11.20.10

WOW! I want to say thank you to all our readers! The response to
my last blog has been incredible, and it makes me really happy to know that
we have so many people who are following our travels! THANK YOU! I've gotten
a lot of emails from others who have traveled or been away from the holidays,
giving me some suggestions on how to handle being away from family. Ana,
from Germany wrote:

Dear Autumn and John
My sister was staying at Dougie's and she told me to check out their
facebook page. I had seen your link on their wall, and that's how I found
you! I really wish I had the guts to just pick up and leave and travel!
Since my sister left, I have been thinking about it, and since I've read
your blog, I am really considering on buying a plane ticket. The closest
thing to traveling I have done was when my job relocated me for a year to
Tokyo. I did enjoy my time overseas, and in Europe it's customary for people
to take a year or two to travel. I had a hard time during the holidays too,
and they even made us work Christmas day! What I found that helped me out,
was to not do anything traditional at all. Instead of snow, I went swimming.
Instead of Christmas turkey, I ate sushi. I saved all the cards and gifts I
got from family until Christmas day. I stayed up until five in the morning,
even though I had to work at 8 am so that I could skype back home. I kept
myself busy creating new traditions that I totally forgot about what I was
missing back home. To this day, my family still talks about when we skyped
when I was in Tokyo, and I always remember the very unique holiday I spent
away from home. Hope this helps and I am looking forward to hear how your
holidays turn out!

-Ana

Other emails suggested that I try to recreate my traditions, so that I can
feel comfy, and others simply said to try and enjoy what is in front of me,
because eventually, it too will end. Since the emails, I have started to
feel much better!
I have been waking up every day, listening to Christmas music,
and John and I have been spending a lot of time preparing Christmas lists
and doing some Christmas shopping! To be honest, that has been one thing
that has helped A LOT! I enjoy so much picking out the perfect gift for
someone, and I get so excited to give it to them. I really thought long and
hard about each individual gift that we could get for each person. I wanted
to make sure it was something they could use and appreciate, but at the same
time, still represented Bali! You have no idea how hard it is to do this,
but we succeeded!
Other news is that we will no longer be going to Christmas Island. They contacted us to let us know that they overbooked volunteers but that we were free to reapply for a later time. I will not be lying when I say that I was neither disappointed nor excited by this news. I really wanted to volunteer and the experience would be out of this world, but on the same hand, I am really homesick and am equally looking forward to being able to spend the holidays with John’s Australian family and now his 2 sisters. Everything happens for a reason though, and we hope to volunteer with them in the future.
The news doesn’t stop there though! We just got word that our friend, Sonja and Marco (I worked with Sonja at Zinc in Port Douglas, but they are from Germany), will be coming to visit us in Bali! They arrive late tonight so we are going to meet up with them and help them find a place to stay for the night. For those of you that don’t recall, I had left for Ohio and while I was gone, Sonja had left Port Douglas. I never got to say goodbye, and since my departure was so quick, I never got to even tell her that I was leaving. It was really awesome of her to show us around Darwin when we had our layover, so we are looking forward to seeing them again, and showing them around Bali!
I must say that we are miserable in this heat! Our AC broke, and with all these glass walls; it just traps in the heat. We both get up super early in the morning because we are cooking, and at night, we lay sprawled out like star fish! They say they will come and have it fix Tuesday, so that will be much welcomed!
I’m starting to feel a lot better : )