So its been just over a week in Poland now. Funny enough I don't even feel like I'm on vacation because I'm far from relaxed! Every day seems to be an early morning with a day filled with activities! Spending a whole day with family or trekking in the Polish Tatry mountains can be exhausting no matter how much food your family stuffs into you!
This week we met up with my uncle in Warsaw, as well as my family in the south (Kielce) and my family just outside of Warsaw ---mostly my moms side except for my uncle. I had 1 day in Warsaw and then we spontaneously decided to use our groupon for Zakopane which is the popular southern town in Poland famous for the Tatry Mountains. It was a perfect time of year for hiking so off we went for 2 days. Peter joined us and we stayed in a really nice hotel there and on Wednesday we spent about 8 hours hiking! My legs were like jello but the scenery made it all worth it! Incredible views and we were able to use the brand new SLR camera :) After those few days we headed over to Kielce to visit my uncle (moms brother) and his family. They live in a small town outside of Kielce and its surrounded by beautiful forests. We had a calmer few days of walking through the forest and hanging out. And ofcourse some homemade moonshine didn't hurt ;)
We returned to Warsaw on Saturday and have been staying with my friend Bernadette and her fiance Tom. He has a beautiful apartment in central Warsaw. The company, the atmosphere and the caffeine has been great ;) We went to a club opening on Saturday and the music and feel of the place was awesome! Some hip electronic beats from "danger"--the decor was amazing! Everyone had a blast, we were just slightly overdressed for the punk/hip hop occassion which Tom continued to remind me about :P
Its always nice to catch up with friends and family and to do it on a more relaxed scale- no work or responsibities around the corner.
We were sitting at Starbucks in Central Warsaw yesterday and had decided to finally book tickets for the next few legs of the trip. We decided on Tanzania November 3rd, but we bought the tickets through Rome so we will spend a few days there first. Its a roundtrip flight so when we return from Africa we will come back to Rome and from Rome we will fly off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia--this will be the beginning of December. Then we would spend a few weeks in Southeast Asia- mostly Thailand and Malaysia at this point and still plan for Australia for Christmas. We have gotten that far so far with concrete plans.....
We leave for Nice, France tomorrow.....excited to catch up with Monica, Roy & Bobby :)
We were watching TEDtalks yesterday (look it up) and we watched an interesting topic on happiness.....it was basically describing how we don't really know what makes us happy and people are misleaded by 'synthetic' happiness which can steer us in the wrong direction and can hurt more than help in the long run. It made me think about this trip. I wondered --what along the way will bring me happiness? Will it be a small child smiling at me? Will it be the sights & smells of India? Will it be the laid back atmosphere of Australia or the hike up Mount Kilimanjaro? What really makes each of us happy and do we even know? I will take it a day at a time and see what makes me click......it will be different for each of us and I expect it to reflect in my decision making as I go.......Right now I am actually curious whether I will like Africa or Asia more? Or differently? I will take it a day at a time and see what happens....Dar Es Salaam is our first stop in Tanzania so we will go from there...
Another interesting thing we watched made the connection between Medicine & the healing powers of Music. It was a great violin introduction and it focused strongly on the healing powers in terms of mental health. I really enjoyed it and it makes me want to connect travel with music as we go on this journey. I am always giving Tom a hard time for playing music too loud or too frequently....but maybe there is something I am missing.....maybe he sees what I don't and maybe I will focus more on this connection. We've got some wonderful world music on the computer that Tom got from his brother-in-law and every piece I have heard so far I have loved.....so I think its time to embrace it more...
"one good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain"--Bob Marley (courtesy of Tahnee Tuenge) :)
France, here we come....
PS. I had the 'aha' moment while in the Tatry Mountains sitting next to 'morskie oko' and staring at the beautiful blue water. The weather was perfect, the air was crisp and I took a deep breathe.......
