Darwin

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to bring Darwin with me.

A little back history, which may or may not explain why I find this a subject to debate:

In 1988, mum gave me an old prop from her Sooter's Studio. It was a stuffed chimpanzee puppet thing, with long skinny arms and a squeaker box thingy so you could make it 'sound like a monkey' while entertaining kids.

I named him Darwin, because even at four I had a very odd sense of humor.

Anyway, Darwin very quickly became my answer to the whole security blanket phenomenon. I took him everywhere with me. Camping, on road trips, to sleep overs (even if I was only going to Grandma and Grandpa's house) Guide camp...everywhere. Darwin's been to Charleston, SC, and Myrtle Beach, and Costa Rica. He's been to Maine, and Cape Breton, and PEI, and Algonquin Park...he's gotten worn, and thin, and one of the grabby mechanisms in his hand doesn't work, and the squeaker box has long since vanished, and the sides of his mouth are split, and I seriously believe that his purple shirt hasn't been washed in the 21 odd years that he's been in my possession. But I don't care.

Darwin has been my constant companion since I was four. I don't know if I can give that up. He has helped me through more bouts of homesickness than can count, through teenaged emo-angst and pure sadness.

So the choice is before me: a) Take Darwin with me to England and beyond. Possibly forever. Hug him when it's dark and scary and I'm all alone. Run the risk of loosing him somewhere, of him getting damaged in the rain, stolen, lost, destroyed...

b) Don't take him with me. Keep him home, safe. Give up a piece of my childhood, something that would keep me grounded and sane, would stave off homesickness and loneliness. But he would be safe.

The choice isn't as easy as it looks. Because of who I am I very quickly imbue objects with human emotions and feelings. If something were to happen to Darwin...

I just don't know if I can make that choice. I likely won't be able to until the last possible instant.

Sleepy...and a tad worried

There is a great deal that I have to do before I go...five months isn't nearly enough time to get it all done.

At some point (preferably very soon) I need to get a job. Tomorrow (technically today) I have to work for Uncle Steve, which is nice, but I would need to work full time at minimum wage to get even half of what I'll need before I go. And most of that will be for stuff that I need while I'm there.

Both Mum and Chantelle figure about $7000 will do it. Which means I've got just over $6000 to make in the next five and a bit months, and I'm currently unemployed. Were I to get a decent paying job tomorrow, I could probably do it. I don't pay rent. I would have to start contributing to the cell phone bill, but I wouldn't have to pay utilities or interwebs or anything like that, and so I would be able to keep most of my monies for other things.

In theory.

What I am most worried about is that the universe will notice me again, and something will happen, and because of that, I won't be able to go. I tell myself that it's unlikely that, out of the six billion or more people on the planet, I would be singled out to be screwed over, but then, I wouldn't be singled out, I would just be screwed over like so many others. Is it wrong to hope and pray that some other poor bastard gets screwed so that my dreams can be fulfilled in some way?

Very probably.

But then, these worries are normal. Money worries...well, they hit everyone. And they're especially pertinent because, as much as I'm sure I'm going to love Cardiff, I don't want to live under any bridge, let alone one in Cardiff.

In other news, I'm making myself a wee travel bag. It's for my journal, I think, the one Chantelle gave me. Or my passport/travel documents. It's got a TARDIS on it, which signifies my desire to journey, to escape, to run away into the unknown. To take that step off into true oblivion and see what's out there. The pioneering spirit.

I'm not sure I have enough of that spirit to be a true pioneer, but I do want to eventually live in Wales, see places I've never been, things I've never dreamt of...journey.

(I'm also, for those of you who don't know, a giant nerd)

Either way, I'm going to line it with waterproof fabric, I think, if I can find some that the texture of which doesn't bother me a great deal. I don't want my journal to get ruined. Or my passport/travel documents, depending on what I decide to keep in there.

Change of Thought

So...upon further reading, I think the UK Ancestry visa is the way to go for now. I think I was misreading/understanding what the pages were saying about citizenship before...

