Jenna has no idea

I have been wooed by Wordpress

2010-05-12T19:34:00.000+09:00

Hey everyone:

I have finally taken a good hard look at Wordpress, and have decided I like their customization options more than Blogger. Therefore, if you would like to continue to read my blog, please hop on over to its new address at http://jennahasnoidea.wordpress.com/

Have a good day,
Jenna

and not a drop to drink

2010-04-16T01:33:00.001+09:00

The ride up the west coast of New Zealand with my parents was definitely the best drive of my life in terms of sheer spectacular beauty. I don't know if anyone else has declared it so, but I'm pretty sure that New Zealand is the water capital of the world. Here's a video to prove my point:

that's just some of the waterfalls we saw in 2 minutes, on a more dry than wet day, within one small mountain range.

On one day, we saw glaciers, rainforest, rivers, and the ocean. My sense of space, of normalcy, of climate, was turned completely upside down. How could a rainforest be nestled next to a deep blue glacier? How could it feel like we were thousands of feet above sea level, up in the mountains near the clouds, and then turn a corner and see the ocean 20 metres away? I do believe I left my heart there, lodged somewhere between the Franz Joseph glacier and Hokitika. Given the redness of the water we kayaked in near Okarito, I think I'm not the first, as it was a rich and bloody hue the likes of which I have only seen previously attempted in Glacéau bottles. New Zealand water ranges from diamond pure to pigeon grey to azure to garnet, with all the medley in between. It was exquisite. If I had any foresight, I would have brought tiny glass jars and captured bits of water for memory's sake, but as I did nothing of the sort, I have only photos and words to remind me, which will have to be sufficient until I revisit the country. I do plan on going back, and doing so soon... It was far too quick a trip for me to absorb anything fully. Someday I will travel there for a year, exploring all that the woods have to offer, but for now, the brief trip will have to suffice.

Bruce Bay was a wonderful surprise... While driving, we noticed a lot of rubble up ahead, but as we got closer, it sorted itself into a place where hundreds (if not thousands) of people had come and left cairns and sculptures and words for the sea to someday recapture. The beach was a perfect fossiking location, having an extraordinary variety of sea smoothed rocks, from the purest white quartz to basalt grays with intricate lines drawn through, as well as driftwood and various shells. I scoured the ground for the right combination of rocks to describe & bind me to the land, and once I found them, stacked a cairn of my own. I left my motto scribbled on a piece of milky white stone, written in green sharpie, permanent only in theory: "Live Simply. Love Generously. Care Deeply. Speak Kindly". It seemed appropriate.

The cleverness and curse of New Zealand is that it is a tourist country. It relies wholeheartedly on tourism to exist in the level of affluence that it does. This means that every time you would love to see what's on the side of the road, there is a handy shoulder for you to pull off on, with a plaque telling you what you're looking at, but it also means that everything is expensive and someone is always trying to sell you something. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around.

I may have to keep on traveling at some point... Rumor has it that New Zealanders vacation in Peru, as it is an even more stunning country... I shall have to go and settle that argument one day.

After coming back, I briefly introduced my parents to the Central Coast and the Rhythm Hut. Interestingly enough, I didn't get nearly as much slack about my commune-hippie-musician lifestyle as I thought I would (although my mother did mention "career path", "Harvard Business School", and "financial security" multiple times within the days we spent together), and I enjoyed getting to show them around my neck of the woods. We even did all the touristy things in Sydney that I would never do on my own! It was a real pleasure being able to share some time with them (they hadn't seen me for 17 months), and I didn't realize how much I missed them until they were gone again.

The last thing I will post about, because it was just such an incredible experience, is a festival I attended called Confest. Located next to a muddy river 11 hours away in the middle of nowhere, it was the most amazing 5 days I have had since I left the USA. Confest (which is an amalgamation of "conference" and "festival") is an alternate living gathering, where people come to talk with each other and learn from one another. If you have something you want to share, you put it up on the workshop board, and teach whoever shows up. If you want to learn, you keep your eyes and ears open (or read the same board), and you're bound to find something interesting. I learned how to make pasta from scratch, and started learning some moves with a staff for Firespinning. There was a gypsy kitchen which we camped near: a communal place where you'd donate some food and walk in and cook whatever you could with whatever was there for as many people as you could. there was an art tent, with a bed in the middle, and you'd sit around and someone would come over and pose, and sit for you as you drew them. there was a massage tent with people willing to massage you for hours, and a sauna, and a mud bath, and unlimited firewater at night for spinners, and a drum circle at any hour of the day, and so much love and acceptance and joy in the air. Clothing was completely optional, along with the rest of societal expectations. Unlike most of my friends, I was completely sober for the whole thing, but still had the most brilliant time. If you ever go to Australia, I'd highly recommend it, and it happens twice a year, over New Years and Easter.

I met up with a friend of mine from Oberlin a few weeks ago, and she told me that I look younger and happier than I did when I started college in 2004. I believe her. I feel better than I ever remember feeling in my life. So cliché, but when you follow your dreams, and just go with what feels right, it's amazing what paths it can open and where your life can lead. I just feel so FREE all the time, so happy, so wonderfully me.

your moment of Zen this month comes from a group I cannot stop listening to:

Love: it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design,
An alignment to cry,
At my heart you see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be

Much love,
me

In which our protagonist has plenty of opportunities to shout obscenities.

2010-02-28T11:27:00.001+09:00

Warning: the following blog entry will be filled with unabashed exuberance. Those hating loquacious dialogue should skip this entry and read elsewhere.

you know you’re in the destination of all destinations when the Hawaiian next to you (who is 16 years older than you judged her to be, because she apparently stopped aging when she got to Maui) tells you she’s moving here because “it’s just so pretty!”

I have a confession: for the first 4 days of my time here in NZ, I was unimpressed. Everything was too stark, the mountains were barren, for a day I didn’t see much but sheep farms & grass, and while everything was pretty, it didn’t impress me much. Aoraki was gorgeous, but I’ve seen snow-capped mountains before in Colorado, with just as sweeping views and valleys (granted, never a glacier of that size with a glacial lake, but it didn’t stun me to silence, merely made me happy I was there). If anything, my father’s previous visit to this country 38 years before gave me overly high expectations: I was disappointed when we hiked to a glacial lake that hadn’t existed when he’d been here last (the glacier had receded a full kilometer in the spanning years), only seeing the effects of global warming in front of me instead of appreciating the fact that I still had some glacier to see. The silica-laced waters flowing into the lakes in the region were more blue than any I’d ever seen before, like the sky borrowed its color from the lakes, but that wasn’t meritous enough to travel to New Zealand for. Maybe it’s because we’re traveling in a caravan from holiday park to holiday park, but I felt that I was missing something in everyone’s gushing over how gorgeous New Zealand was, how everyone should visit it at least once in their lifetime. Is everyone seeing something that I’m not? I wondered. Am I just biased because I’ve seen so much magnificence in Australia?

Now, having experienced the west coast from Te Anau up to Milford, I’m dumbstruck.

New Zealand is obscenely beautiful. It made me angry how stunning it was on the ride up to Milford Sound; no place should have a right to be that breathtaking, because if there’s the law that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, then it’s not such a stretch to imagine that there must be an equal and opposite place for every location on earth, and somewhere on the planet it is downright grotesque, hideous, unimaginably wretched, because Milford is hoarding all this beauty. I told you not to come to Australia; stay the hell away from New Zealand. I feel like an overprotective father must feel with a gorgeous daughter; I want to stand at the front porch of the airport while oiling my shotgun and tell all the tourists who come in to keep their grubby mitts off, I know what they’re thinking and it just won’t happen, buddy, we’re not going to let the lot of you move in here, you gotta be home in 3 months. And (lest I need to remind anyone) I don’t even live here, so that’s a pretty bizarre emotion to be dealing with. New Zealand may have made me slightly crazy (or maybe I’ve just been traveling with my parents too long already). I don’t want to see anything else in the world; I’m done, there’s no up from here, I’ve seen perfection and I’m content if I never step another foot towards a new destination because nothing can possibly beat this. I plan on coming back in a year or two so I can walk on the Milford Trek, and when I die, I want my ashes spread here, because if there’s any off chance I’d haunt my burial ground, the sheer beauty here would put my soul at ease, and if it didn’t, I’d be haunting paradise.

Granted, I did get to see everything on two of the most perfect days in the whole year. In the area, it rains 2 out of every 3 days, and yet somehow we managed to go out on two spectacularly sunny days with nary a cloud in the sky. It was the third to last day of summer, and just cold enough that the sand flies weren’t out to suck our blood, but I still went swimming in Anita Bay, jumping off the second floor of the overnight cruise ship we’d booked with Real Journeys, which was just high enough that you got to shout a few expletives at your stupidity for jumping off something so high before you hit the water. Going back to the anchor point that night, we raced with bottlenosed dolphins, who no doubt were quite amused at our meager attempts to follow their movements with cameras. After a competitive game of scrabble with two women who had just gotten off of six months of work on Antarctica, I looked out over the water at the moon’s faint glow behind one of the cliffs, and wondered over how lucky I was to be here and alive and intelligent enough to appreciate it all. Down past the hull of the ship blinked phosphorescent squid, and you could hear sea lions gently whuff out as they surfaced in the blackness. In the morning, we saw sea lions and got close to a waterfall that I've only ever seen in movies and music videos. It was, quite frankly, astonishing. I was radiant for a good 15 hours flat.

I found out that I am not a tourbus person. The drives between Te Anau and Milford were far too exquisite for the brief moments the bus let us out to take photos. I wanted to explore the moss laden forest, to sweat in the crisp air and look around the river bend and absorb the area around me… in places, cliffs loomed austerely above us for thousands of feet, dwarfing us and the road below and making me wonder what kind of man sees a place like this and decides there needs to be a means for mankind to easily explore it. I am a nature freak, and going into the woods for me is often like visiting a cathedral; I settle into my self, feel more in touch with my core being, and aware of the things around me and my connection to life. These woods were the St Petersburg of forest, my mecca, my Jerusalem, my Borobudur, my Taj Mahal, my wonder of the world. The light streaming through the branches was more hallowed than any stained glass could ever hope to emulate; the sapphire river below was far more unsullied than any holy water.

The night before the cruise we went to see the Glowworm Caves of Te Anau, which were breathtaking… in pitch blackness gleamed thousands of points of green light, each one a glowworm larvae attempting to catch dinner. You wanted to explore Pandora, in Avatar? Well tough, the planet doesn’t exist, but I swear, this part of New Zealand is the next best thing.

Just when my life couldn’t get any more exciting and laden with adventure… I went skydiving this morning, 15,000 feet above the ground (actually 16,200 feet above sea level, which makes it the 2nd highest dive in the world) launched into the abyss of the sky coasting at terminal velocity for a full minute before gently gliding down to earth. I had a dream about it three days prior, in which I went through the whole training, and jumped, full with an instructor telling me to "scream up!". the real deal wasn't exactly like my dream, but it was pretty close... over just as i was getting comfortable with the whole affair, a stunning view of Queenstown and the surrounding mountains and rivers stretching out below. We passed through clouds at speeds so quick my cheeks flapped in the wind like towels out on the line. The scariest part was the jump itself; it was also the part least in my control, as I was harnessed to my jumpmaster, completely at his mercy on whether or not we'd go anywhere and when. For those of you who will ever come to New Zealand, the NZone jump that I completed with my father is the second highest jump in the world (they do one at Everest as well, but that's an additional 15,500 dollars).

Last entry’s MoZ was lyrics from “Heaven’s Here on Earth”, sung by Tracy Chapman. Your Moment of Zen today is a slideshow of all the photos I didn’t show you in this entry, because I didn’t want to overwhelm you. There will also be youtube videos when I have a quicker connection.

End of tour, why I have the best friends, and new horizons

2010-02-09T23:40:00.002+09:00

Don't come to Australia. Australia will make you lose your tongue, exterminate your vocabulary, long for the days when you could call something "beautiful" and it would be enough. I've over-used magnificent, enthralling, verdant, spectacular, breathtaking, wonderful, gorgeous, thrilling, heartwrenching, etc, and I must come up with something new, some new language to describe the utter perfection of the world around me. I feel utterly inadequate in my ability to describe this continent, yet i continue to strive to do so, grasping futilely at wisps of language to capture the life in front of me. Australia is terribly, achingly, painfully beautiful, in a way that wrenches out my heart and leaves nothing but aspirations to perfection, to the idea that there is nothing wrong inside or outside me. I don't understand how such excruciating beauty can be met with anything but peace and love and the idea that everything is as it should be. Don't come to Australia. I want it all to myself.

Tasmania was inspiring. We went on a canopy walk through woods owned by Forestry Tasmania... 45 meters up and there were still trees taller than us! While parts were decidedly overgrown and were in obvious need of a controlled burn to stop a worse fire in the future, as a whole the experience and place felt slightly magical. The river that ran through the woods was a deep red from the tannins that run into it from the peat in the area, and so the river looked bloody, and from a distance above the trees, like some scaled, pulsating sea creature was slowly undulating upstream. There were ferns that were larger than Robert Wadlow's armspan towering above us, and I fully expected a brontosaurus to poke its head around a frond and watch us travel through its territory. Everything felt slightly surreal.

The next day, we went out on the Hume river, to try our hand at fishing and to see Tasmania from a different perspective. It was a sparkling sunny day, and I took this video:

just to give you a feeling of what I was looking at. That movie doesn't capture the seals we saw enjoying themselves, swimming around with their flippers out of the water, watching us idly as we sailed by. We fished, and once again, I was able to assert myself as hunter, although I wouldn't have been able to support a family, as my two fish were rather small. No salmon for us that night!

Leaving Tasmania the next day wasn't something I wanted to do... We stayed the night in a Hostel, exploring the local flavor (my god, the Germans are EVERYWHERE!) wandered a bit around Hobart, and wound up at the Botanical Gardens, which were wonderfully peaceful and well labeled.

But enough about Paradise. Melbourne was great, we had two nearly sold out shows, and then it was back home to Gosford! I was rather excited about coming back, getting ready for a new term of drumming, getting my body and mind back into developing my technique (much better to practice than perform at this point, as I'm still learning so much!), and getting back into my routine. A day after we got back, I turned 24. For my birthday, I was told to show up in the middle of Sydney and wear something pretty. I did, and my friends showed up and blindfolded me, then walked me down the street as I teetered around on my stilettos, laughing as they forgot to tell me when we were going downhill or uphill, and generally making mayhem. I'm sure other people thought we were freaks, or that I was being kidnapped, but I was having a great time of trusting that everything was going to be brilliant and that they wouldn't let me fall on my face. After a while, we entered a building (I could hear the sounds change), and then suddenly, I hear an announcement about getting seated because the show was about to start, they whip off the blindfold, and... They'd taken me to see Warriors of Brazil, a Capoeria/Samba Spectacle! We were actually sitting in the producer seats, best in the house, because the theatre had sold out of everything else, and it was a crazy wonderful performance, full of dance and movement and CAPOEIRA and music and drumming and story and song. What a great surprise! It was a thoroughly enjoyable night, even moreso because I could appreciate the effort that goes into a performing tour a bit more having just come off of one. Following dinner, we had a discussion about future directions for the Rhythm Hunters to take, and whether or not we would want to do a similar style of performance (The decision was no, it was far too sexy for us).

Now I am looking forward to visiting my parents in NZ in less than 2 weeks! I can only imagine what words will escape me there... we plan on hiking for most of the 3 weeks I'm spending there, which means I'll mostly be out in the bush. Expect tons of photos when I get back.

Your moment of Zen:

You can look to the stars in search of the answers
Look for God and life on distant planets
Have your faith in the ever after
While each of us holds inside the map to the labyrinth
And heaven's here on earth

Tour update #3- Bangalow to Tasmania

2010-01-12T08:00:00.001+09:00

I am writing this from Tasmania, the place my friend Mike calls “the land down under the land down under”, having just finished a gorgeous meal of Atlantic Salmon, Pinot Noir, and steamed vegetables, all caught/grown within 30 meters of the kitchen. I am blissfully digesting, enjoying relaxing for a few days before the last leg of our tour in Melbourne. As I’ve got some downtime, I felt obligated to share about life since Woodford, as it’s been such an incredible journey.

After Woodford, we drove down to Bangalow, but spent the night at a place called the Rainbow Temple. I’d heard of the Rainbow Temple while I was staying at Jasper Hall, but had never actually gotten around to visiting it before I’d gone down to Sydney. We got there pretty late at night, and I fell asleep nearly as soon as I got there, but woke up in the morning to light streaming through soaring timber architecture, on the second floor of an octagonal building that branched out into the jungle around us at seemingly random intervals. The people were groovy, and we made pancakes with lemon and sugar before embarking towards Bangalow. The concert there was decidedly surprising; they had to bring in more chairs than they’d planned for… We were just grateful we had such a large, positive crowd in a place where we had no usual followers. We got invited back up, in fact, and so will be returning to Bangalow at some point in the year to perform again.

The best part though, for me, was the day after, as I went with some of the Hunters to Minyon Falls… Minyon Falls was actually 15 minutes away from Jasper Hall, but I’d never had the time to see it when I’d been there. I was so glad I went this time! Even though it was raining sheets, we trekked down to the bottom of the falls, which was a good 100 metres down or so… I kept on getting mixed up, we’d turn a corner in the rainforest there and I’d see a vine tree and suddenly wonder if I’d somehow gotten transported to Costa Rica without realizing it… it’s funny how much déjà vu I was getting while walking the trails there. The one thing that kept me aware of the location was the fact that I kept on having to be vigilant for leeches, as the rain and humidity meant they were out in droves, with a penchant for my ankles. We were beginning to lose hope when we finally broke through the rocks and saw the base of the falls… SO beautiful! Water gliding down in complex, unknowable patterns before finally hitting the pool below and disappearing, it was stunning. I was bloody from all the leeches by that point, hot from the trek to get down there, and bathingsuitless, so I skinny dipped. I’d recommend it, there’s something wonderful about skinny dipping in a lagoon under a waterfall in the pouring rain… you feel wild, and free, and unfettered by anything at all.

Afterwards, it was a long drive back to the hut, to sleep before the gig at the Basement. The Basement was great, we had a pretty large turnout, with a lot of familiar faces supporting us. There was a guy who mentioned us touring in Hollywood, but I think he was drunk, so it probably won’t happen (although if it does, you will be sure to know). I was in an odd mood, but still managed to perform without too many mistakes, and I almost felt guilty being able to sleep in my own bed in the middle of a tour. Then on to Tasmania!

Tasmania smells like Colorado, that crisp, buttermilk yellow scent that you get in the Rockies. The piece we visited, Cygnet, looks a bit like it too, at least where we are in the south, with rolling hills of evergreen, dandelions (more of a pest here, as it’s not native) dotting the fields, roses blooming in gardens… it’s downright idyllic, straight out of someone’s description of a rustic pastoral town... Cygnet was a fantastic juxtaposition to Woodford, a small, intimate town festival to balance out the whirlwind of tens of thousands of people up north. They were all genuinely happy that we’d come, and we packed the main hall with people so much so that people were hanging from the windows trying to see us. At Woodford, as soon as you left the stage, you were lost in the throngs of people. At Cygnet, people remembered you and would comment on your performance the next day. I loved it, and everyone else rather enjoyed it as well. It felt like this bucolic town had just come out en force to celebrate music and enjoy themselves, and we were honored to be a part of it. Even though it’s the middle of summer here, Tasmania’s nights are chilly, although the sun beats down during the day and you better wear sunscreen because we’re right under the hole in the ozone layer.

Tasmania seems to be the place where all the artists have retreated, to spend their time watching nature and reflecting on the beauty here. In a small town like Cygnet, there were still some 10 odd galleries, showcasing everything from fine metalwork to glass jewelry to gorgeous watercolors, all handled with finesse and subtlety. I was pretty impressed by much of it, and had to restrain myself from spending all my money on glittery trinkets.

Now we’re staying with friends of Ren on the Huon River, in Castle Forbes Bay… It seems I must once again reshape my definition of paradise, as this house may be it… sweeping views of the river and the mountains, a garden that provides them with vegetables (and grapes that they were able to fashion into a more than palatable pinot), a channel in the river that they can fish in for Salmon, oysters right at the waters edge that you can walk out to and enjoy for a light lunch… it’s local and magnificent and so serene and I love it. I am so satisfied here, and never want to leave! But we will be going sightseeing/exploring today, so I will have many more tales to come in the next days.

Much love to all of you, take care!

Your moment of Zen is a commercial we did for Oxfam… check it out, I’m on the left in Sydney!

Tour Update #2- New Years Eve

2010-01-01T12:41:00.004+09:00

wow. That about sums up New Years Eve.... just WOW. Last night was... magnificent. Extraordinary. Outstanding. Magical. Cathartic. Amusing. Wondrous. Humbling. Definitely the best New Years Eve that I have ever had.

I woke up rather early, 7am, and went for a stroll towards the Amphitheatre, the largest stage of the festival and the site of our New Years countdown. It was empty in the morning, and I just stood on stage, savoring the space in front of me, worrying about the threat of rain and the pressure of performing in front of so many people on such a huge night.

Our first show at the Grand was filled with energy, even though we had a score of technical problems... Sticks breaking more frequently than normal (we usually go through at least 20 per show, but we needed to restock them twice during the middle for Joe), microphones malfunctioning and slipping out of costumes, so many things that could have gone wrong did. Personally, it was the worst Ladoai performance I'd performed yet, missing a signal and drumming in the wrong direction, not hearing one of the calls so that I kept on going up when everyone else was down... The crowd loved us though, and I made a mental vow to perform perfectly at our second performance at the Amphitheatre, treating the Grand as a rather crowded dress rehearsal.

The official New Years performance was amazing, it started with a 3 minute long silence, and then we started with a bang!

I can report, with relief, that I didn't stuff up Ladoai on the Amphitheatre. However, being the über klutz that i am, I did trip over my own pants on my way out to perform, and went sprawling in front of who-knows-how-many people...

I hurt my knees pretty badly (they're sore today), but got up and kept on going... no stopping on New Years Eve! The crowd's energy made it so that I hardly felt anything but massive enthusiasm...

all images in this post courtesy of Alexander Ross

When our part of the performance was over, we combined with other drummers for a 10 minute long countdown... it started with body percussion, then moved to drumming, and that's about when I got too enthusiastic and dropped my rapaii (hand drum) on stage... yeah, so I was twice the klutz, and totally embarrassed, but i don't think anyone else cared that much, they were too busy jumping up and down and dancing.

All in all, with the blue moon gracing the sky, the clear sky at midnight, the fact that it was my 4th performance with The Rhythm Hunters, and the goodwill and love emanating from everyone, I'd say it was the most incredible night I've had for new years EVER! Definitely makes up for not doing anything last new years eve... Who knows when I will get a chance to perform like that again... how incredible!

Much love to you all,
Jenna

Tour Update #1- Woodford Folk Festival

2009-12-30T11:47:00.004+09:00

Festivals are an entirely different world. People come to lose themselves in the atmosphere, to be whoever they want to be apart from normal societal expectations. Woodford is a week-long festival, which means that we're basically living in an alternate universe for 6 days. And what a universe it is!

People here jaunt around dressed up in fairy wings and lively tattered colors, elaborate feathered headdresses and facepaint, and sometimes, near to nothing at all. Everyone is bright, and happy, and friendly, and silly, and ridiculous, and... open. No odd glances if you just walk up to a group and start talking to them... people expect it. People share food, and drugs, and hope, and love freely and joyfully. If you've never been to a festival, a renaissance faire, a circus, you just won't understand what I'm talking about, the excitement you get as you enter the boundary between your world and this one, and how things that normally matter, all the little bits of stress and mundane idiocy that perch on your shoulders and build up and nag you daily, just melt away. You're not in your life anymore, you're a citizen of the festival. We are Woodfordians.

