my turn

jacob and john @ halls harbour

since i returned from my trip, i have been having requests from other traveler's to surf my couch. up until this weekend, i have either not been at home, they found another host, or their R.V. couldn't be parked on the slight incline that our driveway provides. this weekend however, things changed. ma & pa were away for the weekend. this was beneficial in numerous ways, the biggest being that my stress levels were non-existant because my mother wasn't around to be freaking out about the dog hair on the rug, or that dirty dishes have reached a comical height or that the sheets in the spare room are wrinkled and need to be changed. i keep trying to tell her that the people requesting to come stay here, understand its not the plaza, and that they are just thrilled to have a place to lay their head at night.

on friday night i hosted my first two COUCHSURFERS!, from montreal! i was so excited!!! i picked them up from the a gas station on the highway and brought them home. they were both very tired from traveling, so we had a relaxed night of board games and went to bed early. anna and guillaume are hitchhiking around the maritimes for the month of august, and stayed with me the one night, before i plonked them back at the side of the highway, how i found them.

on saturday night giggles insued. jacob and john were my second wave of surfers, hitting the night right after anna and guillaume left me. jacob and john met at duke university. jacob is a north carolina native, and john is from new zealand. our accent hybrids were delightful. we went to halls harbour where we watched a glorious sunset, which was followed by jacob belting out a disney classic, aladdin's 'magic carpet ride' well balancing atop a boulder. i then treated them to an east coast classic, garlic fingers and donair sauce. we wrapped up our 12 hour friendship by playing dress up, shotgunning beer, guess that shot, and cuddling on top of a picnic table while trying to see shooting stars during a meteor shower. i can't wait to have more CS'ers stay with me!!! definitely a worth while experience. especially now that i get to experience it from the role of host instead of guest. 

books and boatshoes

i went to frenchies. i found mens size eleven boat shoes and two books. i was thrilled to find the boat shoes, no matter how big they are on my feet. i also am an avid reader, and was pumped to find two more gems to add to the collection. what should i do with my life, and angela's ashes. i couldn't tell if the first was a lame frenchies reject book, i contemplated this at length, because there was a hard cover version and a paperback, not a good sign. that fact alone put it in the 'more than one copy' section along with rejects such as what to expect when you are expecting, of which there was four, in a wide variety of editions. i bought the book. a well spent dollar fifty.
i have a rule not to start one book, before i finish the one i am already reading. it was a common problem as a child and i would never finish the potential earth shattering, however slow to start book i was currently working on. but that is just what i did. i pushed post-it note filled anna karenina to the side and opened back the first page of what should i do with my life.
i still am not sure if it is a suitable frenchies reject book. i think i am too biased and diluted with awe at how perfect the timing was that this book should fall into my hands.
i have underlined and dog-ear paged the shit out of this book. it confronted my fear that if i make a wrong choice now, it will fuck me for the rest of my life.
it talked about this old story of three men who were laying bricks. when asked why they were doing it, the first responds, 'i'm doing it for the wages.' the second guy says 'i'm doing it to support my family.' the third guy says (with what i like to imagine is a gigantic smile plastered across his face) 'i'm helping to build a cathedral.' i want my work to be like building that cathedral. i want to talk about my life and say 'i want to be a good parent', not 'i want three kids and a nice house.'
the stories reassured me that it all takes time. that i shouldn't freak out because i don't know what my passion is yet. that interests form into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions; and it takes time, more time than anyone imagines.
when i started freaking out about all of this grown up business about five months ago, people told me many of the same things i am getting out of this book. but for some reason, these words of wisdom are just starting to click into place now. i guess i needed time to process it all, or time to let myself really hear and understand what my parents and friends were telling me.
i am reading stories of a business executive on wall street who left everything to become a catfish farmer in tennessee. he found his passion at 40. i am half way through the book and smile at how calm it makes me with each passing line.
i am 23 and i am discovering my passions in life. i'm okay with not knowing just yet.

