Anna Overseas

My weekend plans had involved the Indian Ocean and swimming with dolphins, so obviously I found myself in the back of a 4 x 4 minibus full of Japanese students just about to slip over the edge of an extremely steep, extremely white sand dune while an Aussie driver reminded us to "Buckle up - this one's a doozy!"

I'm amazed at how often I suddenly look up and wonder what I was thinking to get myself into these situations.

I've already written about seeing the Pinnacles - a vast expanse of shifting sand with large rock formations scattered throughout. The sand there was shades of orange, unmoving, making it hard to believe that the large rocks were because the sand had all been blown away hundreds or thousands of years ago. But this area was different. The sand was pure white, the sky a brilliant blue, and the ocean was peaking out from behind the dunes. The wind was so hot and blew the fine sand into everything, including my camera. (The photos here are the last ones I was able to take with it before it broke. Even now, I can't get the other photos off it.) Including my hair.

Oh, my poor hair.

But first, the 4 x 4ing. It's the only time during the trip the driver insisted we had to buckle up, and waivers had to be signed. Then, he drove the bus into this vast expanse of white, and up, up, up the dunes before pausing at the very top of one of them.

"Ooo... we're beginning to slide!" he cried out as teenaged girls squealed and even the boys gripped hard onto their seat belts. I just felt my eyes getting wider and reminded myself that if it wasn't safe they probably wouldn't be doing it.

And then... boom! Down we went, at top speed! Slipping down the hill, watching everything tilt to 45 degrees out the window, and thinking "but if it wasn't dangerous, would they insist upon a waiver?"

I scream loud.

Up and down the hills, bumping and jumping while the driver laughed and the rest of screamed or whimpered or giggled, and I felt queasy, worried I would throw up from the bumps and leaps into the air the bus was somehow managing to make, until finally we came to a halt at the top of the same tall dune and everyone piled out.

Two things: Sand is very hot in the sun. Sand also turns very very cold when it's in shadows for short periods of time. I'm sure there's a physics lesson in there someplace.

Sandboarding, depending on how you do it, is either like tobogganing or like snowboarding - you either go down sitting on the board or standing on it. Either way, you need to wax the board in order for it to go far, it needs a certain amount of weight or it won't go very fast (and thus won't go very far), and if you scream loud enough, you'll go the farthest.

The last one might not be as true as the first two, but I certainly found I went very very far as I screamed the whole way down the hill. I know, I like to sound so brave on my trips, but you don't understand - I was going down a hill! In the sand! In the heat! I could have been killed by... um... roving bands of... sand demons... or something....

Don't judge me!

I wasn't the first one down, but I was the first girl who went down, and I totally went the farthest of anyone who did. Which just meant I had the farthest to climb back up the damned hill afterwards.

Two things: Sand is very hot in the sun. And sand is also very hard to climb up.

All in all it was a great time, even if I did ruin my camera and have sand caked so hard onto my skin that it took me almost thirty minutes of scrubbing in the shower to get most of it out - and I still had sand in my hair two days and three showers later. It was a great adventure, one I would happily do again should the opportunity present itself.

But really, if you get the chance - screaming makes you go further. Totally the truth.

{all the photos}

{to save on dialup, the rest are behind the cut, or view the entire set.}

It's easy to forget how big Australia actually is. I know, that sounds a bit odd - I'm Canadian, Canada's even bigger (and we have a song about that), but travelling in your home country is different than travelling someplace else. In Canada, I expect everything 'interesting' to be a long ways away, but here? Everything should be like the UK - a daytrip is always possible.

What really brought home for me how big Western Australia (just one state!) actually is wasn't that it took two days of driving to get out to Monkey Mia, but how different everything was by sunset of that second day.

On the first evening, everything was dark as pitch by the time we got to the hostel. We'd made a brief stop to look at some cliffs, but the sun was rapidly setting and there wasn't a lot of time to spend enjoying them. We hurried off to the hostel, leaving behind the crashing waves and looking forward to good food and a long sleep far away from the bus.

But the second evening, though, we'd travelled far enough west to make a different in how late the sun was out. We drove much later, and caught a spectacular sunset over the ocean.

I sat down and looked out over the water, watching the breeze blow through the trees, fluttering the sails on the boats, and thought about how easy it would be to get used to this.

Later, when we got to Monkey Mia, I lay down on the beach and looked up at the stars, and wondered at how easy it is to be overwhelmed by natural beauty. There were dolphins in the water, but I couldn't see them, only hear them, and I couldn't imagine a more peaceful moment in my life.

In many ways, being in Australia has made me very eager to go back and look at Canada and see how differently I view it now. I loved Scotland for castles and crags and men in kilts, but mostly for the ruins and the history behind them. As I've said before, I love Australia because it's beautiful here - from the ocean and the sand to the desert and the wind, so much of Australia is beautiful and overwhelming because of where it is. I keep being caught off-guard for it.

People say to me all the time "Oh, Canada! It's very beautiful there!", and I've always just smiled and nodded. I've loved the Rocky Mountains, but I don't really think about the majority of my country and if it's actually a beautiful place to be. I lament that Canada has so little history, so few ruins that talk about what happened "before", without thinking about how lovely it is to walk through old growth forests or stand on the edge of a crystal clear river. These are, quite frankly, things I grew up with. Things I don't notice.

I've been gone a long time. I'll be in Canada for two weeks this summer, and I wonder how different Alberta will look, now that I've been here.

When I was a little girl, my mother always used to tease me all summer long that she couldn't tell what was dirt and what was tan. I spent entire days, from dawn till dusk, outside, running around and playing in the dirt and being rowdy, before puberty and a sudden interest in books turned me into a pasty white girl with a fear of the bright ball of light in the sky.

I was thinking about this as I floated in the Indian Ocean, looking at my feet. They were tanned and dirty and covered in sand, even though I'd been splashing in the water for a while. The dirt from Australia had ground in, and I could barely see the pale lines of where my sandals blocked the sun.

