Hotel life - Week 4 (Critter rescue day)

  

I thought I would have little to write about this week. We haven't discovered anything new or done much different this week, but today seemed to be a day of rescues. This morning, my husband and I went out to get breakfast. We usually have cereal in our hotel room, but we felt like changing it up a little this morning. I guess it was meant to be. As we entered the parking lot, I saw a few gulls in the parking lots--there are usually flocks of them in every parking lot in this area of town. One in particular ended up standing out to me--it looked like its wing was broken quite badly. It definitely couldn't fly. We even tried to toss it a bit of our food, but the gulls that can fly were able to swoop in and eat it before this poor one could run over to get it. 

I called our local wildlife rehab hotline and left a message. They say they check messages frequently but that they don't open until 9am, so I wasn't sure what time they'd be able to call back and arrange for someone to come out to help me get this bird. I decided to put out a request on a bird Facebook group I'm a member of, just to see if someone could maybe help catch the bird and get it to an emergency vet where it could be examined and held until the rehab place opens up. Someone was indeed able to come and help! This person has caught many injured birds before to help them, and surprisingly, it didn't end up taking us that long to catch this bird, and the person who helped drove the bird to the rehab place, which was open by the time the ordeal was over. It felt really good helping. I don't know what will become of this bird, but I figured at least if it can't be healed, it will be humanely euthanised rather than suffering by starving to death in the parking lot or getting run over because it's too weak to get out of the way in time of an oncoming vehicle.

Then later, when we went out for lunch, I spotted this poor dragonfly stuck in a puddle. It was still moving, but losing strength, trying to get out of the water, it seemed. I put my shoe near it, and it suddenly clung on for dear life! I walked carefully over to the grass--they have strong grip, and I couldn't shake it off me!--and brushed my shoe on the grass. It came off and just sat there. I didn't see it after, so I'm hoping it was just waterlogged, needing to be dried off, and didn't die and it was just camouflaged to where I couldn't see it.

Meanwhile we are one step closer to departing. Our passports will arrive on Monday, so we're really excited about that because we can finally take the next step before we can finally apply to be approved to travel. It will all work out in the end, but it's quite slow with all the pandemic delays!

Hotel life - Week 3 (thoughts about "home")

 This week's highlights of discovering my own city was Borden Park. Since I've mostly lived on the outskirts of the city, this was another place I had never known about, let alone been to before. There are a lot of sculptures in the park, my most favourite being this colourful piece, not only for the sculpture itself, but also for the way it casts shadows on the ground.  There were a lot of little red squirrels running around, too. I know they can be an annoyance in a yard or home, but in nature, they're super cute.

This week had me thinking again about home. I've probably written about it in my blog somewhere before, but as someone who had lived overseas for a bit, was born of and grew up in an intercultural household, and have travelled extensively, I sometimes felt like a nomad. That's why my original blog name is about a wayfaring stranger; I have often felt like I'm just a little person trying to make my way in a big world. My childhood home was sold, and my grandparents' house, where I spent my childhood summers, is no longer accessible because it was sold as well, so sometimes I have felt a little homeless.

Without going into a long rant, now that I'm married, I understand my mom's sentiment that home is really where the people you love are. I have been working on trying to be less attached to "things," material things. Even houses--writ homes--are things, at the end of the day. Even though we're living in a hotel, when my husband and I are out, I'll say, "let's go home," and I'm referring to the hotel. My husband is my home. Where we are together, it becomes home to me. I also referred to the long-term storage place as home the other day, so clearly I still need to work on the attachment to things because I was referring to some of the things that are in the storage location that made me think of it as home, too! 😆

Anyway, it's nice to feel a bit of an anchor feeling like there is a home for me now, even if that anchor moves to different locations.  

In good news, we learned our passports are finalised, so once we get those, we'll be that much closer to to actually departing Edmonton and finalising our travel dates!

Hotel life - Week 2

It's hard to believe we've been here for 2 weeks, but aside from the fact that we have to eat takeout for at least 1-2 meals a day, it almost feels like we're just living in a 1-bedroom apartment at the moment. It actually hasn't been too bad. We thought it would really start to feel cramped when we brought the cats, not so much because they need space, but their stuff does: litter box, litter supply, food, and the large crates we have to use for transport that are actually meant for small dogs but are required by the UK government to meet IATA requirements.

We did at least find out this week that the visa application centres for the UK will be back up and running this coming week, and hopefully we can also get our passports sometime soon. That's the main issue at this point. Everything is coming together in bits and pieces, so eventually we will make it to London!

