Feb 21 – Day Eleven – Happy birthday, Jenna!
It’s my sister’s birthday today! She’s celebrating in Seattle with our aunts and cousins. Family birthdays are something I always miss about living abroad. Everyone in the living room, discussing the dogs, eating Los Panchos or Zacharys (the only two food establishments my family truly needs), talking loudly over each other, Gma Jackie hitting the harmony at the tail end of “Happy Birthday.” And then eating Mom’s yellow cake with homemade chocolate frosting. And then reminiscing about all the cake disasters we’ve had over the years. Good times.
I haven’t been home for Jenna’s birthday in probably five or six years, since living abroad. But she was really there for me for the 30th birthday. I had just broken up with my boyfriend, who I had moved across the country for, and just driven back home, across the entire dang country (shout out to Seghs!) in a kind of depressed, shame-ridden, unemployed funk.
The only point of joy in my life was my mom’s dog, Kismet Oreo, who was the ball of fluff I needed to have a reason to get out of bed every day.
And I was about to turn 30.
Oh, joy.
I had thought, like most girls who spend the tail end of their twenties in a serious relationship, I’d be spending my thirtieth year, for some reason a huge number year, planning a wedding in a rustic barn in North Carolina, finding a perfect teaching job so I could quit the bartending I had taken up on the side, thinking about raising kids barefoot on a goat rescue farm.
Instead, I had moved back in with my parents and was trying to convince the dog that she liked going on walks. Because walking was the only thing I could do where my body wouldn’t let me cry at the same time. And I carved a footpath in the Iron Horse Trail those few months, walking and walking until the big part of me that was in pain figured out how to be smaller.
I sometimes get really depressed and weird around my birthday, and it was especially so around this birthday, and Jenna decided that instead of sitting around waiting for 30 to happen to me, we could take a trip.
So we went to Puerto Rico. Jenna found an amazing AirBnb, we rented a car, we explored, we tanned, we ate. On my birthday, she let me sit in the kiddie pool on the roof and kept bringing me margaritas all day and let me be a tiny bit of a wreck because she cares and I’ll never forget that trip. I think she let me watch like five episodes of “The X-Files” that day. MULDER! I LOVE YOU!
Love you Jen! Happy bday. Thanks for always being there.
Feb 22 – Day Twelve – How to friend
I joined this group called Girl Gone International when I first moved to HK, and it’s been a total Godsend to be in a community (and several very active Whatsapp groups) with like-minded women who have moved abroad, are away from family and the familiar, and are trying to make Hongkers home. We do happy hours, brunches, birthdays, and give and take great advice. It’s sweet. This week I went to a different kind of event – girl power embroidery and champagne free flow.
Yup.
We started with introductions, and I ended up having mutual friends with three of them, and quite a few were teachers. Then we got to sewing instruction. I felt the spirit of my Gma Susi smiling on me as I learned how to cross stitch super simple patterns. I felt like a rockstar. The bubbles were adding to the confidence, but as the night wore on, definitely not to my concentration. My piece still sits unfinished in a ziploc bag in my living room, but I’m excited about picking it up again soon.
During the introductions, although we were hailing from South Africa, Australia, England, Ireland, California (I don’t say I’m from the States anymore), and Chile, the common denominator at our table was a sense of being slightly overwhelmed in Hong Kong, but wanting to make friends, and glad we’d found the GGI group to help.
Making new friends in your thirties is just about as hard as dating. Where do you find new people? What do you talk about? How do you sustain the friendship when we work and travel as much as we do? How do you get people to answer text messages and commit to activities at a rate that makes you feel like you do have a genuine friendship?
When we were younger, we met people all the time with school and sports, family friends, activities, summer camps, etc. Now it requires much more of an effort.
I’m glad I’ve found others also willing to make it.
Feb 23 – Day 13 – First date jitters
Awhile back, I said I was done with the online dating. I had a pretty terrible experience, blogged about it, it ended up getting worse. A week after I had said no thank you to seeing more of him, there were some nasty text messages and it got a bit scary, so I took the blog down to try and end it. Being a female is hard.
I had started talking to another guy on Tinder. He was older, too, because the older ones are usually more likely to strike up a convo and keep it going to the point where you actually meet up. Younger guys (and my age guys) are there for hookups and the dopamine hit of being “liked” back, I think. The conversations rarely go further than “hey.”
But this guy and I had been chatting nonstop. He was sarcastic, had a lot to say, also in education, handsome, etc. This went on for two weeks and I had to be the one who said we should move it to Whatsapp. And then I had to ask if he was ever going to ask me out on a date. He eventually did, and we decided to meet up and go see a light installation I’ve been wanting to see, and I asked him to figure out the bar. He named a place, and when I told everyone I know that I finally had another first date and the place we were going, I was promptly informed that said bar had closed. Perhaps it was a bad omen I should have paid more attention to at the time. Alas.
