El Fuerte

Hello from El Fuerte! I crossed the Gulf of California yesterday in a grotty but comfortable 5 hour ferry, then hopped on a school-like bus to the town of Los Mochis. (Makes me hungry for Japanese rice cakes! Ok, nevermind, Japanese language joke) Then today bussed 2 hours to El Fuerte, a cool town where the Spanish used to have a giant fort to protect them from the local indigineous people.

Last night I ordered the most yummicious cheese quesadillas in the hotel restaurant. The TV was on to ESPN to which a group of men was watching an international rodeo. And they were really IN to it! There are a lot of "cowboys" in the area. At the moment I can hear a donkey beying from outside the cyber cafe. (Do donkeys bey? Maybe it's a mule?) Pretty cool stuff.

Tomorrow I catch the great Copper Canyon Railway to the town of Creel.

So far pretty safe, people are nice, and I'm staying in a $15/night spic and span hostel run by a woman from Sacramento---so don't worry, parents!

Pictures are up! (see side)

Baja California

I've been a little more chill about flying lately, but after the tarot reading in New Zealand that doomed my health for January, I was pretty sure this flight was very possibly going to be "the one". As soon as the plane touched the runway without bursting into flames I thanked God, Buddha, Mohammad, and all the other gods that I arrived in Los Cabos alive.

And it's COLD!! Dad and I arrived during the coldest weather they've ever had---mind you to North Dakota standards people would still be wearing shorts. With 40-50 degree (F) temps I have been wearing my one "cold" outfit everyday this week. I am wearing my winter jacket as I type.

We started at the bottom point of the penninsula and have been driving up in an old rented Nissan "Tsuru". From Los Cabos to Todos Santos, to La Paz and up to Puerto San Carlos where we hired a little boat to see the grey whales off the Pacific coast which was pretty cool. Then up to Loreto. I especially like this little town with its beach front "Malecon" where people constantly cruise main street in their pumped up cars. It makes me so happy everytime some slick cruising dude drives by with tubas blasting from his stereo.

(L) Trick picture, only my feet. Too COLD! (R) Cactus and beach

(L) Mummified manta ray??? (R) San Javier mission

(L) Poncho blankets (R) This morning's breakfast: huevos a la mexicana

I think the funniest thing in the trip so far was in the middle of the desert on a scary dirt road on the way to a 300-year-old mission where Dad was video-taping his eyeball because he couldn't figure out which end of the camera was which. Classic! (to give him some credit, the camera is all in Japanese) It was that same drive that I saw a spider so big, SO BIG that I could see him crossing the road from a distance and actually had enough time to drive around him. (What would YOU have done, huh huh?!) I stopped to check him out but Dad wouldn't let me get out of the car.

Tonight we are in a little pink hotel filled with bikers. There's a courtyard with chirping birds and plants, a cricket hiding somewhere in my room, the beds are covered in poncho blankets and the toilets leak. Dad would usually refuse to stay at a place like this, but the alternatives weren't much better. I like it, it feels like Mexico.

P.S. A big HURRAY! for sister Sam and her CPR skills at the Olive Garden restaurant, we're proud of you!!!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I haven't updated lately because I've been living such a normal American life. But what is normal? Come to think of it, this is all still pretty novel to me. Here are some of the highlights:

Christmas

It was a brown Christmas this year, but I truly enjoyed overdosing on Christmas cookies and pigging out with my family and hanging with the newly extended family! Presents are always a treat! Home is without doubt the best place to spend Christmas!

Snow!

We got a good 12 inches in a matter of days. It was beautiful, and I actually enjoyed shovelling. I was impressed by the way Mom and Sam and all drive through it, plowing and sliding and spinning without even breaking a sweat. This is normal North Dakota stuff.

A picture of me shovelling from last year

New Year's

Sis took me out to a few parties and it was fun, but for me the best place to spend New Year's will always be Japan. I missed eating mashed chestnuts and rice cakes with cheese, visiting a temple in the middle of the night, and getting a slew of New Year's postcards on the 1st. Sigh.

Japanese New Year Mashed Chestnuts---YUM!

