I was born in Kimbrough Army Hospital, Fort Meade, Maryland in 1962.  A mere three days later, I was in Warren, Ohio the place I call my hometown.  Warren, Ohio is about the midpoint between Chicago, Illinois, and New York City. This is probably the reason you may hear a couple of stories about organized crime in the area.

There was a popular book called “Welcome to the Jungle Inn” and a movie starring Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer, “Kill the Irishman” that maybe mentioned Warren, Ohio, and the Mahoning Valley.  Because of its manufacturing history, Warren’s population peaked in 1970 at about 63, 500 and trending downward since the industrial decline of the 80s, it is now at around 39,000. I am proud to say I am from Warren, Ohio, and consider myself a “small-town girl”.

I grew up on a dead-end street in the same house my dad grew up in along with my mom, brother, and Aunt.  Life was good on Cottage Court.   Living on a dead end, we pretty much roamed the neighborhood from sun-up to sundown.  In the summer months, darkness didn’t mean we were in the house.  The concrete back of a business was the dead-end of the street.  The neighbors would bring out a movie projector and we would watch movies shown on the building’s wall.  Our house was a “safe zone” and friends from the neighborhood or from across town knew they were welcome and that my parents would try to help in any way they could.  I walked to Laird Avenue, my elementary school where my mom also worked part-time as an aide.  After Laird, it was East Junior High and then Warren G. Harding Senior High.  Friday nights were football games and weekends were carefree.  Between my junior and senior years in high school, I received a scholarship to attend a summer semester in Athens, Ohio at Ohio University.  My dad wasn’t keen on dropping my sixteen-year-old self off in coed Biddle Hall for the summer, but he survived and so did I.  Imagine this…our high school had a smoking area for students.  We also had teen night clubs where we partied on the weekends.  After we outgrew the Red Caboose, we were ready for the V.I.P. Lounge.  The years were flying, I was off to Kent State and working part-time at the YMCA.  Part-time turned into full-time and I never worked a day in my field of study.

 

Warren seriously had the best restaurants…Alberinis, the 422, the El Rio, the Living Room, Golden Gate, the Sunrise Inn, and the Buena Vista to name a few.  Back in the day, they were known far and wide. Only the BV, famous for Uncle Nick’s Greek Fried Chicken, and the Sunrise Inn, best known for the Old World Pizza, are left from the aforementioned.  Most everyone pays the BV and Sunrise a visit whenever they are back in Warren.  I’ve even been known to have a Sunrise pie delivered to Paris, France.   There have even been a few famous people from Warren.  Earl Derr Biggers of Charlie Chan fame, Catherine Back of the “Dukes of Hazzard”, Roger Ailes, Paul Warfield NFL Football Hall of Fame, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, and professional golfer Jason Kokrak.   Warren has its share of problems but it was a great place to grow up.  It will be my home base when my traveling slows down.

In August 2014, I moved to Paris, France.  It was the first place I have lived outside of Warren, Ohio.  A big change from Warren, Ohio.  Paris had a population of just over 11,000,000 in 2014, roughly the same population as the entire state of Ohio.  I had been to Paris a half dozen times before I moved there.  It’s true when you first arrive all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you have an overwhelming urge to be a tourist. Running out every morning to see what you can see and collapsing into bed every night exhausted. Until that day you tell yourself, stop, this is my life right now. It’s okay to, God forbid, stay home one day and not see if you can catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. Soon, you fall into a routine, and living in Paris is really not that much different than living in Warren, Ohio…..haha, okay, that’s a lie.  Living in Paris is amazing.  Once you learn the secret to the arrondissements, Paris is a very walkable city.  The arrondissements are numbered 1-20 and start in the center near the Louvre with 1.  They then go in a clockwise direction and resemble a snail.  Another secret, well it’s not a secret but it does help you navigate, Paris zip codes tell you what arrondissement you are in.

If you look up the address of my favorite café, Café Chappe, it is 8 Rue Tardieu, 75018 Paris.  You then know you are in the 18^th, also known as Montmartre.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about life in Paris because many of you already know Paris is my heart.  Life in Paris was magical…from walking the cobblestone streets to wandering aimlessly in the Louvre because you could go on a whim.   Attending a Christmas service at Notre Dame to just sitting at a café for hours with a book… indescribable.   And just like Adriana said in “Midnight in Paris”, “Actually, Paris is the most beautiful in the rain.”

After a short stint back in Warren, I was off to China for what I thought would be 6 months.  Not skilled in the use of chopsticks and certainly not prepared for squatty potties, I landed in a rural village that wasn’t even named on a map in Shandong Province…Xiashan.  Xiashan is considered part of the city of Weifang which is a 1.5-hour bus ride away.  The rural village was the epitome of “build it and they will come”.  While the 4-5000 residents of the village lived in simple homes, it was surrounded by 100’s of high-rise “ghost” apartments, one of which I lived in.  Since the newly built school was a boarding school and when school was in session, the population of the community more than doubled because of the student population, I guess they were hoping that the families that traveled (some over 4 hours) to Xiashan would invest in the real estate.

It was this small village that made me fall in love with China.  It was about as far from Warren, Ohio, and I don’t mean distance, that I could get.  Very few people spoke any English and most people in the village and surrounding villages had never seen a Westerner.  Having light hair I definitely stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.  Because I was also taking Mandarin lessons, I arrived with a student Visa that was only good for six months.  Before that six months ended I knew I wasn’t ready to leave China, but I had to return to the USA to apply for a new Visa.  Because of the timing of the semesters, as much as I wanted to return to Xiashan, they had to replace me before I could return.  Life in that rural village was simple.  I bought my fruits and vegetables in the local street market.

I bought meat hanging from hooks or once even waited while they slaughtered a sheep so I could buy meat. So, I went back to Warren sent my passport off, and waited for a new visa.  I was so sure I would get the Visa and go back to China, I asked the school if I could leave my things until I returned which they graciously allowed.

After about two and a half weeks, I had a 10-year multiple-entry visa in my passport.   I returned to Xiashan to celebrate Chinese New Year with one of my co-workers and her family before heading nine and a half hours by train to Hunan Province in South Central China and the city of Changning.  Changning means eternal peace and is home to about 810,000 residents, a small city by Chinese standards.  Life in Changning……my roommate Yulia was from Moscow and we got along famously.

The biggest change here is I went from teaching grades 1 and 2 to teaching grades 5, 6, and 7 with sometimes as many as 85 students in a class.  A slight adjustment in lesson plans and I survived.  I also survived the rainy season in Hunan.  From the time I arrived in February until leaving in mid-June, I think we were lucky if we had 3 straight days without rain.  Living in Changning, I would occasionally take a weekend trip to Hong Kong.  I also visited Guilin, Yangshuo, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shamian Island.  I did love the spicy food in Hunan Province, but at the end of the school term,  I was ready to move on to a new part of China and hopefully back to primary students.

Next up – Part Two -Qingdao, Dong’e, Bali and Warsaw

As I sit here on the Ides of March wondering how to start this post, I am reflecting on things I have been excited about in my life.  There are the small things, like being excited about finding money in your pants pocket when swapping out your clothes between seasons.  If it is a significant amount, then I usually get mad at myself because how could I not know I was missing that much money…unless of course alcohol or gambling was involved.  I get excited when I get tickets to an event I want to attend.  I also get excited over a new pack of colored pencils or brush markers.

I get excited when I discover the perfect writing pen which for me right now is the Papermate Inkjoy Gel 0.7 in every color of the rainbow.  Excitement is an understatement when I talk about boarding the plane when I moved to Paris.  I felt excitement shooting an AK-47 for the first time.  I always get excited when I am watching a movie and one of the scenes takes place somewhere I have been.

It reminds me of my dad’s excitement when we were young and would drive by a house he had built and he had to point it out to us.  I am excited when I meet family or friends in places around the world that I have been to and can show them around.  Excitement is planning a trip.  Who hasn’t gotten excited over finding a pair of perfectly fitting jeans?  I know many people find her underwhelming, but my heart skipped a beat seeing Mona Lisa for the first time.  I remember the excitement of my first trip to Europe.  Sometimes I get excited waking up and seeing the sun shining.

I have a photo on my phone that says, “Excitement is a mixture of enthusiasm, motivation, intuition, and a hint of creativity.” I am definitely enthusiastic about and motivated to accomplish what I am currently most excited about.  I may have to trust my intuition and it could at times take some creativity to pull off.  I am currently most excited to be preparing to close the current chapter of my life and open the next into lands unknown.

I have enjoyed every minute of my life in Poland, but it is time for me to start to close that chapter.  I am excited to say that I am finishing out this semester of the school year.  After that, I will most likely head to Bulgaria for the summer.  When I return to Warsaw, I will start to eliminate all the stuff I have accumulated over the last four years.  Then the excitement will start to build.

I am excited to learn about cultures I know very little about.  Although I have been to Romania, I am considering leaving Poland for Romania and then into and across Türkiye and hitting the “Silk Road”.   The Silk Road was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BC until the mid-15th century.  Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name “Silk Road”, first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, because it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe.  Some modern-day cities on the Silk Route are Istanbul, Turkey; Tbilisi, Georgia; Sheki, Azerbaijan; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Shiraz, Iran; Dunhuang, China; Karimabad, Pakistan; Baku, Azerbaijan; Almaty, Kazakhstan; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Bhaktapur, Nepal; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Xi’an, China; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Nara, Japan; Gyeongju, South Korea; Jaisalmer, India; Leh, India; Yazd, Iran; and Yerevan, Armenia.

 

Istanbul, which I visited last year, is considered the end of the Silk Route.  I was excited to learn that two cities in Azerbaijan are on this list because a major part of my plan is to visit this country.  After all, it is the home of my two flatmates.  Other countries I am considering visiting are Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and India. I know it will be challenging at times between language barriers (Thank God for Google Translate), transportation across borders, and Visa restrictions, but that’s all part of the excitement.

 

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  You will probably get a thousand words because I must tell the back story of the photo I have chosen.  The photo I have chosen is simply a picture of 3 young girls.  It will be joined by two others as the story progresses.  Some of you have heard the back, back story which is where I will start, so you will have to hear it again or skip on by.

In August 2014, I packed up my life and moved to Paris, France.  For the first two months, I lived on Square Bolivar in the 19^th arrondissement.  I knew I would eventually need to move and from there I went to Montmartre on Rue Durantin.  This was a short walk from what had become my favorite café, Café Chappe.  It was my go-to place for un café or un verre de vin. I had become friends with Julie who worked there during my many visits to Café Chappe between 2013 and February 2015. She told me her dream was to move to Bali, Indonesia.  At some point, I promised that if she moved to Bali, I would visit her there.  I happened to return to Paris for a two-week holiday in July of 2015 and of course one of my first stops was Café Chappe.  Lo and behold, Julie was there.  She had indeed gone to Bali, but had returned to Paris because of her youngest son, they planned to go back to Bali at the end of the summer and suggested I should visit. She did and I did!

