Christmastime

Dear Universe,

I don't mean to be unpleasant, but I would like to demand a refund on three countries, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England. (And probably Wales, too, for that matter.) There is simply to snow, none at all. Despite Liesl and my desires for a white Christmas, or at least a white day sometime while we're in this part of the world, the closest we've come is to actual snow is frost and a mildly frozen lake. It snowed in some places in the USA, which you may have noticed is considerably closer to the equator than here. I find this very unfair, and I would like a refund in one way or another please. Thank you.

Yours in sincere disappointment,

Stephanie

Hello Readers,

Happy Boxing Day!

...and Happy Christmas.

Boxing Day is one among many of the UK and Ireland's bank holidays, which means that lots of places are closed. Because of the union between church and state, everything is closed on Christmas, and Christmas Eve, and New Years for that matter. And I mean everything; the tube is closed, the buses stop running...you can't even get a flight within the country.

The last of our days in Ireland passed pleasantly enough, with the pinnacle of excitement being the day we spent hours outside playing with the ice that covered the top of the lake. Ah, the sheer joy holding breaking the glass-like surface the lake and pulling up a sheet of ice. The urge to lick the clear blocks of ice was irresistible--and resist it we didn't. I know it was gross lake water, but it just looked so clean frozen! And it tasted just fine. We tried so hard to stand on it, but it just wasn't quite thick enough, though it did get up to about two inches thick in some places. And just as it seemed that the lake might actually freeze enough to walk on--it would need to be at least three inches thick--it thawed. It was so cool though! We seriously spent hours playing with ice. We would break some off and throw it onto the lake. There were also little frozen puddles that were fun to step on.

One day we kayaked on the frozen lake, and that was awesome too. We had to thrust the paddles through the ice, cracking it, to move forwards. The shattered blocks of ice made clinking, musical sounds as we rowed through them. It was a little winter wonderland.

We had a Curry Night with our neighbors the night before we left, which was fun. The following morning, the 19th,  our hosts kindly drove us to the airport where we boarded a plane to London. I had very neatly written out all of the information that we might need to show to the officers at immigration--phone numbers, addresses, etc. We were sure that they would be suspicious of our reentering the country, what with our detainment and all.

When we got off the plane in London, we approached the desk for people with non-European passports, and produced our passports for the guy at the desk. He asked for our boarding passes, which we then produced, but he had no interest at all in looking at our passports. We were sure that we would have to go to some other place where we would need to show our passports, but strangely--amazingly--we didn't have to. An officer with a dog came up to us and asked where we had come from, Madrid? No, Ireland. She said okay and let us go on our way. That was it. No immigration, no waiting, no questioning, nothing. It was because we were coming from Ireland, which is so close we were later told. But when we got to Ireland from England in October we had to go through immigration, so we're not really sure why we didn't need to when doing the opposite. But hey, no complaints there! Well actually, just one: we were slightly put out at not being able to prove our newly-found organization and overall competence as travelers to immigration. Oh well.

Unfortunately, the Gatwick airport--though allegedly in London--is actually about thirty miles outside of London. We had to take an almost two hour bus ride--which, ridiculously, was longer than our flight--to get into central London, where we were staying with our friends Elena and Zoe in Harrow.

It is a testament to the absurd weight of our backpacks that, even now, nearly four months into our trip, I still crumble, physically and emotionally under the weight of my pack. And my sitting around phase in Ireland ending a long time ago. I was running and conditioning almost everyday, and I ran about six miles or so a couple of times, so this has nothing to do with my being in horrible shape or something. These backpacks are really and truly absolutely horrible. The best thing about them is that they inspire in us a sort of amusement at their ridiculousness, a humor that comes when you've passed the point of frustration and anger.

We've both decided that once we get back to the US we're going to sell our backpacks and maybe get some smaller ones. Personally I've grown to hate REI with their overrated, overpriced, mediocre-quality outdoor supplies. I guess it's mostly because of our stupid backpacks, but honestly, why on earth would anyone need a backpack that big? It's ridiculous. They should have suggested smaller ones for us, they should have known that no backpacker however experienced needs a pack that gigantic. Though we're not going to sell them right away--we're going to be sure to keep them around for long enough that anyone who questioned our decision to quit the Coast to Coast, and anyone that thinks I complain about the backpacks too much, can have a go at carrying one for a while. Fully packed, of course, as heavy as they have been for us.

