This is love. My soul is better because of these two women.
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Posts Tagged ‘ Friends ’
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- We make love to the camera
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- We party
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- We love
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- We make it to the top
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- We chill
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- We Salsa
I gotta say, with as little monetary resources as I’m working with I still have a blessed and full life. In large part this is due to the beautiful family I will be leaving behind. The community I have built over the past 11 years living in Los Angeles has been unexpected. When I moved to L.A. from Mexico as a teenager I felt like an alien. Now, although the scenery changes as I continue to travel, I take comfort in knowing that the love will always be there, not only for this community I’m saying goodbye to, but for the communities I have yet to meet… in Thailand.
8 days to departure!
In our work we often meet people, whether single travelers, groups, or even other organizations, that follow a similar lifestyle of work and travel. One of our favorite of these – The Lost Girls – has been doing some great work recently not only with the launch of their new site (www.lostgirlsworld.com/) but also their own book.
As quick background the Lost Girls are three friends(Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, and Amanda Pressner) who, like ourselves, left behind comfortable jobs and lives of security to set out and see what kind of adventures they could find in the rest of the world. After a full year of travel and documenting their stories online, they compiled their tales into their upcoming book.
We just recently got a copy of it and its a great insight into where some of these journeys can take you when you leave behind what you know to find something new. The stories follow all three girls as they travel through nearly a dozen countries and across four continents.
You can learn more about the Lost girls over on their site, and you can also pre-order their book by clicking here or heading over to Amazon.
As a bit of a teaser, this won’t be the last time you’ll hear of the Lost Girls on our site.
Two days until departure. They say no day is more productive than the day before you go on vacation. That’s the day when everything that has to get done, gets done. It’s one of those times when clarity is forced upon you, when you realize that the world will go on even if half of your to-do list doesn’t ever get done.
For me, that day is always frantic, because I am the kind of person who is always running late and breathlessly apologizing for it. And to be running late on the last day before you leave for a trip is stressful, despite having experienced it so many times before. This past week, I have lost and found my passport, broken my phone and reactivated my previous, incompetent one, and written and rewritten my to-do-before-I-leave list. I have finally booked my flight, bought the guidebook, and set aside the clothes I want to pack. At the moment, I’m trying to decide on a netbook to buy before I leave, contemplating whether I’m packing too much, and calling the airline to see if I get a free checked bag with my international flight.
Not enough time! So many people to say goodbye to. I said goodbye to two of my best friends last weekend as we shared some laughs and frozen yogurt. These are girls I’ve known for over half my life, who have seen me through my previous trips and welcome me back with open arms on every return. They were not surprised when I told them I was leaving for Ecuador as it’s a story they’ve heard before. My family gathered over a delicious meal of Japanese tapas, showering me with well-wishes and instructions to come home in one piece. My phone has been ringing with calls from friends wanting to get in a goodbye before I take off. It’s heartwarming to know that the people I will miss, will miss me too.
That’s all for now because as you know, I’m running out of time.
(Version française plus bas)
I love Vietnam. It’s the first and only Asian country I have ever visited, thus it has a special place in my heart. But it has been almost five months already, so it’s time for Jet Set Zero to hit the road again.
We’ll see you in April in ECUADORRRRRRRRR! I am so excited, you have no idea! See you there!
Most children of Ky Kuang orphanage were abandonned by their parents because they have a birth deffect. Some of them have body malformations, some are blind and others are mentally challenged.
Some of those children still are the victims of Agent orange a chemical weapon used during the Vietnam war with disastrous consequences on people’s health.
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La plupart des orphelins de Ky Kuang ont été abandonnés par leurs parents parce qu’ils étaient anormaux à la naissance. Certains ont une malformation physique, d’autres sont aveugles et d’autres encore ont un handicap mental.
Certains d’entre eux sont encore les victimes de l’agent orange, une arme chimique utilisée pendant la guerre du Viêtnam, et qui a eu des conséquences dramatiques sur la santé des populations locales.
(Version française plus bas)
While we peel, crush and slice vegetables, meat and shrimps, Miss Pham prepares the seasoning with noc mam (a popular Vietnamese fish sauce), soy sauce and homemade vinegar (made with wine, banana alcohol and mineral water).
