the happening

I am not sure how much of this I will get all down before I fall asleep, but I want to do it some justice, this weekend, and also this moment right now, on account of that it is happening. (...not even sure if any of that made sense at all) 

Okay, so here I am, lying on my futon-bed-thing on the night before my orientation as a University of Ljubljana exchange student. And tomorrow, everything that I've been wondering, all those unknowns from before, it all will happen. 

And in fact, everything has happened. And it is. 

My post on South Africa was about how life got weird because life happened. Like something I could never have expected or thought of in reality, it all became real and immediate and amazing. And that is how I feel now, real and immediate and amazing, because of how I didn't know before and how I am experiencing now. 

So in blog-recap style, here are some photos and some things that happened these last few days. 

Ah. 

Right, well I moved in to my apartment, for starters. This is my totally artful shelf, in good taste of tea and Buddha. I don't have internetz yet (this is being written here but will probably be posted on campus wifi), and I can't find tape to put up pictures and flags and things, but still. It is a roomy and bright apartment and I have some great space on a patio/balcony bonus. So all y'all are invited for dinner parties over at mine. Any time, please. I look forward to seeing how this space will be used, who will be here, what their story is, what ours will become. And it's dangerous because I have this little speaker set for my iPod (currently playing me some Nepali tunes) and the first time James Blake (I mind), came on...it got dangerous. And you know how I feel about being a single person in a double bed....it's either find a single bed or a single man, am I right?! *conspiratorial wink and nudge* *haha yeah okay* although I'm sure I've mentioned just how attractive everyone is here. Maybe I can play the exotic 'Canadian' card. Though I'm not sure how exotic it is, really...hmph. 

Then there was this, Blejski grad, Bled castle. Which is way wayyyyy high up on that cliff, overlooking Bled lake. Really the coolest, and such a beautiful view. ...except watch me say that this whole damn time. 

I can't really capture the colour of the lake, especially on a shitty iPod camera, and especially in that painful way that life can only be experienced firsthand to truly know. We took a boat rise into the middle of the lake to this monastery on an island, where a couple was getting married and everyone was holding hands and doing cute things like rowing row boats and taking couple photos. *forlorn sigh* NAH JUST KIDDING it was fucking cool. And I'm making it a point to return on a bright and sunny and warm day, to soak in the gorgeous blue the lake is on a clear day. Mostly because the water here is literally crystal, and it is so easy to see to the bottom. Gah. Unreal. Except TOTALLY REAL. 

Easily one of my favourite moments (of life?) so far. We pulled over to the side of the road to indulge in a super-Kelly moment of horse appreciation. These creatures were large and steady and blew their sweet horsey breath in my face and I scratched their chin and fed them roadside flowers and walked away with horse dirty hands and even just that contact grounded me. 

My dad, in excellent dad-style, joked about coming to "loobie-banana", being all dad about the pronunciation of places (he still can't say Nicaragua correctly). And then in the hilarity of life, we get this bright yellow car. Thus travelling from loobie-banana in our own GPS equipped banana. The little things...

We drove around Lake Bohinj and up some hairpin turns and then hiked up some forest stairs to this, and life got all gorgeous about itself again. This is the Savica waterfall. There was a group of Canadian exchange students studying in Amsterdam there for a visit. The way they held their cigarettes felt like they wanted to look trendy and weren't really certain about it. Where, of course, was one kid from? Newmarket. As in...20 minutes away from Aurora. As in...small freaking world sometimes. 

Saturday night we returned late and sat out, bundled up slightly, by the river for some late night soup. I left, bussed home, felt the way it will feel for nine months now. 

Gotta give mom some serious credit for coming with me on this week ahead of time. Had to get business done and move me in before we could totally hang out and be tourists about things. Thanks mom. You did me some serious good, in typical mom-style. And because I'm in my selfish twenties and getting my feet beneath me, I will take it from here. "Oooh baby baby it's a wide world..." And it's also a deep world, because then we toured on Sunday things like 

THIS CAVE! 

The postojna caves. Amazing. 21km, 100m underground, and that's just here. 

