Sunday was a nice lazy day. I think I may be running my sister into the ground pretty quickly. I need to remember to chill out with the itineraries. I thought it would be fun to try makin' some bacon pancakes. Of course inspired by this lovely song that will forever be stuck in your head, compliments of Teo.
It was fun to try something new. We candied the bacon first to make it extra delicious. And it was. No post from this trip is complete without food.
The recipe is easy. You just take a bacon and you put it in a pancaaakke! ... In Neeww Yoooorrrk!
Here is your complete photo tutorial, deprived of that lovely song.
I have sometimes involved cooking posts on this blog. Because I am a human, and I need food. Also, because I love food. This often leads me to prepare food for myself. And when I feel the situation warrants, I post about the experience.
A lot of my cooking is from scratch because it's cheaper. Not because I am Holly Housewife and I love making the kitchen a huge mess for something that is gobbled up in 5 minutes.
But sometimes it is cheaper to NOT cook from scratch. I enjoy those times. When I found these tubes (yay 2015 and tubes of food!) of cookie dough for less than a buck, it was hard to resist.
I remembered some chocolate-chip-cookie-cream-cheese bar somethings rolling across my Pinterest feed awhile back. Of course I had scoffed, "PPFFFTTT WHO JUST HAS MONEY FOR PRE-MADE COOKIE DOUGH!" and hence not re-pinned.
I guess I couldn't fathom the day I would be this rich! Here it is folks, two bucks burning a hole in my pocket.
I found pretty much the same recipe across the internet, using this one but doubling it (TWO TUBES of dough succkkkas!), and adding vanilla cos I do what I want. Some people cook with wine (you know what I mean), I cook with music. Sublime with Rome has a new album coming out but all we get for now is this single. I could listen to the first 30 seconds of that song on repeat all day.
I know because I did.
And can we please find another name for this dessert?
As I get older and get closer to supposedly figuring this all out, I couldn't be farther from understanding anything. But I'm learning a lot about these creatures called humans during my sojourn here on Earth. Thanks to the magical powers of Pandora I stumbled across this beautiful song awhile back. It's been love ever since.
-New Soul-
Yael Naim
Not only is it incredibly beautiful, it is also upbeat. It's easy to belt out or hum. A nice little song.
And of course the lyrics aren't bad either. No matter how near or far I travel from the Shire, people always surprise me. Today, I am surprised (though I shouldn't be) about the incredible people I call my friends. Their endless and boundless love that is always there for me.
I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take
But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
Sometimes I feel like, in the song, I find myself making every possible mistake. I forget important events, I don't call as much as I should, I'm clumsy with my comforting words, I get irritable, I say things I don't mean, I'm slow to apologize.
But I'm learning from every single one of those mistakes. And as I take, I hope I also give.
See I'm a young soul in this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate? Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make
As Yael tells us in the song, trust and love is not
always easy to make (or, might I add, maintain). But I am so grateful
for those people who, despite distance and friendship tremors, and my
very human mistakes, still love and trust me. This world is filled with ugly hate, ugly disdain. Sometimes because of silly things, sometimes because of important things. But communicate! And you can find so much beauty in this world through trustworthy and loyal people.
This is a happy endCome and give me your handI'll take you far away
Sometimes life can really stink. But I believe, no matter how deeply it gets buried in my heart, that we were made for happy endings. Despite our mistakes and shortcomings, despite the ugliness and fear of the world, we have so much beauty around us, and so many friends that care.
Tuesday morning we headed to Pandy beach. One of my favorites.
I don't think I will ever get sick of these waves movies I take (or my Dad takes). My parents had a good laugh when they saw the sea glass literally littering the shore. The glass that was yesterday so elusive, was sitting in plain sight. Haha.
There is lots of interesting sea glass, but I like the alternative route. Finding stuff that isn't sea glass. I'm never really happy until I find something to impress my parents (see: Urchel), and I am happy to report I found a real stumper!
