Please Happy

Grandma Whaley and I traveled to Barcelona for about 10 days in April at the beginning of my epic journey. After four months away, I flew back to Baltimore and got to see her again! My solo experience in Europe and Asia, then, was an awesome Grandma Whaley sandwich.

Back in Baltimore, it was all I could do at our family dinner to not spend the entire meal giggling with Grandma about our trip.

I wanted to say “Remember that time:

We walked for an hour to the botanical gardens and didn’t go in, then stayed on the bus 12 stops too long – my fault – and had to take the subway back to Las Ramblas and walk five blocks to get back to our hotel?

We met that German couple at the restaurant and took shots of that medicine tasting liqueur after a carafe of wine and the whole restaurant kept looking at us because we were laughing so loudly? And it was raining outside?

We watched that crazy-eyed shirtless man perform Flamenco on his wooden box on the street at night and it was better than any formal show either of us had seen?

We went to Picasso’s famous café and left because the fixed menu was so expensive and neither of us wanted pork meatballs and orange cake? But, then as we were leaving, you made me go back in so you could get a picture of me stepping out of the storied doors?

We went to the Dali museum the day it was closed – my fault – and met those Scots who showed us the beauty of Girona? And you went to that huge cathedral and were a half hour late meeting me, again in the rain, because you were so enthralled and then we ate with the Scots and they almost missed their plane home because we were chatting so much?

We took a local bus to the Montemartre type stairs leading to Parc Guell and you sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow with that trumpet player?

You wrote to Grandpa every single night detailing our adventures and talked to me about what it’s like to love someone for over 60 years. And you called him ‘my darling husband’ and ‘my love.’”

… But, instead, we were polite and only shared a few stories with the group as we ate our family meal together. And everyone said they could tell that we had had a wonderful time and we just smiled … cause we really really did

Yes, I overuse the word amazing. Help me come up with another suitable word and I’ll swap it in. Until then …

Like his younger sister, Anna, Mark Timothy Whaley is amazing!

The middle child of three, Mark has always been the “Peace maker,” the one whose shoulder we cry on, whose ear we bitch in, whose words we hang on. He’s a musician, a linguist, a dancer, a juggler, a traveler, a marathon runner, a loyal friend and deep listener.

The most recent amazing news for Markie is twofold:

1. He graduated college! It took seven years, two universities, at least three trips abroad and countless meditation retreats, but he did it! He aced his thesis, too, which was written in French about French poetry, which he read in its original form.

2. Mark recently accepted an invitation to be one of two personal attendants to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Llama and head of the Shambhala Buddhist Global community. The Sakyong is Mark’s teacher and in Mark’s words “represents all that I have been studying and practicing for the last eight years: How to be a decent person in this chaotic time on earth.”

For about two years starting in August, Mark will traveling the world with the Sakyong translating, making appointments, serving tea, training for running (the Sakyong and Mark ran the Chicago marathon together last year in record-breaking heat), training as a bodyguard, meditating, smiling big and breathing in and out. He will take care of the Sakyong so the Sakyong can teach and be with the people. Mark’s co-attendant is French, so he’ll get to practice that, too!

He won’t have much time for himself. But that, I think, is the point.

Way to go, Markie! You continue to make me want to be a better person! Hip Hip Hooray!!

“My siblings are amazing,” I frequently say.
My younger sister, Anna recently received some exciting career news. Just the latest amazingness in the life of an extraordinary young woman, who is beautiful on the inside and the outside!

A brief chronology:

Anna K. Whaley, age 23.

- Left Towson High School after 9th grade to pursue dance at Carver Center for Arts and Technology.
- Went to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts for one year.
- Left Smith to go to Manhattan (NEW YORK CITY!) alone to investigate dance options.
- Auditioned for and was accepted to Tisch School of Dance at New York University (badass conservatory)
- Invited to audition for the Belgium-based Performing Arts Research and Training Studio (P.A.R.T.S.).
- Went to Belgium in June/July 2008 with a hurt shoulder, a solo choreographed dance and a plan to kick ass in the group audition.
- July, 2008 Got accepted into the program! Now, she just has to decide if she will accept.

Here is a brief description:
PARTS is looking for dancers, dance makers and choreographers with intuition and openness, physical intelligence, clarity and purity in movement, physical potential, stage presence and charisma, general development and intelligence, capacity for observing, mental availability, capacity for looking and listening, the capacity to quickly digest new information.

Damn, Annerr! You are a badass! Thanks for reminding me about strength and beauty!

I can’t pronounce the name in Thai. It’s something like “ggnnyok.” So, I keep smiling and saying the name in Vietnamese: ChumChums. (In English, they’re called rambutans.) I ate these for dinner tonight.

It’s my fourth time ordering a half kilo from these guys in Mae Sot. They’re Karen – an ethnic group from Burma – but they work in Thailand. Not sure if they have papers or come and go with the rest of the migrant workers every day on the “Friendship Bridge” across the Moei River.

They don’t like getting their pictures taken, so they pretended I wasn’t doing it.

When I stop for my mid-afternoon snack, they now know what I want. They give me the “time out” signal, which also means “HALF kilo?” I nod. They fill a plastic bag on the scale and take some out to make the half whole. Then, one or both sneaks some more in post-weigh; I get about 20 pieces. I plop the plastic bag in my bicycle basket. I break the shells in half with my teeth and eat the juicy fruits while pedaling. Spiky red chumchum half shells fill the basket by the time I reach my destination – a temple, a coffee shop, the end of the block.

This small routine makes me smile. Every time I pass the stand now and I don’t stop to buy, they both stand up from their hammocks or chairs and wave. “Hello! Hello!”

And I wave and smile and keep pedaling in the rain.

Today, I presented photographs and stories to Buddhist monk university students about my life as a writer, traveler, adventurer. What an honor to be in front of a class of young monks – the most rapt, funny and engaged audience I’ve ever seen.

Where is Wyoming, anyway?

What we carried into the Arctic on my 45-day canoe trip. Six girls. We very hungry. We practice lots of eating meditation.

The monks listening to me present. I told them if they ever wanted to live in Jackson that they’d have to wear 10 robes. Very cold in the mountains!

The monks thought they were lucky to have a strange western girl show pictures. But, I bow deeply to these young monks, who gave me smiles, bright eyes, questions and insight into my photographs and practice. I am truly blessed.

First photograph by me. Others by the lovely Polish chap, Pawel Rokicki.