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Published: February 14th 2009
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Friday the 13th. Feb..I know this is all pretty 'old news' but keeping the blog up to date is such a nightmare....I think it's getting all the photos uploaded and captioned that takes all the time. Soon we will be in China and I will make a concerted effort to get completely up to 'real time'.
Back ‘home’ to Los Angeles and a big sigh of relief…you just don’t realize how tiring and nerve wracking it can be til you stop….the driving, not knowing where you are going to sleep everynight, where you are going to eat everynight. It’s so good to have family here, where we could just kick back and relax. It’s amazing how much crap you accumulate along the way….anybody who wants to go camping…my cousin has a complete set up…we hid it all around his garage.
Next stop along the way ….PENSACOLA…the only reason for a stop here is that Malcolm was doing a chiropractic seminar. We had 4 days here and I really thought that I would be able to update my blog but somehow it just didn’t happen although for the life of me I can’t really remember what I did
obviously not much…oh I do remember one night…karaoke…the chiros love to karaoke. We met a lovely Greek lady, Marianthe, at the Art Festival who upon hearing that we had to find another hotel for our last night insisted that we came and stayed with her. She cooked us dinner, breakfast and even drove us to the airport the next morning.
Up, up and away…we were two days to early with our visit to the Kennedy Space Centre. If we could have delayed our trip 2 days then we would have seen the launch of the space shuttle. As it is we did manage to see it pre launch. Here in Orlando we couchsurfed with a wonderful lady named Nina and her son, Gabriel. It was a most enlightening and lovely experience being welcomed into her home. We were able to learn more about the Muslim faith. She showed us how she has ‘integrated’ living a western life whilst maintaining her Muslim faith.
Last stop before we leave the Land of Stars and Stripes…CHICAGO. One would ask, why Chicago and not New York and I have yet to find the answer except that Malcolm wanted to visit a chiropractic
teacher (and after all it is a ‘business’ trip). With our trusty TOM we found our way around Chicago. One thing we found in the States, if you don’t have a car it is very difficult to get around. Nobody walks and nobody takes public transport. One of the fantastic things that happens when you travel is that you meet so many different people and so it was in this case. In Lima we met Michael who just happened to be from Chicago...so it was nice to be able to catch up and get a 'locals' view of Chicago
Last stop before leaving North America…TORONTO and Hamilton to visit my cousin…the same cousin for whom I was a flower girl almost 50 years ago. It was lovely catching up with Margaret and Kei and all the family…they even ordered up snow for us. Malcolm got his first taste of clearing the sidewalk. When you come from a place where you don’t even own a heater it’s pretty amazing to wake up and see snow lying all around…the first thing we would do each morning was to go to the back door and peer out at the thermometer to see
what the temperature was….it was down as low as -6C one morning.
We managed to get in a visit to Niagara Falls... in between the snow showers. This is one of those 'must see' things although I did imagine the Falls being a lot longer than they were. One good thing about going in winter time there aren't the masses of tourists around so you can pretty much take your time (ie in between snow showers)
This is also where I got my first taste of Wii FIT and I am hooked. I had so much fun using it that I already have Adam pricing them for me for when we get to China.
As it turns out these aren’t the only memories we have of Canada. Somewhere in the week that we there somebody managed to ‘scam’ our credit card and racked up more than $10000 of fraudulent transactions. Thankfully all these transactions took place after we had left Canada so we aren’t liable but it sure is a shock to the system…Malcolm says he was in shock all day. We don’t know where it occurred as we had only used the card 4 times whilst
Las Vegas
on Halloween in Ontario.
Nov 24 ...we are off to London, coincidentally, so is Lani who has a stopover in Toronto on the way from New York to London. Unfortunately we are on different flights, different terminals but we are due to arrive in London within a couple of hours of each other
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ROBYN JACKSON
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WOW!!!
SOUNDS LIKE YOU ARE HAVING A FANTASTIC ADVENTURE. i CAN'T BELIEVE YOU KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD. jACKO AND i WOULD LOVE TO DO THE SAME THING IN ABOUT 2 YEARS TIME. LOVE ROBBO