Why I make Greg get the mail every day

In my family we are firmly holding on to the tradition of letter writing. Even if we talk on the phone every single day, my mom will still write me a letter telling me about the swallows that are nesting in the barn and scaring the living daylights out of her.

I use this specific example because my sisters and I still laugh about the few months when we all received recurring, concerned letters from our mom detailing all activity of the nesting birds on our property.

Here are some funny excerpts from letters from my mother dearest. Do not be fooled. She is also writes lots of life advice letters and for my entire first semester at BYU she sent me the Science section from the New York Times every Tuesday, but these made me smile while I consolidated my keepsake box a couple days ago..

29 September 2009
“I’m happy you are going on this trip! Do It NOW (i.e. before you have children)
...but they are waiting in the wings for you… and so am I!!!”
then, same letter, but 5 weeks later:
11 November 2009
“So I occasionally lose letters that I’ve started... I took the bus today! My contribution to being green!”

8 March 2009
“I am just glad that you turned out to be a decent human being”

16 October 2008
“Chocolate and I are friends form way back- especially dark chocolate with nuts and coconut. Aye-yai-yai! Heaven baby.”

14 July 2008
(on postcard of S. Padre Island in Texas)
“can you see I marked an ‘X’ where you got your famous sunburn?? We went to Mexico. Our entourage was 8!”

20 October 2007
“Did I tell you about the erosion from Hurricane Dolly and Ike? The outdoor showers are gone! I’m afraid there won’t be any room to launch sailboats! Still beautiful though. The Pelicans were funny.
Love, mama
(this was the whole postcard)

She is so funny. It’s hard for me to be away from my mom all the time, but her letters definitely fill in her blank

Love to you in CT mama

driveway moment

I sat in my garage today during lunch break while listened to this great conversation on a new book about Mark Twain.

He was so fascinating! Listen to learn how he decided on his pen (not Penn state!) name, his political activism, and how he left this world with a bang:)

Here's the link to the audio and interview re-cap.

I'll just add it to my reading list.

the happiest place on earth

We had been home for 3 days. We were sleepwalking from jet-lag.
And then the holiday festivities began.

I am titling this post in my brain:
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

My mother-in-law Debbie is one of a kind amazing. Really, she is.

When December comes and everyone is cookie-baking, and Christmas caroling, and holiday-cheering, Debbie is double whatever you’re doing and her Christmas spirit puts us all to shame. Deb only gets her whole gang (17 people), every other year because of the married kids’ family schedules, so she wants us to have the biggest Christmas every year we are together. Biggest does not mean most presents. (sometimes it does) It really means most fun. Fun-filled to be exact.

She has a 25 foot Christmas tree, and an ever growing Christmas village. She has passed her Christmas love to all of her children so that we are all putting trees up in early November, and picking gift-giving names out of a hat in early October. Walt, my father-in-law is also as Jolly and Christmas-giddy as they come and he makes us all laugh at ourselves around the dinner table while it is still early fall and we are planning out the holiday. I love being part of the Schwarz Christmas extravaganza.


We sleep over on Christmas eve and open Pajamas. We read the nativity story together and start getting excited by laying out the makeshift beds on the floor (girls) and last minute wrapping (boys). On Christmas morning I am in love and baby hungry watching my cute nieces and nephews talk about Santa. This year crew told Greg he was on the naughty list☺ and all he’d get was coal! By the time we were winding down, we were sugar high from stocking stuffers and Deb told us to line up, single file, and march upstairs to see the Christmas surprise….


A few mickey snowglobes, Disney ornaments, and shrieking adults later, we found out we were leaving the next morning for Disneyland! Whoah.

Now for the photos of our Christmas in the Happiest place on earth.

sad day

I am listening to NPR and I hear that JD Salinger passed away today.

he was a hermit and I fell in love with his book, just like everyone does when i read it in 9th grade. I'm glad he made up this miserable, relatable character in 1951 for all of us to love.

Also, I learned on the radio that he lived in Cornish, NH while he was hiding out! Cornish is where we go every summer to the fair becuase it coincides with our family weekend in late august and I had no idea all this time! I told my mom this and she said, 'he was so close to us and we didn't even know it! If we would have known he was living there we could have brought over a pie from the fair!'

my thoughts exactly, mom.

links to the 2 posts I wrote about cornish and Booth family fun for an insiders look into storybookland, NH:)

better links about J.D.
washington post article
UK telegraph blurb about his reclusiveness..

blogging on the to-do list.