The GRE

I crammed to full cerebral capacity. My weakest subject is---and having been an English teacher for so many years this is a little embarassing---English. I studied a panoply of erudite vocabulary which never showed up on the test, but I have since discovered that they appear regularly in crossword puzzles. Thank you, Kaplan Study Guides, for boosting my crossword ability! Much more useful in life than a measly test. I have no regrets.

33 Hour Amtrak Ride

I found a ridiculously cheap ticket to Seattle on Amtrak. I thought I would enjoy the ride, leisurely viewing the mountains and scenery, but it was way, way too much time in a box. The guy next to me was a young east coast environmental studies major who was in awe of the North Dakota landscape. He thoroughly interrogated me on what North Dakotans do for a living, the main cash crops, dont they get lonely out there in the plains? Do they like living here? And everytime we passed a butte jutting unexpectedly from the middle of a flat prairie he would gasp in awe---! So to those of you who think ND is boring, its all a matter of perspective!

Off to Mexico!

I leave to Mexico on Jan. 18th, ¡Olé olé! More on that later!

P.S. Tired of checking for new updates? I can send you an e-mail notice, kind of like a subscription, when I update my blog. Let me know and I will put you on the list! -Shannen

My first American wedding (since I was about 4 years old, anyway)

Congratulations, Samantha and Jamie!

It's been a BUSY two weeks since coming back to the States, helping mom prepare the house for visitors and researching wedding stuff on the internet. I was so honored not only to take part but to have such an important role--maid of honor! So here's what I learned about weddings in the ol' US of A:

1. Weddings are very expensive
2. Weddings are hard to prepare for (especially for the bride)
3. Weddings are a good excuse to convince family to come all the way to po-dunk North Dakota, even in the middle of winter
4. Weddings are fun

Two more interesting facts:

1. The more immediate the family, the more wedding cake you get to take home, YUM!
2. If it's your own wedding, you get to pick ALL the music (and everyone will dance to it with smiles on their faces)

Best quotes of the night:

"All my friends are here, my family is all here, this is the best night of my LIFE!"

Jamie (groom)

"We have to do this EVERY year!"
Sam (bride)

"I could definitely drink a rum and coke tonight."
Mom

Mom won't touch alcohol,

nor did she have her rum and coke this night, either

"Just think of baseball!"
Jamie

When someone said they might cry at the wedding

If anyone has another quote, put it in the comments! I'd love to hear it!

Thanks to Antie Dot, Dee and the junior bridesmaid girls Madelyn and Haylee, Don & Shirley and Lindsey (my camerawoman) and Kristen and their handsome intelligent gentlemen all for coming all the way from Wisconsin! Hope you all made it back safely and enjoyed your trip.

Fiji: WOW!

I was woken up by a phone call the morning of my flight to Nadi, Fiji. I was informed that Australia had just issued a red alert to travelers to the tropical island country due to a possible military coup. I checked the internet for news and called the airline. Their representative assured me not to worry, “Having a coup in Fiji is like having a margarita in Mexico.” I was slightly relieved, figuring since I had no plans to visit the capitol I should be unaffected. I just hoped my parents weren’t too up-to-date on the news.

Arriving in Nadi, I wasn’t sure where to go in my mere 6 days. I opted to leave the next morning for the Yasawa islands, depicted in all the brochures with pristine white beaches, clear blue coral-filled waters, grass-skirted islanders and smiling bikini clad tourists drinking from coconuts. It looked like paradise.

And it was paradise. The snorkeling was amazing, like swimming in the tropical fish tank at your local buffet restaurant. Nemos everywhere! Neon colors from the entire spectrum, fish of all shapes and sizes, and I even saw a few sharks! Life was regulated by breakfast, lunch and dinner times (all included in price of lodging), with snorkeling between high and low tides, drying off on the beach in the sun and napping in hammocks to fill in the gaps. My dorm bed was in a grass hut where I would awake to chirping birds perched on my bed rail; there was no hot water but showers refreshing. I visited an island village where I was introduced to the village chiefs bearing real flower leis and shown their school. School children in colorful purple uniforms sang for us and begged to have their pictures taken so they could see themselves on the digital camera screen.