The place I was swimming is called "Shell Beach" for obvious reasons - the entire beach is made of shells, the bottom of the ocean is made of shells, white, brown, purple, all sorts of colours. The water isn't very deep there - I walked far out and it never got above my hips - and it was easy to pick up shell after shell as I floated. I lay back and let my hair drift, and wondered how far the waves and the wind and the sea would pull me away from land, if only I'd let it.

It was so warm, with just enough of a breeze to keep things comfortable. The rest of the tour group had walked back to land, complaining about cold and salty water, while I felt more relaxed than I had the entire trip. I closed my eyes and pretended I couldn't hear them.

I listened for mermaids instead.

I thought about Australia, about the deserts and the oceans and the short trees and red dust everywhere. I thought about how nice it would be to just lie in the water and see how far I could float away. I wondered how long it would take me to get lonely.

Eventually I lifted my head and looked back at the beach. I'd floated quite a ways, I guess. I saw everyone on land beginning to pack up, waving to me to return so we could get back on the hot and cramped bus, get closer to the furthest point west in all of Western Australia.

I put my ears back under the water for just another moment, but I couldn't hear the mermaids singing.

Instead, I slowly started back towards the beach.

Maybe next time.

{photos of shell beach}

A couple of weeks ago I was staring at an empty weekend in despair. The dolphin tour was filled up, and I wanted to get out of the city. I wanted to *do* something with this limited time I have in Australia, but I didn't know what.

Australia is a great place to live, it is, but it just seems my life here would be easier to experience if I had a car. Or a driver's license.

I poked around online until I found a tour group that would be doing something on Sunday, and signed up as quickly as I could. I didn't care what it was, I was just going to go out and do stuff and have fun, and damn the consequences.

"Stuff" turned out to be going to see the Pinnacles, checking out some beaches, going 4X4ing in the desert, seeing koalas and kangaroos in something approaching their natural habitat, and finishing off with sandboarding. Sandboarding! Like snowboarding, but entirely different! The whole thing sounded like exactly the sort of adventure I'd moved to Aus to experience. I gave them my credit card number and remembered to pack lots of water. And sun screen. And my camera.

Oh, my poor camera.

My camera started out the day in a bad mood and ended the day in an even worse mood, so if my photos seem odd, that's why. Cameras, as you may not know, do not like sandboarding.

But first, the tour. I once again got that marvellous disconnect of being the only white person (other than the tour guide) on the trip, everyone else being from various places in Japan. (This happens a lot on trips in Australia, apparently.) I feel kinda bad for being amused by hearing kangaroos described as "kawaii!" by the two school girls behind me, having previously only heard the word used to describe characters on Sailor Moon.

But kangaroos really are cute! And tasty! Mmm... kangaroo.

Kangaroos, I have learned, come in two sizes: Wee (as they are in Western Aus) and Really Really Big. They are also considered pests here by farmers, and are regularly shot and then eaten. I have no idea if there's a kangaroo hunting season. I do know I have to remember to buy some kangaroo meat next time I'm in the store, because them's good eatin'. Even if they are terribly cute.

Anyway, at way too early in the morning we headed out to a place where you can walk amongst the trees and check out koalas. It was great - you could just barely see koalas curled up in their trees, deeply wanting everyone to go away so they could continue to sleep. I was told that koalas spend most of their days drowsing, and tend to be stoned. The infamous "drop bears" are just koalas that got stoned and forgot to hold on.

Hey, I don't make up the stories, I just repeat them.

After checking out the koalas and the wee kangaroos, we got back on the bus and proceeded to drive through the Aussie countryside. And drive. And drive. And then drive some more. Something I wasn't really prepared for when moving here, even after growing up in Canada, was how long it takes to get anywhere outside of the cities. I got kinda used to Scotland, where "getting there" is usually a short trip and you can be home by lunch time. It took quite a while to get out to the Pinnacles, and along the way we saw Emus, and Windmills (that came with Emus), and a Wind farm, and lots and lots and lots of countryside.

I may have fallen asleep.

But! We were on our way to an adventure! To the Pinnacles! That sounded exciting!

These are the things I know about the Pinnacles: They're a natural rock formation that's caused by... limestone being blown away? Sand? Something? I don't know. We have something a bit similar in Canada called Hoo Doos. I have to admit, although I love looking at natural rock phenomena, I just don't know a lot about them. They look cool.

Basically, they didn't used to be a tourist attraction at all, since they're just a bunch of nifty looking pillars of rock in the middle of a desert. The area is considered cursed by the Aboriginal people. This is it, this is all I know. I wish they'd told us why it's considered cursed, what the story behind it is. None of my digging around on the internet has told me anything about it. I can only imagine.

They are, however, very nifty looking pillars of rock. (I really like this photo, mostly because of the background. Gives you a bit of an idea of what you're looking at.) We got to walk amongst them, and I took off my sandals and let the sand rush over my feet. It was windy, and I had trouble keeping my hat on. I chased it through the sand three or four times, I think, dodging limestone pillars and attempting to keep my balance. Even though there were other people with me, the whole experience was a bit eerie. I described it in a postcard as "feeling surrounded by an army that had turned into stone, worn away by centuries of wind and no rain." For all that I don't know the story, I can suspect why the area is considered cursed.

The sand there is a very odd colour, and I knew when I looked back that my footprints wouldn't last long. There would be nothing left to say I'd ever been there at all.

I think that's the thing about Australia, that makes it so different than anywhere else I've travelled to. Rome and Paris and Scotland and China have all been about looking at the marks that people leave behind - castles and temples and statues. But Australia, as I keep saying, seems to be about nature, and the way we as people don't seem to matter much to it. The Pinnacles are there. They don't care about my footprints or my hat or my words. They just exist, and to them, I'm nothing but something to blow away with with the wind.

We ended up next at a beach where the water was many shades of blue and just watched the tide come in. The tour guide looked at me and smiled.

"This is my typical day at the office."

When I tell you my heart is lost to this country, remember that. To some, a typical day at the office is staring at every shade of blue.