Luckily though, we're giving some of our extra, unneeded stuff to the Oestreichers, whom we are currently living with in London, to take back to the States for us, so hopefully they'll be significantly lighter when we leave for India on the 3rd.

On the note of heavy things, Liesl and I went grocery shopping for all of us the day before the Oestreichers arrived. It was Christmas Eve, and the store was jam-packed The grocery store was only maybe half a mile away, but we ended up filling five bags with lots of heavy food and having to walk back carrying it. It sounds like not that big of a deal, but plastic really cuts off your circulation; it wasn't so much the weight, just the awkwardness of carrying grocery bags, though it was exacerbated by the weight. Also we'd just had to carry our packs around the day before. No rest for the weary I guess.

Once we'd set the groceries down at home--wherever we are currently living immediately becomes our new home--we went to Whole Foods. It is so, so fantastic to be in a vegetarian-friendly country again, after the cluelessness of Ireland. And Whole Foods is a wonderful, beautiful place. I must have applied for a job there (in San Diego) ten times by now. This one was small--not as small as most of the tiny health food stores here though--but it was still so nice to be in there. It smelled herbal, and had tons of wonderful healthy food. We walked around it for a while, taking in the loveliness, and then bought some things to make vegan cheesecake for Christmas dinner. This was seriously one of the best events of my week, and not at all because my week was boring; it wasn't boring at all.

It was nice to see our friends in Harrow again. They have this Christmas party on the tube every year, where a bunch of their friends get together and decorate a train car, and just generally spread Christmas cheer on the underground. We went to the party on Saturday, and it was really cool. It's was awesome seeing the usual normalnes of the subway turned upside-down by young people singing Christmas songs--different ones than we have in the US; Liesl and I weren't very familiar with them--and giving candy to fellow tube riders. The ride was really long, from one end of the northern line to the other and back again, and for some reason I've been getting a little motion sick on the tube lately, but it was a lot of fun.

London is a great place to be during Christmastime. While I feel that there could be more decorations around, there are quite a few, and people just generally seem very into Christmas here. It's proper to say "Merry Christmas" in shops here, I noted; in the USA "Happy Holidays" would be politically correct, though it's pretty clear that America is a heavily Christian country, and that it really doesn't respect any non-Christian holidays, such as, say, Hanukkah, which as far as I know is the only other major December holiday that one could be referring to when saying "Happy Holidays."

The house that we're staying at is in a beautiful part of London called Clapham. Clapham is the embodiment of classic modern London to me: the huge grassy, tree filled common, neat, row houses made of red bricks and wood painted white, elegant little shops lining the busy streets...it's just lovely, London, Clapham, England...I love it. I breathe a sigh of happiness every time I look out my fourth floor window at the perfect balance of buildings and nature coexisting in this city.

Yeah, the houses are four stories. That's quite a few stairs to climb! Our house is wonderful though, I like it a lot. We're basically borrowing someone's house while they're out of town.

I awoke at the unreasonable hour of 7 a.m. on Christmas, to the lovely sounds of rain falling on the house, and thunder rumbling. A Christmas storm. Well, if a white Christmas is out of the question, one can at least hope for a stormy Christmas. It's was very windy, and it lightninged (?) once. Liesl's family arrived around 9 a.m., once I'd fallen back asleep, and I went to let them in since Liesl--in her excitement to see them--accidentally closed the door, which locked, with the keys inside.

We had a present opening session by the Christmas tree, which was very nice. I got a bunch of nice stuff, including two books, which made me very happy, as I haven't really had a book to read in a while.We made Christmas dinner too, which was delicious. Christmas is just so wonderful, there's really no reason not to like it. Obviously the religious element has no appeal for me, but come on, a holiday where you get to give and receive a bunch of gifts? That's so awesome! Also, it just has such an absolutely wonderful mood, the Christmas season. It's full of joy, lights, decorations, food, good-smelling pine trees...what's not to love?


