Multiple Methods of Freezing, or - Stories from Guilin, China

The first very excellent way to freeze is to arrive at 4:30am.

Apparently it was about 3 degrees, but I could have sworn it was below zero! Pitch-black and we stumbled off the bus bleary-eyed, hoping we hadn't forgotten anything, fighting our way through the committed gaggle of taxi drivers and hotel emissaries who homed straight in on us tourists. We had thought we were going to arrive about an hour later, which had seemed much more palatable at the time.. nevertheless, we strode off down the street, attempting to look like we knew where we were going.
We found a little eating house, and charged in hopefully. The owner was about to close (he had been open all night) but graciously extended his hours just for us. We ordered a mountain of food (including the most delicious frog porridge you could ever imagine - frog, I know right?!!) and slowly munched our way through, gradually warming from the inside out. Freeze beaten! At least for the moment..

Another very excellent way to freeze is to go on a raft trip. We had bussed our way down to the little touristy town of Yangshuo - surrounded by those towering rocky peaks the Guilin area is famous for - and as a raft is just the best way to view those peaks, well, a raft it was going to be. We ended up with a raft-woman ( I think her husband was at lunch!), climbed into her little roofed vehicle, and off we went. On the way down the winding river we were too entranced by the soaring landscape to much notice the cold. Helen made friends with the raft lady  and she stopped at the farthest point of our journey so that we could get off and take pictures. She really got into the photographer role, directing us around - face here, face there, even getting Jasmine to pretend to pole the raft by herself!
The only drawback was that on the way back an icy breeze blew up, and having no new scenery to distract us we merely sat shivering pitifully, sitting on our hands to keep them from solidifying into meaty iceblocks.

A final very effective way is to go bike-riding. Now riding in winter is really not so bad for the core of the body, but those poor extremities, like arms and hands and feet and face - they do not appreciate this. Pedalling along, swapping hands from pockets to handlebars (I am not quite coordinated enough to ride completely hands-free, sadly), face numbly expressionless. But you know what? It was a beautiful ride - cruising down the road with those postcard peaks rising on both sides, passing roadside stalls, over bridges, visiting a lurid-lit 'Dragon Cave' and a hilariously awful 'Native culture experience', and just riding on, watching the mist swirl. So worth it.

Finally - hot ginger tea. It makes everything better. That is all.

5 Little Ducks, or why you may want to reconsider river-floating

Well facebook may do the job pictorially, but verbally it just doesn't cut it.. So I'm just going to give you a bit of a run-down on our recent river-float adventure.

Things worth noting:
-It was not the warmest of days
-In fact, it was forecast to rain in the afternoon
-We had not pre-tested our floating devices ("oh yeah, they're fine" from a father does not suffice).
-We had not paid much attention to the timing of our route.
-Nor of the location of the road in relation to the river.

But let me begin.

We were dropped off in a nice little reserve-y place where we blew up our humble crafts (5 li-los), leapt aboard, and floated/bounded/splashed and writhed away. At first the li-los behaved somewhat like errant seahorses, bobbing up and down with us on their backs; but we soon had them tamed, and were able to lie back and cruise on downstream, paddling here and there to avoid the snags.

Tamed, I say, until they began to leak. And it got colder. A breeze blew. It rained a little. We'd been going probably a bit over an hour when the novelty was really starting to wear off (as was the circulation in Laura's arm, holding her leak shut). We floated past a house. At that stage I was still pretty determined to continue, but I did catch a couple of the others casting longing glances in that direction.

A little later, beginning to freeze (did I mention the day was somewhat lacking in sunshine?), we climbed out and peered about the countryside, looking for clues as to our location. A rocky, prickled field dissuaded us from attempting any short-cuts, and so we re-entered the murky depths and paddled on (backwards worked well).

Finally, about 2 hours in, and the end nowhere in sight, we bailed, crawling out and up the bank, our half-deflated li-los trailing behind us. No road to be seen, but we spied some powerlines and a hopeful-looking cluster of buildings, and made a beeline for them.

But THEN - you wanna hear the hitch? The field was covered in prickles. And the next field.
We painstakingly hopped and stumbled and tiptoed and squeaked our way over them. Han ended up tearing her t-shirt into strips and fashioning makeshift shoes for her and Laura.

Finally, we arrived at civilisation. We knocked at its door. It answered. An oldish lady came to our rescue, let us use the phone to call our lift (the dear father), and sympathically offered us shirts and water and towels and a lift to the main road. We declined the first two but accepted the lift and towels.

The sympathy began to wear a little thin, however, into some dressing-down:
"On li-los? Barefoot? What were you thinking?!"
"I'm sure you all deserve a flogging"..

