Out of my heart and into the universe...

I have a very limited understanding of the human heart (B at GCSE to be specific). I know it picks up blood with delicious oxygen in it and sends it out around my body. I know it has valves to stop the cheeky blood cells going the wrong way around the one-way-system, even if they accidently miss the turn off and have to go all the way round again. I also know it gets stronger the more I use it which is very handy. But aside from that I’m no heart surgeon or expert in cardiology at all. But over the last year or so I have learnt probably the most beautiful lesson about my heart.

I have learnt that no matter how full of love you think your heart is, there is always room for more!

Since being with George there have been times when I think my heart will burst because I love him so much. (Somewhere along the way I have transferred from the biological heart to the metaphorical one, I hope you’re still with me!) On our wedding day I could feel it physically in my chest, love brimming out, wrapping us up with its big juicy love-arms.

Sometimes this overwhelming feeling of love takes me by surprise.

All he was doing was fixing the washing line but
I got overwhelmed with love for him!

I’ll walk in to the house and see him doing something perfectly ordinary like making a sandwich or looking at a leaf and I will feel I might cry because my love for him is brimming right there behind my eyes, trying to spill out as hot love tears.

But then last August two things happened that made me think love isn’t measured in capacity at all…

The first thing that happened was we extended our family by bringing home our new puppy, Mooka. That first afternoon we watched him sleeping on his brand new bed, his brand new teddy tucked up beside him, his little furry chest rising and falling as he dreamed about whatever puppies dream about and I felt a new seed of love springing up inside me.

Since then, Mooka has grown into a teenager. He has gone through the ‘Weeing-on-the-floor-minutes-after-you-bring-him-in-from-a-toilet-break’ phase, the ‘Biting-everyone-who-tries-to-stroke-or-cuddle-him’ phase, the ‘Destroying-clothes-toys-and-doorframes’ teething phase and is now beginning to enter his teenage rebellious years (escaping from the house, running down the street laughing at us as we chase him in our slippers, running away when we call ‘Time Out’ and hiding under the chair, wriggling away from anyone who tries to drag him out)… But my love for him as a furry family member has grown as he has grown and my clever heart has made enough room for all the love I have for George and now the love I have for Mooka.

At exactly the same time (almost to the day) as bringing Mooka into our family we discovered that Mooka wasn’t the only teeny member of the Jezeph household that we needed to prepare for, as it turned out we were growing a little human inside my tum!

As is always the case, major life events are never anything like the movies portray them. There was no running into each others’ arms and crying as we waved around a stick all covered in wee… I came into the room and asked George if there was one or two lines on the pregnancy test… He looked, squinted and said he wasn’t sure. I shrugged and said, “Hmm…OK” and waited until the next day. We both peered at the stick and George said “I think that’s two lines…?” And that’s how we discovered that we were to have a mini Jezeph, due to be born in approximately 5-9 weeks!

I’ve heard that the moment your baby is birthed and you hold them in your arms you feel an overwhelming sense of love and protection, and a real sense that you have become a mother.  But the thing is, I became a mother that first day we peered at the questionable two lines. I felt another teeny seed of love being planted and a fierce sense of protection over this teeny jellybean we hadn’t even seen yet.

As the weeks have passed and each milestone was reached; hearing its little heart beating, seeing its teeny face at the first scan, then again at the second scan, (and again at the third, fourth, fifth scan if your bump is teeny like mine!) as well as feeling it move as it learns how to make sense of its surroundings, the love I have for this little human has grown and grown. I have realised that love cannot possibly be stored in my heart as my heart is only the size of my fist.

My love is like the universe – and one of the little things I know about the universe (Again, B in Physics at GCSE) is that it is ever-expanding. It cannot be measured and it is limitless…infinite.

We might have more children in the future, and there is space in infinity for the love I will have for them. Or I may only ever have George, Mooka and Baby, but that’s OK too because that’s almost too much love to deal with as it is!

Having this baby hasn’t completed us, but added to us. And what a wonderful thought, that the love we already contain for our friends, family and pets is complete in itself, with room for more should we need it, expanding just like the universe.

I like the thought of that… so sorry Biology, but Physics wins this one.

The Dreaded Big Blue 'F'...

Recently I've been avoiding Facebook. Not because I'm trying to 'better myself' or because of a clichéd Lent promise to limit screen time (that I will inevitably fail at anyway). I'm avoiding that sinking feeling in my tummy that I get when I tap that big blue 'F' and it presents me with a "1 year ago today" post...

