Tag: mighty life list

Greece! The Teaser

None of these photos have been Photoshopped. Greece is that good.

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Before you arrive in Greece, they hose it down, and repaint everything.

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Then they station thousands of men at three-foot intervals. These men wait for you to pass so they can tell you how lovely you are. You! With the gelato! Gorgeous. You! Near the novelty olive oils! You are beautiful. Beautiful!

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And you are, of course. Because they sequester you at airport security to airbrush away your imperfections before you can enter the country. Such are the indignities one suffers for vacation photos like this.

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In short, Greece is fictional.

Be glad I don’t have access to a slide projector and your phone number, because I have enough sunset photos to put the entire Flickr team into a coma.

I know many, many of you have Greece on your Mighty Life Lists, so in the next few weeks I’ll be offering ideas and urging you to go sooner than you otherwise might. Like tomorrow. How’s tomorrow for you?

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While you pack, we’ll talk about:

  • Places I recommend,
  • The super cute things I stuffed in my carry on,
  • What Laura and Aubrey packed (bonus),
  • Athens street art,
  • Foods I tried,
  • What you should taste while you’re there,
  • How to make a comfort kit for plane rides,
  • And how Laura Mayes and I were almost killed trying to watch the sun rise over the Aegean.

That last bit changed the way I think about my life goals. Profoundly, in fact. We’ll talk.

Here’s where I thank Intel, who funded my trip to Greece. It’s been a privilege to be part of the enthusiastic, helpful Intel team, many of whom have made their own Mighty Life Lists in solidarity — Dave Veneski wants to ride the three hardest mountain stages of the Tour de France, Bryan Rhoads wants to make wine in Spain. Their support has inspired lots of you to make lists too — Jennifer wants to feed a giraffe, Liza (who’s mini-list is on her old site) wants to buy glasses with colored frames.

If you’ve made your own list, please email me (maggie [at] mightygirl [dotcom]) with the subject header Mighty Life List. Eventually, I’d like to link to all of your lists on Mighty Girl, so we can start working on our lives together. With purpose! And community! And so forth! It will be rad.

In the meantime, I have about five more dreams to accomplish in the next month, so things will be looking fairly surreal over here. Won’t you join me? Please pick something accomplishable to do the next month and commit to it in comments. Yes. Do it! And keep us posted.

You guys were right

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Dear Greek Yogurt,

You smell great. Have I told you that? Man, you smell great. Whoa. I think I might still be a little tipsy from last night.

Anyway, let’s be straight. It’s not like the girls haven’t told me about you. I mean, you’ve been around, and I’m not an idiot. The bass player, the bartender, the Greek Yogurt, your exploits have become cliché.

So let’s not pretend here, Greek Yogurt. I know you’re all about waking up with a girl every morning (as long as she’s in Greece), and then dropping off the face of the earth the minute her plane lands back home. And whatever, it’s none of my business. I’m on vacation, and here you are.

And here I am.

Why don’t you throw an arm around me, and we’ll hit the beach? You are so soft. Seriously, what is that? It’s unreal.

-M

I’m in Greece because Intel is sponsoring my Mighty Life List. I’m bringing them back some yogurt.

First Night in Athens

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This was just after a six year old copped a feel of Aubrey’s bum and then raced through the crowd. To her credit, Aubrey just let out a startled, “HUH!” and kept right on walking, as the men on the street roared. In retrospect, we think the kid might have been part of a pick-pocket distraction technique, though no pockets were picked. Such is the upside of traveling with an unflappable Southern girl.

Shortly afterward, we got caught in a sea of fourteen year olds, who swept us up a hillside in their wake. When we got our wits about us, Aubrey said, “I believe we’ve just accidentally found the church parking lot where teenagers go to makeout.” We refrained from making out with any teenagers.

Other small differences between here and home:

-The bathrooms have single use toothbrushes with toothpaste already on.
-Cats on the street sit under your table and meow for supper.
-At 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night, everyone is still gathered on the square.
-If you accidentally make eye contact with a man on the street, he takes you very, very seriously.

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Laura. Get your bum over here. There’s a six year old we want you to meet.

Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my Mighty Life List over the next few months. I’m in Greece because of them. Hi, you guys!

Mighty Life List: What’s Next

Hi. I haven’t slept in a while, as I’ve been preparing for the next leg of this adventure.

As many of you already know, Intel is sponsoring ten items on my Mighty Life List. So far, I’ve:

1. Redesigned Mighty Girl.
2. Taken tap lessons.
3. Gotten a little closer to my goal of tasting 1,000 fruits.
4. Gone swimming with bioluminescent plankton.

The campaign has even inspired me to get moving on some of the more personal goals. On my own I’ve taken Hank camping, given him his first ice cream cone, and played with some sparklers on July 4.

So what’s next? Well, very shortly, Intel is putting me on an airplane to Greece. The country where they keep the Feta and the philosophers.

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with gratitude as I type this, and honestly I’ve been weepy over the last few weeks whenever I think about any of it. That could also be sleep deprivation, of course, but let’s not split hairs.