Lam crushes peanuts for the salad garnish.
A few hours later, here we are, enjoying a fabulous hearty meal along with some fruit wine. Nobody knows which fruit(s) this wine is made of, but it’s very good. Only 4% Vol. of alcohol.
(Version française plus bas)
My friend Yen invited me to sneak in a Vietnamese cooking class. We were supposed to be only two tourists along with Yen and our cook. At the last minute, some friends of Yen joined us. We ended up being seven aides to the cook!
Yen wrote a list of ingredients and we headed off to the local farmers’ market. If wish you could smell the blend of fruits, meats and dried fish!
It’s been two countries and almost two months, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel twinges of homesickness once and a while. I talk a pretty good game about being stoked to be away for who knows how long, but sometimes it hits me that I don’t know when I’ll see my friends and family again. And all it takes is for me to log on to facebook to discover that a friend’s baby has been born, or that there’s yet another wedding that I’m going to miss, or just an epically fun night out that I wasn’t there to witness for it to really sink in. I love the Jet Set Zero crew, but they just don’t cut it for being able to take my mind off the fact that I’m so far away from home. So it doesn’t happen often, but there are points when the homesickness finds its way through a fissure in my relatively tough shell.
So what do I do when this happens? Usually, a Skype call to a few select people is enough to brighten my day, but lately the internet has been intermittent at best and the call is more frustrating than anything. So I’ve had to find alternatives. Some people take great comfort in the familiar taste of a McDonald’s french fry in their mouth when they’re missing home, but unfortunately, there are no McD’s here. Instead, I’ve developed a different tactic.
The first thing I do is put on my iPod and select a playlist designed by a close friend with a collection of my all-time favourite songs. I turn it up loud to try and block the sounds of traffic and horns. And then I go to the local supermarket.
There’s something about a big, air-conditioned, modern supermarket that makes me forget where I am. I don’t actually need to buy anything, but I take great pleasure in going up and down the aisles and spotting Pringles, Knorr Soup Mix, Nescafe, Spam, Lipton tea, Snickers, Listerine, Colgate toothpaste, Juicy Fruit gum, Oreos and Fruit Loops. I briefly consider buying a huge block of blue cheese and some Ritz crackers and think better of it (on this particular day, I’d probably eat the entire thing in one sitting). They have big bottles of Wyborowa vodka (my favourite) for $15 but again, this is probably a bad idea. Then I spot a package of Chicken-flavoured Instant Porridge and some unidentifiable meat products and remember that I’m still in Asia. But for those few precious moments, I have escaped back home.
So much cheese. Love it.
As you can probably all imagine, leaving home is never an easy thing to do. Some people get frustrated with the actual details of packing up their belongings and attempting to squish their life into a suitcase/backpack that can be easily maneuvered, others have a hard time leaving friends, and some just have a hard time leaving their routine.
Well, I had a pretty hard time with all of these, but saying goodbye to the friends I had made in LA was the hardest of all. The recording studio I worked in had become a second home for me. The majority of my best friends were my coworkers and we all hung out together in our spare time despite the fact that we were usually spending about 60+ hours a week working anyway.
I had far too many porch parties at work with all my coworkers at Conway... They usually looked something like this.
I had other good friends outside of work that I will miss just as much, but the ties that I had at work were something that will never be forgotten.
LA quite honestly rocked my world and I’m going to genuinely miss it. As excited as I am to be a part of the Jet Set Zero team, there will always be a piece of me sitting in Los Angeles. It was never the dazzling lights of Hollywood, the fake styrofoam Grammy statues (yeah, those made me laugh, a lot), or the rockstars, it was all about the people I’d met on the sidelines. Sitting in a dark deserted bar bullshitting about the stupidest things somehow became one of my favorite activities because I love people, stories, and well, beer.
The Short Stop - Best Local Bar Ever.
My lovely ladies...
So here’s a little taste of my last day in what I frequently called Lala Land, and how I felt about joining the team literally hours before departure. You even get to see my last beer, which as I mentioned is always pretty cool in my book.
Thailand
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