{we shall not cease from exploration}

Merry almost Christmas!

Done with school (or more accurately, done with exams) for three and a half wonderful weeks. I have a stack of books, a list of movies, a mental file-folder full of recipes to try, miles of running routes, and a sunny house filled with family. This is going to be a quiet break, which is exactly what I need—nothing as exotic as last year (seriously, who goes to Hawaii for Christmas with their best friends?)

About three-quarters of my bucket list involves travel. Hiking Kilimanjaro, seeing the Northern Lights, yachting off Capri, hiking to Macchu Picchu (actually, come to think of it, most of my bucket list also involves hiking…hmm).

 

I speculate that this stems from a pre-emptive strike against my fear that I will end up living in the suburbs for the rest of my life and never get to see what else is on this pale blue dot we call home.

I started this blog at the beginning of the summer because even with a full-time job, I had more free time than ever before. The name “A Life Explored” was more wishful than anything. I didn’t feel like I was doing a whole lot of exploration. Everything in my life was familiar, and not that exciting. That was a concept especially hard to swallow when my original plan for the summer had been to go to Japan, to learn about and explore a place entirely different from what I knew. And granted, it ended up better than expected—I reconnected with old friends and found little pockets of happiness that lightened the tone of the whole summer back into positive territory. But that summer has ended, and now a new chapter of life is on the horizon.

Well, 2012 is already looking up to be a more geographical kind of exploration-based year. On the docket (so far): Honduras, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Sweden. Three separate trips I’m equal parts excited and thankful for. And I’m determined that this isn’t going to become ‘that year in college when I traveled’, but the beginning of a lifetime of travel, of exploring creation, of living my life to the fullest out of gratitude for the fact that I did not do anything to deserve or earn this life but was given it, out of God’s grace.

Here’s to adventure. Here’s to exploration. Here’s to life.

Now let's get off the Internet and go live it.  

up in the air

A word on airports.

I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I’m kind of like an airport anthropologist, constantly people watching and analyzing ‘air world’ culture. Not as exciting as it sounds though. In the last year I’ve clocked sixteen separate flights on the Chicago-Atlanta route alone. So while I’m fairly well-traveled, I often spend most of my time “traveling” sitting in terminal E12 of O’Hare International.

Airports fall into a pretty definite dichotomy. There are the airports with energy, and then there are the other airports. Airports with energy, that je ne se quoi of excitement and the promise of world travel, are awesome. Businessmen striding purposefully off to make multi-million dollar deals and bragging about their frequent flyer miles, people from every country walking around, dramatic send-offs for loved ones. Great for people-watching and for the feeling that at any moment your life could change: you could swap out your boring domestic ticket for Berlin, Paris, Shanghai or Sydney. You could sit down on the plane and your seatmate could be a media mogul, an actor, an international jetsetter. This has a lot to do with what kind of city its in. LA, New York, London all have it. The Dallas and Atlanta airports, surprisingly enough, have it. Major train stations in Europe have it. That feeling that you are somewhere where things are happening.

But then there are all the other airports. They mainly do domestic routes. They are filled with families with small children, people going to routine business meetings and people from the suburbs going to visit their relatives in Ohio. The airport is lackluster. You sit down next to a mid-level businessman from a small company somewhere in the flyover states. It is utterly predictable and utterly devoid of anything interesting after about the fourth time you fly. This only gets worse if, like me, you end up in the same gate of the same airport two out of three times.

Also, the show Pan-Am has been ruined for me. Don’t get me wrong, its entertaining and I’m kind of hooked but after growing up with my dad in the industry I can’t really romanticize being a flight attendant.

The upside is, I rock those airports. Spending that much time anywhere, you start to figure out how things work. 

{savannah}

Back from the weekend, still recovering from the absolutely insane heat 'n' humidity and mosquito bites. It was worth it though. Two days with two of my favorites in a beautiful little Southern town.

Agenda for Saturday:

Drive to Savannah (this involves mostly sleeping in the backseat on my part)

Walk around the squares, take way too many pictures, get heatstroke (not actually).

Me & Emilia (photo by Emily)
Have lunch, which consisted of the best fried green tomato sandwiches ever, at B. Matthews. That might sound odd if you've never lived in the South, but it's actually really good. Take my word for it.

Go to Tybee Beach. This was kind of a shock to all of us, we've been spoiled by uncrowded beaches. Our solution to the issue of loud people playing football all over the beach was to lie down in the shallow part of the tide and sleep. 

Dinner was at Jazz'd, a blues-jazz live music tapas bar. Definitely a good call. The band there that night played blues (they played Ain't No Sunshine!) and the restaurant had a really fun atmosophere. And the food was amazing. Proscuitto wrapped asparagus, chorizo empanadas, stuffed mushrooms, southern crab cakes, hummus, tapas lasagna, leek fritattas, and a black bean soup for my vegetarian Emilia.

{food photos credits to emily}

Strolling around City Market at night, getting matching necklaces because we're still fifth graders at heart, running into people from high school randomly, hotel sleepover with so. many. pillows.

Sunday Agenda:

Up early morning the next day to go tourist it up at Ft. Pulaski and the wildlife reserve (which is where the bulk of the mosquito tragedies happened).

Lunch at a burger joint with a menu more complex than NASA shuttle manuals.

Shopping and walking through Broughton St. 

And the absolute coolest store in the world: The Paris Market. 

Anything vintage, Parisian, or both can be found here. Its partly an antiques store, but not everything is ridiculously expensive. They play forties music and wrap up your purchases like presents. 

{photo creds to Emily}

Basically, this is want my house to look like. I could live in here. And I exercised a lot of self control by not buying lots of fabulous things. Just these. 