What is that thing?! A mollusk of sorts? The curious thing, as you might be able to see, is that it is wrapped around the branch. I found it on the shore, dry. The little thing is dry and hard like a shell. There was another one, just a few inches down on the branch. And after a little more walking on the beach I found another one, near a branch, but not attached. My dad has since brought it back to CA and gave it to his marine biologist friends. I will keep you updated, since I know you are waiting with bated breath.
One of my favorite things of the past week since my parents left is finding these little Daddy The Science Guy gems from his videos I snagged.
Tuesday we also had the honor of Ross's presence. He hasn't been slacking nearly enough, so I'm trying to remind him how to do that. If there is one thing Ross will skip studying for, it's snorkeling. Snorkels, masks, and fins in flipper hand we headed to Groom's Beach.
Pretty big fans of the beach.
We traded off snorkeling, swimming, and lounging.
Ross and I decided to climb around on the rocks.
We saw a dude snorkeling in the water just in front of us, and then the man tried to get our attention. We couldn't understand what he was saying, but his pushy and adamant tone made it seem important. After a few moments of listening over the waves we understood. He was telling us not to climb on the rocks because the whole cliffside could come crashing down on us at any moment.
....
Typical Grenada. Love it or hate it, Grenadians have a way of parenting all children, even if those children are adults. Even if that cliffside would also probably crush him, seeing as how he was swimming about ten feet from where we were walking.
Confused, we wandered back to sandy, less perilous shores. He made sure to track us down, get out of the water, and give Ross a talkin' too!
I've immortalized his words in text so that we never forget his sage advice:
We ended the day at Grille Master. An inexpensive, rather delicious, fast-food type place. "Fast-food type" because, this is the Caribbean after all. I got a cordon bleu burger which was delicious, but I think all of us ended up envying Ross's jerk chicken wrap. Another awesome day of vacation!
Saturday night my parents flew in, and after jumping the proverbial gun and waiting at the airport for over an hour, their bright smiling faces emerged from their day long journey across half the globe!
It was so wonderful to see them and know that they were all mine for almost a whole week. We hung out at my place while I rounded up some dinner and they gave me and Ross tons of goodies. It's pretty fun to be so spoiled. I think my absolute favorite was two WHOLE boxes of Samoa Girl Scout cookies.
Oh happiness!
I hope they weren't too nervous zooming around the awful roads, on the left side of the road, when it was completely dark out, but we got them situated in their hotel room and let them get some rest before our adventure packed week began.
My parents landed a pretty incredible hotel, thanks to their crazy clever travel agent. This HUGE staircase to their room really put the "grand" in "Grand Anse Beach Palace Hotel." The whole week we had fun joking about how grand it was
Sunday we met them at the hotel, which is just a stone's throw from the church building. We had a fun adventure and walked to church in the morning. We ooooo'd and ahhh'd at the beautiful view, but my parents are a little spoiled because they have almost the same exact view from their hotel room. Lucky ducks.
With these two, I was bound to have incredible looks.
After Church we made some lunch then headed up into the jungle. But not before dad and ali dipped their toes in the Caribbean Sea for the first time (just like Rissa, had to get photo evidence)!
I've mentioned it before, but Grand Etang is one of my favorite places on the island. It was fun to steal Ross away to chauffeur us up there.
The lady at the ticket booth gave me some attitude when I politely asked if we could get in for free because Ross was a student.
"No. Today, you pay."
I took my parents aside and told them it wasn't worth it to look at their crusty "museum." So we said never mind thank you very much. Then the lady got more attitude and was like "whatever, you are here, just go in."
Yes we will thanks. Typical.
So we spent two minutes looking at their crusty posters, spending a minute taking the perfect selfie for #selfiesunday. Oddly making it's debut here on a Tuesday #betterlatethannever.
Then we took a purposeful NEAT-ure walk. I love that we drove up from the west coast, but here is a view of the east coast.