It's great seeing the Oestreichers, though it's kind of odd for Liesl and I being with people other than just each other, and seeing people in London that we only ever see in San Diego. But we're very excited to get to hang out with them for the next week, we're going to do a lot of fun things, including going to Wales tomorrow. The original purpose of that trip was to retrieve Liesl's guitar, but we're making a trip out of it, and we're borrowing someone's house that's right by the sea...it should be lovely.

I went for a run in the park today in the rain. My first run in London! Ah, I just love it here...I didn't mind a bit that the sounds of the city drowned out the sound of my music, it was just so good to be back in civilization, and in my favorite city.

Cheers!

Stephanie

Belfast

You never know when a certain day is going to be of particular significance in your life. September the 7th, 2011, was such a day for Liesl, and possibly more potently for yours truly.

It was the first day of our senior year of high school. We were driving in my mom's car, myself at the wheel and Liesl in the passenger seat, on the way to a Rancid concert in Anaheim. I'd seen them twice already, but this would be Liesl's first time.

While, technically speaking, Liesl and I knew each other fairly well, having gone to school together for five years at this point, we weren't particularly close friends. We were friendly, had a mutual interest in punk music, and I had a driver's license and car to use.

I remember specifically that we were driving through that long stretch of coast that is Camp Pendleton: ocean on the left, chaparral on the right. We hadn't yet come to that funny structure that looks like a giant golf ball when we entered into a conversation about plans for next year.

This was quickly becoming a depressing subject for me, having little to no aspirations in my life other than getting the hell out of that hell-hole under the innocuous name of high school. When Liesl asked what I was planning on doing next year, my heart sank, and I replied dejectedly that I had no idea. I may have mentioned some feeble hopes of having a job, and getting my own place, more for the sake of something to say than because of any real convictions I had about this. I knew that I was absolutely not going to college, but I didn't know what I was going to do.

I asked what her plans were, she began talking about how she was going to apply to some colleges that she was interested in, but that she really wanted to take a gap year before going to school. But she said that in order for her to get deferred enrollment, she would need to be doing something that a university would think was a good use of her time, like doing volunteer work, rather than just sitting around for a year.

She said that she wanted to travel abroad and volunteer. It would probably be way better to go with another person though, she said, rather than travelling alone. I asked about her best friend and our fellow classmate Emily, and Liesl said that Emily couldn't abandon dance for that long, and even if she wanted to do that, as her friend, Liesl wouldn't let her throw all of her hard work away.

On sudden inspiration it seemed, Liesl said that maybe we could go together, since she wanted a travel partner and I didn't have any plans. That sounded good to me, and I accepted right away; it sounded a lot better than freaking out about potentially having a dead-end life, plus travelling would be fun, and Liesl and I got on well.

So there you have it. That was the inception of our trip. What followed was a totally sick Rancid concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim, which was, funnily enough, basically part of Disneyland. It was in Downtown Disney I think, outside the park. Odd place for a punk show, eh?.

Fast forward one year, two months, twenty-one days and 5,157 miles to Mandela Hall, Belfast, on the 28th of November, 2012, where our trip came full circle.

Liesl had spiked my hair with some expert backcombing and three rounds of hair spray for the show. Little did I realize that not only would I not be washing the hair spray out of my hair for four more days, but that I would actually be adding more every day up until that point. (We had again forgotten to brings towels on this small trip, just like in Dublin).

This was our first experience seeing an American band--a band from California, actually--in a foreign country. It was a great show, and one of the two vocalist/guitarists, Tim Armstrong, had an awesome beard that immediately reminded Liesl and I of Mark's beard. (We think that we may be developing a sort of telepathy).

It was odd, I thought to myself, hearing the crowd singing along to songs--such as one of my personal favorites, Journey to the End of the East Bay--with lyrics paying homage to places that most of them had probably never been before. I've been to the San Francisco Bay area recently, so I had some firsthand conception of what the East Bay was like. It was sort of a backwards experience, actually, because I'm used to listening to songs by British bands that mention places I've never been. Well, actually I've been to London now, which is a common reference.

Liesl was really excited because she found two hats during a show. However, neither of us can really wear hats...

...So we didn't keep them.

We spent most of our time in the city walking around and shopping. Belfast is nice city, and like Dublin, it was decorated for Christmas. We'd written down a list of things to do in the city but it was left at home, and somehow we just sort of edged away from doing the prescribed tourist things. I guess after travelling for a while you just kind of get tired of the famous this, and the renowned that. We just wanted to be in a city, with people, and lots of Christmas decorations and walk around. So that's what we did.