One year ago today I was exploring a local market in Luang Prabang, Laos. I was eating amazing Lao foods, talking to the friendly Lao people and drinking a Lao Beer whilst the sun set over the Mekong. Right now I am sitting in an Owl Onesie, watching a grey, English-Rain type of Saturday afternoon pass by, having enjoyed a nutritious Gregg's pizza slice for lunch.
(CLICK HERE to read more about where we were 'One year ago today!')

It's been a weird chapter of my life since returning from travelling around the world. I am an optimist, probably because the attitude of "It'll be alright in the end" has worked well for me thus far in my life, and I am also a planner (CLICK HERE to read my "Best laid plans" post if you don't believe me!). The trouble is that these two personality traits combined, leads to frequent disappointment that the amazing, exciting and perfectly timed plans of my human brain have not come into fruition. Hannan's brain decides on Plan 'A', gets excited about Plan 'A' and starts preparing for Plan 'A' until Life sidles in from the wings, taps me on the shoulder and pipes up with a "Heyyy...yeah....nope, that 'aint how it goes down my friend! Try Plan 'B' and see how that works for ya!"

In Fiji, The Boy and I were sat on a beach talking about our grand plans for our return to the UK. They were easy enough to understand and, thinking optimistically, fairly easy to achieve...right? They involved finding permanent jobs which would lead to finding our own home we can move into which would lead to being able to find the perfect Puppy Pal to snuggle with on wintery English afternoons. Completed by Christmas (at which point we could construct another perfect plan for life and so on and so forth). The plan sounded perfect and foolproof.

5 months later, March 2016 and we are pretty much in the same position as that first day back in England. Winter arrived in her frosty glory and the gardens went to sleep, meaning less gardening work for The Boy. After 5 months of me applying for jobs and hearing nothing back, moral is low... No job means no moving into our own home, and no moving into our own home sadly means...no Puppy Pal.

Life has been slow and frustrating for a lot of the time since we returned home and we've found ourselves saying things like "Was travelling really worth it? Did we really need to spend such a lot of our savings, use up 9 months of our life, uproot our stable jobs and completely wipe the slate clean? If we'd not gone we would be doing this or that by now, maybe we could have bought a house, found our Dog and moved forward in our careers..." And on days like today I take my 'one year ago today' Hannan and I pop her right beside my 'actual-today-sitting-in-a-onesie' Hannan and I feel the burden of how different those two lives are.

And I am aware of how gloomy and doomy I sound. But the thing is, since January 2015, 9 blogs ago, I've mostly posted gorgeous photos of stunning beaches, tales of travelling life in all its glory and blogs that possibly (probably) came across as though we were living the perfect life. And now I realize that it isn't fair to present my experiences in such a rose-tinted manner. It took a post from a friend of mine on Facebook to realize how easy it is to filter our social media profiles to portray ourselves as happy, whole and perfect, when actually, the truth is that I had days in every country I visited when I did nothing but mooch around our room, moan about missing home and cry. But that wouldn't make it to Instagram. It isn't 'Facebook-Perfect' and it won't give the impression that I have the perfect life.

I am constantly putting myself under pressure to live life like 'this person' or 'that person' based on what I see on their Facebook page. I see posts of people travelling, getting their puppy, decorating their first house, having babies, perfect hair and make-up, romantic stories of husbands and wives doing loving deeds and see my friends wearing gorgeous clothes and I place myself side-by-side to them and I feel sad. My hair and make-up are far from perfect, I am wearing an actual OWL ONESIE and I just snapped at MY husband for forgetting to shut the door...

It's easy to share the beautiful moments in our lives (and important to do so as it's these moments that remind us of how lucky we are to have friends, family and happy experiences) whilst airbrushing out the imperfections, the mistakes, the stories that prove how human we are. But it's time to be honest.

My friend Abi summed it up on Facebook like this:

"I once read that "comparison is the thief of joy" and it's so true! Guess what......no one has it together! Except Mary Poppins"
 

as she described a stressful, 'not-perfect-in-any-way' sort of scenario whilst taking her baby girl swimming. When I read this, the sense of relief that other people feel they sometimes fall short was overwhelming and I needed to hear it more than even I knew. Having obsessed over several people's Facebooks that very day, lining myself up beside them to see if my life was remotely interesting, it was a real wake-up call. I use Facebook every day and there's no shame in that. As I said, if I wanted to give it up I would have done so at the start of Lent! But I refuse to let it bring me down into a spiral of self-doubt and shame.