It's been a bit windy lately, and on our walk we heard the bamboo clinking together like wind chimes. I tried to capture it.
After we gracious thanked the lady at the ticket booth with many smiles and kind words and headed to the lake to try our hand at, well, hand fishing. Thanks to my cool friend CeCe. I've kinda become obsessed with teaching others about hand fishing.
No fish catches today. I would day I am a horrible teacher... but instead I will say I take great selfies and my students aren't very serious. I mean, just look at these students.
My dad was absolutely thrilled to put his feet in and have the millions of fish chew off his dead skin. No joke, this was a bucket list. What a lucky guy that he didn't have to make a separate trip to Asia.
Our last stop was the Lance aux Epines tidepools.
Ross and dad had a fun time poking around at the crabs. Getting some awesome neat-ure shots. Classic dad. We ended the day at my apartment. I probably made something for dinner. But I am pretty sure it involved snow-cones.
It was a full and fun day. As you can tell from my dad's dramatic face, it was pretty hot.
This is only the third Music Monday, but I still wanted to do something a little different from the first two.
When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I judge them for a second and usually say something standard like, "rock." But that is still such a huge category.
Gaslight Anthem is one of my all time favorite bands. I only discovered them since I first saw Ross rocking a t-shirt. I figured if that semi-decent guy liked them, I should look them up. And in my interwebs searching, the song that stuck with me the most was Navesink Banks. I kept listening to it over and over. I didn't pay close attention to the lyrics until much later. But there is something ... haunting? Meaningful? Passionate? About the lead Brian Fallon's vocals, something about the guitar strums that linger.
I love simple songs that stand alone, but I am a sucker for songs that relate to literature, pop culture, other songs on the album, or similar musicians. Because when you are listening to them for the 100th time, you can pick up on something new. After this post, listen to Bruce Springsteen's The River. See if you can draw any parallels. Springsteen has a similar style, The Gaslight Anthem has played with him, and they are both from Jersey.
I love the way the song opens,
"'All hope abandon, ye who enter here', said a sign I read that was hanging above her bed."
It's a reference to the phrase inscribed on the gates of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The song goes on to tell a story of a young man and his adventures out on his own at a young age. Of sorts, similar to the descent into Hell in Inferno.
In the song there is a reoccurring phrase, "My first sin was..." It changes throughout the song and starts with
"My first sin was a young American girl."
What he sees as his first step down a slippery slope.
"I ran with dirty angels, slept out in the rain, we were scared and tired and barely 17."
"Dirty angels" is an interesting phrase because of the obvious juxtaposition. Angels are thought of to be holy and pure and clean. But I like the imagery of "dirty angels." To me it could mean good people who are caught up in wrong doing, or maybe good people who don't appear to be good, but nevertheless are.
As the narrator is looking back on his life, he later says,
"My first sin was the fear that made me old."
Again, his first sin, not his second. It makes me wonder, is this synonymous with his first sin? Or looking back has he changed his mind about his first sin? Either way, to me it signifies that maybe the fear of being on his own, running with a hellians, acting tough, made him feel mature and grow up a little too early. After all, he has told us that he was "barely 17."
The last verse and my favorite, is set in the present. He is talking to (I assume) a significant other, reminiscing on his rocky past, perhaps with much regret.
"Ah, Maria if you'da known me when." But she only smiles by the light on the Navesink banks sayin', "Listen Baby, I know you now."
You can tell that this woman cares about him and forgives him his past. Who we were is part of who we are, but it does not have to determine the present.
"I just stand by the moon, thinking bout a ghost I hear at night."
This line really shows contemplation. The past haunts him, it isn't something he can easily forgive or forget.
The last line, spoken by the woman, is the best of the whole song. It's now her turn to determine what his proverbial "first sin" was.
"Your first sin was a lie you told yourself."
