To My Family: Thank You for a Beautiful Childhood

Today I turn 20.

"Bittersweet" seems appropriate.

It's not really bidding farewell to my teenage life that bothers me. I'm fine with moving forward into my 20's. It's just weird. I had barely adjusted to saying "19" when someone asked me how old I was.

I can guarantee the little girl I babysit won't know the difference. As far as she is concerned, I'm not an adult until I'm married.

So now it's time to be reminiscent. I've been planning this post for two months, so I intend to make the most of it. This post is not going to be about me (not really). It's about my family. Because if there is anyone you should be congratulating today for surviving these past 20 years, it's them.

I was the trouble child. Ask anyone, even people who didn't know me as a child. Word gets around, and I am saddled with the reputation of being "the Terrible Twos" poster child. It used to bother me, but now I roll with it. "I was a horrible child. The good news is that I got all of that out of the way right off."

It's mostly true.

Mom still takes one look as a child who is screaming, being obstinate, pulling an attitude, or heading toward a spanking and says, “Yup. Must be a second child.” I’m her living proof of overcoming trials and tantrums, of persevering through moodiness and contrariness; proof that spankings work.

Admittedly, I had my rough spots. Still do, and I'm learning to accept that I always will. I've taken to praying that though bumps in the road don't cause any serious damage. So first off, congratulate my parents, because I don't know how they did it. People who know us have an endearing habit of making my parents out to be model parents. People who really know us know what a miracle Mom and Dad truly are. Yes, they are human, but I can say with absolute honesty that there was never one day in my entire life where I believed they did not love me and want the absolute best for me. Sure, some days I was convinced they hated me, but it was a superficial feeling brought on by a well-deserved punishment.

Every day Mom and Dad push us to be the best and to do the best we are capable of. They see the potential in us that even we ourselves ignore. They are our greatest cheerleaders. And they lead by example.

We were raised to be self-sufficient. When I was about 6, I asked Mom in all innocence to teach me to wash the dishes. She jumped at the opportunity, and it paid off, because never once have we owned a dishwasher which worked for longer than 6 months. We were raised with the understanding that being their children did not mean we were entitled to a free ride. We have always had chores, and any money we had we earned (though sometimes it was purely by virtue of turning a year older). It has always been very plain that we live in their house, we add to the dishes and the laundry and the mess, and so we are required to contribute to keeping it clean and in working order.

We know how to tell when something is wrong with our cars, we know how to work through problems to find resolutions, we all have a keen sense of how things work - and even an intuition for how people work.

I will always be thankful for how my parents trained me to be independent (though I sometimes hate it) and engrained in me a work ethic (though some days I prefer to ignore it).

As I said, we all had rough spots. One night they gave up trying to make us eat squash and declared that Heather was their favorite child because she was the only one who could swallow it. When one of us had pushed Mom to her limit, she would throw up her hands and tell us that Dad could deal with us when he got home - which worked in her favor, because that kind of threat was a punishment all its own. I remember the looks when I fainted from a breath-holding contest or a bout of hives; the looks when - twice in my life - I tripped over my own feet and skinned only the bridge of my nose; when I finally caught on to riding a bike at 8 years old but missed the bit about stopping and ended up launching myself onto the grass; when I lost control of my scooter going downhill and chipped my front teeth.

It was never about being our best friends; Mom and Dad are more than that. They are our confidantes, our counselors, our comforters, our coaches. I can always count on their experience to be a guide when I'm stuck.

So here's to my parents, my highest heroes by virtue of getting me this far by whatever means possible.

And then there are my siblings, and there are simply too many memories to put into one post. Wesley and I always had a hard time getting along. I can't pinpoint it. I'd like to say he was jealous of me as a kid. For a little while, my legs were longer than his, and I was the first to achieve three steps running up a tree on paper routes. I bucked up and ran both sides of routes on the winter morning when he was too cold. My vocabulary contained more large (albeit useless) words than his. I had a habit of nit-picking and correcting him, which drove him to insanity some days.

But I was also jealous of him. He could ride his bike with his eye closed and no hands while he ate a sandwich. He wasn't as scared of Death Alley as I was. He was quicker to jump to adventure, and he always got the cool pets (and he had two gerbils at one time!). 

