Feb 1st- Feb 6th

This entry is from my journal about two weeks ago. I am currently reading Samantha Power’s “ A Problem From Hell: America and Genocide.” I started with the elephants because honestly that was how far I read into the itinerary before I booked the trip.  Obsession may be too strong a word, consistently focused and passionate sounds more accurate to describe my views on elephants. My mother, on the other hand, is obsessed.

Everything about the Elephant Nature Park is inspiring: from its back-story to its tour guides, to its promise. The woman who started it, Lek, is a powerhouse of innovation, and is an example of a community based individual with foreign support that has created tangible positive change within her respective community. What can be a major challenge for organizations working in foreign countries is resistance from the communities, which is why it is important to integrate community members into the structure or even lead the organizations. Even the western elephant trainer struggles with xenophobia among the mahouts. (A mahout is generally a man who takes cares of an assigned elephant for the rest of its life, and many times the two create a meaningful relationship. Despite how incredible the job sounds, it is considered very lowly work, as a mahout basically stalks an elephant for fifty years.) I definitely have personal experience with xenophobia whether it was upon my arrival in Jamaica or as a “gringa” in Central America. What most people fear whether its skin tone, eye size, hair color, or language is simply the different.

The idea of difference and foreign becomes a pivotal determinant in genocide. When a country is tragically undergoing civil war genocide, its borders become impenetrable, its people become unidentifiable, its history unknown, and its culture unrecognizable to the outside world.  More people would condemn foreign acts of aggressiveness than internal acts of extreme violence. For example (and here I do not mean to be overly controversial) more Americans will identify and remember more strongly Pearl Harbor, because it was our sons and fathers that were killed by the Japanese. They won’t remember the Hutu massacre of Tutsis despite ten times more people dying. If a Hutu were to cut down a Tutsi and an American with a machete, they would both bleed the same color. But only one would spark the attention of “world’s greatest country”. Replace one Tutsi with 800,000 and the statement still stands.

The fear of difference is why a) its so easy to understand why genocide is capable of occurring within countries and b) why foreign nations are hesitant to involve themselves in other countries’ internal conflicts since they doubt they will understand or change anything. It’s weird to think that our cultural divides become so apparent in such grievous and consequential events, when there are McDonalds and Starbucks in every city globally. If Western culture has infiltrated and linked the globe to the extent that some people believe, and indeed to the extent that even here in rural Laos, hamburger and fries is proudly displayed on every restaurant’s menu then, if that were true, the Mahouts would happily accept the Montana trainer’s method of positive reinforcement. What makes the tradition of how they treat their “livestock” more worthy of preservation then people’s traditional dress or dish? How do we conduct target training with different cultures? Should we even try? Otherwise Elephants are left to be tortured into submission under the argument that its been practiced for thousands of years.

And then Lek comes along. She doesn't have much national support from Thailand. But I have met some among her staff who grew up in Thailand, with fathers who were mahouts and practiced the painful traditional “crush” upon their elephant’s, and knew something wasn't right. They followed Lek’s voice to the Elephant Nature Park. A voice that most importantly sounded familiar.

Change is difficult; foreigners trying to cause change seems virtually impossible, and yet I try to implement the Jamaica Library Project with students from Washington DC, which has produced tangible positive change.  If you create a group of people with the same strong belief all other differences fall to the wayside. Lek has been able to do that successfully, and therefore when I leave the Elephant Nature Park, I walk away with something that the victims of genocide were killed for and that is faith. 

I genuinely apologize for not having updated this blog in so long.  I have been very internally conflicted over what the purpose of this blog is. It has changed multiple times over the course of the year. The original intention was that the website would be set up as an investigative piece on global food. And then reality hit. During my first semester in Australia, I neither had the time nor money to afford a side business of investigating Australia’s food and farmers markets. I ate mainly fast food for my meals, if I ate at all, in order to experience as much as possible. My entire east coast trip was afforded at the cost of my diet. Some days I would wake up at 8, get to the call center by 9:30 and not get home until 10:00 that evening, with only having eaten lunch that day.

My time was fully booked. The deal was I had to pay for everything so I worked for everything while any hobbies fell by the wayside. Well almost any. I’ll admit my weekends for the first month and a half I was in a Sydney I spent mainly with my friends. I made an effort to see each close friend at least once a week (a part from the initial week in the program). Now let me put that in perspective for you. I neither worked nor lived with my four close friends. Trying to build meaningful relationships within five weeks is difficult. I remember rushing from one friends apartment to another, my feet sore and calloused from block after block- many times it would also be raining. They didn't eat well either, well apart from Sophie but she could cook. I struggled with boiling hot water. I don’t regret a single decision I made in Australia, I grew up so much. I went from living with my parents to living with girls in their late twenties and thirties, having a landlord, working full time, planning my own adventures, deciding what was worth paying for, advising people ten years older then me and honestly just keeping my head above water. I came home from Australia and basically slept for a week straight. In three months, there was not a single relaxed moment. There were no days off.  There were no opportunities I said no to. There was no time to go scour for farmers markets and interesting food stories, when I only ate a decent meal once a week.