To me, she is telling him to stop lying to himself. He's not a bad person, and all these "first sins" are just lies he is holding onto. And holding onto them is holding him back.
I can't get over how much I love this song. It sends chills up my spine. The imagery, the emotion, the mystery.
What do you think?
What songs do you like that are packed full of emotion and meaning?
I don't watch American Idol. Haha, I know right? I don't watch much TV in general. I had a brief stint with The Voice, like I watched it two weeks in a row.
What I am getting at is, I do not know who Phillip Phillips is. But I stumbled across his song "Home" whilst on Pandora sometime last year. My bestie Teo introduced me to this incredible musician Kina Grannis. It was love a first listen. I'm no pro at things like this, but I know that her voice makes me melt. And makes me feel a little angry that I can't sing like that.
Kina writes and sings her own stuff, she tags along with some musicians, and she does a bunch of covers. It is really hard to choose a favorite, so I just chose two.
Home - Philip Philips (Cover by Kina Grannis)
The Scientist - Coldplay (Cover by Kina Grannis, Tyler Ward, Lindsey Stirling)
I just love the way all the musicians fit together, like pieces of a puzzle, to present such a enchanting cover of this amazing song by Coldplay.
I love musicians that are versatile. I think it's hard to find popular, real talent. Anyone can sing if you fix it up post-production and make them sound perfect. But live performances, and working with different kinds of artists really showcases true talent.
My last and maybe favorite (but let's be honest I could never choose a favorite) is a song she worked on for Fuse with Hoodie Allen. I know you'll never guess it, but Teo also told me about this song.
Make it Home - Hoodie Allen & Kina Grannis
Lately it has been stuck in my head non-stop, but I'm not complaining. I find myself singing random bits of it around the house. You can check out the live version if you want, because why wouldn't you want to stare at those two for 4 minutes?... or more if you happen to put it on repeat.
"I wanna go where the lights are low and the dreamers are chasin'.
I wanna live like we don't know much but we know we're gonna make it."
Saturday December 28th, 2013
Even though the day before was kinda really awful, with the days of her stay quickly dwindling, we made the most of Saturday!
Ross and I ran over to the store to get some monkey bait food. The store was fresh out, so we did a drive by the fruit stand behind the store. Don't worry east Palmdale friends, what I mean is, I stopped the car, and paid for the bananas. She really talked up her crop. She said that they were gomishell bananas? Yeah idk. But they were AMAZING. I guess they are just a type of banana but they were really sweet and creamy (sorry Cass). I really wanted to keep them for myself, but I also really wanted to see a monkey.
Anyways, we packed up for a fun day and headed into the heart of the rain forest.
If you are wondering/ jealous, the party hat came with the car.
It looks like I am all about story telling today, so let me tell you a story about the freakin' monkeys up at Grand Etang. Those little stinkers hate me. When you first come down to Grenada, everyone has to get their picture with a monkey to be in the cool kids club. It's a rite of passage, like getting a picture with Cosmo when you attend BYU.
You wanna know how many times I have been to Grand Etang? Too many.
You wanna know how many times I have seen a monkey? NEVER.
Those monkeys are just so freakin rude. This time I was determined to see a monkey. Apparently they are out and about for the tourists this time of year, so I grabbed my gomi-whatever bananas and delicately carted them 1,800 feet up, up, up above sea level.
Bless my lucky stars, guess who rushed out when we got out of the car.
Boom! Those gomi-nanas are purrre gold! I think they know the good stuff when they see it. Honestly we were pretty lucky, there were plenty of tourists bustling around, but the monkey came straight to us.
These monkeys don't take no crap. Monkey Rules: Don't peel the banana, keep the goods in plain sight, wait patiently.
I held on tight and the monkey totally crawled up my legs!
The evolutionary brain of these animals is phenomenal. After he took my banana, he went over to Rissa's and instead of doing something cute like crawling up her legs, the straight up snatched the banana!