There is something about blogging that has me pooped out. I am a little tired of thinking that I have something hanging over my head when it comes to this online computer journal. which is really a highlight reel if we're all being honest with ourselves.

I am not taking a break. I am just giving family and friends a non-apology in regards to the fact that it is a hard thing for me to do so you may be hearing about our christmas in disneyland by the 4th of July.

AND. no one ever said I was made for this. there are reasons besides a one sided love of physical fitness that I decided to study about the body and science... not journalism, or persuasive writing.....or art history for that matter. which i really do love much more than the acid base chapter i had to read 17 times to finally understand.

the end.

cheers

I know we have already been home for about a year now, so I apologize for this post. I am aware that adding in one more travel post seems completely unnecessary and redundant for those of you who were not with us.

Blogging has to be chronological, right? I can’t just stop in March, (when I will inevitably be complaining about the number of college basketball games I have been watching), and say, ‘hey! What about Brisbane?!’

SO. In order to get on and through Christmas break:
We. Must. Do. This.


We are driving down what can be comparable to the California coast- just more tropical. And warmer. But still with lots of surfers.

We landed in Brisbane after the 19 hour bus ride I mentioned in the previous post-

We would be flying from here to go allthewayhome in 4 days and we enjoyed ourselves in this beautiful city only as one can during the last few days of a vacation.

We stayed in the ritzy Sofitel, Re-started exercising, and then ate enough to negate the new exercise regimen.

We explored the city- which was such a great place.




Brisbane lies on either side of a windy river with 5 beautiful traffic bridges that connect it, and 2 new pedestrian bridges for strolling and exercising. The entire city center has back entrances along the river for the taxi ferries to drop you along the boardwalk. It was clean, and really well kept up. There were parks and newly renovated condos, as well as a few pedestrian-only shopping streets. Throwing in that warm weather, country club style public pools, and safe, man-made public beaches for the school-aged kids to relax and have fun in-

...makes this a pretty cool city in my travelogue.

here's an arial shot of the city with its winding river-

found here

From Brisbane we took a boat over to one of their resort islands.

We sand-boarded

And snorkeled around these wrecked cargo ships:

We took a long walk on the beach,


and watched these pelicans eat their dinner.

We also talked to my parents who realized on the last day of our trip that our phones were available to accept phone calls☺

Brisbane was great. Our trip was great. I cannot say enough how grateful I am to have been able to go. …and the travel bug is still kicking inside of me.

until the next adventure...
We will now proceed to go on with our lives in the most responsible way we can manage.

Ho-hum.

fin

I wanted to finish. summarize. the last of our trip. for my benefit mostly, and so anyone whom I haven't spoken with yet didn't think I was lost at sea and then transferred straight to Christmas day by rescue chopper.

After The Whitsunday sailing adventure and SCUBA learning experience. (Which brought about a completely new and impressive respect/fear/awe of the ocean for me.)
We went on a crocodile safari,

And traveled to another island. Daydream Island.
Doesn’t that just say it all?

We did daydream.

Greg also almost got into a physical altercation here, too. (so unlike him!)
It was an argument with a meathead about the apparent questionable need for me to wear hard contact lenses.

oh the stresses of a swim-up, in-pool juice bar.

I read more books here. (5 more, to be exact.)

The resort had an open air movie theater where we got to watch Marley and Me and then cry because we missed Doc for the first time in 2 months

Cute boy


This island also has lots of wildlife. At dusk we snuck up on some wallabys that were feeding their joeys on the rocks

We found more at the back of the hotel


And greg found a lizard on the beach

There were also these stilt-legged birds who did not mind their own business.

Daydream was a real dream, and I am getting vacation-sick just writing about it.
That’s all I can remember….

Oh. And then we got on another bus.
For 19 hours.

sea monsters

This is what you will see if you are out of air under water and scuba diving with me.

I took my scuba training very seriously.
I will save your life.

We have been in and around the Whitsunday islands and the Great Barrier Reef for about nine days now. Initially we flew from New Caledonia to Northern Queensland, and bought Greyhound tickets to take down the East coast. The tickets are flexible, with allowable stops pretty much whenever or wherever, so extending our stay here was easy and worth it. Haven't you always heard of the Great Barrier Reef in school? Largest living organism, greenhouse gasses are killing it, etc. etc. I had no idea it would be so BIG. We were diving around it and through it, and the coral was stacked like mountain ranges. Yellows and reds and bright blue rocky mountains. Amazing. I am a scuba convert.