I have had the undeserved honor of attending Woodford as an artist, one of the people who entertains the masses. I have performed twice so far, and somehow, my first ever actual performance with the Rhythm Hunters (open rehearsals aside) ended up being in the Chai Tent this past Tuesday morning at 12:20am in front of 500+ people. I didn't deserve to be up there. It's not that I made many mistakes, but that I've only been working with the Rhythm Hunters since June, and had no hand in building the group up to the point where they have become worthy of Woodford (or any festival they might desire to perform at). However, I am deeply grateful that I was allowed the opportunity to perform, and fulfill the dream I've had since I first saw them at The Dreaming. What a reward, to be able to first perform with them in the site where I initially fell in love.

The night was fantastic. We rocked the tent, and in a place where people normally lounge and sleep and sit on the floor, we had at least 400 people dancing in front of us, with utter adoration and support. Beforehand, I was terrified. Afterwards, I was ebullient. Today, I am... sore. It's hard work, Ladoai, but so much fun and so utterly, utterly worth it. We had a few people come up to us after the show and tell us that we were the best act they'd seen, which is a huge honor, as this festival is also hosting the likes of John Butler Trio and Kaki King.

Of course, I've been terribly spoiled now... Coming to a festival as an artist, I've been taken care of extraordinarily well. Hot showers with good water pressure, free tea and water, an hour of internet access per day, people to dig ditches around our campsite for the tumultuous downpours of rain that have interspersed the hot day... The best part is being able to watch a show from backstage if there are too many people in front. I will be even more spoiled after tomorrow night, when we perform in front of 15,000+ people counting down to the New Year. I am not worthy of this yet, but accept and marvel at it with full humility. It helps that I am faceless once I leave the stage; no one recognizes individuals from The Rhythm Hunters unless they're looking out for us specifically... as a group, especially one so adaptable as the Hunters, the individual identities are far less important than the movement and music of the whole, so that our recognition is through the stability and coordination of our rhythms. Any and all of us are replaceable, and probably will be at some point, through injury or choice. It remains to be seen what will happen after Woodford; how the group will take off (if it takes off), what people will want from us. I am just deliriously happy that I get to be a part of all of it. We have an amazing opportunity in front of us... How did I get so lucky? What are the odds that my life would work out just like this? I am amazed and in awe of the universe. There is nothing but potential in front of me. May I work hard to deserve it and shape it. This new year, my resolution is to be the person who is worth all of the luck I've had thrown at me. I've got tall boots to fill, but I go into it with eyes fully open, arms wide, and with great love in my heart. Let 2010 begin!

image courtesy Alexander Ross

I feel the need to write

2009-12-16T10:47:00.000+09:00

Christmas season in the Land Down Under is... odd, to say the least. It's been over a year since I started traveling, and the second Christmas season away from home. Maybe it would be different if I were from, say, Florida, but seeing Santa while dressed in shorts is a bit unnerving. Flashy lights on peoples houses make me think they're lazy (if it's this hot in New York and there are christmas lights up, it's July and they never got around to taking them down), and "I'm dreaming of a white christmas" in sweltering heat with no snow in sight makes me uncomfortably aware of the racist interpretation of the song.

I actually ended up celebrating Thanksgiving here, although I hadn't planned on doing so. I mentioned it on the day to my housemates, and they were really keen on having the feast, if not the tradition behind it, and so i found myself in the position of making a traditional thanksgiving meal in 4 hours. I made roast pumpkin, portobello caps, mashed potato, salad, baked apple pie (from scratch!) and.... Kangaroo. There were no turkeys, and I couldn't have fit one in the oven anyway even if I were to have found one (our oven is miniscule, to say the least), and as I said before, 4 hours, so we went with the environmentally-responsible-happy-meat option and bought kangaroo. Delicious! Fun Fact: Australia is the only country that eats its national animal.

The Rhythm Hunters are getting ready to go on their first ever east coast tour, and I will be going with them! We're performing at the Woodford Folk Festival up past Brisbane, then going to Bangalow (near Byron Bay, I think I had an entry on Byron a ways back), then Sydney, then TASMANIA! (first time ever going to tasmania, I am super excited I have heard such incredible things about it), then Melbourne, then back up here. the whole tour should take about a month. I am learning how to do one of the pieces that they perform, and will hopefully be able to do it by mid tour, so that I can do it on stage with them. I am so psyched!

I have not updated in ages... most of you don't even know i went on a vision quest a while back, or how it changed me, but my inability to write about it how it deserved to be written about resulted in two months of inactivity on my blog while i searched for the right words, so... I will skip it until I can finally do it justice, and you may hear about it later.

Life is going well for me, the Rhythm Hut is doing its best to find a way to keep me here in the country... my job is the most rewarding thing i've ever experienced. We had our student performance last night, and it was just wonderful to see how people have developed, and what a creative and enthusiastic and energetic group of people have come together to create beauty. It gives me such joy when I hear someone talking about how much they love drumming here, or coming to our events, and recently people have just been gushing about us... It feels like I am on the front of a wave of momentum, and we're poised to get bigger and better and more energetic and just become something so meaningful in the community, a place that people talk about with love and awe and respect, where people know they can feel welcome and supported and understood.

Expect more posts as I travel for the next month, as I will be seeing some gorgeous things :)

Much love.

Moment of Zen: Ladoai, the Rhythm Hunters piece i am learning to do:

In which our protagonist fills in the gaps part deux

2009-10-05T15:28:00.003+09:00

(as a side note, whenever I label something "part deux" I smile because I don't speak any French and am never 100% sure whether or not I am spelling that correctly and whether or not I am offending the French by using their language so poorly. Any of my 5 French readers want to weigh in on that?)

So, where were we... Ah yes. The past month has been filled with adventure and majesty, and that's not even hyperbole. I went on a fabulous Yoga retreat in the beginning of September, and thoroughly enjoyed it (even though I still don't like ashtangas). The retreat combined ridiculously delicious food with drumming and yoga and poi spinning, and how to find inner stillness with each. I will admit that I am a terrible poi spinner, but still enjoyed hitting myself with the poi every time I made a mistake, and will keep on practicing till I can do something of note.
It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend, made more special by the inclusion of a night walk with no flashlight and a full moon to an outlook that floated over the valley below us...

I'd brought along my camera, and took 30 second exposures, which is why you can see something in the above photos... this is what the valley looked like during the day though (excuse the drum, I thought it was too good a shot to pass up).

but the best part of the weekend was yet to come...

On the way back home after the retreat was over, my boss decided to take us to a place called "Echo Point"... the above shots are of the Canyon that the point overlooked... what a magnificent place. It made my heart soar, looking over such majesty and splendor... I was totally invigorated and ecstatic from the view.
The Three Sisters are located there, and I have to say... not that impressed by them, mostly because a)you're not allowed to climb on them anymore, and b) there's an entire canyon there, the three sisters are only a small section of it! Every time i see photos of the three sisters, photographers focus in on them and you miss the fact that they're tiny compared to the absolute magnitute of space around them. But, for those of you who really want to see what they look like, here:

(they're the 3 lumpy rocks on the left).

We ended up walking down this really long, steep staircase (where i took the photo you see above) to walk in the valley, only to realize that if we wanted to NOT walk back up the gazillion stairs that we'd walked down, we'd have to catch the train back up, which was leaving in 15 minutes. The walk there was supposed to take 30. So... we sprinted.
In hindsight, I probably would have been happier if I'd just walked back up, as I hate running, but it did make me want to get in shape, so I've been trying to do a bit of running every week since. And we ended up making the train, which was the coolest train ride of my life (felt more like a roller coaster ride, really, as it goes almost straight up through craggy rocks to get you back to the clifftop.

Speaking of craggy rocks, I've made a friend, L. L has taken it upon himself to appoint himself as my tour guide for the Central Coast, as he understands that I rarely leave the Hut and so am missing out on quite a lot of entertainment and beauty in this part of the world. He's also a photographer, so he knows all these awe inspiring places that just wrench your heart out of your chest and inject it with pure joy... He's taken me to a couple of places recently:

The caves at Cave Beach

A lookout above Pearl Beach

and we were driving back from Cave Beach when he turned off into a national park (that's pretty easy to do while in Australia... they're everywhere!) and started choosing random paths to drive down... we ended up finding our way to the final photo from the last post, the little inlet with the massive waves crashing in...
It's just a glorious experience... Again, I'm not the best writer, so I keep on repeating my adjectives over and over... I need to find a more diverse way of stating the fact that I am surrounded by so much beauty that it feels like it bonds with my skin sometimes and makes me want to scream with the exuberance that jumps out of every pore... sometimes I'm just so happy that I'm alive to see all of this.

That's not even everything I've done in the past month, but it covers most of the important stuff and catches you up as close as you're going to get to what's been going on with me.
I am still having the time of my life. I would not choose to be anywhere else doing anything else right now.

Much love!
-Jenna

Your new moment of zen is a video of me performing in my first public drum performance with The Rhythm Hut... can you see where I made a mistake?

In which our protagonist fills in the gaps part 1

2009-10-02T17:47:00.007+09:00

I completely missed September, I realize. This is due to laziness on my part, and also procrastination and a short attention span: I actually started two different blog entries in September, but never followed through to completion.

I have been very, very busy. I find it humorous that I told people not to let their job become their life, only to have my job consume nearly every spare second of my time. I don't take weekends off, and I work at random hours of the day (sometimes till 2 or 3 am), but I love what I'm doing, and there is very little that separates work and play here. My work takes me to the Australian Reptile Park, and to Melbourne, and will take me to the Woodford Folk Festival, and Tasmania, and maybe more. My work brings talented musicians to my door to perform for me, and sometimes they even ask me to help them in their performance and play music with me after! It's an amazing feeling to be able to hear a musician at a festival, then contact them and invite them to perform at your venue and have them say yes! It's like getting paid to invite extraordinary people to your house to perform for you... I love it.

I have noticed that there are two different types of musicians out there though: the ones that play music because they love performing for people and sharing their soul, and the ones that seem to be in it for money. The ones that are in it for the money are easy to spot: they turn up their nose if you can't promise them a certain amount, and refuse to play for less than a certain number of audience members. I don't understand them, and I hope never to turn into one of them. However, then there are musicians like Colin Offord, who came and performed at The Hut and loved it, even though we had a pretty small crowd (maybe 30 people). He said he's performed for 2 people before, and I believe he'd put just as much effort into performing for those two as he did for us and would for a show of 50,000. It was an incredible night, it seemed like he pulled energy out of the air, shaped it, spit it out, re-formed it, and made it into pure audio hallucinations. We were hearing things that didn't seem like they could actually be there. I'm a little biased though, as he asked me to play the spoons in his final piece, which was a huge honor for me. It was just a strand of spoons strung together that tinkled when you moved it, not hard to play at all, but quite ethereal sounding. I loved it. There are also musicians like Mal Webb, who was one of the most intelligent artists I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, who stayed after the show was over and showed me how to play the kaossilator. And, of course, the group I work with, The Rhythm Hunters (I've literally heard some of them say "who cares about the money?") are all about the performances... These are the people I'm having the pleasure of meeting, the people who's joy at performing and creating shine through their work and make every moment of my time sparkle... I have been able to meet such amazing people and do such incredible things here, so working all the time is pretty enjoyable.

Many of you will have seen photos from the dust storm that hit Sydney by now... it only looked that red at dawn, when I was asleep. However, when I woke up around 10, it was still an entirely different world, and I briefly felt like I was living on Mars. It's the first time in my life that the weather forecast on my computer read "dust". All the particles in the air meant that the light refracted off of things differently, so that everything reflective had a blue tint to it-- cars, windows, lampposts, etc, it didn't matter what color they normally were, they reflected azure.

In a complete non-sequitur, sometime after the dust storm, something finally clicked. I have grown up with the idea that I need to make other people happy. I'm not sure why that's ingrained inside myself, but for my whole life I've tried to live for other people, and do what I could to gain their love and acceptance, seeing anyone's hatred as something I had done wrong, something that needed to be fixed... this is going to sound terribly cliché, but I recently sat down and dwelled for a while and realized that you can't make everyone happy, and that other people are... wait for it.... just other people. They're just as screwed up and filled with self doubt and conflicting ideas and wonder and vision as I am... and who are you to be more important to me than myself? They may be more intelligent or more empathic or more stylish or more creative than me, but that doesn't mean they're all those things at once, and even if they are there's no reason that should matter to me. I am happy where I am and doing what I'm doing, and that's something that many of the people I used to care about impressing don't have, and if they do, that's not a reflection on me in any way. I am my own universe, and no, this doesn't mean that I'll suddenly turn into a self serving bitch, because that wouldn't feel good, but it does mean that I'm nice to people because it makes me feel good, I help people because it feels right, but I don't need other people's validation to do anything. I love, validate, and respect myself. Why should anyone else's feelings change that?

Here's a small preview of what's to come in the next post, which i will probably post later in the week as i have a small bout of free time to myself this week.

Much love to you all!

Community: In which our protagonist skips around a bit

2009-08-18T16:01:00.001+09:00

In the last two weeks I have taken twelve drumming classes... I daresay I'm getting a little better, slowly but surely. My life has found a nice routine recently, and I find myself surrounded by people that I respect and care about, who seem to feel the same for me. I feel like I am becoming a part of a community of people, with music being the common feature tying us all together.

For those of you who don't know me, I had an unusual childhood in the sense that I grew up right next to an intentional community, a place called Skyview Acres. Though I wasn't an official "Skyview Kid", not living in the circle of houses that was considered the community, my dad had grown up there, so I was invited to the events that occurred in the community monthly. I went to Skyview Camp in the summer, The Winter Doldrums party in midwinter, and countless birthday parties and campfires, pool clean up days, folk dances and whatnot, and never thought it unusual. Then I got to public school in 4th grade, and would visit friends houses and realized most of my classmates didn't know their neighbors names, much less the type of art they had hanging in their houses. Most people grow up in housing developments, whether it be apartment building or suburban sprawl, but I would hardly say they grow up in a community.

Skyview mostly supported me, but I did not live within its borders, and as such, I never felt completely accepted there. Luckily, not all communities are location bound. The people I am connecting to here are entwined by a love of music, a desire to see beauty in the world, and an open and honest integrity and willingness to help one another. It's truly remarkable to be able to know these people, and experience a part of their lives. I love how passionate and supportive they all are, and what a diverse range of personalities and talents they all have. It's been really inspiring, and has definitely become a major reason that I've enjoyed settling here.

I am a creative person by nature; I love the act of making something with the resources in front of me. I hesitate to say that I'm an artist anymore, because I do not do enough sketching and photography and artistic things to label myself as such, but I do consider myself passionate about being creative. If I am unable to paint something, or build something, or cook something, I will write, and if I cannot write, I will sing, and if I cannot sing, I will talk, and if I cannot talk, I will still dream. The Rhythm Hut has been fostering my creativity and exciting my brain in ways that I have not experienced in a remarkably long time. I cannot clap with crowds now; I instinctively clap the off beats. When I am sitting still, I start drumming in rhythms I have learned in classes, and superimpose my own rhythms on top of them. I have bought a djembe, and keep a rebana in my room, and am starting to learn the dance to Ladoai.... It's fantastic, I'm loving every second of being here now. Graduating from college, I never wanted to be in an academic setting ever again; I was tired of learning without acting, discussing hypotheticals instead of going out to the street. Here I'm taking classes and looking forward to the next one even as the first is ending. I haven't felt this excited to be in a class since sixth grade.

In fourth through sixth grade, I was part of a program called G.A.T.E (Gifted and Talented Education), a special program where they took us out of our normal classes to learn how to think... I don't know why the program didn't go beyond sixth grade, but I never looked forward to any classes like I looked forward to going to GATE and learning with Dr. Kirshenbaum. We read books like "The Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles", built bridges out of balsa wood, learned fun tricks with Powerpoint presentations (this was back in the days when having a computer in a classroom was very rare and they used the Windows 95 operating system...), completed heaps of brain teaser puzzles, and invented things and had a great time. I don't know what other kids were doing at that time, but I adored the class and loved being able to do fun stuff instead of learning to spell or memorizing the capitals of the states or whatever they were learning instead... No other classes really let me explore everything that I wanted to learn, but rather told me and quizzed me on what the system wanted me to know. College was a bit better, but even with all of my electives, there was always an agenda that I didn't really have any control over... with very few exceptions. The exceptions stand out to me and I remember them far more clearly, because I had a hand in deciding what to learn... My Eco Design course, where we retrofit a house on campus to be environmentally sustainable, was one of the few. Death and the Art of Dying, where we had an hour or two a week where we were expected to just go and talk to someone in a retirement home about anything we wanted to discuss, was another. The best was a student taught experimental class that taught me some basic survival skills, which was something I'd always hoped that i'd learn in school. I learned how to make rope, how to walk silently, how to build debris shelters, and many other truly useful skills.... how to see, how to listen, how to be still. I'd take those skills over philosophy lectures any day (philosophy courses were generally the biggest letdown of my college career, because of the fact that they were usually in lecture format instead of fostering true discourse... I've had more important and relevant philosophical discussions at 3am with a stranger at a party than the majority of my philosophy courses at Oberlin... The exception to this was my ethics courses with Tim Hall, where we genuinely discussed things that occasionally made me angry, but always made me think).

This is not to say that school and college taught me nothing; I certainly learned a lot, I'm just bitter about how most of it was brought about... I'd rather learn about photosynthesis by walking through a field than by reading about it in a textbook... learn about physics by building catapults instead of hearing a lecture... I'm an experiential learner, and too many schools either don't have the resources or the drive to foster that type of education. It really makes me sad to watch children come home all bubbly in 1st grade and announce proudly that they're learning to read, and then come home in 8th grade with all the energy sucked out of them and not remembering a single thing that they heard during the day... The New York Times recently had an article in it that skirted this issue without quite leaping to the conclusions I've made. I often wonder what the world would be like if we were truly nurtured through school, if the professors asked us "what would you like to learn?", and then helped us realize those goals... People I've met who went to alternative schools always seem to be much more sure of themselves and their visions and goals... My boss went to an alternative school where they let him do whatever he wanted (he learned to read when he was 13, when he finally decided he wanted to), and he's completely passionate and a genius of rhythm.

It's wonderful to watch someone's dreams unfold and to be a part of it, if even for a short time. I have no grand vision yet, which is why I'm comfortable sitting here and learning what I can right now from him. I'm sure that I'll soon have a goal and will leave to pursue that vision, but for now I feel that it's really important that I be here, doing exactly what I am. My creativity is going in a million different directions, but it is helping people that I care about to do what they love, and that's a really good feeling.

Want to see what I've been working on? visit our website (that I redesigned), at http://therhythmhut.com.au

Much love to you all.

-Jenna

Busking, Melbourne, & other fiction

2009-07-20T22:00:00.005+09:00

My life is not fiction, of course, but I have been having so much fun it feels straight out of a storybook.

I realized recently that I completely forgot to mention to you all that I went to Melbourne. It was about 3 weeks ago, I was only there for 4 days, and I didn't get to go to many places because I was working with The Rhythm Hunters for 3 of those days, but I did rather enjoy myself, and got to see a bunch of great things on the day I didn't work. Melbourne is a really fantastic city... Counter intuitively (at least for a new yorker like myself), the more narrow an alley is, the more likely it is to contain cool art, funky stores, and delicious food.

Case in point.

It is a fantastically artsy city, with great architecture, lots of public transportation, and really friendly people. Like Brisbane, the city surrounds a river, so there are a ton of bridges to facilitate moving between the districts.

A view from the river

The best thing in Melbourne, besides catching up with some friends that I made while I was in Japan, was the National Gallery of Victoria, mostly because they had an exhibit of my favorite artist of all time in the entire world, Salvador Dali.

I am incapable of taking a normal photo in front of anything Dali, as the man was such a crazy genius that being in the vicinity of anything related to him immediately makes me a more creative person. Seeing anything from Dali is enough to make me squeal with delight, but this exhibit was glorious in its scope, and incorporated film, fashion, and sculptures as well as his paintings in a way that really made me unabashedly awed and amazed at his seemingly unlimited talent. It was a really inspiring exhibit, worthy of the Metropolitan Museum, and soothed my art craving for the month. My only gripe was that the curators wouldn't even let me SKETCH any of Dali's work, much less photograph it. Uncool behavior, indeed.

Another cool thing about Melbourne was that there's a really sweet little vegetarian cafe in St. Kilda called Lentil as Anything, where you could pay what you wanted for the food they cooked there. It was a non-profit community social experiment that I absolutely adored, and didn't spend nearly enough time in... I will have to go back.

Coming back from Melbourne, the trip turned into everything a roadtrip should be: bizarre, interesting, poignant, funny... we stopped by a deer and emu farm (it was an odd side trip to explore a site where my boss's sister might get married), and I got to pet a stag, and see all these ostritches, who looked severely pissed off...

We also passed by a lot of the forest fire devastation from earlier in the year.... From an Artist perspective, the bush in Victoria was cold, muted, unusual in that the only thing that ever seemed vivid was the bright green grass, almost garish against the greys, umbers, and siennas of the trees... I don't know if the trees were always that color, whether it was a winter thing, or whether it was all just fire damage, but it definitely seemed like a different color palate than the rest of the world.

Also, in the most bizarre point of the trip, we passed through Holbrook, which is in New South Wales, nowhere near a beach, river, lake, or other large water mass. Therefore, it was quite amusing when we came across this:

Yup. that's right, it's a SUBMARINE. The town bought it in honor of the guy they named the town for. Crazy, huh?

So that was basically the Melbourne roadtrip.

Your new moment of zen is a video of some of the people from The Rhythm Hut (myself included) busking in Terrigal on Saturday night... it was a great time. These guys are awesome (and even the drunks were fun to be around). Such incredible fun.

the ties that bind

2009-07-16T01:43:00.005+09:00

Chain myself to a redwood. Save the whales. Learn how to drum. Live in Australia. Save the world. (Save the cheerleader? Nah....) Keep Traveling. Learn how to survive in the wilderness. Develop my writing. Be an artist. Pull a Chris McCandless. Get a job. Live in California. Live in Texas.

I'm attempting to allude to (allude to? maybe throwing a sledgehammer through a window to) the fact that my life has so many paths right now, and I'm terrified of making choices, because each one cancels out many others.... The philosophy of Unix is "do one thing, and do it well". This makes some sense in life as well as programming; talent gets the most bang for the buck when it's not stretched out in a ton of directions. The Beatles did music; they didn't also open up a restaurant and design a better toaster and cure cancer. However, in this tumultuous world of multitasking, even actresses are Goodwill Ambassadors and singers have their own clothing lines and search engines do e-mail and operating systems (why yes, I am a technogeek, why do you ask?) and so I should, supposedly, be able to be everything that I want to be. Except for the fact that life doesn't work that way, as far as I can tell, except for the people who have personal assistants and tons of money to throw at problems... I cannot live in both America and Australia and work on protecting whales from super highpowered sonar and learn to drum like a pro and be an environmental consultant and write a book and travel around the world and drop out of society to disappear in the Alaskan wilderness... it just doesn't work, at least not without me winding up drawn & quartered.... Or maybe I'll have a flash of brilliance, and somehow see how to make this all work.

I do, it turns out, have a lifetime ahead of me, and however long that lifetime may be, it's exactly what everyone else gets too. Life is what we make of it. Right now I choose to follow my impulses and see where they lead me. I'm not working very hard on the responsibility front, but that's because life is not demanding my responsibility right now, except for basic deadlines on class schedules and talking to people. I have no children, no mortgage, no health problems, no pets, no boyfriend, no bills... I am a free person, taking the time to explore aspects of myself that I would normally ignore just because they didn't fit in with my goals. Do I feel a little guilty about not dropping everything to join Greenpeace to crusade against Japanese harpoonists? yes, a bit, but I have to remind myself that I am in a place I enjoy right now, and it will still be an issue that demands my attention 6 months from now (and if it isn't, then all the better). The world is constantly falling to pieces, and I am in no position to take it all on by myself, and so I've turned into quite the little hedonist. I'm just lucky that I enjoy long hikes in the bush and playing music over doing drugs and partying.

Following the rhythm

2009-07-04T14:26:00.015+09:00

I have settled down! Gosford, unexpectedly, has become my home base for the next 6 months. It's a small town about 2 hours north of Sydney, pretty quiet, no real art or club scene, a lot of for sale signs in empty store windows... there's not a whole lot going on to draw me there, except for one key thing: The Rhythm Hut.