But the more I see of life, the more grateful I am to have such a brother. We both misunderstood each other a lot growing up, and for a while we couldn't stand to be around each other, but somehow we worked past that. He understands me better than most people. He has a sly sense of humor and sarcasm that sometimes even my carefully honed skills can't detect. He has a head for machines and puzzles, for which I am exceedingly envious. And come on; not many girls can pull a popularity card like "my brother has a fake eye".

Then there's Heather, and right about here words fail me. You really would have to see it to believe just how crazy awesome she is. Her talents range from musical to comical. She's the first to pull out a TV, movie, or children's radio show quote and effortlessly incorporate it into the situation at hand. She isn't afraid to be spontaneous, and more than once we've caught her rocking out to a spatula over a grilled cheese sandwich or practicing her mental patient impersonation on the dogs. She can imitate a wide range of accents and characters, one of my favorites being the bat from Anastasia. Yes, she can sing very well, but she also has that special ability of purposefully singing very badly.

Allenna is the biggest dreamer I know. Nothing is impossible to her, and she inherited the family habit of quickly making a talent out of the hobbies she sets her mind to taking up. She has a special way of seeing the world when most people glance over it. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with her, because her mental track runs a different course than the rest of us. She's a creator, a builder, an artist, and she is never afraid to embrace who she is and disregard what the world decrees.

Jealous yet? That's ok; when people give us strange looks for our antics in the grocery store, I know that secretly they are, too. My family makes a point of being ourselves, in home and in public, though we do try to tone down the awesomeness around other people so we don't scare them off with the sheer wonder of it. My mom was the adult teens wanted on the activity. My friends learned not to confide stupid secrets in me or say things they didn't want repeated, because I always ended up passing it along to Dad for us to muse over and chuckle at (sorry, guys; he trained me well). Mom and I rarely have complete verbal conversations anymore because our minds are working too fast for our mouths to keep up, but we always know what the other means. Dad's sense of humor can be the greatest balm for a rough day, simply because we all understand it more than other people, and that alone is comforting.

Even through difficult years, I have always felt safe, secure, and loved. Mom and Dad daily live out that love toward each other and toward us. With them, I have learned that it's best to be honest and simple about myself, to accept myself, and the let the world see me exactly as I am. 

My memory is teeming with memories, both fond and cringe-worthy. We are all a little accident prone: Heather falls down stairs. I fall down stairs. Allenna was always losing one shoe. Heather was always tripping over nothing. Wesley got a lot of bumps on his head.

We have a bad history with animals. Ebony the cat stole the hot dog pieces out of my mac 'n' cheese and dragged a dead snake into the house. Calamity got stuck in the dryer while it was running. Duke the cockatiel loved to fly but was no good at it, running into the window and landing in a sink full of soapy water or crash landing into a table leg. Duchess couldn't fly, and the one time she tried she ended up in the laundry basket. One morning I found Duke sitting on the top of the fridge with Blare the cat inches away from him, both innocent as could be. Ivy the dog was an escape artist whose attitude put Sasha to shame. There was Bunny, the mean cat Mom thought could be sweetened by motherhood, and Ghost, the smelly undergrown cat with six toes on each foot. We had the goldfish, including Cyclops and Fin and the fat one who ate them; and the guppies Robin Hood, Marian, Little John, and Sarah.

The house went through a rodent stage where we had the hamsters, including Tom Thumb the dwarf albino and Bowser, and the one who drowned in a bucket of water; and then the guinea pigs Trixie, Claire, and Frankie; and finally Poka and Dot, the gerbils.
Now we have chickens and ducks.

Trying to put it all into one post makes my childhood seem colorful and full of adventure. Not to say it wasn't. Thing is, it's everyday for me, and I'm so used to it I don't stop to think anymore how blessed I am. And if you ever wondered why my family seems to strange, maybe now you can understand a little better. I haven't even got started on the rest of the relatives. For starters, my mom's sister married my dad's nephew....

I Must Confess....

I know, I know, it is neither Tuesday nor Friday. Evidently I will need a little while to adjust to that self-imposed schedule.

In the meantime, I can say with all certainty that I would rather not dwell on this week. It's been one humdinger of a month, really.

The highlight was yesterday. I got out of work on time. I was driving home with planning the new game I was going to introduce in game time that evening. I had to make a stop at the drugstore for some much needed allergy medicine. Said drugstore has two entrances, and accessing the most expedient route home from either of those requires turning left.

In short, I pulled out in front of some cars which were graciously waiting for me to go and right into the path of a car that was switching to the turn lane.

I registered a brief squeal of tires before impact and spun into the far right lane.

Neither driver was so much as bruised, his car had a dented fender and a cracked light, my driver door will no longer open and the passenger door on that side is dented, and we traded paint. Blessedly there was an officer just pulling out of the parking lot from which I had made my exit, so we could get the whole business over with that much quicker.

I had a ticket and some car repairs to pay for, and that's all I'm going to say about it. That and: good grief, but I am sending out my teenage years with a bang.

I don't mean to seem like I'm brushing it off. By all means, that's what I wish I could do; but one of my worst faults is dwelling on my failings.  For whatever reason, I have an issue with learning from my mistakes, great or small, and letting the rest go. Somedays I live in the land of "What If?" I'm working on it, believe me, but it's not as easy as buckling into a plane seat and holding on for the ride.

So on to brighter things! (You'll get the joke in a moment.)

Ladies and gentleman, my name is Amber, and I am a heliophile.

*collective gasp of horror from audience*

Yes, yes, it is true. I am in deep like...with the sun.

(For those of you not trained in Classic Mythology and etymology, "heliophile" is derived from "Helios, Greek god (Titan?) of the sun", and "phile", meaning "lover of, enthusiast". Proof that Percy Jackson encourages learning.)

But I'm not kidding when I say I love sunshine. Sure, starry nights are great, and I know how to appreciate a good lighting show. One of my favorite ways to fall asleep is to the sound of rain on the roof and thunder in the distance. But my favorite weather of all is sunny.

The only downside of our new house is that it has a grand total of two east-facing windows: one in the living room and one in the downstairs bathroom. Whenever we move, I look for the bedroom with the east-facing window. I had to settle for south, which is second best (oddly preferable over west). I have my room arranged so that when I'm laying on my bed, my head faces east. Probably something to do with how many Disney movies start with morning sunshine on someone's face. Deep down, I bet I do it hoping I'll wake with a smile and a contended yawn like those obnoxious princesses (minus Anna, who is now my morning hero).

Unlike most of the United States at the moment, we had a bit of a weather break yesterday involving sunny skies and temperatures above freezing. Up until I got out of work, I was having a great day daydreaming of springtime. I'm actually getting quite desperate for it.

Allenna and I went to the library last week, and on the way home, I decided I needed to stop by the nursery near our house. Just walking into a room bursting with greenery and the smell of growing things made me happy. When one of the employees came over to ask if I needed anything, I said I was just looking and admitted I needed a vegetation fix. She smiled and told me she'd already met several people who had said the same thing.

People who have known me a while may be a little surprised when I say how much I enjoy being in the sunshine. As a kid, I was more often pale from lack of sunlight as opposed to tan. What can I say? I lived voraciously through others as a child. I'm mostly over that now.

Maybe it's weird, then, that my favorite season is not summer, but spring, when we're more likely to wake to rain clouds than sunshine and birdsong. I think part of my deep appreciation for sunlight comes from missing it during the cloudy months. 

And I'm rambling now. I'd better scoot before things get completely boring.

How I'm Slowly Coming to Grips with Adulthood

I'm sitting in another coffee shop this evening, polishing off some hot chocolate and contemplating the wrap and pie I just ate, which almost filled my meal budget for a week.

Yes, it was delicious.

Per usual, I don't really have much to say. I'm trying to work myself back into the blogging rhythm. Bear with me. Or, conversely, come back in a month and see how I'm doing.

In a month, I'll be 20. Yikes.

I'm not ready for that, guys. Mostly mentally, though a little emotionally as well. 12-year-old me was sure I would at least have a boyfriend by now and be halfway around the world on some grand adventure, or autographing my latest best-seller.

I miss childhood. The world felt so much bigger then. Now I'm settled into my adult job, doing my best to budget and dealing with the responsibilities of maintaing my own car, buying my own clothes and food, and not having to run every social engagement by my mother for approval. (Seriously, she is insisting I be the independent little adult she raised me to be and plan stuff without her ok. It's weird.)