So he found another place, a British pub, and we agreed to meet up on Friday.
For SIX DAYS I had the absolute nerviest of nerves. Because what if it’s amazing? What if this is the first date that ends all other first dates? Based on what I know about him, I have already plotted out the rest of our lives together.
What if this first actual meeting is a story we end up telling over and over for forever?
I actually googled “things to do on a first date” and “things to talk about on a first date” and “things NOT to talk about on a first date.” As if I have ever met a stranger or ever had problems talking to someone in my life. But when we play this whole dating game, especially in our thirties and living abroad and online so much, the point is, at least for me, to find THE ONE that will be there for the rest of this life. So I get nervous. I pace in front of my closet in a towel, texting my friends, trying to invent last minute excuses for canceling on a date. I can’t word. I giggle and sweat. I swear too much and say things I shouldn’t, share things I shouldn’t on a first date. Or any date.
The flipside of “Because what if it’s amazing?!” is “But what if it sucks?”
What if after texting nonstop for two weeks, we come to find out that there is no IRL (in real life) connection? No genuine spark?
What if, because we feel disappointed by that, and upset by that, but feel like we have to be nice about it all, we pretend that there is? And just go along with things for a while, perhaps too long, to the point where we realize that this is leading someone on, but by now it is too late?
What then?
What could happen that would be okay then, that doesn’t leave you feeling a bit sad, and upset with yourself, and the system and the world and the patriarchy and anything else handy to blame this on . . . and missing the texting conversations you’d had, while knowing it would be unkind to keep dating someone when you’re sure there is no future.
First dates are too hard. I can’t do this much longer. I just one want more. Please and thank you.
Feb 24 – Day 14 – happy bday month, gma susi
happy birthday month, gma susi. been thinking about you a lot lately. wish i could share these teaching adventures with you. you’d get such a kick out of the places i get to go and the people i get to meet. but, rest assured, kids are the same anywhere and everywhere. i give and get lots of hugs.
You died before i moved to north carolina. You died thinking i was running off to marry that boy at that time. We’d gotten to talk a little bit about my first four years of teaching, but nothing since. You dont know that i lived in brazil for three years! That i saw the most beautiful beaches and capybaras and antartica and monkeys crashed church service. You dont know about Carnaval, and wine country in Argentina, and salt cathedrals in Colombia, and that I can speak Portuguese now.
You dont know I moved to hong kong, and have been tramping all over asia now, and seen so many things. That im considered tall here, and delightfully fat to the point im pointed out of stores, and that i make constant blunders with asian culture.
I’ve seen japan, thailand, cambodia, vietnam, malaysia, the philippines, indonesia, korea, macau. Youd love it. I teach all English language learners! How much we’d have to talk about.
Sometimes when i think about you, when something like Ritz crackers, or the Oregon trail, or caffeine free diet coke, or sewing, or teaching first grade comes up, i can hear you talking, looking over the rim of your glasses at me, your big bottom lip sticking out, your painted nails clicking the pen as you worked on the crossword puzzle at the back of a “People” magazine, head shaking just slightly, hair thinning and curly on the top of your head.
“Now, Rachel . . . “ you’d always say to me. All your sentences started with “Now, Rachel . . . “
I’ve spent more time with primary teachers now, and I understand you better. How it’s not something you can turn off so much. I want to ask you questions, like: How to deal with crazy parents, and how to deal with administration that just doesn’t get it. I want to ask you how you celebrated the 100th day of school, how you found the energy to drive to Antioch and teach every day for so long, how you differentiated your learning, how you did it all without a learning assistant or computers or the internet.
How on the weekends you still puff-painted shirts for us and made jumpers and flower girl dresses and later sewed my prom dresses and costumes for “West Side Story” and “Grease.” My God. You were a wonder woman and I didn’t know it enough at the time and I’m sorry but I will say it now.
You are amazing. You’re still with me. As long as a “MRS/MS/MISS WEIGHT!!!!” still rings out in excitement every school day morning, you’re still with me.
I freaking love cheesy tourist things. I used to scoff at tourist traps; thinking I was so cool in my backpacking cheapskate ways, always winging it, hoping to find something local and have a more authentic experience. But when I try to do things on my own, especially when short on time, it ends up being so rushed or stressful that it would have been worth it to sign up for something on a flyer to make sure I didn’t miss a destination highlight.
