Betty's Cold Weather Friend

I remember one of Connie’s trips. It was a trip from Florida to Michigan, for some experimental treatment. Many doctors wouldn’t treat her, but she found one there that would.

At this point, her husband had to make a difficult decision. Connie had said after the last brain surgery (her second) that she didn’t want anymore surgeries. Yet, Connie had had a relapse, was on steroids, and wasn’t able to make the decisions for herself. After deep reflection and prayer, her husband decided to go through with the operation in Michigan.

Friendships are so very special. At that time in my life I felt I had three best friends – Connie, Stacey, and Mary. All of them had heard about each other, none of them had met.

At the time, Stacey lived in Michigan. She volunteered to pick John and Connie up from the airport and to sit with John and Connie as they went through the surgery.

I remember telling Connie about my friend in Michigan, Stacey, that would be there for her in Michigan, where it was cold. I truly didn’t know, and really didn’t think, that any of it was registering with Connie due to how the illness had effected her.

But later that month when Connie sat in the hospital room, recovering from her surgery, my friend Stacey was sitting in her hospital room. They had never met.

As Connie came to, the nurse, being a good nurse, asked Connie who the person was at the end of her bed. I am sure the nurse thought that if Connie could recognize her it would be a good sign that the operation had gone well. The nurse was unaware that Connie and Stacey had never met.

Connie’s response was, “That’s Betty’s Cold Weather Friend.”

I will always remember that. It was so special. It stills makes me laugh and brings joy to my heart when I think about Connie, and Stacey, and Connie’s sense of humor.

Best Friends Don't Leave

Travel – traveling through a journey with friends. For some reason, I am thinking about when I traveled through one of my best friend’s life journeys. Hers was a journey that many have taken, no one wishes for. One that has the potential to teach us a lot, in a cruel, hard way.


Connie’s journey started six months after she was married. Her journey was spelled with a small “c” not a capital “C”. Her journey brought her to Texas, Michigan, and other places around the country.

She was the first I knew to have an operation in her brain. I remember when she shared with me, she said it felt really weird. “It was a different sensation. They couldn’t put me totally under, because they are operating on the brain. I sensed someone was there doing something, but it didn’t hurt. It was just different.”

I remember when I moved away from the south Florida area where Connie and I had met and had become close friends. She was so angry with me. She shared, I get close to someone and then they leave. I assured her that even though I was moving a few hours away we would always be friends. I would never “leave.”

That promise truly played itself out a few years later when Connie was diagnosed with brain cancer. I had never known anyone who had been diagnosed with that before, nor did I know anyone who had ever had brain surgery. Since then I have met many people, and seen so many amazing success stories.

Life in A Day, Day in a Life, or One Day on Earth

I recently heard about the “Life in a Day” project through Google and YouTube where people, on July 24th this year, can videotape their “normal day” and submit it – with the plan that they may turn it into a movie. As I researched this it looked like their goal was to turn it into a movie for the Sundance Film Festival for 2011. I thought, what a great idea! As a school teacher, we have worked on similar type projects over the years, on a much smaller scale.

The project made me think about the different, and similar, experiences people have all over the world. A few years ago I was in a role as the International Connections Resource Teacher at a best – practices private school, Independent Day School (http://www.idsyes.com/). One of the projects I headed up was working through an organization called iEARN (http://www.iearn.org/), where students from around the world worked on collaborative projects with each other. The project our school represented was “A Day in the Life” of students from around the world. Each class (about five to seven classes from several different countries) submitted projects sharing what their typical day was like (http://iearn.org/circles/2007session1/projects/studentDayInTheLife.pdf ). Another project we did was “Cartoon Characters Travel Your City”. Both projects taught the students about people in different schools and different cultures (http://iearn.org/circles/2009session1/projects/citiesOfTheWorld.ppt).

I was very excited to read about this new project, Life in A Day (http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday) until I learned that there was another organization with that idea (http://www.onedayonearth.org/) that had already shared this idea on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Nj72EZZvs) and had advertised that 10-10-10 would be the day that everyone should capture their life on video.

I am excited to see a project where people will submit videos to share their lives with one another. At first, I was deeply disappointed that it appeared that one idea was taken from someone who had already come up with this idea. We try to teach our children honesty and giving credit to resources when you get ideas from others, especially in the age of so much readily available information on the internet. Then I thought about marketing and brick and mortar businesses such as CVS and Walgreen's or McDonald's and Burger King. Many times you will see these businesses right across from each other. They benefit from each other's marketing. They provide competition which helps keep products in line for the consumer.