Most days I struggle with my lack of time management skills. I get the feeling this may be a life-long practice. Bother it all, but I am bad at it. Once upon a time, I was that little girl in the corner stuck in her book with a bag of chips. Now I only snatch enough time to read right before bed or in the morning before work. It hurts.

Also, I forgot to mention that over the winter (starting in September, really) I went on something of a health kick. Suddenly I found myself enjoying hummus (which I once swore I would never eat), buying essential oils at the health food store downtown, craving organic granola, and snubbing potato chips and pizza. What? Part of it can be attributed to the fact that by September I had been working a real job for a year. A job that required me to be on my feet and moving around. Turns out what I wanted during my beautiful childhood was a little more activity and a little less curling up to read. Much as it pains me to admit. (Come on. One fencing class made up the whole of my school sports career.)
When I switched to my desk job this September, I had a small moment of panic. Suddenly I was back to sitting for most of the day.
In short, I'm more conscientious of what I eat now. I'm even contemplating a membership at the gym. (Please contain your shock.) But I'm still learning, still adjusting. I'm slow like that. My biggest struggle right now is the feeling that I'm just spinning my wheels. I can't quite explain it, but it's like I just can't manage everything in my life, like I'm missing something in the chaos. Not that I have a lot going on, but I'm trying to figure out how to arrange everything so I can still do the things I love, the things that matter.
I think part of it is this horrible weather. Usually I love winter, or at least know how to endure it, but this one is making me feel a little stir crazy. I'm daydreaming of my garden this year. We didn't get one in last year, and that was rough. Which is silly, because before then I had a grand total of two years as a gardener. I put in a load of bulbs around the front of the house, and I'm eager to see how they will look. Mom is making plans for the vegetables we will have. Mostly I'm happy that the chickens will be contained to their run and I will be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors in peace without worrying that someone's beak will destroy them for a snack.
I'm also hoping to get into a good walking/running habit with Sasha. She's been driving us all a little crazy lately with her boundless energy. It's embarrassing what a terrible dog owner I turned out to be. Live and learn, right?
The beauty is that I can only imagine the ways God is going to use all of what I'm learning. I'm just trying my best to make the most of it while I'm here. My inner child whispers that somewhere there is a lesson that could save my life one day. That annoying mature, practical part of me groans.
I came here tonight with Mom, who had a Search and Rescue group meeting. Wanting to meet the people she and Dad always talk about, I joined them in their separate room for a while. It got weird when I choked on a bite of lettuce and realized if I showed signs of distress, I'd have half-a-dozen people jumping to offer assistance. Wesley and Heather know how well I handle the suggestion of CPR. I carefully and slowly swallowed that lettuce and soon left. And now I'm waiting, because I didn't expect it to take this long.
At least here I don't have the distractions I'd have at home. Like chores and a dirty room and a cuddly puppy and one of Allenna's shows on TV. That's the problem with me and time management: I have time, but worrying about how to manage it leaves me tired and I end up wasting my time.
And I'm just rambling. I should probably go. I will say, before I do, that my goal is to blog Fridays and Tuesdays as often as I can manage. I never realized how much of a stress relief blogging is to me. (Well, the stress mostly came from guilt that I wasn't blogging, but....) So until Friday, I hope!

It's Been So Long, I Can't Think of a Title

Well, my friends....

I think my long, impromptu hiatus should come to a close now.

I couldn't tell you what prompted that abrupt disappearance from the blog sphere. The hardest part, as I know well, is breaking the silence. I'm sitting at a coffee shop right now and I'm determined to get this thing going again.

So here I am. Just after my last post (way back in September) I started a new job. I'm still at it. It took a while to adjust, because said new job is vastly different from the smoothie shop. It involves sitting at a desk for seven hours a day, four days a week plus Sunday afternoons, typing into a computer and talking on the phone. Most easily described as a secretary kind of job, though it entails a little more, it's the kind that rated second on my list of jobs I never wanted; the first being fast food.

God has a beautiful sense of humor, doesn't He? I think He's trying to teach me something. Maybe, "Never say you won't do that," or, "Keep yourself open to anything"?

