Christmas dayz

Tuesday:
Oh, the walk this weekend. Just amazing. Maybe you're like me, and you really like nature and hiking? But you're not as into being-gross-and-dirty-and-eating-dried-foods-all-week-and-sleeping-on-the-ground as you pretend to be? Then the Tora Coastal Walk is for you. We didn't have to carry anything, we had hot showers and delicious food waiting for us everywhere we went, and our beers were already cold in the fridge at each location. I liked the parts of the hike that went through forest the best of course. The pasture bits were very crappy. I mean, they were covered in crap. Just astronomical amounts of the stuff. It was fun herding the sheep as we walked along though. They're very easy to manipulate. The views from the pastureland were the best since it was so open (especially when we crested a hill and could finally see the ocean, mostly since that meant we were close to the end :) ), but in my opinion nothing is better than weaving through trees on a narrow forest path, with brief and surprising glimpses of spectacular views.

Good moments from the trip:

All of us ladies decided to go down and swim in the river. There were a few sheep lined up on a distant hilltop silently staring at us, like sheep do, as we splashed around and made a lot of noise in the cold water

Taking a shower the second day in an outhouse that had a window at head level looking down at the ocean. The cool ocean breeze blowing on my face combined excellently with the hot shower water raining down.

Seeing other people take showers through that same window (observing people while they are blissfully off in their own shower world is surprisingly intimate, even when you can't see below their necks)

Seeing Kris solve a puzzle within 20 minutes that me and then Ken had been trying and failing to solve for hours.

Discovering that the various Emersons beers I brought out were some of the best beers I've had in my life (especially the APA and Emersons 95)

Hearing Jeanne talk about how she and Ken first started dating

Getting to know Moira

The date pudding

Jumping on the trampoline in the rain (this is one of those things I worry about my mom reading :) )

Clodagh doing my hair

Watching Francisco valiantly lose the battle against nature

Sitting on the couch outside in perfect weather, reading trashy magazines and watching the pig pee over and over again.

Ken's excitement about the pig

Slowly feeling my face relax and my body de-stress as I slowed down to rural pace

Waking up Sunday morning just before dawn after an afternoon and night of heavy rain to see the world clear and still and beautiful.

Wednesday:
I hate when people express doubt about things I'm really excited about. Last night a couple people were really trying to kill my holiday excitement, wondering how on earth I'll possibly fill 8 days of vacation with no company. Oh My God. I'm going to be alone for 8 days. On a beach. Swimming with dolphins. Reading. Surfing sand dunes. Getting massages. How the hell will I survive.

Jesus people. I can't stand some people's standards of fun sometimes. The desperation to have company, any company, to keep busy busy, never stopping because stopping means thinking and thinking means problems. Yuck.

I'm just venting because I was having a perfectly lovely evening at Kazu until this one person started criticizing my vacation choices. I'm spending a lot of money (for me) on this trip, I've been working for a while without a break, this is the one thing I have to look forward to right now, and it's just really shitty to do that to someone. Some of these wetan guys have no concept of what it means to save for something, or that the fact that I was happy and relaxed about spending $60 on dinner last night meant it was a special night, and that I was really excited to see them, that I had carefully planned out how this would be my splurge night for the week and that the other 6 days I'd be cooking pasta and stir fries baby! Having this wonderful dinner and good times with friends as a special memory to hold onto, to chuckle about at work the next day during a particularly tedious run of photocopying. They're just in a different reality from me I guess. We have very different lives. I can't, for example, really appreciate Reza's immigration issues, how he worries about how his Iranian passport will be treated the next time he travels, how intensive the search for bombs will be this time, how he gets finger-printed everywhere he goes, the racism he encountered in Australia. Etc.

I have to pause for a moment here to praise this flat white I'm drinking. Damn. New Zealand coffee. I don't understand how Starbucks stays in business here when there are tiny shops with this kind of product on every street corner. It's like if drugs were suddenly made legal, improving quality, price and safety of transactions, and yet people continued to flock to the sketchy street corner dealers.

I think I've lost the thread here. My coffee cup is empty. This is a depressing moment. It makes me crave the most excellent world of this book I started reading yesterday: Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy. I had been in a rut of only being able to read in short bursts, and it feels good to return to obsession. I'm planning on bringing at least 6 books with me for Christmas so that there will definitely be one or two with similar qualities.

Friday (today):
Feeling good to be alive!