I know this picture doesn't do it justice, but if you've ever been underground, in any kind of cave-like grotto, I think you'll get what I mean when I say that there is something really poignant about stalactites and stalagmites. Totally in the dark, drip by limestone-y drip, millimetres or less per century, somehow these structures can find each other. And after millennia, sometimes, the points meet and forge this column of stony strength, and no one could ever know. 

     It is like nature's greatest, most patient love story ever told. 

Even if they are only stone. I think that reaching, that eventual connection, nothing could be more heartening as a way to say hey,listen, just grow, okay? And another pillar of strength will find you on your journey, or it won't, and either way look how strong you are. Look how many millimetres you can move and shape this world, all on your own. And no one may see, and no tourist may shine a light on it, but still it matters, in the deep and unfolding and alive ways of this earth...it matters. So grow, take your time, find who and what you will, but grow. 

Ahem. 

Yes, that is indeed a castle built into a cliff and on top of a cave. 

This is not a joke. It has its current face from like 1523 and parts are from the 12th century and earlier. 

The view looks like this

What was that I'd said? Look at that view  and check out that castle? 

BECAUSE LOOK AT THAT VIEW AND CHECK OUT THAT CASTLE. 

My goodness, and this was on a torrential downpour kind of day. 

Then we drove to Italy, Trieste, the Adriatic coast. 

So I was all: 

"ERHMERHGERD IM IN ITALY!" 

And it was beautiful. And rainy. And when I say Slovenian on the signs again I was like wow, this actually looks familiar, all the consonants all the time. And it felt nice, to think that, although everything is still so foreign and unfamiliar. Because this is the beginning, and it is beginning to become something else.  

Because everything I wondered about and dismissed as future is now present, is now happening, and I wish I could articulate better how I mean that. It's like one part excitement for the immediate reality (on exchange, in own apartment, foreign country, not English, what the what), one part -ness for the cozy feelings of correspondence, one part HOLYMOLYIMDEFINITELYINSANE, one part immense happiness about how this is my journey right now, and three parts of inexplicable something about the space in my head, the openness of my heart, the freedom that is floating through my veins and the gratitude that follows, and the astounding-ness of the world to contain so much and allow so much and just be so damn much. 

And it is all happening, HAPPENING, for absolutely real. 

Oh, how good this feels. 

-k

some kind of sweetness

15 Glinškova ploščad

Živijo, hello new place of residence.

(for the record here, I am going to likely be typing more z's and v's and accents then I have in my entire life in the next nine-ish months that I'm living here. quick pronounciation guide: the little v'accents [I call them birdies], make words turn into their h-version. so like... z because zh, c=ch, s=sh, etc. and j's are like y's. mmhmm. right. SO MANY SOUNDS, ALL THE TIME, IN ALL THE WORDS, and usually a very skewed ratio of vowels to consonants. aka they never use vowels. it's amazing to hear.)

So I have found an apartment *trumpet fanfare, the victorious kind*
And I'll be moving in tomorrow *repeat fanfare*

*celebratory/mandatory lamp post swing dance photo*

Here are some pictures from today, and also the little things from life, and the good. 

Namely that I found The Little Prince.

And there are these colourful macaroons in the place beside our hotel and it reminds me of La Patisserie  and goodbyes that couldn't end and I imagine they always will.

And there was an accordion player in the city square as we walked out this morning, and after a night of dreaming about camp, it felt right and comfortable and familiar and a twinge, a titch of don't-do-this-to-me feels because who even knows where I'll be next summer.

And there was a fair set up with these booths with green and white canvases over them, of volunteer/philanthropic organizations in Ljubljana, and one of them was the TEDx tent for the University of Ljubljana, on the 14th of November. Oh oh.

And these mushroom at the open market that my grandma's friend would make cookie-replicas of, and they were delicious. 

And sunflowers that made me think of you.

And hilarious signs. This one told parents to take children in hand. 

And views of cities that don't remind me of Kathmandu because you can see everything, East and West and North and South and it is all there and it is amazing, and I will come to know this. This is from the view tower of Ljubljana Castle. 