So that's the biggest news. Everyone knows about our arctic winter. Our Floridian friends called a snow day, and the Chicago Zoo's polar bear had to be moved to a climate-controlled room because he was ill-prepared for the chill. Ironies abound.

For our family, the biggest issue is the wind. It comes whipping across the fields and drags the snow into huge drifts that narrow the roads to one lane and help us girls perfect our windblown look on Sundays. It has also helped to turn our driveway into a sheet of ice. It's a wonder none of the vehicles have any new dents.

That's about it for news. Most of the animals are still alive (though I've lost count of the chickens), we've managed to survive the worst of the flus and stomach bugs going around (minus Heather, who developed pneumonia in December), and we've all adjusted to Wesley no longer living at home. Christmas was a little bittersweet because we could sleep in rather than deliver papers but we didn't get tips to look forward to. I tried no poo with my hair (you know, where you don't use shampoo but baking soda) and it worked great for a while before it killed my hair. Life has been quiet.

And now I'm not sure what to say. I'm wishing I had brought my headphones. My muffin is kind of dry. And I picked the wrong place to sit (the table is too tall for the chair) but I don't want to move.

There is a topic I've been planning to blog about for a while, but I'm not ready to do it justice just yet. So I think I'll sign off now and work on guilting myself into returning later.

Breaking the Silence

So that was an unintentionally long absence...of a month.

Right.

Not that I'm not busy and have nothing to say. On the contrary, I have plenty to say. But I got stuck on a Peru-related post and writer's block is an obstacle with which I still struggle. I plan to return to the Peru topic  after a while, but I'm going to let it rest for now because my life remains ever eventful and I don't want to miss that.

I think the hardest part of blogging is picking it back up after not writing for a while. Followed closely by figuring out what to write.

I don't want to do a recap. Not a full one, at least. I don't want to jam this post chock-full of ramblings.

High on the list of "important things happening in Amber's life" is that I got a new job! It came in a round-about way after I'd given up on a different job opportunity I'd been pursuing. The company is owned by friends of ours, and Wesley worked for them a couple summers ago. Our family histories met years ago when Mom was worked at a pizzeria owned by the wife. (Ah, such found memories....)

A very basic way to describe my job would be along the lines of "office administration", though it entails more than it sounds (and I now know what it feels like when someone says their head is "swimming"...). It's a (mostly) desk job, though my new dwelling with not be a cubicle. Actually, at the moment my area of operations is right next to a big window.

Mom worked this same position in a part-time capacity a while ago, so she's able to help me (or sympathize, mostly) as I adjust. I don't officially start until the week of the 22nd, because I have to work through my last two weeks at the smoothie shop. However, I've already run a few "practice rounds", so I have a very basic understanding of what I will be doing. Very basic.

Let's see....

We got more hens a while back. Two Ameracaunas (or Easter Eggers, as I believe they are in truth), some true Rhode Island Reds (decidedly darker and more red than our original batch), and some more White Leghorns. It took them a few days to get adjusted to the rigamarole of life among the Royce flock, as well as a couple nights hiding under the coop or in the trees, but they're pretty well integrated now. Soon we will bid adieu to most of our roosters, and for most of them we couldn't be happier to see them go. Presley, one of our Polish roosters, is maniacal and lives solely to torment every living creature he comes in contact with. Some of the Buffs (who all turned out to be roosters) are almost equally evil, and are the epitome of everything I despise in chickens. We have one guy who's decent and for the most part ignores us, which I guess is the best we can hope for.

Oh. And the ducks are both drakes, unfortunately. They are dubbed Aflac and Waddles, and they remain ridiculously endearing.

The only other thing I can think of right now is that Autumn is nearly upon us. Last week we had one day in the high 90's with lots of humidity, and a few days later we woke up to temperatures just above freezing. The trees are on the brink of turning. We're all thinking a road trip is in order.

I pulled out my collect of scarves and fingerless gloves and am eager to return them to use. Spring is still my favorite season to experience, but Autumn is my favorite for the wardrobe.

Okay. I have nothing of use to say, so I'll cut this short. Now that my reintroduction is over, I can move on to more important things. Good grief.

The Ocean

My trip to Peru held many new experiences. One of them was the fulfillment of a personal dream of mine: to see the ocean.

