Travel: The Hows & The Why

On a helicopter ride outside of Anchorage, Alaska

Why travel the world?

My first reason for traveling is simply that I wanted to see beautiful sights for myself. It wasn't enough to see Iceland through pictures or movies filmed there. I wanted to stand in front of these majestic sights and let my senses go wild. 

But I experienced something I hadn't counted on, which gave me more reasons to travel.

The biggest new insight I had was that outside of my little world, my body size didn't really matter. People don't look me in the face here. They see past me. It's not something I really notice until people started looking me in the face. I said in one of my videos that I thought it was a US thing, but then I went to New York City and found that sadly, it's a California thing. People acknowledge other people in the world. They look you in the eye and smile. People talk to you. I don't feel self conscious when I travel. I feel beautiful.

There's so much you can learn by experiencing another culture. Seeing how people live differently around the world is such an eye opening experience. After growing up in suburbia, seeing life in a rural community is a shock to the system or even comparing it to life in the city. 

In Central Park, NYC

As an educator, it's really changed me for the better on how I relate to children and what I think they are capable of. Here's a simple story: in New York and other cities, children show up to a basketball court with a basketball and some friends. They don't have referees or even adults watching them. In Alaska, basketball is the sport every child and adult plays. They bring a ball and show up. Again, no referees because they know the rules. So there I am at yard duty, and I'm told I really need to watch the basketball games cause they don't know what they are doing. But I don't. I glance over to check that they aren't fouling each other left and right but I don't need to watch them like a hawk. I've even given them compliments on their sportsmanship. Children all over this country play basketball. I trust the students here to do the same. If they don't, then we have a problem. 

I also realize that not everyone has the same life experience as me. It makes me less judgmental as a person. Life is not confined to my tiny bubble.

Actually, travel has increased my tiny bubble.  

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Myth: You need a lot of money to travel

I used to believe that. I surrounded my tiny house in Alaska with black & white posters from Paris, Venice, and New York. I figured that I would never go to those places because I didn't make a whole lot of money, and you need money to travel.

I dreamed of one day going to Paris. It was more than simply a bucket list item. I loved everything about Paris, the glamour, the sophistication, the elegance...etc. But my life was never heading in that direction. Or so I thought.

In Iceland

My travels started in Iceland. I had a crazy idea to just go after watching a movie filmed in Iceland. I had been saving my money for my move back to California. I decided to give myself the trip of a lifetime since I would never be able to afford something like that again. I booked my own flight, hotel, and day trips based around Reykjavik. I paid for the trip upfront. Because that's what I thought you did to travel.

I went by myself and had a great time. 

The only thing that I didn't like was I would be looking at something amazing...and I'd have the urge to turn to someone next to me and say, "Oh my god! Did you see that!?!" but strangers don't really like that....especially if you don't speak the same language.

And that was the extent of my travels. I had a really amazing adventure and I figured that was it. The highlight of my life.

Then my uncle died. He was married to my aunt who was a travel agent. My uncle left me some money. I figured I would be responsible with the money.

In front of the Trevi Fountain, Rome

Then I changed my mind. I figured what better way to honor my aunt than to see Paris. Minutes later, I booked a trip for London, Paris, and Rome. Then I called my sister-in-law and burst into tears. Because it wasn't real. I wasn't really going to Paris...but I was.

Again, I had the money.

I chose a tour group because I wanted to be with a group this time. That way, I could have a connection with my fellow travelers. Granted, I did no research into the group until after I booked with them. Turns out, they've been in the business for the last 50 years and the price was pretty good. I based it on my gut and my gut lead me in the right direction. 

But my tour group accepted payments. I didn't need the money up front. I didn't need to save up and then book. I could book the trip and then make monthly payments. 

In London

I DON'T NEED A LOT OF MONEY TO TRAVEL ~ I just need to budget the payments and set up the automatic payments. 

It was hard at first to readjust my budget but since I wanted to travel more, I had to make it a priority. So I did. That's the secret: if you want to travel, you have to make it a priority.

I booked a trip for this summer: I'm going to Paris, Venice, & Vienna. My trip will be paid off in May. It will take me about 18 months to pay it off but that's how I am able to go. A little patience goes a long way on this one. And I will be able to go on a big trip every other year.

Except next year, cause one of my big debts will be paid off in the next couple of months, so I'm celebrating with a trip to Portugal, Spain, & Morocco. Cause priorities. 

Since I'm using the same tour group, I've gotten discounts and they have a referral program! Here's the link if you wanna check them out: http://www.goaheadtours.com/account/create?referrer=c04df340-a886-4674-8d61-4a3c5389607f

So that's my hows & whys of traveling. It's taken me a bit to figure out how to make it happen, but now there's no stopping me!

