OT: I need some advice

Starlia....or anyone else for that matter... you are more them welcome to come visit me :)) I am in Sacramento

Nicole

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On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 2:17:59 -0500, Christina Peterson wrote (in message ):

For all the fact that I live about a half mile from where I was born, and have always lived here in my hometown, I've always had serious wanderlust.

As a kid, we spent months at a time in Germany, and I would hang with my favorite aunt and uncle. They took me everywhere, and I looked at it all as a huge adventure. Later, I used to earn my way to summer camp, and would cry when it was time to go home.

Once I got older, I tramped all over Europe, with a hundred dollar bill pinned in my bra for emergencies (which never came up), and not much besides my knowledge of English, German and pantomime. Worked very well every place but Paris.

DH loves to travel, but on a different scale than I do. He has a morbid fear of flying, although he will fly once in a while for my sake. We've driven all over the place, and spent three glorious weeks tramping through the Hawaiian Islands for our honeymoon.

DD is like me, always looking for an adventure. We live very simply for our income, spending mainly on education, travel and books (plus beads, now). I really upsets her that we can no longer just up and disappear with her for a week or two at a time, and she cannot wait to get her drivers license, so she can do the driving on our "adventures."

Because travel is out of the question for me right now, I'm doing a lot of vicarious traveling. There are some amazing travelogues out there. "Road Fever" by Tim Cahill is a particular favorite (as are his other books), as he seems to be the unluckiest damn traveler that ever lived, and still loves it. Bill Bryson whines quite a bit, but he's a pretty fun observer - and a bit of a fool, IMO. (Traveling the world and never even trying to learn a language other than English) Rick Steves makes everywhere seem like paradise, even though I know a lot better.

Sounds like Bob. He's perfectly content to stay in the house where he was born (here), and use it as homebase for his travels. I seem to know everyone wherever I go, but I'm nothing compared to Bob. He goes out for a gallon of milk, and five hours later, he's home again "because I ran into someone I knew."

Me, too. One of these days, I'll post my European travelogues from when DD and I spent the summer wandering Europe. (I was sent there for work, and talked the company into not sending me home between assignments).

Kathy N-V

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Christina Peterson" :

]I ]haven't even started on Northern Calif.

AMEN!

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

(Jewelry) newest creations: ----------- The measure of the menace of a man is not what hardware he carries, but what ideas he believes.-- Jeff Jordan

Always a good sign. I dig dogs.

It's incredibly expensive to go to Antarctica as a tourist. In my mind the only way one could reasonably go is to work there.

A good site for general information about working in Antarctica is

The Raytheon Polar Services site is There's a list of available positions there. Raytheon now runs all the polar services as I understand it. You don't really have to be skilled to work in Antarctica -- there are all kinds of jobs. My friend's wife spent 6 months there as a fire dispatcher, a job for which they train you. You do have to pass rigorous physical and psychological exams, though. An interesting description of life at the South Pole is in Jerri Nielsen's book Ice Bound. She's the doctor who had to treat herself for breast cancer. Leaving aside her illness, her descriptions of living conditions persuaded me I'm way to old and wimpy for Antarctica!

Elise

I don't feel like I'm leaving him. I just feel like I need more adventure in my life than I have at the moment. I've been known to leave to go to the store and in a few hours I was in another state. I just love traveling and experiencing so many things. He just wants to hunt. And I don't cut into any hunting time and support him in that hobby or lifestyle...whatever it is. I just don't want dead animals on the walls.

I hope to go to work. I could be a fire dispatcher since I'm a firefighter. That wouldn't be bad at all.

> > The Raytheon Polar Services site is There's > a list of available positions there. Raytheon now runs all the polar > services as I understand it. >

Well, I certainly agree on the dead animals on the wall thing.

Whatever you do, I wish you well. I also hope that you'll find that adventure you're looking for. Life's daily challenges are enough for me. :-)

You're probably out of luck until next October, but now's the time to start the process.

Elise

> > > > The Raytheon Polar Services site is > There's > > a list of available positions there. Raytheon now runs all the polar > > services as I understand it. > >

That's perfectly fine with me. I'm not ready to step out the door today. I'm just ready for some adventure. California sounds very appealing all the time. I can usually go to Mexico very fast and cheap anytime I want.

Amen. Sing my quote to yourself, and follow your heart. It is between you and your husband how straight you are being with each other, and how you chose to work things out.

Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows

Sooz -- I got the white bedroom put together, at least temporarily (my decorating is always a work in progress) and placed your book in that room! I love you so much, and you are so attuned to my heart. You don't even know.

Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows

And -- flame me if you wish -- but Starlia didn't ask for anyone's advice on her marriage. She asked if people had an idea how to work a passage overseas, at least to the best of my recollection. LOL. Good grief.

Becki "In between the moon and you, the angels have a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right." -- Counting Crows

Oops. You're right. ~~ Sooz

------- "Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you rattle your jewelry." John Lennon (1940 - 1980) Royal Varieties Performance ~ Dr. Sooz's Bead Links

You guys have left out all of the "REAL" north. San Francisco is the southern tip of northern CA. The north coast is beautiful too.Then you have Mt.Shasta & Mt. Lassen, The cattle ranches around Burney and Alturas, Redding(the hottest place on earth some days), the Redwood parks, Agate beaches, Eureka, Fortuna ( Hitchcock's Birds). Mendocino and a zillion lakes and rivers.

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "armand vine" :

]San Francisco is the southern tip of northern CA.

this is the only statement i'd disagree with.

**smile**

**for me** Northern California extends to Monterey.

----------- @vicki [SnuggleWench] (Books)

(Jewelry) newest creations: ----------- The measure of the menace of a man is not what hardware he carries, but what ideas he believes.-- Jeff Jordan

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 0:36:07 -0500, BeckiBead wrote (in message ):

Entirely true.

As for the best way to get yourselves overseas, I got many, many trips paid for simply by being multi-lingual. So few Americans speak multiple languages that those who can are in great demand, especially those who speak English as a native language. (English isn't my first language, but it is my native language, and no one can tell that I spoke German first)

I have a marketing and computer background, and majored in biology in college. That particular combination is particularly attractive to pharmaceutical and medical research companies, as well as those who sell to them. Insurance companies are always looking for multi-lingual folks as well. All these businesses are relatively recession-proof, and have boatloads of money to pay for business expenses (like travel).

I also worked for a high tech company that sold computer software to newspapers. Every city in the world has a newspaper, and although newspaper companies are pretty cheap with the money, they do need certain supplies, and they'll pay to have vendor companies send representatives and trainers to their sites. (They can't send their own employees off for training because newspapers have very inflexible deadlines, and they want their employees on hand 24/7/365)

If I were single, I would have been able to travel a lot more than I did. But being married and having a child and sick relatives to care for kept me closer to home. My single and/or childless cow orkers traveled all the time, for anywhere from two to six weeks at a shot. Some of them managed to save a LOT of money by traveling most of the time, and living with friends or relatives inbetween trips.

DH used to work for a women's garment importer, and they sent buyers overseas to visit all the manufacturers several times a year, for 6-8 weeks at a time. Lots of the places they went are places that are _very_ interesting to us beaders: Indonesia, China, India, Egypt, all over South America, cool places like that. As an added attraction, there aren't direct flights to most of those places, so there was always a stop for a couple of days in Hawaii, Tokyo or Hong Kong.

One suggestion: get a corporate job that involves travel, and save/maximize all your frequent flyer miles. After a year or three, you'll have been to all kinds of places that are on your list, and will have enough miles to go visit the places that are left.

Also, if you want to visit Africa or Australia, consider flying to Germany, and booking the trip through there. Germans get a minimum of six weeks vacation a year, and travel is a huge business. They get prices we can't even dream of getting on travel. Just before became ill, DD and I were planning a trip to Egypt. Even with the flights to Germany, the trip was less than half of what I would have spent going straight from the US.

Hope this helps. It's not exactly traveling with a dollar and a backpack, but it can be a lot of fun nonetheless. To me at least, there is some attraction going to all these places knowing that someone else is footing the bill, and that I have enough money in my pocket to buy what I need.

Kathy N-V

Thanks Becki. I understand the concern though. I wish everyone had a SO like mine. He is giving me such a hard time about it with a grin on his face. He wanted to know last night who was going to tickle me while I watched television and who was going to pet me to sleep. I told him my pet penguin. :-)

Kathy,

I like the way you think. I have tons of government contracting experience and while my language skills are limiting I can speak a few others okay. Choctaw and English are my native languages. I can speak Spanish, understand and read French and speak it back horribly, some Israeli and Greek. I've worked with so many foreign companies over the years that I had to learn some of it over time.

I would love to go back to work for BAE Systems, but that isn't going to happen. That was a work place with tons of money and tons of overseas travel. Hopefully Raytheon can help me out. I'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for the tip about going to Germany and traveling from there. I plan to do that out of Mexico to get to a location I won't mention so I don't get myself in trouble. There is a new movie with the word in it that is coming out soon. Something about dancing. :-) I have always wanted to go and better hurry before the US and Mexico makes some sort of agreement where I can't.

save/maximize