some of her things into there. Mart unzipped my bag, opened Mom’s bag and tried to find some things to move. She finally determined there was nothing she wanted to be without for the 17 hour flight, and the guy was like, OK, don’t worry about it. We loaded Mom’s bags back onto the cart, then mart went to load my bags back on, didn’t realize he had never zipped my bag back up and dumped my entire bag with all my clothes all over the floor of the airport!! Skivvies and all! We managed to smush everything back in and got into the right line and checked in. Mart headed out, Jess and I went through security and decided to go into the shops to spend our last few rand. She picked up some bracelets for the boys, and I found some great coffees and spices in a shop called Taste of Africa. We headed towards our gate. On the way, we bought a couple sodas to drink once we were on the plane. As we neared our gate, we saw a huge line. Here, since they don’t screen like they do in the USA at the South African security gates, they were doing all the screening here. Everyone had to line up, be patted down, have their bags checked and dump out all liquids! In line at the gate for the plane! Thank God we were early, because this was over an hour before boarding time, and the line was already incredibly long. We finally made it through the line and onto the plane about 8:30 PM. We then sat and talked for the next hour until takeoff time.

Once we were finally in the air, it was about 10:00 PM. I decided to watch a movie until I got a little tired. After that, I took my evening pills and settled in for sleep. I had a wonderful nap until about 5:00 when we stopped in Dakar again to refuel and change flight crews. We were off again shortly thereafter – I couldn’t wait to get home! Finally, about 13 hours into the flight, but what was only 7:00 AM US time, we started preparing to get home. We had some snacks, I put on another movie and we started counting down the minutes. Finally, it was time to land. We landed, got our things, and headed off the plane. I asked Mom if it would be inappropriate of me to drop to my knees and kiss the ground! I was so happy to be home! We made it through Passport Control and Customs, found our shuttle and headed back to my Aunt’s to pick up the car. We did the 2 hour drive home, Cyn met me at my Mom’s house and after downloading 800 pictures for her, we were on the road back to REAL HOME, MY HOUSE! Got there, dragged the bags into one door, then went in through the kitchen door. There, I was greeted by a big “Welcome Home” sign and a huge cake!!!! How sweet is that?!!!! I was so happy to be back home! We had an excellent welcome home dinner, I had a big gift-giving session (I think everyone liked what I brought home) and I literally crashed into bed. The adventure had finally come to a close!

This was a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime trip and I am so blessed to have been able to experience it. I saw things I will probably never again see in my life. But the thing I am most grateful for is how much it makes me appreciate HOME. I love my country, I love my home, I love my life. We don’t realize how fortunate we are until you see how others live. It is hard not to take things, to take life for granted. But I will try very hard not to do that going forward. I am truly fortunate, truly blessed. I am grateful every day for my life.

South Africa -- Day 15

Today was Friday, only one day left before leaving South Africa. We got up in our little huts in Bongani, packed our belongings and headed up to the main lodge for breakfast. We had been invaded by baboons the evening before, we’re thinking because of the children that had recently checked in with their families and the thought that they might be deliberately or accidentally leaving food behind. Omelettes and eggs were had for breakfast, though by this time, I was longing for American breakfast. After breakfast, I was on the patio taking some last minute photos, Mart was also on the patio, reconciling the bill, and Jess was sitting inside the main lodge near the breakfast area. All of a sudden, we hear her yelling, “BABOON, BABOON!!!” I run in to see a baboon steal the croissant off of my plate from the table that had not yet been cleared, grab two artificial sweetener packets in each of his hands and run back out the window!!!!! The ladies came running from the kitchen, but they were too late, he was gone! We found this hysterically funny, as we could not figure out what he was going to do with the sweetener packets. Maybe sweeten up his croissant, maybe add it to his coffee, maybe save it for company! We finally got back on the road to head home. It was another 30 minute drive in the safari truck to get down the mountain, then another 40 minutes on the bumpy road leading out to the main road.

We headed home, but at one point, my brother had to stop to find a restroom. He spied a McDonald’s! I was leery, but he told me the whole concept of McDonald’s is that it is always the same, everywhere you go. I thought I would test the theory. He was right! The cheeseburger and fries tasted awesome and like home! We finished our lunch and got back on the road, getting home around 3:00 PM. Jess and I began unpacking from Bongani and re-packing for our flight home the next day. We rested for awhile, packed, watched some movies, packed some more and talked about dinner. Our first day there, Mart had taken us to a place called Rich’s, and he had ordered ostrich steak filets. We both tried it and liked it so much, we decided that is what we wanted for our farewell meals. So tonight, we went out for ostrich steak. They were delicious! They were served with a cherry port sauce, mashed potatoes and veggies. Very good. A nice ending for our final night in South Africa.