The adventure has officially begun. True, I’ve been funemployed for about 2 months so have already been on vacation for an amazing amount of time – but now begins the new sights, sounds, and foods, the travel and meeting lots of new people. I left Burlington about a week into November and really enjoyed my long amounts of time at home in Floyd as well as visiting my Harrisonburg family, Thanksgiving with family in Charleston, seeing high school friends and their new baby in Charlottesville, and reuniting with college friends in NC.
I realized that during this journey I’m going to hang out with a shockingly high number of friends who I’ve lived with in the past. Starting with four on my first leg in San Francisco. The San Fran four were Laili who was my dorm roommate for the first three weeks of Green Corps training in Boston, Shelley who I lived with during Green Corps in DC, Xander who I lived with for a semester senior year of college in Boone, and Becky who was one of my roommates when I was still very new to Burlington. The next two are Eva and Annie who were both college roommates the same year but at different times as each studied abroad for different semesters. They’re a worldly crew – Eva now lives in Australia and Annie in China. This might interest no one else but I thought it was pretty cool.
First thing that happened in San Fran is that my flight was delayed by about 1.5 hours, just long enough to mean that BART (their metro system) had stopped running. So an unfortunate start to the trip was that I had no choice but to spend the $75 to get to my friend’s house who I was staying with in Oakland. That was a shocking amount of money I hadn’t meant to spend obviously but a real world start because mistakes like that are part of traveling, being in unfamiliar territory and out of our comfort zones.
First thing that happened in San Fran is that my flight was delayed by about 1.5 hours, just long enough to mean that BART (their metro system) had stopped running. So an unfortunate start to the trip was that I had no choice but to spend the $75 to get to my friend’s house who I was staying with in Oakland. That was a shocking amount of money I hadn’t meant to spend obviously but a real world start because mistakes like that are part of traveling, being in unfamiliar territory and out of our comfort zones.
San Fran is a wonderful city – absolutely beautiful and has so much good food. There was certainly a part of me that was intrigued to live there, if only I were a city girl. It made me think about how many cities are in seemingly random places other than being good for commerce and shipping – like New York City and DC, etc. San Francisco isn’t so though – it makes sense why so many people want to live there. It’s truly beautiful and has fantastic weather year round. January was a beautiful 50-60 degrees while I was there and folks kept saying it was chilly. To the right is a picture of the painted ladies from Alamo Square. They were featured in the TV show Full House and show a pretty phenomenal contrast with the skyline in the background. |
Wednesday night I corralled my SF Green Corps friends to all grab dinner and drinks. Was really good to see them and I was so proud of all the good work that they’re doing working for 350.org, RAN, Credo Mobile activism team, etc. FYI we ate at Shan Dong in Oakland - super delicious dumplings and noodles. For the rest of the week I did some classic sightseeing and eating with Xan and Allie from App State, went on a great bike ride, hike, and more sightseeing with Becky and Luke who used to live in Burlington, and explored the city on my own.
I suppose I’ll give a brief overview of how this whole adventure came about for those of you I haven’t told. Since I was in high school and my neighbor growing up Amy Avery studied abroad in NZ and brought me back a piece of Punamu (NZ green jade) that was carved into the shape of a fiddlehead I’ve had a growing fascination with the country. Such an amazing diversity of climates and breathtaking natural beauty. That on top of Eva Mowry Lewis, one of my closest friends from college living in Australia made now the time to visit. I had thought about going this last spring but didn’t work it out and when it came down to it I just couldn’t fathom the idea of going that far away for a 2 week vacation which seemed to be the maximum amount of vacation time I was able to build up – so I put in my soft notice at SunCommon mid-summer saying that I was planning to travel in the winter. The closer the date got the crazier it felt, but now that it’s happening I am so glad that I took the leap. |