So know this: True friends will celebrate our perfect moments and support us through our failing moments and the world will be a more secure, confident and positive place for us being honest about the lives we lead as perfect and flawed as they are. If comparison is the thief of joy I need to start being secure that I AM good enough and my life (even through the mundane, feels-like-we-won't-ever-move-forward moments) is exciting and worth living! 'Aint nothing thieving MY joy...

And I think I might turn off the 'One year ago' function on Facebook...

 

Fiji, Friends and the Five life-changing lessons...

I'm a planner. I'm organized, efficient and productive. In an obsessive, over-the-top kind of way as well. This time last year, I bought a notebook and divided it into each country that we were visiting, with subdivisions for each area/city, noting down things like places to visit, cheap or free attractions, things to be wary of, places to eat, friends' recommendations etc...

However, after about a month of planning, each and every evening, hours and hours worth of data carefully and meticulously oragnized in my travel notebook, The Boy casually mentioned that he'd rather just 'wing it', as is the nature of backpacking apparently. I had a tantrum and then reluctantly agreed and we decided to use the notebook as a 'reference point' rather than a 'mini-spiral-bound-travelling-dictator'. His idea of travelling was that we would just turn up at the airport, look at each other, shrug our shoulders and find somewhere to stay. Well...you may remember how well THAT went in India (see this blog for details). However, for the most part, anti-planning has been a really exciting approach to travelling for us. It turned out to be so freeing to say "Hey, we LOVE it here, let's stay another week" without the pressures of booked trains or hostels to rearrange. We ate where we felt like eating and visited places that looked like fun taking opportunities as they presented themselves to us. We took advice from other travellers we met along the way, friends, family and occasionally, "The Notebook" and all in all had a really fantastic experience of 'playing it by ear'.

So, at the point of leaving New Zealand, we had been travelling for 8 and a half months, and had pretty much reached "Master Level" in 'winging it', backpacker style. I'd researched Fiji online briefly (remember, no stressing, no over-planning, just a quick glance at "The Notebook" to triple check we could enter visa-free) and found that we could waltz in without a visa, as we were only staying a week or two at most. We flew the red-eye (early hours in the morning) and arrived at about 5am, having had zero sleep, bleary-eyed but ready to explore the islands and find a beautiful beach to chill on for a couple of weeks.

We got our passports checked and the woman casually asked us the name of the hotel we were staying at. We replied, as we always have done, that we haven't booked anywhere, but it was the first job on our list of things to do in Fiji! Cue narrowed-eyed peering from the woman, followed by 'discreet' phone call to...someone. And then "Please take a seat over there" as she tucked our passports away on her desk and called the people behind us to come forward...

Ohhhh, what the heck is this, now?! Just when you start to relax, having winged it through seven countries relatively hassle free, JUST when you think "Yeh, we got this, we got this travelling malarky. We are soooo free and soooo chilled..." then BOOM. You find yourself sitting in what can only be described as a rum storage room but is clearly being passed off as the "Immigration Office for Fiji", looking at a man with scary stern eyes and no smile, wondering what code word you must have used that triggered such a hasty response...

Turns out the entry requirements for Fiji include having somewhere pre-booked to stay in. I think they are trying to avoid a "homeless traveller sleeps on the street" scenario, and fair play to them, but we had not been aware of this requirement and so we were in somewhat of a pickle. We sat in the 'office', surrounded by the boxes of rum (what are they doing with all that rum at the airport?!) and waited to find out if we were in trouble. After looking at us for a few minutes, he said he was going to book us in somewhere and asked us what our budget was. We looked at each other and mumbled something about not having a set budget, but that we basically needed to spend as little as possible. He slitted his eyes and looked at us suspiciously.

"How much money do you have on you now?" he asked. We again, looked at each other and the mumbling began again, "Well, I suppose, we don't have much, but really, in the bank I'd say...erm...maybe...well actually to tell the truth we are in our overdraft, so essentially we erm...have got money but are keen to not really use it so...erm..."

This did not go down well. He stood up and said he was taking George to an ATM and we had to get out this specific amount of money. Now. We clearly came across like those guys you see on "Border Patrol" who are the shadiest characters and you just KNOW they 're getting busted. Except we WEREN'T shady characters and really just wanted to SEE a beach before jetting back to Autumnal England!

