Packing List: Costa Rica- Nicaragua 2012

One of the things I find most helpful about reading other travel blogs is information on budgets and what to bring.  Here I'll post the packing list for our 16 days in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. While this might seem like a long list, most of the stuff we only need one between the three of us. Many of the things are also very small and will fit easily in our pack

We will each need to bring:

• 1 swimsuit
• 1 long sleeve shirt
• 1 sweatshirt/ thin jacket
• 1 rain poncho
• 1 travel towel
• 1 sleep sack
• 1 pair of pants (travel pants)
• 4 shirts
• 2-3 tank tops (for me, not for the boys)
• 1-2 dresses or skirts (again, not for the boys)
• 3 pairs of socks
• 1 pair of flip flops
• 1 pair of walking shoes
• 3 pairs of shorts
• enough underwear for the whole trip
• a toothbrush
• razors
• deodorant
• makeup (for me: foundation, eyeliner, mascara, blush/compact with a mirror)

Collectively we will have to bring:

• toothpaste
• floss
• chapstick
• hair brush/ comb
• lotion
• sunscreen
• bug spray
• shampoo
• body wash
• conditioner
• face wash
• ear plugs
• duct tape (wrapped around a pen)
• camping silverware set
• clothes line
• drain plug
• malaria medication
• anti-diarrheals 
• cipro (antibiotic in case of bad case of stomach bug)
• motion sickness meds
• hand sanitizer
• sewing kit
• guidebooks
• pack of cards
• daypack (to hold valuables during bus trips or water, snacks, books, etc. for day trips)
• band aids
• cortisone cream
• Advil
• antibiotic ointment
• tweezers
• wet wipes
• paper copies of prescriptions
• sunglasses
• camera + case + charger
• phone + charger
• journal + pen
• book
• flashlight
• headlamps
• travel pillows
• passports
• US dollars in small bills (keep some in moneybelt with passport and some in another location)
• moneybelts
• luggage locks
• credit cards (be sure to notify companies of travel)
• copies of passport (stored separately from originals)
• insurance cards and ids (including student id)
• toilet paper

Optional items:

• allergy medicine
• mosquito coils
• water sterlizer

We will keep toiletries and things that can leak in plastic ziplock bags.  We have a toiletry case for the small items/ medicines/ first aid stuff so that it won't get lost in our bags. 

The North Shore and the Viking Motel

A couple of weeks ago we took an awesome, spur of the moment trip to the North Shore. (for those not in the know, this is the Northeast part of Minnesota along Lake Superior) It all started while we were eating and having Vietnamese coffee at Kinhdo in Minneapolis. It was suggested (not sure by whom) that we should take a weekend trip to the North Shore. Early afternoon was already approaching so we had to decide quickly. After everyone was in agreement we packed a quick backpack and headed out.

On the first night (and it was evening by the time we got there) we made it as far as Two Harbors. Along the way we stopped at two small town/ blue collar liquor stores to stock up on rations. Megan and Nick went classy with two bottles of wine, while I decided on Bell’s Two Hearted IPA which claims to be “well suited for adventurous trips to the upper peninsula” which is very close to the North Shore. As soon as we made it to Two Harbors we picked the first random/creepy/cheap motel to stay at. The name of the place was Viking Motel and the rooms were what I would lovingly call “retro”. The innkeeper was very friendly (possibly because we were the only people staying there on a Saturday night) and strangely enough suggested a restaurant called Viking Legends. She even had a coupon we could use for one free drink! The draw to this place was the fact that you could meet a Viking legend, Jim Marshall #70, who was also a co-owner. We never did meet him (or actually know who he was), but it was very Minnesota-ey and to boot- the staff was friendly.

Once we arrived back at the motel, we went ahead and quickly started the festivities. The first order of business was to restore the heat (which was not working, but was quickly restored by the innkeeper). Next, we went ahead and “upgraded” the room by turning the bathtub into an impromptu hot tub! Unfortunately the water was a little rusty so I decided to reclassify it as a natural hot spring. At first everyone sat around with just their feet in the light brownish red water. Later as the adventurous spirit that is Bell’s Two Hearted consumed me I decided to seize the moment and go all in!