In February 2018, I made plans to visit Julie.  Travel to Bali is quite convenient and relatively inexpensive from the Middle Kingdom where I was living at the time. Julie was living in Seminyak which is a seaside community and was teaching yoga.  For the first part of my holiday I planned to stay in Ubud, which is more north and inland, as there were several things I wanted to experience in that area.  At the end of my holiday, I would go to Canggu and finally meet up with my friend from Paris.  That my friends is how I ended up going to Bali for the first time.

Now for the rest of the story… I had a homestay about a 20-30-minute walk from Central Ubud.  During my homestay, I had a room with a private bathroom in a family compound.  I say compound, because in Bali families usually live together.  Together, this means there are several free-standing homes often with a central kitchen in what is called a compound.  There is also always a family temple shared by all the households.  These compounds make up a tight-knit community.  The communities, in turn, make up a village.  Kenari House, my homestay was in the community of Banjar, Teges Yangloni the village of Peliatan.  My hosts, Ketut and Koming, and their two young daughters immediately made me feel like part of the family.

Finding them so open, I always seemed to have a dozen questions about Bali and Hinduism whenever I was with them.  As my time at Kenari House was nearing the end, I wasn’t quite ready to leave.  I extended my stay by one day before heading south to Canggu.  Staying this extra day turned into my first experience with a Balinese Ceremony.  There was a wedding in the community.  Koming invited me to attend with her family.  What a privilege to have this opportunity.  Koming loaned me a Kamen (sarong/skirt) so I would be appropriately dressed.  It seemed the entire community was there, and they welcomed me with open arms.  I didn’t get to learn much about the wedding ceremony as I was leaving that afternoon.  As I was saying my goodbyes to Ketut and Koming, she told me since I enjoyed the wedding so much, I should return in August.  She explained that Ketut’s mother had died in 2016 and every 3 years the community held a Ngaben or Cremation Ceremony.  She would be part of the ceremony this August.  Would I like to come back for the ceremony?  I told her I would be honored to return and would do my best to make it happen.

Indeed, I made my way back to Bali and the Ngaben Ceremony.  I always thought my experience camping at EBC (Everest Base Camp) and watching the sun set and rise on the mighty mountain couldn’t be topped.  My experience with this beautiful Balinese ritual, the emotion of first-hand exhuming a corpse, washing it and preparing it for cremation, witnessing the burning, understanding each step of the ceremony, and returning the ashes to the sea was truly overwhelming and something I will never forget.  I was included like family every step of the way. During this visit, I spent almost two weeks with my Balinese family.  I also knew I would return and it would be for an extended period of time.

I left China in July 2019, made a stop in Vietnam, and then straight to Bali and Kenari House which I would call my home until I headed back to the States at the end of November. I can’t begin to tell you what Ketut, Koming, Kirana, and Kiara and their extended family came to mean to me over the time I spent with them.  They included me in every aspect of their life and Balinese culture.  I celebrated important events, went to temple events, had my own Kebaya and Kamen made for the ceremonies, I learned to make canang sari (daily offering) and what the ritual stood for, I learned to prepare Balinese food with Ketut (he is a chef), and they welcomed my friends from the USA with open arms when they came to visit for two weeks.   I could go on and on, but they are truly like my family.

In May 2021, there was to be a special ceremony at the community temple.  When I left in 2019, I said I would return for the ceremony.  As we all know, the world stopped turning in early 2020.  Even by early 2021, it was becoming obvious that I would not be able to go to Bali in May of 2021.

On April 23, 2021, I received a photo in a message.  I saw Ketut looking like a young Jackie Chan and a small baby.  That photo I don’t have, but it was soon followed by Kirana and Kirara with baby Komang as seen above.  She was born on April 2^nd, but they wouldn’t be posting pictures publicly until after the three-month celebration or 105 days by the Balinese calendar.  There is a special ceremony called nyabutan or nyambutin.

You may be wondering why I consider this photo special.  They knew I was planning to visit for the temple ceremony in May and were keeping the baby a secret.  They didn’t tell me because they wanted to surprise me when they picked me up from the airport and introduce me to the newest member of “my family”.

I know that was a long story for a simple explanation, but Bai is my soul and my Balinese family will forever hold a special place in my heart.  I still have plans to return to Bali, maybe next year! That is why that photo means a lot to me.

This will be an easy topic because as I mentioned yesterday, I do Speaking Clubs as part of language learning.  Not long ago, the topic was “Guilty Pleasures – What Are Yours?”.  Of course, I’m going to borrow from my PowerPoint.  What is a guilty pleasure?  They’re activities, products, or habits that a person participates in because it brings them joy, yet it also makes them feel slight shame or embarrassment.  While the term feels a little contradictory, almost everyone has guilty pleasures that they occasionally enjoy.  These types of little indulgences make life more fun and bearable when you’re bogged down by a stressful work week or want to get out of your head for a while. It’s all about appreciating these guilty pleasures and not worrying about other people’s perceptions of them.  For my speaking group, I broke them down into food, beverage, habits, and quirky or unusual.

Let’s start with food.  Noodles bring me pleasure, but they aren’t my guilty pleasure since I have them several times per week.  I’m more of a savory food eater and I don’t like chocolate, however, I have discovered these yummy coconut crème filled “rurki” or tubes.  I almost have a pack of these around for whenever I do get a sweet tooth.

Sometimes when I make pickle pizza, I have leftover “sauce”.  My sauce is half sour cream, and half mayonnaise with pickle juice, salt, pepper, and dill weed.  Whenever I have leftover sauce, I like to get a bag of chips and eat them with the sauce.  I would say that is my food guilty pleasure.

