I'm enchanted with the idea of travel writing about places near and far from the comfort of my own home. I am currently in the process of collecting as many brochures as I can get my hands on and organize them according to the states that are furtherest from where I am now and keeping on hand the places in the states closest to where I am now. It's pretty fun.
I also will be hanging up LOTs of maps around our place so other people who come over, will want to go to those places that I am advertising. Or at least day dream about going. :) The joys of travel. There is nothing like it. To be able to go and see all those places you have read about. The places that are widely advertised to make us want to go to them. Like tropical islands or the nearby cityscape that is within an hour drive. Or even the mountains which widely surround the area like they do here in Chandler, AZ.
The desert has a loveliness to it that is hard to compare to anything else. It has a little of everything. Lots of big cacti and palm trees. Less rain with lots of flooding at times. Little bits of big mountains all around. It never gets old but I do miss the South. I miss all the things about the trees and rivers. The greeness. It was like paradise. So very different from Cali and Az in that way. My favorite is probably still New Mexico. Just a neighboring state now. And maybe Oklaholma City. I would enjoy a visit there sometime to explore the area. I only saw bits and pieces of there intriguing cityscape from the interstate but I hope to return there sometime. It's funny, but I was hoping to avoid that state all together on our second trip in the U-haul truck coming back and that is the state I loved the most. I never had gotten to see it during the day until this time around. I haven't given up on traveling. To do that, would mean I'd given up on being alive.
I hope to return to the South someday but until then, I will write about it. The grass is always greener on the otherside as they say. You just don't realize how much you loved a place until it's gone. It's the same as it is with people. Or how much a place has grown on you when you know you won't be seeing it everytime you step outside and drive around town. Here's to the South who has suffered so much this year in flooding but is still so beautiful. I'll love you always.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Close to home
As I continue this journey towards becoming a travel writer, I'm intrigued by the idea of writing about the area you live in as an outward gesture to bring other people to come visit. Isn't it funny when you've been living somewhere for some time, you no longer consider the area you live in a place you are visiting but just a place you live. When I first arrived out here in TN, I belive I was in what I would call the freshman stage of moving somewhere. Everything was new, different weird and scarey. This novelty of my surroundings, only lasted about a year until I began my sophmore year living out here. Now that I'm in my 3rd year living in Murfreesboro TN, or rather my junior year, I begin to feel the need to express that feeling of novelty further as a means of helping other people see why they need to come out and visit Murfreesboro.
As one who originally grew up just 5 minutes from Disneyland, I never shared the novelty and high reguard my friends had for visiting the theme park multiple times when they didn't live up the street. I didn't understand why other people would come so far for fun when I drove down the very street Disneyland reisdes on as a way to go to and from home. I even at one time worked at a McDonalds across the street from the theme park as well as a Mimi's Cafe just a few short years later.
So yes now I live about 40 minutes from what I would call Tennessees' Disneyland and that is how I compare it. Everything out here is so far and spread out that 40 minutes seems like up the street compared to the many hours it took to drive here in the first place. I would have considered this distance far at one time but for my first couple of years living out here I made a great commute of 40 minutes to and from Murfreesboro to the city of Nashville as a means of making a living. Let me say now, it wasn't for the money although money is what I needed when I took a job at the Opry Mills mall in Nashville. Rather, it was for the drive and the adventure to visit the city time and again so different then the one I live in. I am a city girl at heart and going to a city all the time when you live mostly in the suburban countryside, is a nice change. I indeed would love to write about Nashville from this prospective as I have no other. As one living somewhere that I love but traveling just because I could to the city to work.
Maybe if I lived in the heart of Nashville, it would lose its novelty for me as this city has done. I'm not sure I want it to just yet. Perhaps soon enough my sister and I will move closer to the big city but for now, home is what we call Murfreesboro like home is what I once called Anaheim California not so far from Disneyland.
