Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

A Marrakech Birthday

Written by Jennifer on 18th March 2010

Today is my 30th birthday and at the moment, I am in an Internet cafe in the Medina of Marrakech.

This morning I awoke at 5am to the traditional Islamic call to prayer emminating from several nearby mosques. I navigated tiny streets teeming with mopeds and petit txis and donkey carts and seas of people. I have had no fewer than 10 men smile and call out to me while giving me the once over. I have ordered lunch en francois and shooed away roughly 15 shoeshine guys and 20 beggars.

(Coutesy of guardian.co.uk)

Even in a city where tourism is booming and that from the 1920s to the 1950s was colonized by France, I am, without a doubt, a stranger in a strange land. Which, of course, was part of the plan.

This trip was designed to be an intentional way of honoring the passing of time, in general, and in my life, specifically. My 30th birthday blog countdown was also designed to honor this passing of time and to celebrate the life I have had the good fortune to live thus far.

The payoff has been significant.

Because I am on vacation and typing on a foreign keyboard – read: AZERTY, not QWERTY – with dial-up speeds I will save the full reflections for later. Just two thoughts for now.

First of all, I cannot thank the many of you who have shared in this blog experiment with me enough. Not only have I valued your feedback and encouragement, but I have deeply appreciated your own stories and celebrations that you have shared.

And secondly, I would like to say that this experiment has been an invaluable re-authoring, if you will, of my life. More on that later…

For now, I will return to convincing myself that yes, birthdays exist even when you are utterly disoriented from a cultural perspective. I will simultaneously be pretending that I know which direction I am headed in through the winding Medina streets. That technique got me through the last several decades; surely, the thirties cannot be that different!

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Posted in celebration, travel | 2 Comments »

Day 25: Traveling (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 12th March 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

Speaking of Spanish shoes, I’m leaving for Spain today with the love of my life. We’re going to hit up Sevilla and tool around the countryside. Oh, and we’re fitting in a short jaunt to Marrakech because, well…did you know Africa is so close to Spain?!?

Last March 18, one of Scott’s birthday gifts to me was an invitation to cash in all our carefully accrued credit card points and hit up the European destination of my choice for my 30th birthday. I couldn’t have come up with a better gift myself!

(From the latest of my international travels: a solo trip to Guatemala to visit my mom.)

But I’d like to tell you a secret: I’m a little intimidated. As a matter of fact, I’m always a little intimidated when going to a foreign land – even if it’s just a party where everyone else seems to know one another or a boutique where I am clearly out priced. Which is precisely why I do these things and, to the point, why I travel.

An example:

In 2001, my dad I were spending two weeks in the Umbrian province of Italy and we decided to go for a hike in a nearby state park. We were discussing the Italian flora and the oddly frequent “Madonna con Bambino” statues when – out of nowhere! – we found ourselves in a very precarious situation. We were surrounded by a dozen skinny-to-the-bone canines in what seemed to be a country “village” of three dilapidated buildings. Clearly, we were lost and possibly, we were dinner.By the time a young Italian woman with a babe at her breast materialized, called off the dogs and pointed us in the right direction, we had nearly become Catholic converts and had already begun praying to Anthony, patron saint of lost things. We were also moments away from losing our bodily functions.

Intimidating? Yes.

I don’t know what adventures await this next leg. I will no doubt return home feeling more competent, curious and humble. I will be bigger and the world will feel smaller. Which is good because I’ve got this business I run and this love affair I maintain and a crazy family I spend time with. Somehow, packs of growling dogs who definitively do not speak English manage to put all of those adventures in perspective.

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Posted in celebration, change, fear, travel | 2 Comments »

Day 24: The Great Love Affair (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 11th March 2010

As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!

It all started with the shoes. The man wore great shoes. Not your typical upscale LA leather loafers, either. We’re talking fluevogs. I didn’t know at the time that shoes like this even existed. So I did what any self-respecting girl from Jersey would do: I ridiculed him. He didn’t flinch. Rather, he came right back at me.

My heart skipped a few beats.

But I was distracted. I was conducting a lukewarm long-distance thing with a guy from Philly and there was this California boy I had a crush on. Plus my stepmom was dying of cancer. I was certainly not looking to add anything else into the mix.

But like I said – he could take as well as he could dish. It turned out he was also brilliant. And beautiful and athletic and artistic and generous and thoughtful.

And I fell hard. And he fell hard.

Then this whirlwind of a love affair that seemed to be so ill-timed due to death and divorce and age and the whole complicated mess that is life became a relationship and then an exchange of engagement rings and then there was cake and dancing and a honeymoon on Vancouver Island.

It’s been nearly 10 years and I am still having a great love affair that causes my heart to race and my eyes to light up. I still think Scott’s the cat’s pajamas, the person everyone really should meet. He’s the one I’m eager to come home to, the man I always long to sneak away with.

These are gifts I never anticipated I’d be celebrating when I turned 30. And yet here I am.

So thank you, love, for being my co-conspirator in this amazing tale of romance. For being willing to tell the same transformative story with me over and over again. Maybe we can slip away to the Mediterranean this weekend – just the two of us – where we can laugh late into the night and go shopping for Spanish shoes…

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Posted in celebration, change, commitment, story, travel | 6 Comments »

Day 20: My Brother Chris (30th Birthday Countdown)

Written by Jennifer on 7th March 2010

You know those moments when something incredibly important shifts for you but you don’t know it until years later? My brother Chris is responsible for one of those moments in my life that has forever altered my trajectory.

Always one to go out of his way, Chris (26 at the time) decided to take me shopping in New York City for my 16th birthday. I had been to New York several times growing up to see shows, but never to shop. Even for a pseudo-tomboy like me, this sounded dreamy.

If I remember correctly, when the big day came we drove into the city (a treat in and of itself) and spent the morning walking around SoHo where we found a hip outdoor market happening. After purchasing a very short, very tight, very cute black and white dress, we ate lunch and sat on a park bench people-watching.

And then came one of those moments.

Sitting on a sunny New York street,  I became aware, for the very first time, that this world – this WHOLE world – was available to me. I could see myself going to college in a big city and traveling the world. I could imagine the interesting people I would meet and the diversity of food I might try.

So much of this is because of Chris. In his early 20s, he was traveling to Moscow and Tokyo and London on business. He went to Carnival in Rio De Janeiro and trekked through Southeast Asia. And he took his little sister to the big city and regaled her (I am sure) with tales of his travels. In other words, Chris never let the world seem small to him which made it seem accessible to me.

(At the Grand Canyon in 1999.)

As I look back at my decision to go to college in California or I remember eating a conch pistol in the Bahamas or I take note of my immediate plans to travel to Africa for the first time, I must say a prayer of thanks for Chris. For he not only introduced me to Thai food and hot sauce and Russian nesting dolls; somewhere along the way, he taught me how to introduce myself to the world.

How different my life would be without that!

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Posted in celebration, change, travel | 2 Comments »

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