So we signed up for the “Super Ultimate Combo Tour” of Coron’s highlights – an all-day local boat adventure that promised, like, everything. We rushed down to the docks, herded around with other travelers into smaller herds, walked onto boats in the harbor and then waited for them to fill. Like the buses, the boats in the Philippines often won’t leave until full enough to make the cost worth it. The Spanish girls wandered away to try and find items they should have had in the first place if they’d done any research at all (water shoes, sunscreen), the beautiful couple from Mauritius made out and looked beautiful, the wonderfully Asian family dressed in head-to-toe wetsuit onesies, which extended into watershoes, worried at their sunglass leashes and applied more sunscreen, and we all waited for the last couple, threatening physical harm for making us wait so long.
We went to six or seven different locations, all of them beautiful, with small swimming lagoons, huge schools of fish eating rice out of the palms of our hands, crystal clear water, the entire cast of Finding Nemo, one fish that bit me on the ankle (but in fairness I stepped on his house), coral gardens teeming with angel and rainbow and puffer and clown and needle fish. It was amazing. 
We spent the next day on the hot streets of Coron. We stopped and prayed in churches, wandering local back alleys with houses on stilts and small children negotiating bamboo floors over the ocean to walk into their houses for lunch during a break from schools. We giggled over sisters furiously brush their wet hair in the back of a tricycle cab on the way to school in the morning.
Back at our pretend resort (just because it’s in your name doesn’t mean you are a resort) we hit up poolside happy hour and I made besties with a fashion designer from Uruguay and tried to get some guys from Argentina to pay me some attention. It did not work. They were busy taking over the pool bar and throwing a mini rave with girls much younger and hotter than me. 
We ferried back to El Nido the next morning and stayed at a lovely place called Lido with enough sky to make me feel small again. Or at least a medium. I loved the reggae cover band who played “No Diggity” with the same passion they played some Bob Marley with a shout out for people suffering under martial law in effect in some places in the Philippines. 
Arriving at the hotel four hours later than promised, the sun had set and I was disappointed to not get some hours of tanning in. But we made the best of it – our hotel happened to be in this really cool spot with awesome restaurants, live music, and an arcade! We played darts (our fave thing) and basketball shootouts, which make my life. And had some of the best ribs I’ve ever tasted. And stared really hard at a table of men with what were clearly bored hired escorts. We got sent free drinks and listened to cheesy cover songs and some really drunk American slurred his way through a speech about how I was too young to know these people but he had hung out with (insert what he thinks were famous names) back in the day in San Francisco.
The trip was incredible in so many ways. I loved the snorkeling – something about being on a boat in the ocean and then swirling through the whooshy world of fish is so soul-filling. I loved hanging with my bestie and meeting crazy people and having a million things going wrong and finding ways to laugh about it. 
Where are you living? well for most of last year I was living in my condo in Rio with my new roommate, Racheal, whom I called “kale.” I had gotten an upgrade into a “big girl room,” which meant a double bed and my own bathroom attached. It was so liberating to walk around naked and to have sunlight that could reach my room. We had a great relationship – I cooked and she cleaned, and we were both loud and crazy liberals who believed in the power of a late night dance party and thought cream cheese on a cracker doused with hot sauce was an acceptable dinner. I spent a lot of time in my “offices” – the recliner and the hammock, watching the world burn in the election and the aftermath, nursing my fractured foot, exchanging texts and youtubes with Kale, just ten feet away in her bedroom. I walked to work, to church, to the beach, to the grocery store. Besides the part where I worked, and the epic cockroach battles, it was great.
Now I live with my mom, stepdad, and the two greatest dogs ever besides the other great dogs I have known. I have a nice walking trail, a great backyard, free room and board, and tons of family and friends close by. It’s good for my healing process. I am moving to Hong Kong at the end of July!
How many books did you read in the last year? Highlights? 44 books. After the election, I wanted to read a lot of political books that documented the lives of the Clintons; as they wrote it and as others did, too. I wanted to try and understand the lens that people were seeing them through. I learned a lot. Watched a lot of Youtube videos in the follow up – interviews and the like. I ended up feeling sorry for Hillary and loving her even more. Females are strong as hell. And I am feeling more strongly about my own feminism and wanting to reach out to others about misconceptions and privilege and what and who we need to affect actual and positive change not only in this country but in this world.
When and what was your last vacation? I should say Virginia, because I went to visit my family, but the weather was so terrible that it was a very indoors week! I had a great time anyway – I was mostly going to be with the people I was with, so it didn’t matter. So I guess my last true vacation was Yosemite. Which is literally a wonder of the world. It makes me cry to enter the gates and it makes me cry to leave. Please marry and bury me there.
An important relationship at the moment? Probably with my mom and my dogs. We’ve all really fell in love all over again these last few weeks. And my grandma – I think it can be really hard to spend a month straight with anyone under any circumstance, and to do it on a boat, traveling in crazy conditions, with a thousand strangers, is an even bigger test. And we still like each other and do puzzles every week. This is a good thing. 