The Rhythm Hut is the home base of The Rhythm Hunters, an Australasian drumming group specializing in modern Taiko world music that performed at The Dreaming. The Hut is where they rehearse, teach classes, hang out, have improv jams, and stage the occasional show. I first heard of the Rhythm Hunters when I was at the Ashram, and two of their performers came and did a workshop tying together drumming and yoga. I was blown away by the rhythms we constructed, the songs we learned, and how much fun everyone had... I left the workshop vibrating, high with the strength I got from drumming (I even broke my first drumstick!), filled with enthusiasm and positive energy. Then the two of them performed that night, and I danced my pants off (metaphorically, of course... they frown on that sort of spontaneous stripping at the Ashram).

While talking to one of the teachers later on, he mentioned The Dreaming, and the fact that the whole group was going to be playing at the festival. It was the reason I looked in to going to the festival, and we all know how that turned out. They were definitely my performance highlight of the festival, and I've put off talking about them until now because I wanted to get my vocabulary in place.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any videos of their performances at The Dreaming, even though I saw them twice, because the moment I heard them I forgot about everything but the music. The songs made my toes curl, my hair raise, and my heart beat change. It was as if their beats were a thread that physically wrapped around my soul and pulled me into their melodies. It's something that I'm sure wouldn't transfer through to video, which is why i've chosen to share with you guys some footage that i've taken of them rehearsing at the Hut, because then you get a general idea of what they sound like without expecting the magic that I felt when they performed:

I wasn't the only one dancing at these performances (one girl, while not dancing her pants off, did manage to remove her top and dance with nothing but a scarf on her head and her skirt... I suppose stripping is appropriate festival etiquette), but I do believe that I was the only person that came up to them after and said "I. must. be. a. part. of. this".

And surprisingly, instead of shouting and calling me a crazy groupie, they let me in.

That seems to be the sort of people they are... Rendra Freestone (henceforth referred to as Ren), the force of nature behind the Hunters and the Hut, is one hell of a cool guy. He's the quiet center (excuse me, i'm in Australia, that should be "centre") in the storm of activity that happens around this place. I've never met someone so musical before... it's almost as if he breathes in beats. He plays taiko, djembe, guitar, piano, shakahachi (the japanese flute), indonesian flute, instruments I don't know how to pronounce, and he plays them all REALLY WELL... If a sound can be made from it, Ren's on it. And the coolest part is, he's not the only one who can do that. These people are musicians in the best sense of the word. It is, quite frankly... brilliant. Inspiring. Totally fascinating. Crazy. And utterly, utterly awesome.

I'm now staying at the Hut and taking care of general schedule and technological things in return for free drumming classes and some money. The money's a pittance (in other words, if you want to help a poor writer out by donating some sort of money on the right side of the screen I wouldn't stop you), but it's enough to basically keep me going while I follow a newfound passion for a while.

And I have most definitely found a passion for drumming within myself, especially when drumming with Taiko. It energizes me, it focuses me, and it leaves me content. Being at the Ashram made me realize that I think way too much for my own good. I'm constantly overthinking everything, and drumming wipes that all out. There's just the drum and the rhythm. I may not have the best form or be the fastest drummer or keep the cleanest time, but it forces me to be in the moment, and I love it for that, and I've only been doing it for 3 weeks now, so time, form, and speed will all come with practice, I hope. This is definitely the space to practice. There is music here all the time, because if there's not a class going on, there's a performance happening, and if there's no performance, there's always a million instruments lying around just begging to be played.

Next term (which starts August 3rd) I'll be taking 5 classes: Djembe 1, Djembe 2, Taiko 1, Taiko 2, and Taiko Yoga. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in rhythm and seeing how much better I get. I'd love to be able to someday perform with The Rhythm Hunters, but that's probably a couple of years away. Oh, to dream....

I'll leave you with your moment of zen, which, last time I posted one, was Pretty Girl, by Ani Difranco... normally I would link to the song on Youtube, but none of the recordings I found were even remotely worth posting, so you'll have to buy her song off of itunes or something if you want to hear it. This week's moment of zen will be the promotional video for The Rhythm Hunters that I've been working on... enjoy!

Much love,
Jenna

p.s-- If you like my blog, please spend a few seconds sharing the love and sending a link to friends who you think might enjoy it too. I'm trying to get it read on all 7 continents.

Race Relations

2009-06-19T17:03:00.008+09:00

Bear with me; this is going to be a long one.

For my American readers, Happy Juneteenth! for those of you who don't follow potentially obscure (It's not a national holiday, 31 states celebrate it) American holidays, Juneteenth started in Texas, and is on June 19th to celebrate the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston in 1865. It seemed like a fortuitous time for me to tackle difficult subjects, particularly because I read in the news today that the Senate just unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. It's too little, too late, but at least they're admitting wrongdoing, which is a step towards realizing that America is not a perfect system and we still need to talk about racial injustices, because they haven't gone away. Having a black president doesn't change the fact that, as a black man in America, statistically, one is more likely to go to prison than serve in the military or graduate from college... So there are clearly things to work on, and injustices to be righted, and nothing can happen if we're not aware, and we can't be aware if we don't talk about it, and an apology is a good way to start talking. So I'm hopeful for the future, and I feel confident enough to take a stab at discussing things that I know not nearly enough about. Please feel free to discuss everything I say in the comments section, and have some constructive debate.

I also felt a need to write this entry because of the fact that I haven't written about anything negative that I've experienced in Australia, so everyone assumes that the trip has been nothing but sunshine. That's my fault, because I don't like to dwell on negative experiences or look like I'm whinging (yes, that's an australian term that means whining, but sounds more like the action itself), but I do want people to know that I'm human, not 100% happy all the time, and that I'm not looking at everything through rose colored glasses.

Kevin Rudd, the Australian Premier, formally apologized in early 2008 to the Aboriginese populations here in Australia for how they had been treated, particularly to the Stolen Generation. For the international audience that doesn't know about the Stolen Generation, from 1910 through 1970, between 10 and 30% of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents and families in a concerted effort by the government to force integration. The speech is beautiful, eloquent, and seems pretty heartfelt (it's linked above if you'd care to read it), however, not all Australians share his sentiment.

My first negative experience in Australia was in Atherton, and it pertained to race relations in Australia. I was driving with the woman I was staying with to pick up her children from school (13 and 15 years old), and upon picking them up, they told us that one of the kids at school had been drunk and had brought a knife in to class, so the school had instituted a lockdown until the police could come. I was shocked, but what shocked me even more was when the mother asked "what color was he?", and when the youngest answered "Black, of course", she just nodded. Later on, the youngest started calling someone a n*****, and I told him that it made me uncomfortable. He told me "oh, it's not directed towards Americans... your black people are fine, we've got no problem with them, it's just ours who are n*****s." I looked over to the parents and explained that the kind of language he used was really repulsive to me, as it carries a long history of hate and oppression when used in the United States. I was expecting some support, but the father started in, saying "oh, it's not that bad a phrase here, it's just how we describe them because they're lazy and useless".
Even though none of this hatred and ignorance was directed at me (they were nothing but kind and welcoming to me), I felt maligned and attacked. Later, I tried talking to the son alone, asking him to see things from another perspective, put himself in Aboriginal shoes, but he would have none of it. I left feeling upset and frustrated, and entirely bewildered. How could these people have so much hatred?

The anger, I discovered (albeit in a much less personal circumstance), went both ways. In Brisbane, at the Gallery of Modern Art, this painting was on the third floor:

Intrigued by the statement and the vague Pollock drips, I went over to read the information card on the side of the piece, and found this statement:

Lack of spaces aside, the artist (I am making the assumption that the artist got to write his own information based on the fact that most of the other information cards were less... capitalized) clearly has a lot of anger towards Colonial Australians (from now on I will be separating Australians into two groups in this post: Colonial Australians and Indigenous Australians), and with good reason. As I tried to explain to the Atherton child, imagine a group of people coming into your house, taking all your rooms because they claim you're not using them, then stopping you from getting access to the things you're used to using, like the kitchen and bathroom, then watch them defile your bed, and take your kids away. Plus you knew all these really good ways to keep the house tidy, and these people are mostly making a mess of things. They seem to be wreaking utter havoc, and yet they want you to act just like them. It's an obvious oversimplification, but it does explain why there's a legitimate reason to apologize nationally and the need for what the Australians have started to call "reconciliation".

On a side note, I find it curious that race problems between Colonial and Indigenous Australians more mirrors the anger and resentment between African Americans and White Americans than any discussion we're having with our Indigenous peoples, but that's something to dissect another time.

In the cities, it was a bit better, people were more tolerant, acted disgusted with my Atherton story, but no one seemed to know any Indigenous people, or have any Indigenous friends, or want to talk about the discrepancies between colonial and indigenous cultures. I walked away from Queensland with a keen sense of disappointment at the lack of discourse about the anger that people were feeling, the prejudices that weren't talked about in constructive ways, and the basic intolerance that I wasn't able to change. So, when I heard about The Dreaming, a festival devoted to Indigenous Cultures, I knew that I owed it to myself to go, if for no other reason than to see what kinds of discussions people were having there.

Tickets were 250 dollars, so Erik and I applied for volunteer positions at the festival, but we applied really late and they ended up putting us on the waitlist. As neither of us really had the means to spend that kind of dough on a weekend, plus food and transportation, we thought we wouldn't be able to go, but Erik got a call two days before it started that his name was up on the waitlist and they had a spot for him if he wanted it. I was after him on the list, and so we decided to wing it, get up there, and hope that we'd be able to get me in too. After 14 hours of driving north overnight on the Pacific Highway (a side note on the PH-- It's possibly the most disappointing effort calling itself a highway that I have ever been on, as it was only a four lane road with 110 km/hr (that's around 60 mph for all you Standard measurers out there) speed limit for about a tenth of the trip, and then it would drop down to two lanes and go as slowly as 40 km/hr through random towns for the rest of the distance.... it could have been a 9 hour trip if we'd been able to go 110 the whole way, like we would on an American highway), we arrived to find that our hope and a dream paid off, and I could volunteer as well.

The festival was everything I could have hoped for, and more. Not only was there incredible music, dancing, theater, and people, but there were open discussions about reconciliation, and about genuinely learning from the oldest cultures on earth instead of trying to assimilate them into what many people commonly assume is a more advanced (and therefore "better") culture. I was able to ask an elder of one of the communities, Uncle Herb (Indigenous Australians call their elders "Aunt" and "Uncle" as a sign of respect), about law in his culture (there are/were over 200 different tribes in Australia, all with different languages, laws, and customs) and he told me that he thinks that people in our culture need to take more responsibility for our actions... he said that if he could write the laws, there wouldn't be a Bill of Rights, but rather a Bill of Responsibility, where people would be held personally accountable for what they do. It's something that really intrigued me, and I've been stewing on that ever since, although i'm not producing anything worth sharing yet.

The Dreaming wasn't just a festival about the Aborigines, but a festival about indigenous cultures all over the world. There were Maori, Celts, Acehenes, and other peoples representing parts of their culture through their art. Some of it was pretty traditional, but other stuff was very modern, and didn't have much to do with being a representation of a specific culture except for some of the people in the group. It was great because, by inviting artists based on culture instead of style, you got to see music that ranged from this:

to this:

to these:

and everything in between (and more!).

Erik and I left feeling so positive and happy. It made me glad that, at least somewhere, the conversation has already more than started, it's flourishing. Sure, there are times when people stick their foot in their mouths, and offend people, and anger people, but the conversations continue, and people are learning acceptance and respect, on both sides of the aisle. I hope I'm still in the country next year so that I can attend again, but more importantly, I hope that America can take a page from Australia's book and start having open, heartfelt conversations about all that we need to discuss.

Small indulgences

2009-06-03T14:05:00.006+09:00

A friend of mine recently complained that I haven't posted enough photos of myself. So, for her sake, and for those of you who don't know who I am, here's the woman behind the words:

America

2009-05-31T12:18:00.007+09:00

I'm still in the Ashram, and so have very limited internet access, but I've been working on this entry for about a week now, and so will post it now, and talk about all the other things that have been going on recently (including a spontaneous 15 hour road trip up North to attend an Indigenous peoples music festival called The Dreaming) starting next Thursday, when I return to the real world where I'm not worrying with a 56k connection.

America is so passé, or at least that's what the painter I talked to the other day has told me, and many other people have confirmed. As I travel through the world, I hear more and more pity in peoples' voices when they respond "oh, an American" to my statements of birth. There's much more excitement when I jokingly tell someone I'm Canadian, and that's a real shame. After the last 10 years, I guess I don't blame them, what with the attention the American media gave to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and then 8 years of George Bush mispronouncing things and blatantly disregarding basic human rights and whatnot, but it still comes as a shock that people don't feel America is worth much anymore. The dream is dead, or has been revealed to be a flashy ad with no substance beneath. We export things that the rest of the world is slowly figuring out they don't really want or need-- Coke, McDonalds, a form of Democracy that reveres Capitalism as its highest god... people aren't just frustrated, they're outright annoyed with America.

This is not to say that anyone's been horrible to me because I'm American... I've received gentle ribbing for it, but Australians have a problem with the country, not the people who leave it... Having shown a willingness, ability, and determination to travel, I'm already considered in a different group than the Americans they see on YouTube who don't know that Australia isn't actually North Korea (at some point I will insert a video here to prove my point, but Youtube is blocked at the Ashram). The fact that I want to stay in their country and realize what a wonderful place I'm in also endears me to them.

People keep on asking me why I want to move to Australia, and so I feel moved to explain myself.
The first reason is that, though America and Australia are similar in many ways (racial tensions, an obesity problem, ignorance, industrialized agriculture, English as the primary language), there are some very key differences:
America (and many Americans) is all about results. We work and work and work and put ourselves through the wringer to do our jobs well, and identify ourselves with our livelihood, so that failure is unimaginable, and if we get fired, it is the end of the world.
The painter I was talking to, when I asked him about himself, said "Do you want to know my Profession, my Practice, my Passion, or my Trade?" and had a different answer for each. He's not the standard for all Australians, I'm sure some of them really do make their job their world and get caught up in results, but for most of the country that I've experienced, there does seem to be an undercurrent of "well, we'll give it our best shot, and if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world" (Note: this does not apply to rugby matches). I have watched both my parents get horribly depressed over getting fired, and gotten horribly depressed myself when I got downsized, and we tend to start associating ourselves with our jobs until we find a way to retire. I'm trying to find a place where I can enjoy what I do without it becoming who I am, and it seems easier in Australia.

Plus, the minimum wage here is around 15 dollars, and they get 4 weeks of vacation.

Reason #2 is that there's a whole lot of beauty here, wilderness that makes my soul sing. The trees seem more beautiful, the dirt is definitely more beautiful, and I just enjoy the sensory overload that I've experienced when going out into nature here. This could possibly be due to the fact that I'm still pretty much in vacation mode, and can go out and explore whenever I get the urge, but Brisbane and Sydney both have a lot more trees than New York (of course, so does San Francisco, Washington DC, and Portland, all places I've considered moving to), and the beach and the mountains are ridiculously closeby.

Reason #3 is that the people here are really laid back. Aussie standard phrases include "it's all good", "that's full on", and my favorite, "How ya going?" People strike up conversations with me on the street, in cafes, in trains, in bus stops... They're really easy to talk to, and I feel very comfortable and safe here. Yes, I miss my friends and family back home, but I'm already making friends here that I want to know for the rest of my life, and there's always skype and vacations to meet up with people back home (although I am also not so secretly trying to convince you all to move here because I'm sure you'll fall in love with it too).

Reason #4 is that Australia is not a religious country. This is not to say that there aren't people who believe in god(s) here, but the "religious right" doesn't exist as we know it in America, and so certain things that we consider huge, divisive issues that can make or break who we vote for (Abortion being the biggest) aren't given that much importance in elections (Also, it's mandatory to vote here, you're required to make your voice heard). This means that almost any Australian you meet is likely to be more liberal than a large portion of Americans, which brings me to my next point:

Australia as a country actually cares about Climate Change, and its people are willing to make changes in their lifestyles and support candidates that promise to reduce their carbon footprint. They're already worlds ahead of America in terms of buying locally, reducing plastic consumption, involving solar power and alternative fuels in their energy demands, and generally worrying about the state of the world.

But the final reason is much more personal....

I feel I should mention that I don't hate America, and am actually quite proud of us right now, when we've finally managed to elect a leader I believe in and people are starting to explore options on how to manage Climate Change and there's a growing movement for universal healthcare and we're closing Guantanamo... but Australia has captured my heart in a way that nowhere else on the planet has, and I want to move here on a much more permanent basis. I feel like there are answers here to my soul's questions, and that i have a chance of finding my purpose and fulfilling my greatest aspirations if I stay. It's just something i feel deep down inside, and there's nothing specific that has brought that idea to existence, but it exists nonetheless. I feel like I'm home here, even if I'm not sure where home is yet.

Getting some me time in

2009-05-21T13:20:00.003+09:00

a misty morning is one of my favorite scenes to wake up to, particularly when you're up before the sun, and you can just see ghostly grey around you, and then as the sun rises, trees start to apparate out of nowhere (why yes, I am enough of a dork that I use words from Harry Potter to prove a point sometimes).

and then as the sun gets higher in the day, you can see farther away:

and here are some photos of the caves that I promised you guys (for more, check out the photo album on the right side of my page):

Life in an Ashram is steady, with almost no "personal time". Our schedule is as follows:
-wake up between 5 and 5:30, for the morning yoga class at 6 (counterintuitively, it starts at 5:30 on the weekends)
-breakfast at 7
-chanting at 7:45
-cleaning at 8
-visitors meeting at 9
-work at 9:30
-morning tea at 10:30
-work at 11
-yoga nidra (guided deep relaxation) at 12
-lunch at 12:30
-clean up from lunch at 1
-work at 1:30
-afternoon tea at 3
-work at 3:30
-class at 5:15
-dinner at 6
-dinner clean up at 6:30
-class at 7
-silence after 8:15.

Usually I'm in bed by 9pm, the earliest i've been to sleep here since I got to Australia. It's pretty regulated, the same schedule every day, but I'm finding peace in routine. I'm learning to enjoy yoga, and i've been learning a few mediation techniques that are really helping me quiet my mind and deal with a lot of issues that i'd deeply surpressed. We're going to stay for another three weeks, and I'm not sure what i'm doing after.

Erik and I are not going to be constant travelling companions for the next 7 months, as I initially thought, as I realized after he got here that I'm better at travelling alone than with a person that I worry about. We think a lot alike, but in this case, I don't think that's necessarily helpful, because I'm trying to reinvent myself as I travel. We'll be meeting up at various points during the trip, but we won't be glued at the hip. I think it's a more convenient arrangement for both of us.

I definitely have to find a paying job soon, as I'm getting pretty broke by now. I don't have to worry about money at the Ashram though (besides the occasional 2 dollars for laundry), because they give us room and board for all the work we do.

Life's beautiful, I'm content, and i'm surrounded by a world that begs me to explore it.

much love to you all.

last moment of Zen was Evolve, by Ani Difranco. Here's your newest song:
I am not a pretty girl
that is not what I do
I ain't no damsel in distress
and I don't need to be rescued
so put me down punk
wouldn't you prefer a maiden fair?
isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere?

Satyananda a.k.a a plea to travel

2009-05-14T15:22:00.005+09:00

At a ridge in the cliffs above the Satyananda yoga center that is known as "the Caves", I stared out at the valley below me and did what I assume any rational and adventuring person would do if they were out alone on the top of a mountain: I got naked.

Staring out at the valley below me, sunlight gleaming off the creek below and the forest alike, the wind gently swirling around me, sheltered by huge fiery rock formations, I felt deeply satisfied with the world and my place in it.

Erik and I are currently wwoofing at the Satyananda Yoga Retreat at Mangrove Creek near Sydney, where we plan on staying for at least a week (though now that we've been here a day, we'd both like to stay a bit longer).

Before here, we were in Sydney for a few days, and the Blue Mountains for a few days as well.

In the Blue Mountains, we saw some truly spectacular temperate rainforest.... The type that makes you stop and look around with your mouth open while your brain tries to catch up with your eyes and figure out how you got to be so lucky that your feet brought you here.

Yeah, what I'm really trying to say here, people, is STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND COME TO AUSTRALIA. You owe it to yourselves to see this part of the world. One way tickets right now are about 360 dollars from LA or San Francisco, assuming you buy before May 19th. You can do it! If you don't like flying, take a boat! find a crew on FindACrew.net, and take a boat to hawaii, and then fiji, and then australia. or WHATEVER... Stop with the excuses, pack up and GET OVER HERE!

gotta go to yoga class. more later, with photos to boot!

Jasper Hall

2009-04-29T14:39:00.008+09:00

I feel I should preface this by telling you that, as I write this, I am stone-cold sober. That being said, I'm feeling so good today it's like I've been drugged. I haven't, but I'm feeling utterly connected to the world around me, and it feels so incredibly good. The bottom 3 inches of my jeans are stuck solid with mud, my arms are covered in scratches, I'm a tiny bit sunburned and pretty itchy from various bug bites and tobacco plant fuzz, but I'm content, and happy, and blissfully aware of myself, the people around me, and nature. This must be what one step towards nirvana feels like. I have so much love inside my skin i don't know what to do with myself and I'm almost afraid I'll vibrate to pieces.

Let me back up and explain a little bit:
I'm wwoofing at a place called Jasper Hall. It is near Byron Bay, near a waterfall called Minion Falls, and it feels very close to attending some sort of odd summer camp in paradise.
There are about 10 wwoofers, and another 5 or 10 people renting here, and they're doing their best to live entirely sustainably, totally off the grid. There is a large overgrown food patch, and quite a few citrus and banana trees, and an outdoor kitchen, and quite a few buildings.
They're currently building a new solar heated shower, but until it's done, there are no hot showers, or even warm running water. There's a compost toilet, but you're expected to pee in the woods, and at night you can hear the frogs in the ponds sounding like geiger counters detecting high levels of radiation. We get up around 7, work from 8-10:30, take an hour break, then work for another 2.5 hours until we eat a late lunch. One of the guys here has a swollen eye from an incident with a leech. There's no cell phone reception, no insulation in the buildings, and it's getting colder at night.... So what could possibly be so amazing about this place? What could possibly put me in such a good mood?

I spent the whole work day destroying a forest. Not your usual work for a treehugging hippie like myself, but in this case, it was necessary to destroy something to create something better. The forest we were destroying was a mass of invasive species, and we needed to clear the bush to regenerate the regional rainforest. They've been doing this for ages now, years upon years, clearing out the alien, planting more locals, and you can see the effects on so many different parts of the land. It was grueling labor, and as I mentioned, I'm pretty scratched up and sunburned, but it felt like... penance or something. Yes, I realize I often lapse into religious terms when I speak about forests, but bear with me. I felt like I was doing something to give back to Australia, to repent for all the plants and animals that Westerners have carelessly dropped across lands where they're not welcome.
The tragedy of this work is that it's much harder to get rid of invasive species than it is to introduce them, so people don't want to expend the effort to get rid of the stuff they brought here accidentally. However, it felt like a step towards protecting the place i want to live, since I'm currently planning on living here on a more permanent basis at some point, like proof that I care enough about the country to be allowed to stay. Maybe all people should have to contribute something positive to a place before they're allowed to live there, if for no other reason than to help them appreciate the sanctity of the land, and what a travesty it is to drop invasive species willy-nilly and let them grow unchecked.

Yesterday, instead of a shower, 5 of us went down to the river and jumped off a rock into the depths. It was invigoratingly cold, the type that shocks you as you hit the water, so that you have to restrain yourself from gasping and swallowing while you're still under the surface. The location was straight out of a movie, as usual, a small waterfall leading to a deep pool, surrounded by tall, lush rainforest trees that filtered the light through the leaves. We got out feeling numb on the outside, but warm and happy on the inside (although i shouldn't speak for anyone else but myself).