I decided to live my last day in Fiji to the fullest. My flight was at 11pm and I had all day to enjoy. I took an introductory scuba course that morning, amazing but took some time to get used to the breathing. Then I had a drool-inducing 40 minute beach massage. Later I took my snorkeling gear to “feed the fish”, an island sponsored activity that involved taking bread into the open waters where the fish were already waiting for us---see, fish have brains after all! There were thousands of them, so many you could catch the little ones in your hands. At one point I realized I had wandered a little too far from the group when I noticed the fish were getting bigger, and, what’s that??? A STINGRAY???!! It must have been a meter long---plus the long pointy nose! Lastly, once back to shore, I decided to try swimming around the entire island. This particular island, South Sea Island, could be circumferenced on foot in about 15 minutes, a little oasis of sand and coconut trees that could be mercilessly wiped out by the most cowardly of tsunamis. It took about an hour, but exhausted and happy, I gathered my things for the ride back to the main island, and to the airport.

I was contented and excited to head back to the States for my sister’s wedding. Eager to show off my new tan, I realized my skin was starting to itch something fierce…I had developed a huge rash right there on the airplane. The doctor later diagnosed me with “swimmer’s itch”, sounds cute enough but the internet tells me it has something to do with flatworms mistaking me for waterfowl—EW!

By the way, Fiji is still on high alert for a possible coup. The Prime Minister was making an important speech on television the day I arrived, but to the adults’ dismay the Fijian kids at the hostel kept turning the channel to cartoons. On one island I heard an announcer shouting from the radio, all the islanders surrounding the radio with expressions of great concern---but found out they were listening to a live rugby game. It makes sense, paradise can only be unaffected by politics.

New pictures are up! Check ‘em out!
By the way, the pictures program has changed a bit, but just click the "slideshow" button and they'll zip by like before!

Dolphins!

This morning I put on this sexy wetsuit, got on another rocky boat, and SWAM with DOLPHINS!!! There were dolphins everywhere! We were told to make silly noises and try to swim like a fish, and the dolphins would be more interested in us. I sang a couple bossa novas there in the freezing water, and had up to 5 dolphins swimming loops around me! It was the most amazing experience.
Then after about a half hour I had to swim back to the boat and be sick again.
No more boat trips for me please!

NZ Pics are UP!

Pics are at side bar, Come and see!

North Island
(Aukland, Clare, Tracy, White Island volcano, Mt. Taranaki)

South Island
(Julie, Tekapo, Mt. Cook, Milford Sound, Franz Josef glacier hike)

NZ's North Island: Volcanic Paradise!

I took 20 pictures of mud in a New Zealand town called Rotorua to get this photo. I erased most of the twenty, but still have about five excellent mud action shots in the camera. "Mud?", you ask? But behold, this is not normal mud. This is bubbling mud, found in the Rotorua city park. The park would be an average park with grass and benches and ducks, except for the fact that it erupts now and then. The duck pond bubbles. And the whole place steams and smells of sulfur. The last park eruption was in 2003 when mud was spewed up to 200 meters into the air. I want to live here.

I have been in the north island of New Zealand for 2 weeks now, and it has been great. I spent the first week with Clare in Aukland and the weekend with Tracey in Hamilton, we were all mates in Japan. I also met their moms and dads and sisters and brothers and cousins and friends and flatmates---I feel like I've joined in on a New Zealand family sitcom! Lots of laughs. Tracey took me to her mom's house in Rotorua where we went around to the lakes and the volcanic Kuirau Park, then she's lent me her 1985 Honda Accord, a.k.a. the "Golden Bullet" for the week. I have not yet crashed or bumped into anything, hurrah!

I waited 3 days to get on a tour boat to the White Island, NZ's only active marine volcano. You can only get there by guided tour boat as the island is privately owned and is 50km away by sea. The sun finally came out, but the water was still so rocky that most of us spent the trip filling motion sickness bags. I tried to not notice, but you should have seen the swells out there, swell after swell, rising, crashing, rising...swelling...urghxxxhxhf!!!! We had to use hard hats and gas masks, and the volcano was incredible. Well worth the seasickness.

There is so much to write about NZ, but I will leave off here for now. Pics later!

Take care, all!