Thinking Travel

photo by I'll Never Grow Up

I’m back in the U.S. for exactly one night. I just flew in from Costa Rica and will soon meet Aaron and fly to Madrid.

Funny, I was freaked out about flying to Costa Rica during the rainiest month of the rainy season. But the weather was perfect flying in and out of the San Jose airport. It was in ATL that we had rainy, windy conditions. Nevertheless, we landed on time.

Then my ATL airport adventure began.

Even though ATL was my final destination, I still had to go through airport security.

Then I got on the airport shuttle and made my way to another terminal so I could find some dinner to take to my hotel. After walking all over terminal A, I found something. (This was a good thing since my hotel is who knows where and there’s absolutely nothing near us and they only serve breakfast here.)

Then I walked all over terminal A and T and the baggage claim looking for the hotel shuttles. Once I was hot and sweaty and the plastic bag carrying my dinner had cut off all circulation to my right hand, I finally figured out that at ATL, “Shared Rides” means “Hotel Shuttle.” And that you have to exit the terminal through a hard-to-see side exit.

So then I follow the other confused passengers, many who are only carrying small carry-on bags and one of those free bags of toiletries they give you when they cancel your flight and you have to spend the night without your luggage. We walk across the street, down the sidewalk, turn right, walk down another sidewalk and finally find the hotel shuttle pick-up area.

It was chaos. There are more shuttles than parking spaces, so each shuttle parks when there’s an open spot. The driver jumps out of the van, yells “Hiiiiiiiilton Hoooooootel!” and then drives away.

I look for the Courtyard by Marriot shuttle. After about 10 minutes I find a Marriot Shuttle. Yeah! Oh. No yeah. As I board the shuttle I’m told that they don’t go to my Marriot. Oookay…

Then, about 5 minutes later, I find a Courtyard shuttle. Great! Oh. Not great. This one only goes to the Courtyard by Marriot South. I’m in North. Then the driver tells me that I have to take the Renaissance Hotel Shuttle. Oookay…yeah, that makes sense.

The funny thing is that the Renaissance shuttle was the first one I saw. But it didn’t occur to me to get on that once since I was going to the Courtyard.

Anyway, finally, after something like 25 minutes I get on a shuttle and am driven 7 minutes to my hotel by a really friendly driver. This guy said hello to everyone, helped an older woman on and off the shuttle, and even went a little out of the way to take a guy to the Fed-Ex airport. He was awesome.

I’m now at the hotel, finishing some work and getting ready to GO ON VACATION! Woo hoo!

Photo by Elsie esq.

Hello from 37,000 feet. As I write, we are flying up the western coast of Florida on our way to Atlanta. I spent the week in San José , Costa Rica for work and am now on my way to Madrid to attend the Global SIETAR Congress and vacation for a few days.

Five things I did while in San José:

1. Gave three intercultural workshoplettes (short workshops), two at the Tri-Association conference and one at the Anglo-American Bilingual School. The participants were awesome.
2. Visited a rural elementary school in Cartago with a colleague who used to work there. We spent time with a Kindergarten class talking about Halloween.
3. Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with my Canadian, Costa Rican, and U.S. colleagues.
4. Got soaked while walking back to my fancy-schmancy hotel from the mall that was across the street. When I say soaked, I mean I looked like I’d showered with my clothes on.
5. Got up very early every day. But it wasn’t bad at all because it’s light at 6am (because it gets dark at 6pm) and the hotel had Britt coffee pods in my room.

Five things I learned while in San José:

1. If you go to Costa Rica during the rainy season (October is the rainiest month) bring or buy the biggest umbrella you can. Because if you don’t, you’ll get soaked. I speak from experience.
2. Ask if your hotel offers breakfast with the room price, even if they don’t offer the information. Don’t wait until your last day in a nice hotel with an excellent buffet to find out that you can have more than black coffee in the morning. Again, I speak from experience.
3. Why is it that whenever I give a workshop that includes taking about the “cultural iceberg” the movie Titanic is on the night before? This has happened more than once. And I always seem to get in on the part when the ship hits the iceberg.
4. There is an excellent Asian restaurant in San José.
5. The Intercontinental Real has the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in. Seriously.

Things are good.

I’m in Costa Rica.
I’m staying in a nice hotel.
I have colleagues who make me feel welcome in their country.
I gave a presentation that 66 people attended (waaaaay more than I anticipated).
And I spent the evening at the U.S. Ambassador’s house.

Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

It’s late and I really should be prepping my pillow for sleepytime instead of typing on my laptop. But whatever.

Anyway.

I’m working on several things right now that are cool and exciting. One of them is revamping this blog. I started ThinkingTravel.com a couple years ago (click here to read my first post) with the following goals:

(1) put myself out there

(2) practice writing publically

(3) experiment with new technology

How did I do?

