Eat.Pray.Love.Don't Travel

(This is, sadly, not a) TRAVEL BLOG

Last Friday I went to see Eat.Pray.Love with my besties and fiance. { I am not a fan of romcoms, they stopped appealing to me in my adult life. But this one had Julia Roberts in the lead role and she will never stop appealing to me}.

The movie failed to come together well (for me). But the one thing I could relate to is the main character's feeling of being stifled and then regarding travel as the answer to all life's questions.The most poignant line in the movie is when she says "I need to marvel at something". That's really how I feel. I'm not being ungrateful about the wonderful  and MARVELous life I have here.  I just acknowledge that to understand myself  in relation to creation and to all living things, I need to have my horizons widened. I need material that will abate my writer's block, give me a new appreciation for the things I have and inspire a rebirth of my spirituality.

I see travel as the route to closeness to God. I want to push my toes in the sand of a foreign shore and contemplate the levels of His greatness. How He created this beach and all beaches, this person and all people. My  mind has not been able to properly comprehend existence. All I know is here, Cape Town. I want to offer my experiences to the rest of the world and receive the same gift in return. There are nooks of the earth that are calling for me by name.

I don't need to run away from anything (anymore). My need to travel has been modified over time. It may have started in adolescence when nothing I said made sense- but I've brought it with me into my late (yuck) twenties where its form has more maturity and clarity every day. 

I want to travel in the name of adventure. In Cape Town, in my culture, people tend to get  married, struggle in a job that pays too little then panic as soon as they have children.

Am I wrong to want more?

Why should I ignore the voice that says 'travel' when most  people don't even have these all-important soliloquies (#happytobecrazy) . People look at the idea of temporary  immigration as  something  that is so impossible to do.
But I need to go, even if it means failing and missing home too much and going around in a circle just to prove that temporary immigration is impossible.

When you know where your home is you should be able to move away from it freely.

 


People who haven't experienced other cultures or countries are different to those who have. I don't want to be a  visitor to a country, I want to be a  citizen for as long as I'm there. I want to learn a new language, cook with their foods, live by their traditions and their rules. I want to know the country's  favourite  landmarks (not the ones in books or on the Travel channel- but the ones the locals pick). I want to eat at the best indigenous restaurants and be in awe of the things that are so different to what I know. I want to stay long enough to tap into a culture's secrets and be a part of the way they do things in their part of the world.

however....

My need to travel comes second to my need to be a wife. In 4 months time I will take on a responsibility that will hopefully change me for the better.

I have been told I will need to make compromise the mantra for that chapter of my life.

On Friday my fiance was interviewed for a Cape Town-based job that he feels could be the answer to all his life's questions. Heavy. We got into a heated debate about these two conflicting life paths. Adventure vs. Security; Not knowing vs. Knowing; Possibility of no money for a while vs. Money; Change of scenery vs. Cape Town. At the height of the debate I fell quiet. He carried on speaking about all things logical, sensible, correct and safe but I began to exit the moment...

It became apparent to me that a big test would be on our hands were he to get this job. And before he even had to ask me to stay in Cape Town, I was trying to make myself okay with it. Soon it would be my duty to support him, soon I would have to start behaving like a woman who was answerable to someone else. 

It hurt very much the same way that a broken heart does. Because it has the same ingredient.  

The conspicuous truth that kills a concept you once believed in.

Traveling in the way that I would like to do it would have to be put up on the shelf next to skydiving, shaving my head and having coffee with John Mayer. I'm not resigning from my dreams. I'm accepting that my fiance makes more sense and I'm prematurely accepting the role of the trophy wife over the role of the jet-setting ethnographer. 

Back Blogging

So much has happened, will you forgive me for being such a poor blogger! I am still without my laptop - so I can't do my famous Carrie from Sex and the City impersonation at night :(

I managed to post something a few minutes ago, which I must clarify was actually from last Tuesday.

I'm going to attempt to write about the most recent events because they are the most fresh. For all the other post I'm going to have to slot the information in under the various headings- #ihatebacklogs

Sunday- This is what I woke up to

My cousin is house-sitting for someone with 2 very cute dogs and a dying cat. The house owner has been pretty much relaxed about my cousin having special friends over so me and my besties were in luck. We got to stay in a beautifully-furnished bungalow that overlooks Clifton 4th beach. Property in Cape Town does not get more prime.

When we woke up on Sunday we had just missed the sunrise (by 7 hours). But I'm sure it was pretty much as majestic as the sunset without the bathers.

So I took my champion's breakfast- Ensure and a banana- on the terrace and had a chat with one of my besties about what it would be like to live like this everyday. With the beach at your feet and the mountain at your head you would truly have the very best of Cape Town all the time.

I kitted up and in less than 10 mins I was on the field- Helenic the Greek Club in Bay Road. In full view of the Cape Town stadium- awesome.

Our first game was easy, against Brett Evans' girls called Ajax (just for the tourney). I was worried about coming up against his wife who has scored a hat trick in last week's league game. I always see her at cycling events so I know she's fit. But the game was in the bag once the first 3 goals were scored by our powerful striker. Not even my own-goal (#epicfail) affected the victory- in a more serious game/with a tighter scoreline, I would have been given sad silent looks. Lucky me I got to be laughed at for the rest of the day instead.

During the second game I got badly injured. I took an elbow to my front tooth. Now I entered into the world of womens soccer 3 years ago with just one reservation- possible injuries to the mouth. 

It's taken me most of my life to come to terms with my teeth. 

I had a huge gap, 

then braces, 

wore a retainer for 3 years (while I slept) 

and the minute I stopped wearing it the gap returned. 

Normal. 

*Now, at age 26, with Madonna's reinvention still fresh in everyone's mind I actually love my teeth. In the same way I love my other once-hated body parts. Madonna showed everyone that the gap can be beautiful if you couple it with other great qualities (like sick dance moves and a smoking-flexible-killer body). On my way to Madge's fabulous body, I'll believe that the beat goes on and that anyone can reinvent their looks, and breathe life into unconventional physical features.

 

Back to the blood bath that my tournament turned into- I was sent off the field and immediately I could feel that something was wrong. Once I had rinsed some of the blood- which was coming from my split lip- I could see the extent of the damage. My precious and central right front tooth had been hit back. Surprisingly there was no looseness just a feeling of anger building inside my chest. For a second I wished I could go back in time and smash in that little blonde bitch striker. All she did was haggle in my area of defense clearly annoyed that I was marking her. When it all got to much for her she thought she'd destroy my tooth and my dream of having a beautiful collection of wedding pictures. All I kept saying was "I'm so livid, it's my wedding in four months". 

I called up an old friend who is now a dentist and she offered to meet me at the dental practice in Wynberg. Just as I was about to leave the field with one of my besties, my fiance arrived and I felt myself caving in. You know that one person who is privy to the weakest version of you? Well, the minute my bestie was out of earshot and eye-line I burst into tears. I cried from the Hellenic Club to Maynard Mall. All the while the fiance comforted me, with an ice pack (he carries one around with him wherever he goes :) and sensible words about how the dentist would fix everything up. 

I cry because he let's me 

and before the first tear drops he has already made himself into a wellness centre offering medical advice and counselling. *Events where he has been the hero: 

• completely closed his car door onto my right thumb: he was there with ice and bandages. 
• got headered by a guy during soccer: he met me at the hospital with ice

• nearly fell to my death on Lion's Head: he was there with ice water and an improvised bandage made of a soccer sock
• (Please note that ice is a crucial element to first aid)

If you ever danced with death, he would be the kind of fiance you would want to own. His hands are made of magic and he always seems to know exactly what to say to calm your nerves and stop your pain. It helps that he has a medical background because he knows when something is badly broken under your skin or when you could be concussed. But at the end of the day it's so much more than that. It's the fact that when I get hurt he wants to be first on the scene and he wants to be the one who fixes me. 

Maybe I became more accident-prone when I met him :) 

Klop en Gebak Chocolate Cake Recipe

I'm home recovering from an epic weekend. Sadly I will have to return to work tomorrow if I want to convince my parents that I am well enough to play in our first soccer match of the new season.  



I have the definitive urge to bake again- could be my ego hungry for the praise from last weeks success. 

I haven't decided whether to make biscuits or chocolate cake. Decisions. I will post some pictures once I'm done :)

Klop en Gebak

Ingredients

2 cups castor sugar

4 eggs

1 cup fish oil

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

4 teaspoons baking powder

2 cups cake flour -  For Chocolate cake remove 3Table spoons of flour replace with 3 table spoons of Cocoa.

1 and ¼  cups milk

Method

Mix above ingredients in the order that it is listed using a big spoon and adding the ingredients as you go along. Pour into either a round baking dish or a square dish. Bake at 180 Degrees at preheated oven for 20-30 minutes.

Topping:

(I don't do the jam thing. In fact I bake my cake in a round tin with a hole in it (I think it's called a doughnut).)
Spread cake with apricot jam

Mix together icing  and coconut (dry) and sprinkle on cake

Topping for choc cake

1 can of nestle cream (a half of the big one or one small one)

1 slab of Cadbury chocolate

Method

Melt chocolate in microwave. Add cream and mix. Wait until cake cools down, top with a layer of jam then top with chocolate mixture.
(I melt the chocolate in a glass dish over a pot of boiling water.)