I have lots more to write, as the trip was outstanding. I have 92 more photos to shuffle through and attempt to find the best of. I have a camera to be sad about.

For now, check out the current batch of photos, and I'll tell you about the beach, and the sandboarding, and the way my camera was destroyed soon.

This conversation may be slightly fictionalised.

I stood in a room full of chocolate and frantically pressed buttons on my phone until someone picked up.

"He--llo?"

"Don, it's me."

"What? It's 4 in the morning, what are you doing calling? Is something wrong?"

"No, well... yes. Something's wrong. I need your help!"

"What help do you need? Did something bad happen with Amy? Was there an accident? Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, but I need help. Don, I'm in the middle of a chocolate factory."

*silence*

"Don, are you there?"

"You called me at four in the morning to tell me you're in the middle of a chocolate factory?"

"No, I called you at four in the afternoon. It's not my fault you live in Canada. Now, you have to help me, this is a chocolate situation that I just don't know how to deal with."

"You called me at four in the morning to tell me you're in a chocolate situation."

"Yes! Yes, it's four in the morning in Canadia, I acknowledge this, but c'mon, I'm in a chocolate factory and it's full of chocolate! And there's chocolate everywhere, and there's samples of chocolate and chocolate being made right over there by incredibly gorgeous and sexy people and there's all this chocolate and I'm going to go insane with love for chocolate and look, see, people are making chocolate right over there and I don't know what to do!"

"Anna. It's four in the morning. I don't care what you do. Buy yourself some chocolate. Let me get off the phone and go back to sleep."

"Really? I can buy chocolate?"

"You can buy all the chocolate you want. I'm going to bed now."

"But-- but-- you have to help me pick out which chocolate to buy! You don't understand! There's bags and boxes and bottles of chocolate right here in front of me! Don! Help!"

"I'm hanging up now. I'll talk to you later. Enjoy the chocolate and the eye candy."

And then he hung up on me!

And this is why I came home from the chocolate factory without any chocolate. It's all Don's fault.

{Photos of the Chocolate Factory}

If I ever decide to put up a singles ad, this is totally the photo I should use!

I have been looking forward to swimming with dolpins since well before I made it to Australia's over-heated shores. Every weekend I've planned on doing it, and then every weekend something else has come up. But this weekend was finally the day: I woke up way too early after way too little sleep, and headed out to catch the bus to Rockingham and swim with real live wild dolphins!

The trip out was great - the group I went with (Rockingham Dolphins) does a great intro to the whole thing on the bus ride out. They talked quite up front about how hard it can be to actually see dolphins in the wild - it's not as though they keep an updated calendar about where they'll be, and trips have taken as long as 5 1/2 hour before anyone saw any dolphins in the water. Nothing at all can be guaranteed.

They also gave great little facts about dolphins - apparently baby dolphins don't realise they have blow holes right away, and for a while keep surfacing to breath with their mouth (awww... so cute!). Also, apparently when mating (and they have no mating season - dolphins are always up for it), they take on a pinkish hue. I have no idea how obvious this pinkish hue is, but hey - I like the image of happy excited little dolphins playing in shades of pink. I'm strange that way.

Once we got out to Rockingham, we all started to congragate on the boat and get into our uber-sexy wet suits. "Swimming" with dolphins is really snorkling with dolphins, which really makes a lot more sense. As much as the image in my head of little dolphins happily frolicking and playing amongst the people, rubbing up against them and playing little games of tag appeals, the truth of the matter is that dolphins "are wild animals and as such behave in unpredicatable ways". (They had that sign up at AUC regarding the swans. It always makes me giggle.) Basically, dolphins will bite you if they don't like you.

So, we suited up, and proceeded to drive around the bay at Rockingham, looking for dolphins. It took a while (no where near five hours, though!), but I can definitely think of worse ways of spending my morning than sitting on a boat watching the water and the waves, looking for dolphins while seeing all sorts of birds I'm unfamiliar with.

But eventually we found dolphins! I was so excited (and I have a video clip of me jumping up and down about the whole thing), but a bit scared. The people running the tour suggested I come right up front and hold on to one of them while we snorkled around, in case something went wrong. Which was a really really good idea.

Because... guess who found out she panics when snorkling?

I've been in the water before, I've been in the ocean before, but I completely freaked out at the idea of snorkling and putting my head in the water and trying to breathe at all. I started frantically trying to keep myself afloat (not difficult, being that the suits keep you floating) and crying and sobbing and begging them to please please please get me out of the water please I am going to drown and die and there will be badness and god I don't want to die in the middle of the ocean please get me out of there now please.

They very quickly and calmly and politely got me out of the water and back onto the boat, where I proceeded to huddle in a corner and hyperventilate for a while, sobbing and crying and generally freaking out for at least two or three minutes.

A very nice woman who has been on the tour three times now (Hi Wendy!) sat with me for a few minutes and got me to breathe and got me some water. Then, she kindly held onto my glasses as I got myself back into the snorkle gear and went back into the water.

Scariest thing I've ever done. I was convinced I'd go back in and panic again and be so embarassed for the rest of my life that I had done that. I was so scared, and yet... went back in.

I'd love to say that the next time everything went fine, but it took me at least three or four times in the water before I could just relax and float and breathe through the snorkle. For the first few times I kept pulling me head out of the water and breathing that way. But eventually I relaxed.

Being in the water like that, even being unable to see very far... it's amazing. It's like there's nothing anymore except the water. It's like... like... I don't know. It's as close to being in paradise as I think I ever want to be. Nothing else seemed to matter except the water and the coolness and the way sounds pass. It's like floating forever, and time just seemed to stop for me once I could relax and enjoy it.

Because of how bad my vision is, I know I saw less dolphins than the other people did, but I did get to see quite a few out there. I remember seeing these two dolphins swimming side by side through the water, doing something that looked so graceful and acrobatic. They seemed so close... I wanted to reach out and touch them, I wanted to follow them. Watching dolphins swim underneath you is so... well, it's amazing. I'm sorry I lack the words for it. It was everything I wanted it to be. This was such an experience, and if you get the chance to do it, I recommend you do.

