Preparing For A Shock

Since my last post I have flown to Seattle, drove to Portland, drove to Skamania Lodge, back to Portland, and then finally back up to Seattle! At one point I had been in four states in a 48 hour period. Phew. I am enjoying pretty much doing nothing in Seattle with my sister and brother-in-law!

Last weekend I was at Skamania Lodge, which is a beautiful lodge on the Columbia River Gorge on the border of Washington and Oregon. My brother-in-law's family have a reunion there once a year and this was my first time going. Again, another beautiful place. Trees, the river, the lodge with all it's wooden features, sculptures and big stone fireplaces. It was a shame that the weather wasn't great. Rain, rain, a bit of sun, then some more rain. It didn't matter too much though. There was a lot to do inside like swimming, relaxing in the hot tub, going to the gym, and with 20 other people in your group, always someone to talk to or play board games with! We all spent a lot of time in the indoor pool; at one point we had pretty much taken it over with the majority of our party playing piggy in the middle and of course, having competitions like who can travel the furthest on a single breath. Why is it that when families get together, there is always some level of competition? Not that I mind of course! We all know how competitive I can get. We did introduce the newest member of the family to swimming. Now this cute 2 month old will surely be a great swimmer when she get's older. She was already kicking her little legs and blowing bubbles in her adorable pink swimsuit!

The first night we were there, after spending the afternoon in the pool, we all gorged ourselves at the dinner buffet. In fact, I am reluctant to use the word 'buffet'. It makes it sound like it was just one big table with cocktail sausages an potato salad. No, this does not describe it well enough. Perhaps the words 'culinary experience' would be more appropriate. There was everything you could possibly want from all kinds of hand carved meats, sushi, pastas, fresh fish, I could go on and on.  We won't even touch the dessert table. Buffet's are dangerous. Really, really dangerous. It is not often that you find yourself walking out thinking "I only had four plates worth, it could have been worse"! I'm glad we spent a lot of time in the pool and the gym! Oh my word the smoked salmon was to die for. Sunday brunch was the same type of thing, and my brother-in-law summed it up perfectly when, at the end of the meal, pushing his plate away, he said "You know you have overdone the buffet when you dunk your last piece of french toast into the creme brulee!" The following evening was thankfully just the average three course meal. This came after photo-shoot time outside with a whole array of different combinations of people; "Ok now the sisters, now the brother with mom, now grandma you jump in and mom you jump out, now just those with dark hair, smile! Now James Bond style". There was no professional photographer, just members of the family who had been coordinating this for the past ten years.

Another great activity that we took part in was the Bird's of Prey talk and exhibit. We saw the end of the show that took place just outside the lodge on the lawn, on the Friday evening, but when we came to watch it on the Saturday, it had been moved to inside the lobby which was a much more cozy setting. I have never been so close to a giant Bald Eagle who was happily decapitating a chick! The photos are of the same birds just on the Friday showing.

Came back to Seattle on the Sunday night and haven't done much since! Well, I got my nails done, something I have been wanting to do for ages after forcing myself to leave them alone. Now I feel all girly! The bro-in-law and I did check out the Experience Music Project which is this giant museum downtown where they have all these cool exhibits about Nirvana, the music in horror movies, and sound labs where you can play all these different instruments. You should have heard us rapping in the vocal booth! Actually, i'm glad you didn't. I'll stick to my piano. Speaking of which, that is one of the first things I am going to do when I get home on Thursday. I can't believe I only have a few days left. I love Seattle, and I love being with my family here, but now that I have left Santa Cruz and California, I feel like I am in a weird limbo. Everyone has been telling me how much of a shock it will be going back home and i'm not sure how to prepare for that. Coming back from a three week holiday to America get's me all confused with the cars on the other side of the road, and the money etc! It feels weird that I will be seeing my friends and family in just a few days, and this sounds strange, but I feel nervous about it! Oh of course I am excited too, I just know it will be strange to begin with. I think I am going to open with "LOOK AT MY TAN!" Or what is left of it...damn Seattle and the rain. It is starting to fade. Is it weird to take pictures of your own back as evidence? That may just get awkward.