Here is our instructor, Simon

He was a scuba cowboy. smoking, drinking, and doing 9 dives a day. he basically broke every rule he tried so hard to make us memorize in our classroom time. Greg thinks he is sweet. I kind of thought he was a creeper, but he definitely scared me into paying attention.*

*Australia has the top 10 most venomous snakes in the world. You can also be eaten by sharks or crocs, attacked by dingoes killed by jellyfish (our biggest worry since it was their season), even stung by killer snails (yes, snails!) or the blue-ringed octopus. We were more, or I was more scared of the wild than I have ever been.... I read too many online travel journals?*

Of course Greg really did get stung by a jellyfish. We were completing our swim test after our first open water ocean dive. I was swimming ahead and turned around. Greg was seriously lagging behind the group and I thought he was being a wiener. (Compassion filled Bianca strikes again!) After he came up he said he felt like he had swam through a bunch of wet noodles and been stung all over his hand.

Brave Greg, soaking up the Vinegar. (not pee)

The Anaconda III, a 100 ft. giant boat with a captain named Baz carried us through the GBReef and Whitsunday Islands for 3 days. We stayed in a tiny cabin, went to eat by the call of a bell, and pretended we were Jack and Rose.


We also made some German friends

watched the sunset

went diving and diving again

Greg and the boys did the obligatory crew-sail-hoist.

(this was advertised in the brochure as 'help sail the great vessel!')

on Whitehaven beach

Greg's group night diving


More Anaconda



and us coming back into the marina..

we were sad to leave

far and away

I have never felt so far away from home as I did on Mare island. I was trying to explain, in French, that i'm from a place very close to New York City. The lady had never heard such a thing as New York City. I am still trying to get it- how Greg lived here and was completely immersed for 2 years. I am impressed. He's the man:)
(greg with missionary door frame to mark their areas)


New Caledonia in a week is hard to write about. But I am almost 2 weeks behind posting, and before you know it, i'll be home. So a condensed version ensues.

ooh, and if you're like me, and had never heard of New Caledonia until now when I'm telling you that Greg went there on a church mission; it's a French territory island- about a 3 hour flight from Sydney. It's large geographically, (7,000 miles) but there aren't many people. Its inhabitants are made up of a small number of relaxed (relatively) white French, who have money and live in the city and windsurf, and the larger population of indigenous Melanesians (kanaks). The number I got when I looked it up was about 30% and 50% respectively, with the remaining 20% made up of Tahitians and other Asian or Pacific Islander immigrants.

I do not have a good enough grasp on the word Kanak. The Melanesian people call themselves this, but it is also a sort of movement- to maintain their identity and not be a colonized people. Greg said that he wouldn't call someone a Kanak unless they were good friends, but Kanaky is a term of endearment in teasing and it is is also a type of reggae-style music on the island. I don't know. but I was in love with them.

Greg's parents were with us for the first 4 days..
We hecked out his old apartments
in Tontouta and in Ducos- a part of the capital city of Noumea...


























We went to look at the church buildings where he worked


























and we did some sightseeing around Noumea and on Phare Amedee



Our last night. Schwarz Boys in new shirts:)


After his parents rushed home, because thanksgiving was the very next day, (champs!) Greg and I went to visit some of his old friends.
The Teahu family took work off to decorate their grass hut.

Then they cooked us a huge lobster and steak dinner.
These people have such a different mentality- I mean I've heard about 'island time' and no worries and all of this, but they were giving giving giving like energizer bunnies and so happy without reliable electricity. On top of this, they were not the least bit worried that it had been a year and they were still waiting for the internet they paid for.


Visiting the Ozoux family



After the main island, we flew to Mare for a day and a night- one of New Caledonia's loyalty islands. Greg lived here for 5 months working in the coconut fields and helping out. He has a nasty scar on his knee from a machete accident here....

(I am gushing a little bit, I know. It's just that Greg has alwas described this place to me. And I never believed it would be that picturesque, or the people would be that wonderful, because memories like these usually get really twisted up with all the sentiment. But there were real, live, people who told me how much they loved my husband, before I even knew him. it makes me want to cry just thinking about how much he grew up here learning to shuck coconuts and do his laundry!)