And on the little corn-and-cheese boat tour we took on the river Ljubljanica this afternoon, we travelled under many bridges, one of which was the bridge with the locks from the lovers who locked up and "throw away the key so love lasts forever, but I say keep always a spare key", from our tour guide.

I don't know if I would, keep a spare key, that is, because look at how beautiful life is on any given day, and love is part of that, and loss it too, and hurt is too, and all of it means something in the end, and there is no easy way out but to let it hurt when it does, and pass when it will, and be what it must. 

tea

streets

Nepal 

And we had tea at lunch and walked down these streets, and there were things that said Nepal, and I hold Nepal just here and it is funny how these things pop up, you know?

And I know the cynical world just wants to throw it all away and say forget it, it means nothing, none of it means anything, everything is random and it does not matter, but I don't.

I don't want to say that and I do not want to believe that because it is something wonderful and something beautiful to find the little things that tie life together into this strangely moving and alternative version of poetry to be read like some kind of sweetness. 

And this is some kind of sweetness, to see these things and find my journey converging in ways that have me wake up doubting and then dance in the shower to wipe away tears and forget fears and walk outside hit by another language and not remember where in the world I am and do so much more than everyday and go to bed smiling, in the end, because when the day begins there is nothing to know yet of it, and by now, by just now, it is these wonderful and warm and wide feelings and reflections in mirrors of a face that has seen the sun and colour and remembered what it is that makes roses special and deserts beautiful and other people and stars and something more than what was before.

still wondering what to say.

-k

something that will belong

"This don't feel like home anymore"
are the words playing on this songza playlist I played to write this and also put me to sleep sometime. 

And it fits appropriately, those words, I think, in terms of the then that came before my being here, and I didn't plan on writing this or starting this way, but I think I should.
"I no longer feel such a shame"
which is also true, because it is not that there was ever shame in me leaving home, but there was a difficulty in it, a struggle to allow myself to be disattached, probably because so many people are attached, to home. And that's a fine thing, but just not how I felt or defined it, which made it hard for me to be non-similar about life and the journey I feel is mine to take. 

But things have changed since I first made my big move to Vancouver, namely that we have sold my childhood home and moved away and to different places and now my sisters have gone off to university and so our house will never quite be the same. Because we will never quite live together again. Which is the way this life works.

So no, it didn't feel like home any more, and I think I carry my home in my heart. In part, it's knowing that I had 61 kingscross to grow up in, but also in part it is my actual physical beating heart that emotionally attaches itself to people in place, and it is also partly the way I remember and the way I choose to and the way people take me in, making Vancouver home and camp home and 51a Chesham home and 61 kingscross drive home and anytime I ride home and the mountains home and the ocean crashing against the shore home and being on a stage home and hugging home. 

And that I take with me, and that I know I will find, and this I know now. 

Which is also to say, this place here is not home yet. 

Watch this space for how this changes. 

But also I just arrived. Like literally...it has only just passed the first 24 hour mark of being in Slovenia. 
Which deserves a 'what the actual fuck' moment to be observed. 

*observes it* 

Because to everyone who has a routine and found the way the days can fold into each other again, this probably looks like I have some ridiculous amount of freedom on my hands to take so much dang time to write and reflect and maybe I'm not living every moment and it's like, c'mon, Kelly,you always say yourself quoting that play you haven't read but it's a line you love anyways: "do human beings ever realize life as they live it, every, every minute?" and why are you writing when you should be living

...okay, maybe not such a thought process, but yeah, I see how this could look like geez Kelly another blogpost already? 

But it ain't, at the heart of it. Because I AM practicing how to realize life as I live it, to take moments and capture them and shake myself out of that auto-survival mode I sink into when starting new things. (I still need to perfect the art of the shake-up-when-life-gets-similar-day-by-day, but hey, I'll holla at ya when it comes around.)

So...okay...what that Dickensian-length interlude means to say is that THERE HAS BEEN SO MUCH LIFE IN THESE 24 HOURS. Because everything is new and nothing has been done before...like at all, not really even in a remotely similar context, so I'm all wide eyes and quick to laugh and chat casually and seize my goddamn day and not be into myself and nervy-joe about life. 

