Every little thing, is gonna be alright!

It’s amazing how quickly life goes by. Not "by" maybe, but “on” – how it continues no matter what choices, experiences or opportunities arise. I've quickly nestled back into “home-life” and being on the road seems so far behind me! I've been back on the east coast for just a few days now, super excited that my plan to surprise Kerry on her birthday worked!! We had such a beautiful luncheon at a gorgeous vegetarian restaurant followed by a few of us going off on an adventure to see an art exhibit on Cockatoo Island; which actually ended up being a harbor-side walk and ferry ride under a beautiful sunny blue sky! I hitched a ride with Kerry and Rock back to the farm to relax for a few days until this weekend when we have Steph's goodbye celebration on the coast -woo hoo! And then I potentially start working! But before all of that consumes my existence (which I very much look forward to!) I want to give some more insight on my latest experiences! I took tons of pictures, so hopefully those will help me recount the experiences once I'm back home as well.

*Part of me is eager to share the details of my road trip across the country and another part of me is feeling so beautifully grounded here on Waverleigh Farm that it's hard to think outside of this moment right Now! It's a gorgeous (nearly) spring afternoon and the flowers are blooming, birds are singing, the sun is shining and the cookies are baking!! Yay. Today I encountered a beautiful lesson in nonattachment when my original plans for work fell through. Fortunately this simply opens the door to a whole world of possibilities for me. Hopefully I'll know more about them soon! But right now let's go backwards a bit shall we...

Jennifer and I had a beautiful time exploring (and trying to make sense of) the big red rock in the center of the country, as well as the “neighboring” rock formations (100 K away.) They are really indescribable; it was one of those things where you just have to be there in person. There are many places like that in Australia actually – it’s amazing that I got to experience them! While we were staying in Uluru, (again let me reiterate- the middle of nowhere! where they are bloodsucking tourism maniacs,) I was on a mission to find a ride to Alice Springs before Jennifer flew home. There were hundreds of people there, all on holiday and many on road trips, so I figured surely someone can take me along for the 4 hour trip to the next town. (Yes, the nearest town was 4 hours away, like I said...) So I wrote up little notes about myself (Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm a preschool teacher traveling for a year....) and put them on all the dashboards of the non-rental cars and campervans. I also put them up in the bathrooms. And I got NO response. However, it made me famous! I was also chatting everyone up and people I talked with said, "Oh, you're the preschool teacher." Yes. Can you give me a ride? No? Bummer. And so this went on for a couple days. (Meanwhile Jennifer had her fingers crossed that her new passport would be ready in time for her to fly out of Australia and into London!) My last resort was greyhound.

Finally it all fell into place! Jennifer and I were cooking in the shared “resort” kitchen and chatting with a couple lovely ladies, Deborah and her daughter, Natalie, who was my age. They were on a road trip adventure AND they were going to Alice Springs!!!! Jennifer and I looked at each other (EEEEE!!!! :) These were my people! We did lots of happy dancing that day! I also got to visit Kings Canyon with them, which I really wanted to see as well. Kings Canyon has spectacular views and I feel so lucky that it worked out for me to travel there with these awesome women! I think it was a five hour hike and we all did great! Nat and I left Deborah wandering without water at one point! Oops! But the views from inside the cliffs were amazing and we got some great photos to share with her. It's fascinating to think how it was all formed so very, very long ago! Natalie's a great photographer and took some gorgeous shots. During the drive to Alice we encountered wild camels crossing the road! (To get to the other side, of course.) Which was a much more exciting camel experience than the camel trains at the farm. (Though going for a camel ride was a very cool experience.) Natalie and Deborah were wonderful travel mates and we had such a great time together. We enjoyed some fun music in the car and took loads of pictures along the way. Deborah's only hope was that the kindness be returned to them one day during Natalie’s travels. In this beautiful world, I know that's definitely possible! On our last night together we shared a cheesecake in our "cabin" while watching a bit of the Olympics Opening Ceremony. The next day they dropped me off in Alice Springs and promised me a place if I went down south to Melbourne.

