Thrills, pills and a headscarf

Written, as promised, for my mother. Since I started travelling I said you always want things to go really right or really wrong - you never want average. At least with really right or really wrong you've got a good story. This is a rationale I started applying to life too. I had no idea how much it was going to come back and bite me in the arse! About a week after returning from my South America trip I sat in a cafe with my mum in Karangahake, discussing many things including my health - or lack thereof. She said to me that I may be giving a false impression that this is an easy journey with my positivity. That several people had commented on how well I was dealing with this and I acknowledged I had had similar comments. So, because it's the year of yes and because I love my mum (even though I tell her the wonderful daughterly things like how terrible she is and how I'm pretty sure her carcinogenic toasted sandwiches were the cause of the cancer in the first place)...

I've always said that travelling gave me an education I could never buy. One that could never be taught in schools or universities; that simply needs to be learnt as each opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities could be great fun or amazingly challenging. All of them important to deal with. I feel so thankful to have had another four weeks to continue my education in life and as slow as I've been on my blogs I want to share some of those learnings. Some useful, some not. Language is great in it's ambiguity: I thought I spoke Spanish to a point. I guess that's still strictly true but we had some fun experiences with it. It was quite empowering to realise I was still able to get by in Spanish, speak to people and get done what I needed to get done even if it wasn't perfect. What I did learn was there are many more differences between the Castellano I have learnt and South American Spanish. In some of many language confusions we established that ...