The night was rounded out with a talk about raw food around a woodburning stove. It was cosy and intimate, and felt very much like a night at camp.

There's no one reason today why I was so happy, but I'm just rolling with it and accepting that I'm connecting to some greater energy that flows through here. No one was surprised when I mentioned it to them. Apparently this happens often here.

a slight non-sequitur: Ever since getting my tattoo, I've been running into more and more people, books, and posters telling me that we're all interconnected and manifestations of each other (everything is ONE). I don't know if it's the places I'm going or the people I'm talking to and if it's just chance or if it's fate, but I just feel like I'm finally starting to understand something. If I were in Plato's caves, I'm just starting to see the shadows on the walls in the darkness... But I know there's something out there causing the shadows, I just need to break through to see whats there... Writing some of this makes me feel like a bit of an exhibitionist, but I'm trying to clue you in on where I am in my own personal development right now. no comments or replies to this necessary, it's just something I'm putting out there for you all to observe.

much love.

EDIT: Last Moment of Zen was too easy, so I'm going back to a less pop music but no less wonderful artist for this posts Zen:

I walk in stride with people
much taller than me
and partly it's the boots but
mostly it's my chi
and I'm becoming transfixed
with nature and my part in it
which I believe just signifies
I'm finally waking up

and there's this moth outside my kitchen door
she's bonkers for that bare bulb
flying round in circles
bashing in her exoskull
and out in the woods she navigates fine by the moon
but get her around a light bulb and she's doomed

The red line

2009-04-25T19:55:00.002+09:00

If a group of 20 people walked by while you were sunbathing wearing t-shirts with the words "I've been abducted" and holding on tightly to a long bright red string, and then another group walked by the same way, wearing shirts with guns on them, and then another group with a mix of the same, and another, would you interact with them and follow them?

I would. I did today, and ended up going on a 4km walk with about 175 other people to protest against the treatment of children in Uganda and Sudan, and other countries in Africa, many of whom live with the fear of getting abducted by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) and get forced into being child soldiers. For more information, look here.

Apparently it was a global effort today, with people in cities across the world joining in to push the UN to start prosecuting the LRA heads and provide relief for the displaces masses that have fled their villages. We walked for two and a half hours (the rest had started even before me, so they probably walked closer to three), passing curios people left and right, all the time talking with them about how many people have been hurt by what's been called "the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today". I got to meet some very friendly, awesome people, and we talked about NY and America, and cultural differences and language, and a ton of things before we finally reached the park where the multiple walking groups convened. We sat around and wrote notes to the Prime Minister of Australia asking him to put pressure on the UN, and the Premier of Queensland, and then we heard a Sudanese man talk about the movement and a representative of the Premier came and thanked us for bringing awareness to the cause. After I spent some time talking with people and listening to a kick ass guitar player, and then I rushed to the ferry to get a ride back home. It was quite a fun way to get involved in something I've actually been aware of for a while (I saw the movie, Invisible Children, a year or two ago, and it was rather poignant... I'd recommend you see it if you've got the time and want to feel moved).

I mentioned the possibility of Salsa dancing last night, and I'm glad to say that I attended, and it was SO much fun! There had to be at least 75 or 80 people there, all in various stages of learning how to dance, and having a good time from 8-11 pm. Unfortunately for my friend and I, we got there at 7, so we waited around for an hour and did a little dancing on our own in the corner while we waited for the lessons. There was an hour of lessons at 8, with a guy teaching a little cha-cha, a little merengue, a little salsa, and a little reggeton, and then they turned us loose to enjoy our meager skills and move to the music. It was like a huge party in the center of the square, and apparently it happens every Friday night. There were some incredible dancers, and some mediocre dancers, but no one was judging, everyone was just having tons of fun. I got to dance with some guy who immediately started spinning me around in circle after circle, taking charge and enjoying my sad attempts to keep up. I laughed so hard, partly because I was just having fun, and partly because I was loving watching him expertly maneuver me. There is something so satisfying about watching a good dancer, and even more satisfying dancing with one, especially one that is good enough to work around your shortcomings... It's definitely something I wish I'd been able to attend more frequently.

Not going to Gadhya after all, worried that I'll get stuck up there and have to pay 85 dollars to get back to Brisbane... Going to try to find somewhere I can WWOOF until the 5th.

Take care everyone! much love!

Stagnation

2009-04-24T14:43:00.004+09:00

It's friday, and I'm still in Brisbane, although I have word that I may be going to Gandhya tomorrow... We shall see if that's actually true or not. If you don't get another post from me until the beginning of May, assume I made it up there. Two pickers came back to Brisbane yesterday, to meet up with a friend of theirs, and they gave me the lowdown on the mandarin jobs (all the while smelling deliciously of orange juice, which i found quite distracting). Apparently the work is ridiculous, the people who live in the town are mostly racist (They quoted one farmer as saying "the only good korean is a dead korean"), and they charge 20 dollars for 4 hours of wireless time at the library. I probably won't be checking e-mail or updating my blog much while i'm up there, but I'm still going up just in case I can make something before going down to Sydney.

Today we went to the botanical gardens next to Mt. Cooth-tha, which were positively gorgeous. I realize that botanic gardens are just man-made creations where they squish tons of non-native plants together and attempt to make it look cohesive, but I felt very calm and peaceful while walking through, and enjoyed seeing the different atmospheres the gardeners had created. Also, there were a bunch of lizards around, and they let me get really close and take photos of them:

We saw a bunch of really cool spiderwebs, although only one was close enough for me to take a photo of it:

I should mention that I loathe/am slightly terrified of spiders, and Australia's got a ton of them, and many are some of the most poisonous on the planet. They even have a bird catching spider here... Now, I'm not a scientific expert by any means, but it seems to me that a spider large enough to catch birds is just going overboard. Evolution needs to just stop that direction of movement, because if they keep on evolving that way.... I don't want to think about it, it makes me shiver. ick. So yeah, spiderwebs are beautiful, spiders are monsters bent on the eventual destruction of the human race after they snare us in their webs and suck out our souls.

... er.... moving on..... LOOK A DISTRACTION YAY PRETTY PICTURES:

And now that you have all forgotten about my bizarre rant, I can tell you about the rest of the day that I've got planned, which involves reading on a man-made beach and going swimming in a man-made lagoon in South Bank, and then going to salsa lessons tonight from 7-11. There will be dancing. Oh, there will be dancing.
In case you didn't look at the photo I uploaded from my last blog post, that's a perfect double rainbow I was seeing... Yeah. How often do you see those in NY?

Your moment of Zen from last time i remembered was "Rock & Roll", by Eric Hutchinson. Here are your lyrics until next time:
Something in the way she moves,
Attracts me like no other lover.
Something in the way she woos me.
I don't want to leave her now,
You know I believe in how.

In which mindfulness is discussed

2009-04-21T19:44:00.001+09:00

I'm back in Brisbane, although you all would barely know I left, considering how much I've been posting recently. I'd spent the last couple of days on the Gold Coast, enjoying the pristine beaches and spending time with friends, when I decided to come back up here to hitch a ride up to Gayndha (Honestly, I have no idea how to spell it, all I know is it's pronounced like "Canada" but with a G at the beginning) to do some fruit picking before going down to Sydney. I thought we'd be leaving tomorrow, but now it's looking like we won't be leaving until thursday. Ah well, carless people can't be picky about transport days. From what I've been hearing from people who are already up there working in the Mandarin fields, the work is monotonous and boring, but since I'm only planning on being there for about 2 weeks, I think I'll be ok. It'll just be nice to make some money again, no matter how meager that money may be.

I was at a party last night when a friend told me one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me (To be fair, she was pretty inebriated, but still, the words were kind hearted and well meant). She said "Jenna, you're like, constantly THERE without being overbearing about it. You just kind of exist, and when you talk, you talk, and when you're silent, you're silent, and when you dance.... you dance!"
It was a compliment to me because I am doing my best to take Thich Nhat Hanh's ideas to heart and be mindful. I think I've still got a long way to go towards living in the moment, but it's nice that someone sees in me the person that I'm working on becoming.

Brisbane is once again sunny and gorgeous (although you tend to get rainbows here after the rain, so it's pretty hard to be in a bad mood here even during a downpour, because it's going to be so pretty when the rain stops). I hope to go to the Botanical gardens here tomorrow, and bring back tons of pretty photos for your perusing pleasure.

Ciao!

In which our protagonist apologizes for the lack of recent updates

2009-04-13T18:09:00.004+09:00

Hey everyone.

Yeah, sorry about the lack of communication from me recently. All I can say is that I've been too busy experiencing everything to write it all down, and far too little time near internet hotspots to get things posted and uploaded and all.

As I write this, I'm in Byron Bay for the night. My first impressions of the town is that it has been overrun by hippies, and that this town has somehow jumped out of a sci-fi book and eliminated all people between the ages of 30 and 60. Everyone's either very young or very old, there's no middle age here. I don't know what to make of it, although the impression likely comes from the fact that there's a huge Blues Festival going on right now, and so there are masses of youngsters who have flocked here to hear musicians groove and dance in the rain.

It's currently pouring outside, although the rain wasn't so torrential this afternoon. This allowed us to go to the easternmost point of continental Australia, or at least as far out as I felt comfortable going without getting drenched in the ocean:

You can hear my thoughts on the matter in the video. The waves were crashing over the rocks (I filmed at a rather low point, but I promise they were breaking all over the place) and the wind was gusting and I felt like I was on the edge of the universe, staring into the gaping maw of creation. It was mesmerizing. I felt the urge to yell out to the nothingness, proclaim my existence to the chaos that crashed around me. It was, quite frankly, an exhilarating experience.

Since my last post, I have (in no particular order, because it's all blurring together):
1) gone to Wet and Wild, an awesome waterpark, with my couchsurfing host M (tons of fun rides, and I didn't even get sunburned!)
2) gone up to Calaundra, a small city on the Sunshine Coast, and swam in the ocean for the first time in I don't remember how long (and actually enjoyed myself!)... I got to sleep out on a balcony of a chic apartment 8 floors up and wake up in the morning in time to see the sun rise... I'd recommend it to everyone, I haven't slept so peacefully in ages.
3) climbed up to the lookout on the top of Mt. Coot-tha and looked out on the entire city of Brisbane.
4) gotten a tattoo (i guess that's not since my last post, but it's almost totally healed now. Yay!)
5) had a Curry Cookoff at a birthday party, and
6) walked all over Brisbane, climbed trees in Brisbane, talked to heaps of Brisbanites, and enjoyed myself immensely.

I'm hopefully going to start caching soon (there's an article on it here), especially if Erik wants to get into it (I need a GPS locator if I'm going to do it, and those are costly.... anyone want to give me a late birthday present and donate money to buying it? there's a link on the side of the website where you can put money directly into my paypal bank account... even 5 or 10 bucks wil help). It's basically a global scavenger hunt.

I am going to be spending some time at another horse farm for the next few days (probably), and then will probably do some crop picking until I have to go down to Sydney, just to pick up a few dollars. I'll try to be a more frequent updater at the same time.

I have a new song stuck in my head! therefore, without further ado, your moment of Zen:

Cause if she wants to rock she rocks
If she wants to roll she rolls
She can roll with the punches
Long as she feels like she’s in control
If she wants to stay she stays
If she wants to go she goes
She doesn’t care how she gets there
Long as she gets somewhere she knows oh no

Tattoo

2009-04-05T11:04:00.002+09:00

As photos are worth a thousand words, I'll just give you these:

and say that it's something i've been wanting to do for about 6 years now, and it has a lot of meaning to me. The other left hand is the tattoo that the guy i'm staying with got at the same time... it's an African symbol meaning "strength through adversity". Mine is a mobius strip, a symbol of infinity and eternity.

...my parents are less than pleased. Ah well, can't be the perfect child all the time.

Brisbane, part deux

2009-04-02T14:02:00.004+09:00

I've become quite infatuated in the last two days. Brisbane is the type of city I can see myself living in for a very long time. The architecture is inspiring, the people are kind, and the transit is relatively cheap. The big museums are free. There are trees everywhere. It reminds me a bit of San Francisco with an accent.

I woke up yesterday morning and decided to go into the main part of the city. After navigating the bus system, I arrived roughly where I'd left the day before, and looked around.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but internet access in Australia is rather expensive. So my first order of business was going into the library across from me, to see if I could use the internet there.

Turns out I couldn't, but what a library! It was built in the last couple of years, and had a great energy about it, with mood lighting, and special spaces, and great furniture... the whole place felt reverent, which is a good thing to feel in a space devoted to knowledge.

That's a meeting room inside... how cool is this place?! What you can't see from that is that the chairs in the room are designed to look a bit like leaves... The entire inside felt like the result of a good architect's use of biophilia.

Though I couldn't use the internet at that library, the librarian i asked led me to a window and pointed me across the river to the other public library, where there is free access for anyone who wishes to use it (as I am currently).

Walking out of the back of the library, I ran into a farmers market that happens there every wednesday. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and i walked around for a while before stumbling upon a stall with about 10 different varieties of tomatoes.

I am a diversity appreciator, and I'd never tried most of the varieties that they were selling, so I bought a kilo of assorted tomatoes, and spent the rest of the morning eating them as I walked around, making my way slowly across the river towards the state library.

That's the outside of the State Library of Queensland, the one with free internet. The photo doesn't really do it justice... I'll have to take more later.

Anyways, after checking my e-mail, I met up with a girl S from the house I'm couchsurfing in (it's called The Forest, for those of you that couchsurf and want to check it out... the people are awesome, the building... not so much, but whatever, it's free and I'm moving somewhere else tomorrow), and we decided to go to the Gallery of Modern Art. The gallery was really cool, it had a huge exhibit on modern chinese artists about cultural identity and how communism and globalization are changing china and influencing its art. I saw a film that I adored called "Love", 21 minutes long, which basically pursed together all these scenes from different movies from various decades, starting with glorious love scenes, kisses and promises of undying devotion, then moving on to the heartbreak scenes, then moving on to the violent scenes, then moving on to the murder scenes, with women killing men that wronged them in 10 or 15 different movies. It was quite witty and stayed in my head for a while, which is one of the ways i judge a good art piece. To see some of the exhibits from the museum, look at the photo gallery on the right side of my webpage. After we were done with the museum, we walked back through the farmers market next to the first library, indulging in random food tastings and talking to the people behind the stalls. I talked to one woman manning a mushroom stall for a while, and eventually gave her my contact details just in case they need extra help this weekend.

At 4:00, we made our way into the library, because we'd seen a sign outside, and.... yes, you'd never believe it, but they were having a breakdancing workshop on the second floor of the library. S and I watched for a while, and then learned some breakdancing moves, and hung out for a bit with the guys afterwards, as they were cool people and we appreciated the lessons.

We went home around 7, and hung out with people from the house for the rest of the night. I got sleepy around 10, and went to lie down, but as I was drifting off, i heard the most amazing music coming from the balcony. It was an unfamiliar sound, so i went out and saw one of the people playing what looked like a UFO. He did a couple of songs, then noticed that i'd grabbed my camera, and told me that he'd do a song just for me. That's when I started filming:

It was awesome. I was so happy, it was just a great day.

a note about the instrument he's playing: it's called a Hang Steel Drum, and it was made by these guys in switzerland, and apparently they made like 10,000 of them and then stopped, so they're impossible to buy, sort of like Stradivarius violins, except the guys are still alive. I kind of want to take a pilgrimage to Switzerland to find these guys and beg them to make me one, but that will have to wait until I'm done traversing Australia.

Today is rainy and dark, but I still danced across the bridge to the library (literally, I had good music in my ears and I can't stay still when there's good music on) and I am probably going to another museum today. My raincoat has withstood the rain well, and my backpack is waterproof, and I'm happy happy HAPPY to be alive and in such a great place.

Life is good.

the last Moment of Zen was I'm Yours, by Jason Mraz. No wonder that I think it's the perfect traveling song, since thats what he's doing in the video... we must think alike.

I'm blanking on new lyrics right now, so you'll have to just put up with not having something new to think about, and just watch the videos i've uploaded. ENJOY!

Much love to everyone. LOVE LOVE LOVE (it's easy).

updates

2009-04-02T11:59:00.004+09:00

Now, a short jumpy post before going on to Brisbane, so as to stop me from getting ahead of myself:

Atherton was a (mostly) good experience. Looks like a valley, but you realize it's not after you're driving uphill for 2 and a half hours to get there. It's a huge flat plain with soil the color of red ochre.

Never underestimate the power of a hole in the ground to inspire awe and amazement. I saw the Mt. Hypipamee volcanic crater, and it was pretty incredible:

Yes, sometimes I am nearly speechless. Bear with me.
So the hole in the ground was most impressive (the video doesn't even do it justice, it was huge and special and nothing like I expected it to be), and the waterfalls in the area were pretty sweet too.

After, I went on a hike in a forest near A&Gs house... I had the whole forest to myself. Saw some Wallabies, and birds, and felt like the entire world was a mass of beauty and transcendent calm... No, i wasn't on drugs, I just wax poetic in forests, especially when the sun hits the trees just so and everything seems to glisten with possibility... I saw a butterfly that could have been a fairy, or maybe it was a small bird... things just seemed magical.

I'm lazy and cheating here a little and not go into descriptive regurgitations over the rest of Atherton, mostly because there's so much to say about the last two days, and i don't have all the time in the world to regale you all on every moment of my life, as that would stop me from actually EXPERIENCING every moment of my life... If you want to see more, look at my little slide show on the side bar entitled "more photos"... actually, it's a good idea to do that anyway, because i've uploaded more photos there than I have on the rest of the blog. I am already running out of space on my camera and my computer.... not a good thing, considering I have another 8 months here. Oh where has a month gone?!

After Atherton, I spent one more day in Cairns, mostly to get in a last snorkel trip before going south. I used a different company this time, not the cheapest (but hardly the most expensive), and they took us to a site with a little less pretty reef, but a ton more cool fish (which made the photo taking more difficult, because I saw so many fish that I wanted to capture, and they wouldn't stop moving). I will upload my favorite photos from that session later.

Next post, BRISBANE!

Brisbane

2009-03-31T17:20:00.003+09:00

Very lovely, Brisbane (I hear "Actors Nightmare" in the back of my head whenever I say very anything... I hope someone knows what I´m talking about with that reference). Quite beautiful buildings, lots of sculptures and trees... More to come much, much later. I need to summarize a week in a post or two... damn catching up. At some point, there will be videos and photos, of that I promise. But that´s all I promise right now.

the hunter vs the hippie.

2009-03-24T21:14:00.011+09:00

Yesterday, I turned into a killer.

Not a murderer, though it was premeditated. Not a torturer, although that may be a matter of opinion. I felt horribly guilty about it, but I did it nonetheless.

Yes, that's right: I caught, killed, and gutted my first fish yesterday.

It's the second step I've taken into truly confronting my own tendencies towards carnivorism. A ways back, I read The Omnivore's Dillema, by Michael Pollan, and it really made me examine my own consumption choices and take a look at what was going into my mouth. In America, almost no one cares about how a cow turns into a big mac as long as it only costs a dollar and tastes relatively good, and many people don't examine what goes into the industrial cycle that allows a quarter pound of beef to be sold so cheaply (Confused? read the book. I swear, it's an eye opener). While I've never been a hamburger person, I did eat steak and bacon and whatnot, and cheaply, so I decided that I wouldn't eat meat until I could take responsibility for the life i'm taking by eating an animal. For about 9 months, I was a pescatarian, someone who wouldn't eat red or white meat, but would eat fish, because I figured i'd seen a fish dead and there was more of a connection between a dead fish and eating a filet than seeing a live cow and eating a steak. So, when A&G offered me the chance to go fishing yesterday with their friend D, I took it, since I hadn't gone fishing in 10+ years, and I'd never caught anything that I remembered, and I thought it was time for me to see if I could go through with the whole process, from pond to plate...

I was lucky, and caught 3 fish within an hour, all perch, and about 8 inches long, and we decided to keep them and eat them. I thought they'd die quickly when they got out of water, but they were still alive at least a half hour after I'd caught the first one. D had thrown them in a backpack, and we brought the backpack back to the A&Gs house, and I reached in to get one, and it was still flapping around and jumped out of my hands (The fact that I was shocked that it was still alive also helped it escape, since I dropped it as soon as it started to wiggle). This gasping was a problem for me, as D wanted to show me how to scale and gut them, but they were still moving around and looking horribly miserable out of water. I felt ill. I asked D if we could put the fish out of its misery before starting scaling it, and to my horror, he hooked his finger through the gills and ripped its head off ("quickest way to break the backbone, eh" he said), then hung the body down as the blood started dripping out. I actually shrieked, shocked at the brutal efficiency, and A&Gs son C (age 13) started laughing and making fun of me. I'll admit, my heart pounded with multiple emotions as I watched D scale the fish, then slice open the fish's stomach to take out the guts, and I felt sick, and scared, and horribly sad as he finished up the process, and turned expectantly to me. I decided to do it, no turning back.

"I'm sorry", I told the fish, as I held it in my hands and watched its mouth open and close futilely. "I feel badly about this, but it's something I have to learn. If I didn't eat you, in all likelihood something else would, perhaps a crocodile, maybe a larger fish, who knows? I should have just thrown you back, but now I'm committed, because you've been out of water so long that you're dying anyway, and if I don't eat you, your death would just be for sport. Please accept my apologies." C nearly doubled over with laughter, relishing the fact that he had a front row view to a crazy person that talked to her fish. I glared at him, but that just made it worse. D showed me how to start scaling the fish, and I asked him where the backbone was so that i could cut it with the knife, instead of pulling off it's head. He pointed through the gills, and in my attempt to slice through the backbone, I cut into its eye and poked it out of the head. Waves of guilt washed over me as I looked at the damage I'd done trying to make this death a gentler process, and I decided to suck it up and kill it by pulling its head off (given that there was no cleaver on hand). Then I gingerly cut open its stomach, pulled out the guts, and cleaned it. I wrapped it in tinfoil and stuck butter and lemon on its side, and baked it for 45 minutes.

Pollan was right, you appreciate a meal so much more when you go through the whole process from start to finish. That fish was the most delicious fish I've ever eaten. I felt no small satisfaction in the fact that I'd been able to provide for myself. The hunter in me was happy. The hippie, however, was horrified.

Needless to say, I'm happy that, in an emergency, I can provide for myself. But I don't think I'll be eating any more meat anytime soon, since preparing it hit such a nerve. I dunno. we'll see. It's definitely something to seriously consider. I didn't think it would affect me so much, but i'm kind of happy it did. It's good i'm not so jaded, that taking a life means something to me.

In other news, Atherton is lovely, i went horseback riding this morning, and have been having a great experience. The farm i'm staying on has one fallow field right now, and the soil is the most gorgeous red color. I now know how to grout a tile floor, and i'm sleeping in a camper van. Things are good.

Snorkeling

2009-03-21T19:25:00.009+09:00

A taste of my snorkeling trip in Cairns:

I woke up at 7 am and had to transfer rooms in the hostel before going to the marina to catch the right boat at 8. After signing my life away and getting provided with flippers and a sting suit, the crew told us it was going to be a rough day on the water, and anyone who had experience with seasickness should take meds before we left. I decided to risk the seasickness, just to see if I could deal with choppy water, and am proud to report that I did not feel sick at all, even with the deck rolling from side to side (although I did get tossed around whenever I tried to stand up to do anything). We pulled up to a larger boat an hour and a half later, and traded some people, and I rented an underwater camera so that I could document everything that i saw. We got to our first site and I jumped in the water as soon as possible, eager to see everything i could.

Immediately I was miserable, as I kept on swallowing salt water. I'd take a breath, and then the bottom of my snorkel would fill up, and I'd frantically try to clear it so that i could breath again, and then it would fill up a breath or two later. It was distracting and horrible, but the reef was so beautiful so i didn't want to stop, but i finally went back to the boat ready to call it quits. However, when I got to the boat, i drank some water and started to feel better, and there was a woman who'd gotten out before me, uncomfortable with the open ocean around her. I put on a false sense of security and offered to take her out as a guide, and hold her hand so she didn't freak. It was one of those "pay attention to others discomfort so that you don't pay attention to your own" moments, and it allowed me to ignore my worries about my snorkel and force myself to go outside my comfort zone again. After swimming around for a while, and being relieved that she was happy to be seeing things, i finally realized that my snorkel was broken (after the filter popped out), and so we swam back so that we could eat lunch and I could get a new one.

