"Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverence and application?"

-Confucious

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"Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand."

-Chinese proverb

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I've been reading a multitude of travelogues lately: I've read about a woman travelling across southeast Asia and cooking over fires with native New Guineans, I've shared the life of a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English Literature in China as described in the pages of a ratty paperback, I've seen how sprirtual Mexico can be to the eyes of a young woman who fled there from the United States for self-realization, I've created visions of dedicated students practicing wushu routines in steamy gyms in Hunan, and I've dreamt myself to be sitting in a tent on a beach in Fiji, watching the moon glow and listening to waves pounding in from the sea.

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I think my fascination with reading about far-off places is a reaction to the captivity of my inner traveler as of late. Some history. I grew up with a stable home and community; we never moved the entire time I lived in Illinois, and my parents still live in that same house. The funny thing was, although we had that house, many of the rooms in it were sparsely furnished and we lived quite demurely compared to the neighbors: the living room was a vast continent of burnt sienna carpeting, the basement was a hard-cement chamber where my brother practiced drums and I hit a little whiffle ball on a rope with my plastic bat, we were always late (or absent!) on getting the new technologies, and my Mom never did welcome video games into our house. My parents, instead, invested in experieces. Classes, lessons, team memberships, and, most memorably, journeys.

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My Dad was already a loyal employee of United Airlines by the time I was born, and he remained so until he retired last winter. He started off as a meteorologist (to this day my Dad can still explain weather patterns in such a fascinating way with a lexicon foreign to most of us), then worked his way through programming and teaching and baggage services. It wasn't the money that kept him there, nor the love of his job, I don't think...but the opportunities it afforded him and our family in terms of getting acquainted with the world: we were able to fly virtually for free anywhere we desired to go.

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My Mom tells me that she and my Dad always wanted my brother and me to think of the world as our home; they wanted us to be aware of the vast differences that exist around us and to feel comfortable in welcoming them into our lives.

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So we traveled all around the United States and Canada - memories of these trips are forever dancing through my head: the lust green dampness of Acadia National Park in Maine, eating prawns in the rain outside a shack on Maui, celebrating Thanksgiving dinner at a roadside diner with torn plastic seats in Pennsylvania, taking picture after picture of the gigantic bison in South Dakota, searching through stones at 'Chris' Rock Pile' in Arizona, eating Ben and Jerry's at the original shop in Vermont, and watching blacksmiths in costume pound their hammers in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. As my brother and I got older, we went further. I practiced my French in Quebec and we visited markets full of fresh fish and produce in Vancouver. In France itself, we stayed at pensions and dined on croissants and Nutella in the mornings; in Germany we ate huge Bavarian pretzels and I drank little sips from my Dad's stein of beer; we blew through Luxembourg and Belgium in our rental car which my Dad drove with wild abandon on the vast autobahns. We walked through ruins and conversed with burros in Mexico, we participated in pig roasts and swam with stingrays in the Cayman Islands, and we trapsed through thermal parks with crystal blue lakes of sulfurous water in the foggy rolling hills of New Zealand.

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It was a childhood of amazement and wonder. I learned early how full and active life was in a place where nobody even knew I existed, and that humbled me. I saw things that I liked, and things that upset me. I came upon places I felt I'd been meant to see, places that changed me in some small inexplicable way because they spoke to pieces of me that hadn't yet been addressed...at locations across oceans from where I was born.

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I think often that my childhood adventures hugely influenced my decision to move out to the Bay Area five years ago because this place is a world unto itself. Since my flight benefits ended when I graduated from college, I needed an easily accessible new world where I could live amongst new and amazing things instead of traveling to them. One needs not an airplane to transport herself to another country in the Bay Area...and I know this goes for many proper cities including Chicago and New York and Seattle and so forth; she needs only to walk down one of the many streets - though the Chinatowns or Japantowns or Italian areas, for instance - to ethnic markets or restaurants where her taste for the new and different can be satiated. Specifially here, she can see the ocean and the mountains and the desert and the rainforests; she can stand in the snow watching flakes fall onto her jacket, or lie on a beach letting the sun warm her skin.

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For five years I've explored this place as if it was a new country. I've bought travel books; I've taken tours; I've strolled through museums; I've visited places of historical interest; I've driven North and South and East and West; I've met the 'locals' and seen their homeland through their eyes; I've also met the immigrants and transplants and seen how different this place is through their eyes; I've acquainted myself with the fruits and vegetables that grow on the trees and in the soil; I've tasted the wine that comes from vineyards all over the state; I've hiked up mountains and looked across the hills that ripple through the land; I've waded in streams and thrown rocks into the ocean...and I know my adventures could go on forever as I've only explored but a portion of what's at my fingertips.