Well, I mean, some things have weirdly similar connections. Like how my Slovenian phone (hahaha I HAVE A SLOVENIAN PHONE NUMBER THIS IS WONDERFUL: 041...hmm I forget the rest although I oughta have it memorized...there is 2 5 6 8 0 in some order.) is the exact same model as the phone I purchased in Nepal for DWC. Except this one is black and red, where that one was white. IT IS SO STRANGE to hear the same sounds, text on an old school "abc def ghi" t-9 keyboard that sends messages like in Nepal. Ha. In Slovenia. Ha. 

Also while out on a no-show apartment viewing today, we managed to get way on the edge of town and thus at the start of some serious Slovenian mix of countryside and suburb and walk down dusty roads in Austria or an appropriately Balkan country and you'll get what I mean, but standing at the edge of the driveway waiting for this absent landlord, the almost-evening smelled like a cross between burning veld and sunset on the roof of our hotel in Dang (Nepal). 

What even. 

Also the fact that walking down/up(?) Slovenska cesta (main street through Ljubljana), you can see the mountains behind the road and the traffic lights and buildings. Which brings back some gloriously Vancouver memories of walking Granville or Arbutus or somewhere. Don't think you aren't here with me. 

So there's that...which is really only moments, (...LOL at my grammar, this will steadily decline over the months as I try to adapt my English to the GLORIOUS AND FREE AND BEAUTIFUL AND IM IN LOVE WITH ALL OF YOU ALREADY non-native english speakers here)...so nothing is familiar. And it is gorgeous, because I have nothing to prop my elbow on and get cozy about, and by cozy I mean lazy, so my brain feels alive and my eyes are looking again and I love this. I've realized before that it is this that I thrive on, breaking up routine and resetting, reinventing my baseline so damn much that everything else cracks and falls away and teaches me again how to stay aware of wonder. 

I'm not saying it is always this way, but it certainly is now. 

"Yeah yeah Kelly, the feels and stuff are nice, but what have you been DOING?!" 

Oh right. 

So once we landed and arrived at our hotel (Hotel Slon, which is actually the Slovenian word for elephant....hahahahaha), I set about my to do list. Visited a student office, was told to visit another office, got a SIM card from OH MY the first of many attractive Slovenian men (by men I mean young men as in under 30 and over 18), got a phone incompatible with aforementioned SIM card, figured it out, made some phone calls for housing, arranged apartment viewings,went for a stroll, it got dark and beautiful around the city square with the three bridges and the river and the beautiful little cafes and people and buildings, taxi'd to the first apartment, liked it mucho, returned here, passed out, because I appear to have a cold (also my ear cartilage piercing appears to be a little stanky in a not cool way...any advice on dealing with tight/red/ouchy piercings?). 

Woke up this morning a little drugged from NyQuil still and those random dreams you get from new things, had breakfast at the included buffet (also can you say Kathmandu, because our hotel there had a free breakfast buffet, although majorly more options here), confirmed things, went to 'campus'/collection of certain faculty buildings, and then walked like 25 minutes up the road to the second apartment viewing. It was a little grey and foggy, the weather, not the apartment. Saw apartamento número dos, all spacious and super private with some patio space (can you say dance parties?!?!) and got a ride from owner Marjan (pronounced akin to mar-i-yon) back to school. SO PRETTY IN THE SUNSHINE AND WITH THE TREES and I walked a touch through the faculteta za druzbene vede (FDV, faculty of social sciences, where I applied and am studying, as University of Ljubljana is a 'decentralized organization', so it is specific faculties you study in, less mobility to take classes anywhere and any time), and I breathed that certain air of higher learning and EVERYONE WAS SO ATTRACTIVE (surprising for how white/similar they appear) and I felt like using words like discursive practices and rhetorical applications and theoretical knowledge and normative what-what-ness. Because I bet 'what-what-ness' will go over real well in an essay here. We have faculty orientation on Monday(!). Visited the SOU (student organization for international studentskis) and was helped by ANOTHER REALLY GOOD LOOKING SLOVENIAN GUY who was seemingly not even aware of himself being so good looking and was just all this sincere helping-ness I instantly wanted to be his friend (...with benefits..........      ..... ... . JUST KIDDING MOM AND DAD.)

