It’s awesome and emotionally draining, physically exhausting and guess what? The insane heat has turned my body into a constant napping machine! Seriously I can sleep anywhere so it seems… on the floor, couch, table, chair, bench, the jungle gym and on the roof with any amount of distractions going on around - peacocks hanging out a couple of meters away squawking their way at nothing in particular, kids pulling at my hair turning it into a moustache on my face, mid-lunch rush, fans blowing inches from my face. Anything!

It’s actually quite nice really. 

I guess that’s what happens when you go from snowboarding in the mountains one day to living in Mexico the next. The call Tapachula the home of the devil’s oven - high 30s (I wouldn’t even know, it could be in the low 40 but that’s what someone guestimated the temperature at) and humidity that’s high enough to make me stand out in the rain and still be sweltering with heat.

Anyway, this was just a quick post to let everyone know that I’m okay and here safe and didn’t manage to loose any of my luggage along the way (I was legitimately expecting to, considering I checked it all the way through from Vancouver and had a travel time of 24 hours with an 8 hour layover and a lot of time for bags to go wandering). 

I start work in the morning at 6 so I best be heading to bed - although it could be a while until I get to sleep. Just because I can nap at any given point doesn’t mean sleeping at night comes easy. 

Yeh, seriously. I must have been about 14 at the time and it was not a pleasant experience. My best friend and I were flying home after spending a weekend by ourselves in the shopping capital of Australia for a friend’s birthday. I can’t remember the first time I went on a plane by myself, but it must have been when I was pretty young – maybe 8 or 9? So it definitely wasn’t the first time flying unattended, but it was for sure the first time that I was flying with my best friend anywhere. Come to think of it, it’s very rare that I’m on a plane with anyone else - I guess because every time I’ve been travelling it’s been by myself for the most part. Anyway back to the story, we boarded the flight and as soon as I sat down I knew I needed to pee.

Oh shit.

But it was fine! No worries, I could hold it. However, being eager and young and excited, we must have been in the first few people to board the flight so by the time the flight was full, I was asking the hostesses if I were able to go before we took off. Nopeeee not allowed to do that, no Ma’am. So I sat down begrudgingly and looked out the window at the crew loading our luggage onto the plane. By the time they’d finished with that, things were getting desperate. I had now actively been thinking about my close-to-exploding bladder for a solid 20 minutes and to make things worse I was sat caged next to the window knowing full well I’d have to ass around with getting the two people out from beside of me before I could even make it to the bathroom – which, for the record, wasn’t going to be for at least another 30 minutes. At first Laura thought it was mildly amusing that I was having a panic about not being able to go pee and she rolled out the standard jokes of waterfalls and sprinklers and whatnot but then I shut her down with the very real threat of peeing on her.

Not impressed.

Then just as I thought hope was surely lost, the plane began reversing out to make its way over to the runway. Excellent, I now had gates to steal away my focus and something to gauge of process of taking flight. We progressed further and further down the runway. 134C, 135B… We had to be close to the end! My ordeal was coming to an end. I could do this. Oh wait no, woe betide how dare I think we were first in line when we arrived up to the start of the runway. I’m sure it was only 15 minutes or so but honestly it felt like an hour. I became one of those annoying people who presses their call button repetitively, even though it’s very clear that the hostesses are seated and therefore can physically not move to come talk to you. That didn’t bother me in the slightest, all I cared for at this point was my bladder and how long it was going to be until I could get some sort of relief.

It was our turn to take off and it really couldn’t have come sooner. But first I had to get through the vibrations of the engine revving up and then the thundering of the plane as it gathered enough speed to take off. Not fun. At all. By the time we’re in the air I’m counting how many pools I can see, all in a futile attempt to distract my brain. But it wasn’t enough, my eyes started to water (or I started crying, I’m not too sure which) and I turned to Laura for backup. “You need to distract me and distract me quick or I’m going to pee. Legit.” So she starts asking me how much money I spent over the weekend and what I spent on it (it had been a shopping weekend after all). I hysterically start listing off the items that we’d purchased whilst also telling myself in the back of my mind that I would have to face the man sitting behind me if I peed on him. I think I even looked to see who was sitting behind me so I physically could imagine his face as it happened and how embarrassing it would be. How would I even explain to this man? Surely it would go through the seat onto his feet. He looks like he’s on business. “Uh sorry folk, a girl pee’ed on me on the plane”. What would the crew do? Oh my god I would never live down the embarrassment.

This was it, it was going to happen. I was going to have to sit through the most awkward and most horribly uncomfortable not to mention humiliating 3 hours of my life. My physical trauma was about to be mental. The most scarring experience of my life was on my hands and I couldn’t avoid it. I was already crying but I was about to cry a whole lot more.

I was a matter of seconds, I kid you not. I heard a sound that was not my call button (although, it should be recognised that I was definitely still abusing my right to press it thoroughly and constantly), and the orange light I had my eyes fixated on disappeared. I stood up on my seat, jumped Laura and the somewhat terrified 15 year old boy on the other side of her into the aisle and bolted to the back. The flight attended was still unbuckling her seatbelt. I’ve never moved so quick in my life. She clearly didn’t understand the severity of the situation. Come on now, I was still in very real danger of wetting my pants although it was so close now that I knew I could jump 10 times knowing that by the time I’d finished, the bathroom would be unlocked and functional and this traumatic event would be over- and then that was it, and so it was.

