i had lunch with my good friend and mentor, Darlene, yesterday. we talked about her experience with an ailing loved one and my experience floundering with work. Darlene has an uncanny way of cutting through all my foggy, emotional ambitions and speaking to my passion.
today she sent me this video clip and i thank her.
happy new year!!! due to popular demand, i am adding another blog post. i guess my last post was a little depressing…
update: i made it home in time for a christmas fryup at mama & da’s. 11:30am to be exact. we shared a wonderful christmas as a family, and the next week was filled with lots of festive visits to family and friends.
life is grand back here in my hometown. i’ve got a great contract for work, am volunteering with amnesty international vancouver, have an excellent living situation and am all around pretty darn happy.
i’ll write more later but suffice it to say no news… as always… is good news!
i realise that i haven’t updated my blog in a longish time. to be honest, after my last post i had the most amazing weekend followed by the crappiest week. but now i am in manchester and things are already looking up!! so i think that i will blog about the good days that i’ve had since i last wrote and forget the rest.
sound like a plan?
good day #1: eurostar to london. friday, october 21st.
if you ever have the chance to take a eurostar train from paris to london, i’d say DO IT! :D what an awesome experience. the trip was fast, the seats were large, and i got to go under the english channel at crazy stupid speeds. after today’s experience flying to england, i’ll opt for the train next time!
ticket and my passport as the tracks zoom by. note the “conditional” entry into the UK. tsk tsk, jimi you should know better. this time i deadpanned, debated, pleaded, and even flirted a bit over a 45 minute interview by the border guard to be allowed regular entry!
king’s cross st. pancras international station in london. my first glimpse of the city; pretty intense.
i absolutely loved the quintessential london imagery: black cabs and the underground. is it all about transportation??
public art outside the library. interesting.
i have so much more to blog about but it will have to wait as i’m running on three hours sleep. finding a renewed love of travel in the delirium….
Paris has been wonderful so far but on a whim I decided to go to London for
my birthday. I really miss Marie and I also miss understanding and being understood. communication is an important part of my character- I’m pretty sure that weekend will be full of it!!
so I bought a eurostar ticket and am off for a fabulous weekend in London! as the train whips by the country side at fascinatingly high speeds I can’t help but think that I could be in abbotsford or any other town with green fields, low lying bush, and farm houses in the distance.
British immigration isn’t convinced that I’m going to leave England; the border guard strongly suggested that I purchase a return ticket to Canada as soon as possible…. guess I’m going to have to commit to a plan soon.
still loving the life yet missing my friends and family.
on arrival to London, I had to buy a new sim card so message me for
my new mobile number! after I got my bearings, I went to a quaint British pub for a gigantic bowl of spicy potato leak soup and a pint of London Pride.
love it.
this morning i woke up feeling much better than yesterday, and yesterday i woke up feeling much better than the day before. except yesterday was sunday. so naturally, all things being open, i was excited to wake up feeling much better on this crisp, cold autumn monday morning.
i wrestled with the idea of just going to the market to get groceries and then come back home as i have nothing in the apartment and had not really eaten much in the past few days. but the sun was calling and instead i spent a few more minutes at home picking out the perfect spot to have lunch; shopping could wait until later. looking through the circled, highlighted, and underlined entries of my several guide books, i decided on just what my still-healing body needed: Bakery Rose.
the inspiration for Bakery Rose is supposed to be organic, locally grown food, served in a cafe/restaurant style: lentil soups, tarts, salads and risottos are what the reviews rave about. perfect! my body is craving a hearty, vitamin-rich, vegetable meal! so i bundled myself up and took the metro out to the 9th arrondissement. when i got out of the metro, i found myself in a bustling part of the city that i had not been to yet. there were lots of inexpensive cafes and restaurants, many people on their lunch breaks, and absolutely no tourists. no prob! it took me a while to find rue des martyrs, and then when i found it, it took me another little bit to walk up to the top the street where Bakery Rose is located. By this time i was getting quite short of breath, weak with hunger, had only one tissue left, and was re-thinking my adventurous excursion. no matter. the thought of warm vegetable soup kept me walking until at long last, i stumbled into the arched iron gates of Bakery Rose.
“désolé, nous sommes fermés”
“…pardon..?”
“we ahr close”
“oh… merci. au reviour…”
crap. at this point, my head swimming, my chest pounding, body shivering and sweating, i had no clue what to do. funny how such a tiny little thing as a cafe closed in a neighbourhood filled with like cafes can be such a huge deal! i kept walking up hill. you heard it! i think that i was still so sick that i could not make any cognitive decisions; my feet just took me in the same direction that they were going before my ears heard the bad news. when my confused body made it to the top of the hill my watery eyes saw a corner store where my parched mouth ordered a water and my shaky fingers paid the grocer.
after sitting on a bench in a square for enough time that my brain resumed communicating with my body, i realised that i should not be out of the house. i am still sick. admitting defeat, i turned around, walked down the street, got on the metro, and went back to my neighbourhood where i stopped at the grocer, bought some tea, honey, orange juice, and chicken soup. when i got home i put a pot of water to boil, changed into my jammies and had a three hour nap.
i promise, when i can stay awake long enough i’ll edit some photos that i took when boo came to visit!!