Ready or Not....Here I Come!!!

By this time tomorrow, I will be in Alaska....for a week anyways. I am taking a class there & staying in the village I will be living in come August. (I call this my "recon" trip.) I'll actually be staying in my house with my new roomate too.

My first trip didn't scare me. I was staying in Anchorage. I knew I was gutsy enough to jump in a cab & pay someone to take me to my hotel.

I'm a little nervous/scared about this trip. I'll be landing on an air strip. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. My biggest fear is that no one will be there to meet me. I am always someone who needs a back up plan....and I have yet to devise one!! I have no idea where anything is but here's what I know: a) there's a school and b) there's a church.

Plan B ~working~: I can go to one of those buildings by following the path (note to self: stay on the path & watch out for bears) and ask anyone I come across for the location of the teacher housing. I'm not really comfortable banging on doors, but that might get faster results.

The good thing is that after this trip, I'll know my way around. This is the scariest trip, after tomorrow, I won't be so nervous.

All these thoughts are racing through my head, and they're more questions than thoughts. They question my sanity, my strength, my smarts, and my resolve. This is where I suck it up and get on the plane. The questions will pass (and they are passing, I'm almost embarrassed to admit to their presence) and answers will take their place (oh that's the bed size I'll have!!). And me moving to Alaska will seem totally logical again.

But the self-doubts are important too. If it were easy & safe, it wouldn't be an adventure!!

In Between Trips....

As I sit here reflecting on my trip to Hawaii, I am also doing my laundry in preperation for my trip to Alaska. (By the way, I hate doing laundry. I'd rather buy new clothes than do laundry, but you have to wash those too, so really, what's the point?)

So Hawaii, beautiful Hawaii. And it is beautiful. It was lush with the most vivid colors. Pictures do not capture the blues of the water, nor the greens of the plants. They do however capture the gray of the clouds and there was quite a few of those...but whatever.

I loved the beauty. I enjoyed the ocean, and there were many awesome things I experienced. But it wasn't a great trip, a good one, yes, but great? No....

One: It's a good thing I'm headed to the cold, because I am not a hot weather girl. I liked cooling off in the water, but I'm more of an A/C (air conditioning) kind of gal & you don't go to hawaii to stay inside. And it was a bit humid, so I felt damp after a while.

Two: My mom was having back problems and took a lot of naps. Which meant I was by myself...a lot. Most of the pictures of me are me taking them of myself. And I totally understand that she was in pain, & I don't want to seem like I'm complaining, but there you go. I was alone most of the time. And Maui's not really designed for singles.

There were some awesome moments. I loved the beach our hotel was on. It was gorgeous!! And our hotel was really right on the beach. It was just passing the pool and there was the beach.

There were a lot of other hotels. The one next to us had this incredible swimming pool. Actually, it was a bunch of pools connected. I would have loved to swim there!


Another thing I really enjoyed was the Maui Ocean Center. It was an aquarium, small but really well done. They had a tunnel where sting rays, different sharks, and fish swam all around you. I had a moment with a sting ray. She was MASSIVE!! She kept watching me as she swum around and around. Then she started swimming around my head. I feel we connected on a spiritual level. Here are some pics from there:





I loved all the flowers I saw. They were so beautiful and colorful.


But my favorite thing of all was the tour I took of the Road to Hana. We drove around a volcano on this little two lane road (the bridges were one lane though). I was so glad that I didn't try to drive it myself!! There are blind corners everywhere. And one part of the road is next to a cliff! The driver had to honk her horn when we turned corners so that other cars would know we were there. It was very intense. But the sites we saw!! Waterfalls, black sand beaches, lush green valleys, and gorgeous coastlines! Once we passed the town of Hana (where Oprah just bought land), we continued on around the island of Maui. We stopped at these fresh water pools that lead to the ocean. I swam in one! Did you know there's a desert in Maui? Yeah, it's on that particular road. It was not very pretty. And the road was rough, it felt like a massage chair vibrating really hard. But it was still a great tour & our tour guide was amazing!




Overall, I enjoyed Hawaii. Would I go back? Well, that would depend on the occasion. Am I glad I went? Absolutely!! It was worth going to see it!!

Off to Maui.....

So today my alarm clock went off, and I thought to myself, "What am I doing today? Why did I set my alarm?" And then it hit me....oh yeah, I'm going to Hawaii today. Man, I was out!!! Then I got all excited.

I planned this trip back around December. I haven't traveled much and I wanted to go on a real vacation. I've never been to Hawaii before and I wanted to go somewhere where I could just relax. That and I wanted to be connected to nature. According to native american lore, volcanos are the closest thing to mother earth. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I felt my life was going and going and I was starting to feel further and further away from nature. So my vacation had to be centered around the earth. Hawaii it is. And after a bit of research, Maui it is. Add that to a call to my aunt who is a travel agent and BAM! you have yourself a vacation.

This was before moving to Alaska was anything more than a "someday wouldn't that be cool" whim. But now you can see why I would be drawn to Alaska. Talk about nature!

I am going to Hawaii with my mother. There were other friends who were maybe going to go, but plans fell through. And as much as I adore my friends, I travel better with my mother anyways. I don't know why, but I'm actually difficult to travel with! I mean I could blame the other people I've traveled with before, but what do they all have in common? That's right, me! I'm flattered that people are surprised to hear that I'm difficult to spend a vacation with, but it's true. I think it's because Queen of the Classroom works in the classroom quite well, but on the road not so much! I'm used to calling the shots and having my space (as horrible as that sounds!!) But my mom & I are a good combination. It's not that I boss her around (think of her more as the Queen Mother), it's more that we know each other so well and it's a good give and take relationship. And it turned into the last thing we'll do together before I move thousands of miles away.

I will have internet access but not for posting pictures. This picture I took of the website of our hotel. So have a great week everybody!!!

not the only ruark having an adventure!!!

So I am not the only Ruark who adventures are in store for!! My baby brother is currently "across the pond" in England!! Ethan (aka Evil Ethan) is a huge Shakespeare fan/student and is really excited to be in Straford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace & early home of William Shakespeare.

His journey first took him to the city of Bath (which he can't say without the english accent - i know, so Madonna), where you can see bathhouses constructed by Romans during the Roman Empire. The pipes still flow hot water, but they used lead pipes, so you can't actually go into the water. But you can see the steam...

My brother also went to Stonehenge, where this picture was taken. (and used with permission - thanks Ethan!!). Kudos for the amazing pic!

I wish Evil Ethan good luck in England. My first adventure was also in England 17 years ago, and it's been fun seeing pictures of the same places I saw back then. My only advice to Ethan is to not let 17 years go by before you travel someplace else.

I loved London & I hope my brother does as well. Actually, I have no doubt he will adore it. My only real hope is that the food has gotten better since I was there. Yuck! It was awful!!

So enjoy and good luck!

Welcome!!

Welcome to my first post. Today's adventure took me to the San Francisco Zoo. Okay, not the most exciting place ever, but still pretty cool.

Yes, my big adventure is teaching in rural Alaska, but I plan to have many adventures and I didn't want to limit myself to writing only about Alaska. So I decided to just leave it open and just call my blog Miss Ruark's Adventures.

Two days left of school & then comes summer. My next adventure starts next week....more details to follow!!

Above is a picture I took when I was in Anchorage in April. Below is a picture of 9 P.M., it didn't get dark until 9:30 that night.




So enjoy and check back soon!!!