One of the neat things about being in limbo, however, is that we are forced to find things to do and place to go that are safe but that are entertaining. Now that we don't have a backyard or balcony, it's not like we can sit outside to eat when the weather is nice. I decided to look up parks and restaurantes in Lewis Estates, so we did takeout from there and took it to nearby Christopher Cruz park. For whatever reason, there was almost no one there. It was serenely quiet, despite the playground, with just the sound of trees and birds, and there was a small, quiet storm water pond with mallards, pelicans, and a double-crested cormorant. We found an old country road with a mossy old fence. It was just beautiful.

An old, mossy fence

Hotel life - Week 1

We've been living in the hotel for almost a week, now. It's not terrible. I think that some 1-bedroom apartments are this size, except you'd probably have some place for storage and possibly a larger closet or wardrobe. We are allowed 2 suitcases each, and since we're moving and not just travelling, we have 3 large suitcases and 1 medium sized one in the room, and as of today, we'll have 2 large pet crates and a litter box once we bring the cats over from the house. It will really begin the feel tiny. 

But it's nice that we have the kitchenette, and as we brought some things from the house that we'll use anyway, like dish soap and cat food and tea and things like that, in that sense, it feels homey. I can make chai every morning, even if not masala chai, but it's what I had growing up, and it was fine. We have space in the full fridge for things and cupboard space to store cereals and snacks. So it will be a bit cramped, but it is decent, and we can make do. We also have a decent view as we can at least see the trees from out the window instead of the other side of the building that faces a retail zone, like a Walmart and Petland and other shopping complexes. If you click on the thumbnail, you can see a larger view. The only thing I don't like about it is that we have the front entrance below, and there are often people out there talking really loudly and smoking, so we don't want to open the window. It just means we don't want to open the window.

The one thing that really annoys me right now is this blogging program. Apparently Google has made updates, and now I can no longer neatly insert a photo into the text so that the text appears around the photo rather than pushing it down the more I type. First they stop updating Picasa, which was able to perfectly embed photo albums with a slideshow into Blogger, and now they have even ruined in the in-text photo features. Why are they making worse and worse updates? Are they trying to move people away and use other blogging programs? It might be something for me to research to see if I can import my blogs to another program that works better.

New adventures to report...at some point!

For all the travelling I've done, I am now embarking on yet another trip, but this time, I'll be gone for a while--at least 3 years! My husband and I are re-locating to the UK this summer on account of his job, so I look forward to many travels while in Europe. I didn't meet my 30 by 30 country goal, nor my 40 by 40, so perhaps I'll reach 50 by 50? We'll have to wait for a vaccine for Covid-19 to get there, but I'm still hoping. 

My new adventure begins in a hotel at home, though. The military does 2 packing days, dividing it up by what you are shipping and what you're putting into long term storage, and they schedule separate days for loading the stuff. So we started living in a hotel as of today as all our kitchen stuff got packed, so we have nothing to cook with or eat on. We're in an extended stay place, so we have a small kitchenette as we might be here about a month and won't want to have takeout all the time. I've lived in hotels for a month at a time in my old recruitment job, and you miss having home-cooked meals. We don't have a full kitchen set, so there isn't a lot we can cook at "home," but we will have the odd thing we can do, and it will be a nice change from takeout and restaurant food.

And the reason for the delay?

As you might imagine, it's the pandemic. We only just received info about our accommodations in the UK, and we are still waiting for our passports, so hopefully those will arrive soon. It's difficult enough to travel in a pandemic, let alone internationally, but we'll eventually get through it, and the mandatory self-isolation period when we arrive. So at some point, we'll have adventures!

Ottawa 2019

Actual border between Canada and the US

!000 Islands view

As I mentioned in my last post, we drove from Syracuse to Ottawa on Friday. It was pretty uneventful, but it was a little nerve-wracking for me to drive while going through the border, as I always feel that border guards are scarier than the ones in the airports for some reason, and also because we ended up having to go over this really high-arched bridge as we drove through the 1000 islands region. I have a fear of heights, and it is coupled with the fear of being on a bridge when it collapses, so it was not fun to drive that part. However, it is also good to conquer your fears or to at least keep on going in spite of them, and that is what I did. The scenery is beautiful in that region, though, and while I was too scared to look out on that bridge, I had a chance to snap a couple of photos once my husband took over driving on the Canada side, not only to give me a break from driving but also because he is more familiar with Ottawa than I am.

