C. Rose and The World

For four months I was doing what I have always wanted. Travel, meet new and interesting people from all walks of life and from different parts of the world on a day to day basis. Also getting a perfect fix of Association Football as well as other sports. I may have missed my friends back home but I was making new ones. Making each day count in some way or another. Discovering new dreams that I had and old dreams that I had forgotten. Out there I was me without society, friends and family telling me what I should want to be or what I am. Traveling for that long amount of time allowed be to just be. The journey was of myself and not just a different part of the world. I was in my own personal love of me journey. I fell in love with some cities and what they allowed me to have in myself and I morned there lost when I moved on but took what they had taught me. I traveled and I learned and I loved the most important person in my life which is me.

Then I came home.

Those first few days were those of jet lag and seeing wonderful friends I missed oh so much and some I didn't care if I saw them again. Telling stories of new friends and wonderful adventures. Reliving them again and again in the spoken words of life past. Still in love with them all and still high on that love. The buzz is still there, the joy is still complete and full. Then there is a week gone. Life is settling in. Everyone is seen, your favorite stories are told so many times that each time you must tell it again you have a slight pain for that gone moment and a hope you can have it again in another form. Then a little more time passes and the expectations of society and everyone starts to come back on you. You must begin to conform in little ways to survive in what this life requires and who cares if it doesn't really make you happy. If it can get you by it is good enough.

It is the full throws of the hangover now. The nausea, head ace, the looking for any cure to make this pain go away. Knowing that the only true cure is to go out there again and see something new, wonderful, powerful. To push myself so that you can learn more about myself, grow, love, laugh, and be. I have the hangover of what people say life should be. Travel is looked at as this drug that is ok in moderations but don't get to carried away because that can't be what you live for. Yes living a life that is about travel is hard at times, can be a great struggle, and is not for everyone but who is to say that I am not allowed to go for it. I don't want my life to be the hangover. I want my life to be the high and bits a hangover to get to the next high. I want my pillow to be my home and the world to be where I live.

Long layovers can be a blessing or a curse. It all depends on the length, the air port and the timing of it all.

On my way to South Africa I was fortunate enough to have to red eye flights and a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. I was able to sleep on the plains and go and explore the city in between the flights. The only down side was that I was in Frankfurt which has to be one of the most industrialized cities in Germany. I walked out to the city center to be greeted by McDonald's, H&M, and Nike. It was a big Welcome to Europe here is everything you see at home. It was still the best way to spend a layover and I can't complain a bit about it because I had a fantastic sandwich.

Then there was my flight back to Chicago from Cape Town. It was lovely 40 hrs of travel time with what turned out to me a 12 hour layover in Abu Dhabi, UAE. There was excitement at first glance at my itenary. Even with the crutches and broken foot I was going to go and see a bit of the UAE and maybe meet up with a couch surfer or two. It was going to be an awesome layover and a new stamp in the passport! Then at second glance I see that I land in Abu Dhabi just a little before midnight and my flight leaves at 10.20 am, which turned into 12 pm, which leaves me with no chance of seeing the city. I was heart broken and now had to sleep in an airport. Now I land and enter with my wheelchair service into the most amazing airport I have ever seen. Really, you have to check it out, even if you don't want to go to the UAE get a flight that connects through there and have your breath taken away and enjoy the fantastic free wifi. I had to take pictures it was so amazing and I didn't even get to really roam around because of my foot. Sorry a bit off subject but it was fantastic. It is late at night and the place is still buzzing because of all the late night flights but there is no way I can go out and see the city. So my hours of layover becomes me laying on a floor and napping listening to my ipod and podcast playing spider solitaire and reading my book. It is nice for the first 3 hours but the last 7 are just getting though it. Watching the sun come up and wishing I could be somewhere in the city seeing it.

I spent 12 hours in Abu Dhabi and all I got was the coins from my purchase of a water and a picture of the airport. Thats a layover for you.

Cape Town is the San Fransico of South Africa.

I was told that by a few people before my trip to South Africa began and it is very true. The weather is very muchin the same bracket and there is this great and wonderful diversity. There are artistic, ritzy, gay, dodgy, business and tourist neighborhoods. A wonderful music seen. Extreamly high end shopping and lovely markets with great deals. Cape Town is a great city of life and culture. It can rivel any industialized nations city.

I have fallen in love with Cape Town. The people here, the wine that is produced, the lovely olives, the fresh fuit on the streets and the beauty that is all around will keeping me coming back here again and again. It is a wonderful place that I will tell at lot of my friends who love to travel they must come to. With all that there is here you forget that South Africa is still ranked as a third world country. I even made a joke about how I can see how SA isn't a first world county with the great poverty and the extreamly low wages but how it should be a second world country. We had a whole conversation about how that would be the perfect inbetween ranking for some countries.

