There’s a time in most adolescent lives when everything starts to change, when the things you did last week now seemed juvenile. We all become misfits for some brief, difficult years, lured by the different and the dangerous. We become obsessed with something with the zeal that only teenagers possess, purposefully ostracize ourselves from the adults in our lives. Some kids turn to music. Some kids turn to drugs and alcohol. My obsession became the world itself.
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When I was a little girl, I used to love watching the Olympics. My favourite sports to watch in the winter games were figure skating, speed skating, ski jumping, hockey, and luge. It was a pretty big event in my household; for both the summer and winter games, my whole family would crowd around and watch the events on TV. One of my biggest regrets in life is not being in Canada when we won the gold medal for hockey in the Vancouver 2010 games.
I rarely get political on this blog; I’ve always maintained it’s not a place for that. I felt a need to write about what’s going on in Russia, though, because it absolutely breaks my heart.
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The man leaned in close, his face next to mine. I could smell his breath, a mixture of tobacco and a pungent, unidentifiable spice. His arms were stained slightly indigo from the traditional robes he wore. He was a Tuareg, a true “Blue Man” of the Sahara. Though he was only in his mid-fifties, his face bore the wrinkles of a lifetime spent in the unforgiving sun.
“C’est trés difficile,” he said to me, and I nodded. We were sitting by the fire under the desert sky of the Moroccan Sahara, and he was helping me to untangle the necklaces I wore around my neck. I had bought the strands of colourful glass beads in the souks of Marrakesh only days earlier, and he worked quickly and carefully to free me from their knots.
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Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. The New Year is more than just a celebration; it is the start of a new agricultural year, and a time for loved ones to meet. It is also a time to prepare for good luck, and to encourage luck to enter your home so that the next 12 months to come are healthy, happy, and prosperous.
But how to prepare for luck?
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Do you know what they say about people who love the colour red? They’re impulsive, outgoing, aggressive at times. They have a strong zest for life. They tend to be extremely optimistic, but hate monotony and crave change. They are passionate and strong, full of vigour. They are restless. They can be too quick in their decision-making; one might call them rash, hasty. They are determined to get all they can out of life.
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I was in León, the second largest city in Nicaragua (after Managua, the capital), and was travelling with an Australian woman I’d met in Utila, Honduras, and we stayed together in a gorgeous guesthouse with a pool. After a day trip to Las Peñitas, we decided to try the very popular volcano boarding we kept hearing about from other backpackers.