A Dose of Normal

Since August, life has been crazy. Build-up to the wedding kept us busy, followed by prep for our honeymoon, followed by our actual honeymoon. When we returned home, we were back to reality, but by no means back to our regular, everyday, normal life.

When we got home, there were thank you cards to write, wedding registries to close, a sadly neglected house to clean, birthdays to celebrate, turkeys to be eaten, laundry to be washed and errand after errand to be run.

And when we were finally done all that, Tom decided to head to Seattle, and I decided to head to Toronto.

My friend, M, left Calgary over a year ago to start a new career. She wasn't able to make it to our wedding, so I booked a flight out to visit her. It is only for two days, but it was a much needed visit.

Me and M, post-gelato.

Weather in Toronto wasn't anything to rave about last weekend. It was about 15 degrees and overcast. It also rained for most of Saturday night, and part of Sunday morning. However, the trees this time of year are absolutely beautiful! Calgary had a very nice autumn this year. The leaves turned the most vibrant shade of yellow I have ever seen. But because Toronto has a wider variety of trees, the myriad of colours was fantastic!

Now that I am home, I am ready for a little normality. This weekend couldn't come sooner!

Happy Friday!

Back to Reality. Almost.

Sunny days, prime for snorkeling.

Plentiful flowers at the resort.

Lily pads in the koi fish pond.

On the boardwalk between overwater bungalows.

Me on our personal balcony.

Crab hanging out by the kayaks.

Collapsing walls of the extinct volcano.

Tom and I at an outlook point.

A papaya plantation.

A pineapple plant.

Rooster strutting his stuff.

Island views.

Mauruuru (Thank You), Moorea!

Days always pass so quickly when you are enjoying them.

The mornings always seem to be the best part of the day in Moorea. As soon as the sun starts to rise over the horizon, we are very aware of the houses across the lagoon where some of the locals live. Daylight beacons the roosters that live there, and so begins the never-ending shrieking of, "Cock-a-doodle-doooooo!" "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOO!" For the rest of day (and sometimes into the night) we can hear them crowing away. If the air condition is on, or the wind picks up, the noise is drowned out for a little while.

It has been very windy here. We overheard a couple last night telling another couple that it is usually breezy, but has been more so than normal on this visit. It is a continuous wind-- it doesn't seem to gust. But it is moist and humid.

An example of the wind.

Since it is always moist and humid, my hair has reached epic proportions of hugeness. In 2005 when I was in New York with Ashley and Kim, it rained a lot, and it was also humid. Both Ashley and I found our hair getting bigger and bigger. We compared Ashley's gigantic hair (which is much thicker than mine) to a lion's mane. We called her Simba, in honour of the Lion King (and the lion in the Museum of Natural History)! I'm pretty sure my hair has surpassed Ashley's Simba mane.

Tom has another sunburn. I'm happy to report that unlike his Hawaii burn, it is an even, all-encompassing burn this time. No patches from uneven sunscreen application. I'm sure he got it because he spent so much time snorkelling! He is trying to stay out of the sun, but I don't know how long that will last for!

Eating meals out here has been very interesting. Yesterday we ate breakfast at 8:15am, and then didn't eat again until 6:00pm for dinner. I didn't feel particularly hungry in the interm. We has the most amazing crepes for dinner. Crepes are delicious in any country. My savoury crepe was ham, cheese, mushroom and egg. Tom's was seafood in cream sauce. Then we both had a dessert crepe as well. Mine was aptly named "Le Bounty," and was full of chocolate, banana, coconut, and almond, topped with whipped cream and coconut sorbet. Tom's was similar-- chocolate, pineapple and coconut with whipped cream.

Amazing dessert crepe, "Le Bounty."

After dinner it was dark, but the water was very still and clear. Near the crepe bar there were lights over the water, so we watched about a dozen black tipped reef sharks circling underneathe us. They were maybe about 1m to 1.5m in length. They aren't around during the day while we were snorkelling, the just come it at night.

Black-tipped Reef Shark.

Coconut is delicious in all forms. Raw coconut, coconut sorbet, coconut bread, coconut milk... Coconut cookies! It also seems like everything I try is made of papaya. Papaya jam, papaya juice, papaya ice cream! Yum!

Today was our last full day. We went on an auto tour of the island. We stopped at a distillery and sampled some various types of fruit alcohol. We also went to some beautiful vantage points for scenic photos. I'll post those another time though!