Martini – icy cold, extra dry, slightly dirty with bleu cheese stuffed olives – I could drink one every day, but I don’t. I usually have wine when I drink.  Let me tell you when I do make that Beefeater’s martini, it tastes like perfection.

Other guilty pleasures when it comes to food and beverage would be eating popcorn in bed (I embarrass myself when I wake up and see I have been sleeping with kernels), having cold spaghetti for breakfast, and 30% full-fat cream in my coffee.  I do on occasion like to have Starbucks delivered on a Sunday morning.  And I am guilty of drinking beverages right out of the container and skipping the glass.  I did drink champagne directly from the bottle on New Year’s.

During my speaking club, I had Guilty Pleasures – Habits.  This segment included music, films, books, conveniences, and relaxation.  I don’t often have music playing ( I like silence) and I rarely watch movies but I was able to come up with a few things here.  Music-wise I would say it is playing songs like “Dancing Queen” (most Abba songs actually), “Chevy Van”, “Brandy”, “Windy”, “Seasons in the Sun”, and all those other cheezy songs.

The best I can come up with for movies are, “Dirty Dancing”, Pretty Woman”, and “Flashdance”.  When it comes to books, once in a while I will read a Nancy Drew book or even a Dr. Seuss.  What can I say, I’m a kid at heart and I don’t like romance novels.  Now, conveniences and relaxation are where I shine.  Living in a shared flat, having a cleaning person is a given.  Now in China, it felt like a guilty pleasure.  Even more so in Warren, Ohio when I would have someone come over and clean my house.  Having my hair washed – I love having someone wash my hair, every so often, I go to a salon just to get my hair washed – heavenly!  Taking an Uber instead of public transportation can feel like a guilty pleasure.  When it comes to relaxation, I am a master…sleeping until noon, pajamas all day, naps, and not leaving the house or talking to anyone for two days.

No matter where I am on the planet, I search out massage.  Be it foot, chair, or full body, the ultimate relaxation guilty pleasure is a massage.  And my quirky guilty pleasure is having way too many colored pencils, pens and markers.

There you have it.  My so-called guilty pleasures.  But, I am going to now tell you the truth.  I don’t have any guilty pleasures, because if something brings me pleasure, I don’t ever feel guilty about it!

So now I’m going to put pajamas on, eat popcorn in bed while sipping a martini, and read something mindless.  Peace Out!

Monday, March 11, 2024 – Timeline of my day.

I like to stay up late and also sleep late.  Staying up late to me is going to bed anytime between 24:00 and 02:00.  Sleeping late is getting up between 09:00 and 11:00.  This is only a problem on Monday and Wednesday mornings.  I get up at 06:00 because I have early classes at 07:00. Of course, working from home, I really don’t need to get up this early.  I get up this early because I like to linger with a hot cup of coffee, do the Wordle, do a couple of other word puzzles, and mentally prepare myself for the day/week ahead. I get my coffee pot and my day’s lessons ready the night before.  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I try to go to bed by midnight.  On Sundays, I never make it before 01:00 because Thursdays start my downhill cycle and it is almost always between 01:00 and 02:00. Which means I only get between four and five hours of sleep before my 06:00 wake-up on Monday.  Why I am telling you this? You probably don’t even care, but, today’s timeline isn’t my usual Monday schedule.

We have a client of my language school, Eklektika, for whom we offer additional language practice.  These are called Speaking Clubs and they allow a maximum of four participants to have an hour-long conversation on a given topic.  I sign up each month to lead some of these groups.  I enjoy them because my topics almost always deal with travel or food. I’ll get back to why these are important in a minute.

Usually, on Mondays, I have three classes in a row starting at 07:00 and finishing at 09:45.  Because I don’t get the seven to nine hours of sleep that I like, when these classes finish, I take a morning nap for an hour or two to catch up.  When I get up from my nap I make a late breakfast or an early lunch.  I also have a few hours to run and do errands and go to the market before my 15:30 afternoon class.

That is my usual Monday morning/afternoon timeline.  Today, no nap for me.  I went to bed at 01:30, woke up at 06:00, and went through my morning ritual of coffee and word games.  I had my three regular morning classes, finishing at 09:45. I filled in my online documentation for these classes (attendance and material covered). These classes were followed by four Speaking Clubs at 10:00, 11:00, 13:00, and 14:00.  I opened my email for my Zoom links for the Speaking Clubs.  I then noticed there had been a change in the original schedule, the 11:00 group had been canceled.  To be honest, I was happy because I wasn’t looking forward to eight classes today.  After the first Speaking Club, whose topic was “All Inclusive Holidays” ended at 11:00, I heated up leftover spaghetti for lunch.  That left me an hour but I dared not take a nap, you know how I love my sleep.

I answered a couple of emails and then reviewed my PowerPoint presentations for the next two Speaking Clubs which were, “Airports – A Blessing or a Nuisance?“ and “Historical Sights around the Mediterranean”. Those two groups went great and we had a lot of interesting conversations and finished at 15:00.  I took the next half an hour to complete my online documentation for those and prepared for my 15:30 lesson.  After that lesson ended, I made baked broccoli and rice casserole with kielbasa and topped with cheddar for dinner.  Chatted with my flatmate while it baked, then we both took bowlfuls and had dinner.