We did see Queens University though--the concert venue was an extension of it I think--and it was lovely. It looked sort of similar to Parliament in London. We also took a quick spin through the Ulster museum, seeing an Egyptian mummy that still had hair.

Look, it's Liesl next to a mural of the characters of The Big Lebowski!:

I got some CDs, and both of us got Christmas sweaters, thought we were severely disappointed to find that ugly/tacky/overly-Christmasy sweaters, ties, and boxers are not a thing here. It was appalling, really, coming from a place where thrift stores put up large signs to advertise their ugly Christmas sweaters. But we both found more subtle Christmas sweaters that we liked:

Our plans for staying with someone in Belfast for free had fallen through not far from the last minute, so we ended up staying in a hostel. Again. Our hostel, Paddy's Palace, had very mixed reviews when we checked it out online, but it was cheap, and we're both on a tight budget, so we stayed there. It was definitely sketchy. One of the two front doors had a strange, tape covered handle in the middle of it on the back side, and all of the bathrooms had broken doors, locks, or toilets. It was also just about as cold in the common areas as it was outside, and it was freezing outside. When we left, we asked for some tape to close a box of rice that we'd bought, and they couldn't find tape, so they put a couple of bandaids on it. That should give you a feel for the place. But the beds were comfortable, and it was in a decent location.

The bus rides to get from Athboy to Belfast and back were very long. I noticed, looking out the window of the bus to Dublin, where we would get a connection to Belfast, that this country has an astounding number of low, grey stone walls. Really, they're everywhere. I think they generally divide fields. These definitely contribute to the ancient vibe this country gives off. Maybe some of these walls are modern, but I tend to associate them with, say, Medieval times, or earlier.

I had my three year vegan anniversary during this short trip to Northern Ireland, and we'd tried to go to a vegan restaurant but it didn't exist. It was the only vegetarian restaurant in Belfast too, so that was a fail. Ireland is beautiful, but I have to say, I'm very excited to go back to England where vegetarians are not alien beings. We're hoping that Christmas ties and Christmas boxers might be more common there as well.

The night after we got back from our trip, we found out that there was a sort of riot in Belfast, at city hall. The Union Flag--the flag of the whole United Kingdom--used to be hanging from the building 365 days a year. But a new measure was just passed that limited the number of days that this flag could be flown to only fifteen days per year. The Loyalists--those loyal to the Crown, also known as Protestants--were enraged by this decision, and forced entry into city hall. A few people were hurt, and there was some property damage. We saw a short news report of this, and it looked really intense. Both of us sort of wished that we were there for this; it's just such a novel thing to us, being in a country where these sort of riots aren't uncommon. I don't think that stuff really happens in the Republic though, just in the North.

So here we are, back at home in our flat. It rained last night, and all day yesterday. Something that Liesl and I have noticed is that people in this part of the world are constantly complaining about the weather, and emphasizing how much it rains. It honestly hasn't rained that much during our trip. Sure, more than it ever does in Southern California, but still not that much. It's usually just a drizzle, too. It actually rained for real yesterday. It even hailed a bit. It was evening, and Liesl looked up at the pitch black sky through our skylight--we have three; I guess they compensate for our other windows being near the floor--and said, "It's hailing!" There was a slight pause, then we both jumped up, grabbed our coats, hurriedly stepped into our shoes and dashed outside. It was so great, I love weather.

When we were in Belfast, we looked for Advent Calendars, but none of them had vegan chocolate. So I came up with an idea for an unconventional Advent Calendar. We wrote down one activity to do each day for the rest of our stay in Ireland, and we cut them into strips and put them in a mug. We draw one everyday, and execute whatever activity it says to do. We have: played hide and seek in the forest, had a picnic, hung out in the Big House, and procrastinated and doing gymnastics, since it was too wet outside. This is a great way to make December more fun. It's perfect, because you can tailor it to your life. Here, we don't have as many Christmas-related activities that we can do--sadly, both of the pianos in the Big House are broken, so we can't even have a Christmas song jam-a-thon, though we do listen to Christmas music pretty much everyday. However, we have a great facility to use, so most of our things are outdoorsy. Today Liesl and I will be: climbing a tree. Sweet.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Thanksgiving

Greetings,

Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances sometimes arise, and I was not able to blog about Thanksgiving as soon as I'd planned too, so I'm doing it now, a little after the fact.