And so the blog became my emotional outlet. At times frustrated by the time difference, exhausted from work and thoroughly stressed out about being independent for the first time in my life I turned to this blog as my sole companion and stress reliever.  I am a notoriously sporadically passionate person - meaning yes at times, unsurprisingly to many I can be melodramatic. And this came across in my writing. Some posts were thought through and spell checked. Others were written late at night after work through hungry, exhausted eyes, and that showed.  

So now what is this purpose? Well, hopefully, like my situation has, it’ll change. I am currently on a Pacific Discovery program for two months in Southeast Asia. We visit Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, highlighting each countries different culture, language, history and cuisine. Hopefully this blog will be focused on my personal views on what we are experiencing.  In Australia, I learned new aspects of my personality and of “real life” every day.  In contrast, this semester, I am learning new things about the world every day. 

Sydney

“Either write something down worth reading or do something worth writing down”- Australian proverb written on the black board of the café I am at

I have finally left Sydney. Despite being in Sydney for seven weeks, I feel as if most of my stay was simply preparing to travel the east coast. That’s what all backpackers do in Sydney. They prepare to leave it. Sydney for very few is the final destination. Everyone there only has a job to save money for travel. They only make friends to find travel companions. And they spend their hours talking about their plans. Almost all of my friends in Sydney were British. Which means I know more about the difference between a Northerner and Southerner in England, from their different accents to their different cultures then I do about the difference between any Australians.  I did have a couple Australian friends.  Notably the night receptionist at Wake Up, who after a night at Side Bar I would join in Wake Up hostel to fold pillows. A couple of my friends witnessed me folding pillows at 1 am and I specifically remember some screams, a couple of groans, probably Sophie going not again, and then they went back down to Side Bar. My other and most definitely closest Australian friend was Rhiannon, my colleague at Strike Force Sales. From working forty hours together for four weeks straight, she knows way more then either of us is probably comfortable with about my life. To be fair, she made the call center livable. Without her I would have drowned in a sea of cold calls, hang ups, and rude women (girls are always the worst to talk to on the phone). We got too many complaints about how giggly we were. I answered a couple calls laughing my head off. One of my favorite things that she did for me was after I booked my trip and was incredibly excited she made me write down everything I was excited for. So there on my desk was a post it note, covered in future plans. I don’t exactly understand how my boss missed that when I told him that I had to quit immediately to head home for a distant family member was gravely ill. But I had to go to Cairns first. Obviously. To be fair he forgot my name (a name he had mispronounced during my entire employment) when he was giving me my goodbye speech, so I don’t think he deserved the truth.

During my last few weeks in Sydney I tried to tick off as many things to do  as possible. Because Sophie had decided to kill herself with work, and Emily hadn’t returned yet, Beth was elected as my adventuring companion. We went to Manley, the Blue Mountains and a different beach every weekend together. Aleisha joined in on most things as well. I visited the night noodle markets, the glebe markets and the sculpture by the sea walk. Spent a day at Manley as well as at days at Coogee, Bronte, Tamarama and two days at Bondi. I visited all of the most talked about Nightclubs in the city including a Sash Session at Home Bar (an entire glass club located directly on Darling Harbor). Beth and I spent a night in the Blue Mountains. Which was possibly the strangest experience of my entire time in Sydney. After completing a four-hour hike during the day, we drank milkshakes, showered and went to the only pub in Katoomba. As we were sitting down about to eat our dinner, two drunken Australian guys sat down at our table. One of them demanding to be called Mr. Fuzzy. They had a lengthy conversation with themselves basically describing “real Australia” which as I recall involved a police station and a field of kangaroos. Beth and I escaped the drunken aussies to sit with a quiet group of French backpackers, who were staying in our room at the hostel. Only the guy spoke good English, but the two girls were still very sweet. A French gypsy band began to perform, and the lead singer flirted with one of the French girls throughout the entire performance. At about 10:30 the accordion player stalked off stage into the ladies bathroom, and the male singer followed her. Before long, there were screams and banging coming from the bathroom. Naturally half of the bar got up and went to watch the fight. About 15 minutes later the band rejoined, with the accordion player grumpily playing along looking extremely disheveled. At this point I decided it was late enough to call my parents.  As I am telling them about how incredible the Blue Mountains is and this strange night we are having my dad goes “Yes, aren’t they beautiful. When I visited the Blue Mountains about 20 years ago, I was reminded of my childhood in Jamaica as they are just covered in eucalyptus tress and my parents had such a tough time growing those trees. It was quite funny actually”

I have never felt so inadequate so quickly.  Despite traveling half way around the world at eighteen years old to hike mountains in the Australian countryside, my dad had still managed to one up me. 

For my last night in Sydney, I went around and said goodbye to most of my friends. Once again saying goodbye to Emily and Rob was very hard. Since they got back on Tuesday we had been joined a the hip again. It was like a tease. Remember how well you guys get along? Well sucks because you are leaving again. They and Beth came to Janine and Andrews’s with me on the Friday before I left for dinner. Never have I been so happy. I was eating great food, surrounded by great people in a great city. It was perfect. I said goodbye to Heather, who I definitely did not see enough of in Sydney.  So we made plans to meet up in Tasmania on December 4th.  I lastly said goodbye to Beth and Aleisha. Which was especially tough because I don’t know when I will get to see them again.  Then Sophie messaged, as she doesn’t have a phone, and told me to get to her place ASAP as she had a surprise for me. Enticed and curious I followed her down to the Ives Steps. Our spot we had discovered about three weeks before. The Ives Steps is a small boat dock located directly under the harbor bridge. If you sit on the edge of it you can see the entire Sydney harbor from Luna Park to the Opera House. Out of Sophie’s backpack came a champagne bottle, two champagne glasses, strawberries, a fuzzy picnic blanket and Godiva chocolates.  I cannot explain how perfect it was. I could not have dreamed of a better way to spend my last night in Sydney. We laid down on the dock, drinking champagne staring at the emblem of the foreign city we were discovering listening to Taylor Swift and looking for giant bats. When the bottle was finished, we tore out a page of Sophie’s journal, and wrote a message for someone to find. It was mainly about traveling and leaving, a passion every backpacker in this city shares. It encouraged the reader to leave Sydney. It encouraged me too.  I left Sophie in Sydney, not sad or homesick or anxious but undeniably grateful, happy and excited.

The Journey:

So this is the current plan. I have just arrived in Cairns and cannot check in until one, which is why I have the time to write this blog post. I am supposed to see Val and Emilie sometime soon, but they are very hard to get in contact with so I don’t know when that will happen or if it will.  They are supposed to come traveling with me as well but I don’t know if that’s happening either.  So it’s Tuesday the 11th and I have just arrived in Cairns at a very hippie hostel, relying off of maybe three to four hours of sleep. 

November 15th-October 16th: Magnetic Island

November 17th: Go to Airlie Beach

November 18th-20th: Atlantic Clipper

November 20th-21st: Airlie Beach

November 22nd: Overnight Bus

November 23rd-24th: 1770

November 25th: Noosa

November 26th-29th: Fraser Island

November 30th- December 4th: Brisbane

December 4th: Fly to Tasmania and meet my Dad

My mom wants to come traveling and meet me maybe in Noosa and I would love her to do that.  Hopefully it will work out. 