I’ll be visiting Athens, Santorini, and Mykonos. If you’ve been to Greece and you have any tips, please let me know in comments. I know from reading all of your lists that lots of us dream about Greece, and I love knowing that. So if you’ve made your own Mighty Life List, please don’t feel weird about linking to it, because I like it when you do.

I’m traveling with Laura and Aubrey, who are both very fun, so that means no sleep in my immediate future either. Our main objective on this trip is to watch the sun rise over the Agean.

You guys, I have always wanted to do that.

Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my Mighty Life List over the next few months. They’re paying for my trip to Greece as part of their Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign, and also because they are nice people in general.

Take Hank Camping, Check.

I grew up camping — fresh-picked blackberries and cream, sodas chilling in the creek, bug bites so profuse that I looked infectious. I figured Hank would be a natural outdoorsman.

He was a champ for the five-hour drive, and happy enough through camp set up. I kneeled for a kiss when we’d finished pitching the tent. He took my face in his hands, cocked his little head, and said, “We can go home?”

I figured he’d come around once he’d spent some time in the dirt with all his older cousins, and he did. A little. Unfortunately, he grew increasingly upset when they took occasional bike rides and left him behind. His lip quivered, his eyes welled, “We can go home, pease? Pease?”

We cuddled him. He asked to go home. We tickled him. He suggested we play tickle in the car. We hung him upside down by his feet. He thought that might be more fun if we left and tried it someplace else. Someplace like our apartment. So we pulled out the big guns:

When we were done with the water fight, Hank looked around and gave an unhappy sigh. We scooped him up and took him to the river where he was content to throw rocks for a couple hours. Then his cousin caught a fish. Oh dear. Hank examined the fish, touched it, and said, “Now that fishy go swim again,” and pointed to the water. Uhhh. I distracted him from the concept of death by making high-pitched noises and unattractive goofy faces while we exited the scene, but when he realized we were no longer by the water?

“We go home now. Now. Nooooow. NOOOOOOOW!”

We muddled through the day, but soon it began to dawn on him that there was no way to go inside when it got dark. His face twisted into a mask of such extreme toddler frustration, I’m certain he would have cursed like a sailor in a tattoo parlor if he’d had any expletives at his disposal. Instead he cried for a while, and Bryan cuddled him to sleep in the tent.

The following day was much the same, with a slightly more dramatic bedtime scene. But Hank woke the second morning refreshed. Say! He had a great idea. How about we all get in the truck? From there we could go home! No? What are we doing now? Getting ready to go home, he hoped. Are we going there now? He would enjoy that.

After an hour or two of subtle coercion, Hank asked me to lift him into his car seat, and then simply refused to be moved. His forlorn toddler face said it all:

So instead of staying another day, we cut the kid a break and packed up the campsite. My sister assured me that this was a passing phase. Her kids didn’t like to camp at Hank’s age; toddlers like routine. Meanwhile, Hank perched in his car seat with a matchbox truck and his sippey cup for nearly two hours while we packed. I have never seen him display such patience with anything that wasn’t shaped like a TV.

So, I’m crossing “Take Hank Camping” off my Mighty Life List. Next I think we’ll all go out to sushi and then head to the Opera. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Small Differences Between Puerto Rico and Home

First, the crucial beverage differences:

  • On the whole, pre-packaged beverage servings are much smaller — serving-size cans of juice are only about 4 oz. The photo above is of big juice cans. I love that label design.
  • Related: you can get tiny Coronas called “Coronitas.” They are adorable.
  • Stores sell milk in juice box packaging. Which wouldn’t be that unusual I guess, but they’re everywhere.
  • A “fruit punch” is likely to be made up of actual tropical juices, even if you buy it in a can. This makes rum punch dangerously easy to mix, even if you have no business mixing yet another rum punch, Maggie.
  • Melissa orders a beer. The waitress just pops the top of the can and sets it down in front of her. I’m amazed by this. I’ve been living in a big city too long.

Non-liquid differences::

  • That burrito? It’s full of hummus. Melissa ordered it knowingly, despite vigorous head shaking on my part.
  • Cars drive by open-air restaurants blaring advertising out of speakers on top.
  • Our airplane ticket for the ride back to Old San Juan was handwritten.
  • There are iguanas crawling through the grass on the side of the road.

  • I took this photo from the car. Wild horses are everywhere in Vieques, often standing in the road.
  • Little lizards are everywhere too. Like on the wall behind my pillow. Where I sleep at night.
  • People grow cacti in long rows to use as fences for small livestock.
  • Had I not made a When Harry Met Sally point of it, my nachos would have come with corn on them.

  • The pool at our hotel wasn’t chlorinated, so swimming was like taking a bath.
  • Bats swooped over the pool at night to eat insects off the surface. This made Melissa nervous at first, but I assured her that they could see us, and wouldn’t come near us. On our last night we lingered too long in the pool, and the bats got frustrated. So one dive-bombed my face. It came inches from my mouth, and I could hear the leathery wing flaps, and feel the leathery wing air.

*Intel is giving me more to write about by sponsoring my Mighty Life List over the next few months. They paid for my trip to Puerto Rico, so they’re indirectly responsible for any bat flashbacks I may have for the next several months.