In front of the Eiffel Tower, Paris

Keeping Up With the Adventures

I have made several attempts to reestablish this blog but none have taken hold. I start one direction and then I lose interest.

So, the question at the heart of the matter is: what do I want to blog about?

And the answer was: nothing.

I had even attempted a YouTube channel. You can see the videos, I'm not taking them down. But I lost interest in that as well. 

So I let everything just sit. I did nothing.

And then a random notification came up that someone had left a comment on one of my videos. Specifically, my video about traveling to Europe when you're plus sized. 

The comment read, "Thanks for posting this. I am going to Europe in a few months and am having crazy anxiety about it being plus size myself. I feel a bit more confident after watching this." 

And all of a sudden, I realized that I had done some good with my silly little YouTube experiment. Someone felt better after listening to what I had to say. I could not have been more flattered about that.

Which got me thinking, maybe I should keep using my voice and sharing my experiences. I'm not saying that I could change the world or anything, BUT I've already made a tiny difference, who's to say I can't do more?

This blog was at it's best when I wrote about my adventures. So I am bringing the focus back to where it used to be. I'm talking weekly updates, either looking to future adventures or ones I never wrote about. 

And there's so much to say!

Here's a look to the past:
*Hawaii
*moving to rural Alaska
*driving the Alaska Highway to move back
*Iceland
*the teardrop trailer experiment
*Disneyland
*Santa Monica/UCLA
*London
*Paris 
*Rome
*Las Vegas
*Stanford University area
*New York City/Columbia University

My upcoming adventures:
*Paris 2018
*Venice 2018
*Ljubljana, Slovenia 2018
*Vienna 2018
*Portugal 2019
*Spain 2019
*Morocco 2019

There might even be a Mexico trip slated for 2018 with my family but that is still in development. 

I'm not going to cover all of these adventures, as some of the colleges involved professional development for my teaching career and not that exciting but I am excited to bring my blog back to what it was originally designed to be...that feels good.

If you are interested in the video that started this post, you can view it here:




It's good to be back! Check for my updates on Sundays, starting this Sunday!

Teacher On Break Part 1

Teachers and their summer vacations.....I hear all the time that I am so lucky that I get a long summer vacation.

Actually, I don't. I'm actually in between contracts. That's right, technically, I'm unemployed at the moment. But that's okay, I'm enjoying my break.

I thought I would give some insights as to how the rest of my summer is going. I spent some time packing up my classroom. I'm changing grades next year and the kindergarten classroom I was teaching in had to move to another room, closer to the kindergarten playground. So I had to pack my things separately from kindergarten for the moves. It took me a couple of weeks (I didn't work every day in my former classroom) but as of June 23rd, I was done with Room 5.

Just in time for a 3 day training at Sanford University. It was a specialized training for a specific student I am getting next year, so I won't be going into exactly what the training was for....but it was so specific that it was directed to the teachers specializing in the issue and not really for general education teachers like myself. I said something to the organizers, (not as a complaint just during the daily survey) and then one of the organizers met with me during lunch. Other experts joined in and I was able to have an excellent conversation around my specific needs with my student. 

I had a lot of fun exploring the area with another teacher from my district who knew the area. We walked around the campus and then drove up the mountains to an out of the way place for dinner in the middle of the mountains. It was beautiful and I had a delightful time. 

I took a week off and did nothing. 4th of July, lunch with friends, massages, etc.

But tomorrow, I am heading to my new classroom to start organizing it. I may take a weekday off here and there but right now, it's such a mess that I don't know exactly where to start and I'm worried that I won't have enough time to get things ready. 

I am going to take home books to read in the evening to start learning my new 4th Grade curriculum. 

I have 4 weeks until my training in New York City for a week. Then when I get back, it will be time to officially go back to work. My contract starts on August 17th. I am on a committee that meets the day before that AND my union work starts the 16th as well. 

I want to show people how much work a teacher really puts into their off time. Especially when they happen to be changing grades. 

#stanforduniversity #california

A post shared by Lara Ruark (@miss_ruark) on Jun 29, 2017 at 11:03am PDT

Halls of #stanforduniversity #northerncalifornia

A post shared by Lara Ruark (@miss_ruark) on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:18pm PDT

PETA Doesn't Go to Alaska

Background: Alaskans wear fur. They've been wearing fur since they crossed over the land bridge from Asia & Russian. You can't even bat an eye at it because there's a whole rich history of Alaskan Natives and hunting, sewing parkas, etc. It's a subsistence way of life up there and it's not for the "politically correct".

This story is about fur....or rather about my attempt to sew rabbit fur baby booties. 