Headed into the city and got an Urbana card for TRANSIT, then had lunch along the river. Hello, super close to the Italian border and thus amazing pizza. Visited a third apartment in city-ish centre but run by, shall we say, a fairly severe kind of landlord who told me 'no visitors' with a few hundred figurines of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus looking on, and I wasn't sure what to do about that, considering she lives in the flat and for all I know has eyes everywhere and likely her bedroom wall is against what could be mine...so no thank you. Ne, hvala. (I will probably try for ever to say 'hvala' (thank you) correctly, and, like Afrikaans, fail SO HARD).  

Walked through the permanent pop up market and admired the size of red peppers and picked up a cup of ice cream/gelato and crossed the bridges and returned to the hotel and googled directions and proceeded to the Slovenian almost-countryside and got stood up in like a really nothing wrong with it way, bussed back to the city. You get 1h30 for each 1euro20 ride, but with the student card which I should get by the end of the week, it's like a u-pass but for 20euro per month, I do believe. All this like pre-paid stuff makes me want to keep better track of finances...right....

I changed into my most European of outfits (one of those stylishly drapey long shirts and leggings and brown boots and glasses...well, glasses because I should wear mine more....does this sound European? Man I bomb at this fashion game) and then joined the group of 50 or so Erasmus students, a number who had been there for a few weeks already doing the Slovenian language course (apparently brutal in terms of how difficult the language is). Met a group of ....wait for it... BEAUTIFUL Spanish people, and then some French people, then some boys from Germany, and eventually sat at a table beside two Korean girls, a Hungarian postgrad, a Spanish girl, Polish girl and Greek girl (who can speak seven languages because of her degree and is literally so I don't give a shit about what you think of me, but in a self assured way...going to take a page from her book maybe), and sat with this Spanish kid Javier with all the charming Spain-Spanish way but a reluctance to use english, and this like bouncy kind of infallibility about him in everything else. He did a 'magic trick' for us, that ended with me and one of the Korean girls B (name is pronounced like "Embi", but said just call her B...Bee? you get it) receiving an elastic band shaped like a star. Remember those days of those elasticky bracelets you could wear and when you took them off they were kangaroos or guitars and the like?Think similar thoughts. I told Javier (because what else would this kind of guy be called) "you know I'm going to keep this forever" and he laughed and said "I see you", and I laughed. Because it probably seemed like me just joking, but like...you know how I like those little things, about people and life, the things that would just kill Holden Caufield. 

So I've got that star. And it reminds me of the Spanish word for star "estrella", and how pretty it is, and of the blog post I wrote in Nicaragua called "las estrellas", and of the little prince, of course, and the night sky I am so familiar with and the ones I don't know, can't see, have not grown up with, the moments in SA where I would look up and there was no Big Dipper but constellations instead of another kind. And constellations. And how you make them, and how I carry those points on the back of my neck and forever the ability to make them, draw from point to point what it is I want to matter in my life. 

There was a Ghanaian guy in the group, who grew up the latter half his life in Italy, and I was like 'Saran! That's almost your life story!' So I shall hope he studies social sciences and seek him out on orientation and become his best friend. 

Mm. 

Yes. 

Chatted the bus ride back with B, who just wants to travel and this is her first time travelling in the western world and she studies English/translation and will travel after winter semester to England. A lot of the students are only here for winter semester. So I will get to do this all again in February when summer semester students arrive. COOL LIFE OF MINE. Parted the evening with Sue and B (the Koreans) and Sabella the Spanish girl and said 'I will see you soon' to them and it's nice to think we get to see each other again, them and everyone else. And it is cool to think I will recognize some faces in class and not remember all their names do that laughing-about-forgetting thing and see them all again and start that process of get to know ya and get over the awkward shininess of new-ness, but also revel in it, so so much, the unknown-ness of who all these people are, and what conversations and classes and things and events and life will carry us where. 