Liesl and I had already invited John and Robin, our hosts and distant neighbors, and Jill and Martin, our across-the-courtyard neighbors, to Thanksgiving a while before we'd gone to Dublin. When we returned, we went shopping for ingredients, found the recipes that we needed, and cleaned and rearranged our house. We spent a few hours cooking on Thanksgiving, and it was actually kind of stressful, though I think this was exacerbated by the fact that our lives here are so strangely free of the stresses of everyday life. But, for the most part, everything worked out in the end.

I think that Thanksgiving is great. A holiday based on gratitude and food? Um, yes. Now I know that if we look at it historically we see a union between the settlers and the immigrants that seems laughably pathetic in lieu of the fact that the colonists soon proceeded to massacre Native Americans after this. I'm a little fuzzy on American history--I was bored to death by it during school, for the most part--but I do know for sure that at some point after Thanksgiving, the relationship between the settlers and the natives was distinctly less than harmonious. But anyway, it's still nice to have a holiday about thankfulness.

Everything we made was vegan, except one dish that was just vegetarian. We could see that our neighbors were a bit apprehensive about eating a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, but they sportingly tried our paradoxically unusual and traditional food. We had pumpkin pie, apple pie, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, etc.

It was interesting celebrating an American holiday in another country with people that are not Americans. Well, actually Robin is orginially from the US, and she's had Thanksgiving here before, but she wasn't planning on doing it this year.

This is all of us except for John, who is taking the picture.

The meal was very delicious and our guests seemed to enjoy it too. But possibly the highlight of Thanksgiving for Liesl and I was the social aspect. Our neighbors are very nice, and it was so thoroughly enjoyable just to converse with other human beings. Martin told us of some very interesting and bizarre pagan celebrations that take place in various small towns in England, most of which seemed to be of unknown origin and which included dressing up in strange attire and spending most of the day dancing.

We primarily ate Thanksgiving leftovers for the next few days.

One morning, shortly after Thanksgiving, I awoke and went out into our living room and glanced out the window. Everything was covered in white. Amazed, I looked more closely to see that it was actually frost and not snow. However, this was still very exciting for me, so I quickly went outside to check it out.

Everything was coated in frost. The grass crunched under my shoes, and I left distinct green tracks across the lawns.

 On a sudden inspiration, I trudged over to the side of the lake to find that the body of water was in fact, somewhat frozen. Sheets of ice covered it, making it look white in the places where it was thickest. I'm not sure if the whole thing had ice on it or not, but sadly, it definitely would have held the weight of a person.

There are two swans that live in the lake. Have I mentioned that before?

Per my recommendation, Liesl went out to look at the frost when she woke up as well. She found some puddles that were frozen, where you could break off a chunk of ice and throw it onto a larger frozen puddle and watch it shatter spectacularly.

From this point on--and actually long before this for me--we have wanted it to snow here, and the lake to freeze properly, with a burning passion. Unfortunately, it normally doesn't snow here or in England until January, so in all likeliness we will miss out on the snow. Which makes me very, very upset. I hope that England has snow in April.

This brings us to an important point, an announcement really, which is that Liesl will be returning to the US in April, and I will be continuing on to England for the months of April and May. My friend Melody may join me in May. The reasons for Liesl's early departure are mostly financial, though she is also excited to go back to San Diego and see her friends and family sooner than May. India is the part of this trip that she is most excited about, so she'll be leaving right after our stay in India. I'm actually kind of excited to have a short solo trip, I think it'll be fun.

Also, thanks to Mark, Liesl not only has her flight back to the US booked, but we both have a flight to London for December 19th and our India visas! It's going to be so exciting spending Christmas in London.

This is what many of the trees in Ireland look like without leaves.

Liesl thinks they look like lungs; they do, they look like the bronchioles. A very fitting metaphor for a tree, really, a lung. They do look animate, the trees. I think they look as though they were thrashing around like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter, but got frozen into place.

Up next: our recent trip to Belfast.

Cheers,

Stephanie