Off to New Adventure!

On Wednesday I am leaving for my next life adventure.  Well, first I’m headed to a wedding on the east coast, but then flying clear across the country and re-locating to San Francisco for the summer.  I will start my training to work as a tour guide for G Adventures on May 5th.  I have long wanted to do this and tried hard to get this job.  I’m very VERY excited.

I’ll be taking a break from veterinary medicine for the summer.  Good-bye veterinary medicine, for a while….  I’m definitely in need of a break from you.  Don’t go away mad, just go away.

I’ve been crazily studying the California Commercial Driver Handbook as I will be required to possess a Class B Commercial Driver’s License with a Passenger Endorsement for this position.  I will be leading tours throughout the U.S. and possibly Canada for the summer.  G Adventures caters to adventurous outgoing travelers and offers reasonably prices tours in a sustainable fashion.  I’ve been on three G Adventures tours before and I’d dare to say they changed my life.  I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with the company.

Provided I pass all of the training program, I’ll start leading tours around the beginning of June.  I don’t know my tour schedule yet, or which sections of the country I’ll be going through.  Most of the tours involve camping, hiking and other adventure, and they seem to focus on national parks and fun cities: right up my alley!!

I’m planning on blogging periodic updates.

I’m so excited!

The Africa Diaries Entry #2: May 20, 2010

First day in Cape Town, South Africa!! I’m so happy to be here. It’s really cool. Today I went on a day tour of a township called Langa. It is a really poor area in the Cape Flats. It was an eye opening experience. A lot of people live in squalor and garbage and there are animals everywhere. The government does provide fresh water, so that is good. I saw a pre-school there and got to meet some children. They were so happy and they loved having visitors. Even though I’m generally not fond of children, the kids were so happy that they made me smile and they made me happy too. They liked to pose and to get their picture taken and then look at it on the camera screen afterward. I gave a tiny girl my sunglasses.

 

After visiting the township I went to an apartheid museum and it was quite sobering and interesting. Then I went to visit Robben Island, which was also very interesting. People were isolated on the island for having diseases like leprosy and prisoners were also kept there. Nelson Mandela was a prisoner on Robben Island for 18 years. I got to see Mandela’s prison cell. The tour of the island was led by ex-prisoners and it was a really interesting tour.

Mandela’s prison cell

Inside Mandela’s Prison Cell

 

I met a girl named Alex who did the same overland tour as I am about to do, only starting in Nairobi and ending in Cape Town, she loved it, and told me it was amazing. I’m excited.

I’ve been trying to determine if water truly does circle the drain clockwise instead of counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere. I can’t tell so far. The toilet water doesn’t really circle the drain so much as go straight down in my hotel room. Yesterday I took a bath and tried to watch the water go down, I still couldn’t tell. Again, it just seemed to go straight down. The water that comes out of the tap here is yellowish. It felt a little strange laying in a tub of yellow water, but the temperature was nice and I just ignored it. Before I let the water out I peed just to see if I could even tell there was urine in the water. I couldn’t tell. It was fun.

Tomorrow I will go on a hike and bike tour and I signed up for cage diving with sharks the day after that – yikes!!

The weather is really good and I like it here.

Crossing Borders and Language Barriers

This was an entry from my journal that I kept on my 3.5 month backpacking trip through Europe. This entry is from August 27, 2011:

I’m currently on a train to Belgrade, Serbia and I’m riding in the first car of the train.  Rob and I woke up this morning and ate some breakfast quickly.  We bought a few things at the Spar grocery store to eat throughout the day and then we made our way down to the station in Budapest.  We got on our train to Belgrade and sat down for our seven and a half hour ride, which of course includes stopping at any number of small towns along the way.  We were riding in an old run-down car, the kind with little separate compartments that have 6 seats each.

I had my ticket ready and was waiting and waiting for the inspector to come and check it.  After about 45 minutes of waiting I was starting to fall asleep. Since it was just me and Rob in the compartment and since it was going to be a long ride I decided to try to get my collapsible pillow out of my bag.  My bag was on a rack above the seat and so I stood on the seat and was trying to get it out.  Of course standing on the seats is not allowed and of course that moment is when the inspector came to check our tickets.

I felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and I imagined myself in some fantasy scenario getting caught by some big strict German “Frau” in a uniform with huge biceps and hairy arms who would pick me up by the scruff of my neck and the seat of my pants and then throw me off the moving train for potentially having damaged the seat.  I figured I would at least get told that I was not allowed to stand on the seat.