Alice Springs was not my favorite part of my adventure I admit, though it certainly had it’s magic. I was getting nervous as I ran into wall after wall trying to find wwoofing jobs in the area or the “neighboring” towns and I was officially alone for the first time in my travels (in my life?) No one was answering and nothing seemed promising. I knew something would work out, I just didn't know what it was. The discomfort of my uncertainty didn’t last too long as I met a lovely German girl in the backpackers I was staying at and it was good to have a friendly face to talk with. When I realized I needed to spend another night in Alice Springs I had to lug my stuff across town to the only other backpackers because the one I’d stayed at was booked up for that night. Ugh! It wasn't too bad considering I could carry everything I own on my person (one large backpack, a smaller “carry-on” backpack and my “pantry” which was definitely necessary thank you very much!) At the new place I met another sweet girl right away. I feel so fortunate to make friends quickly! It makes traveling much more fun and less scary! Amanda and I walked to the Alice “botanical gardens” and then I met up with Natalie and Deborah to visit the Telegraph Station! I really love seeing history right in front of me. My imagination allows me to create the experience all over again and it feels so real! The kitchen was the most interesting part of the experience for me, as I walked in and was suddenly overcome with emotion! It was the strangest thing. I want to look into more of the history of that place and I’d like to read a book about it called, “Alice on the Line,” if I can find a copy!

That evening Amanda walked with me to post requests on the bulletin boards at the two hostels about a ride outta there! Then she and I walked up to watch the sunset at the top of Telegraph Hill. Just fifteen minutes after I’d put my sign up, I got a call! The caller was obviously French and told me he and another guy were leaving in the morning if I wanted to join them! I was hesitant at first, but agreed to meet them. It was a silly series of events as we ended up meeting unexpectedly in the kitchen over dinner. Yay for kitchen-connections! I spent the evening hanging out with him and was excited about the prospect of a road trip up north and then along the west coast! I didn’t know how I would get a chance to do so much traveling otherwise and I’d heard wonderful things about the northwest! Yes, I would be ready in the morning! It wasn’t until putting my things into the car that I met our travel mate from Ireland, John. He seemed really friendly and there was plenty of space for me in the backseat so it was looking good! We had a rough start, though. One window was broken and was being held up by plastic stabilizers, the coolant wasn’t registering as full (even though they just changed it) and apparently there was a dead bird in the “grill” (I only know the bay area word for it!) Once we finally did get on the road we ended up picking up a backpacker, Darren, who shared the backseat with me. He was from Canada and had been backpacking for nearly two years. He had some fascinating stories and got me interested in a canoe trip across Canada! Not sure when that will be… (This picture is for you Gene!)

The first leg of the trip was quick. The idea was just to get to Darwin, drop off Darren, pick up Cesar and then begin the adventure back down and over. We did make one stop on the way up at the Devil’s Marbles which were giant round rocks scattered all over the place! Exploring is tricky in a small two-wheel drive car when you’re in the outback and venturing into national parks meant for off-road vehicles! The boys were grateful that I love to cook and gladly let me take the reigns in the evenings. Though really in the end, the job was shared in a lovely family style fashion. Unfortunately our diet was consistently simple, as cooking from the back of a car on a small gas stove would be. (I was super grateful for my “pantry” at this point!) We had lots of canned things but no cooler. I bought fresh veggies for dinner whenever we found them; which was ridiculously rare for the most part, traveling through huge masses of land with no town for miles! It’s just like it’s described in books, I would compare it to a treadmill of a highway most of the time. The landscape was fascinating though, being used to city or countryside, a desert offers amazing plant life – like ginormous termite mounds! (We never did dress one up, though we saw it several times.) When we got to Darwin we discovered there was no place to stay! And so began our pirate camping experiences – if there had been another option we would have taken it! First, we stayed up as late as we could at the beachfront park singing and dancing with a group of French travelers in the same situation as us. (They got fined $150 for camping illegally though and we slipped through the cracks.) That next morning I took the first of many cold showers in a beachfront rest area and then we began the journey south.

*I know if I don’t publish this now it’ll just keep getting pushed back so I’ll just post in pieces! There is more to come! Thank you for reading!

Where in the World is Hannah Marie Tashjian!?

I'm back in society after an amazing adventure to say the least! I don't even know where to begin! The stories? The scars? The red dust? The things I lost along the way or the ones I gained (mostly intangibles but also many heart-shaped rocks!)? I guess the last time I wrote was after my family reunion phone call at the beginning of July! Okay, let me see if I can cover 5 weeks in this blog! I've been keeping track of all the little details in my journal and they will make for wonderful stories when I return but I know some of you are super curious about what in the world I've been up to in general! First of all, let me just say, it's been such a breath of fresh air to be completely disconnected! What it did actually was help me connect with myself in beautiful ways.

