I wanna go travelling!!

As Anne also mentioned in her post, Kate definitely picked this subject just to spite us, seeing as none of us cam actually go anywhere right now (not even for a mini-vacation). Anyways... (Just so you know, Katie, this is not compalaning! We love you and I really do like the subject for this week, even though my vacation stories are virtually non-existent.)

The thing with travelling is that I am a horrible traveller. Whether we go by car, by ship, by train or by plane, you can guarantee that (at some point or another) I will get sick. (The woes of a sensitive stomach - not going to analyse it, though, so don't worry!) I love going places and seeing new things, and I have recenty come to the realisation that my stomach is the reason we didn't really go to many places when I was a kid.

We had a big family vacation every year, sometimes in England, sometimes in Greece, but always in the same places, so it's not what you would call very exciting. The first time I went anywhere on my own was this last September, when I went to Rome with one of my friends for 5 days. I had been to Rome before on a school trip, but it just wasn't the same. We ended up having an amazing time and I am hoping that we will be able to go somewhere else together in the future (though not so far in the future)!

I just had a thought, though.... Maybe that doesn't count, as - technically - I wasn't a kid then.... Hmmm... 

Oh, well.... That really is all I can think of... (As you may remember from a previous post, I cannot remember much from my childhood... Sad but true.)

Now, I wanna go travelling again............... 

Let's go on a journey!

I swear Kate picked this week's topic just to spite me. It's been far too long since I've been on vacation, and she wants us to talk about our favorites. Not only will I be sad that I'm not there now, I'll be sad cause I need it so bad!

Anyway, rant out of the way, I have a hard time picking my favorite vacation. We were always traveling when I was a kid, anywhere and everywhere. We never really did recurring vacations anywhere unless it was to visit family. Even so, I loved it! As a kid, I earned the nickname "the go baby" because all you had to do was say "car" and I was headed to the door.

So for me, a favorite vacation is going somewhere new. I love to go somewhere and spend time learning about the local culture and the nearby important sites. It obviously helps if the landscape is beautiful as well, but considering I live in the flattest place in the entire United States, if not the world, that's not all that hard to do.

Following that theme, probably the favorite I've BEEN on was my two week tour of Europe. A friend and I went over our spring break while we were studying abroad in England and went to 6 different countries and 10 different cities in the space of something like 14 days. It was so amazing to visit all the places I'd only heard about in history books, as well as a few I'd only heard of in passing from other travelers. I have about 30 bajillion pictures, some of which I still haven't sorted through, and most of which I can only caption with "I... thought it looked pretty?" because I have NO CLUE what it was.

But, I guess, the important thing about favorite vacations, is that you never settle for what you've already done, at least not for me. I'm always looking for the next vacation. And seriously? It can't come soon enough!

A stupidly long list

One of my favorite quotes is 'Don't live for today, because then you'd be fucking crazy, but live your life like it's a story that you'd want to tell someone' (Philip DeFranco). I think this ought to be my motto because I have always been obsessed with living an interesting life and have been lusting after all of the things which I am about to list below. 


The following list has been compiled over the last few two years or so and has been edited many times since its origin. I'm only going to write the things I haven't done yet. 

• Swim in the Devil's Pool
• Climb Mount Kilimanjaro 
• Get high in Amsterdam
• Get drunk at Oktoberfest
• Meet a YouTuber (known for vlogging)
• Meet a celebrity
• Volunteer or work abroad
• Go to university
• Visit all 7 continents
• Really travel 
• Take a picture of the stars
• Get something published
• See the 7 wonders of the world
• Sail down the Nile in a felucca
• Visit Iguazu falls
• Hold a sloth 
• Road trip across America
• See the Northern Lights
• Spend Christmas and New Years in New York City
• Catch a firefly in an old jam jar
• Travel across a desert
• See a zoo animal in the wild
• Fill my travel diary (an old leather-bound thing filled with real parchment)
• Go to a sweet shop in Japan and try five random sweets
• Go to Loy Krathong in Thailand
• Swim in a lake
• Own a cat or dog for the entirety of its life
• Visit the fjords in Norway
• Take a picture of a skyline 
• Protest
• Write in The Elephant House
• Truly help somebody
• Watch the Superbowl as it should be watched

That is a long list.

On the weird concept of bucket lists

First of all, I must apologise for the lateness of this post (once again). I thought I wouldn't have pressing deadlines for while, but it all came to kick me in the butt... So, yeah... Uni is hard work, let me tell you.

Anyways, this week's topic is bucket lists. First time I ever heard of a bucket list was sometime last year when a little girl who has cancer made a blog about all the things she wants to do before she dies. And people started responding to it and helping all of her wishes come true. My first question, naturally, was "why do they call it a bucket list?". I didn't really care enough to find out and hadn't really thought about the whole concept until Kate chose it as our theme this week...

Which essentially means that I do not have a bucket list of my own. So, people, I will have to think of a few things just on the spot...

Taking a cue from Anne (and in the process, stealing some of her wishes) here are some things I would like to have/do sometime in my life:


1. Own my own house with a LOT of books in every single room! And definitely a study of-sorts, where I would have even more books!

2. Travel a lot! I live on an island in Greece and I haven't been to many other places in Greece, due to the fact that you always have that extra boat trip to the mainland (which is a bit of a pain). So, I'd like to go to other parts of Greece, to all the countries in Europe and I would definitely like to at least visit one place on every single continent! One place I really want to go to is Australia! It must be weird to have snowstorms in July and wear shorts at Christmas....

3. Have a job that I actually like doing. I don't fancy getting stuck in a tedious 9-5 job. Actually, I don't mind the 9-5... I just want it to be on something I actually like doing.