And there were some awkward moments:
"So what schools do you all go to?" (Georgie, the youngest, leapt in - gamely saying she'd just finished at the Christian school last year. The rest of us exchanged looks which were a curious mix of hilarity and horror - we could not tell her that the majority of us were actually in our twenties!!)

But all's well that end's well - Dad arrived to rescue us, we waved goodbye to the angelic weathered face of civilisation, and limped home to hot showers and lunch. Happy days.


And I take it back. There is no reason to EVER reconsider river-floating. Even if your toes curl up and drop off due to frostbite and your feet are speared with thorns the size of your fist and you need to amputate..

Do it. It will still be worth it.

The African at the Bus Stop

On Saturday night I met an African man at the bus stop (or he introduced himself to me, rather).
He was only a little annoyed to hear he'd missed his bus, and soon launched into conversation, asking what I studied and why, and what Social Work had to do with being sociable, and that I should go and be sociable with his family because they needed help learning english! At first I thought he was drunk (speaking slowly and stumbling a little, leaning towards me.. but soon I figured he was just African, and ESL).

I was more than a little skeptical of him at first (what girl is not skeptical of a guy that randomly comes up and starts talking to her. at a bus stop. at night. ?). But he said he had a family, so that was a good start. He went on to say that his family had just come over to Australia from a refugee camp in Africa and been reunited with him - it was more than 10 years since they'd been able to live together! They were Congolese refugees, and he had been living and working in Kenya while trying to get visas for Australia.. and that's just how long it takes. He'd been here for about a year before they were able to follow him.

He told me that it was all written up in an 11-page story in the Newcastle Herald, which I could search for online. He also told me that as well as studying he was working for some group called Alliance for Peace and they are making a trip over to Africa (maybe Kenya?) in January to help communities over there and that I should go with them and help.

He gave me his number and email and told me I should look up the article online and depending on what I thought, to comment on it or email him.. and maybe I would decide to come and visit his family.

Finally he asked me what struck me most about my conversation with him. I was a bit taken aback, but had to admit that the first thing that came to mind was that he didn't ask for my number! And next, thinking about what he and his family had gone through to get here..
He offered his impressions of me, and then he was off!

I still wasn't quite sure what to make of it all, until just now when I pulled out the bus ticket with his details on and looked up the article:

http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/news-features/out-of-africa-in-to-newcastle/2271776.aspx?storypage=0

My gosh, it's such a beautiful story I nearly cried.
You should read it.

Maybe I will go and 'be sociable' with them after all..

lucky schmuck

yeah.. that's me.

I can't believe I'm going away in three days! ahh!! So exciting. I feel so spoilt (I am so spoilt!), being able to go overseas again, and join in with people's lives in another part of the world.
..Give and receive, bless and be blessed (I hope!).
Taste and see the differences.
Celebrate common, immortal humanity.
Have fun.
See some cool stuff.
Live courageously.
Spark myself alight on the world...

"Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up: you flipped the light switch, started up the wind machine, kicked on the flywheel that spins the years. Can you catch hold of a treetop, or will you fly off the diving planet as she rolls?

Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang on to the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping.

What is important is anyone's coming awake and discovering a place, finding in full orbit a spinning globe one can lean over, catch, and jump on. What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch – with an electric hiss and cry – this speckled mineral sphere, our present world."

- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

There's been a lot of ups and downs to life lately, but I've still got to be one of the luckiest girls around.

Interesting People...

Just a Few of the Interesting People I Met [Part 1]

Diplomat on holiday
On the bus on the way up Volcan Poas in Costa Rica, I met a lady who said she worked as a UN diplomat! Naturally, I said 'wow, how on earth did you get to work for the UN?!' Just in case you are also wondering, I'll tell you. She said she did an arts degree in International Relations (she must have done pretty well), got a job with the Red Cross, then a couple of years ago got this job. Since then she's worked in South Africa and somewhere in Europe, and now for the last year in Colombia! She was still pretty young. Basically what she does in Colombia (and elsewhere) is ironining out conflicts, working with govts and the drug groups and guerrillas, trying to get communication happening and restabilise.
Wow. She also told me that Colombia is very beautiful and well set up for tourism. Go there!! [just avoid the druglords, ok?]

Epic combi-driving dude
In Santa Elena, Costa Rica, I met a Canadian guy who spent 4 or 5 months driving a VW combi all the way around north america! He said that less than 2 weeks into the trip the combi broke down and he and his friend began to doubt they'd make it all the way round.. but then they found an internet site devoted linking to combi lovers-helpers-fixers with combi-drivers-in-trouble. So then whenever they had a problem, they would look up the closest combi-enthusiast in the state, and ask for help. Soo many people went out of their way to rescue them, doing over and above what they ever imagined! They had a fantastic trip. I was so inspired!