I will leave you with both the notion that this is the last post that I will make while in America. I want to do another one when I am at home so I doubt this is the last! I am also mentally preparing myself for the epic journey from here to home, via Iceland of course.
 Finally, my bro-in-law and sus gafas de sol. Sadly he did not have them on while we were rapping.

A Bit of a Water Baby!

Leaving Santa Cruz was very hard to do. Packing was a long, annoying task, and there was a lot of stuff that I had to get rid of! How did I accumulate so much in such a short space of time?
Sunday was my friends graduation, so in between packing and cleaning, me and the roommate went down to watch her walk and receive her diploma. Afterwards, her parents invited me to join them and their friends and family for a celebration meal which I happily accepted! We had planned on packing up the car and driving to Sacramento to meet our two friends to go to Tahoe the next morning. Didn't quite work out! We ended up not leaving campus until around 11pm so we ended up staying at the motel that her parents were at and got up the next morning at 6.30am to drive to Sacramento!

We arrived at Lake Tahoe, on the North Shore which is close to the border of Nevada, at about 2pm, unpacked the car and the infinite supply of food (that would have fed eight people for seven days, not four people for three) into my friend's uncle's cabin and rushed to the lake. It was just so gorgeous, though a bit windy! We walked down a pier and put our feet in. Then promptly took them back out as the water was freezing. Like heart stopping freezing! we hung out on the dock for a while in the sun, getting sufficiently burnt, and then headed back to the cabin for a BBQ, smores, drinks, and Parchisi!  A lot of games were played this trip.

Tuesday morning we went swimming in the communal pool for all the cabins in that particular area. I just love the water. We spent a good hour or so there before heading back, eating again, and watching the England game that the lone guy on our trip desperately wanted to do, with a beer in hand. We decided to go for a bit of a hike up the Tahoe Rim Trail, however this epically failed as we were being dive bombed by mosquito's and I was being eaten alive. We decided it was because foreign blood is a delicacy in these parts! We ended up just walking through the cute little town and along the shore, which were thankfully mosquito free.

Wednesday was definitely the best day. Again, we got up and went swimming where two of us perfected our dives and trick routines with rubber rings, while playing 'Monkey in the Middle'. I tried arguing that it was 'Piggy in the Middle' but was laughed out of the pool. After lunch we went back down to the dock area and spent the next few hours jumping off of it and into the freezing water! It was pretty exhilarating, and after a while, our bodies were so numb that you didn't feel the cold so much. Luckily the water was completely calm and the weather was boiling hot. We took plenty of photos and videos of course. You should see the tan lines on my back; I have a proper razorback from all the time I have been spending in the water this year, and after a bit of burning on this trip, I am going to be even darker! I just hope it lasts for the next two weeks so I can show it off to people at home who believe I would never be anything more than paper white.

After we had sun-dried we travelled to Squaw Valley, the Olympic Village which was where the Winter Olympic were held in I believe 1960. Gorgeous place but expensive to live. We looked. We then went back into town and had some dinner at a place called Rosie's, and then we border hopped into Nevada! I can now cross another state off of my list! We went to a couple of casino's where my ID worked just fine (21 age limit and all that), and I was very proud of getting my 21 and over wrist band at the Hyatt Casino! A secutiry guy even came up to me and when he saw that I had already been carded said "Wow, you look so young", to which I replied, "Well thank you!". The great thing about these casino's is that you get free drinks all the time. They just come round while you are sitting at the slot machines or tables and ask what you want! This made up for the fact that I sucked badly at all the slot machines and lost all my money! One of my friends came our $2 richer than when he went in! Winning.

This trip to Lake Tahoe was such a great way of spending my last few days in California and with some of my friends that I have made here in America. I hadn't thought I would make such good friends with only being here for just less than a year. I am going to miss them a lot and I am very excited that one of them is spending the year in Berlin starting in August! I am currently sitting in Sacramento airport where they dropped me off on the way back for my flight to Seattle. I won't lie, my eyes were a bit watery! Though now that I am leaving California, and will be home in less than two weeks, I can really get excited about seeing my friends and family that I have missed so much! For now, onwards and literally upwards to Seattle, then tomorrow down to Skamania Lodge. More swimming, more lakes, more water. WATER BABY.