So...that's a thing. And it is a thing in my life. And it is a thing in my life that is happening, me being that smiling and joking Canadian whose "English is so good" and everyone being first a country, and then a name, and then a subject, and then a time limit before they become a person. 

Okay. 

Yeah. 

I think that's what's up. 

I just yawned and my jaw is all sore about it because I've been trying to pop my ears from such severe pressure changes from yesterday's flights and it has mostly worked but those corners of my jaw are protesting like mad.  Shush you, jaw hinges, you ain't no 99%. 

"Thanks for that Kelly *eye roll*"

...but this is like Kelly-uncut, here, so watch out, eh? And I really do mean uncut because I very rarely read these posts a second time on account of this being my iPod I'm currently writing on, as you can probably tell by the myriad tiny mistakes and mishaps of touch screen keyboards, and also because 'all the things and beginnings' are always a happen-as-per-experience thing, and I want this to be too, and not be clean and censored and done-up, though there is something in that too.  

So be it. 

Tomorrow I'm going to make a decision on housing, because I probably should, and this is supposed to be me sleeping on it. Woops. 

At any rate, I shall close my eyes and dream strange dreams of all the things and will write again when life happens in enough time to do so.  

Please send me updates on your lives as well, if you are reading this and you know I love you. If you're unsure, send em anyway, and use all the past tense auxiliary/complicated grammar-speak in the world so I can stay on stop of it. Nah, jokes, I have Dickens to read (Great Expectations...don't be surprised if I write in three months and still haven't budged on it) and thus keep me in top condition. 

Thanks for making it this far, if you did. If you didn't, I guess you will never know this.

Chocolate chip cookies for all of you. 

*hands over* 

And if you want me to address anything in specific...well I make no promises, but comment! Or else email me. You know who you are. 

Right, and pictures will be forthcoming, perhaps when I'm on a computer proper, and actually give myself time to be a tourist here and stop working so hard to live here.

...I need a good tagline/endline here. Leave suggestions in the comments and the best one gets a personalized tweet shout out. Unless I am struck by inspiration. Something creed-like and worthwhile and reassuring and exciting, like the feeling you get in your stomach before doing something a little reckless combined with someone unexpected complimenting you and also a warm beverage in your hands in a room full of people in a place called home. 

For now,

be on time and kill it. 

-k

(These aren't all the feels from this last day. I am too tired, perhaps tired of/out, to get properly rage-y about that state of the world/just the world overall and how things possibly are as they are. I'm glad of the distraction of these days to keep my mind chewing on all this, but eventually it will soften and get glowy and familiar, and I will find that all the mad and hurt and not-understanding and unjust-ness of the world will still be here. As is as is as is, and there is always choice, but mad does not mean bad. Just alive)

"nueva entrada"

Because I set this fancy pants but not really iPod touch to "Spanish", the option to write something new for my blog via this app says 'nueva entrada', and I think that's just the most fitting title for this slice of life just now. 

Which is to say I'm sitting thirsty and sleep deprived in the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, terminal 2G...which, if you wanted to know, is about 26km away from terminal 3, where I landed (merci air transat), so I had a wonderful time lugging/kicking/dragging/abusing my two suitcases and rolly wheel carry on here. Shiiiiiiiiiiittttt France, you don't make this easy hey? 

But this is a new entry for life right now, because I am only two hours away from where I am about to live for the next TEN FREAKING MONTHS, and when I walked off that first flight into the warming Parisian morning with clouds being indecisive about the sunshine, I took a deep breath and I laughed to myself and I said hello, Europe. 

Hello, Europe. 

Hello, new continent. 

Hello, soon to be home. 

New entry, page, blank slate, all of it. 

here 

we

go

-k

I'll write as the days go and the things happen, but I can promise no Internet consistency, so just be with me on this one and patient. 

AND LOOK AT THE VIEW AS WE LANDED IN LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA.