SIMPLY ELABORATE blog

Posts Tagged ‘trip’

It’s been a weird feeling, these last few days of being in Boston. I’m getting the rest of the week ready as I have about a billion errands to do the second I get up tomorrow morning, resetting my phone up to work in Canada after basically having to erase every money-inducing feature of it while roaming in the States and fixing up a little to-do list for the next phase in my life.

I’ve also realized that my fixed expenses for every month has taken a turn for the worse and it looks like I’m going to be returning to “three-job-emilia” to keep up as a part of me is a bit apprehensive over what the heck I’m going to do, especially with the Christmas season coming. The other part of me wants to go …. Relax, like usual, it’ll all work out because it always does.

Perhaps I just begin to feel like this because I tend to listen to nostalgic and depressing music while I wait to board my plane. Habit. But what are you gonna do?

The thing I know is, I can’t believe how much I learned while on this trip. Not only about being a sales person, or an event coordinator, or even a planner. I learned so much about the United States, and if anybody knows me, they’ll know me as a 100% Canadian supporter and very skeptical of anything US related (whoops, did I say that?). The thing is, after being here for five weeks, not touring one specific city but actually experiencing the workforce here, albeit a tiny glimpse, I have a bit of a changed view. The amount of people I spoke to, the information I received on how their own people view others in the same country proved to be half-patriot and half-separatist. I found it extremely interesting.

I also found it amazing the vast amount of metropolis cities and realizing that, coming from a country that basically has three or four major cities that people can immigrate to and actually make a decent living, my view on the US was a bit biased. Okay, I already knew that, but my mind was opened a tiny bit. You really can go anywhere you want and start from scratch and make it. You have about a billion choices. Fifty choices, actually, because every state has a major city with a “headquarters” of some sort, a division and it’s probably roughly a two to three hour drive from the neighbouring state, and cheap to fly to.

It surprised me. I even have a new view on the health care system. Don’t get me wrong, it still is ridiculous that more than 11 million people don’t have health care but, boy was it interesting to see the difference in opinion depending on what state I was in.

I learned a lot of things from a lot of people on this trip. I didn’t learn all of them on day one, or day …. thirty three? I learned them from those close to me, far, ones I’d just met – everyone.

And that was pretty exciting and scary. And really, extremely … humbling.

“You’all,” I say in a pronounced, half-mocking southern drawl as I walked out of the Palmer’s Bar and Courtyard in San Marcos, Texas on the warmest Thursday evening I’ve ever experienced in late October.

“It’s ya’ll – say it!” I get reprimanded from one of the lovely ladies I’ve met through this wonderful travelling experience that hasn’t picked up on my sarcastic tone.

“Ya ya, okay – here I go, ‘ya’ll” I manage to spew out between Bloody Mary induced giggles (I have resorted to drinking extra spicy Bloody Mary’s here, nobody in the US can make a Caesar – half don’t even know what Clamato juice is).

“And do you wanna know what the plural for ‘ya’ll’ is?” She asks while I begin to answer her with ya’lls in mind. “All ya’ll,” she bursts out, as if she’s making fun of her own accent, her peoples own accent.

“It’s not the land of the grammatically correct now is it?” I question.

“Well, honey, Bush came from here – what do you think?” She replies.

I probably would have laughed at her liberal-esque comment but I then became so entranced with the random bamboo growing on the side of the restaurant that I completely forgot, and just walked away from her.

“Do they not have bamboo in Canada or something?” The other woman laughed after the group had now begun to wait for me while I attempted to grab a good bamboo shot on my BlackBerry’s camera.

“No, that’s the point!” I shouted back.

Finally, they managed to get me in the SUV that was carpooling us back to our hotel – the lovely Embassy Suites in San Marco, Texas. Finally a good night out on a whirlwind of a tour that started God knows how long ago because I’m just so frazzled when it comes time for “what day is it?”

But I guess that is the life of a travelling businesswoman!

I thought I would be more drained once I arrived in Minot, but strangely, I’m unable to really fathom that I’ve spent the last fourteen hours in a car. I say that, though, while passing on taking a dip in the wonderful water slides and pool this hotel has to offer because I just couldn’t be bothered to leave the hotel room. I even got a pizza delivered instead of going to the restaurant in the Sleep Inn, which was delicious.

I always seem to want to stay another day when I’m in a hotel room, especially one with a King Size bed. The rooms just seem so beautiful and like such a waste for only one night. But I guess that’s why people actually visit the places they go to, instead of merely driving through. I seem to be one that does that often – just drives through. Leaves before things become complacent.

At one point of my drive, I thought I’d be staying in Canada for a little while longer, after I couldn’t believe how scary it was at the border even though I had absolutely nothing to hide. They train those border guys well. Personally, I think he would have loved to go through all my belongings but there was a line forming behind me and my sweet angelic eyes proved my innocence. Alas, I made it through, ahead of schedule, even (I sped, a little – but speed limits are like 120KM here!)

Anyway, I made it. One third of the way to my new home, my old home, my old life turned into my new life. One third to the biggest change I’ve ever made. Way bigger than the one I made when I moved to Calgary two years ago.

Way bigger.

On such a brisk, yet sunny Autumn day, the lake was very calm and serene. It’s funny that things always seem different, relaxed and just when you’re away. It also seems that the second you return back to regular life, things are hectic, crazy and upsetting – all the time. The things that never seem to bother you when visiting Mother Nature now cause you to bite the side of your cheek when stressed, according to dentists.

What if I always lived next to a big, beautiful, turquoise lake? Would life always seem serene, or would the calm laps of water find some way to stress life out for me?

There we were, as usual, not listening to what those with less ignorance had told us. Looking at this picture now, six months later, I realize that it’s who I am: a person who disobeys. Why shouldn’t we? Who gets rewarded for colouring inside the lines passed the age of five?

There are times in our lives when we can feel defeated, exhausted and hopeless. It’s these times, that I turn to my past to invigorate the future I know is before me. I have two provinces left on my mission to see every one of this beautiful country (the territories will be added one day when I can properly afford it) and a part of me can’t believe it. I know the Maritimes must be visited once again in the summer months, and I’ll do that and tick off Newfoundland to the last of my east coast journeys as well.

For now, however, I can remember what an amazing time, what an amazing country we live in, and smirk at the memories of people warning me to get out of my trip plans before it was too late: “winter in the Maritimes?! Are you crazy?”

I guess we were.