![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaI am part of a FB group for SCA ladies who want an excuse to send snail-mail, and this week two cards arrived from the states. One of them said "If you ever feel so inclined, I would love to hear how you have moved about, living in so many different places.", and I happened to have the energy to type up a reply. Having done so, it will do double-duty and serve as today's post:
Thank you for the most beautiful card—that blue doorway looks like it would open up to a world full of excellent adventures. Since you asked of my adventures, or more specifically how I have moved about, living in so many different places…
My habit of moving about to so many different places all begin in infancy. My father was in the Airforce, and, soon after my parents learned that I was on the way, he was posted to Thailand for a Temporary Duty Year. His next posting was to Japan, so as he was finishing up his year in Thailand mom took me to visit his family, in Pennsylvania, and her family in Michigan, and then she and I drove across the US to California (me in a nest in a cardboard box on the floor of the car), where we put the car on a boat to Japan, and we caught a flight, arriving there when I was about 10 months old. Three happy years passed there, and then it was time for the next adventure.
I attended kindergarten in Germany, where we spent a couple of years, followed by a few months in Crete, until my parent decided that it was time to try living apart. Thereafter I went to 1st grade in Ewen, Michigan (in mom’s hometown), 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades in Texas (there having been no jobs in Ewen with sufficient pay to support herself and two kids).
By this time dad had retired from the military, and wound up in Alaska, where he was working as a labourer for the road crew part of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Mom had always wanted to see Alaska, and it had been some time since we kids had seen dad, so we headed north for a “Two-week vacation”.
We flew to Fairbanks, and dad took us to his brother’s house in North Pole, where we played with the cousins and ate carrots and berries straight from the garden. Then we drove four hours south, to mile 150 on the Richardson Highway, where two other uncles had their homesteads (one mile apart). There we kids swam in the lake, swatted mosquitos, and played with all of the cousins there (five of them!), and while we kids were thus distracted, mom and my Aunts took a trip to Anchorage (four hours south), and when they returned she announced “I got a job, we are moving!”
This spur of the moment decision kinda set the tone for the rest of my moves. We were 10 years in to that “Two-Week Vacation” before my mom, who by then was working as the Alaskan Field Representative for DeVry Institute of Technology, ask my then boyfriend (and Viscount) if she could practice her sales pitch on him. He said yes, and she did such a good job he signed up to go away and study at DeVry in Phoenix, Arizona. I wasn’t done enjoying his company, and, as her dependant was eligible for free tuition, so I went, too.
The program I was in was a three-year program. However, at 1.5 years in my mother did another spur-of-the moment move, to Australia this time, to marry a man she’d never met (details available in a lovely documentary that my beloved step-sister made: https://youtu.be/dKE2s97KHzI ), so I moved back to Alaska and enrolled in the local university. (Where I could afford to pay the tuition myself. Besides, I’d missed my mountains!)
A few years slipped happily by, as I took classes in anything that sounded interesting, but eventually I found out that graduate students get paid to go to school, and thus I decided that it was time to change my major and get a bachelor’s degree, so I, too, could get paid to study instead of paying for the privilege. Of course, I choose a major that wasn’t available at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, so I moved to Eugene, Oregon. Before that school year was out, I had met a nice knight living in Ashland, so I moved south “For the Summer”.
Three wonderful years in Ashland later (it was a long summer!) I graduated and moved north again, to do a Master’s at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Four years later my funding was expiring, but my thesis wasn’t quite complete (full time SCA and full time university means that the degree takes a little longer than the uni might wish). Therefore I moved to Anchorage, to live with my mom and step-dad (they had moved there from Australia a few years before) while I finished up my thesis.
Then a dear friend in Kotzebue suggested “you don’t have a job—come spend the winter with me in Kotzebue, they always need substitute teachers, and we can take a trip to Europe in the spring. This sounded fun, so I got to spend one winter north of the Arctic Circle and enjoy the beautiful effects of the sunlight making it just far enough over the horizon to turn the mountains across the inlet a beautiful shade of glowing pink/purple, but not actually shine any light on the town.
After that visit to Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales I spent a summer as a volunteer at the Visitor Centre of the Hatcher Pass Independence Mine State Historical Park (which is located in a truly beautiful mountain valley not far north of Anchorage. I then spent about one more year Anchorage before Colin, with whom I had fallen in love, became Bard of West. While I hadn’t wanted to leave my beloved mountains, being there to see his performances, and to share the joys of song writing, etc. seemed suddenly much more important than being in Alaska, and so I moved.
I truly loved my three years living in the Mists—the SCA there is amazing, but the weather was not to my taste, nor the traffic, especially when trying to get out of the Bay Area on a Friday to get to an event. Therefore, when my stepdad’s health took a turn for the worse, I went to Tasmania to help them out (they’d retired there five years before), and then helped her get the house ready for sale after we lost him.
By then I had met my own cute Australian, Crian, who was looking for an adventure, so we decided that he would take a working holiday visa to Canada, and we moved to the Vancouver area for a year together. That year went well, so I followed him back to Tasmania, where I enrolled in a PhD program.
Five years later, degree complete, I got a Post-doc position in Milan, Italy, and enjoyed 1.5 years of being able to easily get to SCA events and conferences all over Europe. Then I met a cute guy in Luleå, Sweden, who told me I could come visit “as long as you want”. That was nearly 10 years ago, and I am still here! Sweden is a wonderful place to live, and also to visit. When you are able to get out and travel again I strongly encourage a visit to Drachenwald in general, and Nordmark in particular, and, whilst here, wend your way to the far north, where I would be delighted to host you, and to show you some of the local sights.