So The Boy and Scary Immigration Officer returned with the cash and both seemed slightly more relaxed. And then, reassured that we weren't actually penniless, the hotel booking commenced. He tried to book us into a place on the mainland that we had heard wasn't all that great and whilst he was on the phone I began to whisper out of the corner of my mouth to The Boy... "Tell him we want an island...This is our only chance to have a Fijian Paradise Holiday, we want an ISLAND..."

...The view of another teeny island from
our teeny island...

"Erm...excus...excuse me? We'd actually quite like to stay on..erm...an island? Maybe.... *points to map* this one...please?" Without saying a word, the man picked up the phone and phoned the Beachcomber Island Resort and after a lot of quick mumbling he announced that for 4 nights all inclusive it will cost 'x' amount. The Boy and I looked at each other, both trying to read the others' expression. 'X' amount was more money than we had anticipated, and would cause us serious financial problems on our return to England, but it was the final destination on our round-the-world extravaganza, so surely, we could overspend a little bit?! Our thoughts were interrupted by Scary Immigration Man bluntly telling us that if we don't accept RIGHT now, he will deport us... Right now. And so the deal was done. He booked us 4 nights all inclusive and we finally left the 'office' for our much-shorter-than-originally-planned beach holiday.

...The view from our room. Green, green, green
until you hit the blue, blue, blue...

We arrived on the island, tired from the red-eye-no-sleep-at-all flight, behaving like zombies, more than ready for our first day on the beach. We were just filling out the forms at Reception when the manager approached us and asked if we were the ones who were collared by Immigration at the airport. She then went on to explain that she had upgraded us free of charge, from a bunkhouse to a private room, because she felt bad about our misunderstanding at the airport.

...So blue...Just SO blue..!

And our souls sung, and the sun seemed brighter and the sea seemed bluer and our room was perfect. Because, our first impression of Fiji was scary and stressful, and at one point I thought, what's the point?! Let's just get deported already! But the moment we arrived on that little island, our imaginations of the 'Paradise Getaway' began to come true.

I mean seriously... LOOK how clear and
blue this water is!! This is the ACTUAL SEA!

The island was tiny. So tiny that, when walking around it one afternoon, The Boy said after ten minutes "The sun is burning hot isn't it, maybe we should head back" and I stopped and looked around and said "Well... we are back, look..." and lo and behold, there was the bar we'd set off from!

...Conquering ANOTHER fear...Water. Oh, and
fish actually. Fish freak me out...

The water surrounding our paradise island was ridiculously perfect, being in paradise and all. It was so blue that I kept picking some of it up to see if it was actually coloured blue in my hands. I had a conspiracy theory that the Fijian government must pour tons of blue food dye into their oceans to keep the tourists coming each year. The Fijian people were amazing. They sung as people arrived onto the island and they sung a goodbye song as people left. They organized daily activities including snorkelling and fish feeding,  turtle conservation demo, games and competitions, day trips to other islands and of course, the traditional Kava ceremony.

We got to know the staff and even spent an evening drinking Kava and chatting with them in their staff bunkhouse, with one of the chefs giving his Sulu (man-skirt) to The Boy as a gift.

...We won a 'dancing with partners' game and
celebrated with a free pitcher of beer...

We met some new friends and spent our days sunbathing, snorkelling, eating (3 huge buffet meals a day split up by morning and afternoon tea and cakes, our tummies were constantly full...) reading, playing cards and sleeping. Four days flew by, and before we knew it we were listening to our own Goodbye song being sung, waving our friends off, crying and hugging the staff of the resort, promising we would be back again soon.

...Our friend Lauren leaving the island while the
staff wave and sing the Goodbye song...

And I so hope we will. It was the country we spent the least amount of time in, but it had one of the biggest impacts on me. The kindness, friendliness and fun of the Fijians on Beachcomber was overwhelming and that, combined with our new-found friends from around the globe meant that Fiji will remain as one of my top memories of travelling.

...About to board our final flight from
LA that will take us home! Note
the sleepy eyes of a man who is
done with all this flying...

And so, with a strange cocktail of sadness and anticipation in our hearts we set off home, flying from Fiji to LA, and LA to London within the space of 2 days. We hadn't told anyone that we had run out of money and we were coming back, leaving them to think we were staying in Fiji and then exploring America until Christmas, and the excitement of not only seeing our families and friends again, but also surprising them cushioned the sad thoughts that our trip of a lifetime was over.