I think I speak for all of us when I say we were ecstatic to have such a wonderful run in with a monkey. Haha. We were laughing about his attitude long after he stalked off into the jungle.
It is tourist high season right now, so we wandered around and played the part.
We wandered over to the visitor's center, where there is a nice view of the lake.
The view is clearly marked, in case you forget, or didn't notice.
I think Grand Etang is Ross's favorite place in Grenada. The air up there is so nice and cool and fresh. All that green isn't bad either. After educating ourselves on the Grand Etang Lake Ecosystem at the visitor's center, we headed to the lake.
Looking back, I guess I never blogged about hand fishing with Katie and Cece... But it's a thing folks. I didn't think anyone would want to try, so I didn't bring bread, but that didn't stop them.
It is really freaky to see all the fish swarming your hands. I didn't get a great picture, but you can see the yellows and oranges of the huge koi that live in the lake.
Ross actually caught a fish! But I was too busy taking bad pictures to get one of his victory.
Not to be vain, but I really like this picture of me because I think I look a lot like my mom. And my mom is really beautiful, so I will just go ahead and hand myself this one. ;)
I grew up the desert, and every once in a while I am reminded how how stunning the deep greens are here. Look at that blue sky!
Sadly, we couldn't fish all day. We had a measly piece of bread that was quickly disintegrating. So we decided to head down to the close by Annandale Falls.
The world's most fantastic storm happened to stop by (I think after Santa dropped by thank goodness).
I live on the top floor, and the tin roof (or whatever it's made of) magnifies the rain x 100. It's like the world's loudest rainstick. The rain woke some of us at first, but we were able to get back to sleep. It wasn't until the booming thunder and lightning show that we were all out of bed, eyes glued to the windows.
It was the most incredible storm I have ever witnessed (not that I have much credence). I tried to take some video, here are my attempts.
This one captures some good lightning. But it just doesn't do it justice. It was like the lightning was playing tag, back and forth, back and forth. It would illuminate the entire sky.
This video has some good thunder, but again, it doesn't capture it all. It sounded like someone in the clouds was banging on timpani drums, not just one, but a whole sloppy symphony of them.
Days like this, I can see how people like Grenada. But that is because with me not working, and Ross not in school, and endless amounts of government loan money repay-able at 9% interest (joke), we can be tourists.
I've been pretty crabby lately because I just want Rissa to be here! She left this morning, but won't be here until Sunday evening. The suspense is killing me! I think in an effort to distract me, and get out of the house, Ross and I headed to the tidepools here in Lance aux Epines. I've been there plenty of other times. I blogged about it twice before, here and here.
It's one of my favorite places. There is always a breeze, and you are on a little peninsula so you are surrounded by ocean and crashing waves. And besides 800 used condoms, there is no one else ever out there.
It's no Leo Carillo, but maybe I like the spot because it reminds me of home. My family would always always go to the tidepools, field guide in hand, and climb around looking for animals and creatures in the rocks.
Above is a different view, looking out towards Hog Island, that big greenish lump you see in the center-leftish. Beyond that I think is Secret Harbor and Calivingy.
As you can see, if gets a little windy out there! So of course Ross is a big fan of the place.
We just hung out and watch the huge waves crash on the rocks.
There was this little spot where the waves would wash into this crevice and create a kind of geyser.
We noticed a ton of little crabs scurrying along the rocks. I don't think they thought it was as fun to watch the huge waves crash on the rocks have huge waves annihilate them.
Happy kid loves the sea! And probably the sea water mist on his face.
The water was actually very clear today.
The storm clouds and rain were coming and going, it couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or pour. I didn't mind, because we stayed relatively dry.
When the clouds looked too much to take we took cover under a few trees, then eventually headed back home. Little did we know, we were in for a Neat-ure Walk!
Please watch one of my favorite videos on all of YouTube (and thanks to Ali and Cass for showing it to me)!