After lunch, we went to an entirely different section of reef near the larger boat, and I got my new snorkel ready and went out as soon as i'd digested a bit. What a difference! Suddenly i felt perfectly calm, and despite the choppy water, i wasn't fighting to breathe, i could just go with the current. I saw so many incredible fish and coral, and not a single killer jellyfish. I was as happy as could be. The scuba divers complained about poor visibility, but up at the top, it was nice and clear. Sure, my photos and everything was a little blue, but it was great to see all these neon fish that basically looked like they were glowing!

If you want to see more, go to my picasa album, linked below:

Snorkeling

I did my best to film underwater, but I'm afraid it's a bit too bumpy to give you guys any real idea of what it was like to be there... The waves, as I said, were pretty choppy, so i'm moving around a lot while trying to film, and the camera i rented didn't have an underwater film function... still, here's something so that you guys know what you've got to look forward to if you get out there someday:

It ended far too soon, i want to do it again and again and again! I may not be a beach person, but i'm definitely a reef person. It's too bad scuba diving would kill me, or else I would have been happy to be a marine biologist.

The rest of the night was spent partying with the Backpackers, which included us sitting around next to the Lagoon, playing guitar and talking in various languages (French, Danish, and English for the Irish and Canadian and myself), and then going out and dancing. I won 5 dollars off a guy in a billiards game, and slept around 3 am.

Now i'm on to Atherton. Should be a good trip. I will, as always, write when I've experienced more.

Much love!

The Hostel

2009-03-19T13:00:00.004+09:00

I never thought i'd be grateful to McDonalds for existing for any reason, but they've got a place right next to where I'm staying, and from there i'm getting free wireless. I'm still not buying their food, but i have no problem using their wireless access.

When I moved to Brooklyn, I remember having a conversation with one of my friends (I don't remember who at the moment) about how they don't warn you when you're going into college that it's the last time that people will just be sitting around waiting to be your friend. Colleges (or at least small Liberal Arts schools like Oberlin) tend to self select for people who think similarly, or have similar values, and the people attending tend to have lots of time on their hands to sit around and talk and bond. If you move to a city you've never really lived in before, and you move alone, there aren't people just waiting for you to come and talk to them, or if there are, they're harder to find. People become friends with coworkers, but if you aren't at a job long enough to really make friends with someone, or your office is very small, you have to actively go out and search for people to talk to, or else you become a loner very quickly.

This is all a roundabout way to say that I have found a place where people sit down and wait for you to become their friend away from Academia, and it is called The Hostel.

B&J dropped me off today in Cairns, and I'm spending the next three days here before I go on down to Atherton to work at a horse and potato farm (they ride the horses and package the potatoes). I'm staying in a hostel, and it's filled with young people all traveling the world and looking to meet other travelers. I'm rooming with two english girls, a girl from the Netherlands, and a canadian girl. It costs 15 dollars a day, and that includes dinner, and if I wanted to work for two hours a day, it would all be free. The rooms are nothing to brag about, but i'm not here to spend time in my hotel room. It's clean enough, and i get linens. that's all i need. Everyone's bubbly and enthusiastic and willing to take you out with them and show you the good spots in town. I've already been to the Lagoon, which is a large, lovely pool across from my hotel, and plan on spending the afternoon in an art gallery that i can see from McDonalds and then go out dancing with the canadian tonight. If she leaves, there are 40 other people staying in the hostel and someone's bound to have an activity that they'd like to share. It's like college, but with no classes and no stress. Theres a bulletin board with people who are looking for drivers, or looking for passengers, or selling their car or scuba gear or whatnot, and it's all very helpful and welcoming. It's a great place to go when you want an automatic community.

There are a few downsides, you have to watch your stuff because people will walk off with it (I saw a sign that a girl left on the stairs asking people to return her ipod), and people are coming and going at different intervals, so you're not making lifelong friends with someone unless they're there for a good portion of time with you, but it is just what i need right now to feel comfortable here, and I'm looking forward to the next couple of days.

This is going to be fun.

more later. Much love!

as a side note: girls looking to fit in in Australia: get a haircut with long straight bangs (they call it "fringe") that almost touch your eyes. It's THE trend here for hairstyles, although i feel like it makes everyone look like they're trying to be 12 again. I'm obviously horribly biased and jealous because my curly hair doesn't encourage that sort of activity.

Hopefully going snorkeling tomorrow. YAY!

Daintree and the Mossmann Gorge

2009-03-15T14:14:00.014+09:00

Such beauty. I was absolutely enthralled with the sights I saw today.

Having my computer on in the dark has made me realize that the reason i've accrued so many bug bites here is because they're able to come through my window screen at night and bite me while I'm sleeping. And yet it is too hot to sleep with the window closed, as there is no air conditioning. Argh. So be it, the itching is annoying, but i will bear it to see the wonderful things here.

Before I write any more, I must confess that I am a forest person (a good reason to not worry about the fact that i did not get the Island Caretaker job). Being around trees makes my heart soar. Seeing the light filter through the leaves, listening to birds sing, finding waterfalls and soaring vistas after long hikes through damp leaves, the smell after a good rain, all of these things and more make me feel peaceful and whole. The beach, while beautiful, just doesn't do it for me quite the same way. There may be slight gradations in the color of the sand, or the horizon might display a magnificent sunrise rather than a soulful sunset, but I do not like the lack of shade, and I find sunbathing boring (or, worse to my artists eye, filled with neighbors with no discernible joints who somehow feel comfortable sitting in tiny chairs that sag under their weight while wearing spandex that they've poured too little of their flesh into). Perhaps if my skin was less translucent, I'd enjoy it more, but most beaches look the same to me, and many do not have the abundant reeflife that exists in Australia to catch my interest below the waves. I do like the ocean here, and i plan on spending some time in it, but given the choice between walking through an unknown forest and walking along an unknown beach, I'll choose the forest every time.

So, to sum up before actually writing: I am extraordinarily biased when I say this has been the best day I've spent in Australia so far.

We got up early in the morning, and I was pretty sore from horseback riding yesterday (which was an enjoyable time as well, but not nearly as exciting as today), but after a lovely breakfast, we left for the Mossmann Gorge. My mother e-mailed me the following warning before I left:
“It is dangerous to enter the river, due to swift currents, flash flooding, cold water and slippery rocks. Drownings have occurred in Mossman Gorge.

Avoid stinging trees. These plants are found at rainforest edges. They grow to approximately 3-4 metres high and have large, heart-shaped leaves with serrated edges. DO NOT TOUCH these plants as it will almost certainly result in a very painful sting. If you are stung, seek medical advice.”
which was all well and good, but as I was going walking with J, who's lived here for most of her life, brought countless wwoofers through the forest, and, at age 64, was not likely to take us through anything supremely stupid, I felt it was a bit unnecessary (but will include it so that readers may know the dangers i prevailed against while walking through the forest-- I should mention though that i saw people happily swimming in the water, and that the trails had apparently been cleared of Stinging Trees for the convenience of the tourists).

It was not the longest walk I've ever been on, but it was pretty magnificent. Though it was a sunny day, the rainforest was humid and fecund. We went to various outlooks that hung over the river. Here's a short video to give you a taste of what I was looking at:

I love rivers, and this one was quite lively and inviting. At one stop, we got swarmed by a tourist group, and J overheard the guide telling them about "all the platypus that live in the river", which she scoffed at, because platypus don't like fast moving waters. A good reason to befriend the locals-- they know what's going on in their own forests, and are less likely to make stuff up to impress the tourists (we watched, half amused, as the kids craned their necks, looking in vain for platypus swimming around). J also pointed out to me a bunch of plants that she's been growing at the house, in her bid to help regenerate the rainforest on her property. I saw some great butterflies and birds, and then we went back to the car to find B, and left to go to Daintree.

Right outside of Mossmann Gorge is the first aboriginal community I've seen since I've been here, although we drove past it pretty quickly. They're the only ones allowed to hunt in the rainforest, but the ones I saw didn't look interested, and J told me that it's a dying tradition. She said that about 1/3 of the aborigines are flourishing in Australia, but the other 2/3rds "expect handouts". I asked if the 1/3 are flourishing at the cost of their culture, and she agreed, that if they don't assimilate, they tend to get into trouble, but if they do, they tend to lose their culture. She and B used to work in an aboriginal community, and she said that back in the 70s, the kids she taught would go out bushwalking for half the year and come back healthy and fit and happy, and then come back to school and lose all of that while they sat in the classrooms. She also said that the elders would have prophetic dreams, but they don't as often anymore, especially when they start to adopt western culture.

I felt incredibly saddened, seeing a community of people who's ancestors were self sufficient in every way get tied down by a different society and succumb to a new culture. I'm not trying to talk about "the noble savage" here or anything, but I do think that our society has lost a connection to the world with all of our technological innovations, and our tendency to seek out and convert every tribe in existence over thousands of years (one of the reasons I mistrust all organized religions) has nearly eliminated the ability for us to (relatively easily) learn how to listen to the earth. For example, in India, about a week before the major tsunami, a small tribe that lived near the ocean moved away, because they knew something big was coming. None of our computer programs and satellites and radar and whatnot predicted it, but these people knew and moved out of harms way. Who knows what knowledge we've lost by assimilation of different tribal communities? It scares me to think what we could lose if we ever manage to assimilate (or kill) them all.

Anyways, I'll save the rest of that rant for another post, and move on to Daintree, because that was our next stop. The Daintree river is home to a multitude of crocodiles, and there are a few deaths every year from people being careless around the river. However, did that knowledge stop our heroine from jumping into the river?

Of course it did. I'm not stupid, and I certainly didn't want to risk ending my adventure so soon. B, J and I took a boat ride (haha, at first i wrote "botride", which sounds like it would be so cool) down the daintree river, to see what we could see.

The boat was flanked by welcoming swallows, that dipped and dived around us as we valiantly tried to capture them on film. We rounded the bend in the river, and on a small beach lay a croc, sunning himself while eying both the birds that pecked around him and our boat. We maneuvered the boat as close as we dared, and took as many photos as we could (I was crying inside because my dinky little lumix l3 couldn't get nearly as good a shot as my D80 could have), then continued down the river.

Daintree River itself is nothing special. It's 135 km of pretty brown and murky water, with piss poor visibility, but there's a section of rainforest that it passes next to that is stunning beyond belief. The tour guide told us that the section we were passing was one of the only untouched pieces of forest around Daintree, and that if you were to survey any one acre of land in the section, you'd find more species of tree than in all of Europe and North America (at least 1200 different species in a single acre!), plus more than 250 species of orchids, 28 types of mangroves along the river, and 40 different species of bird. It looked (and was) absolutely wild, verdant, unfettered by our tendency to slash and burn. I was starstruck. The forest proudly loomed over us, giving nothing away but its beauty. Going further down the river, we passed hibiscus trees and pasture, but that range of wild stuck with me for the rest of the day.

After the tour ended, we went for lunch, and i had a crocodile burger (If they're so keen on eating us, I felt it was only fair to return the favor). It was a decent meal, but for those of you who have not tried crocodile meat, I'll let you know, it tastes like... unsalted bread. That is to say, there's very very little natural flavor there, and more just a nice chewy consistency. From now on though, when something doesn't taste like much, I'll say it tastes like crocodile, instead of chicken.

Going back to the house, J took the scenic route home through the sugar cane fields, which was mostly lost on me as i was exhausted and fell asleep for most of it. oops. Still, it was a great day.

Your Moment of Zen: last song was White Flag, by Dido. Here's your lyrics for this week (i think this may be my traveling song for australia, which is a pity because i do not have it on my Ipod):

well open up your mind and see like me
open up your plans and damn you're free
look into your heart and you'll find love love love
listen to the music of the moment maybe sing with me
ah la peaceful melody
its your godforsaken right to be loved love loved love love

so i won't hesitate no more
no more it cannot wait i'm sure
theres no need to complicate
our time is short
this is our fate, i'm yours

Oil

2009-03-14T19:04:00.001+09:00

I don't know if you guys have heard over in the states, but there's been a major oil spill near Brisbane, and it's affecting a ton of beaches and islands (it's spread over 60 km of coastline), and they're doing everything they can to stop it from going up the rivers and tributaries. The spill came from a cargo ship transporting fertilizer and other toxics, which got caught in rough waters from Cyclone Hamish (which has disapated by now), and 31 barrels of fertilizer dropped overboard, and one of them banged up against the hull and sprung the leak. More than 100,000 liters were spilled (with some news agencies reporting that it was closer to 200,000), and 350+ people have volunteered to clean it up. I've committed to helping out at a horse ranch from the 23rd through the 30th, but after I think I'll volunteer as soon as I get down to Brisbane.

Alaska still hasn't recovered fully from the Exxon spill back in the 90s, and they didn't have nearly the diversity of life that depends on the reef here. Luckily they're not making the same mistake of using high powered water drills to clear the oil, because that gave many of the volunteers in Alaska horrible health problems that still haven't gone away. The people in charge are hoping that they're able to clean everything up by easter, but I don't know if that's a realistic goal. They haven't reported any birds dying yet, but they have had to clean up an entire pelican population. For more information, read about it here.

Rugby

2009-03-13T19:57:00.002+09:00

Rugby is a bit like football, but with no pads and no passing forward and almost no time-outs or rests, and a lot less money for the professional players. Personally, I don't think American football players could last for a full game of Rugby, although this is coming from a girl who actually sat down and watched the Superbowl for the first time ever in 2008 (although I only watched the last 30 minutes, but i've heard they were the most exciting). I find I can follow Rugby a little more easily than football, but I still get bored while watching. I just don't have the patience to watch sports and enjoy it, even when i'm watching the pros... but for you American guys who like watching American football, I'd recommend Rugby. I'm going to agree with B in saying that it's far more manly.

B is an inspiring person to be around, because he's basically a walking Murphy's Law: Whatever can go wrong with him inevitably does, and yet he jokes about it and keeps on going strong. J says he should have died three or four times now, he's had two melanomas, gone through radiation and chemo, had some disease that gave him serious asthma, had both lenses in his eyes replaced, and he got attacked by a Cassowary, a big bird that usually kills anyone it attacks, and he just keeps on going. In the last week, he's had to go down to Cairns to get a second surgery underneath his left eye, because he had a cancer underneath it that needed removal, but they didn't get it all with the first surgery. The surgery was successful, but then it started bleeding three days after the surgery ended, and it turns out the stitches got infected. Seriously, anything that can go wrong for him, does go wrong, but he's still upbeat and sarcastic and happy. I hope if life throws that many things at me, I emerge as positive.

Tomorrow I'm going horseback riding, and the next day I'm going to Daintree and the Mossman Gorge. Should be rather exciting. Post and photos to follow.

Culture shock and a bit about me.

2009-03-09T21:00:00.006+09:00

A few things about Australia:

If you ask for lemonade here, you basically get Sprite. I've been making “wacky American lemonade” for a few days, since it's a nice drink in the middle of a hot afternoon, but don't expect to order it in a restaurant.
5 Australian dollars and up are made of colorful plastic bills (as opposed to the nearly monotone cotton American bills). If you comment on this to an Australian, they will almost always mention that it's nearly impossible to rip their currency, and demonstrate as such in front of you. Anything below 5 dollars is in coinage, but they do not have one cent coins. Even with the lack of one cent coins, they price things as ___.99, which amuses me due to the blatant consumer manipulation, and annoys me because of.... the blatant consumer manipulation. Really, I want to open up a store some day and charge full dollar amounts, but the sad thing is that it probably wouldn't do as well because people think that a cent off something makes it a much better bargain. Any sociologists out there want to comment on that?
The road signs here are much more... artistic than the signs in the states. The symbol people are muscular and shapely, which is funny because in America all the signs are designed (for the most part) to be as graphic and unisex as possible. Also, you see caution signs on the road for emus and kangaroos, not deer. And they drive on the left side of the road, and they drive very quickly.
Australians really like to drink. As in, every day around 5 pm, B looks at me and says “what time is it? It's BEER O CLOCK!”, and gets a beer. He brews his own. J drinks at least two glasses of wine a night, possibly more... And all the Australians I met in Japan also commented that Australians like to drink a lot. I am doing my best to not follow their example, although i'm drinking wine with dinner every night.
There are a lot more obese people than I expected, especially after coming from Japan, where nearly everyone is petite and skinny. It's apparently an epidemic, due to the marketing on television about the obesity problem (sponsored by the government).
Everyone I've met so far has been really nice and easy to talk to. It's a breeze here to find your way, you can just walk up to anyone and ask for directions. I know that sounds normal to most people, but after living in New York, and knowing way too many people who delighted in giving tourists wrong directions, it's certainly refreshing.
Australian television is funny (and sometimes a little annoying) for a few reasons: They often start hour long shows on the half hour (so a show will start at 8:30 and end at 9: 25), they often start a show one week and resolve it the next (how much do you hate “to be continued” at the end of a tv episode? Apparently it happens ALL THE TIME here. So annoying), and (Puritans and tv show producers take note) they do not bleep out curses on any of the television programs, and yet Australia has not disappeared in a puff of blasphemic smoke, nor have all the children grown up to be axe murderers. Shocking, I know.
There are amazing clouds here. The sky is breathtaking nearly every time I look up. Often they're big fluffy balloon float clouds, that look like weirdly fluffy hydrogen filled creations, looming miles over the mountains, bobbing around happily (you would too if you had that view, i'm sure). When the sun hits just right, and it has at least once a day since i've been here, the clouds look like someone lifted them straight out of a renaissance painting. God i feel spiritual here.

On the subject of spirituality, I've been encountering more than one document recently on the idea of reality versus perception, and the way we view the world and interact with it (one of these documents being “The Miracle of Mindfullness”, by Thich Naht Hanh, which is one of the books I chose to bring with me, so that one, at least, was not entirely unexpected), and it's all gotten me to be a bit more introspective than I have been in a while, more curious about exploring myself and finding inner peace. I know I haven't really gotten into this a lot before in this blog, but bear with me (after all, I named it Jenna has no idea for more than one reason) while I wander off in search of myself.

B took me along to visit one of his friends yesterday, and they were surprised when I told them that my parents were still together and pretty happily married. Apparently most people they met WWOOF to get away from things, and they seemed to think I had a pretty secure head on my shoulders (HA!). I guess I was running away from New York when I first decided to contact Cliff about Niseko... The job market was crumbling, I'd been downsized from the job of my dreams, but more importantly, I was lonely, and getting bitter about it. New York is one of the most unusual cities in the world. People are pretty cautious and throw up a lot of barriers that make getting to know someone difficult. For example, it's basically impossible to start a conversation on a subway with a stranger at rush hour. You can try, but most people will just look at you funny until your conversation dwindles and dies. There's a hardness to people that makes them unapproachable, and you find yourself staring someone down if they make eye contact. I was getting jaded, and i didn't like it. I was lonely and felt that I didn't have people I could call and hang out with on a regular basis (Which is ridiculous, in hindsight, as I realized after I left that there were a ton of people from my college, my high school, and even my old summer camp and elementary school friends that i could have hung out with had i known they were living in the city. I didn't make as much of an effort to reach out as I should have, because underneath all of my outgoing nature, I am a very insecure person who doesn't actually enjoy putting herself out there). However, at the same time, I loved New York. I loved the buskers and the people watching and the accessibility of everything you could possibly need to buy, the way the light would glint off Manhattan and the statue of liberty as you rode the N across the bridge to Brooklyn... the neverending nightlife, the underground blues clubs, the costumes and parades, both official and everyday... The way you could walk to everything, given enough time. But I felt myself growing jaded and cold, and so I decided to leave when the opportunity presented itself.

I am still very much in a transitional phase of my life, and I don't always like myself all the time. There's a lot to work on, but I'm learning to love myself, and I'm pretty sure that putting myself out there and pushing my boundaries in a foreign country or two is helping. Living in Japan started teaching me to be more attentive towards other people, and also to become more comfortable with silence. Who knows what Australia will teach me. I had a dream last night that my parents came to visit and somehow got me to go home after two weeks here, and i was crushed, because I knew I wasn't finished with Australia, but was too poor for the moment to go back. I woke up so relieved that I was still here, and still able to explore before it's time to leave. I have another month and a half or so of being alone before Erik meets me in Sydney. I plan on putting the alone time to good use.

I guess, I just don't feel like i'm running from anyone or anything anymore, and more like I'm carefully exploring new avenues of possible existence. There's a huge world outside, and I want to see all of it and let it all inside me to wreak havoc and leave me different than i would have been if I'd stayed in one place. I want to experience reality, and find the joy in the everyday as well as the extraordinary.

/end personal stuff, for the time being.

Much love to you all.

Your moment of zen:
last lyrics were Warning, by Incubus (you want to watch that music video, it's awesome).
This week:

I know I left too much mess and destruction
to come back again
and i caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
and if you live by the rules of it's over
then I'm sure that that makes sense..
but I will go down with this ship
and i won't put my hands up in surrender....

sunset

2009-03-08T05:57:00.002+09:00

If you've been following the Australian news recently, desperately scared for my safety, you'd know that even though the cyclone has upgraded to a category 5 storm, it has not crossed over to the mainland, nor are they expecting it to. It's threatening a lot of the islands, (maybe good i didn't get that job, eh?) but they've evacuated a bunch of them to protect people, so it's looking like it will be worse for the buildings than the tourists. B&J have weathered a few cyclones in their lifetime here, and aren't too worried, so i'm pretty calm.
The great thing about there being a major storm in the area is that the sunset last night was one of the best i've seen in a long time.

Stunning, no?

As you can all see, I am happy and well. I'm not going to panic about anything until B&J start to, since they've weathered things like this before... They're pretty amazing hosts, very happy, very fun, and very positive (although B likes to rib on me for the hell of it). To give you an example of what they're like, J is 64, and for her 60th birthday, she and B went skydiving. Awesome, right? Forever young at heart... I've been cooking for B&J, and they're decidedly happy with it. Last night was grilled veggies and t bone steak marinated in a wine and worschestire sauce. Delish!
Today we go to Port Douglas. Photos to follow.

Much love!

ouch

2009-03-06T08:10:00.004+09:00

the sky is a gunmetal grey color, and they're promising a cyclone on the news. It's raining pretty hard, and we may have to start tying things down outside at some point. Since I'm already in Oz, if I get caught in a cyclone, will I wind up in Kansas?
in other news, I saw my first wallaby this morning, jumping across the grass a little after dawn... they are very cute, which in australia means it's pretty likely they could kill me (deadliness is directly related to cuteness here).
in other other news, I hurt my lower back gardening yesterday, and now it's making life more difficult than I'd like it to be. damn.
it could be worse though, i could be in the snow right now.

Julatten

2009-03-04T10:12:00.006+09:00

After signing off on the last post, I now have a few things i haven't had in the past three months: a cell phone, an australian bank account, and skin that feels like patent leather dipped in honey. If someone chopped up Costa Rica and put all the good parts together, it'd look a lot like Cairns, except here there are more things that are likely to kill you (and on that subject, I divert your attention to this lovely song on youtube. Catchy, no?). We took the scenic route to B & J's home, which B hated to do because he likes to drive fast, but necessary due to the fact that there'd been an accident on the main road that would have had us waiting 4 hours in traffic. Drive fast he did, at least 30km over the speed limit at all times, turning corners with speeds that made me grip tightly to the seat and hope for the best. We cleared a corner, and all of a sudden, there was the ocean! Bright azure, and tiny waves lapping along the beach, and so much beauty! The rainforest almost ran into the water in certain places (J described it as the forest kissing the ocean, and it's a pretty apt description). It was so breathtaking, that I decided I was fine with B driving us straight off a cliff, because I'd be dying happy and surrounded by incredible beauty. Luckily for this blog, that didn't happen, and after passing in and out of sleep (I'd been up since 3am, and nothing puts me to sleep faster than riding in a car), we arrived at their home.