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This exploration has kept me stimulated and occupied for years; but this year, perhaps because of many close friends leaving the area, my longing to travel and make home a new land and a new community of people has returned with a ferocity. I can feel the momentum building for a new adventure, so I'm doing what I can to prepare myself. I know not when it will happen or where it will be, but I know it's coming.

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In the meantime, I'm digging in deeper here in Oakland. It's a great place to dig because you keep finding more of interest the deeper you go.

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I took the day off on Friday and spent the morning exploring two more farmer's markets in my area that I'd not yet been to: the Old Oakland farmer's market and the Kaisier Permanente Organic Farmer's market. The second was tiny; there were only a few booths, but it attracted a decent crowd. The first was much bigger, though, and covered two blocks on the outskirts of Chinatown between Clay and Broadway on 9th Street. As the East Bay Express once printed, "[this market] well befits a city that prides itself on cultural and ethnic diversity." Many of the purveyors were Chinese, and the stalls were packed with bitter melons, long beans, huge bunches of coriander and lemongrass. Old women sifted through damp peanuts in the shell and fish mongers were selling catfish right out of their trucks. I promise to take photos next time. I rode my bike around a little more since it was a beautiful morning, and then I headed up to the Ecology Center in Berkeley. I was able to find four books relating to school gardens and farming with kids, which I promptly checked out (I'm working with the folks at New Highland Academy in Oakland to get some gardening started at their school and I needed resouces!)

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When I got home, I made some Vegan Zucchini Bread. Mmm!

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That night I drove up to Napa to say goodbye to my dear friend Noelle who is moving to the East Coast next week. For the last time, we met for wine and appetizers, something we've done frequently since she started an internship at Stag's Leap winery. That night, we went to Tra Vigne Pizzeria, which is a delightfully affordable and casual eatery in St. Helena.

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Saturday, I fed my addiction again and I went to the Grand-Lake market. I purchased avocadoes, lemons, freshly-squeezed orange juice, some cippolinis, potatoes, mixed greens, spinach, raisins, and olive oil. Since I've relaxed on my eating habits, I decided I'd try the Roli Roti roasted rosemary potatoes. The potatoes are grilled under stacked rotisseries of chicken, and all the chicken 'drippings' flavor the spuds. They just smelled too damn good not to try, so I did. They turned out to be nothing too special...they were tasty and all, but they looked magical simmering under those birds...I had expected more. That was breakfast...along with OctoberFeast's delightful version of the pretzel croissant that they sold to me at a discounted 75 cents.

Now that was delicious! Perfectly buttery and flaky...and a little crispy. Mmm!

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When I got home, there were apples waiting patiently in a bowl from last weekend to be made into sauce and I had a hankering for muffins. I cut up the Golden Delicious, Wickson, Sierra Beauty, Fuji and Pink Lady apples, and to them I added some water, a few strips of lemon peel, the juice from that lemon, a couple of cinnamon sticks, some brown and some turbinado sugar, a shake of allspice and a pinch of salt...and I let it all simmer until the apples were soft and my apartment smelled like a cider mill in the fall.

I then mashed the sauce up a little bit, and used a portion of it to make Vegan Applesauce Spice muffins. I wish I could share smells online!! It was the quintissential autumn afternoon with the perfect muffins baking in the oven.

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That night Alicia and I cooked again, this time with our bounties from the market. We made Roasted Veggies (zucchini, cippolini, peppers, mushrooms, leeks and eggplant) on a bed of couscous along with a corn, tomato, avocado and spinach salad. For dessert, I finally tried out Isa's new cookbook and made the Vegan Carrot Cake Cupcakes. Everything we made was delicious! A huge success. I think we should open a restaurant.

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Sunday, Petey and I had the chance to babysit the best baby on earth. Ella is about eight months old, and she is the coolest, strongest, happiest, silliest and most daring baby I've ever known. Even though she's young, I thought it was best to teach her a little about South Africa, where her Dad is from. I brought a coloring book to aid with my lesson, and I had her coloring a picture of thatched-roof huts in no time!

I then realized it was a very biased coloring book, so we went onto something else...but the afternoon was a fun one. Thanks, Chelsea, for trusting us!