Lounging in the Dead Sea

Fun times in the Dead Sea!

Mom and Me at the Dead Sea

Dead Sea Mud. Not a bad look!

This is what Mom looks like when she's laughing really hard. About that bruise on her shoulder, it wasn't me!

The view from our hotel on the Dead Sea.

Sunset on the Dead Sea, with a view of the West Bank.

On the beach at the Dead Sea. I loved this place. We had it to ourselves except for two Canadian dudes.

I put this a lower down so you'd have to scroll!! Like Mother, like daughter!

Sunset from the hotel over the Dead Sea. West Bank on the horizon.

How I managed to get my mother to visit me in a country that is tucked between the West Bank and Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia... is completely beyond me. But she came! And we had a blast! Here are a few shots from the first days at the Dead Sea, where we bobbed like corks and had a good laugh at our buoyancy. If you try to swim in stomach-down, the water will flip you over. It's like a giant, child-proof, swimming pool. No water wings required!

More shots to follow. Peggy on a camel. Never thought I'd see the day...

xo

Shannon

Eat, Pray, Love

My sister gave me a book called “Eat Pray Love” a few weeks ago as birthday present. The book is a travelogue. It's written by a woman who is looking for happiness (and herself) in the far corners of the globe. Not that I can relate to that at all.

Usually when I read stories or hear about people who travel to the world, chronicle their adventures and do stuff that not a lot of people do, I get … annoyed. I’m like, “Hey. Cut it out! Stop stealing my originality.” It’s childish, yes, but I’m being honest. Just the other day I was sitting at an out-of-the-way, Mexican-style café in Amman when a pack of American twenty-somethings strolled in. They sat in the center of the room and started talking about expat life in the Middle East. As their collective voices cut through the noise of the bar, I cringed. I almost said, “Seriously, I get it that you’re all on some kind of Lawrence of Arabia shtick. And I love that you’re all experiencing something new and unique. Now get out of my café.”

What can I say? I like to feel like I’m, um, original.

So I fully expected to grind my teeth through this story of a woman finding herself in an Ashram in India and in the smoky cafes of Rome. But then something funny happened. As she talked about always looking for the next adventure instead of enjoying the one in front of her, I thought, “You too?” And then she talked about running around the world and thinking happiness was something you chase after, not something that is right there with you if you’d just shut up and pay attention for once (“Really?”). She talked about relationships and heartbreak and spiraling into an emotional freefall and crying on bathroom floors (“My God, is this person my internal transcript?”)

I just finished the book. I loved it. I loved it because it has given me a little perspective and because it came at just the right time in my life (thanks, Colleen). My friend Silke was once trying to describe how much she enjoyed a book she was reading. Exasperated, she finally said, “Shanni, this BOOK. It's like a best friend.”

I wouldn’t consider “Eat Pray Love” a best friend, but I think it’s a very good friend indeed.