Yeah, I've never been to the ocean, at least that I can recall. Plenty of lakes 'round here, sure, but they aren't the same thing.

It was the Monday we went to the other children's home and the holding tank (and also the day Dad and I went mountain climbing). Actually, we'd seen the ocean earlier in the trip when we visited a more ritzy part of Lima to eat lunch, but it wasn't up close. We watched from a distance while a couple people tried to surf, and shivered sympathetically every time they fell. But Monday we got up close and personal.

First we drove through the yards full of shipment containers. The less pleasant ocean-related smells seemed to gather around there. The area where we disembarked was a clean little park, complete with small grassy lawns and a statue involving a cannon. The shore was all rocky and kind of steep at points. My lake tourist-side kicked in and I immediately started watching for sea shells. Some people in the group started skipping stones or trying to catch fish, and others spent most of their time getting too close to the water and having to outrun the waves.

I think one of the coolest parts about that visit was just listening to the water. The view certainly wasn't that great, what with us being near a port and there being so many ships blocking the horizon. There weren't many seagulls like we get at home, so that did help a little. But the sound of the waves in and of itself was amazing, especially when the water receded: the sound of so much water rushing over the rocks, shifting them and pulling them and dragging the smaller ones back down. It wasn't a roaring, like how waves are usually described, but more like a...shushing sound, almost. (Susurrus, anyone?) It was one of those sounds that can be difficult to describe, like the wind in a hemlock* forest (which remains one of my favorite nature sounds). I wish there was some way I could have recorded it well. On that stretch of rock-covered beach, the sound probably was loud, but it didn't have that powerful quality like thunder.
We all wandered the beach for a while. I got a pocketful of shells and a couple neat stones. Many of the shells were stained a greenish color, and where worn smooth by the water. I ended up sharing them with Allenna when we got home, because she likes seashells and I could say I picked it up at the ocean.
I did double-check all my shells to make sure they didn't still have residents. It's not so much bugs that make me squeamish as the slimy, oozy, blobby creatures like slugs and things that live in shells.
There were other people there besides our group, though not many of them. I was kneeling down looking at rocks when a little Peruvian boy stooped next to me and picked up a tiny star fish. Excited by his find, he immediately leaned over to show it to me, exclaiming enthusiastic things I couldn't understand. I nodded and smiled and declared, "Muy bonita," which may not even be correct. Suddenly the boy was more curious about who on earth he was talking to than about his starfish. He took one hard look at me, realized I wasn't Peruvian, and scrambled away.
Our trip to the ocean turned out more profitable that just a collection of shells and fossils. Some in the group had been handing out tracts to the other visitors, and a couple ladies ended up getting saved right there as a result. That occasion served to remind me of the real reason we were there.
Years ago I noticed that I have a habit of staring at the ground when I walk. It's probably in part because I'm so clumsy and I'm trying to avoid anything that might cause me to trip. However, when I noticed this habit, I decided I should probably correct it, or I'd end up walking through life too focused on the dirt and miss everything else. I still have to make a conscious effort some days to lift my head and make eye contact with people and admire the flowers and look at what's ahead of me.
At the beach, I spent most of my time staring at the ground searching for tiny seashells which I could stuff in my pockets and admire as trinkets. I wasn't handing out tracts or even saying "hello" to the other people there. I barely noticed them until that little boy wanted to share in his discovery.
We get the same way in life: so focused on find seashells and watching our footing that we forget or ignore the people around us, and we forget that there's something ahead of us that we should be pressing for.We wander around, lost in our little world and careless to the rest. In the end, all we have to show for that are some shiny, broken, fragile little shells even the sea creatures don't want.
Putting myself in a new environment jolted me enough to wake me up to this reality, but already I'm off that "spiritual high". I'm not worried about losing the somewhat manufactured excitement and enthusiasm, but I am worried about losing or forgetting a true passion for people.

I enjoyed my visit to the ocean, but I'm disappointed that I missed the more important thing that happened there.

The Mountain

I realize that up until now my posts about Peru have been more about themes from the trip and not single stories or what we did day-by-day, as I'd originally intended. Turns out it's easier for me to organize my thoughts going with this new format, but in this post I am just going to give one story: the day I climbed the mountain (with Dad).