I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted, even with my sexy new camera, because I was soaking wet a lot of the time and didn't want to touch it. As well, as per my usual reaction to being on a boat, I felt sea sick a lot. (I didn't actually throw up, and yay on that.) I didn't really want to move much. But I did get a few photos of the tour itself, and some lovely pics of the beach out at Rockingham. There is, sadly, only one photo of a dolphin. But really - photos wouldn't have done it justice anyway.

Some time in the next few months I'll head out again and go actual SCUBA diving. I can't wait.

The plan was very simple: Go on the ferry (yay!) to South Perth. Do not go to the Zoo, gosh darn it. I didn’t want to go to the Zoo because I didn’t have a lot of money (having no bank card yet) and figured the South Perth suburb would be interesting enough all on its own, at least for a nice Saturday afternoon.

Which, it would have been, but the Zoo is almost right on top of you when you get off the Ferry, and it occurred to me that I had purchased nothing cunning and nifty to send back to people in Edinburgh, to make them jealous of my madcap adventures in Australia (you know, the ones that have barely started, unless you count hostel living. Which is a rant for a whole other day. It involves cockroaches.) A lot of the shops that I’ve been in so far are *incredibly* touristy, and I was hoping for something with a bit more substance to it.

[Also, picture this for a moment: I'm wandering aroud South Perth and I'm going all dreamy and wide-eyed because there are flowers everywhere and it is *simultaneously* February. This does not happen in my world. I spend half my morning squeeing over flowers and taking pictures of them and being incredibly touristy and excited over this idea. I resolved at one point that if anyone asked I'd tell them I'd recently been released from the hospital after a tragic accident involving a giraffe. Or that I was American. Which they might have assumed anyway.]

So, I passed the Zoo shop. And I thought “Hey! Zoo shop! That will have nifty things in it!”

And it did – lots of nifty things! Things involving… kangaroos! And it occurred to me, since I was there anyway, that there would probably *be* kangaroos in the zoo! And koalas! And snakes! And other cool and nifty animals that I had never seen! And how could I be in the Zoo shop and not go and see a real kangaroo!

So, I scrounged around in my pockets and went through the Zoo. There were kangaroos and lions and rhinos and koalas and crocodiles and big scary snakes that could eat a person, and little tiny birds, and I got attacked by a pine cone! (It was a vicious and evil pine cone that just dropped very heavily out of the sky. It hurt! Feel sorry for me! I don’t care that there were warning signs about the pine cones, it doesn’t count!)

(Also, Oz pinecones are *nothing* like North American pine cones. Not only are they evil and attack people, they also are big and green and heavy. North American ones are small and brown and are typically very light.)

I had *such* a good time at the Zoo that, on my way out, I bought a Zoo membership!

They told me I have the only adult membership card where the ID photo shows someone sticking out their tongue and making faces.

And that was my Zany Zoo Adventure of not going to the Zoo, gosh darn it.

(It’s a great pass, though – my tongue looks blue! And I get free entrance to the Zoo to see the elephants and the birds and the quokkas or whatever they are, and I get a newsletter, and I get other stuff, and it’s great fun because hey! Zoo!)

{More Zoo Photos}

Observations on Australia after only Two Weeks, a list, by jo

1. Oh My God It's Hot. It's hit low 40 Celcius here several times since I got off the plane. (That's *PLUS* 40. I can handle minus 40.) I may die.

2. They don't give out free sunscreen at the airport like they totally should.

3. Phone numbers have eight digits! How do phone numbers have eight digits? It hurts my head - phone numbers should totally have seven digits!

4. For whatever reason, coffee here isn't as good as coffee in Edinburgh - but the hot chocolate is better. Please don't ask why I was drinking hot chocolate in this heat, because I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

5. There are flowers! In February! They're so beautiful!

6. They don't have pennies! How am I supposed to save my pennies if they don't have pennies? And why did no one tell me there were no pennies here?

7. Lots of places have air conditioning. I love these places. I shop in them just because they're there. They have signs that say "Air Conditioning - Come On In!" So friendly!

8. The City of Perth seems to shut down at an incredibly early time. I thought Edinburgh did, too. I was told Edinburgh shut down because people would protest at having to work late when they could be out drinking. Apparently Perth shuts down because people want to be out surfing. I can understand this.

9. Speaking of surfing, they have plastic money! Lots of it! I refuse to believe it's for any reason other than that they're too lazy to take their money out of their pockets before tossing things in the wash, but Jezz says it's because of surfing. Jezz is so boring and practical sometimes.

10. Palm Trees! Palm trees everywhere!

11. On Sundays in Perth, you can go down to Forrest Square and they let people stand up and rant. They have police officers there and everything. It's like...like... college!

12. There's a duck crossing sign near my flat - I can hear the ducks right now, and at night, I can hear crickets!

Having a wonderful time!

Kissing, or the lack thereof, defines entire countries for me.

I remember being 17 and walking through the street of Paris. I was at my angsty best, pining after a boy, and felt that everything I was doing there (walking across bridges, looking at beautiful buildings, seeing churches or statues or paintings) was coloured by the fact that That Boy, That Boy That Was Always On My Mind, wasn't there. I remember sitting on a bridge at night, holding a rose I'd gotten from some place, and slowly taking off every petal and dropping it into the river.

The next time I went to Paris, I had freshly turned 29 and the memory of being that overly-lonely 17 year old brought me some form of bemusement. Ah, young angst, I thought, while pretending not to notice the young couple doing everything except actually getting naked whilst the lights were coming on at the Eiffel Tower. There's an age I think we all go through where that lack of someone to kiss is so... disheartening. The feeling that we're the only one that isn't being kissed *right now*, except maybe our parents, and parents don't do that *anyway*, right? 17 and in Paris probably should have been just as much fun as 29 and in Paris was, but I was so distracted.

Maybe if I'd had someone to kiss at 17, I would have been just as distracted. It's hard to notice the beautiful lights across the city when you're... well, otherwise distracted.

At 27, I went to China, and dealt with students that were the same age I was then. I didn't so much notice the lack of kissing in the school - it had been so long since I'd been in a high school, and most of my classes were of kids around 12, so it just didn't occur to me. Sometimes I'd tease my older students about having boyfriends, or get the younger boys to behave by telling them that they should stop showing off to impress their girlfriends, and quickly everyone would fall in line. It wasn't until my first trip to Shanghai that I finally noticed that those public displays of affection that were so common in my high school were totally absent.

I was sitting on the bus from Rudong, travelling with a friend of mine, when I saw a couple of teenagers on the street kissing. "Pssst..." I hissed at Paul. "Look over there." When he saw them, his eyes went as wide as mine, and we spent most of that weekend pointing out Public Displays of Affection in awe. How brave they were! How... affectionate! How... normal, at least to us. Then we went back to our respective very small towns and noticed how little affection we saw displayed in classes.

Soon after that I found out that students could be expelled and sent home in disgrace if they had boyfriends or girlfriends. I don't doubt there were relationships going on, but there was so much pressure to never be caught.

I'm almost done my packing for Australia and I'm very aware of the fact that there won't be anyone to notice these things with. There will be no one just as lost as I am to whisper "Do you see them?" to, and smile and share secret memories of being that lost in each other that the lights seem unimportant, no one to discuss whether the socialably acceptable forms of affection in public are the same as they are back in Canada. {In thinking about this now, public displays of affection are much less in the UK than they are in Canada... maybe it's because we cuddle more to deal with the cold?}

There won't be anyone to kiss.

I suspect that this time that won't be quite such an end-of-the-world type of feeling. But I won't promise not to sigh occasionally in wistfulness....

{Sunday Scribblings}
{More pictures from Paris}
{More pictures from Rome}

I hate to disappoint anyone, but I have to tell you the truth:

Rome was full of a lot of cheap tacky crap. It was very strange.

Luckily, everyone who asked for something to be brought back asked for cheap tacky crap, so that was okay, but it was a bit surreal. I'm used to drooling over things of various levels of affordability and bringing back at least one really nice thing that one can show off to people and say in that oh-so-casual-I'm-really-worldly-but-hide-it way "Oh, yes, I picked that up at this little shop outside the Coliseum. It was a sunny day, I'll never forget how warm it was, and I'd just popped in there to see if they had any air conditioning, and I found that..." I'd put it on the nick nack shelf, next to my goat from China and dragon from Wales and the lovely clock my mom carved me.

I.. uh... brought back a bright pink glittery Coliseum made out of plaster. It turned blue once it left Rome. I have no idea why.

I alternately loved and hated the seemingly deliberate tackiness of all of the stuff you could find near the tourist-places. I wonder if it would be any easier during the summer, when tourist season is at its height and the place is packed with people who just want to be cheated on something nice.

Ah well. I have memories, I have photos of Don dressed up like a crusader, and I have this lovely blue sparkly Coliseum. What else could a girl ask for?

Rome destroyed Italian food for me.

Never again will I be able to enjoy a "good" Italian meal, having had food that actually burst into flavours in my mouth. Never again will I be satisfied with some pitiful, anemic version of tomato sauce. Never again will ice cream make me happy, when Gelato from Italy has melted on my tongue.

The food, oh the glorious wonderous food that is Rome. Every day seemed to bring a new amazing food experience for me. From the first full day we were there and I found the Platonic Ideal of Latte (it was amazing! It only needed a bit of sugar because it was perfect. It... it... it made me want to sit in this little back-end restaurant down by the Trevi Fountain all night, discussing world-changing and whether Joss Whedon's comic book version of a Season 8 of Buffy would be considered canon and how to finance a month of living in Rome) to the last day where Pizza is sold by weight and tastes entirely different than the stuff I grew up with, the food was always the best part of everything. So flavourful, so good, so... inviting. Finding food every day was always an adventure, but never one to disappoint.

At one point I sat on a bench with Don, just up the street from the Vatican, both of us completely silent as we ate Gelato. Mine was banana and his was tiaramasu. Neither of us spoke, just enjoyed, as the scenes of Rome played out in front of us - beggars and people selling cheap trumperies and tour groups and large groups of nuns walking past. How do you speak, really, when you've just realised that you're going to never again taste such perfection?

Food in Rome seems to be something entirely different than what I've experienced elsewhere. In China, eating out is a huge social event, usually with lots of people, lots of dishes, way too much alcohol and laughter. In the UK, it's usually a much more somber occasion, and although it may be a comment on the type of places I go to, I rarely see families out eating, or groups of large than three. But in Rome, it just seems that eating, drinking, enjoying it all is practically a religion. Restaurants open for lunch, then close again till as late at 7 or 7:30 when they slowly start to fill up with people. Groups vary from couples who are being googly eyed and feed each other pasta slowly and lovingly to large parties that slam back lemonchelo at the end of the meal before going on someplace else. Plates after plates after plates of food are the norm here, and I wished we'd had more time (and money!) to spend an entire evening eating good food, drinking good wine, discussing the world and everything in it over good coffee.

But oh, lemonchelo. I first had it in this little place we found in the Jewish Ghetto. We had been given a *very* bad tip on a place just further up the streeet and had left in a hurry and just started wandering. The place we found eagerly escourted us to their "back room" - a little courtyard that would be open to the sky in summer but was closed over with a canopy because it was "cold". They had a little heater set up in the back, and the place was lit with candles. A mostly-gone statue of a warrior with his horse made up part of the back wall. We sat there for hours eating such good food (I had some sort of seafood pasta dish that just made my whole mouth happy), and in the end the waiter brought us two iced shot glasses of lemonchelo. I had no idea what it was, so I took a cautious sip.

Oh, my.... It's this amazing lemon liquer that just... rolls off your tongue and into your tummy, making the whole of you feel warm and good and happy. I recommend you serve it chilled in iced shot glasses, because it was so good that way. They gave it to us for free, and it was lovely....

