So travel time alone …. 52 hours and 30 mins.

Adding an extra 24 hours with no change of clothes and limited toiletries definitely makes you ‘creative’.

Regardless, this would have been a long haul trip but it isn’t over yet and I am just burnt at this point. I was able to shower yesterday but not changing clothes is the thing I am struggling with especially since I had to jam through some areas.

Irritatingly, I usually carry a change of clothes but I was trying to conserve space so I could buy a couple of things at duty free. I could kick myself because I needed it!

Plus, met a few people that had similar issues for travel and had lunch with a couple gentlemen from California and spent some late night time chatting with a young lady heading to Boston. They made the tome go by and so did trying to photograph the mice in the airport. Lol.

Since my gma has not been doing well, I want to use this space to share with her some of my trip and month so far. Even though we are so far away from each other and she is not doing well. She is with me on this journee.

I am very thankful that I was able to talk to her today though it makes me very emotional. She is not well and I am land masses away from her but this is not about me.

Hi Gma.

I just want to share this with you. So Journee, crazy right? I know I mentioned my divorce when I saw you. Dad/your son’s passing and now your own hospitalization. First off, I love you. Second, I got to feel you a little two weekends ago.

I just randomly competed in a competition at Hilton Hawaiian Village and I didn’t want to stay there with the Ililkai right next door. So I stayed at the Ilikai instead. My view actually overlooked beachside and was on pops side, that is where we scattered dad’s ashes.

Before I go farther, yes, I danced hula in a competition 🙂. Yes 😋, I started to take hula in the past year as all of this was happening. But in my defense, I was only divorced at the time and trying to find something for myself not for others. I was pretty adamant that I didn’t and wouldn’t perform since the kumu was known to not make people perform so she wouldn’t make us. Kumu invited me to, so I said yes. I tried on those old performance pair of jeans learned from theatre. They still fit but I did practice a lot and even did some of the smaller performances as part of my mental and physical warm-up and memory building. You know me.

Although I am glad I did it because I am obviously old to be starting up new hobbies and a little crazy. But you already knew that part. I did it again because, like I said, I wanted to do something for myself and performance was always for me when I started doing it in the beginning. A way for me to give something to others, with the hope that at least one person would feel something in that moment that will allow them to be somewhere else for themselves when they might need it. Or feel something that I contributed to, when I stopped doing it, it was mostly because I felt like I accomplished that outward goal.

I wonder now if I should think more of what that inner goal is for me.

I heard the news gma, I hope it means that a part of you is clearly at peace now and another part of you is okay that I bring a your presence with me on this journee.

But for the physical, a hui hou, gma. I love you and am glad you were able to finally rest. And join gpa, dad and those we recently said goodbye to also.

So I am leaving Prague today, we are taking a train! Next stop Vienna. I am going to take in a Mozart concert and a guided food tour. In addition, it is where Viktor Frankl is from and he is someone I like as the writer of Man’s Search for Meaning. I am going to go to his museum after the foodie tour.

Why do I like him? He endured and asked questions in a way that stayed with me. Instead of what is the meaning of life he flipped to, what is life asking of me?

I used to wonder why I was made, mostly because I didn’t believe there was a reason I existed which I even tested. But in hindsight it is because I wasn’t made to feel like I should exist. Something was wrong with me and I wasn’t good.

Someone I took a workshop from asked as one of our house rules that we put moralizing outside of the group’s time. What he meant was that we shouldn’t assume good or bad in what people were sharing. We should treat the information without that lens. It was freeing to me because I didn’t realize how that was the activity of judgment. Sorry, rabbit hole. Viktor Frankl and seeing something of his possibly even his gravesite. Definitely a must for me.

I also think what is life asking of me is a much harder question to answer.

Hi Gma,

In Vienna now, you passed the day before I got here. 🖤

I am doing this blog giving a day-to-day recap and then thinking about also doing a country by country takeaway. Not to mention a random things ….

So far, Vienna is my favorite, it feels like a place that I could be forever in wonder. I liked Prague for similar reasons but Vienna feels alive. I feel awake here. It could be the melange (viennese coffee). Not 💯 sure but I felt it before I drank any coffee here 😅.

I am sitting in a café right now and this is my view.

In the past couple of years of travel, this place makes me feel like moving. I sleep better here (super tired at the right time of the day) and I wake up and want to walk around and do something. Very not me.

I don’t know what it is but words I think of here are dazzling and inspired.

Hi Gma.

In Budapest now. Trains for Travel, you would hate them, tbh, this place isn’t made for people that pack a lot of luggage or aren’t able to lug and lift their own luggage. Up into the train, out of the train in the luggage bins, you name it. I should have known this after Thailand. Oh man, that just hit me, you, dad, and my ex were all on that train I am thinking of. Divorce and Death took the people that I had in my more recent chapters of my life more than others, just in the past two years. Divorce was a choice but there were choices around all of them and loss that I still grieve. Yours being unbelievably recent.

But something I learned here thanks to the ladies, reserved tickets are a must. People who don’t have reserved can sit in any empties but if someone comes with a reservation on that seat you have to get off the seat.