B & Js house is located outside of Julatten (pronounced pretty much like gelatin, gel-lA-tyn, not jew luh-teen, as I told the customs agent at the airport), and it is wonderful. Their home overlooks a valley, with cow pasture bordering their land, and it is verdant and breezy and delightful. B's got a bonsai tree collection, which he started teaching me about, and they've got a gigantic gorgeous Brazilian iron tree, a few banana and mango trees, a few citrus trees, and a goat, 9 chickens, a bull mastiff, and a cat, as well as a pool and large screen television and computer (they've got one of those 30 inch monitors, my little 8 inch acer aspire feels so inadequate!). They get fresh eggs from the chickens, plus bananas and mangoes from the trees, but the birds mostly steal the citrus before they can collect.
I've got the task of working on re-establishing the vegetable garden, as it had become overgrown with weeds. In the last day and a half, I've cleared out all the weeds, tilled the soil, and threatened my first poisonous creature. The Cane Toad has poisonous glands behind their eyes that will kill you if you ingest even a quarter of a teaspoon of it, and one snuck into the garden as i was weeding. I shrieked, and then decided I couldn't leave it there because I was afraid i'd forget about it and accidentally touch it, so i took a shovel and did my best to maneuver it out of the garden, wincing every time it jumped towards me and hoping that it wasn't the kind of toad that can shoot the poison out of its eyeballs (it wasn't).
But yeah, still alive, and enjoying myself a great deal. It's raining today, so we're taking it easy, but everything's peachy. I'm cooking dinner tonight (i made macaroni and cheese yesterday, thinking of making spanakopita tonight), and looking forward to another week and a half here before i go to my next adventure.

Much love to you all!

A new continent!

2009-03-02T07:47:00.004+09:00

Cairns at 5 am looks much like any other place i've been at night, with one exception: The stars are unrecognizable. Different patterns entirely. I realize, upon getting out of the airport, that i have never seen southern stars before, or if I did, i was too young to remember. Two other things distinguish it from Japan: it's 27 degrees Celsius here, slightly humid (Snow? What's snow??), and it smells like sand, and waves, and sunshine. There's nothing quite like the smell of the beach, and though I can't even see the palm trees until the sky begins to brighten, I know we're by the ocean by the smell of it.

Unfortunately, nothing is open at 6 am, when I get dropped off by the shopping centre where I will be picked up at noon. So i'm currently camped outside an internet cafe, hoping that the wireless inside will start working before the people do. No such luck. It's a cute little cafe, and I hope the people will get here around 7am so that I can find out what's wrong and upload this to the web.

I left Niseko in high spirits, as i had a fabulous send off dinner from the staff the night before. Cliff gave me a choice of ordering anything off the menu, but i told the head chef that i trusted his judgment and would look forward to his choices, and he went a little overboard (in the best possible way, of course). Succulent Pork Bruchette, scallops so tender they nearly fell apart as soon as your chopsticks touched one, Japanese crabs grilled to perfection, salmon carpaccio with anchovy sauce, rigatoni with a cream gorgonzola and spinach sauce... I was in foodie heaven. It is doubtful I will eat as well again for a majority of my life. Everyone was wonderful, I was sad to leave. The chefs also gave me a necklace, that Fukushima-san described as “a one of a kind piece to bring you good health”. It's three beads of deep purple glass, and i've worn it ever since. They said that even though I was the worst presenter they'd ever seen (since, if you'll remember, in Japan there's only one right way to do everything, and I was holding all the plates totally wrong), I carried the plates with such seriousness that it almost looked presentable. They said they'd miss my smile, and that i'd helped Takahashi-san (the youngest) get out of trouble a bunch of times because Fukushima san would be berating him in Japanese, I wouldn't know and come bounding into the kitchen with a smile on my face, and Fukushima-san would forget what he was angry about because i was just so happy. I told them that they'd done a great job of making me feel welcome, even with the language and cultural boundaries. I gave them all hugs goodbye in the morning (they all cheered when I hugged Takahashi, I think they were rooting for us to get together), and Cliff took me to the airport.

I spent 28 hours, give or take, in Tokyo, transitioning between one journey and the next. Last time i spent any recognizable time in Tokyo, i was 14, and every time I went anywhere remotely touristy, I got hounded by Japanese schoolgirls who would surround me with a flurry of schoolgirl skirts and demand “you.. ameh ree cahn? We take pick suh wis you!” They would promptly turn to one camera or another, make a peace sign, and... CHEESE! I thought it was hilarious.

This time, I had less than a real day to see everything I wanted to see (since I'm now in an internet cafe that is prohibitively expensive, photos will come at another point). I went to Harajuku, and the Meiji shrine, which was exactly how i remembered it. If Central Park had a sacred ground in the middle, it would feel a bit like the Meiji shrine. Both are gorgeous man made wildernesses in the middle of a city, but Meiji shrine is a bit smaller, and a lot more sacred. It's quiet and reverent, and there are gigantic Torii at the entrance. Shinto may be one of my favorite “religions”, because there's a lot of reverence for nature, and it's about purity in life and death versus achieving eternal peace or 144 virgins or whatnot. I happened to be there at exactly the right time to either witness a wedding or the beginning of a doll ceremony. I'm not exactly sure which (Video to follow, to help you understand what i'm talking about).

The bridge right outside of the Meiji shrine was deserted when I got there, and when I left, there was only a small group of people dressed as cosplayers... Last time I was there, the bridge was packed with people dressed as characters in animes or just dressed to the nines for the hell of it. I didn't have time to wait for the bridge to fill up though, so I left.

On to the next destination! To contrast with the Meiji shrine, I went to a buddhist temple in Asakusa. It was packed! The streets leading up to the temple were teeming with people, with shops selling everything from fake samurai topknot wigs to japanese fans to those funny little cat dolls that bob their heads to fried dough. The temple was filled with people milling about, covering themselves with incense smoke and murmuring prayers. It felt more like a spectacle to me, but that's just a matter of opinion.

Took the train to Narita Airport, get there with plenty of time, was lucky enough to get 4 seats in the middle row of the airplane empty, so I laid down in full and slept for the whole ride. Now i'm in cairns, waiting for the rest of the shops/banks to open, and will hopefully be picked up at noon for my next big adventure! I AM SO EXCITED!

I saw that a bunch of you in New England may be in for 18 inches of snow in the next day or two.. Good luck! enjoy it!

Much love to you all.

Peet-sah Toh-stoh

2009-02-23T16:28:00.003+09:00

The Japanese are exceedingly good at a great many things:

1) Gardening (Though I have not had a chance to visit one on my current trip, the rock gardens of Japan are some of the most beautiful, tranquil places I have ever visited)

2) Erecting gorgeous buildings

3) Living in exceedingly small spaces

4) Making awesome (and awesomely confusing) game shows

5) Being at the forefront of technological innovation

and many other things that are a lot less trite and meaningless than a 5 point generalized list. However, it brings me to my point for saying all those things: For the most part, time and time again, the one item I have seen way too many restaurants in Japan ruin is.... Pizza.

There are some extraordinarily delicious breads in Japan, bakeries all over the country that make sweetbreads and donuts, big fluffy white breads that put Wonderbread to shame, round breads with manchego cheese and almonds baked into the middle, and other delicacies. I have gone into bread shops and been completely unable to choose one piece over another, feet glued to the floor with indecision as I look from one exquisitely browned roll to the next. You would think, with all this experience with breads, that there would be pizza shops galore, with thin & crispy, or thick & chicago-style crusts, but you'd be wrong. Horribly wrong. Terribly, Exceedingly wrong. Because, for the most part, restaurants don't serve pizza. They serve pizza toast.

The first time I came to Japan, I was 13 years old, and I didn't want to try Japanese food (Yes, I realize, I was an idiot.) I grimaced every time my parents tried to get me to try sushi, or dig in to a Bento Box, and contented myself with kappa maki (cucumber rolls, for those of you who don't regularly eat Japanese food) and Tempura Udon (Japanese noodle soup with a specially breaded shrimp on top), which were both foods I'd eaten before in the states. My parents and I travelled for about a week before we got to Clifford's apartment, and he took us out for food. I complained about all the Japanese food my parents had been trying to get me to eat, and Clifford tried to help by pointing out that a lot of places served Pizza Toast.

I was overjoyed! Finally, Pizza, something I relished back in the states! However, it was not the dish I had envisioned in my head. Pitsa toasto, as it's known, usually looks something like this or this. It is a thick slice of bread, some sort of tomato something (occasionally tomato paste, instead of marinara), and a lackluster cheese. After taking a bite, I turned to Clifford, pouting, and exclaimed "They've ruined pizza forever!"

Ever since, I've avoided buying pizza in Japan, until Cliff redeemed the country three days ago by bringing me to a genuine brick-oven pizza shop in Annapuri. The pizza was thin crusted, the cheese was delicious, and while it wasn't quite Artichoke, it was good enough to make me want to go back.

So, moral of the story? If you are going to order pizza in Japan, stick to the places with an oven you can see, otherwise you're stuck with toast.

Australia update: I'm going to start the trip by WWOOFing with a couple outside of Cairns, who describe their experience as "a 17 acre property with beautiful mountain views and a creek running through the centre which is home to a shy platypus. Wallabies roam through our paddocks as do echidnas & bandicoots. We have a Caribbean Pine plantation, fruit trees and also regenerating rainforest trees natural to our area. Work includes weeding, pruning & some household chores. On weekends we take our Wwoofers to nearby tourist spots and sometimes camping. Accom for one person in our home."

I think I'll stay there for 2 weeks, and then see what else is around, maybe work at a farm with horses so I can do some riding (because deep down, I believe horses deserve to be ridden, rather than eaten)... I'm getting SO excited!

Your moment of Zen: the last song was "Paris, Tokyo" by Lupe Fiasco (and for the longer remix, see here)

Today's lyrics:

Bat your eyes girl, be otherworldy

doubt your blessings, seduce a stranger

whats so wrong with being happy?

kudos to those who see through sickness,

over and over and over and over and....

She woke in the morning

she knew that her life had passed her by

she called out a warning

"don't ever let life pass you by"

A Restaurant Review!

2009-02-22T13:47:00.003+09:00

The most recent issue of Powderlife (a local magazine self described as "Niseko's powder lifestyle magazine fresh every two weeks") just hit the stands, and I'M IN IT! The full article can be read here, but I'm going to copy down the parts about me just in case the article ever disappears: "Cliff’s cousin, the friendly and professional Jenna, also from the Big Apple, was waitress for the evening, enchanting us with her conversation, an artistic eye and infallible service...Cliff, chefs, Jenna and co. should all be proud that they have pulled everything off perfectly the first time around." SO COOL! The actual article in the magazine also has photos of the food (the three on the bottom taken by me), and a picture of Cliff and me sitting on a couch (see below):

If nothing else, this will probably help me get a hospitality job in Australia, right? But still... I think this is the first time I've ever been mentioned in a magazine. Yay! Glad I could help the restaurant shine. Too bad it came out so late in the season...

Another Onsen, and Wa.

2009-02-19T10:32:00.006+09:00

For my latest onsen outing, Cliff took me to Yugokoro-tei. Very nice, good hot water, and a gorgeous outdoor bath:

Here's a vid of the whole picture, just to see the snow falling:

This time around, there were two japanese girls in the bath with me (they clearly left before I took this video), and they both decided to do the whole "cover yourself in snow" dive. As it clearly had Japanese approval, and my following wouldn't make me lose any Wa, I indulged as well.

I don't think i've discussed Wa on this blog, so here's the concept as far as I understand it (and I will warn you, my understanding of it is very limited, so if you know more than I do and I'm completely off, feel free to correct me in the comments):

Your Wa is how much esteem and respect you hold in the eyes of others. You can lose Wa by not paying attention to little things, or for doing really socially awkward or horrible things. For example, pouring your own glass of saké makes you lose wa, because the people around you are supposed to fill it for you. I don't know if that translates as to you being greedy for wanting your saké immediately, or whether it translates to the other people not choosing to refill your cup, but helping yourself to liquids decreases your wa. Being rude to someone decreases your wa. Not bringing back a present for your subordinates when you go somewhere for business decreases your wa. Not bowing low enough or long enough to your superiors decreases your wa. It's not like a coal mine, where you've got a limited amount of wa and when it's gone, it's gone forever. Wa can be replenished, by being aware of your actions and acting correctly, but losing it does mean something to the people who are paying attention.

Luckily, foreigners are let off the hook and not judged too severely when we royally screw up (although it's a bit patronizing as well, very "aww, poor things don't know any better, it's so cute", and I'm not sure if, being foreign, you start off with a lower level of wa to begin with, just because you're not Japanese), so I'm pretty sure that the people I've worked with here don't think of me too horribly, even with my dancing with myself when a song I like plays on the speakers, or my too-loud laughter. A high level of Wa requires you to be very perceptive of the people around you, and react in ways to make their situation better before they ask for your help. Sometimes this results in Japanese people doing things they don't necessarily find proper, just to make you feel like less of an idiot.

So, in that situation, I think that it was ok for me to dunk myself in the snow because the girls had done it before me, but I haven't done it beforehand when I was with other people in an onsen, because I don't think it would have been viewed as proper if I'd just done it on my own, and I didn't want anyone else to feel like they had to jump in just because I had done so.

Those of you who have never lived in a cold climate: Jumping into snow is cold (and doing it naked is even worse). Jumping back into hot water after, whether it's an onsen or a hot tub, feels like you're burning. Your skin gets all prickly and super sensitive for a minute or two, like every pore of your body is being stimulated.

The mens outdoor onsen was located right next to ours, only separated by a high fence, so we could hear them talking... They heard the girls too, and some threw snowballs over to our side (we threw some back). It was quite a lot of fun, and I think the girls were amused by me (although I'm sure I lost some wa as they saw me walk back outside with a camera in front of the "no camera" symbol).

After, I found Cliff reclining in an awesome (and free! unusual for the onsens, most charge 100 yen for 10 minutes) massage chair, and I experienced my first massage bed! You lay down on it, pull a hood over your body, and music and wave sounds play as the massage table lifts you up and down. It felt like lying in the ocean, with some shiatsu mixed in for good measure. So relaxing, I could have stayed on it all day, if there hadn't been other people waiting to use it.

I'd love to go back before I leave, but I doubt i'll have time.

Regarding my video, if you haven't voted yet, please do so (http://www.islandreefjob.com/en/#/applicants/watch/E0g8COAnQzI) The link wasn't registering hits or votes for almost all of yesterday (so those of you who voted yesterday may be able to do so again, try it and see), but I believe it's now working again. I appreciate the kind words, the donated facebook status', and the love thats been pouring my way. You guys are the greatest!

Much love to everyone,

Jenna

Your moment of Zen:

last song was Zombie, by the Cranberries. Here's today's lyrics (I'm eliminating points, because no one seems to care about voting):

Lets go to sleep in Paris

Wake up in Tokyo

Have a dream in New Orleans

Fall in love in Chicago,

Man, now we can land in the motherland

Camelback across the desert sands

and take a train, to Rome,

or home, Brazil, for real.....

Kamonohashi, the Ninja Platypus

2009-02-17T16:36:00.005+09:00

Big news, my video for the Best Job In the World (If you don't know what I'm talking about yet, you haven't been paying attention) just got posted.

http://www.islandreefjob.com/en/#/applicants/watch/E0g8COAnQzI

There's the link if you want to see it in all it's glory... if you do watch it, rate it 5 stars and pass it on to a friend (or two, or three) and encourage them to do the same!

I spent most of today experiencing the closest thing I'll get to a coffeehouse here (sitting near the edge of Hanazono 308s huge dining hall), while I wrote in my journal and listened to an amazing musician play his acoustic guitar. I was interrupted by two things: being dragged up on stage to do karaoke in front of 100 or so people (we sang "Lean on me", I blushed profusely), and the NINJA PLATYPUS!

For your edification, the platypus in question:

Yes, you viewed that correctly. That's the mascot of Hanazono 308 (and apparently all of Niseko, Japan), Kamonohashi. He is a snowboarding Ninja Platypus. Possibly the coolest mascot EVER (I think Oberlin, my alma mater, should ditch the Yeoman as their mascot and totally adopt Kamonohashi), and definitely a highlight of 308.

Otherwise, I'm just excited that the video's getting posted.

New onsen tonight.... i'll sneak in my camera if I can.

Bloopers, Japanese Healthcare, and Australia updates

2009-02-12T11:21:00.005+09:00

I sent in my application today, so you'll all hopefully be able to vote on it in a few weeks... But in the meantime, to keep you all amused... as promised: BLOOPERS!

Enjoy.

Now on to Japanese healthcare... As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been sick. Starting January 23rd, I had a painful sore throat. I went to the emergency room at the hospital here (because they don't have any normal doctors offices in a town this size), but it was a saturday, and I could only see the general doctor, not a throat specialist. He looked at my throat and gave me 5 days of pills, which I took faithfully and thought it was over.

2 days after the pills are gone, my throat starts hurting again, so I return to the hospital. I wait for an hour, listening to them test their fire alarm system. In the states this would be a cacophony. However, this being Japan, there's a series of songs that sound like they're all played on the xylophone. If you concentrate on the music, you realize they're playing random old pop-- Imagine, by the Beatles, Let It Be, by The Beatles, and you start to think they're on a Beatles kick, until all of a sudden BAM, they play We are the Champions, by Queen (a very weird song to hear by xylophone), and just throw you for a loop.

This time, they issue me a card (Japan's got electronic records at their hospitals), take me into a different room to see a specialist, who tells me that the other guy said I had tonsilitis and that he must not have given me the strong stuff (this is via a translator), and prescribes me 5 more days of the pills. Three days after I'm done with them (this is a Saturday), my throat starts acting up again, but again, because it's the weekend, no specialists are in at the hospital, so I persuade them to give me another two days of antibiotics to tide me over until monday, when I can see a specialist. Even though it takes the doctor in the emergency room all of 5 seconds to prescribe the pills, I end up waiting about an hour and a half to see him.

Monday comes around, and the desk tells us the specialist throat doctor won't be in until Tuesday. I go back Tuesday, and it's another long wait, until I'm finally led into a room.

This room looks straight out of the twilight zone. I've somehow traveled back into a different era, where there are instruments of torture lined up in neat little rows, all shiny and sharp and painful looking. The doctor is actually wearing that headband with the circle above his eye that you see in cartoons. He picked up one tool, which looked a spoon with the middle of the head cut out, and asked me to open my mouth. A moment of panic, the 5 year old in me telling me he was going to twist off my tongue somehow, or yank out that thing that dangles in the back of my throat, but given the fact that I am 23, not 5, I opened my mouth and said "AAAAAHHHHH" like I was supposed to, and he told me that he couldn't see anything and a culture would be useless because the antibiotics that I'd taken for two days had surpressed everything. He then prescribed me another 7 days of antibiotics, but told me to only use them when it hurts.

Now, I am nowhere near being a doctor, but I thought the point of antibiotics was that you're supposed to take them when the symptoms start, and not stop until you've used them all, so that they wipe out all the bacteria and don't lead to drug resistant diseases. What are these guys doing? I went home, and waited, and yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon, my throat started hurting again. This time, I called my doctor in NY, and told him what was going on, he told me it's probably a viral infection if two rounds of antibiotics didn't work, and i just need to wait it out and take tylenol. So that's what i'm doing. I don't exactly trust the Japanese healthcare system right now, so I'm trying it the New York way and hoping that it won't hurt too much in the process.

On the Australia front, I'm getting more and more excited to go... My friend Erik is joining me at some point in May, so i'll only be traveling alone for 2 or 2.5 months (that's enough time for me to get tired of myself, right?), and we'll probably be doing some wwoofing (unless, of course, i get the BJITW). I might also be traveling with my parents for 6 months after, because my mom (a professor at LIU) got sabbatical, so she and my dad are talking about traveling around southeast Asia for 6 months, and I'm not too cool to enjoy a family vacation every now and then. Where will we go? India? Thailand? Singapore? Who knows??? However, it's definitely looking like I'll be outside America for all of 2010, and possibly part of 2011.

I hope everyone's having a fantastic week, and that you're enjoying the unseasonably warm weather if you're in NY (Was it actually 70 degrees in the middle of February??? How scary....).

Much love!

Bonus: Last bonus was "I've just seen a face" by THE BEATLES (how did no one get that?), however the clip I linked to is the version in Across the Universe, which is a crazy awesome movie that i enjoyed immensely and I daresay I may like Jim Sturgess' version more than the original, if only because it's a little quicker...

anyways, on to this post's bonus, an old favorite of mine (15 points):

But you see, it's not me,

it's not my family

in your head, in your head

they're fighting

with their tanks, and their bombs

and their bombs, and their guns,

in your head, in your head

they're crying....

maybe the real last video for the island job?

2009-02-10T22:24:00.003+09:00

Ok, made some more corrections based off of critiques, and I think this is the final cut... maybe? Let me know if you think the text in the middle should be there or not.

Thoughts?

The final edit? maybe??

2009-02-09T17:50:00.008+09:00

Ok! I think this may be the finished product. Everyone, let me know if you like it.

The video I think I'm submitting for the Best Job in the World:

So... What do you all think? Is it creative enough? Does it show how much energy and passion I have? Does it show I like the outdoors and adventure without actually saying those things outright? Does it link back to this blog for long enough that people might actually check this out as a sort of resumé? Does it explain the screaming people?? Please, give me feedback! (leave it in the comments section instead of e-mailing it, so that other people can also work off of what you're commenting on)

Again, the only criteria on the website was:

Create a video application (in English and in 60 seconds or less)

In an entertaining and engaging way, tell us why you’re the best person for the job and demonstrate your knowledge of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

So there's not a lot to go on. Ah well. If you guys like this, and I submit it, the next video will definitely be the blooper reel.

THANK YOU! MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!!!

Snow Festival Stuff

2009-02-05T16:00:00.009+09:00

Sapporo was much more interesting than the title of this entry suggests (I'm just a sucker for alliteration sometimes).

Getting to Sapporo was actually quite fun, as it involved me taking a train, which i haven't done in ages. I had to switch trains at Otaru, a small town near the ocean. For me, at least, there is something quite off-putting about seeing the ocean in the middle of winter... the water, a deep clear blue, recalling all the times I'd been to various beaches in the tropics when the water is nice and warm (and seeing surfers didn't help the impression, even if they were all wearing full body wetsuits), and yet the snow on the beach attesting to the contrary... My mind was at war with itself. I wanted to get off the train and jump in, but i knew i would have frozen. So to distract myself, i took short movies with my camera.

Here's the travel video I've compiled of the trip, for those of you who don't want to do all the reading that's ahead (It has bits and pieces of everything, so you can make up your own story while still seeing the pretty pictures):

The song is Her Morning Elegance, by Oren Lavie, which was my bonus song last post (Congrats Becky, for getting it right).

A little more explanation: Whenever I travel, almost inevitably, I get fixated on some song for the time that I'm there, and play it almost constantly as I walk around and experience things... The first time I ever had an MP3 player, I went to Costa Rica and listened to Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve while walking through the rainforest... The second time I went to Costa Rica with an Ipod, it was Cinder and Smoke, by Iron & Wine... Apparently this trip to Japan is Her Morning Elegance, because I have not been able to stop listening to it since I found it online. I'm not sure if it's the xylophonic high notes or the cello or his voice, but it is superb walking-around-and-seeing-things music.

So, if you've watched the video, by this point you're probably a bit confused (oh, and Max was fine, he wasn't actually devoured by the ice sculpture). It turns out I was flat out wrong: The festival in Sapporo was a snow festival, not an ice festival, so all the sculptures were made of snow, not ice (well, except for that one palace), which meant that there were a lot less perilously balanced sculptures, and more boxy ones. Still, many were pretty impressive:

This one was, actually, made of ice, but it was the only official sculpture that was.

A note about this one: apparently the writing on the bottom basically says "We should get the 2016 Olympics in Tokyo because, well, we're Japan, and Japan's just that awesome" or something to that general gist.