4. Go to a book signing. This one might strike you as weird, but foreign (non-Greek) authors don't really come to Greece (not counting Victoria Hislop). I don't want to have a conversation with the author (I'm rather shy and not very talkative), I just want to go to one of those meetings! They sound fun!

5. Since I've already met Kate in person (and hopefully will be seeing more of her in the not too distant future!), I really, really would like to meet Anne in person! But she is so, so far away..... Someday! I promise!


That's all I can think of right now. They're not really all that interesting, but then again, I've never given the matter much thought (if any)... I'm actually rather proud of myself for coming up with these 5!

Let's see what next week has in mind for us!

If I die before I wake...

ACK! It's 10:30 on a Monday and I haven't posted yet! Sorry in advance for the lateness, and shortness, of this post, but I have to get up early tomorrow so I really should already be in bed... (though in fairness, I do have a good excuse for not being with it this weekend =P)

Topic this week is from Kate, and she picked Bucket Lists. Unfortunately I've never done one, though I've always meant to. Yesterday, when I first saw the topic I thought I should just go ahead and make one up just for the post, since I wanted to anyway. Yeah, don't think that will be happening because it could take me hours. There is just so much that I want to do with my life. BUT! If I had a list it would include things like:

1) Set foot on each continent (current total 2) and each state (current total 24 + Wash D.C.) at least once.

2) Own a home/apartment with an entire room devoted to books/a library.

3) Live at least 1 year in a foreign country on my own (kind of already did this, but I don't really count it because I was still in school so they took care of things like a place to stay etc.)

4) Learn to at least read a language that uses a different alphabet than English.

5) Grow a plant without killing it.

6) Be a published author (either through research or fiction).

So yeah, that's my brief beginning of a bucket list. I'm sure I'll be adding to it, and one day, maybe I'll actually sit down and spend some real time thinking about it. For now though, that'll do.

Monday likes to travel!

It's hard to believe we've made it through a full round of posting! We've each assigned a topic and now it's back around to me, and I have assigned "Favorite Childhood Memory." I have a ton of memories to choose from, but one definitely sticks out from the rest.

When I was a kid, my family traveled a lot. I was pretty smart, so through elementary school my parents didn't feel too bad about pulling me out of school as long as I got the homework beforehand or something. I have many wonderful memories from spending a couple weeks in the Northeast (visiting Boston to Maine) or the Smoky Mountains, or, even once, a week and a half in Puerto Rico. We have a huge tent, and we would set up camp somewhere centrally located to a bunch of stuff for a couple of days (and pack those days to bursting with sightseeing) and then move on to a new location.

Probably my favorite trip, though, was a plain old camping trip. We went just to get away for a week or so, and we didn't go far - just to the other side of the border in Canada on the lake. I don't remember too much about most of the trip, but one night we decided to go and watch the sunset on the lake because we'd heard it was spectacular. There were a bunch of people already on the viewing dock, but we squeezed in next to this old guy (who, looking back, probably wasn't all that old) with a pair of binoculars. The sun set, in a gorgeous blaze of color, but what really stuck with me is what happened after. Just as the sun slipped beyond the horizon a figure rose up, exactly where the sun set. It was an ethereal purple-pink column, and to the 9 or 10 year old I was, it looked exactly like a ghost ship. I excitedly begged the gentleman next to me to let me borrow his binoculars. The figure held up under closer inspection - it even seemed to glow softly. I'm sure the rest of the people on the observation deck were just humoring me, but they all agreed that it must be a ghost ship.

I spent the better part of the next school year trying to write the story of that ship for my creative writing assignments, and telling anyone who would listen that I had seen a ghost ship. I was SO PROUD that I'd seen something so unusual.

Eventually I gave up telling people about it. Nobody ever believed me anyway. But I have to say, it's still my fondest memory of childhood.

Hello, I'm Monday!

First 5 are from Miss Friday, aka Kate:

1. Age, Sex, Location (ASL for all the old chat room frequenters out there)?
I am 22, Female, and I live in Ohio, USA (aka that big bit in the middle with lots of... grain? For all those of you not up on your US geography)

2. Where in the world would you most like to live?
Honestly? What I really need is a house with legs (or possibly thousands of balloons like in that movie Up) because I love to travel. Barring that, my top three are: Anywhere in the UK, Venice, and the Smoky Mountains - North Carolina area probably.

3. What is your New Years resolution?
This is a hard one. I never used to do New Year's resolutions, but then I did last year, and I actually kept it! So this year, I've kind of gone overboard on the resolutions for little things like what I should read, write, etc. But I guess the big one is get into a good graduate school.

4. When you're not blogging, what are you doing?
So many things! I work as a chocolatier, so I am often making chocolate, but I also like to read, watch movies, craft and cook. Oh, and I do research for fun. Yes, I am that crazy.

5. What are your favorite sounds, smells and feelings?
Again, difficult. I enjoy listening to movie soundtracks and lots of other types of music. Smells? I think I'll go with petrichor (Thank you Doctor Who for teaching me a word for it!). That perfect spring day just after it rained overnight with a slight breeze that smells like "FRESH." Also good food cooking. I'm particular to my mom's Mexican meat and Green Bean Casserole. Feelings? Oh you really felt like a pain today, didn't you Kate?! I'll have to go back to that perfect spring day, whatever you call that feeling. Peace is the closest I can get.


And the 5 for everyone:
1. Tea/Coffee/Chocolate: Tea
2. Indoors or Outdoors: Depends on my mood - mostly indoors looking at outdoors
3. Cats or Dogs: Cats, but dogs can be cute too, long as I don't have to take care of them!
4. Team Zombie or Team Unicorn: If forced to choose, Unicorn, but if not, I am fiercely TEAM DRAGON!
5. Hot or Cold: Cold - can always put on more layers!


Tune in on Wednesday for Phanee's answers to my questions!