I had it quite a few times after that, and even brought a bottle home.

Rome is... full of flavour and excitement. We walked back to the Met.Ro that night along the river, under the trees, past the Circus Maximus and talked about the distant past and how everything fades away.

I wonder if Italians ever come to the UK and think "Oh, they're so cute with thier 'history'. They think they have old buildings. Heh. Well, let's indulge them and look at their little divit in the ground out in Wales that they call a coliseum, shall we?" I know that how far back we can trace things really has little to do with physical remains of buildings, but it's something tangible, easier to point to, and it has that immediate effect. Within Rome, there's a vast difference between looking at a divit in the ground and saying "Yes, that was the Circus Maximus" and walking into the Pantheon and staring up at the dome.

We came upon the Pantheon almost entirely by accident. We were looking for it - but it wasn't where we thought it would be, and I had forgotten what to expect. It's been so long since I studied the architecture of the period that the dome had slipped my mind. It won't ever again. We came upon it in the evening, when the place was cooler (it was so hot when we were there), and sat at the fountian and just... stared. As one does, I suppose.

It's like walking in a dream, a lot of Rome, and nothing really seems like you expect it to. The heat, the sky, the press of people, the way the Met.Ro gets so crowded in the mornings always seems so mundane. I know, it's a city where people live, but it just added to the feeling of disconnection - how could any of this be real?

In front of the Pantheon is a court yard, or piazza, with a fountain in it. Everywhere in Rome has a foutain in it. At night, at least, the little restaurants that line the piazza are filled with patrons. I didn't eat there - I had found the best restaurant in all of Rome when trying to find my way. There's a McDonald's directly across the piazza from the font entry which added to the strangeness of the scene.

I don't know what to say here. I've been reading the wrong type of books to write about Rome, I think - novels that try to be pretentious, and it's affected how I'm writing right now. I don't want to make Rome sound pretentious or holy, even though that's so much a part of it. Romans, Italians, seem to just shrug their shoulders about the history, much like I can't find anyone to get excited about Edinburgh Castle unless they're an ex-pat. It's just a place, just a church, just 2000 years old with a dome that dwarfs so many things. How to you explain that, the casual disregard combined with a feeling of "This is our legacy, this is ours, no one can take it away"?

I need to arrange to not ever again read Kay's "Sarantine Mosaic" right before travelling to Rome.

So, when you write about going to Rome, where do you start?

I've been asked this dozens of times so far: "How was Rome?" And I still haven't come up with an acceptable reply. It's so hard to talk about, because the experience was so... much. So many things, good and bad. I remember telling Don that at one point I felt that I *had* to have an amazing time, because I had to come back and write about it to all my jealous friends.

But I did have an amazing time. Rome is so... different than anything I've experienced, even than Paris. It was being in this city so huge you know they don't care about you, with such ancient history that your country isn't even a blip in comparison to, and just wanting to wander around and gape at everything. It is finding these beautiful fountains and small little restaurants that are so... common to the people there that they don't get a mention on the map. It's a city where even the "bad" food is good, and where they complain that winter is here because it's only +8.

I loved it. I loved every second. I loved staring up at the sky through the window of my hostel and trying to decide what shade of blue it was. I loved seeing people on the street in the evening wearing scarves and hats and shivering while I was wearing my tank top and bemoaing forgetting to leave my coat behind. It didn't rain once.

I don't know where to start, sincerely. I don't know how to write about it.

I want to go back. I want to spend a month walking through the small little courtyards that make up Trastevere, I want to find more restaurants that make food that actually has bursts of good flavour that overwhelm your mouth, served in back court yards lit only with candles, I want to get lost and orientate myself by the dome at St Peter's.

For now, I have only pictures and words and memories, because I bought so little while I was there. There didn't seem to be anything I could take away that would be as meaningful as gazing at Christan frescoes from a 6th Century church, build on the ruins of a Mithral temple, that has in turn be built over by another Christian church.

I bought a little St Christopher's medallion, though. That might be enough, all things considered.

Last week I went to the Scottish International Storytelling Festival's opening night at the Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. {That's right, my life rocks so much I have a storytelling centre in the town I live in. *grin*}

I've never really been to a 'formal' storytelling experience, and it wasn't exactly what I was thinking. I guess I had in my head the same thing they'd do at libraries, where someone would sit with a book and read aloud, and everyone would be very quiet, and it would be... odd. But I wanted to hear the stories (Tristan & Isolde, and Diarmuid Ua Duibhne & Gráinne) and was curious at the storytelling centre, so I went.

It was... nothing like what I thought it would be.

The stories were told in pairs, a man and a woman, and each were accompanied by live music. The first story was of Diarmuid and Gráinne, and of how Diarmuid had been cursed as a child from the actions of his foster father, and the ultimate story of how that fate had played out. Hearing this story told by such haunting voices, so dramatically, was beautiful and moving, and the music added so much to it. It was an hour, but it felt like only minutes.

There's this haunting quality to the voices, and a real sense that if I closed my eyes I would be able to see the whole story - Diarmuid being cursed, being granted the love spot that ended up causing all the problems with him and Finn McCool and Gráinne.

The story of Tristan and Isolde was different than the one I'm used to - I'm familair with the Authurian take on it. Throughout this whole story I was completely transfixed. It takes place at Tintagel, you see, and I couldn't stop imagining the beautiful blue waters, seeing Tristan out in the waves, picturing the cave of the druids and the way the ocean is both a lover and death to those who cast their fate upon it. When Mark casts Tristan out of Cornwall, I wondered how much of his grief was at the lost love of Isolde and how much was because of the beauty he was leaving behind.

If I'm not careful this will turn very maudlin. You may have heard - I loved Cornwall and thought it the most beautiful place I'd ever travelled, so I may be biased. *smile*

I think the British Isles have their legends because they need to capture that beauty and longing somehow, and words that describe places don't do it. Pictures that show you how beautiful Cornwall is don't give you the moving sound of the sea as it crashing through Merlin's Cave, or the way the air smells like salt and whispers. It's not enough, and so words that describe great romances, great men, strong women and deeds that defy the imagination do it for us instead.