Our primary focus since arrival has been to set up my husband's place where he will stay for the year, but we wanted to do some sightseeing together as well. We went to the War Museum yesterday, which I enjoyed, but I did not take any photos there because it isn't really a place where you can take a lot of photos since the lighting is poor, and much of it is just artifacts of war and military stuff. The only photo I did take was of the game True Dough Mania, which I proudly own. It's a hilarious game made by some serious non-Trudeau supporters. I was too young to have an opinion about the senior Trudeau, so I really don't have an opinion about him, but I like the game because it's just comical. In any case, I wish we had a museum like that at home as it would be a great resource for social studies being able to take students there in a more interactive way to learn about the world wars and Canada's military.

On Saturday, we went to Parliament Hill, stopping at the War Memorial along the way. We happened to arrive shortly before the changing of the guard, so it was neat to be there for that ceremony. It isn't as extensive as the changing of the guard along the India-Pakistan border nor at Buckingham Palace in London--neither of which I've seen but have heard about from others, but it is still interesting to see. There are also only 2 guards as compared to all the other guards at these other locations, so it only makes sense that the ceremony would not be as extensive. We continued on to Parliament Hill, which I was very excited about, because I wanted to get some really good close-up shots of the details and gargoyles on the building now that I have a camera with a much better zoom lens. The Parliament buildings are really beautiful, and most people would focus on the entire thing, but I like seeing details that most other people can't see or would notice. I discovered, for example, that there are beavers carved all over the the place. It almost became a game for me to see how many beavers I could find. I also took a photo of the scenery from the main entrance of the building. It's one of the things I like to do when I travel is to see what everyone is missing when they're focusing on the big thing in front of them. Sometimes you can end up missing something beautiful in its own right. Since I took enough photos, I ended up putting them in an album.

These are my travels! I don't know when I will make my next post, as it will depend on when I travel again, but I hope you've enjoyed my little journey. I may make one about our little trip to Gatineau park today if we return tomorrow for me to go on my birding tour. We got rained out today, so doing the walk was unfeasible. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EzRxh7cnjRCJssvD8

Through the Midwest to the East

As much as we enjoyed Chicago, we were just as happy to leave the congestion of downtown for the open road again. This time we were headed to my brother's to visit for just one night. It wasn't exactly on the way, but the detour created only a difference of about 2 hours in our our last couple of segments to Ottawa anyway, so I wanted to go just to see my mom before she heads back to her home in South Asia and just to get an extra chance to see my brother and his family, including my super cute nephews.

The drive there meant driving through Indiana and Ohio. Indiana welcomes you with industries everywhere. They look pretty unattractive--industrial revolution-like conditions, almost. The places look dark and dingy. Thankfully, that gives way to fields of corn and other agricultural products as well as marshes and lakes as you keep driving.

Once we were in Ohio, the main challenge there was toll roads. They are so expesinve--almost USD20 to drive through the state. But you get what you pay for. The roads were well-maintained with excellent rest stops that had tourist info, gas station, a few fast food restaurants, and obviously washrooms. It was nice to stop there for meals and bathroom breaks. We also learned a valuable tip for Canadians driving in the US who need to put their zip codes at the gas pumps when trying to pay at the pump: use the numerical digits from your postal code and add two zeros at the end to create a 5 digit zip code. So if your postal code was R5F 3E3, your "zip" code would be 53300. It worked like a charm. One of the gas stations had actually unlocked the pump so we could use it without needing to pre-pay, just trusting us to pay inside, but you don't always get that. It would have been helpful to know that 10 years ago when I was driving all over the US for work!

Bridge on the I-79 in Pennsylvania

Anyway, reaching my brother's place, my nephew came running down the front steps to see us, big smile on his face and hands held in the air to give us a great big hug. He is so sweet and affectionate. It just brings tears to my eyes. It was wonderful to be somewhere that we could relax a bit, have some downtime--even with 2 kids under 5--and enjoy some home-cooked food. One the road, you have fast food because there isn't much else unless you have the time to drive to a city for a proper meal, and usually when you have this much driving, you're just trying to save time. I sure wish we could have stayed more than a night, but I was grateful for the time we had nonetheless.

Red tailed hawk

Cedar waxwing

From there, we spent the night in Syracuse so that we could enjoy a relatively short drive to Ottawa on Friday, our final leg of the  journey. Syracuse seems filled with churches for some reason and looked beautiful in many parts. We wished we had time to explore the city more, but we were just as happy to reach Ottawa today and finally rest for a few days to set my husband up here before I fly home in a few days. We faced a fairly strong storm while heading to Ottawa, but then we were treated to a beautiful rainbow along the way to Syracuse, and I also got a couple of bird photos outside the hotel. I have seen these birds in Edmonton before, but I never pass up the chance to get a good photo of a bird.