They had a trunk-ful of "vintage jewelry grab-bags". Just a little bag full of odds and ends of antique jewelry. So obviously I got one.
Also, a map of Paris. Kate, Mary, hopefully you like this since its going on our wall next year. 
After that, I picked up some pralines as souvenirs for the family back home and headed off. 

So, if you find yourself in Savannah, enjoy the restaurants and quiet streets, brace yourself for the humidity, try some sweet tea, and take lots of pictures.

Listening to (partially inspired by The Paris Market):

Quelqu'un M'a Dit--Carla Bruni

Le Temps Perdu--Carla Bruni

Ain't No Sunshine--Bill Withers

I'll Be Seeing You--Billie Holiday

santa barbara

words cannot express how much i love santa barbara. in my mind, it is the perfect town. it even has perfect weather. and its a beach town curled up beneath the mountains, a town where the beach is always empty. when we were little, my grandpa told us that east beach's secret name was 'money beach'. we would go out  really early in the morning since that's when wreckage and treasure from ships would wash up. surprised but glad that no one else seemed to know about this magical stretch of real estate, we ran through the waves, picking up quarters that must have just rolled in. Years later, of course, we realized it was my grandpa throwing coins into the wind ahead of us, but that beach still feels magic to me. I feel completely at peace. Diving into the ice cold waves, I feel like I could spend forever here.

Listening to: my "California Dreamin'" playlist, of course!
California--Phantom Planet
California Girls--Beach Boys
California English--Vampire Weekend
Earthquakes & Sharks--Brandtson
Surfin' USA--Beach Boys
Dani California--Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Beach--All Time Low
Californication--Red Hot Chili Peppers
Mansard Roof--Vampire Weekend
Catch a Wave--Beach Boys
Miss California--Jack's Mannequin
California Dreamin' --Mamas and the Papas
Good Vibrations--Beach Boys

la granja/la playa

First off, getting to South Dakota is not easy. Delta doesn’t fly there directly, and the Mississippi river floods surround the nearby airports. Figure about a day each way for travel. We went up to visit my grandma, who moved to the small (even by Dakota standards) town of Vermillion. As usual, it was a tiring trip. My grandma had lots of projects for us to work on when we got there. And when I say ‘when we got there’, I mean she gave us jobs when we finally got in at midnight (a couple touristy detours are to blame). But I think she was happy we were there and that was the point anyhow. And spending the fourth in the heartland is always fun.

Fourth fireworks

Yankton Dam

prairie dog

The World's Only Corn palace

 

Our farm

My little brother's a farmer

And then the travel day from hell started. I’ve had longer flights, longer drives, worse airport experiences, but something about this day just whacked me over the head. We left Vermillion at eight AM, drove through a still-flooded Iowa to get to the Omaha airport (if there is a more depressing place than the Omaha airport on a cloudy day…), barely made our flight since it had changed gates and we were now on an RJ (read: tiny plane that can’t handle turbulence), and flew two hours to Salt Lake City. This at least was a pleasant change. You fly straight into the mountains, the airport is full of windows and funky restaurants, and all the people seem healthy and happy, like they mountain biked there or something. But the altitude gives me a pressure headache. So already sick, I flew another ninety minutes to LAX and by the time we finally landed I couldn’t even hear I was so stuffed up.

Normally, I hateee LAX. And LA, really. You get off the plane and immediately feel like a schmuck compared to all the beautiful, perfectly maintained people and boring compared to all the oddballs. You are very aware of your plane hair and unstylish outfit and berate yourself for wearing glasses. Today, however, the entire terminal was under construction. We walked off the plane amidst guys on scaffolding hammering and drilling—definitely a work zone. I’m still not convinced the pilot didn’t drop us off at the wrong gate. So add that slightly more surreal arrival, factor in the climate shock and trying to locate our luggage and you have my state of mind. And then we shuttled to the rental car place and drove three hours up to Santa Barbara.

Yeah, this is in fact why more people don’t try and combine the west coast and the Midwest in their travel itineraries.

Anyhow. Onto my favorite town on the planet.

{chicago}

Back from Chicago! (after perhaps the worst string of flight delays EVER occurring in a two day time period). But my actual time there was great. We only had one day, so we jam packed it. Our big plan was to hit up the East 57th Street bookstores near the University of Chicago in the morning (My friend's an English major and I'm a nerd, so that would have actually been super fun for us). 

However, what we didn't know was that there is no public transportation that drops you off at U of C. You would think the several thousand undergrads would warrant a Metra stop. Oh no. We wander out into the middle of South Chicago, which even at ten in the morning is probably the sketchiest place I've ever been. Six blocks in we chickened out and, fearful for our wallets and safety, hightailed it back to the mag mile. When we checked the map at the El station, we realized we were about eighteen blocks of gang-infested back alleys (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it was bad) away from anywhere we wanted to be. 

We decided to just focus on our other fun plans. Mainly, the Taste of Chicago festival. 

Hundreds of booths from great city restaurants spread out over Grant Park; you buy some of these little guys:

and go to town. Kate & I decided to split everything so we could try more. And did we try more.

ravioli, deep dish, potstickers, tamales & sweet potatoes galore.
After which we hung around Chicago (very carefully NOT taking the El this time), shopped in nearby Naperville, got dinner (although HOW we possibly ate again astounds me), went to Bridesmaids (even better the second time), crashed a dinner party, went to church and brunch the next morning and then it was time to head back. All in all, a very short but very worth it weekend.

Listening to: "Chicago", by Sufjan Stevens (it seemed appropriate).