As one who originally grew up just 5 minutes from Disneyland, I never shared the novelty and high reguard my friends had for visiting the theme park multiple times when they didn't live up the street. I didn't understand why other people would come so far for fun when I drove down the very street Disneyland reisdes on as a way to go to and from home. I even at one time worked at a McDonalds across the street from the theme park as well as a Mimi's Cafe just a few short years later.
So yes now I live about 40 minutes from what I would call Tennessees' Disneyland and that is how I compare it. Everything out here is so far and spread out that 40 minutes seems like up the street compared to the many hours it took to drive here in the first place. I would have considered this distance far at one time but for my first couple of years living out here I made a great commute of 40 minutes to and from Murfreesboro to the city of Nashville as a means of making a living. Let me say now, it wasn't for the money although money is what I needed when I took a job at the Opry Mills mall in Nashville. Rather, it was for the drive and the adventure to visit the city time and again so different then the one I live in. I am a city girl at heart and going to a city all the time when you live mostly in the suburban countryside, is a nice change. I indeed would love to write about Nashville from this prospective as I have no other. As one living somewhere that I love but traveling just because I could to the city to work.
Maybe if I lived in the heart of Nashville, it would lose its novelty for me as this city has done. I'm not sure I want it to just yet. Perhaps soon enough my sister and I will move closer to the big city but for now, home is what we call Murfreesboro like home is what I once called Anaheim California not so far from Disneyland.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Onward Southern
A couple of years ago my sis and I, though I cannot say what possesed us for sure to do just what we did, up and moved from our home state of 24 and 27 yrs in Southern California. We haven't been back in 2 and half years and now that the time is approaching for us to make a return visit, I'm feeling a mix of emotions.
Up until 2006, our whole family which includes myself, my two sisters, my mom, my dad, and our pets, all lived in the same house for 27 years. Not all of us were there that long since me nor my younger sis haven't been alive as long as my older sis Holly. So we moved houses from the hometown of Disneyland Anaheim to the border of one of the most beautiful areas by the sea, Oceanisde.
I loved Oceanside and it always felt like a dream the whole time we lived there. I had my very own room and bathroom for the first time ever. We had this historic mission up the road from us San Luis Rey, and we were 20 minutes from the theme park Legoland. Life was good. We even had: cable, wifi, a spa and a pool in our neighborhood, and a path that could be biked down to the beach by our house. But I knew in my heart that it couldn't last. I knew I was destined to move somewhere faraway. I thought maybe another country and in many ways Tennessee is just that. I had dreams Holly would come with me too but I didn't know just where we would end up. You see, I had always had these dreams about moving to a small town in the South since I was a kid and so it was right up the road in a line of crazy thinking in my crazy mind. Once the destination had been decided, no one, least of all Holly or myself, could believe we were really moving so far away. We felt compelled to do this. Or should I say I felt compelled to do this and kind of dragged Holly along for the ride. As she wants to move up to New York someday, Tennessee seemed like a happy middle ground to stop for a moment in time. How long that moment extends is anybodys guess.
I feel like since I moved out here, I have slipped into this kind of trance and time just rolls by so slow and so quick at the same time. We don't have our very own rocking chair on a front porch or sit around most nights spinning tales by the bon fire playing banjos with friends, but we have made some very great memories. Not all have been happy but they have served to leave a lasting impression on my mind of the very real thing which we did that cannot be undone moving out of house so far away. I am not sorry and I believe God has called us here to prepare the way for us to live out His purposes for our lives. What better place to learn and grown then in the Bible belt. Surrounded by churches, farms, and forests, everything points to our amazing creator and Lord. I'm always happy to discover a new way to get somewhere and find endless shortcuts through the countryside. Now I can even say, I've developed a love for Southern cooking namely at a restaraunt called Cracker Barrel. ;) As I am currently unemployed, I am taking this opportunity to embark on this journey called life and make note truely as a travel writer.