But this view, I am thinking it is worth it.

Budapest was my FOMO place. I went to do laundry as soon as I got there. There was a place within walking distance. Right next to the Launderette was the Glass House Memorial Museum. This place was important and the operational base for Swiss diplomat, Carl Lutz. Saving tens of thousands of Jewish people from deportation during World War II. Such a random find and it made me actively look everywhere for random signs and plaques. And they were everywhere.

Hi Gma.

Heading home … very slowly.

Thursday

Woke up at 4 a.m.

30 min drive to airport

3 hours at airport

30-40 min delay getting on flight

1 hr and 35 min flight

(1 hr 45 min layover)

MISSED FLIGHT!!

24 hour to next flight as rebook

Had to rebook my last leg to HI because this screwed me up.

11 hr 50 min flight

5 hr 20 min layover to get bag, go through customs from international, go back to terminal, check in for departure.

5 hrs 34 mins flight

Grand total: 52 hrs, 34 mins without deplaning and getting luggage 🥴

Got home and a week later feeling like a normal person again.

I love you grandma.

Monica~

I went walking to find a lei and found a lei po’o also. So the people just a 15 min walk away from ‘here’ dont speak English but either French and/or French Polynesian.

I also met a couple of new people who work here. And went to the spa then had dinner with Jenna to celebrate her birthday.

Ia Orana (ya o ra na), Jenna corrected me on this one.

I never spent so long on my face (80 minute teeatment) but at my age I should be better at knowing what is what. All my friends seem to think of that.

Meitei roa (i am good), meitei (how r u)

Mauruuru (thank you) and merci, and mauruuru roa (deep thanks).

I also got my animal fix, brown noddy, noio.

Treats go far here, too.

So a couple of weeks ago I randomly received a text from an old theatre acquaintance. He was able to get my number from a theatre I worked at in the past and wanted to know if I was interested in workshopping a play he was hoping to perform in the upcoming season. He is using improv as a device to explore the development of the play for the playwriter.

Yesterday we had our first workshop with a cold read of the play and introduced some of the improv exercises/games we will probably be exploring in the next workshop.

It was nice. I saw some old friends, worked with some newer actors in the scene, and felt like improv continues to be my foot in the door to explore a creative outlet that feeds me in ways other things just can’t. Bonus was the theatre reading because it is easier to have a script and work through it versus making things up with just a few bits of information. I cannot wait to do more next week.

I feel like that old clothes item people pull out of the back of their closet every once in a while to see if it still fits or works for the current outfit. Glad to say, I feel like I still can be in fashion when needed.

Back to acting. I decided in high school that I was going to go into Theatre for my college degree. While at the university, I remembered watching a black box, late night production of “Write Before Your Eyes”. It was an improvisational theatre experience with a handful of graduate students performing long-form improv.

Long-form improv is unlike short-form improv exercises/games most people are familiar with from shows like “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Long-form improv is typically story-based or longer than short-form games which typically range from 5-7 minutes.

I was hooked, I never knew improv could offer so much more than fun improv and acting exercises but about listening, being present, character exploration, and telling stories in the moment. I immediately started going to a Sunday workshop that the student organization had started. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship that helped me grow and learn, with laughter and many moments where I questioned if I was truly a masochist going back to it over and over again.

Wanted to channel some improv thoughts with my work. Today, I came across polarity mapping and polarity thinking. It is a ‘both, and’ conceptualization of choosing between two possible options. Instead of having to choose one or the other, you balance between the two options, weighing the strengths and possible ramifications of each.

There is more to it but I am still exploring the cyclical flow between the two options and then the next steps and actions that stem from each side to find balance or understanding.

Hi, All. It has been a while. I am going to try to get better at being on this for myself but not be long and windy. My goal is to get better at reflection, and my communication and writing style without being long-winded.

So given that, I am starting with something I love, I love it because it helped me as a teen/young adult feel better about life and find something meaningful to do and escape into. When I first got into theatre, it was a summer program at UH Hilo, I was there for six weeks and I loved it. I was away from home and I learned so much about being in the theatre and a part of theatre, it filled me in a way that I felt whole.

Now was I good at it? I would have to say, no. I was not a shining star born to do it but one of the first lessons that I learned about myself was that I cared about making a difference in a small way by allowing someone else to have a cathartic experience from something I performed in, I loved to learn, ask questions, and acting was just the sum of a whole bunch of little parts of a bigger puzzle. Because of this mindset, I started to pick up each puzzle piece and I tried to to get better at it one piece at a time.

The biggest lesson I learned at this time was that there were a lot of pieces to being an actor and to theatre. And yes, I loved it all.

I do not know when exactly this became a “thing,” but, for over six years, Squire and I have been making use of our camera photos each year to commemorate that year and fill our family and friends in on what we have been up to in the year, or at least the things we decided to capture with our phone cameras. It has become a regular thing that we send around the holidays, and by regular, we now feel compelled to do it because people actually made a point to mention that they like it enough to hope they get another one so they can see what’s happening. Who knew? But this is just our 2021 one to welcome in 2022 and wish all of you the best of the best. See you sometime in 2022.