Here it is 18:30 and I’m working on day twenty-two of the writing challenge. What does the rest of my timeline look like?  When I finish writing, I will shower and put on pajamas.  Then I will get my coffee set up for the morning, and make sure all my lessons are prepared.  I’ll pack away any leftovers the guys didn’t eat and tidy the kitchen.  I can’t go to bed without doing two things…getting my coffee set up and making sure the kitchen is clean.  The rest of the night is hit or miss, I’ll scroll Facebook, read a little, work on memorizing country flags and capitals (I do this every night in bed), and maybe have a snack.

There you have it, my timeline for Monday, March 11, 2024. Nothing too exciting today, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The dictionary tells us that if you miss something, you feel sad because you no longer have it or are no longer doing or experiencing it.  During my travels a lot of “do you miss” questions come up in conversation.  Do you miss your family and friends?  Do you miss the United States?  Do you miss any food from home?  Then there is the “I miss you” comment,  or the “we miss you, don’t you wish you were here with us?” question.

I moved to Poland in February 2020 after being home in Warren, Ohio for a couple of months.  During that time I had been going to trivia night with a bunch of girlfriends. One night I stayed up late so I could “join” trivia one night via video chat.  This scenario ended the night:  The phone got passed around and all the I love you; I miss you’s were said. Near the end of the video chat, someone asked, “Don’t you miss us and wish you were here”?  Well, a couple of seconds passed, I didn’t answer, and my friend Teri said, “Look at that face, that tells it all”.  All I could do was shrug my shoulders and give a half of a smile.  I thought about my response or should I say non-response for a couple of days.  Was it snobbish?  Does it seem like I don’t like life in Warren/America and the rest of the world is much better?  Should I have just given the normal, expected response of, “I miss you too”?  No…I know my friends know me better than that. They know I love to travel and it is what I want to do currently.  I am living my dream.

The first time I left for an extended period, I went to Paris, France. Honestly, I didn’t miss anything while I was there.  I didn’t miss any food from home, I didn’t miss my stuff, I didn’t miss my family or friends.  When I arrived back in Warren, Ohio, I discovered more than anything I missed the adventure of living abroad.  I seriously missed being gone and soon made plans to move to China. During those first six months and the three and a half years that followed, I thought I missed things, especially cheese. Seriously, more than anything, I missed cheese.  This, by the way, is what made me come up with a possible title when I write my book…” No Cheese in China”. I quickly learned that I could live without these things.  The things I was seeing, doing, eating, and experiencing far outweighed what I thought I was missing.  I also realized that some of my feelings were really FOMO – Fear of Missing Out.  Missing out on family and friend’s life events.  Missing that wedding, that “special” birthday, that funeral, that birth…but the more I thought about those things the more I knew that my family and friends understood that I could still love them without being geographically near.  They know I share in their joys and sorrows. They know I am a text, a Facebook post, an Instagram picture, or a video chat away.

I am getting good at not answering the question at hand.  Although, I did once write a blog post, which I did call “No Cheese in China”, about what I would and wouldn’t miss about China.  Two things I do miss about China are the food and $6.00 per hour massages.  I’m not sure I will be able to eat Chinese food back in the USA, it is nothing like what you eat there.  And well, who wouldn’t miss $6.00 massages, unless, of course, you don’t like a massage?

 

What do I miss?  Do I miss my parents?  I would be lying if I said yes.  Now before you judge, let me explain.  I loved my parents dearly, but you always know they won’t be around forever.  Yes, in my opinion, mine were gone too soon.  In the beginning, you find yourself going to pick up the phone because you want to tell them something, but you can’t.  There is always something you wish you would have asked them and now it’s too late.  As time goes on, if I’m honest, no I don’t think about them every day.  I think about them at random moments…something they would have liked or something reminds me of one of them.  For instance, a whiff of Old Spice after-shave worn by a man who passes me in the market can bring a tear to my eye.  It can be something unexpected that sparks a memory.  So while I have gotten used to them being gone, what I miss is not being able to share an event, a thought, or something funny that happened.

I am sitting here thinking about all the ways I should answer this question, “I miss my parents”, “I miss my brother and Lori”, “I miss my condo”, “I miss my stuff”, “I miss my friends”, “I miss my city”, “I miss my country”, or “I miss my bed”.  None of them seem to work for me.  Then, I thought about saying that I miss my youth, but I don’t.  I wouldn’t want to be twenty-something again.  I’m happy where I am right now in my life, although, I do say I think 40ish was a good age.

Now for my final answer…what do I miss?  I miss the days when my body didn’t ache when I got out of bed.  Or it didn’t take me a few minutes to get my “sea legs” after sitting for a long time. I miss the time when my back didn’t ache after standing at the kitchen counter fixing a meal or washing dishes.

You’ve probably seen the meme that says, “One minute you’re twenty-one, staying up all night drinking beer, eating pizza, and doing sketchy stuff just for fun.  THEN in the blink of an eye, you’re fifty (or sixty-one) drinking water, eating salad and you can’t do any sketchy stuff because you pulled a muscle putting on your socks.”

So, lame as it may be…I don’t miss being twenty-one, but I miss how my body looked, felt, and rebounded at twenty-one.

 

This sounds like one of those trendy interview questions.  I’m not sure where I will be in five months let alone five years.

The best way to tackle this is to first look where I was five years ago –  March 2019.  It’s a good thing I am a Facebook whore because I only had to go back and look at my profile to know where I was and what I was doing.

It’s a bit interesting that five years ago I was preparing to exit China.  Not so different from what I am doing right now except I am leaving Poland.  I can’t explain what it is, but I get to a point where I just wake up one day and decide it’s time to move on. Not that I make any decisions at that exact moment, but I have questions I ask myself.

