Unfolding As I Go - Carole's travel blog

Sprouting at home: the easiest way to increase your nutrient intake and make every soup and salad even more delicious. I started as soon as I arrived home and knew I was going to be confined for a while, so I might as well share the process of how I make these sprouts! Only one ingredient: dried lentils. The green lentils have worked best for me and they sprout super fast, in 2 days it is already ready! Material : - a glass jar, the larger the better to make a good enough quantity - a mesh cloth, it can be a piece of tight or in this case a piece of very worn-out sock - a rubberband or string - a bowl (in which the glass jar fits upside down) Step 1 : add 1 tablespoon of dried green lentils to a glass jar, fill up with fresh water and let soak overnight or  at least 12 hours Step 2 : secure the mesh or cloth with the rubberband around the jar and drain the water out (lentils will stay in the jar thanks to the mesh). Rinse a couple more times adding water through ...

It's official: March 17th is the start of the lockdown in France. This is no news to anyone by the time I publish this. But I will have it in here as a memory of the past when I read this again in 10 years from now and remember some details of this historical moment and how people are coping and reacting. The President of France announced it in his speech last night: we are all to stay home, 'We are at war!' After the ban of public gatherings of over 50 people, the shut down of non-necessary stores and the closure of schools, it is now time to go to the next phase: a stricter confinment and important social distancing measures. We can only go out for specific reasons and only with a signed certificate. Fines can go up to €135, the goal being to limit going outside to the bare minimum. More about this in an article from March 17th. The panic of some people have spread to many and we have experienced a surprising phenomenon: people are hoarding toilet paper! It i...

March 17th. It all started as a usual morning at home at my Mom's. The first thing I do when I wake up is go see Blue. He sleeps in the kitchen and loves when we come to open the door in the morning, he stretches and jumps on his cat-tower and rolls around for cuddles. But after a while I heard him in one of the rooms meowing, which is weird because this cat never meows. As I came closer to him, he was also hissing at me. So strange, had never seen him like this. As he tried to move to the other side of the room, I realize he his back legs were dragging on the floor... he was half paralyzed! And he seemed to be in real shock and stress about what was happening to him. He was so panicked that he was crawling around the house meowing in despair.  I only got an appointment at the vet a few hours later and was initially thinking this will pass and he can be back to normal again. But my friend Annie told me the same thing happened to her cat in the past and she had to put h...

That Saturday night, March 14th 2020, my last night in Los Angeles (and my sister Michele's birthday!), I still didn't know where I was going to fly to the next day: Bali or Paris? Where would I want to be if I need to be in self-isolation for a long while? The situation wasn't clear at all, there was only one coronavirus case reported in Bali and I thought if things do escalate, where is it best to be 'stuck' during 1 or 2 months? I would actually be very happy to be stuck in Bali, working on a self-sufficient permaculture farm growing food and knowing I would have everything I need. Sounds to me like the perfect plan instead of being in France where so many cases are already reported, everything was shutting down, national emergency state declared by the President and supermarkets already missing supplies. How to decide? Should I stop my trip and return home earlier? Should I risk the long flights through Sydney to get to Bali and hope to be safe there?...

So that common cold I had in Colorado, well it was getting better, then worst, then better then on my second day in Los Angeles it got really worst again, I was coughing all night and in the morning decided it was time to go see a doctor. No fever nor dry cough - meaning no Coronavirus! and was most probably bacterial. Indeed after 2,5 hours at the Urgent Care clinic and lots of money spent, I'm on antibiotics and prescribed rest and fluids to get over that bronchitis. And to not bother Christelle I prefered to take a hostel room so I could just sleep all day until I got better. Luckily I found a great place, right on Venice Beach: the Samesun Backpackers Hostel , with a private room where I could just spend my day sleeping bothering nobody and trying to recover as much possible from this bronchitis. My schedule was: sleep, eat and walk a bit. On the beach! Perfect place to take in some fresh air, walk on the sand, watch the surfers and the birds. California Venice Beach sc...

Christelle and I met when we were 5 years-old playing in the Orangerie park in Strasbourg, France. She is in a similar but opposite bilingual/binational family situation: her mother from the US married a French man and they went to live in the US and every summer they would come back to stay in Strasbourg during the summer. In my Mom's case, she is the US citizen who came to live in France with her French husband and we were going to the US in the summers. 30 years later, Christelle and I are still friends and meeting up in Los Angeles! That's were she lives now. Looking at the different routes to get from Costa Rica to Bali, a stopover in LA was a perfect way to reconnect, meet her 2 little girls, so cute, see her new house in a beautiful part of the city, hang out in the cute places of Montana Avenue, walking along the Santa Monica bluffs overlooking the ocean, go out to their favorite sushi place and of course get cupcakes. So nice to see Christelle again! and fun to...

It was time again: hair long enough to get a 10 inch cut again! I found out hair can be donated back in 2012 when I was living in Lawrence, Kansas during my postdoc. We were driving back home with friends from the Kansas University Swim Club after a swim meet in Missouri and the topic came up in the car: two of my teammates were waiting for their hair to grow long enough to donate them again. What?! I didn't know you could donate hair! My hair grows quite fast and in the past I have already done 2 major 'cuts' from very long to short, I could have donated instead of it all going to waste! Wigs are expensive and organizations use donated hair to make wigs for children suffering from hairloss due to various illnesses but who's families cannot afford to buy one. So since my hair grows fast and I like to cut it every so often anyways, might as well donate it each time. Apparently 6 to 10 hair donations are needed to be able to make only one wig. This time was my 5th...