Imagine the most rickety roller coaster ever. Now give it some drugs and Froot Loops. Now take away all it’s sense of direction and safety and suspension and brakes. Now I want you to imagine that the ride lasts 2.5 hours each way. And now I want you to imagine that you are riding it with a bickering family of three from Mexico, who can’t decide if they’re going to speak English or Spanish. But they can decide they are familiar enough with you to announce “it’s a good thing we’re all so thick here in the backseat, otherwise we’d be sliding all over the place!” as his wide hips slam against your child-bearing ones for the umpteenth time.
And yes, you are seated in the back. Next to the son, who is holding on to his mom, who is screaming for every minute of the 4×4 ride you are taking “ay! papi! ay! dios mio! ay! ay no! ay!” in a manner that is somehow amusing and yet painful and yet mostly painful. Son, meanwhile, is saying “I got you, Mami! I got you in a tight grip!” every three or four minutes, while Papi in the front films the whole thing on one of three devices, yells “SHUT UP ALREADY!” or laughs and says “oh shit, lady! you really know how to drive! show those assholes how it’s done!”* to our driver, a petite Brit named Naomi who wore a beret and exchanged several over the shoulder eye rolls with me as we puttered along the backroads swamp to see the penguins we were all so anxious to see.
‘Welcome to the Falkland Islands,’ the sign said. Although it’s also referred to as the Stanley Islands or the Malvinas, as three countries have been fighting claim to her for some time. I meant to read more about it before we went, I did, but I didn’t. I asked Gma why countries as civilized as the UK were still fighting over small spits of land thousands of miles away in the 20-whatever centuries. “Men,” she said, flatly. “It’s always men.”
Penguins are weird. We could see a lot just from our verandah – swimming away from the boat, waddling up the hills to tend to their young, perched on glaciers. The videos I have of them are hilarious and will be a week or so to come, but every time I get stressed about some element of this trip, carting my grandma all over God’s creation, I remember that I sat on the beach next to a penguin and talked to it about it’s day. I will have that for the rest of my life.
After the Falklands it was a straight sailing day to get to the mainland. Turns out I am not and will never be a sailor – the open water plays a massive mind game on me. Our captain announced it as “now we will have some adventures!” with the swells. I just looked out at the waves and felt them roll beneath me and literally had to stay in bed the entire time and watch ‘Downton Abbey’ to pretend I wasn’t scared to death. I alternate between wanting to stand on the forward bow and “I’m the King of the World!” it and worrying if my body will throw itself over the edge just for fun. This happens to me on car rides, tall buildings, etc. Is that stupid? I don’t know. But we room-serviced and Crawley family-ed it through a few sea days, finally landing in southern Argentina.
I’ve finished six books on this trip, and I’m pretty sure set the record for tea consumption and most consecutive games lost of solitaire. How much can one lose to one’s self? How many games until it’s really sad? Is this a metaphor for the greater picture of my life? It just makes me throw things, then laugh, then order more wine. Then I make my friends try and play a game with the same deck of cards so we can decide if it’s cursed or not. Or I make them learn how to play Arizona Golf with me. Now my diary has entries of games played from people all over the world and it makes me smile. Collect memories.
I celebrated Christmas off Chilean fjords, New Years Eve in Drakes passage (I think?) while singing Elton John harmonies at a piano bar.
What I loved about it was that people from all different times and places of my life came out of the woodwork to offer support or suggestions. People said they were delaying dinner, keeping the kids up past their bedtime, waiting for the next move like Beyonce was about to drop a new single. Meanwhile I was doing my best to stifle giggles, which only became more and more difficult after each glass of wine I ordered to give reason for staying at the table well past my meal (which they judged). Despite multiple requests, I just couldn’t be a person who would post photos of a holes on the internet and embarrass them. They deserved it, absolutely, but . . . .I don’t know. I’m not in charge of justice. Thank God. They’ll meet it when one of their perfect children marries a patriarchy smashing, multi-ethnic, bleeding heart liberal like me who refers to her family as a ‘tribe’ and raises all their grandchildren barefoot with names like “Courage” and “Fleetwood” and “Doorknob” or whatever phase I’m in at the time. (I do really like doors.)
I just hope that my conversations never sound like to an outsider. Surely there are so many wonderful things and people and experiences in this world to talk about, I would never have to judge the 
I also want to take this moment to apologize to all selfie-stick users I have ever teased. I TRIED to use mine and I couldn’t get the hang of it! It is harder than it looks. I abandoned it, but then pics are just my face and a blurry water background. Oh well. Perils of solo travel. I know I was there. On that note – please always offer to take pics of people you see traveling alone. It’s so hard to ask for some reason.