And then again, some made us look at them and feel kind of bad for the sculptors, because they were pretty lame:

or just horribly bad:

Or sometimes they were faked (we were pretty sure Tinkerbell was made out of wood):

Ah well, they can't all win (although i don't think it's a competition)... and it's possible that, since I went a day before the festival actually started, some of the sculptures that were less than exciting got a million times better before the opening ceremony today (although since no one was working on them at the time, i doubt it. but I could be wrong).

Everyone in Sapporo seems to get really excited about the festival though... Even the construction guys in the middle of the street were participating:

they're making a Bull, as far as we could tell.

So after we saw the snow sculptures, we ended up going to Iwamizawa, to hang out with all of Max's Fulbright Scholar friends. Great people! There were 9 very funny, intelligent, interesting people to hang out with for the night, and I was enjoying myself so much that I ended up calling the couchsurfing people I was supposed to stay with to cancel when Max's friend David offered to let me crash at his place with everyone.

I have to admit, it was nice to be in a roomful of people where there was a basic commonality that ran through everyone's experiences (American, post-college students, english speakers, etc), just because I immediately felt at ease with everyone, and not like I was observing from the outside, as I have often felt while I've been here. We ended up walking into town to a restaurant (where we got the VIP Karaoke room, lucky us!) and ate and drank and sang for 2 or 3 hours, then went back to David's house and played card games and such. I actually had pretty painful hiccoughs for most of the last part of the night from laughing so much. Everyone ended up crashing around 3 in the morning (I climbed into the bed around 2:30, but woke up when everyone else was trying to figure out sleeping arrangements). It was pretty impressive, for such a small apartment, we managed to fit 10 people with relative comfort (though I say this being one of the two girls at the party, we got the bed, so maybe the guys had a rougher time of it).

I woke up at 10:30, got back into Sapporo (It was snowing, so i'm glad I was there the day before, because i think i got the better photographs), did a little shopping, then took the train back to Kutchan. I feel I should mention shopping malls in Japan: many are underground. The one I went to happened to be one of these underground creations, under the train station... just rows and rows of sparkling stores, sometimes with american music blasting... I think malls are basically the same everywhere, no matter what country you're in (It didn't hurt that there was Coach, and Gucci, and many of the other high priced stores you'd expect to see in an American city). The department stores are a little different, as they really do sell EVERYTHING (including usually having the basement be devoted to foods, not just restaurants, but all sorts of meats and fishes and spices and sweets) that you could possibly want from a store. They're a bit like casinos in that you have no idea what time it is or what the weather's like outside. Many have restaurants as well, and those restaurants (and many restaurants outside as well) tend to have plastic food in front demonstrating what the restaurant cooks. They look remarkably lifelike:

None of the above food is real.

On the train to Osaka, an older woman gave me some candies and seaweed, which was very nice of her, and we sort of had a conversation about the Snow festival (in broken japanese and english).

It was definitely a highlight of my trip here, and I'm sad that I'm probably never going to see the majority of the people I met again. One of the pitfalls of travel, I suppose...

I hope you're all having a good February at home, and have a great Valentines day... Apparently the tradition here is that the women give gifts to their men on v-day, and then there's a separate day after when the guys give a gift back if they actually like the women. Glad I don't have to worry about that sort of thing this year.

Take care, and Much LOVE!

I'll make this bonus an easy one (10 points):

I can't forget the time or place
Where we just met.
She's just the girl for me
And I want all the world to see
We've met, mmm-mmm-mmm-m'mmm-mmm.
Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
And I'd have never been aware.
But as it is I'll dream of her
Tonight, di-di-di-di'n'di.
Falling, yes I am falling,
And she keeps calling
Me back again.

Ice Bar part deux

2009-02-01T23:16:00.001+09:00

In preparation for the ice festival, to continue to whet your pallets for the upcoming spectacular photos (I hope!), here are more shots of the Ice bar, which I took last night when I went with some of the guests at the Inn:

The corner, with stools made of ice covered with sheep skin to make sitting a little bit warmer.

Closeup of the wall. The ice is pretty beautiful... I took this shot a bunch of times, as the LCDs changed the colors of the wall, but I think this one is the prettiest...

Getting a side shot of one of the sculptures with the wall in the background... I love the textures.

Another shot of the sculpture.

The drink I ordered... they give it to you in ice, so by the time you finish drinking it, your lips are completely numb. It does do a great job of keeping the drink cold though...

Shooting directly into the ice sculpture.

Me!

Looking towards the entrance... again, I was just so entranced with the colors and the way they played off the ice...

Framing the sculpture just so...

A chandelier made out of ice... i want one! I think this was the prettiest part of the whole bar...

After, we went to this really great Japanese restaurant, and ate a ton of food (including horse, which was surprisingly delicious, although I will probably never eat it again due to the fact that I enjoy riding horses so much that I felt pretty guilty eating one).

Turns out I had tonsilitis, which was why it felt like I'd swallowed a knife, but that's all better now that I'm on lovely antibiotics.

And the bonus song from so long ago was Lullaby, by Assemblage 23... I really thought my music tastes were pretty mainstream, and I know that I've played many of these songs for at least a few of you, but I guess they're easily forgotten.

Anyways, I've left hints about this coming song on various places in the intarweb, so someone should get it.... 50 points!:

And she fights for her life
as she puts on her coat
And she fights for her life on the train
She looks at the rain
as it pours
And she fights for her life
as she goes in a store
with a thought she has caught
by a thread
she pays for the bread
and she goes…
Nobody knows

Sun been down for days
A winter melody she plays
The thunder makes her contemplate
She hears a noise behind the gate
Perhaps a letter with a dove
Perhaps a stranger she could love

Getting better...

2009-01-29T23:33:00.002+09:00

So... There was a group of 15 at the Inn tonight for a birthday party, and they were super cool, and I was talking to them about applying for the Best Job In The World, and they decided they wanted to help me out, so now I've got an alternate ending for the video... (I'll just mention that I've got a blog in the middle part).

So... which ending do you all like more?? I also worked on the timing of the photographs and getting the music volume right.

Video #2

2009-01-29T11:50:00.004+09:00

Still working on this one (I gotta film the knowledge section, where I talk about the Great Barrier Reef and all the crazy awesome stuff you can do there), but I thought i'd give you guys a sneak peak so that you can critique while I'm working, which should make this easier to change.

EDIT: here are the requirements for the video: Create a video application (in English and in 60 seconds or less), and in an entertaining and engaging way, tell us why you’re the best person for the job and demonstrate your knowledge of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

I'm feeling SO much better... Antibiotics are a wonderful thing.

Sickness

2009-01-23T19:38:00.008+09:00

I'm sick. My throat hurts so much that swallowing the soup that Fukushima-san made special for me today literally brought me to tears. Luckily, I don't have a fever, and I can still breathe through my nose. However, I'm still pretty miserable. Apparently there's a flu going around Hirafu, and i'm desperately praying that I haven't caught it (Though most of you guys are in the states, if you haven't gotten your flu shot for the year yet, I'd highly recommend it, since I didn't get mine and look where I am now).

So, i probably won't be seriously blogging for a couple of days, while I try to sleep this off and recuperate.

Expect a big post around February 5th, as I'm going to Sapporo on the 4th to see the Ice festival and hang out with an Oberlin alum named Max, who's been in Kyushu for the last couple of months... It'll be nice to see someone I know. It'll also be my first time Couchsurfing, so that'll be something exciting to talk about.

Going back to sleep now, but here's something pretty to tide you guys over between updates and give you a taste of whats to come when I go to Sapporo:

Ice bar!

The entrance, with a fur door... it's a little imposing, but very pretty. Here's a shot inside:

The lights change color every couple of minutes.

...I wonder what the carbon footprint of an ice building is relative to normal construction....

Bonus song (15 points):

May you find solace in the gentle arms of sleep

Despite the wolves outside your door

In time you will see them all as harmless

and their idle threats easy to ignore

And if ever fate should choose to smite you

Stand your ground, never walk away

Please don't ever let the world defeat you

don't get buried in this decay...

Birthday, and a new birth for America?

2009-01-21T15:48:00.007+09:00

So, as you all probably know by now (and to the many of you have e-mailed me, called me, or facebooked me: thank you!), yesterday, besides being Obama's election, was also my 23rd birthday.

For the most part, it was pretty quiet. I talked to my mom and my two best friends around 7 am on Skype, and then fell back asleep and woke up around 10 to eat breakfast. Did a bit of snowboarding after (went down a pretty tough diamond and didn't kill myself... but i still really need to learn how to turn), and then took a shower and a nap.

I was supposed to go to a tea ceremony with some of the guests from the Inn, but then it turned out that the guy in charge of orchestrating it didn't call the place to see if the tea ceremony was actually happening, and it closed at 8, so we all just went straight to Wild Bill's to eat and start my party.

Here's Tahlia, one of the guests at the Inn... she's 13! but super cool, a total sweetheart... We're going to meet up in Cairns in March with her dad, who's shoulder you can see on the right.

Ok, i went a little japanese school girl for my birthday... I figured, you know, when in japan... attempt to dress like the japanese?

This is Kene, my new Canadian friend...

Kirsten and Byron, who came to the bar just for me and my birthday... They're awesome. Kirsten's from Australia, and Byron's from Canadia, and they've been travelling together (and dating) for almost 2 years now... They brought me a present (a pair of pink knit hotpants that say Sweet Trap on the back... yeah, probably never going to wear those in public again)

The bar was a lot of fun, towards the end of the night I jumped up on a stool and tried to get the entire place to sing me happy birthday (but most people weren't paying any attention to me). I played a couple of very unsuccessful games of pool (hint: two mojitos and a shot of jaagermeister do not help your game), but had a blast. There were more people there that were hanging out with us, i just didn't get any photos with them.

Today, there was cake, that the chefs made just for me:

It was, of course, delicious. Angel food cake with strawberry layers and toasted almonds... Yum! I think they were all taken aback by the hugs i spontaneously gave them though... Whoops (hopefully they'll just chalk it up to the crazy Gaijin customs).

But the best part of the day was, of course, Obama. I wasn't able to watch it live (CNN wouldn't let viewers in this region watch their videos for some reason), but I caught the speech on Youtube, and...

I just feel very optimistic about the future. I teared up not watching Obama speak, but when the camera panned out to show the expansiveness of the crowd... It just gives me hope to see all those people coming together, ready to support a new dream. Wish I could have been there.

I'm excited to live through the next 4 years. I don't imagine that I'm going to like every decision he makes, but I think that he's going to change America in a large way for the better during his presidency. It's nice to have someone so intelligent in the office, who speaks to all of us like we're adults. It's about personal responsibility, not being the victims of circumstance.

YES WE CAN!

In other news, i've booked my flight to Australia... I'll be leaving for Cairns from Tokyo on March 1st, and will be coming back to Tokyo on November 29th. That gives me basically 9 months in Australia... these are the places I plan on seeing so far. Basically one huge circle.

Hope everyone is in as good a mood as I am.

Much love!

Help!

2009-01-17T16:07:00.008+09:00

So this is my first attempt at a video that I will submit to the Best Job in the World... please watch it and give me feedback, let me know if you all think it's worth submitting, if not, what i could improve upon in a second or third take.

The video submission needs to have some entertainment in it, and also show that I'm knowledgeable about the area... If you want to see what's been popular on the website so far, look here. If you have any other ideas for it, let me know.

In other news, the last two days dumped 4 feet of powder, so the snow is now officially taller than I am in the drifts:

I think that may be the back of a two story building behind me.

Last post's song was "These Pages" by Chris Pureka... again, if you've never heard it, you should download it... It's a folksy song, but well worth it, she's got a really luscious voice.

Ouches and Onsens

2009-01-13T22:49:00.004+09:00

Well, when the sun comes out, it's quite beautiful here:

Yesterday was, of course, my day off. I rode the lifts pretty far up the mountain:

and then proceeded down. I had no trouble with the squares (medium difficulty), but ended up really hurting my neck on a circle that was pretty flat... in trying to pick up some speed, I caught the edge of the board and flipped over and whipped my head into the ground. Luckily I was wearing a helmet, so I didn't kill myself or even get a concussion, but i've woken up this morning with a pretty severe stiff neck.

After I got to the bottom of the mountain, I called it quits for the day, and headed back to the Inn, took a quick nap, and then headed out to an Onsen. I grabbed a ride on the Spa Bus (which only drops people off at Onsens), and ended up going to one that Inomata-san recommended, Yuki-Chichibu... Definitely one of my favorites.

The pictures don't do it justice... It's not necessarily the most beautiful place, (the inside, especially, was pretty ugly) but the water, Oh, the water!

This bath was so hot that i could only stay in it for a minute or two... even though it was outside, it made my skin prickle so much that I felt like I was slowly being boiled.... I endured it for a little while, just because I figured it was good for my joints, but man, it was the first onsen I've been in where one of the pools was too hot for me to handle!

This pool was nice and relaxing, and surrounded by a TON of snow, so I had the urge to jump out, dive into the snow, and then jump back into the bath, but I refrained because there were two japanese women in the bath while i was in there, and i was dry by the time i went out to take this picture and they'd gone....

That last picture, with the two small baths, is the whole reason I want to go there again and again... I climbed into the one on the left, thinking that it was just a bath for people who wanted a little privacy to soak, but as soon as my foot touched bottom... it was squishy!

Turns out that these two pools have mineral mud in them, and you spread it all over your body to exfoliate and soften your skin... It was delicious (unless you have a fear of mud). I luxuriated in that particular bath for a good 15 minutes, and then washed off in the bath on the right. My skin today is silky smooth.

After, I bought dinner at Seikomart, basically a 7-11 (I didn't feel like spending a ton of money on food), and came across this little gem:

I have NO idea what an e-dish is... it sounds like something you'd eat on the internet. But of course that's not possible... weird! Also, calling a sandwich "sand" makes it infinitely less appetizing, at least to me (it makes me think of grit in my teeth).

To round out the night, I went to Wild Bills, saw some people (including this very nice guy Russel, who's only here till Saturday, but I'd enjoy seeing him again), had to leave ridiculously early (9pm) to catch the last bus back to the Inn, and went to sleep.

Today I waitressed breakfast, and will probably waitress dinner... we hosted a few of the concierges from other hotels a few nights ago, so that they would recommend our restaurant to their guests, and they were really impressed with the meal, and are already sending people our way, so that should really help business pick up.

I'm currently planning on applying for this: http://www.islandreefjob.com/en/#/home

If I win, you're all invited to come visit me. But you should probably apply too. And if you win, you should let me come visit you!

Bonus: 15 points for the artist and song...

Oh, there you are,
it's so good to see you,
it's so good to see you,
standing right at my door,
I wish you could stay.

Well, how's your girlfriend?
How's that going?
She never liked me,
oh I wish you could stay.

It might be an ordinary day,
but it seems like more than that to me.

Lines of my forehead,
from trying to thread the needle of this idea,
without letting you know it.

Sunrise

2009-01-12T07:15:00.005+09:00

The sight that greeted me this morning:

So gorgeous...

cultural boundaries

2009-01-11T19:52:00.004+09:00

An example of my communication technique:

"I enjoyed trying to figure out what spices you used tonight because it was delicious and I cook when I'm in the States" becomes "oishkata (it was delicious), Goji so samadeshta (thank you for cooking for me).... Lemon? butter? (point wildly at random spices until Takahashi-san nods and goes over to the soy sauce) I..... America.... cook? (gesture of sauteeing, cutting food, Takahashi looks totally lost) Pesto, Gnocci, risotto..." (point at chest, point at pan, trail off, look hopeful)

Takahashi-san looks stunned. he points at me and says slowly "you?"

I nod vigorously, he looks completely disbelieving. I either just proposed to him or he has no idea that a woman can cook. Its entirely possible that I have also just insulted him.

I say goodnight ("Oyasuminasai") and go to bed.

Such is the nature of my day... and it's almost always that awkward. Meanwhile, they've learned some GREAT english phrases ("Laugh.. TOO loud!") and enjoy pointing out how much weight i'm gaining here, but I think it's mostly just harmless fun. And they all have a great sense of humor, and can be hilarious (hence the reason they decided they needed to learn how to tell me that i laugh too hard), like when I told Ryo that the scottish people that had eaten in the restaurant that night had told me that it was one of the best meals of their entire lives, and he said "of course, they're from the UK". I really wish I understood more japanese.

My birthday's in 9 days (although by the time Obama gets sworn in at noon, it'll be 2am on the 21st here-- I'll have to watch it the next morning when I wake up, I guess), and it says something on the calendar in the kitchen on my birthday, and I pointed it out and Fukushima-san raised his fingers to his lips, then said something to Date-san and Takahashi-san that made them laugh, so i think there's something going on... Whatever it is, I hope i don't embarrass myself... I was playing SET with a couple of guests the other night and asked (well, mimed to) Inomata-san if he thought Takahashi-san would want to learn (it's a totally visual game, so if you can figure out how to communicate the rules, anyone can play), so after the guests go upstairs he disappears into the kitchen, talks a bit, then gestures me in, at which point the other two chefs, Inomata, and the dishwasher/driver all watch as Takahashi distinctly says "No thank you", at which point they all start laughing and i go back to playing alone.

...Yeah, still haven't been able to figure out the point of that one. Ah well.

Anyways, the Inn's getting more guests, and will probably keep on being more full till I leave at the end of February. I'm just really looking forward to us getting another car (which should hopefully arrive within the week), because then i can start going out at night again and staying out past 9pm. There's apparently a bar around here with a refrigerator door as an entrance, which i totally want to see before I go, and another bar made entirely out of ice (sounds cold).

Tuesday will hopefully be more snowboarding, and maybe a new onsen?? we'll see.

Much love to all.

Bonus: 10 points for the song, since it's been covered by SO many artists:

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"

AAAH YAY!!!!

2009-01-06T21:13:00.003+09:00

"RE: Application for Subclass 462 - Work and Holiday (Temporary) (Class US) visa

This is to advise that Jenna S***** T****** has been granted an Electronic Work and Holiday subclass 462 visa on 05 January 2009.

This letter contains important information about this visa.

VISA GRANT NUMBER
The visa grant number is 80XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. This is the unique number assigned to the visa. Visa Holders should keep this visa grant number with them, as they may have to provide it to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) during the life of the visa.

VISA INFORMATION
This visa allows JST to make the initial entry into Australia no later than 3 months from the date that the visa was granted. The initial entry into Australia must not be after 05 April 2009.

Once in Australia, this visa permits JST to stay in Australia for 12 months from the date that they first enter Australia. It provides for multiple travel to Australia, which means that JST can leave Australia and re-enter Australia as many times as they wish during their 12 month stay. However, if JST departs Australia during their 12 month stay, they are not able to recover the period of time spent outside Australia.

JST will not have a visa label placed in their passport when travelling to Australia as their visa is recorded electronically in Australia's visa systems. It is recommended that JST keep a copy of this advice for their personal records.

::: CUT BECAUSE IT'S BORING :::

OTHER VISA OPTIONS
If, after arriving in Australia, JST is interested in the possibility of a further period of stay, information about other visa options that may be available to them can be found at: www.immi.gov.au/visitors and www.immi.gov.au/skilled.

We hope that JST enjoys their stay in Australia

Yours sincerely

Hobart Global Processing Centre
Date: 06 January 2009 "

SO, what does all that legal mumbo jumbo mean??

I'M GOING TO AUSTRALIA!!!! AND I'm allowed to be there for up to a year. AND i'll be able to get paid if I find a job. Holy shiznit. I could not be happier right now... This makes everything that much better! I get to keep traveling!

Applying was a total breeze, I did it online. Anyone under 26 can from the US, as long as they've finished high school (we're lucky, they require a tertiary education from every other country in the world, so if you don't have a college degree or are in the process of going to college, you're screwed). The visa only costs $139.48 to apply, which isn't that bad (hopefully I'll make that up quickly when I'm working there).

So, if anyone wants to visit me in Australia, let me know! you could, in all likelihood, totally do this too.

What else happened today... OH YEAH, I snowboarded. Down the real mountain, not just the kiddie slope. and boy is my tailbone sore... I went with Tim, who is probably the most patient person i know (since he put up with me going 2 miles per hour down the slopes, and multiple falls, and I think still liked me afterwards). I made the "mistake" of following him, which means that the first time we went up, we started down green, and then all of a sudden he's like "hey, lets go this way, it's a little steep, but it flattens out", and by the time we got to the bottom and I'd checked out what we'd done, I'd gone down my first diamond. So, of course, having already done one (and survived relatively unscathed), we went to the top of the mountain and went down through a more complex route that took me back to Hanazono. I got REALLY tired, and pretty sore, and I wiped out spectacularly a couple of times (someone took my photo once, it was that impressive), but I did it! (I'm glad i had someone to push me, otherwise I would have stayed on the circles forever, never knowing that it's possible to be a complete amateur and go down something difficult without killing yourself) and now I'm terribly tired and sore and am going to sleep SO well tonight, especially now that my master travel plan has started to cement itself a little more. I need to learn how to turn on the snowboard without launching myself off the mountain into a heap, but that'll come. Next things to do: buy a plane ticket to Australia, push my plane ticket from Tokyo to America back a couple of months, start figuring out where I want to go and what i want to do.

YEAH!

Much love to everyone.

Bonus: Instead of songs today, here's two links i've perused lately:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1778399&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html

Work and Vacation

2009-01-04T17:41:00.007+09:00

So I said I wouldn't blog about any more onsens until I went to a new one, but Clifford, Samantha, and four of the five Australians who are staying here went to Goshiki today with me, and I was actually able to take some pictures (and that movie), so I thought I'd share:

Clearly you should all come to Japan.

Pei Hong left yesterday... We had a going away party for her on friday night, at a restaurant in town. Here's the crowd:

(in order of appearance: Pei Hong, Ryo (General manager), Fukushima-San (Head Chef), Ryo's wife, Harada-San (one of our drivers), Takahashi-San (the youngest chef), and Date-San (the middle chef))

Fukushima had been a mentor to the head chef of the restaurant, so we got treated like royalty. The food was great. For example:

This is the sashimi plate that came out (So pretty!)

This is a better shot of Pei Hong:

Now that she's gone, I'm going to have to learn japanese, and quickly! She was my bridge between japanese and english... and the only other female staff member... Ah well. Time to buckle down.

The great thing about working in a vacation town is that as soon as you have any free time, you're on vacation. I'm trying to put down the camera a little more, and enjoy whats in front of me without feeling like I have to record everything (live much more in the moment), so you may not get as many pictures for the next month. Or maybe you will. I'm capricious...

I went snowshoeing yesterday, and walked around on the golf course a bit... quite nice, and a good little workout. It was entirely still and I was utterly alone except for a crow who I had a nice little conversation with before he flew away. I'm learning to like being alone with myself.

I am crazy lucky to be here, in the circumstances i'm in. This has been a really great trip so far, and I'm just so in awe that I get to be here and do all these things I rarely get an opportunity for when I'm in the states.

Next important phase of my travels: Apply for a work and travel visa for Australia... If i get it, i'm going to be there for a while, maybe up to 6 months.

Bonus: Last week's song was, as Laura guessed, the Macarena (seriously, how long has it been since you've heard that song?!), although she only got 15 of the 30 points because she didn't say the artist... This week, the song is worth 30 points for obscurity, and another 50 points if you can tell me which book it's quoted in:

Hey, have you ever tried,

Really reaching out for the other side?

I may be climbing on rainbows

But, Baby here goes

Dreams, they're for those who sleep,

Life is for us to keep,

And if you're wondering

what this song is leading to....

more snow

2009-01-02T10:33:00.004+09:00

the sky here consistently looks like the blank screen before the movie gets projected on it.

I keep on expecting to look up in the sky and see Johnny Depp wooing Kirsten Dunst, or some epic battle between submarines or space pirates, or something else entirely.

I feel like i've shoveled at least 8 or 10 feet of the stuff by now, but it has settled outside to merely be up to my mid thigh in most places. Still, it's not exactly stopping any time soon, so who knows how high it will get. Time to whip out the snowshoes.

Edit: of course, in some places it is actually so high that i can barely see over it anymore. Guess i've just been looking at the consistently shoveled stuff, not the full accumulation.