When we first arrived at the children's home (5 bloomin' AM), I was so groggy I couldn't sort out conversations on the bus from my own half-asleep hallucinations. I seem to recall that it was as we were pulling up in front of the home that someone made a comment about climbing a mountain. 

It was a generally accepted idea that our first full day would be spent relaxing, sleeping in, having brunch, and hydrating to avoid getting sick. However, most of us were up and functioning (at least basically) by 10:00. We were all warned to take it slow, but some silly person revisited the notion of going hiking, and the majority of the group adopted this notion.

The home is set uphill at the edge of a decently-sized mountain which leading into the higher peaks of the surrounding range. Before lunch more than half of our group was scrambling up this mountain.

I really wanted to go, but I was feeling cautious, not sure how I would handle a climb after so little sleep following an exhausting and thirsty day. (They do not give you enough water on planes.) I had a bit of a headache and deep down knew I was still tired, so I curled up on my top bunk with a journal and dozed in the sunlight. As I didn't see much real sunshine for the remainder of the trip, I later appreciated this.

However, I still wanted to try that mountain one day or another. A couple of the guys in the group hiked it together some of the mornings before breakfast, and I asked Dad if we could do the same. We were going to go Saturday, but plans got changed when so local officials started yelling at us and we didn't know what they were saying, and then Sunday was church day, obviously. So Monday it was.

I will say that on Saturday we went to visit some ruins and I did a little practice climbing. That was very neat, and good experience for me. I was unusually brave on this trip, and pushed myself farther than I normally do. Good thing, too.

I set my alarm on my watch for 7:00 on Monday. Breakfast was served at 9:00, and I figured 2 hours was plenty of time. I forgot, however, that I had never switched my watch to the correct timezone (never could figure out how). So at 6:15 local time I was knocking on the door to Mom and Dad's bedroom. Dad was up pretty quickly, and we set out into the pouring mist.

"You know it's just after 6:00, right?" Dad asked.

"Is it? That explains somethings...." Like how the sun was barely up.

I went armed with a bottle full of water, a Clif bar, and some crackers, all of which I stuffed into Dad's backpack. I had on some denim capris, some cheap Wal-Mart sneakers, layered shirts, and a sweatshirt, my hair in a ponytail.

The adventure before us was nothing like we were expecting, and it provided some excellent character building exercises and also some father/daughter bonding time. The early hour, the altitude, the adrenaline, the exhilaration, and the fear messed with my head and made me feel particularly philosophical and poetic. Thankfully I kept my mouth shut most of the time.

We had been told by the previous hikers in our group that the easiest way to get down was to go all the way to the top and take the trail there back down and around. I had no idea what the definition of "the top" was, and pretty soon we couldn't see very far for the fog. We could hear pretty well: chickens, dogs, some vehicles, the occasional goose, perhaps a sheep, and sometimes the falling rocks we kicked or tossed down.

10 or 15 minutes in, we sat down to catch our breath, and I nibbled my bar. Dad made some comment about how he wondered what the path down was like, because he certainly wouldn't be coming back this way. I wholeheartedly agreed.

The terrain changed from thin dusty sand over brown rock to rough, craggy granite with patches of moss. I wished aloud for a pair of decent climbing gloves. Earlier I had recalled Heather mentioning a spot where it got kind of scary, and I think we found it when the trail narrowly snaked along the edge. It was probably a good thing we couldn't see very far.

I think we took another short break somewhere around there, when we found a relatively level area. My hands smelled moldy, but that was the worst of my complaints. However, I learned that, at least mentally, it is significantly more difficult to stand back up after sitting down on steep, rocky ground.

From that point we pressed on. About an hour into our little trek, we started wondering about when we would find the trail down. We knew - or guessed - that it was near one of the peaks; which one remained to be seen, quite literally. Every time a peak rose out of the fog, I wondered if it was the right one, but then I'd see another one appear when we reached the previous.

At last we came to a point where the trail seemed to disappear. Sometimes before that point we could see marks where other people had gone before, but here there was nothing to be seen. I looked up, Dad went back down and around: zilch. Was this it? There was no obvious trail down.

After some debate, we figured we might as well start down. Perhaps we'd meet the correct trail on the way. There was no way we would be going back the way we'd come.