Jennifer and I didn't end up going to New Zealand. We got to the airport, luggage in hand, dinner in containers for us to eat before hopping on the plane, just to find out New Zealanders are super intense about their rules! Jennifer's passport wasn't legible enough for them because it had gotten wet. Australia was totally laid back about it but NZ said "No way!" I think we handled the situation quite gracefully actually and the lovely man behind the counter told us he could credit our tickets to fly anywhere else within Oz. After gratefully accepting the help of our Sydney friends to spend a couple more nights there, we decided to go to Uluru (Look it up! It's a HUGE Rock in the middle of nowhere!!)

First we flew from *awesome Brisbane up to Cairns and spent time in the rainforest, on the beaches and at the Great Barrier Reef. We went on a live-aboard ship for a night and did six dives/snorkles in the middle of the pacific ocean! AMAZING! We also spent one day on an island which was unbelievable, felt like we were in a commercial for vacation! We took a beautiful hike up to the windiest place on earth (I swear!) and sat on a shelly beach looking out onto amazingly blue waters with the Reef existing just below the surface. I didn't take any pictures of any of the things I saw because I'm not an underwater photographer and it was more about the experience (snorkeling is SUCH a weird concept! I'm swimming around in the biggest aquarium on earth and Breathing?!? What?!) But over the course of our trip we saw: sea turtles (one swam right up to me!), a camouflaging octopus, nemo-fish!, angelfish, cuttlefish (which look like squid), sea stars, rays, sharks(!), lots of teeeeeny tiny fish, and some HUGE fish, like the Queensland Grouper!!

We also spent lots of time in Australia's beautiful Rainforest along the coast! Exploring in the dark was so exciting! One night we saw cane toads, lots of spiders!, a wallaby hopping along the road, fortunately for him we were driving slow so we could try and spot the huge PYTHON (10 feet long) stretched across the road warming herself!, a dingo runnning about and earlier in the day we saw Cassowaries!! BIG DEAL ~ they are very dangerous dinosaur birds! HUGE! And they were RIGHT next to our car! It was very, very, very cool. Australian wildlife is fascinating! As is the landscape, from the rainforest, to the beaches, to the beautiful oceans, to the VAST desert and amazing farmland! It's so Diverse! In the five months I've been here I've seen soo much (more than most Australians actually) and hope to see more after I settle for a bit and get a job. Seeing all retired couples in their campervans these last few weeks has made me want to fast forward to the end of my life and travel to my heart's content! Anyway, Jennifer and I parted ways July 25th(?) leaving me stranded Literally In The Middle Of Nowhere! Fortunately we met friends along the way so I wasn't entirely alone.. but there is NOTHING on the outskirts of Uluru and with no plan other than find my way around as I go, we said our sad goodbyes! I miss you Travel-buddy!

But it magically turned out beautifully, as it always does! I've just finished an amazing adventure of a road trip where I traveled (if you want to look it up on google or a very detailed map of Australia) from Uluru to Kings Canyon, up to Alice Springs, where I met some boys heading north to Katherine, then Darwin, through Litchfield National Park, then back down to Katherine (hot) Springs, across to Broome, down the Great Northern Highway along the coast to Port Headland, into Millstream National Park and back out again to the coast at Karatha and Port Sampson, then down through Karijini National Park (where I climbed up and down Mt. Bruce) to Tom Price (big mining town), headed further west up towards Exmouth on the peninsula and Cape Range National Park where we snorkeled at Ningaloo Reef, then drove down to Kalbari National Park and got to meet the stromatolites who created life on earth!!!!, then down through Geraldton to Nambung National Park and finally to Perth!! What an exciting arrival it was after being in the car and sleeping in a tent for three weeks!! More details to come I promise, but now you can picture what I've been up to and how strange it is for me to be part of society once again! It's a beautiful day today so I'm heading outside, all tanned and freckled and fit! YAY Adventure! *More pictures to come soon as well I promise!

A new Bell (or Whistle?)

Sysadmin update: Testing Testing. New Feature: "follow by email" in upper right, enter your email address, complete captcha to submit, then respond to the email sent to you from feedburner to receive an email update when RealGirl updates this bloggityblog. Note: preliminary test indicates that the email is issued once per day (if content has been added that day), rather than immediately post-post-posting. The email timing is not yet clear, but using this feature should notify you within 24 hours of a RealGirl update. Cheers!