In late 2018 and early 2019,  I started asking myself, “Do you want to be in Dong’e this time next year?”.   That answer came fairly easy, “as much as I love my life here, no, this time next year I can’t picture myself in Dong’e”.  Next question, “Do you want to be in China?”.  That was a little more difficult to answer, I didn’t know. Then, if I decided to answer the “Do you want to be in China?” question with no.  The next question was, “Do you want to be in Asia?”.  For the next several weeks I thought a lot about those questions.  I made the decision that I would leave Dong’e at the end of the school year which is July 2019.  I did know I had to be in Warren, Ohio on January 9, 2020, for the grand re-opening of the Robins Theatre and that the last time I was in the USA for Christmas was 2012.  I also decided I would go home for the holidays.  After the Robins opening, I would be free to make a long-term commitment to teaching somewhere and I was leaning toward SE Asia and Vietnam.

Over the first few months of 2019, I started to devise a plan.  The last time I was in Saigon, I met a young University student (Le Minh).  She has often asked me to come to Vietnam and teach English.  So, upon leaving China, I decided my first stop would be Vietnam and investigate job opportunities.  From Vietnam, Bali is just a hop, skip, and a jump.  I had friends in the States who had mentioned joining me in Bali in August.  So, I then decided to head to Bali after Vietnam.  Also, having friends in Bali, I decided to investigate an extended stay, meaning teaching/volunteer opportunities.  I would have about a month of R&R, then my friends would come for a couple of weeks.  After that, I found a School for Special Needs students, Yayasan Widya Guna, in Bedulu, Bali where I could volunteer for 6-8 weeks.  After a few more weeks of doing nothing but enjoying life at Kenari House, I would head back to Vietnam before returning to the States.

That sounded like a perfect plan to me.  Of course, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men.  Thinking I would return to SE Asia, I browsed opportunities on several ESL teaching websites.  At the time, I was also researching my upcoming trip to Paris in May.  So even though I had my sights set on Vietnam,  just for shits and giggles, along with SE Asia, I browsed opportunities in Paris and Europe in general.  After putting in my criteria, a company called English Wizards based in Warsaw kept popping up.  It looked interesting, a young company with hopes to expand outside of Poland, so I contacted them.  We talked back and forth for a couple of months, and I explained it would be almost a year before I would be available.  Long story short, on April 16, 2019, I committed to relocating to Poland end of January 2020.

As I sit here in Warsaw, Poland where I have lived for over 4 years, I started asking myself similar questions last year.  Do I want to be in Poland this time next year?  Do I want to go back to Asia?  Do I want to look for another ESL position and settle somewhere else?  When I say I don’t know where I will be in 5 months (other than hopefully finishing up camp in Bulgaria), it’s hard to even think 5 years down the road as I still don’t have all the answers to my questions.  Not that I don’t love my life in Poland, but no, I don’t want to be living and working in Poland this time next year.  Yes, I want to go back to Asia, but not to work.  I would like to visit Xiashan and see if it is still a small village not on the map.  I would love to see Marlon and his mom in Qingdao and visit my littles in Dong’e.  Will it happen?  Maybe!  I don’t want to look for another ESL position or settle anywhere next year.  When I do leave Poland, the only definite place in my itinerary is Azerbaijan.  I’m not sure where the road will lead from there, but as David Bowie said, “I promise it won’t be boring.”

I just wrote nine hundred words and haven’t answered the question.  These last four years in Warsaw have gone by in a flash.  The vision of myself I see in five years is this… My condo in Warren, Ohio will be embellished with mementos of my travels.  My hammock will be slung in the corner next to my floor-to-ceiling window so I can sip my coffee or wine while reading.  My Tibetan Prayer Flags will be hung between the windows over my fireplace.  Under the glass on my coffee table will be currency from all the countries I have visited.  The walls will be adorned with canvases of photos I have taken and there will be a story to go with each one.  At night I will fall asleep under the quilt I brought back from Bali.

In the morning maybe I will make Turkish coffee in my cezve or ibrik that I brought back from Istanbul.  Then I will sit at my desk and write.  Or I will be getting ready to head off to tell my story to young people or anyone who wants to listen.  I will meet friends for drinks or have small dinner parties at my home with my favorite dishes from around the world.  Then I will start to get the itch for Paris or to visit Warsaw or take off for some far-off place I haven’t been.  The travel bug will kick in and I will have to go, knowing when I return, I will pick back up right where I left off.

“Why do you go away?  So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.  And the people see you differently, too.  Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” From “A Hat Full of Sky” by Terry Pratchett

 

I am a huge list-maker.  Looking at my desk right now you will find my “To Do” list.  My to-do list doesn’t have deadlines.  It is just the things I need to accomplish soon, like answering emails, changing the wall in front of my desk, working on my spreadsheet of countries, practicing my flag challenge, and so on.

I keep a list of books I have read.  This is mostly done, through Goodreads but I also have a written list of books that have had an impact on me.  I also keep a list of books I want to read.  Again, mostly on Goodreads, but also a physical list that supersedes the Goodreads list.

In one of my journals, I keep a list of words I like. It was a thirty-day challenge of a word a day.  I also keep a written list of words or phrases I like, some are English some are Polish, and some are from other languages. For instance, “Dolce Far Niente” ~ Italian for the sweetness of doing nothing.   One of my favorite Polish words is “chrząszcz” and it means beetle.  I recommend putting it in google translate to hear the pronunciation.