Dad took the lead. He had started that way, and at one point we switched for a little while. I was happy to follow his lead now. As soon as we stepped over the crest of the mountain, the sounds of the city below disappeared. The only sounds now were ours, though we made plenty of them.

Trusty solid ground became a memory, and every foot- and hand-hold was tested to ensure integrity. All the fun was gone, and now we just had to focus on the next move.

About that point, Dad and I made an agreement: there were some things Mom never needed to know.

In short, I learned how to control a free slide when no other option was available; my favorite phrase was "oops, sorry" when I kicked loose rocks that hit Dad's hands and feet, but thankfully not (to my knowledge) his head; I stuck to the four-point rule: three limbs and my face in contact with the mountain at all times. Sometimes we crabbed along an edge, hugging the sides and testing the reach of our arms and legs. A few times our only trail was the course of a previous landslide; once, near the end, it was a footpath for dogs. We came across a lost shoe, and a couple hundred feet later we found its mate. For a very long 3-4 seconds I had no foot- or hand-holds and was not in a controlled slide: some of the most terrifying seconds of my life.

Near the end, Dad reminded me of the possible danger of scorpions. Good thing he hadn't mentioned it earlier, because from then on I scrutinized every nook and cranny.

The aforementioned dog path took us back to the upward trail. Around the same time, the hum of the city returned. A path we had earlier determined was much too tough and dangerous to take down became a laughing matter, a breeze, a stroll. Suddenly we had our pick of paths to take, we could move vertically, and we could trust where we put our feet.

We took one final break, sitting down and enjoying the view, now that the fog had cleared. We saw my youth pastor jogging on a soccer field. Some dogs, indignant that we were on their turf, barked at us from a nearby backyard.

Finally, we started on the home stretch. One of the men from the group had come out of the dormitory at the home, coffee in hand, and watched us.

Dad and I resumed our conversation we had abandoned during the last tense hour. We were almost back.

Then I got too

confident. Conquering a mountain will do that to you. Literally two minutes from the bottom, I lost my balance and slipped.
I caught myself hard on my hands. Our coffee-drinking friend confirmed that my "Ow!" echoed. Dad paused to check on me; I'd slipped and automatically mumbled "ow" a number of times before, but that "ow" was usually out of surprise.
This was a real "ow".
The heel of my left hand was scraped and already red from blood that had welled up, though it didn't gush. Dad launched into a first-aid lecture as we finished our decent.
Looking back, I should have made up some heart-lurching story about how I got that "battle wound". Of course, I told the boring truth. And then cried in agony while some hand sanitizer did it's terrible job and said wound was properly cleaned. I seriously think I almost passed out.
We arrived, clean and on time for breakfast, and people said, "Oh, you climbed the mountain?" Ha! Did we ever. They were casual about it because they...well, they did it the right way. "But I, I took the road less traveled by." We had our own unique mountain experience, even if no one ever learns the details.
It was determined that we didn't follow the path far enough. Yeah, we'd worked that out on our own. No one was very clear on where the actual path could be found, though it sounded like we'd gone a little too far up that last cliff and missed the path that led around.

Looking back, I can't believe I managed that little adventure. At the time, there was no other option, so I guess my brain went into survival mode or something; I certainly wasn't thinking normally.

As we were making our way down, right before I fell, Dad made a comment about how I was even more like Bilbo Baggins. I'm assuming he meant something about mountain climbing in general, though it might have been an allusion to an Unexpected Journey. Certainly it didn't involve dragons, dwarves, or treasure hunting.

I don't regret doing it. The experience of trail-blazing and putting my rock-climbing abilities to the test is one I'll remember for a while (considering my indoor rock climbing attempts never amounted to much).

Unfortunately, I won't have a decent scar to commemorate it. Mom and Dad kept checking the status of my wound, worried about tetanus and blood poisoning and severe scarring, but a few days of antibiotic ointment and band-aids and then letting it sit in the open air and it healed disappointingly well. In the end, I might have some boring discoloration.

(I did have one of the girls scrutinize it on the bus ride. She grabbed my hands and I winced, and she noticed the scrape. She poked and prodded and muttered "ow" over and over until the nanny next to me told her to leave it alone.)

And that was my and Dad's mountain hiking adventure!