Challenge 6: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

I love to travel and discover new places, people, customs, traditions and generally poke about. Often I'm surprised by the ordinary things I see and often see the extraordinary in the everyday of another culture.

Bicycle in Mumbai, India

Now, I invite you to take a journey!
It can be actual or via the armchair, but you must travel to a country other than your own. Once there look around, observe, take in the sights, sounds and smells. Experience the humidity or cold, generosity or indifference of the people.

Tree in Utah, USA

Think of this challenge as seeing with fresh eyes and being open to new inspirations.

Post box Tainan City, Taiwan



Have fun exploring and discovering what, to you, is the extraordinary in the ordinary.



Indian palace door

Please make your quilts in landscape format, 24" wide x 18" long.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

A family friend likes to tell this story of when I was a young child: 

Adults were relaxing around the dinner table after a lovely meal. All the other children had run outside to play, but I remained seated, attentive. At some point there was a lull in the conversation, whereupon I stood up and announced to the table "I'm going to travel the world!"

 

I don't remember that evening but I believe the story. Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated with other cultures. In college, I delayed an early graduation in order to study abroad. I have been blessed to live, work and travel in many different countries. If possible, I'll continue traveling throughout my life.

No matter where I go, my parents have recommendations for how to spend my time.  My mom is an architect and my dad is a foodie so my travel always includes interesting buildings and exotic foods. Despite such wonderful exposure, my most extraordinary experiences have been simple interactions with ordinary people:

• A night in rural New Zealand, arriving at a hotel only to find it closed for renovations. The caretaker informing me there was nowhere else to go and no grocery or restaurant open at that hour. Then saying: "Well, we've got some friends coming and we're about to throw something on the barbie; why don't you stay over and join us?"
• Taking shelter on a door stoop during a deluge in Sweden, with no money for transportation and a four mile walk ahead to the ferry. An elderly woman opening the door, comprehending my situation despite not speaking the same language, walking me to the subway with her umbrella, putting a coin in and pushing me through the turnstile as she smiled and waved goodbye.
• A young cabbie in Iceland who was so enamored with my 78 year old, Icelandic-speaking mother-in-law, that he invited us to his house for dinner. When we told him it was our last night, he insisted we come back and stay with his family on our next vacation.

Amongst all the beauty and wonder of travel, the simple, ordinary encounters have been my most memorable and inspiring.

Nothing Ordinary Here

I have spent most of the past week on holiday in Bali, and with a Viewpoints 9 deadline looming, you can bet I have been giving this next theme a great deal of thought. Of course, when visiting a culture that is distinctly different from one's own, *everything* ordinary is extraordinary ... from the vegetation -





to the unusual foods available -

to the customs and traditional costumes.


So on every sightseeing foray, I have looked around to see if there was subject matter I would like to select for our theme.

The I hit on what I thought was a brilliant response - I would take a batik workshop and then take the batik home to stitch and finish: thus, taking an ordinary piece of fabric and doing something extraordinary with it.

The workshop was absolutely incredible and I enjoyed my day immensely. My instructor, Widya, was fantastic, knowledgeable and patient, and as you can see from some of his finished pieces below, very talented. He is from Java so has a very specific style of batiking.





I decided to begin by doing a combination of line drawing with the janting and stamping with hot wax. What fun!





Then I painted on natural dyes and let it dry. I was happy to leave it there!


But the next steps altered everything - putting on more wax to fill every space with pattern and design (so not me!) and then dipping into the final blue dye, which I had envisioned as a sky blue but which was, in fact, closer to indigo.

I will stop there, leaving you hanging. Because, you see, once it was finished, it did't look like anything Mary Pal would make ... and I don't think I can "make it mine" even with significant stitching. But I won't be back in Canada until the 21st, a mere 5 days before we must post the finished piece. So I have to either come up with some other brilliant idea pronto or rework this Bali Mandala. The pressure is on - stay tuned!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ubud, Bali

Paper or Plastic?

Research Site

Having my son (an ex-pat for over 10 years now) and his wife visiting from Sweden earlier this month, reminded me of some of the things I enjoy doing when I'm abroad......among them, I'm fascinated by foreign grocery stores!  While they wandered the aisles, wondering at all of the variety and reminiscing about foods they enjoyed, I started to consider my memories of groceries.

German Sausages

For the local population, a store doesn't hold much more than a routine chore.  But really, a whole lot of sociology goes on in the grocery store.  It's not just about the food, though that's always an interesting part,  it's about what there is, and isn't, from how things are packaged and displayed to how they're grouped together.  The absence of grocery bags or baggers.  Smaller portions, less wrappers...no wrappers.  Imported produce from unexpected places.  Not to mention the local specialties.



There's a lot of the routine items, toothbrushes, deodorant, jam, frozen food....but it's all just a little different and curious to me.

Cheese in France

Fish in Paris market

I love trying new things and this is such an easy way to experience the local culture.  I do sometimes wonder, though, if I'm putting things together properly - particularly with more obscure items, or if, through my ignorance, I'm doing the equivalent of putting ketchup on ice cream.

Dragonfruit in Stockholm

What a great challenge Sue!