 

Another favorite from Polish is the word for winter – “Zima”.  There is however a story behind this word.  Back in my younger days, there was a popular malt beverage that was introduced in 1993 by Coors.  It was marketed as an alternative to beer and I loved it.  As some of you may remember, it was called Zima.  Then there are some English words/phrases which have gotten lost in translations.  My kids in China called a home aquarium a “fish house” and they called an aquarium that you go to visit a “Water Zoo”.  Believe it or not, many languages don’t have separate words for fingers and toes.  I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the word “foot finger”.

In my journal, I keep a list of quotes.  It also started as a thirty-day challenge, but I am constantly adding to it.  My journal lists go on and on.  I have a list of Chinese spices, herbs, etc., that I consider essential in my kitchen.  I have a list of things I love about Paris.  I have a thirty-day thirty-songs list.  There is a list of countries I have visited and another with UNESCO sites I have seen.  I have a list that is just called “foodstuff” and a list of gins I have tried.  I think you get the picture.

Now, let’s get to the subject at hand….a bucket list… a list of things that I haven’t done before but I want to do before I die.  Of all the lists I keep, would you believe, I don’t have a written bucket list and I have never made one?  I have a few ideas in my head but nothing on paper.  Some of the most popular items on bucket lists have to do with travel.  From way back when, for me, that would have been Paris, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids.  I have nothing pressing on my travel list because lately I get an idea and I just go.  But don’t worry, for the sake of this blog I will come up with a couple of places.

Here goes:  Wendy’s Bucket List

1. Be able to identify all the flags of the World
2. Name all the capitals of every country
3. Set foot on one more continent (I have North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa)
4. Visit China and Bali again
5. When back in Warren, Ohio I want to tell my story to young people and encourage them to take that gap year or at least travel somewhere different from what they are used to
6. Visit Azerbaijan and at least 3 “Stan” countries
7. Do a WorkAway in India
8. Continue to understand my purpose for existing and fulfill it
9. When in India, visit Dharamshala (where the Dalai Lama lives) and try to be in one of his audiences
10. Not only tell my story but write it

I have written diaries and journaled most of my life.  I started my first blog on MySpace.  When I moved to Paris I started “Down the Rabbit Hole.”  Unfortunately, it was lost when I didn’t maintain my domain.  I started “Down the Rabbit Hole” again in February 2017 and have been pretty faithful for seven years.  Of the ten items I listed above, numbers five and ten are the most important to me. For a long time, I have felt that my PFE (purpose for existing) has been to tell my story. Not just from my years traveling, but also my life story as I know that experiences in my childhood have impacted my life today.  Everything I was is intertwined with who I am now and how I face whatever life puts in my path.  It’s been an amazing ride and it’s not over.  One thing I hope I have been able to share with my blog and one day in a book is how many beautiful, kind, people there are in the world and what they have taught me.   Maybe someday, someone will have seen something through my eyes and it will encourage them to follow their dreams.

I grew up in a “Christian” household, Presbyterian to be exact.  Mom and Grandma taught Sunday School, sang in the church choir, were elders, deacons, etc.  You get the picture.  My dad knew the bible inside and out.  He read me bible stories as bedtime stories and I remember “Old Rugged Cross” and his favorite, “In the Garden” being played as part of the Sunday morning repertoire on the antique green stereo console in our living room.  But Dad only attended church on Easter and Christmas or a special event in which we (me or my brother, Mark) might be participating.  He said he didn’t need to sit with hypocrites to justify his faith.

I have been blessed to live and travel to many places around the globe that don’t practice Christianity.  I’ve heard the calls to prayer in many countries, visited mosques, and listened to the prayers of those of the Islamic faith.  I was in Qatar and Dubai during Ramadan.  I have sat with monks in Buddhist temples.  I have been in synagogues and attended a Jewish wedding ceremony.  I attended a service of Caodaism (cultivating self and finding god in self) in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. I have sat in monasteries in Tibet and read the teachings of the Dalai Lama.  I have been to a Hindu cremation ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal which follows closely to the Hinduism of India.

In Bali, Indonesia I have attended many Balinese Hindu ceremonies which differ from those of India.  I have witnessed the exhumation of a human body for cremation (Ngaben).  I’ve been to a Nelubulanin/Nyambutin ceremony which is like our baptism and is performed for a baby when they reach three months (105 days) by the Balinese calendar.  I’ve been to the temple ceremony of Odalan which is the anniversary of the Temple and I have had the opportunity to pray at Pura Besakih or the Mother Temple.  I was overcome with energy and couldn’t hold back the tears.  As I sat in a drizzle of a cleansing rain, my guide talked me through the prayer ceremony.  He lit the incense (the smoke takes our prayers to heaven) and explained what to do with the flowers in the offering.  After the prayer service, the Priest came and blessed me with holy water and gave me holy water to drink.

The guide then one by one took 9 strings of color and wound them into a bracelet.  It is to be worn until it falls off or breaks.  Peace, energy, harmony, balance, gratitude, and spirituality are just a few of the emotions I felt.  I still wear the bracelet (it has been 5 years) and it reminds me daily to be thankful for the blessings I have received in life.

Watching the sunrise/sunset on Mount Everest was a very spiritual experience.  Was it a Christian experience?  I honestly have to say no.  Did all those things like God and “How Great Thou Art” go through my head?  Yes!  But I was on the mountain with Tibetan Buddhists, so I got to experience spirituality from their point of view.

Growing up Christian, we heard stories of missionaries in far-off lands converting these “pagans”, “non-believers” and even those of other faiths to Christianity.  Through my travels, I have come to question this practice and ask, “Why”?  Why do we in the West think that our religion (Christianity) is the one true and right religion that everyone else should follow?

