Bucket List

It's been a stressful few weeks out here in Bali and as you may have noticed from the delayed update of this blog, our internet has been off. Much to our frustration, sorting things out like this in Indonesia isn't as simple as making a quick phonecall to your provider. Nothing is. To me, it feels like the equivalent of searching for The Holy Grail. And so, I stress that this maddening situation that we've been in has not just been about the bloody internet of course. A whole multitude of things (and much more serious, may I add) have gone, shall we say, tits up.

To conlude, our plans have now changed and we are forced to switch the tracks. We are coming home to Europe in June. There are plenty of positives in this decision, believe me. And the most exciting thing about it is that we have so much more to be getting on with. So many other places we want to see, so many things we want to do.

So, during a dinner with a friend, we got onto the subject of a bucket list - a list of things you want to do before you die. After having discussed what we all had done so far, I felt quite proud of my achievments at the age of 27...leaving Bali is just a minor change of plan in the grand scheme of things. Not staying here for a year as previously intended isn't a failure at all but a realisation that this isn't the way it's meant to be. Listening to calls when you get them are more important. That's what it was to me when I decided to go travelling last year, it was a calling. And in following its path, I crossed off a bunch of things from my bucket list in one hit.

Our friend chalked up what she'd love to do before she dies and posted it on Facebook...in response to that, I'm going to tell all of you mine on this blog. It is then archived for me to look back on in time to come when I'm feeling a little stuck or blue. Sometimes we just need to tell ourselves that we've been bouncing along a rainbow of experiences all our lives and when we hit that grey cloud, we need to look back on the bountiful path we've been following. And on the otherside of that cloud, sunlight will eventually break.

So here are the highlights of what I've done so far:

*See the Himalayas
*Bond with an Elephant (I spent a lovely morning making and feeding rice parcels to the beautiful elephant Jampar Kali in Nepal)
*Visit Jim Morrison's grave in Paris
*Spend time on a Native American Reservation
*Do a sweatlodge ceremony
*See the Grand Canyon
*Go dolphin watching
*Sit on the dock of the bay (A tribute to Otis Redding in San Francisco)
*Stroll down "The Walk of Fame"
*See the "Christ the Redeemer" statue in Rio, Brazil
*Be on TV (The 6 o'clock news with my mum, in the audience of MTV's TRL, in the background of a news report in Nepal and featuring in a main story on a French reality show about loved ones reuniting at airports - with Loic in Lyon)
*Stroke a lion cub
*Learn guitar
*Learn a craft (there are several I still want to learn, but one of them I actually did was learn how to make candles)
*See the Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo and all that jazz at the Louvre
*Visit Stonehenge
*Go to a Buddhist temple (been to a couple now)
*Have a Past Life Regression

The Himalayas, photo of Jim Morrison's grave by Cyrilplace on Etsy, The Christ in Rio and The Louvre Museum

Ok...so running out of things I've done...a little shorter than I wanted it to be, but not bad a list. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few!

And now for my up to date Bucket List:

*See Machu Picchu
*Hug a panda
*Ride an elephant (nearly did but had to cut the trip to Nepal short)
*Master a Jimi Hendrix song on electric guitar (I know, I know)
*Bathe in the hotsprings in Iceland
*Visit Graceland
*Go to Japan
*Publish a book (this has always been number one, actually)
*Visit Delphi, the ancient oracle temple in Greece
*Learn more crafts, like: bookmaking, printmaking, sculpture, making stained glass windows, mozaics, dressmaking, soapmaking, woodcarving etc
*Own a Victorian house (this comes very closely behind publishing a book - a lifelong dream)
*Spend a week in a cosy log cabin
*Road trip across Europe

Japan, Mozaic making, hotsprings in Iceland and Machu Picchu

And I'm sure there are many more, but we'll leave it there...achievable? I'd like to think so.

After reading a few articles on Bucket Lists, there are some rather pessimistic people out there who seem to think that these lists are supposed to include things that are out of one's grasp...unrealistic dreams that would never happen. There was one particularly negative article that gave a 'most likely' type of list that is, according to this writer, the blueprint of most of our lives. The list featured things like: 'get a mortgage then fall behind on payments', 'do a degree and then spend life working in an irrelevant field'...I mean really, if this is the case, it's only because you choose it to be. And what sort of hope is there for people who settle for humdrum and never think they can achieve anything exciting? Go and do it, even if it's the smallest of things like 'write a song' or 'ride a horse' - do it!

I'm intrigued by other people's dreams, desires and goals, so what's your bucket list? And better yet, what are your proudest achievements?