Belizean back to his roots
In Belize I was bumping along for a few hours in a practically antique bus from Belize City to the sleepy coastal town of Corozal. The African-looking guy (though with lighter, more honey-coloured skin) I was sitting next to was very polite, helping me get settled on the bus with my stuff, but was determined to not bug me or get in my face (he said later), and so sat staring straight ahead and didn't say a word.
This of course had the effect of making me intensely curious and wanting to talk to him. Finally I started a conversation, and drew out that he'd lived in the US ever since he was a small child, had been educated at uni there and everything, but that it was not his home, and he thought that Belize, and his family's little property in the middle of nowhere was the most wonderful place in the world, and so just a couple of weeks ago he had come back to stay. We continued on talking about what's really of value in life, about the states, Australian culture, and his home, until it finally came in sight and he leapt off the bus and carted his things down the driveway..

Farming in drug country
In a hostel in Oaxaca city I met a young fellow, early twenties, who has been coming over to Mexico in his summers for about five years now! He and an old guy he knows own a patch of land up north in Oaxaca, and have been working it, and trying to get alongside the local community as well. They try not to get directly involved in town politics, but have a few friends among the villagers who they talk to about stuff, and they pass on suggestions to the rest of the community as they see fit. They've done things like taking people all the way to the city when they need it, getting papers signed, legal support, etc. Also trying to encourage different approaches to agriculture, and a greater variety of crops. One thing they're working on at the moment is trying to set up a coffee cooperative. He also had some interesting stories to tell about clashes with those people you _don't_ want to be clashing with...

The Rose Thief

Well, the title is self-explanatory. Perhaps I should just admit guilt and move on.

There's an eerie orange glow in the sky tonight. And the air is cool, though a bit sticky.
I'm not trying to give excuses. I just picked one. And then another. And then I thought "my goodness, I'm a rose thief!" so I picked a few more.

I'm soft though - I only took from bushes which had some to spare. And you could say that night is a bit of a soft time to be taking roses. Those with real guts steal in daylight. Though if we're speaking of softness, why bother with stealing roses at all?

But the dark has its own magic...


I couldn't really tell the colours, so I chose by scent. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Heavy with Wonder

Some reflections from the jewish theologian/poet/mystic/historian Abraham Heschel:

Heavy with Wonder

"To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.. The tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it contains is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away.
Sometimes we wish the world would cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur.
Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder."

Like a Bell

"Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind - these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives."


[I asked for Wonder, A Spiritual Anthology - Abraham Joshua Heschel. Edited by Samuel H. Dresner]

Why you should go for a Walk

You should go for a walk because:

-you might find a mulberry tree, or other fruit tree to surreptitiously sneak a sample from (yes, it's at the top of my list)

-you might find a cool leaf or feather

-you might find a damp drainpipe to sing songs in

-you might find a big group of people playing cricket on an oval, sausages spitting on a barbie, onlookers wisely huddled in the scrawny eucalyptus shade

-you could be blown about on top of a hill

-you could swing on swings in a park

-the musty murky bits could get cleared out of your mind

-you could find an amazing variety of bits of broken glass, cans, and faded chip or lolly wrappers

-you could have a secret little dance, all to yourself (oh wait, it's meant to be a walk!)

-you could get rained/hailed/rainbowed/shone/spat upon (don't worry, that particular one hasn't happened to me yet)


all this could be yours, AND MORE!

That's the thing - you never know...

ps - and there's that little thing called exercise, but that's not as interesting in itself as all of the above.

Waking up on two legs

"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or drowning: in media res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighbourhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way.
...
Consciousness converges with the child as a landing tern touches the outspread feet of its shadow on the sand: precisely, toe hits toe. The tern folds its wings to sit; its shadow dips and spreads over the sand to meet and cup its breast.
Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

[An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. HarperPerennial, 1987]

I love how Dillard describes this coming-to-awareness. Beyond the waking as a child, I know the strange feeling of suddenly noticing oneself - that feeling when you step back, step outside yourself and become your own self's observer, just for a moment.

"Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up: you flipped the light switch, started up the wind machine, kicked on the flywheel that spins the years. Can you catch hold of a treetop, or will you fly off the diving planet as she rolls? Can you ride out the big blow on a coconut palm's trunk until you fall asleep again, and the winds let up?
...
Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang on to the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping. Or, conversely, you step aside from the dreaming fast loud routine and feel time as a stillness about you, and hear the silent air asking in so thin a voice, Have you noticed yet that you will die? Do you remember, remember, remember? Then you feel your life as a weekend, a weekend you cannot extend, a weekend in the country."

May I stay waking, and ride it well.