So, when Mum and Dad and I and whoever else go to Ottawa at the end of the month (there's a decent chance Bean will come too), that's what I'll be asking about first.

Without a visa, I can stay in the UK for a maximum of six months. This might be a good thing, because six months should be enough time to figure out whether or not I want to actually live there and commit to getting my citizenship. Then again, if I still don't have a means of getting home at the end of those six months, how the bloody hell am I going to find a job without a work permit?

Jon's beginning to question how our relationship is going to survive a trans-oceanic long-distance relationship. While I see why he worries, at the same time, Chantelle and Ari have been doing just fine for nearly as long. They're getting married next year. Well, technically later this year, because that's the easiest way to get his Canadian citizenship. But the full, 'official' wedding isn't until next year.

What frightens me is that I'm going anyway. This is something I've needed to do for years. Wanted to do for years. Leap off the proverbial precipice and see if I can actually fly, or if I plummet like a stone. And if that wasn't a lame enough metaphor for you, you'll just have to deal.

Wee update...

Mum's said that we can go up to Ottawa to the UK Embassy at the end of the month, when my dad has some time off. Make a long weekend of it.

I'm hoping that (because I better damn well have a job by then) I'll be able to get the time off. If the time is running the photography studio in some capacity, this shouldn't be a problem; it'll be by appointment only.

If it's anything else, though...

Anyway, I'm hoping it won't cost too much to start the repatriation thing going. Last I checked, because I was born after Jan 1, 1983, I was pretty much good to go. But, these sorts of regulations change, so I'll need to take another look at the UK Border Agency website.

Hmm.

At some point this week, mum wants to go to Toronto to a) pick up my diploma and b) check out the UK Consolate and ask them what I need to do to repatriate and how much it'll cost.

I'm a little nervous, about both. The initial shock of knowing I'm actually going has worn off somewhat, and I think that actually making the leap to starting the process of repatriating will make the upcoming trip (and the fact I have no way back) real.

At the same time, I think that if I had a way back, I wouldn't get anything out of this trip. It would just be a holiday. It wouldn't be the life-changing experience I seem to need. Spending two months in Costa Rica wasn't much help either, because I knew when I was leaving. It was stressful, knowing I had to come back here. The fact that we had to deal with the theft of Bean's stuff on our trip to Jaco, and then those stupid whores that took Bean's computer and my ring wasn't much help either.

Costa Rica is a nice place to visit, and I did see an active Volcano, which was awesome, but...whatever it was that I was looking for when I left, I didn't find.

Maybe having a one-way ticket will give me the time to find whatever it is that I'm looking for.

Musings

Mum was saying that Bean might come too, at least for a while, because I leave around the same time that she wants to set out on her 'wander'. I think I like this idea, though I know that if Bean and I are together while we're there we won't separate, and I'll probably end up wandering with her. Or her with me. Which is fine, because these things are always safer with company.

Chantelle thinks it would be best if I could push the date ahead on my ticket, to go a little later to give me a little more time...I find that idea appealing, but I know that if I do that I'll never get out of here. I need to leave. This post-post-secondary school lethargy has gone on long enough. Life awaits.

She was also asking me - in an attempt to help me plan - what I want to get out of this trip, and where I want to go, etc. I'm not entirely sure. I know I want to get my UK citizenship, and I know this means that I'll likely have to spend five years living in the UK. Which I'm fine with, because there's no point in becoming a citizen of a country you're not prepared to live in.

I want to see the "Land of My Fathers"...well, mother. I have half a mind (or a quarter, at least) to looking up my mum's biological parents. Not to meet, but to find out who they were so I can trace my ancestry on that side back beyond mum.

I want to see the place that Gran and Granddad grew up in. It's called Cogan, and apparently it's in Penarth.

I want a piece of bluestone to wear around my neck so I can make other fluffbunies jealous. And another piece that I can mail back to Chantelle to add to her collection of rocks and crystals.

I want to go to Scotland to take a picture of Uncle Tom's statue. And so I can go to Scotland.