Shortly, in May, our cousin will be getting married and this is an opportunity for us to see what it feels like to be a visitor to California. Up until now, I could come and go at my own liesure from our childhood home and I knew it would always be there for me to return to. Now that our family has a new place to call home, I look forward to seeing it from an outside prospective.
Up until 2006, our whole family which includes myself, my two sisters, my mom, my dad, and our pets, all lived in the same house for 27 years. Not all of us were there that long since me nor my younger sis haven't been alive as long as my older sis Holly. So we moved houses from the hometown of Disneyland Anaheim to the border of one of the most beautiful areas by the sea, Oceanisde.
I loved Oceanside and it always felt like a dream the whole time we lived there. I had my very own room and bathroom for the first time ever. We had this historic mission up the road from us San Luis Rey, and we were 20 minutes from the theme park Legoland. Life was good. We even had: cable, wifi, a spa and a pool in our neighborhood, and a path that could be biked down to the beach by our house. But I knew in my heart that it couldn't last. I knew I was destined to move somewhere faraway. I thought maybe another country and in many ways Tennessee is just that. I had dreams Holly would come with me too but I didn't know just where we would end up. You see, I had always had these dreams about moving to a small town in the South since I was a kid and so it was right up the road in a line of crazy thinking in my crazy mind. Once the destination had been decided, no one, least of all Holly or myself, could believe we were really moving so far away. We felt compelled to do this. Or should I say I felt compelled to do this and kind of dragged Holly along for the ride. As she wants to move up to New York someday, Tennessee seemed like a happy middle ground to stop for a moment in time. How long that moment extends is anybodys guess.
I feel like since I moved out here, I have slipped into this kind of trance and time just rolls by so slow and so quick at the same time. We don't have our very own rocking chair on a front porch or sit around most nights spinning tales by the bon fire playing banjos with friends, but we have made some very great memories. Not all have been happy but they have served to leave a lasting impression on my mind of the very real thing which we did that cannot be undone moving out of house so far away. I am not sorry and I believe God has called us here to prepare the way for us to live out His purposes for our lives. What better place to learn and grown then in the Bible belt. Surrounded by churches, farms, and forests, everything points to our amazing creator and Lord. I'm always happy to discover a new way to get somewhere and find endless shortcuts through the countryside. Now I can even say, I've developed a love for Southern cooking namely at a restaraunt called Cracker Barrel. ;) As I am currently unemployed, I am taking this opportunity to embark on this journey called life and make note truely as a travel writer.
Shortly, in May, our cousin will be getting married and this is an opportunity for us to see what it feels like to be a visitor to California. Up until now, I could come and go at my own liesure from our childhood home and I knew it would always be there for me to return to. Now that our family has a new place to call home, I look forward to seeing it from an outside prospective.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Introduction
Ever since the 6th grade when my teacher Miss Joanne forced us to read about current events going on in the world around us, and do a report on them in front of the class, I have developed a fascination for travel. As I struggled with the spellings of various countries around the world in geopraphy that same year, I wondered truely who would EVER care about these little countries at all let alone their spellings. Inspite of this, I perservered in learning for a few years about geography and the things going on in the world around me. This fascination with travel continued to develop and grow as I went into my freshman year of highschool. During this first year of school, I truely fell in love with maps and began to seek opportunities to visit these countries I had learned so much about. So while everyone else grew bored with the dry subject of geography and was nodding off, I found ways to stay awake and pay close attention. I knew at a young age that I would embark on many journeys ahead that would take me to faraway lands.
It was during my sophmore year of highschool that I got my first couple of chances. One to the Holyland of Israel on tour and later that same year on a missions trip to the Philippines where my uncle was a missionary. It was him and his family who inspired me that you could travel to places faraway.
It was during my sophmore year of highschool that I got my first couple of chances. One to the Holyland of Israel on tour and later that same year on a missions trip to the Philippines where my uncle was a missionary. It was him and his family who inspired me that you could travel to places faraway.
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