chasing blue and the glitter pool

this weekend my best friend came home. it was my first time meeting her band, chasing blue. when margaret told me that the band was coming up for a visit i was naturally a little nervous about meeting them. even though my facebook lurk skills are superb, that only gave me the confidence to recognize them in a crowd, which wasn't too hard because they were the ones on stage. i wanted us to get along, i wanted them to like me, and me to like them. i was terrified. their trip was too short, but in their short stint here in the valley, i believe we made a solid start to things. i hope that flip-cup and a glitter pool evening has left a lasting impression on them.
margaret has been with the band for about two years or more now, and it is her life, bluegrass is her life.
on the first night i saw them play i couldn't stop smiling. i couldn't take my eyes off the band. i was so proud of margaret. she has a passion, and she went for it. that passion is something i am still searching for. while i was sitting in an old barn packed with people, red dusty lit lanterns hanging from the rafters, i thought of margaret having to leave school and go straight to banjo practice, about telling new friends that i know a banjo major and saying it with pride, of seeing a sticker that mentioned banjo music and standing in a huge ass line to get it for her. during this rush of nostalgic memories i got this tingle in my nose, almost the same as when you open a bottle of dill pickles and you get that waft racing up your nostrils that makes your nose holes go boi-zingh! then my eyes started to get watery. i knew i had felt this feeling before. it took me a minute, but i eventually placed it. it was pride. i was so proud of her i cried. when did i turn into such a mom. margaret mackay, is all grown up and i couldn't be more proud of the choices she has made, and where she is today. i love you and chasing blue.

vagabond wisdom

"the trouble with doing nothing is not knowing when you're finished" -ben franklin
found this gem while flipping through the italian portion of one of my travel journals. reined true then, still does now. 

still an adventure

unemployment at its finest 

i wasn't planning on writing on this blog again. because as far as i was concerned, my great 'round the world adventure' came to an end when i had that tear filled reunion with my parents at the airport. but if my time home since that moment has taught me anything, it is that this is still an adventure.

i have been back for just over three months, and it has been rough. not death and torture bad, but unexpected turn of events bad.

this is the first time in my entire life that i have been without routine. without structure to my days. it all started with bottle, sleep, diaper change, then daycare, then school for thirteen years, university for four, then BAM. twenty two years old and it all changed. i replaced the comfort of routine with an exhilarating anxiety accompanying my travels. and now that i am back in my hometown, with my family, but no school, no friends, no work, no commitments, all the exhilaration is gone.

i became depressed when i got home and came off my adventure high and began to settle into reality. people asked if i was depressed because i wished i was still traveling, because i didn't have a job, because i missed my friends...people asked A LOT of questions i didn't know the answer to. i hated bumping into people i hadn't seen since before i left for my trip. the "what are you up to know?" loomed above their heads. one slightly intoxicated night i was presented that question from some people i went to highschool with. i was fed up with the question, and my memorized blurb that always followed it, so i got creative.

"well funny you ask, im actually moving to dubai tomorrow, good thing i bumped into you tonight, who knows when i'll be back!" or the ever popular "just weighing the pros and cons of the med schools that accepted me"

for that i apologize, not my proudest moment. although i must admit the summer acting camps have paid off in full.

now it is just past the third month of unemployment, and the adventure is still on. even if it is mainly consisting of days in my kiddie pool on the back deck.