I want to walk from one end of Wales to the other along the coast, and go camping and stay in bed and breakfastses, and take awesome pictures of stuff.

I want to see Stonehenge, and Woodhenge, and other neolithic sites, in Wales and England and Ireland and Scotland.

I want my own little studio somewhere, where I can write and take pictures and learn how to draw better. And sell my own pictures, too.

I want to learn what it really means to be Welsh.

Is that enough? Should I want more out of this? That last on the list...I've often scoffed at the idea of anyone wanting to learn about their cultural identy, because I've never seen the point. How can anyone not know? And why does it matter, anyway? I am ME, and I always will be, even if ME is changing constantly due to personal evolution. But in recent years (and in no small part because I've finished my degree and now don't know what to do with it) I've been thinking that merely because my ancestry is Welsh doesn't mean I am Welsh. Especially since I was born and raised in Canada.

But then, Canada's cultural identity is based on the fact that we don't actually have one. Our 'culture' has to be determined by government offices because our population is made up of various stages of immigrants from elsewhere. And, I don't like hockey, I rarely eat poutine, W.O Mitchell and Margaret Atwood SUCK, and I neither fish nor farm on a prairie. So am I really Canadian?

I hope to find that out. And, like all pilgrims in search of wisdom, my journey must begin elsewhere.

Damn. This could be the preface to my autobiography, or a photojournal, or something. I suppose, in a way, that's what I'm actually writing. Only on the internet. And I'm not getting any money out of it.

Things I Will Need

Here is a list of what I'm going to need before I go/while I'm there. It's a preliminary list, merely because I haven't gotten my head out of the clouds enough to figure out precisely what I'm going to need...and because I've never gone on a trip that didn't have an end date attached, and so I can't really say what I'm going to need after the first few weeks or so...except more of the same stuff.

So I'm going to use the Heinleinian method of trip preparation, which is to list everything that could possibly ever be useful and then slowly pare it down by scrapping things that are simply too large/heavy/unnecessary to bring.

Any that look like this have been obtained.

• A bigass backpack
• Money. Lots and lots of money
• A knife
• Camping gear - tent, sleeping-bag, stove, pots, utensils
• A damn good pair of boots
• Two weeks worth of clothes - shirts, pants, skirts, socks and undies and bras (three weeks worth of each), sweaters, shorts, pjs
  
• A very large book of maps/Google Maps print-outs
• Darwin
• RAIN GEAR
• One of those groundsheet thingies to go over said bigass backpack
• A rucksack similar to the one I made for Clayton
• The rucksack I made for Clayton, only finished, so I can give it to him while I'm there
  
• The Journal that Chantelle gave me for my birthday
• Sketch book, pencils, pens, erasers
• A DAMN GOOD CAMERA with film/memory cards and batteries
• A UK power converter
• An iPod or similar device, with which I can listen to music
• Notebooks in which I can write stories, in case I can't bring a laptop. This is not the same as the journal that Chantelle gave me, because that has a very specific purpose.
  
• A laptop, preferably a very light one with a decent amount of memory for picture uploading/writing/internet surfage where possible
  
• Somewhere to stay.
• A ticket home
• A work visa
• UK Citizenship
  

Better Late Than Never

I started this blog...a while ago...for the express purpose of writing random things at random times. Then, characteristically, I forgot about it.

Now I've decided to use it to chronicle the things I have to do to get ready - and go - to England and Wales in May. There are a lot of things, on account of the fact that my mum sprung this trip on me at Christmas.

So here are the basic details:

I leave May 18th, 2009
I have to pick up my diploma before I go
I have to renew my passport
I have to earn enough money to make sure I don't starve while I'm there, and
I have to earn enough money to make sure I CAN GET BACK

Because it's a one-way ticket.

To say that I'm terrified is...actually pretty accurate. I've never been to England, or Wales, despite the fact that this is where I've been drawn to for my whole life. My Mum and Gran know people over there, and I'll likely end up staying with them for some time while I figure out wtf I'm going to be doing...

*deep breath*

It's going to be a journey, that's for sure.