Tomorrow we'll be heading to the airport in the evening. We unfortunately have to take a red-eye to get home. I'm glad we have a few days of weekend to get ourselves back to normal in Calgary. The staff at the reception desk says that since we have come here for our honeymoon, we must come back every five years for our anniversary. That doesn't seem like a hardship to me!

Mauruuru, Moorea! It's been lovely!

Chocolate Chip Promise

Steve in Rat's Nest Cave, March 2009

Every time I think about how long I've known someone, it makes me realize how fast time flies.

People are getting married, having babies... And Steve is officially a year older!

Today is Steve's 26th Birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Like some of my other good friends, I've known Steve for ten years. You'll likely remember him from previous posts-- you can't forget Steve!

Here are some things you might (or might not) know about Steve.

1) Steve is a collector. He has a huge collection of comics, a huge collection of music, a huge collection of TV and movies on DVD and a huge collection of Rock Band songs. Steve does not mind sharing or loaning parts of his collections. Steve is rather generous.

2) Steve is an excellent writer. I'm not sure I would have started blogging if Steve hadn't had his blog all those years ago. Unfortunately for the world, Steve doesn't write too much any more. Boo!

3) Steve considers violence to be the "Neanderthal's way." Steve will cut you down with his words before he'll ever smack you around.

4) Steve is sometimes referred to as Stevie or Steve-o. I'm not sure if I've ever called him either of those names. This is sort of a boring tidbit.

5) For the first 23 years of his life, Steve had never eaten cheesecake. He preferred to stick with desserts he was familiar with. Steve also prefers chocolate chip cookies, and adds extra chocolate chips to his recipe.

Steve, I hope your 26th birthday was awesome. I hope someone made you some chocolate chip cookies with extra chocolate chips! And if someone didn't-- I promise I will make you some when I get back.

Enjoy your day!

Moorea, French Polynesia

View from the overwater bungalow.

Tom and I arrived in Tahiti yesterday without any major problems. Our little overwater bungalow is lovely. We have everything we could want here-- incuding a private balcony and a ladder straight down to the water in the lagoon. Last night the water was so still and clear you could clearly see all the colourful fish swimming around. There is also a glass portion of the floor so we can see the water and fish going by beneathe us.

We sat with a chatty older lady on our flight to LA, and had lots of time before we caught our flight to Papeete, Tahiti. Air Tahiti Nui is a pretty awesome airline! We got a little package as the flight was taking off that contained ear phones, socks, sleeping eye-masks and stickers indicating whether we should be left alone to sleep, or woken up for meals.

The weirdest thing for me was adjusting to hearing French all the time. When the flight took off from LAX, the staff immediately switched to French as their primary language. All around us people were speaking French. I think that is my first time being immersed in a different language. Since I am primarily a visual learner, I've always found learning languages to be difficult. I found it a bit unsettling to hear an unfamiliar conversations going on around us. I soon realized that this wasn't a major problem. All the flight attendants were bilingual, and so far everyone we've encountered has been as well.

During our flight to Tahiti, I looked a little closer at our flight informaion. I realized that our flight home was booked wrong. I blame this entirely on the wedding. If I had not been overwhelmed in wedding planning for the last three months, perhaps I would have noticed that our flight from Papeete to LA leave at 11:30pm on October 8, and arrives in LA at 10:45am on OCTOBER 9th. Perhaps we wouldn't have booked our flight from LA to Calgary on October 8-- a day too early! We've e-mailed our travel agent, so hopefully she'll be able to rectify our bad planning!

You might be wondering why I am blogging on our honeymoon. You know... Don't I have better things to do?

Heh, this is the wonderful thing about relaxing. I can do whatever I want!

This morning we woke up at 6:30am (10:30am home-time, we are four hours behind here). At that time the sun was out so Tom read on the balcony, and I read in bed. Then we went for a swim, ate breakfast at the restaurant, went snorkeling, and have gone back to relaxing. My efforts at snorkeling were short lived. It is overcast, and VERY windy right now. The water was incredibly choppy, and all my inefficient flailing (i.e. attempts to swim) tired me out. In fact, it is so windy right now that every once in a while you can feel the slight swaying of the bungalow.

We will surely have eaten our body weight in pineapple and coconut by the time we leave. I never get tired of how delicious and fresh the fruit is out in the tropics!

Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow. If not, we will make the best of it!