oceania

the toyota land cruiser that took me and kai from darwin to rockhampton

when i finally did make it to sydney, i had no where lined up to stay. my last hitchhiker friend dropped me off at a train station, and i took the metro into downtown syndey. i figured this would be my best bet to find a hostel. and i was right. immediatly after stepping off of the platform i saw multiple different youth hostel signs. the first one that i passed by, i ended up staying in for two weeks! i quickly befriended three irish girls who were staying in the same room as me. at the end of the two weeks, they were moving into an apartment, and invited me to tag along until my move to auckland! sydney was kind of a laze-about time for me, after my roadtrip with kai, and the truckers. i was relishing in being in one place for more than 24hrs. one of the highlights of my trip to sydney was taking the ferry to manly to meet up with a friend. who recommended i check out nannying. i had mentioned to her, that i was interested in staying roughly in one place for my time in NZ and not popping around too much over the holidays. so i was thinking of getting a job. so i then became addicted to checking ads, and sending out tons of emails, in hopes that i would find a family willing to take me over the holidays, and for my time in NZ. several days before my flight to auckland i got a call from a woman named jo. jo and her husband paddy were looking for a live in nanny for their four children; for over the holiday season. she sounded delightful on the phone, and after the initial call i had my hopes set on her family. the pattersons. after a few phone calls and emails later, i was offered the job! and im happy to say that for the past month ive been staying in stratford, new zealand to the patterson family. the children are zak(10), hannah(8), cooper(4) and keith(2). i feel like ive been here for months. when the time came for me to pack up and say by to orla, siobhan, and aisling (irish girls) it was tough. just when i meet someone and get to be good friends with them...i have to leave. jo and hannah picked me up in new plymouth, and i felt like we clicked right from the beggining. today is december 27th, and i have officially survived my first christmas away from home. not as blubbery as i thought i would be. i think it had something to do with the fact that it wasnt as christmasy here as it is at home, so there wasnt as many triggers to set me off. like arols on the radio, main street and each store front window decked out to the nines, snow suits, or stockings with clemetines at the bottom. so yeah, i guess it just didnt feel the same. plus this was the first christmas where i wasnt the youngest one in the house ahha! i cant believe the international part of my trip is almost over. in less than a month i will be flying back to calgary and attempting to make my way across another country. this one being my own though. i hope to be back in nova scotia sometime in february or march. wish me luck!

darwin

i arrive at the darwin airport at 3am.
i was lucky enough to find a couchsurfer in darwin named dan.
dan even offered to come get me at the airport at that outrageous hour, which i was so happy for.
on the flight to darwin i met a canadian girl from quebec, who was planning on staying in darwin for a week or so, while she tried to figure out where to go from there. since we had similar plans, and hit it off really well we decided to exchange information and hopefully met up. so over the next week in darwin gabrielle and i met up in the city centre and contacted many different people who were looking for travel mates for an aussie adventure!
one day we met up with an irish guy named kai. unfortunately for gabrielle and i, kai could only take one person. and since gabrielle's main focus was to travel the west coast, and kai was heading east, i decided to say farwell to gabrielle and leave with kai.
i met kai on a monday and we left for the outback the following morning. kai owns a beast of a landcruiser, which was perfect for the terrain we were about to face. i told him thats my plans were wide open and i was game for anything. and he told me that he really wanted to get to australia's most northerly point before wet season hit, so we set off for cape york.
kai and i spent almost three weeks camping in the outback. this was by far my favorite part about my trip to australia. we slept somewhere new almost every night. and 99% of the time it was just a spot we picked in the bush on the side of the road. highlights include waking up in my tent being stared back at by 19 kangaroos, seeing all of the indigenous communities, and of course making it to cape york, the northern most point of australia.
i needed to make it to sydney by the end of november, and kai was looking to head west, to central australia, so we split paths in rockhampton. and this is the part i waited to tell my mom about till after it happend. i decided i wanted to hitchhike!
kai was not thrilled about the idea, so we picked a decent looking spot on the side of the road, and i made a sign saying 'south', although i knew it wouldnt last long since it was POURING rain out! and kai parked a little down from me, so he could see who picked me up, and get their plate numbers. within two minutes of standing out on the road, a white suv stopped, and i jogged up to the side to see where he was heading. his name was ian and he was heading five hours down the road to maryborough. ian was the first of the four guys that took me from rockhampton to sydney. this was the thrill and experience of a lifetime. although i must admit, im not in any hurry to do it again.