You Blink And You Miss It

Well, that is it. My time at UCSC has finished. I can't quite believe it actually. In some ways it has just flown by but at the same time I feel like I have been here forever.
My sister has been here since Wednesday which has kept me occupied and not thinking about the fact that I have to leave. But today she went home and when I got back to the apartment to start packing, a wave of melancholy hit me and I have been feeling down ever since! I love UCSC, I love Santa Cruz, I love California, I love America. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to see my friends and family, I have missed them so much and I wish I could have shared this experience with them. However, this year has just reinforced the feeling that I already had before I came here; I want to live here permanently! Now I need to get working on that! I'm not leaving America right away, I have about 3 weeks left so I am going to leave my year abroad epilogue till I actually leave...

Finals were over and done with by 11am on Monday, and I was at the beach with a friend not too long after that! It was gorgeous and sooo relaxing. Just what I needed after all the work that had just been done! In order to get a two day extension on my housing contract I had to do some volunteering on campus so Tuesday saw me picking through recycling bins with the 'Zero Waste' team. Mainly we just stood around in the sun and chatted!

On Wednesday my sister flew down from Seattle to spend a few days seeing the sights of Santa Cruz! It was a great excuse for me to do all the things that I loved one more time before I left. The first thing we did was stop at Burger and get food! Everything involves food I have found. After we gorged ourselves, we did a bit of a walking tour of campus, then went swimming where I was teaching her flip turns, surface dives, and showing off my butterfly (which turns into 'wounded waterbeetle,' as my coach calls it, after about 50 yds!). I have become a real waterbaby since being here and can't wait to get back into it when I am home. If anyone knows of a diving team, as in springboard, not scuba, let me know! That night, my sister got to re-live her undergrad days at the dining hall;)

Thursday I had my final physio appointment, and I got a t-shirt for 'graduating'! Again, going to miss that place and the people. I need to find a PT just like it. The rest of the day included walking on the wharf, checking out the sea lion pups, eating a ton of nuts from Nut Kreations, sushi at I Love Sushi, and a party over at the guys house where we played numerous rounds of flip cup, chandeliers, and then rock band!

Friday was the best day...another kayaking adventure in the Bay. Started the tour by nearly going headfirst into the ocean as I tried to get in. Embarrassing. The sea lions were very active and were leaping around all over the place which was a bit terrifying at times as I was fully prepared for them to leap onto the kayak! Lots of Sea Otters and their pups too:) So unbelievably cute. But then what baby animal isn't? It was a private tour and the woman who took us out was very nice, though when she told us she had three jobs, and we said "Oh but this must be your favourite", completely out of left field she said no, hre job at a sex shop was. Fair enough! Don't quite know how to respond when someone says that! The evening was spent at the beach, playing frisbee, building sand castles, taking photos, and watching the surfers do their thing.

This weekend is graduation weekend so there are a ton of people on campus! So Saturday morning we got up pretty early and headed down to the Arboretum before all the buses got too busy. Plenty of flowers, hummingbirds, lizards, and even a rabbit, kept us occupied for an hour or two, while we quickly fried to a crisp in the 90 degree weather! Air conditioned buses are the greatest invention ever. That, and ice water. My sister went back to Seattle that afternoon and I returned to campus to start the daunting task of trying to fit my life into two suitcases again. I have waaayyy too much stuff. I am holding a yard/garage sale in my bedroom as we speak.

It was a great final week at UCSC. God I am going to miss this place. But for now, onwards and literally upwards to Sacramento for a night on our way to a friends cabin in Lake Tahoe! Then to Seattle, then down to Skamania Lodge for a family reunion weekend with my bro-in-law's family, then back up to Seattle, then home! I'm glad I did the recycling session this week; I feel I need to give back to the environment as my carbon foot print is going to be pretty hefty.