I still had to live the whole ordeal down for the rest of the flight with the guy in our seat row, that was pretty awkward, but hey, at least no ones shoes were full of piss. To this day, I will not get on a flight without going to the bathroom in the 10 minutes before boarding - even if I’ve just been. Irrational, I know. But I think everyone’d agree, it’s in everyone’s best interest.

and I think I’ve managed to hack the wifi without having to pay. I’m not too sure what just happened but I was paying for the internet then it cut out and I disconnected my skype payment and then it came back and now I’m still on the internet… But my skype balance is the same, so I guess the system’s got a loop hole and I managed to chance it.

Wicked!

Anyway, I have another four hours or so until my next flight - I’ve waited out the three previous hours in various lying positions on the ground getting weird looks. Standard not giving a shit backpacking routine is coming back to me ever so slowly. Everything’s been pretty mellow this trip, which, if you’ve been following this from the start of my travelling two or so years ago, you would know is not generally the case when it comes to me and customs. No getting questioned by US customs for hours or being threatened to be put on planes back to Aus, no de-routing of flights into completely different countries (yet) or being completely searched including the full linings of my backpack. The guy sitting next to me on the flight from LA lost his passport though and only realised when we landed in Mexico. That sucks. 

I tried to write about leaving Whistler but it’s a little too brutal at the moment. Now I’m out of the country it’s a lot easier to deal with but I had to seriously work hard at holding it together as the plane took off from Vancouver airport. I didn’t cry as much as I thought I would (although that could have been due to my house mates giving me endless shit for tearing up over saying bye to our kitten) but it was still horrible all the same. I guess it hasn’t sunk in that I don’t live in Whistler any more, least not Canada. Snowboarding isn’t part of my life now and neither is the culture that comes with it - that’s definitely a tough one to deal with. I guess it’s because I’ve been so happy there that really at the end of the day I’m just paralysed with fear that I won’t be as happy elsewhere as I have been there for the past few years. 

SO instead of writing a sad sorry story of how upset I am at the thought of leaving Canada, I’ve chosen to pass my time with writing about my irrational airport phobia. After all, it only seems appropriate even though it’s far too much information. 

So I move (I guess one would term it “move” as I’ll be living there for the next little while) to Mexico next week. It’s absolutely mental. 

I haven’t been writing much about what’s been going on in Whistler for the past little while because my emotions are about as stable as the weather these days and I haven’t really been able to figure out how I feel about any of it to be honest. I was really excited to leave, then anxious, impatient, happy, sad, relieved and then finally just really shit scared. Whistler’s been my home for the past couple of years and it’s been somewhere where I’ve been really really happy. I always thought travelling was my go-to in terms of what made me happiest, but last fall when I left to go back to Europe I was just so homesick it was unbelievable. I’ve never been homesick, ever, so to feel that about this place was just as much as a shock to the system than anything else. Now that I’m leaving, I’m scared that I’ll feel that way again, yet I won’t be able to push through knowing that I’ll be back in a couple of months because realistically, I won’t be back in Whistler (least not living here) for at least another 5 years, if ever. I know it’s not going anywhere and that plans can change (and most likely do) in a matter of seconds but for me, I’ll never be living here again in this moment with this group of amazing people around me. There’s a fair bit of grief floating around, yet I know it’s the right time to leave, just keeping that in perspective is the slightly difficult part. 

So after thinking about that constantly for a month or so, I honestly went into overload, I’ve over-analysed everything so much to the point where now, I’m not really feeling anything about it all. I’m still terrified about my completely irrational fear that the kids in the orphanage won’t like me and that I’ll do a terrible job as a volunteer (like I said, completely irrational, yet still rather prominent fear all the same) - however it just seems so surreal and distant (neither of which it is) that I’m finding it difficult to pin anything on it other than a big fat question mark that I’ll figure out next week. For the moment all my energy is going into this last week in Canada and just enjoying that for what it is (which I think is a good thing). 

With that being said, these past few weeks have been awesome. I don’t have a bus pass now, which is forcing me to be a bit more creative but it’s been good. I walked the 5km-ish walk into work the other day and came across a bear with her two tiny cubs - something that I’d failed to come across last summer. We hiked the chief last week - something we’d been talking about doing since the start of last summer and finally it worked out to go (tiiiiiick!). Every house party seems so much more enjoyable and every day I find myself so immensly happy that I’m actually sad to leave this place, knowing I’ve learnt so much here and had so many awesome times here. I’ve finished up at two jobs (one of which was basically where this whole stint in Whis started which was a bit sad) and I finish up at my full-time work today. I still have the next three days working for functions and events but after that I’m off for a four or so days to cram some stuff in (overnight camping/last days snowboarding/being grossly hungover after our leaving houseparty/hanging out on the lake/frolfing/moving the entire contents of our house) and then that’s it, kaput..

and I guess, hola amigos!

did I get to the point where it was time to leave everything and anything I’ve ever known, pack up everything and move to the Mexican/Guatemalan border to volunteer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a refuge full of orphans. 

needless to say, I’m crapping my pants and my mind is basically on speed.

people who tell me that I’m lucky because I’m travelling/get to go travelling absolutely piss the shit out of me. 

