2012 was a big year. Lots of travel, lots of activity, including:
- finishing up a difficult frozen winter in the Yukon,
- a long and uncomfortable 3,344 mile Greyhound bus trip from Whitehorse all the way across Canada to Ottawa,
- a month in California exploring bees, community gardens, and seeing friends,
- my 40th birthday,
- taking a class through distance education,
- the cutting and donation of about a foot-and-a-half of my hair,
- home gardening and cooking endeavours in Southern Quebec with a good friend,
- an intense end of summer in Vancouver and Nanaimo, BC doing slave labour as a housekeeper while applying for Chinese visas,
- a return to tropical China and an iffy work situation,
- a final relocation to Nanjing for a college position, and
- ending the year with a busted ankle after offending the Buddha (I know, stop talking about it already…)
With all this activity and the millions of photos I took, it was so difficult to choose just one for every month. Here is my attempt:
Rules for the Weekly Photo Challenge can be found here.
My word what a wonderful but busy year you’ve had T! I didn’t know you’d cut so much of your hair. Did you donate it to a special friend?
You’ve inspired me to do my year in pix.
Excellent! I’m looking forward to seeing what your year held for you. It was really hard to boil down so much time to so few photos, but it is a good challenge.
Yeah, as much as I loved having long hair, I felt it was time for a change. I donated it to an organization in southern Ontario that produces wigs for children with cancer and other hair loss issues. If you know people looking to do something like this, I made a list of major orgs in Canada, the US, the UK and Ireland, and Australia/NZ who take donations.
http://thegoodvillager.com/2012/05/29/donate-your-hair/
That spice and raisin cake looks delicious… and you survived a long and challenging year. 2013 will shine!
Actually, that cake was surprisingly good. Half the time, I buy a Chinese baked good and it has dried pork in it somewhere. But this? It was really quite tasty!
I absolutely agree – 2013 will be excellent!
Wow, what a year! Just the bus ride alone… good grief. I once went roundtrip from Boston to Burlington, VT in the end of February when I was a senior in high school. I went to look at Univ. of Vermont and after that bus ride dressed in a south Florida girl’s version of winter clothes, well, let’s just say I didn’t go to school in Vermont!
Anyway, the horrors of bus travel aside onto much, much better stuff… welcome to the 40′s! it’s a rather fabulous decade if you ask me, and I should know, I have spent 7 years in it! Gets better every year. So with that, I tip my hat that is on my hair of grey and say, “Glad to have gotten to know you in 2012, and here’s to a damn good 2013.”
Oh my, you must have frozen your Southern patootie off. That neck of the woods gets cold and the damp can be a killer.
Yes, I like to think that gittin’ older is better. I definitely feel in tune with myself more than ever before. Not sure if that makes any sense.
Cheers! and bring on the New Year!
I’m having such fun visiting other blogs who have posted year-end photos but first, I went to your ‘About Me’ page to get a sense of the who/what/why! Love all your adventures and commitment to living responsibly …and wow, the bee photo with the pollen, I hope you entered that into some photo contest. Extraordinary.
I have a good friend who lived in Nanaimo in the 1980s and when she moved back East, brought with her a recipe for Nanaimo Bars, a to-die-for cookie that originated in the city of the same name.
Happy 2013.
Thanks for your comments and visit!
One of my goals (in the early part of the year, hopefully) is to get a decent camera. I was lucky with that bee shot – actually many I took on that day turned out quite well. But usually, my camera lives up to what it is.
Ah, Nanaimo. It is the funniest place. There are a lot of interesting artistic types sort of living/swimming in the undercurrent. Then there is a very apparent drug addict population that they’ve made headway into cleaning up in the last couple of years. And then there is this swath of suburban characterlessness that leads for miles away from the downtown core along the highway. The Nanaimo bars are a nice highlight, but the scenery is the real draw to the place.
On a separate note, I enjoyed your piece on trying to give when it’s not wanted. I didn’t comment, as I figured coming in after the fact when the flames were dying down wasn’t a wise move. Regardless, the mark of a good post is the commentary it provokes. Well done!
Happy New Year to you as well!
So many great cameras out there and I am old enough to wish I still had my old SLR film camera with a million lenses, but for ease of blogging I love my Panasonic Lumix.
Thanks for the compliment about the giving post. I don’t go that route often, blogging about something political, but sometimes it feels so darn good!!
I’ll be back here. Nice ‘meeting’ you.
Yes, that’s the thing. So many great cameras. How to choose? Research, of course, but that only gets you so far when you’re not actually trying them out. One of my students here in China enjoys photography and has a friend at a different college who is taking a photography class. Many of the students sell their (excellent) cameras purchased in order to take the class in order to buy something even better once they are done with the class. I may end up going that route. A beginner (like me) spending a lot of money to test out a camera doesn’t make sense to me.
Politics – one of the big (3?) not to talk about among friends – but somethings things just build up
Your life and your blog sounds and looks very interesting – glad I found you! I’ll be back! Great photos too.Have a wonderful New Year!
Thank you so much! And a very happy New Year to you as well. I’m looking forward to more great posts from our community!
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