Mare is beautiful

We were told to head to Pede beach- and we had it to ourselves to snorkel and see sea turtles..

At the far bank of the Saut du Guerrier (warrior's leap)

and eating lunch at the piscine naturelle


We also went to visit the Bearune family, and brought some food over. The grandmother, Meme, who is 80, ran away after we gave our gifts and came back 10 minutes later to give me one of her dresses
Here we are on Thanksgiving and my new dress.

Henriette- the woman that let Greg live in her shed/apartment and eat her cooking for 5 months while he was on the island

Greg and Wadra, Henriette's husband

me with the kiddes

Meme cut this coconut open for me to drink in the morning


signing out with the baby chapel on Mare

That's all for now. See you in about a week(!)

a land Down Under...

We went to Sydney, after a long flight from Thailand and were meeted and greeted by Greg's parents. They put us up in a swanky hotel and we had a fantastic time exploring the city.

City photos.
coming from the airport we took the Cityrail in

(i don't know why I love transit photos so much)

Greg and I with Captain Cook before the Sydney Harbor cruise

Sydney harbor bridge and opera house


Does this remind you of a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie?? Alyssa? Hannah? I'm sure I watched them at this park with you girls during a sleepover!?


We visited a great aquarium, and the Sydney wildlife preserve which had all the wildlife we were dying to see.

I have been super bummed that I let myself be talked out of flying to Alice Springs, a town in the middle of the outback to do some crazy camping adventure and see Uluru/Ayers rock. Australia is crazy big, Much bigger than I'd realized I guess? I'd bit off way more than I could chew, thinking I could see a chunk of the continent in 2 weeks. (me coming down from a travel fantasy is a common occurance. let's be honest.) So alas, my dream of being Nicole Kidman traveling with indigenous australians in an open top jeep safari whilst a pack of kangaroos escort us through the desert like dolphins to a cruise ship was not to be realized. I have also had to cross off a trip to Kakadu National park from the itinerary. oops

ANYWAY, here are the cutest things you'll ever see.
koalas

roos

and a cassowary. not cute. scary.

Walt said that maybe we should all move to Sydney!? It was beautiful, and clean, and super cool. Great shopping and sights. We took one of those hop-on-hop-off double deckers and saw the highlights. I know everyone knows this, but Australian English is like cute sneaky English where you know what everyone's saying and are admiring their accent but then, whoops! They'll slip a word in and you're confused.

Like, for example:
a boofhead means a fool or blockhead or something like it
a mozzie means a mosquito
they nickname places like Coolie for Coolangatta beach, brizzy for brisbane and Maggie for Magnetic Isnad.

Actual conversation:

salesman at Townsville Reef HQ (coral reef aquarium): So you guys can watch the feeding and then still have time tomorrow to come back over here after Maggie for the iMax.
me: Who's maggie?
man (ignores me): You know some people live in Townsville and they haven't ever even BEEN to maggie!!!
me: what? Who's maggie!?
man: MAGNETIC ISLAND. ALSO, I've BEEN to Salt Lake before and when I was there, there was a river flowing through the city! That place is at the end of the earth!
That was the end of the conversation, really.

ok, but I will tell you a couple more funny words that have confused me:

concession is not a drink or snack, it's a discount you get for being a student (another time i felt dumb)
pensioner is a retired person. they are eligible for concessions
you're alright or no worries is what they say for 'you're welcome' when you say thank you
how're you goin? is what they say when you come into their store. I thought I was being asked, continuously, where I was going.
and bathers and sunnies are bathing suits and sunglasses.

do you see how cute it is?!

We also went to Bondi beach.

i think a beach in a city makes a pretty cool city.

and we saw these cool cats at bondi
(it is their summer holiday right now!)


I don't know what else to say about Sydney.
Just like I don't know how to describe the differences between the cities I've seen because I think I am still at the stage where living in a big city with just me and greg seems like this romantic possibility dream and every single one of them is filled to the brim with living potentials that may never happen for us. This stage may be nearing it's end if I'm being realistic. It's strange how your life starts turning out before your eyes even if you aren't actively doing anything to make it turn out that way. So that's all I have to say about that.

I will end this monstrous post with Walt and deb in love with a Kangaroo:)

It was so great to see some family out here! Especially with Thanksgiving fast approaching. Thank you for an amazing stay, and a super fun week! We loved seeing you and can't wait for a couple more weeks 'til the christmas extravaganza in Alpine! xox