(1) I told exactly 4 people about my blog and encouraged precisely 0 people to read it so I wouldn’t say I put my whole self out there. It was more like I put my pinky toe, covered in a wool blanket, out there, a little ways. But you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

(2) I’ve written publicly before (newspaper/academic journal articles) but not in an informal, on-going, bloggy type way. It’s been fun, and ultimately useful/helpful, to blog here and there because it’s just good writing practice. I liked challenging myself to put together different types of posts, to give myself a time limit so I couldn’t spend hours obsessing over every detail, and to be okay with posting something that wasn’t perfect. After two years, though, I still have no idea what my “voice” is like. Does that really matter?

(3) I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit playing around with widgets and code and stuff like that. On one hand, it frustrates me to no end and I feel overwhelmed and I hate that there’s so much I don’t know and can’t do without Aaron’s help. On the other, I love it!!!

I started this blog simply so I could try something new. But now I’ve plans…so even if I’m not around for a bit…stay tuned.

What I did over the weekend:

Friday. Even though I flew to Atlanta on a plane that was about the size of a Suburban,   the flight turned out to be quite ok and not scary. I might even go so far as to say that I enjoyed the flight.

Most of all I’m pleased to report that year’s flight to ATL was less eventful than last year’s…

Saturday. The workshop I co-facilitated went very well and I felt like I actually helped people. Later, a barista at the hotel cheerfully made (really good) lattes for a handful of customers, even though she’d already closed two hours earlier. That’s good customer service.

Sunday. Aaron and I went to Target and Trader Joe’s with coupons and grocery list in hand and left $200 poorer! We did a stock-up shop, bought fresh fruit, and have lunches for a couple weeks, but still…things are getting expensive.

All of the blogs I’ve recently discovered have turned out to have Portland, OR-residing authors. Or they’re originally from PDX. Or they’re moving to PDX.

And it’s happened several times that I’m looking at some random photo online and something in the photo makes me say to Aaron, “I bet these people are from Oregon” and 90% of the time I find out I’m correct.

Usually it’s the trees or the lighting that tips me off but sometimes it’s something about the people, even though I don’t quite know that it is.

Is the universe trying to tell me something?

In honor of our 8th wedding anniversary, which was actually last Tuesday, I thought I’d post this photo, the only digital wedding photo we have. Can you believe it, when we got married people were still using film! So don’t think this photo is actually a digital photo, I think we scanned it.

Anyway, here’s a photo of me, Aaron, and Poldy (whose name is actually Reinhard, who was my “man” of honor, who lives in Berlin) at Mason Sabika, the Spanish Tapas restaurant that’s in a beautiful old mansion.

Arg.

Aaron and I planned to spend today at the beach celebrating our 8th anniversary but an IT emergency forced Aaron to work today.

And since I couldn’t manage more than a sleepy grunt in the wee hours of the morning when Aaron told me he was taking the car, I’m stuck at enjoying a day at home.

Actually, it’s ok. Hopefully Aaron won’t have to spend tomorrow working and we’ll go to the beach next weekend. And I’ve actually gotten a ton of things accomplished today, like cleaning the kitchen, working on a couple top-secret projects, and updating the new SIETAR-NC website.

Speaking of getting thing accomplished, let’s see how many things I can cross off my 10-Things-in-101 Days list:

1. Upload Caracas and MoBay photos to Flickr.
   –Done — see photos here!
2. Finish reading Three Cups of Tea.
   –Still happily making my way through this excellent book.
3. Bring my lunch to work at least 3 days a week.
   –I’m getting much better at this one so I’ll cross it off.
4. Re-up my SIETAR-USA membership and find a mentor.
   –Just need to sign up for a mentor.
5. Sort the gazillion dissertation articles in my file cabinet and toss out what I no longer need.
   –Uh, ya, still need to this.
6. Add 5 people to my LinkedIn profile and become more web 2.0.
   –I’ve received a few requests recently and I joined Facebook…does this count? (no!)
7. Gather the photos and pictures I want to hang in our house so I can assess my framing needs.
   -Done!
8. Outline an article from my diss.
   –Still a work in progress.
9. Go for a walk with Aaron at least 3x a week.
   -Done! Our weekly walking averages out to about 3x a week.
10. Finish this want-to-do list and create a 101 Things in 1001 Days list.
    –Nearly finished.

Ok, this is really sad. I’ve only done half of the things on my list. That’s 50%, an F.

10 things in 101 days, this shouldn’t be that difficult! Maybe it’s a good thing I’m stuck at enjoying a day at home, rather than at the beach.

Thanks, Aaron, for the beautiful flowers that surprised me at work today, for Thai food for dinner, for saving me from the cockroach on the wall (ah yes, the joys of living in the south in the summer), and for 8 great years of being Mrs. Brubaker. Love you!

My friend Karen’s Two Geeks and a Girl blog is in my RSS feed. The posts, pics, and videos of her daughter Natalie are my daily dose of cute. Visiting Karen’s site always lifts my spirits and reminds me what’s really important in life.