First of all, being immersed in a new culture is somewhat intimidating. I was going to title this story: The Whitest White Chick in the Room but I decided the PETA title better suited this specific story. 

I went to Akiak wanting to learn about the Yup'ik culture. I knew that there was a long history of white teachers coming to teach Alaskan Native children and expecting them to adapt to the white ways. There was one story I was told of a woman who's teacher use to make them wipe their feet every morning before coming into the classroom, not because their feet were dirty but because he told them they were removing their Yup'ik ways and to leave them behind when they walked through the door. When I met this woman, I expected her to be much older than just 20 years my senior. 

I didn't want that for my students. I was NOT going to be that person. I was not that kind of white teacher.

**Side note: did it matter that I was white? Yes. I looked different than my students. Not just my skin color but my hazel eyes were something that brought on a lot of comments. I know that many people want to see past race and it shouldn't matter what color my skin is, but when you go to a place, where people who look like you mistreated a group of people because they weren't like you, it makes you very conscious of your skin color. There is a lot of mistrust of white teachers in that area. And I'll tell you something truly frightening: in my new teacher orientation for Akiak: two white teachers there ended up being accused of sexual abuse. One was accused by his own daughter, and the other from several female students in the village. So as much as we want to say, "Hey, don't blame me for the sins of the past!" all I can do is let my actions and respect shine through because I still saw teachers using their white privilege (sadly, even more than those two really bad ones) to put native children down.**

I was going to be as respectful as I could be and be open to new adventures. But I would be true to myself at the same time. I was told that I should be quiet and reserved because that was expected of women. Well, I'm loud and quite a talker so that was out. I later realized that was bad advice anyways. Humans want people to be themselves and not pretend to be anybody else.   

So, back to my story:

I was invited to a sewing group where we would be sewing rabbit fur baby booties. This was amazing! A chance for me to learn some domestic skills! I didn't know anyone who was going to have a baby to give the booties too but that didn't matter. 

Before I left for Alaska, I had become a vegetarian. I knew that it was going to be pretty ridiculous to try and maintain that kind of lifestyle so I had given it up. But I did find some irony in that fact when I got to choose my rabbit pelt. It was already skinned and treated (you can send away for pelts already to work on) so it needed to be cut into the pattern for the booties.

You use a knife or a razor blade to cut the pelt after you trace it. You were suppose to make little cuts and the goal was not to lose the rabbit fur off the skin. You wanted as little amount of fur coming off as possible.

Our instructor told us this and looked around. She nodded at several of the other ladies as they brushed off the few rabbit hairs that come off of the pelt. 

Then she looked at me.

Me, who was covered in rabbit fur. It was all in my lap, my sleeves, in my hair, eyelashes, and it kept trying to blow in my mouth with I talked. I kept having to blow/spit the fur out as ladylike as possible. 

A couple of the little girls in the room kept coming over to me in attempts to brush the rabbit fur off. They had never seen so much fur come off of a skin before. They were giggling as they shook their head's at me. 

Then the principal's wife had to leave early because the fur coming off of me got on her and she started having an allergic reaction to it. There was just so much of it. 

Probably didn't help that I thought the whole thing was hysterical. 

Or maybe it did.

I think it did leave an impression on the women that night. It would not be the first time they'd be shaking their heads at me. (Like the time I didn't want to sew the hem on the sleeves of the shirt I sewed so I stapled them instead. Olinka busted me for that one.) 

Whitest white chick in the room.

That's me.

What Miss Ruark Knew.....

This is the story of alcohol, people making bad choices, and assuming too much.

The first thing you need to know is the village I taught in is called a "dry village" because it is illegal to have alcohol in the village. People smuggle it in, bootleg style ala Al Capone, but you aren't supposed to have it or drink it. A teacher getting caught with alcohol could face legal consequences which could have an effect on their teaching credential in Alaska.

Being that I'm not a big drinker, I made the choice before I moved to Alaska that since I was there to teach, I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize my career. It wasn't that important to me to begin with. It just didn't seem worth it.

So I spent my time in my village not drinking. I knew other teachers who drank but as long as they weren't hurting students, it didn't bother me. I didn't think it was any of my business anyways.

So now comes the story...

I was flying home one time and another teacher from my village was on the plane with me. And she was drunkety, drunk, drunk. Like sloppy drunk. Like trying to kiss the bush pilot drunk. It was annoying.

But she was just my coworker, not my friend. So I decided not to try to rescue her or take care of her. She was able to walk (albeit crookedly) and she was just loud and obnoxious. She didn't really need my help anyways.

But she slipped and told me that she was sneaking in a bottle of Jack Daniels for another teacher, XX. 