I must admit that living abroad and experiencing different religions firsthand has changed me.  I haven’t denounced my Christianity, but I find myself being open to accepting the beliefs of other religions.  Born and raised a Christian I have always believed in a greater being, namely God.  As Christians, we are taught to be Godly in our everyday life, say our prayers before bed, etc. but, truth be told it is “seen” mostly on Sundays.

Traveling solo and living in different cultures has allowed me to look deeper into myself and my personal journey of spirituality.  The first place I really felt a pull of spirituality was Tibet.  I had such a peaceful feeling there that I struggle to find the words to describe it.  There was something magical about Tibet.  I am still drawn to that culture, but the connection I feel to Bali is overwhelming.  I have never experienced a culture that is more welcoming or a people that always seem happy and peaceful.

The National Motto of Indonesia is “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” or Out of Many, One, or Unity in Diversity.  The full motto states, “It is said that the well-known Buddha and Shiva are two different substances; they are indeed different, yet how is it possible to recognize their difference in a glance, since the truth of Buddha, and the truth of Shiva are one?  They may be different, but they are of the same kind, as there is no duality in truth.”

Am I still a Christian?  That’s a tough one. I am not trying to turn this into a religious debate but, my views on Christianity have been drastically altered.  I think it is hard for Westerners to admit maybe Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions aren’t so far off from Christianity.  Am I a Christian?  I am going to answer yes, but my Christianity has become more spiritual.  The language all over the world is different, why not religion?  Are we all worshipping the same “God”?

I will leave you with this, author unknown, ”Travel, because you have no idea who you are until you experience yourself through different people and realize we are all the same”

I guess this was to be expected after yesterday’s “What Makes Me Happy?”.

Merriam-Webster tells us sad [ sad ] is an adjective meaning affected with or expressive of unhappiness.

If you spend any time in Bali, you will probably notice statues wearing a black and white checked cloth called a saput poleng which symbolizes the coexistence of opposites and the ultimate goal of harmony.  The Balinese people believe that joy will always be balanced by sorrow, and that good and evil exist in the world and everyone.  They embrace differences because they create balance and harmony.  Following this theory, you can’t experience happiness if you have never known sadness. Think about it, without sadness, happiness has no meaning.

Today’s topic might be even more challenging than yesterday’s.  I won’t say that I never experienced sadness because that would mean I’ve never been happy, and I like to believe I am happy most of the time.  So what makes me sad?

I think it was easier to feel sadness, believe it or not, as a kid.  I’m not talking about deep, sorrowful, depressive sadness, but the sadness that comes when you’re six and you misplace your favorite toy.  Or you’re ten and your Little League team loses.  How about when you get your first B on your report card, and you have always had straight A’s?  Then there was that time one summer when you got a new bathing suit, and you couldn’t wait to wear it on Sunday because you were going to the Elk’s Shore Club on Lake Erie in Ashtabula, and it ended up raining.  That all-important Warren, Ohio football rivalry, Harding vs. Reserve.  How sad we were when our team lost.

There’s a different kind of sadness that comes with being an adult.

I was sad when my friends came to visit me in Bali and I took them to visit Pura Lempuyang, the Gate to Heaven.  I was sad because when I was there just a year and a half earlier, it was just an important temple for the Balinese people.  When I took my friends, there was a two to three-hour wait to take a photo at the now Instagram-famous Candi Bentar or Gate.  People were surprised/disappointed to discover there was no lake or water at the gates but merely a camera trick of placing a mirror beneath the camera lens so that the picture appears to be reflected on non-existent water.  Not only that, but you must hand your phone over to a “local” photographer with a donation so he will snap your photo and you get 3 poses.

I find the Gate to Heaven stunning without the Instagram sham of water.  It made me sad that most people were there to get that all-important Instagram shot and forgot or maybe didn’t even know that Pura Lempuyang is one of Bali’s six major temples known as Sad (six) Kahyangan (place of Gods) or that it is only one of seven temples in the complex.  It made me sad that people were disrespectful to the fact that it is a sacred place to the Balinese.

I was sad every time I left one of my schools in China.  Sad, because you say, “I’ll come to visit”, instead of saying goodbye, but deep down you know, it’s goodbye.  You get through that by thinking of the quote from Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it’s over.  Smile because it happened.”

I was sad when I left Bali, but happy I was going to Ohio for the Robins Opening.  I’m sure I will be sad the day I leave Poland, but excited for what awaits me.

In my adult life, the thing that has brought me the most sadness is death, the death of my parents, but not in the way you might think.  Death is always sad, but it is a part of life.  The saddest thing about their death is what they have missed.  It made me sad that they weren’t there on January 9, 2020, sitting in the front row of the mezzanine (my dad always liked to sit in the balcony).  My dad letting out a whistle when Mark stepped from behind the curtain.  I’m sad they never got to see what he accomplished in downtown Warren and across the globe.  It makes me sad that they never got to see me follow my dream.  I guarantee they would have been to Paris, China, Bali, Poland, and anywhere in between to visit me.   Please, none of that bullshit, “Oh, they were there”, or “They have been with you”.  Nah, not the same.  Not only that, but I’m also not sure I want them with me all the time or seeing everything.  I mean seriously, if “they were there” on opening night, what about that time I got a little freaky with so and so?  Nope, best they aren’t around.  I will settle for being sad that they weren’t there.

 

Anyways, life has its ups and downs, its happiness and sadness, and somehow through it all, life is pretty damn good.