the time has come the walrus said

i'm starting to get the itch again. the "i've-been-in-one-place-for-to-long" itch. 

i'm feeling the need for travel, the need for adventure. maybe it's because i fell asleep to the lizzie mcguire movie last night.


who knows? but for some reason i really want to go somewhere tropical. although i've been to a few tropical places, hawaii, fiji, it's usually not my idea. my ideal travel destinations are typically places like Spain, Iceland, India: places that have history, culture, and beautiful landscapes. i like vacations where i try to pack in as much sight seeing and exploring as possible.


however, this is not the case right now. im not sure why but i really just want to go somewhere with a beach. so that i can go to that beach and never leave for the entire vacation. i want to do nothing, which is SO NOT me! 


anyway, this has inspired me to share some stories/photos from our family trip to fiji. every summer marta  tooma leads a mission trip to fiji. since the tooma's are our good family friends we got lucky enough to tag along! 

this was the village where we stayed for 10 days! the building on the left behind the boat is the medical/dental clinic.

all the women on the trip stayed in two dorms. each dorm had 12 beds.

we had to sleep with mosquito nets over our beds as to not get eaten alive.

luxurious showers/bathrooms not attached to the dorm.

so here is the bathroom story.  during our trip we drank so much water (because it was SO FREAKING HOT) that every night in the middle of the night i would have to get up to pee. well it's pitch black out there, and night time means mosquitos, loud scary frogs, and other creepy crawlies. in the beginning of the trip each night i would get up and make the scary trip to the bathroom with only my flash light and myself sometimes when i just couldn't brave it alone i'd wake my mom up. well one day i shared this with a few other people on the trip. turns out everyone had that same fear/problem. so we made a rule, if you woke up in the middle of the night and needed to go to the bathroom, you would get up quietly, flash your flashlight a few times, say bathroom twice, and see if anyone else needed to go. at first people were still hesitant to say bathroom as not to wake anyone else up. however, on the second to last night there one girl got up whispered bathroom twice and soon practically our entire dorm got up to pee!

on the way to the cannibal caves. yes thats a spider. yes i touched it. (our fijian "tour guide" said nothing in fiji is poisonous. he lied) 

sea cucumber...

... on veronica's hand.

anyway, i need a vacation. i need an adventure.

FOR THE RECORD

 NYE 2009 --> 2010

we had fun....

... in our glitter.

love and other impossible pursuits

Late in 2008 I was jogging down the street on my way to hike Runyon Canyon when a lady stopped me mid-jog. She approached me and basically said some bullshit about my glowing aura and that she could sense that 2009 was going to be a very big year for me in terms of love and my career. She got a little deeper but I don't want to get into the details. Her words were very vague, I know, and she probably says that to everyone, which is why I really didn't take it all that seriously.


With that said, her words have remained in the back of my mind all year. Yes, she was right my career has definitely advanced and although I am not exactly where I want to be yet in terms of my career I am in a good place.  I also thought that "a big year in terms of love" meant that maybe I'd find someone special this year.  Not the case.


Last night at my neighbor Aaron's birthday party/new year's eve party I started talking to everyone about what the psychic told me and how I was pissed because she was wrong. In fact 2009 has been one of my most loveless years. However, what my friends so kindly pointed out last night was that 2009 actually was a huge year for me in terms of love.


I might not have found a boyfriend but I have been blessed with some new friends that have literally changed my life. I found a second family. The Finley-Quists. 

In 2007, I moved into an apartment in West Hollywood with Morgan, my friend from high school who is two years my senior. Morgan's older sister Megan, Megan's husband Aaron, and their best friends Amy and Ari also lived in the building.  It was a blast because! However, a few months later Morgan realized that LA was not the place for her so she moved out. This meant I had to find a new roommate. It also meant that Megan, Aaron, Amy, Ari and I stopped hanging out at much. On top of that my new roommate's line of work meant that he would rarely be home when I was.  Since I have never lived alone before I started to get really lonely. Part of the problem is that I find it hard to open myself up to new people. I don't like to get hurt (none of us do), so I keep a wall up. However, after spending many hours crying on the phone with my sister, she told me that I needed to put myself out there. People can't read minds, if you need help ask for it. So one night I told Megan, my neighbor that I've been getting really lonely since Morgan had moved out. She told me that if I ever felt lonely I was more than welcome to go up to their apartment to hang out.


Now a year later you will rarely find a night that I am not up there. Megan and Aaron have made me a part of their family, for which I am eternally grateful. They have changed my life and helped me find happiness. Something I never thought possible without a boyfriend. In fact, despite bad days or negative circumstances,  I am very happy more often then not. Which is the opposite of my mental state at this time last year. 


So long story short, yes, as Oliver, Megan, and Aaron, so kindly pointed out, the psychic was right. 2009 was a big year for me in terms of love. I feel so incredibly blessed to have such incredible and amazing new and old friends! I am so lucky. 


As they say, boyfriends will come and go but family is forever.