I loved Cornwall, I'm sure that's obvious, but I never wrote about it. It was too hard in a lot of ways, because that beauty was caught up in how incredibly blue the ocean was, how the breeze that went through my hair seemed filled up with possibilities. I remember sitting on the beach and building sand castles with a cheap bucket while children shreiked and ran into the cold cold water, and then destroying the castle myself, leaving to trace of it before I left.

It was so tempting when I was there to believe in mermaids, to slip beneath the water and away from all my troubles and my cares. It was the first trip after everything had fallen apart with Kristi, my attempted flat mate, and I was still mourning for how that had fallen out. In many ways the trip was supposed to be a touch stone, to remind myself of why I travel, of why I love seeing the world, of why it was worth being sad and lonely some days because of the beauty I got to experience in it all.

In less than 12 hours I get on a plane and head back to Canada for a week. It's possible, but not probable, that I'll run into her, and have to ask myself again if this vagabond lifestyle is worth it. Some days it really feels like it isn't - I'm leaving behind more friends, good ones, in just a few months, and while other friends are settling into careers and making long-term plans, I don't even know where I'll be living in three months. It feels like it's not actually worth it at all.

And other times I look at my photos from Cornwall, and listen to the legends of this more wild land that I get to experience straight on, and I remember why it is.

One day, I'll find the mermaids, but until then, I have adventures to chase after.

* * *

NoNoNoNo, as some may remember from last year, is a project my friend Raven started a few years ago whereby one takes 50 Photos in 25 Days. It's a play off NaNo, of course. Last year I thought I'd take photos of churches and statues, since there are many in Edinburgh, but this year I gave up on that and just decided to take pictures of things at night. It's easier on my brain then trying to take pictures of things during the day.

I should totally title this photo "This is my squinty face".

One of the things that keeps me from updating about my travels is this sense of perfection - I can't possibly write about something until I've uploaded the photos to my flickr page, can I? That would be foolish! And that means I have to go through all of my pictures from a trip, bick the best bunch of them, and do things with them, and be all perfect, and label them and all that stuff. And then there's the writing of witty descriptions on each photo. Thus, I perfection-obsess myself into not blogging about something.

Really quite foolish, since I doubt anyone reads this for my stunning photographs.

That being said, I've decided to bite the bullet and just *write* about things again, without fretting about photos. (That I just uploaded 50 photos about my trip to Inverness is not relevant - it's just a coincidence. Really. Besides, they're untitled and have no description and most of them don't even have tags.)

It helps a bit, I think, that my time in Scotland is coming to a close, and I really do want to get all these things sorted out and written about and recorded before Australia just jerks it all out of my head and I'm left trying to remember what I did when I was up North in Scotland... did I see a lake monster or not so much?

Right now I'm thinking a bit too much about my upcoming trip to Canada (for another wedding - it's not that I begrudge going to weddings by any stretch, and certainly not this one, but damn it - can people please space out their lives so they're more convenient to me? *laugh*) where I'll be there for another whirl-wind visit where I'll see some people I want to see and miss out on all sorts of other people that I also want to see, and trying not to turn into a big pile of goo over the trip to Rome. (Did I mention I'm going to Rome? Because I'm *totally* going to Rome.)

Basically, I'm getting rid of my procrastination techniques one by one, because I do want to get back into writing about my adventures and joys and sorrows of being an expat. Lately, though, it's not been just "not doing interesting things", it's been a sense of waiting. I want to be here, but I also want to be in Aus. I want to be on to the next adventure, and I'm not living life here to its fullest.

On Halloween I'm going to the Fire Festival (Samhain?) that the people who did Beltane are doing. I can't wait!

Since I complain about it an awful lot, I thought I'd share what I did at work last week.

An awful lot of nothing, as the photos will attest.

{We did this carnival at work last week where you had to play in games to win points, and the team with the most points won dinner at some restaurant I've never heard of. It was surreal and fun, but the best part was, of course, the duckies.}

Inverness worked out well - I have great photos and some wonderful stories. Sadly, I did not see Nessie. Once I'm more awake, I'll post about it.

Actually, while I'm pimping out photos, I have some great ones of the Fringe, but I'm mostly happy with this one of Don.

{That is, by far, the worst title I've ever come up with for a blog entry.}

I keep running into people who have either never been to the Tattoo or went once, when they were kids, and never intend to go again. I've sort of chalked this up to the same reason I can't be arsed to go back to the Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall. Of course it's there, it will always be there, and it will never, ever leave.

But I love the Tattoo. It's more fun that anything else I can imagine involving so much bagpipe music. I may love the pipes, but by about mid-August I could happily strange every busker on Princes Street, and that's not even going into the recorded stuff played in shops. But the Tattoo does pipes, like everything else, larger than life. If you ever get the chance, go.

{On the other hand, I regularly talk to people online that take "I'm going to the Tattoo! I loved it last year, I can't wait to go this year!" and think I'm talking about something to do with body art. *sigh* It's not.}

It's hard to describe the tattoo though. It's military bands doing performances for the public, which can sound kinda dry. Unless, of course, you know those military bands include the Top Secret drum corps from Switzerland, and they wear hats with white plumes. (Link is in Swiss, I assume.) I won't speculate on what's so Top Secret about a military band with drums - do they sneak up on the enemy by playing loud and entertaining beats in the dark? Their drums are all black, as are their outfits, but the sticks are white. (But, plumed hats!) Everything with them has this interesting combination of over-the-top performance and obvious skill. The plumed hats, as you can tell, did it for me, and now I want to move to Switzerland and find myself a nice young man with obviously good hand-eye coordination. (They would toss sticks between themselves to trade beats!)

This year's 'special' presentation was the Scottish Military, and the talk they gave read like a bad wikipedia article. Won't comment on it anymore than that, since if you're going to the Tattoo to learn your military history, you've got bigger problems than I can address here. It's nifty, though - they use the Castle as a projection screen for that part, while the bands play a counter-point (on the pipes, of course) and the announcer talks. Last year was about Admiral Lord Nelson, and involved a dramatic re-enactment by Highland Dancers.