Maybe it will be interesting to see how different each movie becomes. Either way, I believe the more we understand others, who may on the surface be different than we are, we learn how much we truly have in common with each other.

International Friends

Over the last year I have adjusted to many changes, both personal and professional. I had little time to explore. I felt all of my free time was used to just adjust to the pressures and responsibilities that this past year through at me. Sometimes that is the way it is.

I have so deeply enjoyed this summer and feel like I am back to the business of living, loving, enjoying life and people and pursuing passions such as travel, writing, art, and creating. Over the year I feel like I have become clearer on what I see for this block. As my first blog stated, "Travel is a state of mind." I still believe that passionately.

Travel with Friends to me means experiencing life and life's journies with people you care about it. It could literally be travel, it could be exploring your local community, it could be traveling through a shared experience, struggle, or celebration with another. What does "travel" mean to you?

One experience that I am very excited about is a meetup group I learned about a year or so ago. Ironically, my neighbor and one of his friends, who I knew, started it. It hasn't been until this summer that I have been able to have the time to participate in this meetup group. It is called International Friends and is growing by leaps and bounds. There are many activities and such an interesting group of people, many of who have traveled to different corners of our world.

So remember, travel can be a state of mind. Live in the present, travel through today with joy, find the experience, the sparkle of the day. When I have traveled, I look at things in a new way, with the curiosity of a child, the appreciation of a humbled receiver. I am going to try to live each day like this. Let me know how you approach your day with new curiosity.

Honeymooners

Do you know anyone getting married? Do you know any wedding planners or photographers? There is a very exciting website with great travel rates. One of the features they have is a Honeymoon Registry. A couple can sign up for free and their guests can donate to their honeymoon, just like a regular bridal registry in any retail store. Travel would be booked through this site. For me personally, as I have tracked this company, traveled, checked prices, and referred people I have found that probably 60-80% of the time this site has had lower or equal prices to what I can find elsewhere. Their customer service for me has been some of the best I have experienced. Sometimes the conceirge desk takes a few steps to get to the right person in the phone que. All and All I have been really impressed with this site. So impressed, I decided to refer business to them.

To help with your honeymoon costs and trip, register for the honeymoon registry!

Honeymoon Registry: www.travelwithfriendsnow.com and click on Honeymoon Registry

Let me know how your trip is!

Travel Inspiration

I wanted to wish my father a Happy Father's Day today. I remember growing up he and his business partner owned their own business. They built automation machines for companies in the United States and outside the US. Dad would often bring people home for dinner or do to things with our family. He felt that they were away from home and he wanted them to feel comfortable. Occasionally, we would have visitors from different countries, some that were unable to speak our language. Sometimes we would have translators, often we would not. When my sisters and I were grown, mom and dad began their travel - mostly with a business focus and pleasure tossed in. Dad has been to about 50 countries. Thank you dad for giving us such a beautiful legacy. I hope to pass the passion of exploration, meeting new people, and seeing new places on to others that you shared with us growing up.

Travel - A State of Mind

Whether we travel across the seas, across the country, or across the street - we are all travelers of this world. Some of us take bigger steps and venture further than others.

Travel is also a state of mind. It is the spirit of exploration. The taste of wonder. The sense of what is new and what is old, what is the same and what is different. The first time I had the opportunity to travel to Europe I was silenced, humbled, soul stopped - for it was then I truly realized how young our country is and how much more we have to learn from each other.

Travel teaches. It reaches. It stretches. It answers questions. It grabs our curiosity. Once, while standing upon the ridge of a crater in Hawaii, awaiting the rising of the sun on that particular day, I was reminded how small we are as humans in this vast, dependable land. It took almost an hour for the sun to rise that day. My inner spirit reminded me of how dependable our earth is, how consistent our creator is, how humbled we should be. It reminded me that we can truly count on the things that are important in this world without doubt and should we be worried about something, maybe our focus is on the wrong thing.

Travel exposes us to our brothers and sisters in our local town, called Earth. Several years ago I had the good fortune to attend an educational conference half way around the world. There students less than ten years of age interacted with teenagers, college students, and senior citizens from four contintents with different native tongues. Yet, everyone interacted respectively, sharing joys, concerns for the future, the meaning of friendship and leadership, and ideas on how to plan for our future world. I learned that the more we travel, the more we discover how much more alike we are from each other than different.

It is wonderful that we all have the opportunity to travel, for to me we can travel through books, through the virtual wide world, or in person. You never know what the future will bring. I once dreamed of sailing the Greek Islands. I knew this was so far out of my reach it was impossible. Yet, a little over ten years later that is exactly what I was doing.

You just never know what life will bring!