December of 2012, Boot Size 10
My Dear Readers,
I was recently watching a BBC show called “An Idiot Abroad”
. Essentially they take a middle aged “boring” man who had never left England (not even to go the rest of the UK!) and they send him around the world to do tasks that occur on most people’s bucket lists, mostly involving some sort of travel. The episode I watched was, of course, about him going to Japan.
The aforementioned Idiot is Karl in the middle.
The bucket list event was to climb Mt. Fuji. But along the way he did other tasks such as sumo wrestled, tried three year old fish (I won’t lie, I couldn’t do it considering my lack of fondness for fish), and play with robots. What baffled me about this man is that he hated pretty much every minute of it. Every minute! My dad got a laugh out of it because the entire episode I was yelling at the television screen to let me do it, because I would have had a blast!
I am always looking to try new activities. For example, just the other day my friend and I decided to wander into a shwarma shop because we had never had shwarma before and thanks to the movie Avengers we were intrigued and wanted to try it. But while we were in there, we found a ton of little food items that we’d never seen or tried before! So we decided to go all out. I, for the first time, tried Turkish Delight!
I don’t know how you capture the flavor of rose… but it was so delicious!
It was delicious. Along with our shwarma wraps (filled with hummus, pickles, lettuce, and beets) we had two drinks we’d never tried. I picked out a blood orange pomegranate juice blend, and he tried a sour cherry nectar drink.
The right is beef, the left is chicken.
I want to drink this every DAY!
For desert we were intrigued by these little donut hole-looking delights called galub jamun…
…We did not like it as much as the rest. Mainly because it was too sweet and gooey.
Nevertheless it got me thinking of that silly little BBC show I had watched and how much the “idiot” didn’t want to try new things. As I said, the entire time the show was going on I was whimpering because I’d give an arm and a leg to do what that man got to do, and he fought against trying new things like his life depended on it. That astounds me even thinking about it now.
This is why I’m WWOOFing in Ireland, to get a really deep and cultural experience. I don’t just want to jump from monument to monument like some people. I want to get in there and live like the people live, and eat what they eat… Though maybe not organs. Haggis in one thing I will probably politely turn away, except have a single bite just to say I’ve had it. I oftentimes have regrets about the things I didn’t do on my first trip out of the country to the South Pacific because I was too scared to. I wish I’d tried more foods, and been more open to the people I’d met. I sought to change that for all the other countries I’ve been to, and I still strive to improve on myself to this day.
My main reason for writing this is to encourage all travelers to stray off the beaten path. Try different areas of new countries. Lots of people go to Paris, why not try the countryside? Have a unique story of your own, and inspire others to try new things. This is probably where I should do a Robert Frost reference, but I feel that clinched is a little overused when it comes to this subject.
Plus I live in New England. I heard his poems my whole life.
I hope my message has come across to you. And I hope those of you who enjoy stories of leaving the average adventure behind will join me as I share my experiences with you while working in Ireland.
Until My Next Adventure,
Viviana Ayre
Bootprints in the Sand 