Wednesday, 26 June

At the moment, we are awaken at 7.27 in the morning, as I am sipping some coffee before getting ready to josh off to work at the local community college where I tutor ASL. I thought I would use some of this time to write a quick blog to share with you what has been happening lately in this corner of the world. The weather has finally turned into its usual summerlike self, with temperatures in the 80s and 90s. of course, when you have a car that has a weak air conditioning system, it's a bit hard to stay cool apart from keeping the windows down! Summer has finally arrived here!

I have been working some overtime hours at my full-time job, mostly to save some money for my trip in Espana and Portugal. There is only five weeks left until the trip, and I am becoming pretty excited as the time comes closer. I have finally started working on reserving hostal rooms for the dates we have; however I am coming to a mental block about what to do during the one week in middle of our trip. You see, we have the option of taking a bus from Lisbon to Sevilla (but the schedule is so bad, only two buses per day, and it takes all day, hence wasting all day just sitting in a bus), or to take a direct train down to Faro. The first option would make us waste a day, but we can stay in Sevilla then pick up a car rental to drive around Southern Portugal and Spain, affording us more opportunities to see whatever we want in Portugal. The latter option would have us with limited options of visiting around the Algarve region of Portugal, depending on bus services or renting an expensive car rental for the day.

Granted, I love travel planning, but I always like it better then my friends are able to give me their feedback or opinions about the plans we would be doing. My boyfriend, Kim, who is going with me, has been pretty silent in that area, no matter how much prodding I have been doing. In a recent email, I explained the options to him, and his most recent answer last night was "I am still deciding, I will let you know." Heh... I hate it when people say that they don't know. It's like "I don't know either, so help me arrive on a decision!" Smile...

I am amazed with the internet. I have been able to search around for hostal listings and to contact directly to the hostalkeepers to enquire about the availablity of rooms on certain nights. Then I am able to make reservations without having to depend on telephone nor fax. I am trying to remember back to the time when I first travelled in Europe. In 1996, internet was not widespread as it is now, and I had to contend with going to the local tourist information office and asking if they could make calls and reserve for me. I remember making the first train trip to Paris without any plans, and arriving at Paris Gare de l'Est information booth asking this nice woman if she could assist me in finding a room. Few minutes later and a few calls, she was able to place me in a hotel not too far from Gare de l'Est. I always appreciated this service, and used this last time when I was in Bergen, Norway in 2006. There, the lady had to charge me some money for reservation even though I was deaf and unable to make the calls myself.

From the way things look, we may be travelling for a week without any schedule in our rental car, arriving at cities and enquiring around for hostals. The good thing about no schedule is that it would give us greater flexibility without having to follow strictly a schedule. The bad thing is that it might take some time to find an available room if the city is a popular destination in summertime. It is all good, and a part of a big adventure! It has been interesting to learn about Spain, how they have hostals, which is a category between hostels and hotels. Some of them are family-owned, and can save you quite a bit of money. A lot of them start at €30 for a double room without ensuite bath. One can go down the hall to the shared bath to shower. A lot of the reservations we have for the first and last week of the trip has us for €35 per night, which I think isn't so bad! In Barcelona, however, we couldn't find anything less than €50... but that is fine because that was our budget for a room per night.

I can't imagine trying to make travel plans as a Deaf person in a time like 100 years ago, when there were no internet nor telephone. But again, I am sure that travelling was not much of an option 100 years ago! Today, more and more people are able to travel anywhere in the world; something that our ancestors would not have dreamed up of. I remember in 1997 when I planned going to France for my spring break, my mother replied "but you just travelled to Europe LAST YEAR!" Up to 1960s, most of the travel were done on ships across the Atlantic, and it was an once-in-a-lifetime thing to do. Nowadays, our ancestors might think that we are crazy to just fly to Europe for a week. What will travel be like 20 years from now? Supersonic travel? I feel fortunate to have been born in a time where exchange of information is so easy, and that I have access to such information especially online.

A change in theme: in the last blog I mentioned that I would like to start a walking regime. I only managed to walk about 20 km that week, mostly because of working overtime and having other plans. Still, 20 km is a pretty good start, and is a good step towards the 50 km per week goal. This week, I have been working, so I have not had much time to go walking. Tomorrow, I will be off, so I definitely will walk to work and go for a walk in the afternoon! Every bit counts! I only managed to lose one kilo since the last week, which doesn't surprise me since I haven't been quite active these past week.

On Saturday, we had the Hawaiian luau at the Deaf Centre. It was nice getting together with my friends and chatting, eating some food and watching the local Samoan group do their dancing. In the group, one of the guys was deaf, and he danced the traditional Samoan dance pretty well. It was fun watching, and my friends and I spent the night chatting until 3 in the morning! Whew! Next day, I met again with the same friends and we chatted until 12.30 in the morning! Heh... typical deafies!

I'll stop here for now, as I have to head off to work. Take care!