"Without a doubt, coming out into nature is one of the coolest things to do!"
"Oh! SCORE!" And iguana. Or as the locals say, an "iguanhur!"
These are for you daddy! My dad has been wanting a picture of an iguana since I told him there was one that lived at my old place. We would find him in the tree, or out sunbathing between the banana trees.
This is Ross saying,
I don't know why it looks so minuscule in that shot.
"That's pretty NEAT!"
After walking a little bit we saw this bird just bobbing on a bouy. Ross didn't think it was real.
"This is a pelican, you can tell it is a pelican from the way it is!"
That was the extent of the cool wildlife. I say that because, who knows how many other bugs and birds and neatness we passed by without even knowing it?! All I know is,
"Not too often do you get all this neatness in one location!"
Awhile back I posted a little about what Ross and I did for Easter. But it wouldn't be complete without pictures from the Kite Festival. This time of year kites are really common because there is a lovely breeze that helps sustain them. You see them for sale everywhere along the street.
Some of the kites get really high and they make this kind of awful noise. You can't miss it. The other night I heard one at like midnight! The sound comes from the way the nose is constructed. The way the wind/air slips over and through the nose creates a loud vibrating noise.
Without further ado, pictures!
When we first got there, it was pretty overcast and a little rainy.
I'm happy to say that it cleared up though, and all the brightly colored kites in the sky looked magnificent, albeit pretty hard to capture.
One cool thing about the festival was that there are a handful of different categories kites may be entered in, so there is a lot of diversity!
Here is a kite being flown via fishing pole
Here is a kite made out of a dried up leaf, with a target bag tail! The string used for it was just a regular ol' spool of thread. Haha. I love the creativity, any one can make and fly a kite!
This girl was killing me, as you can see, the slack on her kite is only about two feet. She just stood there, holding it tight, with a little sass and attitude!
This was Ross's favorite kite, a man and a woman, with a cool colorful tail. It was really pretty.
Don't blink or you'll miss it, but on the end of the stick that girl is holding was an entry for "Smallest Kite" the family/ group that entered this kite was super proud of it. Every time I looked over it seemed like a different person as flying it. Can you see the kite? It is yellow and blue and has a cute little ribbon tail.
I think this next kite might have beat out the leaf kite for #1 in my heart. It was a styrofoam plate kite. The elderly man walking around with it was dancing and having the time of his life!
So along with the Smallest Kite, and Discovery Kids Kite, was the much anticipated Largest Kite competition. Turned out to be way more intense than I had anticipated. There were I think 4 serious competitors in this category.
Here is the kite's take off!
The kite below was the Ross & Kristen pick. It went up on the first try and had a pretty good flight except the string got caught on another kite. The tangled mess broke the string and it went flying off towards the horizon. So sad. :(
Below was the biggest kite, measuring about 16 feet from tip to tip. You can see the beams are made of dried bamboo.
It was really crazy to see them try and get these kites up in the sky! This gray kite was attached to a pick-up truck. There were a bunch of people holding the kite, and someone in the back of the pick up. As the pick up drove off to give the string tension, they used their phones to communicate for take off!
At first try the gray kite began to go up and the cord to fly it wasn't strong enough. The force of the wind pulling the kite was too much and the cord (I think it was just twine) snapped and the kite came crashing down and the bamboo broke. Fortunately the team had supplies and they went into action to fix it to fly again.
I love this photo!
The huge shadow of the large kite:
Since the kites were so huge, instead of a simple tail for balance, they needed a something a little more heavy duty. ENTER: old jeans, tree branches whatever floats your boat, er - flies your kite.
I took a ton of pictures, I just thought they all looked so amazing! I loved the creativity.
Very beautiful and colorful kites. Very fitting for Easter in my opinion.
I was told that Grenadians fly kites on Easter to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether that is true or not, I think it is a very beautiful symbol.
I am so grateful for the unique experiences I have on this little island!