We surprised George's family in Guildford, and then travelled up to Preston to surprise mine. Then, having felt so very sneaky having been in the country for about a fortnight without any friends knowing, we finally texted round and had a grand reunion.

...Jonesy so excited to be reunited with us. See
his smile? He loves us so...

So now we're home...It seems like only yesterday I was writing about our upcoming travels, wondering where the year would take us and what we would learn. I've been thinking about it a lot since arriving home and I think these would be my top 5 lessons the world has shared with me...

...Our friend David, chef at
Beachcomber. He gave us his Sulu,
which I wore ever so stylishly...

1. Love freely... Just because you should. Not to get money in return. Not because it's your job to be polite. Not because you're scared karma might look upon you unfavourably, but because it's good and right. The kindest, most loving people we've met this year all had one strong characteristic in common...they loved unconditionally.

2. Be scared...A HUGE one for me, with my plethora of fears and anxieties. I used to have spider dreams all the time such was my anxiety of them co-existing in the world with me, but the other day I spotted a teeny spiderling and I gently poked it with my finger. It didn't like it and I kinda felt bad afterwards but I did it. I actually poked a spidey and I'm now invincible!

...The nightmare spider
in Laos. Fears galore...

Well not invincible, but I am braver than ever and will now at least think about trying new things before deciding they scare me!

...The dreaded 17 hour minibus ride that we
no longer speak of...

3. Great Britain is tiny...I used to complain about travelling 4 hours to get from Surrey to Lancashire and vice versa. Now, having experienced a 30 hour train ride in India, a 17 hour minibus ride in Laos and countless 2 hour journeys from Surfer's Paradise to Brisbane just for afternoons out with pals, not to mention the 10 hour flights here and there, I will never again see a 4 hour journey as anything more than a little afternoon trip!

...I was so nervous about travelling in India. I had
been warned about being poorly and ended up
feeling so very healthy and happy..!

4. Take risks... If I'd believed everything I'd been told about the countries I visited before going, I'd never have left my sofa back home. Every single country was totally different to how I'd pictured it based on hearing other people's anecdotes and even reading guide books. Everyone experiences the world differently, including me! If you hear a country is awful to visit, or scary, or has 10 foot pythons in the toilets and spiders in everyones' bed, take it on, bear it in mind then get up and go and decide for yourself. Opinions are infinite and experiences are unique.

5. Throw the tick list away... My biggest (and most life-changing) lesson is exactly this. I literally wrote a list of things I wanted to see, do, experience and 'tick-off'. Some of them I did, and some I didn't, and it took me a long time to move on from the feeling of 'incompleteness', seeing items on my list not ticked off as I left the country in a plane. Having a tick list also sometimes means you only see things to say you've seen them, and I am, even now, guilty of doing this. When we visited Sydney Opera House, we stood outside it and I said "Right, we've seen it now, shall we get a Subway?" (I was obsessing about Subway that day, it's all I wanted) and that was that. Off we went for a foot long Veggie Delite...

...The obligatory selfie. You can practically see
my thoughts of a Veggie Delite..!

We didn't spend an hour marvelling at the architecture or going inside or actually seeing an opera (do they even do operas there? I assume so but I'll never know?) or learning about its history. We'd ticked it off and that was that. But maybe our experience would have been more meaningful if we had learnt about the woman/man who built it, or the creative reasons behind its unique shape... Don't get me wrong, I have a bucket list and it's exciting and motivating to have a list of things you want to accomplish, but for me, it was quite oppressing to have a tick list, as it made me anxious when we couldn't tick something off, and made me feel false elation when I could.

Since arriving back, the one thing most people have asked is this...
"What was your favourite place to visit?"
And the answer always changes. Because one day, I'll be craving a curry and I'll remember the amazing food we had in India, and India will climb up to my number one spot in the travelling charts in my head. Then another day, I will be cold and wintery in my house and I'll remember the days spent on Thai beaches, enjoying the beauty and tranquillity of such an awesome country and Thailand will be my number one memory for that day. Or I'll see a Facebook post from friends we met in Laos and I'll remember meeting their Lao family, sharing meals with them and painting the little girls' nails in their tiny village home. And Laos will be my favourite country in the world. For that day. And so on.

...Home, where the rain refreshes the traveller's
weary soul..!

But for now, the best country in the world is right here. England, where my favourite people in the world live, and where Autumn is every colour of the rainbow, and where a cup of tea is just right.

So I think we'll stay put for now...

Love Hannan xx