What a great challenge Sue!
Although I would *have* loved to travel, my actual experiences outside the US have been extremely limited.
Fortunately, we've had a steady stream of people from all over the world come to stay with us.  We've had exchange students from Germany, Palestine, China, South Africa, Namibia, Japan and Scotland.
I think I'll have to borrow something from them to work on.  It certainly gives you new insight on your own culture when people who are experiencing it for the first time notice every day things that you take for granted.
I stumbled on a wonderful photo stream on Flickr.  The guy takes delight in looking at totally banal objects in a new way.  I am slowly working my way through his pictures, trying to ration them out so they last.  I'll post one below.

it's a bendy straw!

Meditating

by Lin Hsin-Chen

Thanks to Ms. Sue Dennis for giving us this interesting challenge.

Recently, I have been busy handling various business reports, budget and final accounts…etc. It’s a long-term stressful job. I’m familiar with dealing these matters, so it seems to be easy and trivial for me. However, those matters are complicated actually. In short, the combination of a series of simple things becomes extraordinary.

I often leave my working environment with complicated emotions, worries or some problems that awaiting to be solved. I expect the change of time and space would help me up with those matters. This week, with an unhealthy heart, I went on an adventure of mountain hiking with a group of experienced elders. Mountain hiking seemed to be an easy thing for them, but for me, I could only follow their path and walked slowly behind them. While walking, I felt kind of nervous, helpless and very unconvinced. I am at least 20 years younger than those walking in front of me, why aren’t I as healthy as them? Undoubtedly, this trip didn’t solve my worries, but increased my hard works and fatigue.

When I finally reached the destination, I shared my hard feelings with the elders. One of them told me it’s just like I could make a quilt easily, but it’s an impossible mission for them. Everyone has their “ordinary” abilities and “extraordinary” expertise. Indeed, the elders concentrated on walking, and focused on the adjustment of footsteps and breathing, while I was walking around and taking photos for my creating. I didn’t concentrate on mountain hiking at all. No wonder the 10-kilometer journey was too exhausting for me.

While we were discussing, a shop nearby showed us an interesting scene. It’s just like reminding us that it’s ordinary for chameleons to change colors, but it’s extraordinary for them to pile up and change the body temperature and color together. What a perfect answer for this trip!

It all started with a photograph

I actually think my love of travel began with this photograph.  The man on the camel on the left is my Dad, who joined the Army Air Force (when it was still part of the US Army) before 1940.  After the war my brothers and I heard his stories about people and places all over the world.  

While my father never spoke of war, he told us incredible stories about Hindu dress in India, eating habits of Bedouin in North Africa, words of greeting from Tagalog speakers in the Philippines, how to say "more pasta, please" in Italian and on and on.  We have no idea what he did during the war...it's still classified...but we learned to love the people he met

and the places he visited.

Adding to the mix of my love of travel, were the years we spent in Japan.  Again, it was my father's job in the military that sent us there.  But it was his encouragement to explore that biased us in favor of foreign adventure of the everyday life in another country.  

Another tourist in Beijing at the Summer Palace

Bungle Bungle

 Granted, exploring the Kimberly's Bungle Bungle ranges in Western Australia in a little helicopter is not everyday, by any stretch of the imagination....our love of travel has always been a fascination with place and people....and whilst visiting there last year we met a charming young man who will be coming to visit us this next month.  Boy, it just doesn't get better than that.  We will get to show him our territory.  Full circle.

Oh, the memories.  Over the years, whenever an opportunity was available for travel, I jumped for my toothbrush.  This challenge posed by Sue will be very interesting...remembering past travels is the best.  The dilemma may be where to alight.  Which place?  Which story?  What people?  Just makes me smile thinking about it.  Perhaps the real problem will be for me to stop with the reminiscing and get to work.

Mental Vacation

This challenge has been a nice change of pace for me.  After the chaos, noise and excitement of the holiday season, then my 8 year-old son's Harry Potter birthday party (10 kids with magic wands and cardboard brooms running around the house! LOL), I was ready to fly away to a tropical island.

Sue's challenge is almost as fun as running away - and less expensive.  Yesterday I spend a lovely hour or so daydreaming about the different places I've been, either alone or with family.

I really tried to put myself there and recreate the experience of each place:

How crisp and clean the air was in Villach, Austria.  The smell of green grass and fruit trees.  It gets a bit chilly as you hike up the mountain but not unpleasantly cold.  Like wading in fresh running water.  You can see for miles from nearby Burgruine Landskron castle.

In Venice, the air was much different - heavy with humidity and the smell of food, boat motors and canal water.  Hot stones under our feet that suddenly turned 10 degrees cooler in the shade.  Piazza St Marco echoing with voices, in all different languages.  People taking pictures, feeding pigeons, buying souvenirs, laughing and calling to each other across the square.

Croatia’s coastline fills my senses – the smell of fresh baked bread and salt water, the sound of people arguing politics over tiny cups of very strong coffee.  It seems like there are as many sailboats as cars – their white sails and colorful hulls are like confetti on the turquoise sea.

Most of my trips have been during summer time, so it was especially nice to “visit” them while back here in Connecticut the temperature is hovering around freezing.  I'm not sure where I'll take my Viewpoints9 challenge, but so far I’m enjoying the journey in my mind.