South Africa has so much and offers so much how and it be classified as just third world.
Famous last words.

That one statement and then the great reminders of exactly where I am as almost the entire country went on strike. The medical and educational systems went on strike. Nurses, doctors, and teachers not required to come into work. Only those in great need of medical attention to be cared for. Which is great for a person with a broken foot and needs cheap care. I'm sorry come again later, the clinics are closed. Students not going to school because parents are in fear of violence at the schools. Home Affairs on strike as well. Walking in to be told that we need you to be illegal before we can help you. If you have a day or to before your visa expires please come back. Having to call in to make and appointment because they are really closed due to the strike. Now thats when you are in a third world country.

It is all slightly funny in the balance of life to be honest. Back in the states I use to complain when people would go on 1 day strikes to prove the point that transportation is important. Here in SA the long distance trains are not running because the two companies that run them are fighting and instead of trying to work out their differences while still making money on the people who need to travel. Just a bit third world. Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing country that I will come back to soon. It is also a country that reminds you what first world actually means.

The fist time I have injured myself and been completely ok with it is now. Sandboarding is completely worth the pain and suffering that I am now enduring and I plan to go sandboarding in the future.

Did you know that the out lying area of Cape Town has the second smallist Desert in the world? Well it does. It is funny how we always thing about the largest in nature but never consider the smallest. By the way the smallest desert is in Canada and I now what to go and see it.

Anyways, sandboarding is amazing. I had never been skiing or snow boarding and only be on a skate board once or twice so it was all new to me. And the rush of heading down the dune with you heart in your throat and reading the just right point to adjust you weight so you don't face plant in the sand it amazing. I broke my foot on the second run because I fell and didn't have the sandal on tight enough.

But pain be damned! I continued on for 3 more hours because the rush was so fantastic and addicting. It didn't matter that the next day I woke up with a foot double the size and black and blue all over. I had gone sandboarding and lived it up to the fullest. There is this amazing point when you get up at the top of the dune and you stop to get your beath a bit and look around. The rolling sand dunes with there fuzzy edges of wind and sand particals and the brilliant blue of the skyline with the hints of green trees and ocean in the far distants makes you glad to be alive and in this space. I use to hate sillince but in a place with that much beauty sillince is the greatest luxury that you don't what to let go of. We would all act silly, my friends and I, laughing and having fun and then up at the top of that hill it just stops. We all inhale the moment, smile and enjoy what we have infront of us.

It is an ultimate experience of life and nature and it should be loved and enjoyed.

I am in my 20s, I have had great opportunities with fabulous friends who have been so kind along the way and have made some great friends also.

I have the travel bug. I have decide that my goal in my 20s it to try and see the world and be in many different places seeing many different things and my 30s will be the time to embrace growing up and real life. With that I have decided to write about it. Make my self write about it all. The adventures, the hard ships, the friends, the hopeful loves. Basicly the life of me. C. Rose and the world. The adventures of what I hope to be a few years of working in hostels, visiting friends, seeing and being part of the world. I will take this time to create my art. Learn to live with less and embrace what this world has to offer.

So that is the basics.

Now to the stuff. I have been in South Africa for over 3 months now and in Cape Town working at a backpackers in Obseratory for 7 weeks. The best thing about working in a hostel(backpackers) is that you get to go on free tours and don't have to worry about a roof over your head. Just make sure you don't have a boss who seems to not relize that it is a hostel and the business is hospitality. This trip has been my first big trip and I have done it all alone. Making friends along the way and having as much fun as I can possible have. Internt is a lugury in parts of SA and I went from checking my email and facebook mulitpul times a day to completely forgetting to check it for days on end. Back home in the states they all think I have lost it. There have been drama and problems and miss calculations on my part but for such a long trip my first time out that could be expected things just went ary for a bit and I have tried to work them out.

Now I am on the verg of heading back to the states. Where I have no job, no place to live and a bit of a plan. I was supposed to leave a few weeks back but a broke foot has put a bit of a damper on things so I am now working out my medical visa so I can head back to the states. Try and decrease my life. I have found it quite liberating living out of a backpack. And save up for my next adventure. In my former life in Chicago I was in management and that is nothing I want to be a part of at the moment so I am going to go find something that pays enough that I can save money and be off to the next place to work and save money. I want a simple life of work hard, travel loads, and play hard. So lets see how it goes!