The Spider was smaller then a fingernail. But it was hanging from the roof, and with a pair of boots I smashed it. I remember that instance of murder so clearly because it was the same day I got an apartment. And yet, I felt more accomplished when I had killed the spider. Because for the moment that my two boots hung right outside the spider, I was completely in control. I was brave, facing one of my biggest fears, and there was no one else around who could help me. The day I got an apartment, the ATM messed up and I lost some money (don't worry it was eventually recovered, thanks to the confused Chinese cashier who due to my yelling permitted me to make three international calls from his phone((I take that back, permit is not the right word, he never really had a choice in the matter))). I also spent an hour with the landlord going back and forth on whether I should actually go through with it or not. I woke my parents up at 4am American time to engage them in a proper discussion about it. But I did end up getting the apartment. With no minimum stay, a lagoon pool, fast wifi, a huge tv, and only one British girl to share a room with it was my best option. To be fair it probably still is. Despite the fact that in the past two weeks I have slept more at my friends' houses then at "home". An apartment can logistically make sense, it can be the best deal in town but that doesn't necessarily make it home. I find it ironic that my friends now house me on a regular basis, considering in DC the Green-Williams hostel was a busy business. I found a job two days after finding the apartment. I turned down three jobs before I took the one at the call center. I just finished my first week. Its hell. I am a telemarketer and that annoys me just as much as I annoy the people on the other end of the headset. But my coworkers are hysterical and the pay is good. We have decided that rather then calling and trying to be amicable we should call and soon as people answer scream at the top of our lungs "HOLOCENTRIC-HOLOCENTRIC-HOLOCENTRIC-HOLOCENTRIC", and then abruptly hang up. Doing that a couple times a week I figure the customer  will finally get curious and look up what the hell it is. It was that or blackmailing people into buying wine. We may or may not be desperate. I lost out on two waitressing jobs. I am not ashamed to admit it considering Serafine taught me how to hold three plates the day before my first trial shift. I overheard the words "Rookie" and "pathologically stressing customers out" coming from my not so potential bosses. So yeah I work 9-5 at Strike Forces Sales (funnily enough abbreviated to SFS). And every single week is a roller-coaster ride. Saturday can be the best day of my life before I find out on Sunday I have lost my credit card (don't worry I found it again). Janine and Andrew, the family in Bronte, are my life savers. I go over and sleep at theirs once a week. Janine makes homemade pizza twice or three times a week so its pretty much a no brainer.  My favorite memory of her is two Saturdays ago where me, her and her ten year old extremely hyper daughter sat on the couch eating home made ice cream, while she drank red wine watching Scandal and Dance Moms for six hours straight. Pausing ever so often to explain, to Hendrix, the daughter, why exactly the President in Scandal was allowed to have a girlfriend as well as a wife. 
Thank you so much to all the girls who housed me this week. I know I hog covers. Sophie thinks the only reason people could potentially think I am weird was that when I was out on Friday night and lost my friend whose house I was planning to sleep at, rather then go for the obvious option of taking a cab home, I devised a complicated plan on how exactly I was going to sleep on the street without getting assaulted. I.e. which train station I would go to, the type of homeless person I would be physically closest to, and the right time for me to leave my future new cove. Not because I spill my life out on the internet for a bunch of random people to read and potentially judge me on. If Bill Bryson can do it on paper, I claim the cloud. 
On Sunday I came home to moldy bread, bad milk and extremely exhausted. 
So yeah, its so strange. honest. everything is. We are all homesick, broke, dying to party, and constantly curious. 
I wanted to write this post because I knew some people would be waiting for it, Sophie needs new material for story time, Michael and Matthew (The Irish lads) are waiting to be named, and my mother is probably peeing herself with happiness. 
I am about to help my Brazilian 35 year old roommate write her resume. Because thats my life now. 

I don't really know when to start. Is today my second day or my fourth? Technically I have been traveling since Monday, September 15th, however the program I am on only started yesterday. 
On Monday September 15th, my dad woke me up at 6:30. I had barely been able to sleep and had a cramp in my neck. We shuffled around the house a mixture of urgency and sadness. My brother awkwardly hugged me a good twenty minutes before I left right above the stairs. And then proceeded to spend the rest of the time asking my parents why he had to walk the dog at this ungodly hour, and why both of them HAD to drop me off at the airport. A classic display of Wyatt's emotional insensitivity and blissful ignorance of emotionally charged moments. I remember the last thing I said to Buffalo, as she sat by the door, begging to go for a walk. "Don't look at me like that, Wyatt's the one who has to take care of you."  Now it seems possibly the most depressing statement that escaped my lips that morning. We climbed into two different cars. I drove with my Dad. We generally talked about logistics, and how beautiful DC looked in the morning. No mention of the foreboding tearing apart of my life  that was right around the corner. We checked in at AA and sat at the Starbucks. My favorite Starbucks in the entire DC area, simply because its been my sanctuary before long journeys so many times. I begged them to continue waiting until the last possible moment. My last moments with my parents were light hearted and absolutely hysterical. Those last few minutes summarize my view on my parents. They were loving, caring, clearly worried but didn't want me to know it and cracked jokes the entire time. If I could sit at the Starbucks table with them for the rest of my life, just talking, I would be just fine. We said goodbye and as I walked though security, I silently began to sob. Embarrassed I buried my head into sleeve, constantly waving back at them. Refusing to let go. I waited at the gate, missing my best friends with ferocious fire that tore through my chest. I got on the plane at a window seat. And my mom called. Now due to the architecture of National Airport, if you stand outside of security you can look down through the windows at all the planes lined up. My parents stood by the window waving the entire time. I quickly located them, directed by my mother of the phone. It was incredibly heart-wrenching. They were simply waving at a window unable to make out my face. I was waving back at them knowing they couldn't see me but praying that they could feel it. And So thats how I took of for my journey, looking insane to my fellow passengers, waving outside an airplane window at the two most important people in my life, feeling utterly and completely loved. Probably a metaphor for my whole life or something.