This inspector was a skinny older man, who didn’t seem angry and instead he checked our tickets and then began to talk to us at length, I assume in Hungarian, none of which Rob or I understood.  It didn’t seem that the inspector was reprimanding me for standing on the seat, but I wasn’t sure.  He tried again to explain something – Nope, I still didn’t understand anything.  He didn’t appear to be chastising me at all, but instead he seemed to be trying to explain something.  I contemplated just pretending I understood so that he would go away, but thought better of it because maybe what he had to say was important.  He seemed as though he really wanted us to understand whatever it was he was saying.  After a little while he seemed to give up trying and he said “Come” and motioned for me to follow him.  I hesitated for a moment and then he said, more emphatically, “Komm, bitte” (German for “Come, please”).  I put my sandals on and followed him.

He took me nearer to the front of the train a few compartments away and he opened the door on a compartment with three guys and one girl in it.  He pointed his finger at one of the guys and commanded: “Speak,” and then walked away. I remained at the door staring into the compartment at the guy who the inspector had just pointed to.

The guy in the car laughed at this situation for a second and then spoke to me in English with an American accent.  He told me that the entire train is not going to Belgrade, and that only the first 2 cars are going there. The rest of the cars of the train will be left behind somewhere in Hungary. Since we are presently riding in cars that will not go all the way to Serbia, we will have to move up to one of the first two cars within the next two hours.  He motioned to the girl next to him and said that she was helping to translate what the inspector was trying to relay. The girl timidly waved at me.  The guy said that the girl didn’t speak the best English, and she explained the best she could. He said that he wasn’t 100% sure that this explanation is exactly what the inspector was saying, but that was what he understood from it all.

I went back to my compartment with Rob and started to explain to him what I had learned.  As I was explaining the inspector returned. The inspector suddenly opened the door to our compartment. Standing next to him was a confused looking guy, presumably another passenger to Belgrade.  The inspector pointed his finger at me and said: “Speak.”

Life at a crossroads

I’m probably having a life crisis….  I think (hopefully) it’s too soon to say “mid-life” crisis, but maybe a 1/3 life crisis….

 

After quitting my job in June and traveling through Central America for almost two months.  I came home to almost immediately break my foot.  Pre-occupied with foot healing and inability to work, I concentrated on healing and didn’t really have time to consider what I want to do next with my life.  My foot healed just in time for a road trip with my friend Sven.  I met Sven on my 2010 journey through Africa and he finally came to the U.S. to visit.  This trip gave me another excuse to pre-occupy my mind.  Now my Central America trip is over, my leg is healed, my American road trip is over, Sven is gone, I am out of money and unemployed.  Now is the time for full on post-travel depression.  Reality is setting back in.  Turns out reality sucks.   

I’m trying to figure out how to make it not suck.  I feel like I prefer living in this fantasy travel world of vacation and time off.  People are always happy and having a good time.  I feel like there should be a way to meld this with a career for myself.  There has to be a way.  There has to be a way to work in a field that I really get excited about, that has a lot of time outdoors, preferably camping or backpacking, and involves happy people.  I have worked 8 years as a small animal veterinarian in daytime and emergency practice.  The idea of going back to this does not thrill me.  I love the animals and I love helping animals, but talking to stressed out owners about money and possible death fills me with dread.  I feel like I would like to take break from that.  I need to try doing something happier.  One time in 2006, when I was very stressed from working at my first job as a veterinarian, I went on a rafting tour vacation with my mother in West Virginia.  We had a great young tour guide named Stu.  Stu was handsome, outgoing, strong, capable, happy and fun.  He told us that he thought he had the best job in the world.  He got to be outside on the river, meet new people, and be a happy part of their vacation.  I envied Stu.  I still do.  I want to do something like that.  

The very good thing about being a veterinarian is that I will ALWAYS be a veterinarian, no one can take that away from me.  I have the ability to try something else and come back to it later.  This is a very good aspect of being a veterinarian, and hopefully I can use this to my advantage.  

I feel like I’m at a crossroads of my life.  It’s stressful, but I remain optimistic.  I have a few factors to consider.  I am in a relationship and I have dogs.  Some of my job choices may be hard on a relationship and also difficult to do when I need to take care of dogs on a daily basis.  I also have a large amount of student loans that I need to continue to pay.  These are all things I need to consider.  Job ideas that I have considered are working as a tour guide, trying to work with endangered animals like California Condors or bald eagles in the field, teaching biology at a community college or in a vet tech school, working with mules in the Grand Canyon, or leading hiking tours.  Ideally I’d like to do something that combines animals, the outdoors, educating people and working with people who actually LIKE what they are doing at that moment.  

My boyfriend is supportive and just wants me to be happy.  I just need the courage to take the plunge into the unexplored and try something new.  I believe I can do it!  Let the search begin!  I hope I don’t punk out.