Really?

I’m not lucky because I work my ass off to save money, I’m lucky because I was brought up believing that if you want something then you go after it. I’m lucky that my parents are supportive of what I’m doing with my life.

But god forbid I am definitely not “lucky” that I choose to spend my money on travelling rather than drugs and alcohol and stupid clothes.  

Ugh. So irritating.

When I was little I used to make the same new years resolution most years. I used to tell myself that I would keep a diary, whether it be sporadic or a day by day, blow by blow account of my life. Whatever it was, I would promise to myself,yes this year I will keep my new years resolution. I guess I thought the whole Bridget Jones notion was one to aspire to, I’m not too sure.

Point being, most of these diaries fizzled out over time. Majority of them after either a week or ten days, sometimes I even made it to a month. Once I made it to six. I always started page one with such optimism that this would be the year where I’d keep my resolution.

After I’d made it to six months, I read back on those six months of diary entries and I hated what I was reading. I hated having an outsiders perspective on my naive, what was it, thirteen year old self. I hated seeing my frustrations and irritations as petty problems when I knew at the time they felt so real and so life consuming. Thirteen probably wasn’t the best age to gauge what my life should or shouldn’t have looked like, but I did it all the same. I started despising what I was reading and even more how I was acting through the ink. Eventually I stopped writing my thoughts and feelings based on the fear of reading back on my entries and experiencing nothing but self loathing and regret. That was the age frame I was in. Another self consumed teenager at the age of thirteen/fourteen. Anggsssssttttt!

Where I’m trying to get with this is, this is page one. I don’t know if it’ll last a day, a week, a month or a year. I’m writing this post because somewhere between a and b, my personal blog became a travel blog and I used my travel blog as a scapegoat of communication. I gave the address out to the world, to my family and friends, knowing full well that this way I would be able to communicate without actually communicating. Well, directly anyway. 

Since I put my travelling* on hold (in that I’m still overseas but very much living permanently in Whistler), my posts have become less and less humorous and more and more censored. Less and less content, more and more talk about snowboarding and the same things happening each day. Work, lazing around, drinking, eating, partying, sleeping. I never wanted to fall into the trap of just writing about what’s going on because it’s been the same for the past twenty-something months. We all know it’s me just being lazy. I used to focus on the little things, the things that interest me and the things I wont remember down the track. The things I hope (…?) other people find as amusing and/or interesting as I do. I know it’s partly because I haven’t been writing so much, so writing itself is more difficult and in real honesty, it’s not exactly like life in Whistler requires many brain cells to begin with (not that I’m insinuating anything by saying this), so it feels as if my brain has gone on standby for the past little while. 

Anyway, here’s to something new. It’s time to write a new chapter in the book. Just as well though hey, because we’re about to switch back to being a travel blog. Three weeks.

Hollandaise sauce, as I have found, does not make every type of food taste like creamy deliciousness no matter how much you put on.

I had (and have had probably since I first tried eggs benedict as a 10 year old) the most certain preconceived notion that it most definitely did. It’s not like I put it on chocolate croissants or anything, it was on eggs and hashbrowns. Absolute ridiculousness!!

I feel like 5 year old me discovering that raw potatoes do not taste like chips and that cocoa powder is very different to chocolate powder. Basically, the magical world of food just got slightly less magical.

Sighhhhhhhhhh, such a shame.

As per usual, lately I’ve failed to even think about what to write about on my blog and therefore have fallen into the trap of just writing/posting nothing, period.

Between failing to do my tax, washing, injections, travel arrangements to mexico, cleaning my room, saving money, not spending money, fixing my ipod, cancelling my phone, bank account and not drinking, there’s been a whole heap of spending money, drinking, eating out, partying and doing absolutely none of what I’ve needed to do. I swear I’ve been home probably 3 days out of the past 2 weeks. Half my wardrobe is at work, the other half at my friend’s and there hasn’t been any sort of food in the fridge for a ridiculously long time. I even have all this alcohol at home that I haven’t drank simply because I haven’t been there.

Telus festival has been a bit crazy, between Michael Franti, Cat Empire, Beautiful Girls, Adventure Club, Big Airs, Superpipe, Slopestyle, working three jobs, having people visit from Australia, I feel like this month’s just run away. I guess it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve committed to leaving and now time’s flying away because it’s not never-ending anymore.

As always, I’ve been ridiculously sly and crap at going about taking photos of anything and particularly during Telus Fest (really, wtf was I thinking) but here’s to taking more photos in these last 5 weeks. I’m sure I’ll go on a rampage when I get to traveling again.

So in short, I’ll blog a lot in a couple of months but these last 5 weeks are going to be pretty intense as is and then there’s no internet in the orphanage. Crazyyyyyy