(It wasn't a very good one, though - I have a hard time believing that the battle looked so neat and checkered.)

One of the best things this year was the band from New Zealand. Further proof I need to move there. {In saying that, do I have to give up my trip to Aus? I have no idea what the relationship between the two countries are...} They did Interpretive Dance during their performance. At one point they played the theme to James Bond while two trumpet players mimed out an opening gun sequence, and when they played the theme to Swan Lake the tuba players put down their instrucments to do "dying swans". At least, I think they were dying swans.... I hope they were dying swans. {Link is to a blurry photo.}

They also had a group in from China that made my heart hurt... One of the kids looked like one of my students from Jiangyan that I miss. *sigh* The demonstration of Kung-fu was great (in a performance sense - I could hear Kris rolling his eyes and making sardonic comments), and hard to photograph. Strangely, children jumping in the air with swords *move*.

I didn't love all of it - I though the gospel choir from Africa didn't lend itself well to a stadium-sized space, and I missed the little guys on bikes from last year - but I loved most of it. I wish I could go again, and I intend to at some point in the future, but like everything else I do this summer, it'll be the last time for some time, and that leaves everything a bit bitter-sweet.

The Tatto ends every year with all of the bands coming together to play while the performers dance, and although the combined music works *really* well... let's just say that "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" is not a song I needed to hear played by bagpipes! The rest worked well, as did the entire audience once again singing Auld Lang Syne.

If you're planning on going to Edinburgh, get tickets. They go quickly. I haven't sat near the front, but the 'cheap' tickets at the back are still a great view, and you won't regret it. Bring a blanket, though - it gets cool in August.

I'm disgustingly proud of this photo and felt the need to share it. I finally got to take my brand-new tripod (Thanks, Don) someplace and use it, and I got some lovely photos of St Cuthbert's Churchyard at night. Since it's usually locked up, I was very satisfied over all.

I was in the churchyard at that time of night because of the Fringe show I caught there. It was Vespers, sung in Russian, and it was beautiful. It's amazing how religious music can be so moving, no matter if you know what they're saying. It really felt like... well, like a choir of angels. I was reminded of a quote I read once in my history of Wales... "When we meet God, I'm certain he'll be speaking Welsh." I think, in the end, how faith and spirits move us is so entirely based on feelings and impressions rather than words.

Which may be why the Islamic festival left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There was a presentation yesterday on women in Islam, and it was very poorly done. I don't want to go into it too much here, but I was hoping for some real discussion and insight into the faith, the religion, the culture, and everything caught up in those things. I wanted it to talk about things that were important to women in that culture and faith. Instead, they chose two "poster-child" type women to speak about their experiences. Neither had ever lived in a different culture. At least one didn't read Arabic. Neither could answer any of the questions we had about Islam and women. Neither was a scholar. In comparison to the way the man's talk earlier in the week had been, it was frustrating. And whereas I can see why people may not want to stand up and talk about their faith in terms of questions that seem like instrusions... well, that's what it was billed as. That's what I expected from what the Mosque itself had advertised. I wanted more.

I spent a lot of time questioning things this weekend. I went to a talk about history in India and Persia, where the idea that the problems in the Middle East right now go back as far as things in Ancient Greece. That sense of divide between us and them goes back to Sparta. Points were brought up about resentment on the side of people who are "Eastern". I tried to ask if the speakers, both authors of recently-published books about the history of the region, thought this might be because the "authoratative" books on the history and culture of the area were both written by White, Middle-Class, Western, Scottish Men. I didn't get a satisfying answer.

I wasn't really surprised at that.

I was strangely surprised by something else: Who'd have thunk it: People read at Book Festivals.

I was also surprised at one other thing: My passport returned from the Home Office. If I recall correctly from the last time this happened... things will start to move rather quickly from this point on.

I am so scared.... and so excited.

It's impossible to describe Edinburgh during The Festival (also known as August). Natives either completely embrace the city, or wish they could be elsewhere. The streets are packed with too much of everything, and it's either excilerating or overwhelming.

This year, I'm so excited! (Last year, not so much.)

You can see all sorts of things during the Festival, and it all seems so common place. There are buskers everywhere, doing everything you can imagine. There's a guy sitting on Princes Street during the day who's doing busking with chess - play a six minute game of speed chess with him. It's great to watch, and he seems to be quite seriously raking in the money.

Of course, the best thing about the Festival is that odd conversations and things you'll see. I had a very odd little man (made me think of Wormtongue) come up to me and start going on about how I was the sun. Yes, I, Anna, am the sun, and he was the Earth, and he revolved around me, and I was the sun, and great, and wonderful, and the sun, and my friend Melle was the moon, and should rotate around him, who is the earth... and I said "Can I marry you?" And he stared at me, and said "Yes...." then said "See, she is the sun, whose job it is to smile and not speak", and then wandered off.

I out-weirded the weird people on the Mile. Life is good.

I think most nights of this month will end in fireworks. I'm a good 30 minute drive from the Castle, and I could watch them from my window. I love fireworks, they're great. I is happy.

I'm really looking forward to days of being on the Mile, of the crowds of insane people. I might not feel the same way after three weeks of having buses slowed down on my way home from work, but right now, the world is full of promise, and the festival is full of exciting things to do...

{Photos!}

I've been here for a year.

I don't know how the time crept up on me so quickly. I was aware of it, of course, but in a distant sort of way. End of June = One Year in Scotland. Sorta like how Christmas is really far away, and then boom it's December 21st and I've forgotten to buy presents.

And here I am.

It feels good.

I love Scotland. I love the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed here - I travel so much, I know these great people, I'm content with life in general. It seems so good right now, and I realised the other day that I'm not waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think I've come home after searching for it in other people so much. Here it is.

So, a Year in Review....

My first post on this side of the ocean was o