In which our protagonist loses some mobility.

2008-12-31T10:03:00.012+09:00

... Then again, everything can't always go right.

DUM DUM DUM!!!! (cue dramatic music)

And now, before capitalizing on that statement and photo, which has in all likelihood so enraptured you that you will read the next few words with breathless anticipation, I will tell you about all the things in the past two days that did go right. Skip to the end if you need to spoil the anticipation.

Monday night, Cliff took the whole family out to dinner. But first, we went to the first Onsen I'd been to here, which i now know is called the Kanronomori Onsen. Once again, the place was entirely too crowded to get away with any pictures inside, but here's a picture of part of the reception area:

The water was, as before, spectacular, but the best part was that after we were done, we had about an hour to wait before we went to dinner, so Mamiko (Cliff's wife) took me upstairs and treated both of us to a 30 minute Ashifumi massage. In an Ashifumi massage, they lay you down on the floor, cover you with a towel, and then proceed to use their feet to massage your entire body, not walking on you, but rolling their heels to their toes all over your back and legs and neck... It was excellent. Their feet are so limber that sometimes you couldn't tell whether they were actually using their feet, or their hands, and I would peek open one eye and see the other woman working on Mamiko with just her feet, so I assume that my masseuse was also doing the same... It put me into a trance, where i definitely wasn't awake, but i wasn't exactly asleep either, just deeply, deeply relaxed, like in the meditation part at the end of a yoga class.

I totally want to try to do it sometime, so I'll need a volunteer at some point... if anyone's up for letting me try a new massage technique on them, let me know.

After, Clifford took us to one of the only japanese restaurants in the entire area, an intimate restaurant built by hand by the owner/chef... We proceeded to have one hell of a special meal.

These are pictures of Chester and Samantha, Cliffords kids (and mamiko in the background drinking her soup):

This is the setting that greeted each of us... There were only seats for 12 people in the entire place... That's pork slices that were dropped into the boiling soup pot on the left, and we got to try their amazing home made plum wine, which you can't see on my placemat because i'd already drank it by the time i decided to take pictures (it was so sweet, almost like a riesling) :

Anyways, after the pork/soup course, we got served oysters, partially baked, with a slight taste of orange from the zest of some local orange-type citrus fruit that grows in Japan... I took a picture only after we ate them, whoops:

As far as I'm concerned, it's the only way I ever want to eat oysters ever again, it was so delicious. They were more firm than eating an oyster raw, but they were not overdone and too hard. Succulent, perfect, Oh so good... After that, we had sashimi of some sort of white fish, also delicious, and then a deep fried fish, of which almost everything was edible except the spine (I even ate the fins, they weren't half bad), followed by a delicious course of slightly cooked duck, served just like the white fish sashimi, and then came the main entree, the handmade Soba... Watching this guy prepare the soba was watching a master artist at work.... I took a three minute long video of the process with Clifford's D90, but it's too big a file to post here, so i'll try to describe the process for you guys:

He started with a ball of dough, which he kneaded inside this extraordinarily large black bowl (seen at the left part of the photograph, under the stairs), until he liked the consistency, and then he brought it over to the table and started rolling it out. He rolled it, and generously sprinkled more soba flour on it, and rolled it, and sprinkled more flour on it, and kept on going until it was uniformly exhaustingly thin, and then lifted it with the rolling pin and folded it over on itself, then used this knife that was square and about the size of my forearm to cut the noodles into the requisite thinness (you can see the knife next to his arm on the table)... Slicing the noodles so thinly was truly a spectacle to behold... after, he put it all on the tray he's holding in the photograph, and then he cooked it for about 2 minutes, and served. Here's the final result:

What an amazing meal, it was a fantastic night, and so nice to spend it with family! It finally felt like a holiday.

Yesterday was, of course, my day off, so i decided to go snowboarding again.... Ryo managed to secure me a free pair of snowboarding boots, so I was able to actually get into things a bit more... I think I've got the hang of it! I'm going to try an actual slope next time I have time to go out, because I got really bored of going up the magic carpet again and again.... I think I've got enough skill now that I won't endanger anyone else's life on the slope, which was the whole reason for sticking to the kiddy part of the mountain.

I ate lunch at Hanazono 308, the base lodge next to Freedom Inn, eating ramen with crab (it's really hard to get the meat out of those shells, even with long pointy forks!), and I ran into one of the guests from Freedom Inn, and we hung out and talked for a while... Very nice guy named Craig, he's here with four friends from Australia, they're all going to be here till the 12th... Turns out he lives in the country in Australia, and he owns a horse (which of course, I flipped out over), and so I'm hopefully going to go visit him when I'm down under, and get to groom and ride "Kenny".... I'm meeting all these great people! Which comes in handy when I get stuck in Hirafu, which was the next portion of the day:

I rode the shuttle bus from Hanazono back to Hirafu to return my boots to the rental place, and knocked on the door of the people who'd come by the restaurant on Christmas who were so wonderfully kind to me just to say hi, then ran into two of their kids outside who'd been getting a movie... Sam and (I'm blanking on the other one's name, but he was a total sweetheart)... Said hello, but I had to catch the bus back to Hanazono, except that by that time it was about 4:15, and getting dark, and none of the busses were stopping at the bus stop, even with me flapping and waving my arms, so i walked to a different one, and the guy told me the busses only drop off at Hirafu after dark (or at least, I think that's what he was saying, he was speaking japanese and doing a lot of pantomime) and don't return to Hanazono, and so I tromped back to the Chalet and called Cliff and told him I was stuck in Hirafu. He needed me to work at the restaurant because we'd gotten an influx of reservations last night, so he set a point at a hotel to pick me up while he was picking up some guests for the reservation at 6:15. By that time it was 5:10, so I had some time to spare, so i watched a bit of the movie Blow with the guys at the chalet, and then went over to the hotel. Slipped and fell down a small hill, so that now my shoulder is slightly messed up, because I landed on it weirdly (falling countless times while snowboarding? no pain at all. Slipping down a kiddie sled hill? end up hurting my shoulder. there is no rhyme or reason to accidents). Re-met a guy named Tim, who gave me his number so that we can actually hang out sometime (he seems really cool, I talked to him the first time I was handing out flyers, he works in the most expensive restaurant in the area, Kamimura). Came back, waitressed for one of the most hectic crowds of people I have ever had the "pleasure" of serving (there were 10 kids running around), and then passed out after they left around 10:30. LONG DAY, but mostly enjoyable.

So I'm sure you're now salivating for the denouement, the explanation for the picture at the top and the reason I'm not going anywhere for a while: The car got flipped yesterday, while the driver was trying to de-fog the inside of the windshield. NO ONE WAS HURT, but the car is totalled, and we won't be getting another one for a couple of weeks, and so in all likelihood I'm not going anywhere or hanging out with anyone until then, because I can't drive the van just in case something were to happen along the same lines. I'm just really happy that everyone was safe, and also happy that it wasn't me (I'd feel really bad about flipping someone elses car). Hopefully we'll keep the snow tires, they rocked. So, unless I can convince Cliff to come out partying with me, I'm pretty sure the next couple of weeks will be pretty devoid of interesting updates. Sorry guys, there's only so much I can write about when work becomes a routine.

Anyways, tonight is New Years Eve, but I will be working at the restaurant for most of the night, so I doubt it will be a newsworthy night for me... I had some hope of sneaking into the masquerade ball that's going on at the Aprés Bar, and watching the fireworks on the mountain in Hirafu, but without a car, that's going to be impossible... But please let me know what you're all doing to celebrate! Hopefully I can celebrate vicariously through your fantastic parties.

Much love!

Bonus: Last song was "This Time", by Jonathan Rhys Mayers, from the August Rush soundtrack... 30 points for this one, which I heard yesterday in the ski shop while getting my snowboarding boots... I actually performed to this song on stage in 5th grade, with a group of 15 or so people dancing behind me....:

"Now, don't you worry 'bout my boyfriend

The boy whose name is Vittorino

Ha, I don't want him, can't stand him

Even though we get so high ... (giggle)

Now come on, what was I supposed to do

He was out of town, and his two friends were soooooo fine

Da le a tu cuerpo alegria macarena...."

... I think I'm going to make these points actually count for something, maybe bring back a special souvenir for the person who amasses the most during my trip. Good luck!

snow

2008-12-29T09:52:00.004+09:00

You'd think that there couldn't possibly be 5 inches of snow piled up on a 2nd floor window, especially because the basement is above ground, but you'd be wrong. It's been a cold, blizzard filled couple of days. This is fantastic for skiing conditions, but not so much for anything else (except making you ecstatic that you're inside and warm). It's also been between 10 and 20 degrees for the last few days, so I've been even more excited that I never have anywhere to go... Every morning, I wake up at 7 to unlock the laundry room and shower, turn on the boiler, and shovel the stairs and the walkway. The snow has now gotten to the point where I need to find new places to put it, as it has built up against the basement enough that it's about to spill over back onto the stairs to the first floor. I'll take pictures sometime, maybe next time I see the sun. Some of these drifts are higher than my head. I think we currently only have about three feet, but that's only because the powder here is so light, it settles a lot. If we were in NY, it would be a state of emergency, people would be out of food, and the roads would be undriveable.

... And yet we drove to the nearest Onsen yesterday, and people keep on going into town, and tonight I'm eating out in Hirafu (or maybe Niseko? I'm not sure where we're going) with Clifford, his wife and two kids, and his parents, and celebrating the holiday season, so the area definitely hasn't shut down yet.

We went to the Weiss yesterday (the one i've taken pictures of before), and I helped take care of the kids, which mostly meant carrying them through the snow to the outside onsen (because they didn't want to walk through the ice... I wonder why), and then making sure they didn't drown and ducking away from the snowballs they were launching at me (hey, at least they weren't throwing shoes)... I think I like being in an outdoor onsen even more in a blizzard, even with the icy feet that burn when you enter the water, because the snowflakes that hit your skin tingle, and make you aware of your relationship with the world and how fragile we are without the things we choose to envelop ourselves in (be it clothes, technology, circles of friendship, etc).

I think I have to stop waxing poetic about onsens. You guys get it. Onsens are awesome. I will not talk about any more Onsens until I go to a new one (and possibly take more pictures).

Being a waitress here has been an exquisite torture, especially in the last few days... I've waited almost every meal, and seeing and smelling all this extraordinary genius makes me salivate like a saint bernard, and I'm always starving by meal time. I just want to take a bite out of every plate I take out... The Rusutsu Pork with the diablo sauce is the worst offender, it just smells so succulent and spicy, and looks so juicy and sweet, I'm always just tempted, walking out of the kitchen, to turn right, go up to my room, and damn the guests. But no, I have some semblance of self control.... sort of.... so far. Maybe sometime if it's a slow day and I'm not working, I'll actually sit down and order a lunch or a dinner.

My job has mainly been waitressing for the last couple of days, although I'm still converting photographs to coloring book pages in my spare time... It's been really nice to see Clifford's kids, and spend a little time with them. Yesterday we all exchanged gifts, and Cliff and his wife got me this wonderful poncho from Muji, which i love, and am now horribly fascinated with the company... It's sort of like Ikea, but they're an anti label company... they don't really advertise, they don't put labels on anything they sell, and everything they design is classic and long lasting, so that it's environmentally responsible and visually elegant... they mostly get sales by word of mouth, I think. They're AWESOME.

Ok, that's all for now. Gotta go do the lunch thing.

Much love to all of you!

Last post's bonus was 24, by Jem. Here's something else I've been listening to recently, 50 points due to its obscurity:

Tonight the sky above
Reminds me how to love
Walking through wintertime
Where the stars all shine
The angel on the stairs
Will tell you I was there
Under the front porch light
On a mystery night

I've been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines
Been waiting for a dream to seep in through my blinds
I wondered what might happen if I left this all behind
Would the wind be at my back ? Could I get you off my mind
This time

Success all around!

2008-12-25T11:27:00.003+09:00

So, the Christmas Eve dinner was a HUGE success. I did not drop a single dish (although I did splash sauce all over my hand once), and the kitchen churned out delicious magnificence after delicious magnificence, and it mostly went off without a hitch. 7 full tables, one of kids and teenagers (which was only nerve wracking when some started playing that stupid knife game where you see how fast you can stab a knife between your fingers without stabbing it into your hand... Luckily, there was no blood), and everyone left full and content.

After, Pe Hong and I went to Wild Bills, because we heard there was a DJ and I was in the mood to dance... The place was PACKED. Apparently they take celebrating christmas eve seriously at one bar, at least... the bartenders were handing out candy canes, and there was a DJ, but he wasn't playing very good music to dance to... more Usher, less T.I. Also, he was spinning all his stuff positioned above the crowd on a loft, with no ladder or anything to get up there. I decided I wanted to request something I could move to, so i got into my head the brilliant idea of climbing onto a bar stool next to the loft to gain his attention. The bar stool was surrounded by three men, and I asked one of them to hold it for me as I clamored up. The DJ didn't see me at all, so I started jumping, and waving, trying to get his attention, and then all of a sudden my legs were in the air, because the guys below me decided to help me out by going all cheerleader on me and propping me up for a better view. It was pretty hilarious, I'm trying furiously to get the attention of the dj while these guys are holding me up, and he's just looking everywhere but where I'm waving at him, until finally I get his attention, and he leans over, and I smile my most winsome smile and shout "hey, can i request a song?" to which he replies "nope", and goes back to spinning.... All that effort for nothing. He didn't even let me ask for an artist before shutting me down. Ah well, can't have it all all the time. Pe Hong and I did end up dancing for a while, seeing some friends, and stumbled back home at 2 am.

Today we had a party of 14 for lunch, and so we were very busy serving. Jonathan and David (the French guys living in Tokyo) ended up stopping by for a bite to eat and offered to show me around Tokyo for a few days before I leave, or meet up in Sydney because they have friends there. It was fun to serve people that I knew, especially since I'd invited them at Wild Bills and written up the directions on a random scrap of paper with my undecipherable handwriting, so they'd actually made an effort to come and see me. After they left, I napped, still exhausted from the party on Christmas Eve.

Tonight at dinner, we had 15 people, who were SO awesome. They were mostly australian, although I think there were a couple from Puerto Rico, and they were intelligent, and fun to talk to, and so nice, and they invited me to come hang out with them in the next few weeks at their chalet before they leave, and to stay with them in Queensland in Australia. Score! Definitely people I plan on seeing again, and soon. Everyone LOVED the meal, and one of the men (a professional photographer) said that he'd talk our restaurant up to everyone he knows, so that should bring in a lot more business.

This is the least christmas-y christmas i've ever experienced, but it really didn't bother me (probably a lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm not a christian, so there's absolutely no spiritual significance for me)... I joke with people that I celebrate Xmas, the holiday of consumerism and santa claus... But I guess i got a year off this year, which doesn't bother me at all. I'm looking forward to New Years, when hopefully there will be some countdown party I can attend. Nothing like New Years in Time Square last year, but I'm hoping i can still have some fun.

Samantha and Chester, Cliff's kids, are here for the week, and his parents will be here in two days, so maybe it will feel more like family time then. We'll see.

Anyways, I hope you're all having fantastic holidays, and are enjoying some much deserved time off and spending it with people you love.

Much love!

10 points for the artist and title:

Been given 24 hours
To tie up loose ends
To make amends
His eyes said it all
I started to fall
And the silence deafened
Head spinning round
No time to sit down
Just wanted to
Run and run and run
Be careful they say
Don't wish life away,
Now I've one day...

Boarding & Bills

2008-12-23T18:40:00.000+09:00

Wheeeee! I tried out snowboarding yesterday. Cliff had an extra board downstairs that happened to have straps on it, so I used my northface boots and tried a little snowboarding. Here's me gushing:

I actually really enjoyed it, although I'm going to have to get some real snowboard boots because my snow boots just weren't cutting it (no ankle support whatsoever, and a lot of room in them so I put a lot of pressure on my toes) ...Skiing and Snowboarding are ridiculously expensive sports! I talked to this Australian named Chris inside 308, the new base camp near the Inn, and he said that boots alone are like, 300 dollars for the cheapest, so it probably will make a lot more sense to rent than to buy for this season, since I can't go out that often anyway.

I did a LOT of falling down, but the powder here's so soft that I didn't hurt myself, even when i lost my balance and fell backwards down the mountain. I should probably get myself a helmet too, since i don't want to crack my skull open when i go head over heels. But being strapped in on both feet didn't bother me as much as it did 10 years ago, the first and last time i'd tried boarding before this.

I stayed on the kiddie slope, because i didn't want to hurt anyone else in my attempts at learning, and it was pretty deserted, which suited my purposes just fine. I went on a couple of runs, and then came back to the Inn, and took a nice long nap.

Cliff invited me out for dinner, and we went to this japanese restaurant in town. It was quite the experience... Almost as soon as we sat down, they gave us these silly costumes to put on and then took a picture of us (i took one too, as you can see) for their wall, which is filled with pictures of foreigners wearing the same outfits and attempting to not look like we're culturally appropriating. Still, the food was excellent (particularly the deep fried octopus and the mushrooms wrapped in Bacon), and i got to drink an orange juice that promised me "you can satisfy not only your thirst but your heart with this".

After, we went to Wild Bills, played a few rounds, and then we drove back home and Cliff gave me the car so I could go back to Wild Bill's and come home when I wanted to. I went back and ended up making friends with these great Parisians, who are living in Tokyo for banking (A french accent saying "arigato" is possibly one of the most interesting things i've heard here so far). When I ran out of money, they bought me a drink and a few more rounds of pool, and then we hung out by the bar for a while and talked and laughed and did a little bit of dancing and a little bit of raving, depending on what was playing (ok, all the moving was really mostly just me, I can't stay still when there's a good beat going on, but there's no real dance scene in Hirafu, no dance clubs or anything, it's really quite sad, although after seeing a couple of australians "dancing" the night before, I can kind of understand why)

The bar closed relatively early (final call at 12), and so i drove myself home... I'm becoming much more comfortable not only driving on the wrong side of the road, but also driving on roads that never get cleared of snow... We've got some really fantastic snow tires on the suv, and 4wd, but even with that I've become pretty good at steering out of skids.

Woke up this morning and man are my legs sore.... Today's the big christmas eve dinner, so i'll be waitressing tonight. We're expecting 28 people, and desperately hoping we don't run out of silverware and dishes. ACK! wish us luck! Good for business, bad for stress levels... The chefs started preparing two days ago. It's going to be major revenue for us. I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping I don't drop anything.

Much love, and i hope you all have a really fantastic holiday!!

Bonus!

10 points to anyone who recognizes the following lyrics (I'm completely obsessed with this song right now, SO GOOD!):

"I need a hero, i'm holding out for a hero till the end of the night, he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast and he's gotta be fresh from a fight, I need a hero, i'm holding out for a hero till the morning light, he's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon, and he's gotta be larger than life."

Flyers and houses

2008-12-22T14:39:00.000+09:00

I always pitied the people in new york city standing in the streets handing out flyers, wearing ridiculous hot dog suits and looking absolutely miserable.

Luckily, that's not exactly what i've been doing for the past couple of days, although I have been walking around giving out flyers.

First of all, I'm not wearing an ugly costume, just my jeans and my floor length down jacket (and all the other normal clothes one would expect underneath), so i'm comfortable and warm.

Secondly, people are much more excited to hear about a new restaurant opening up around here, since it's such a small town, and i've had a lot of fun talking to people, and am looking forward to seeing some of them in the restaurant.

Thirdly, it's paying off! Already the restaurant's almost booked solid for our christmas eve dinner, and we're planning on having a new years dinner as well.

And the best part is, today i got to walk through the lower part of the Hirafu village, and see all the awesome architecture. This place has the capability of becoming an architectural mecca. See below:

I wonder what they all look like inside....

Other than that, things have been quiet the past few days... I did go to Wild Bills two nights ago, and met dan and alex, who told me that to really appreciate Australia, i should stay for at least 6 months... Dan's into green engineering, so he talked about letting me crash at his place for a little while and possibly helping me find an environmental job, so it's possible i'm going to apply for a working visa before traveling over there... We'll see. I'll keep you all updated.

Much love.

oh man!

2008-12-19T22:33:00.000+09:00

Food advertising is almost always based on a lie. In commercials, I've heard they use glue instead of milk to get the perfect consistency for that perfect pour. They coat things in oil, to make them shine, and hairspray, to make things dull, and all sorts of other random substitutions to make our food look interesting.

The point to that story is, that there was almost none of that falsification in the pursuit of hyper realism today. The only time i faked it was with the wine, where we didn't want to open the real expensive stuff to get a good shot, so we diluted some cooking wine with water to get the nice deep red we were looking for. The rest of everything is just the mastery of the chefs (and yes, they prepare these dishes like this for EVERY GUEST, so you're always eating a ridiculously beautiful meal). I hope they make you salivate, as that was kinda the whole point, as I was taking shots to put in our advertisements... But the best part was getting to try everything after I finished taking photographs, as that was our lunch for the day, which we all split family style. No substitutions here! The chefs made the normal meal, and i did my best to capture their brilliance.... Oh man. Local salmon baked in phyllo dough, beef and potato stew in a white wine cream sauce, penne with gorgonzola cheese, a japanese fish and scallop with caviar and cream, local beef with a zesty gravy, and mussel linguine.... wow:

After, I learned how to drive on the wrong side of the road in slightly hazardous conditions. Cliff ran some errands, and then we drove to this extraordinarily special onsen.

A hint for future travelers to Japan: The best onsens smell the worst. The onsen we pulled up to was hidden deep in the mountainside, and as soon as we drove up we were assailed with the scent of sulfur. This was water straight from the depths of the earth, heated and tempered by volcanoes and rock. However, all the lights were off, and we thought the place was closed. However, there was a side building with lights on, and Cliff ran in to check the details. Turns out it was open, we were just the only guests there.

Even though the onsen was deserted, i have no shots to show you guys, because the steam was so heavy and thick that the camera lens couldn't pick up on anything at all. They didn't turn on any extra lights for us, so it was also really dark. I got clean and climbed into the hottest one (from what i could tell), and it was ridiculous. In a hot spring, your skin feels prickly, almost as if you had a steamy hot towel that you wrapped around your entire body tightly up to your chin. It's impossible not to feel calm and safe.

I realized that there was an outside pool, and, since i wanted to take advantage of everything while i was there, jumped out and found my way over. There was a rock in the middle, and you could lie down flat on it and the bottom half of your body was in the warm water, and the top half was exposed to the cold. I then got the idea to float around, since there was no one to tell me not to. It was such an intimate experience, looking up at the stars through the steam, most everything submerged, being able to hear my pulse underwater... i kind of slowly danced while floating, just enjoying the way the water supported me and warmed me up. It didn't matter that I smelled like a rotten egg, that i was probably breaking a number of traditions and rules by floating around.... It was just me and the expansiveness of my thoughts and the sky above me.

The water was almost oily, it left my skin and hair slick when i finally got out, and i could see the minerals swirl around the bottom of the pools as I moved around them... No wonder the japanese have such good complexions... Met up with clifford outside, and we both enjoyed the computerized massage chairs they had set up.

i'd say it was a good day. Now back to designing coloring books for the kid guests to enjoy.

Much love.

Photos IV

2008-12-18T17:19:00.001+09:00

Mt. Yotei at night.

The 2nd onsen i went to, outside picture

The second Onsen I went to, indoor picture. That's where you clean yourself off before getting into the baths

The baths... between 37 and 42 degrees celsius

Pocari sweat... what a weird drink.

more photos!

2008-12-18T16:56:00.001+09:00

The really sweet water reservoir

Drinking from the really sweet water

Some sort of statuary... i think there was religious significance, but i don't know what kind

The yogurt drink I'm absolutely obsessed with, and other deliciousnesses from their dairy farm

Yellow bridge!! Pretty...

photos II

2008-12-18T16:18:00.000+09:00

Japanese keyboard

Me outside of Freedom Inn... the mountain's not on fire, it's the lights from the night skiing

Refresh Sparkling! (on the other side, it says "PHYTOS FOR LIFE!)