Hugs,
--Kareina
PS Sorry if this is a little long, but you asked…
Thank you for the most beautiful card—that blue doorway looks like it would open up to a world full of excellent adventures. Since you asked of my adventures, or more specifically how I have moved about, living in so many different places…
My habit of moving about to so many different places all begin in infancy. My father was in the Airforce, and, soon after my parents learned that I was on the way, he was posted to Thailand for a Temporary Duty Year. His next posting was to Japan, so as he was finishing up his year in Thailand mom took me to visit his family, in Pennsylvania, and her family in Michigan, and then she and I drove across the US to California (me in a nest in a cardboard box on the floor of the car), where we put the car on a boat to Japan, and we caught a flight, arriving there when I was about 10 months old. Three happy years passed there, and then it was time for the next adventure.
I attended kindergarten in Germany, where we spent a couple of years, followed by a few months in Crete, until my parent decided that it was time to try living apart. Thereafter I went to 1st grade in Ewen, Michigan (in mom’s hometown), 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades in Texas (there having been no jobs in Ewen with sufficient pay to support herself and two kids).
By this time dad had retired from the military, and wound up in Alaska, where he was working as a labourer for the road crew part of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Mom had always wanted to see Alaska, and it had been some time since we kids had seen dad, so we headed north for a “Two-week vacation”.
We flew to Fairbanks, and dad took us to his brother’s house in North Pole, where we played with the cousins and ate carrots and berries straight from the garden. Then we drove four hours south, to mile 150 on the Richardson Highway, where two other uncles had their homesteads (one mile apart). There we kids swam in the lake, swatted mosquitos, and played with all of the cousins there (five of them!), and while we kids were thus distracted, mom and my Aunts took a trip to Anchorage (four hours south), and when they returned she announced “I got a job, we are moving!”
This spur of the moment decision kinda set the tone for the rest of my moves. We were 10 years in to that “Two-Week Vacation” before my mom, who by then was working as the Alaskan Field Representative for DeVry Institute of Technology, ask my then boyfriend (and Viscount) if she could practice her sales pitch on him. He said yes, and she did such a good job he signed up to go away and study at DeVry in Phoenix, Arizona. I wasn’t done enjoying his company, and, as her dependant was eligible for free tuition, so I went, too.
The program I was in was a three-year program. However, at 1.5 years in my mother did another spur-of-the moment move, to Australia this time, to marry a man she’d never met (details available in a lovely documentary that my beloved step-sister made: https://youtu.be/dKE2s97KHzI ), so I moved back to Alaska and enrolled in the local university. (Where I could afford to pay the tuition myself. Besides, I’d missed my mountains!)
A few years slipped happily by, as I took classes in anything that sounded interesting, but eventually I found out that graduate students get paid to go to school, and thus I decided that it was time to change my major and get a bachelor’s degree, so I, too, could get paid to study instead of paying for the privilege. Of course, I choose a major that wasn’t available at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, so I moved to Eugene, Oregon. Before that school year was out, I had met a nice knight living in Ashland, so I moved south “For the Summer”.
Three wonderful years in Ashland later (it was a long summer!) I graduated and moved north again, to do a Master’s at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Four years later my funding was expiring, but my thesis wasn’t quite complete (full time SCA and full time university means that the degree takes a little longer than the uni might wish). Therefore I moved to Anchorage, to live with my mom and step-dad (they had moved there from Australia a few years before) while I finished up my thesis.
Then a dear friend in Kotzebue suggested “you don’t have a job—come spend the winter with me in Kotzebue, they always need substitute teachers, and we can take a trip to Europe in the spring. This sounded fun, so I got to spend one winter north of the Arctic Circle and enjoy the beautiful effects of the sunlight making it just far enough over the horizon to turn the mountains across the inlet a beautiful shade of glowing pink/purple, but not actually shine any light on the town.
After that visit to Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales I spent a summer as a volunteer at the Visitor Centre of the Hatcher Pass Independence Mine State Historical Park (which is located in a truly beautiful mountain valley not far north of Anchorage. I then spent about one more year Anchorage before Colin, with whom I had fallen in love, became Bard of West. While I hadn’t wanted to leave my beloved mountains, being there to see his performances, and to share the joys of song writing, etc. seemed suddenly much more important than being in Alaska, and so I moved.
I truly loved my three years living in the Mists—the SCA there is amazing, but the weather was not to my taste, nor the traffic, especially when trying to get out of the Bay Area on a Friday to get to an event. Therefore, when my stepdad’s health took a turn for the worse, I went to Tasmania to help them out (they’d retired there five years before), and then helped her get the house ready for sale after we lost him.
By then I had met my own cute Australian, Crian, who was looking for an adventure, so we decided that he would take a working holiday visa to Canada, and we moved to the Vancouver area for a year together. That year went well, so I followed him back to Tasmania, where I enrolled in a PhD program.
Five years later, degree complete, I got a Post-doc position in Milan, Italy, and enjoyed 1.5 years of being able to easily get to SCA events and conferences all over Europe. Then I met a cute guy in Luleå, Sweden, who told me I could come visit “as long as you want”. That was nearly 10 years ago, and I am still here! Sweden is a wonderful place to live, and also to visit. When you are able to get out and travel again I strongly encourage a visit to Drachenwald in general, and Nordmark in particular, and, whilst here, wend your way to the far north, where I would be delighted to host you, and to show you some of the local sights.
Hugs,
--Kareina
PS Sorry if this is a little long, but you asked…