Now, XX was also not my friend. I actually was so indifferent to his existence that I have since forgotten what his real name is. Or what he taught. Or what his face looked like. I really did not care what XX was doing in his house. 

Not my circus, not my monkeys, right?

But then I did something kinda stupid. I was complaining to a friend of mine at a training one night (she lived in the village next to us) about how annoying it was flying with the drunk lady. It was super late and I was tired so instead of going into the details, I mentioned that she had brought a bottle for someone else and was sloppy drunk. I stupidly then said, "So I guess I know all the dirt now." 

But I never said what exactly I knew. And here's where it gets interesting....because that girl repeated to a group of people (XX included) that I knew.

That's all she needed to say. 

XX freaked out that I knew about the bottle....he assumed I knew about the MANY other bottles and parties at his house. So he came to confront me, just to make sure that I didn't repeat to anyone else about the bottles & parties.

Me: "Well, I know you don't know me very well but I would never jeopardize someone's career and I didn't know all that to begin with."

Their friend came to confront me because she heard I knew about her drinking beer at her house and then listed all the other teachers over the years who were drinking and even a couple who brewed their own beer and I better not tell anyone. And since I had told my "friend" all about what I knew, I obviously couldn't be trusted.

Me: "Well, I know you don't know me very well but I would never jeopardize someone's career and I didn't know all that to begin with."

XX's roommate came to confront me because I knew that XX was having an affair with a married teacher and yeah, he didn't approve of it either and warned them that it was a bad thing to do.

At this point, I was DONE. I told the guy that not only did I not know about it, I really didn't care. I may have yelled that I never knew any of the stuff that people were telling me and I wanted them to stop. I didn't want to hear anymore.

I think it was then when people realized how very little I had actually known. Oh, but I sure knew now.

They avoided me after that and if it was an attempt to snub me, it went unnoticed. They were not people I cared to be friends with. I couldn't tell you why at the time, but after they flipped out on me, I think my gut was steering me to better paths.

Thinking back though, it's kind of funny what a guilty conscience and the words, "She knows" will do to people...

A Book Too Close To Home

I started writing a very personal entry and realized, I don't want to put out my personal secrets for everybody just yet. But I did want to write them down.

I don't do well journaling. I tend to focus on what's bothering me and then I feel that I am dwelling on it. It's when I stop journaling that I start to actually move on and feel better. 

But I miss writing. I tried a YouTube channel but I don't like feeling like I have to be made up to get my thoughts out to the world. I'd rather sit on my laptop, make up free with my hair up in a messy bun and you be none the wiser.

So here I am. Back to blogging.

I'm reading a book that is making me uncomfortable because I can relate to it so deeply. And not for good reasons. 

It's Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist. And without diving into what part I can relate to....let me just say that reading her diary entries when she was 19 years old, filming Star Wars and obsessing about her older costar Harrison Ford (whom she was having an affair with) is hitting a little too close to home. 

As much as I would love to say that I too had an affair with Harrison Ford, no, that's not it. But when I was 19, I too was obsessed with my older man and the feelings she expresses in the diary, are ones I could have written as well. 

I don't imagine that I am alone though. I don't think any of us were our best at 19, almost 20 years old. Love was bigger, exaggerated almost. Those throes of first love are what shape many of us, for good or bad.

But what may not be true for everyone, is how undeserving some of us feel at the time. 

One entry just killed me: "He'll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that'll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you."

Now, I don't remember hating myself to that extent, but in my relationship, I felt the need to prove myself worthy of him. Sadly, I chose a man who could never be pleased and from there my story varies greatly from Carrie Fisher's. 

The need to please. The fear of failing. The fear of him leaving because you aren't enough.

I hate the phrase, "daddy issues" but we were both abandoned by our fathers at a young age, Carrie Fisher and I. I think she saw her father more than I saw mine. But it's a little off putting to see a women with a similar start in life have the same sort of issues with a man 15 years later. 

I really do hate that phrase. I never thought that I had "daddy issues" but I do. Although, that phrase makes it sound cute. I have abandonment issues. Let's be clear here. Those issues run deep.

My guy may have been not so great, but I don't think Harrison Ford was a bad guy. I think he probably had no idea what was going on in her head. She admits to playing it off like it wasn't a big deal at the time. And she makes it clear that he didn't know how inexperienced she was with men. I wonder if he'll ever read her book. 

I've had a boyfriend obsess about me and I don't think I ever want to read his diary at the time of our relationship. (if he wrote one)

I'll most likely finish the book tonight. And I'll never look at Han & Leia the same way again.

But I don't think that's a bad thing.

I Was a Bush Teacher