The next day we started with breakfast at the well known Betty's Pies.  Corned beef hash, biscuits and gravy, and delicious pie was a great start to the day.  Then we drove up the North Shore to Split Rock Lighthouse where we watched a historical video about the lighthouse's history. A small museum detailed the maritime history of the lake.  We were able to admire the lake during the daylight the entire way home.

Goals and Dreams: First world problems?

When I think about all the goals and dreams I have in my life (re: bucket list, reading list, travel goals, etc.) I can't help but think about how fortunate I am to even be able to hope for these things.  What if I had to wake up each day and spend every waking moment trying to eat, trying to survive? I would have no time to wish for travel, to fulfill personal goals, to try to become the person I want to be.  There are many, many admirable people who overcome their living situations to fulfill their goals and dreams and to make a difference in the world.  There are many more who can never do more than struggle to survive.
This makes me feel the need to spend more time just appreciating the life and opportunities that I have. It makes me want to make sure my luxurious extra time is not wasted and that I do become the best person I can be.  I have the luxury of being able to spend time just on myself.  I have health, security, support, love and so many other blessings that I am able to sit around pondering the meaning of life and what I wish to do with it.  This just blows my mind sometimes...that I can even be so introspective and spend so much time on self fulfillment.  I want to give back in some way and I'm hoping that one day I figure out just how to do this.  I want to be able to take the luck and opportunity I have been given, just by virtue of where and to whom I was born, and give that to others who are not so fortunate.  I also do not want to waste what I have been given because so many others would give so much for what I have.

At the same time, this makes me feel superficial about my own personal goals.  Travelling around the world? What good does that do for anyone besides myself? At times I feel selfish and spoiled.  If I ever have a bad day or feel upset with my life, I wonder what gives me the right to feel that way when I have so much.  I guess the only thing I can do is try to help others along the way to fulfilling my own goals...hopefully I will figure out how to do this as I go along because it seems so vague as I think about it now. Are all those first world volunteers going out for two weeks to "help" a third world community really helping? Or are they just doing it to make themselves feel better? Where is the line between too privileged and making full use of your opportunities? What is selfish and what is just understanding you are fortunate and not letting this be taken for granted? I'm hoping to gain more insight on this this year.

100 Novels Reading List

So in trying to compile my list of 100 books to read for my bucket list I began searching online for ideas.
First of all, I decided on only putting fiction/ novels on my list as nonfiction seemed like a wholly different goal.  I found a couple sources to draw from in creating my list:

First, Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list and the companion Reader's Choice 100 Best list:
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

Then there was Radcliffe's Rival list:
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/radcliffes-rival-100-best-novels-list/

Then another reader submission-based list:
http://www.thebest100lists.com/best100novels/

And finally NPR's top novels list:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103869541

From this I created my own.  What I liked about the reader submissions was that there were more contemporary novels, not just "classics."  In choosing my list I wanted some variety and not just the obvious literary greats.  So here goes:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
5. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
9. Animal Farm by George Orwell
10. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
11. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
12. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
13. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
14. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
15. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
16. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
17. The Arabian Nights
18. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
19. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
20. Ulysses by James Joyce
21. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
22. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
23. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
24. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 
25. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
26. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
27. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
29. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
30. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (In Progress)
35. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
36. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
37. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
38. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
39. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
40. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
41. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
42. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
43. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
44. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
45. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
46. The Stranger by Albert Camus
47. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
48. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
49. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
50. Watership Down by Richard Adams
51. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
52. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
53. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
54. Dracula by Bram Stoker
55. The Stand by Stephen King
56. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
57. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
58. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
59. Dune by Frank Herbert
60. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
61. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
62. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
63. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
64. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
65. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
66. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (In Progress)
67. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
68. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
69. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
70. Middlemarch by George Eliot
71. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
72. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
73. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
74. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
75. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
76. The Golden Cage by Shirin Ebadi (In Progress)
77. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
78. Persuasion by Jane Austen
79. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
80. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
81. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
82. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
83. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
84. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
85. The Trial by Franz Kafka
86. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
87. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
88. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
89. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
90. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by H.H. the Dalai Lama
91. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
92. Emma by Jane Austen
93. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
94. Siddharta by Hermann Hesse
95. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (In Progress)
96. Atonement by Ian McEwan
97. What is the What by Dave Eggers (In Progress)
98. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
99. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
100. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne