Favorite Places: San Juan Island

Dear Friend,

There is a reason why Islanders refer to a trip to the mainland as “going to America”. The San Juans seem to be on a completely different slice of reality than the rest of the world. When you step off the ferry, you are immediately at ease. There is something about the salty air and the smell of the ice cream shop that can calm the most cluttered mind. The town of Friday Harbor is absolutely charming. From over-priced boutiques, to yummy coffee shops, there is something for everyone. Walk along the wooden docks and pass the fish market and you’ll be sure to see Pop-Eye, the half blind resident seal. Saturday morning at 10 is the farmers market, where you can find literally the best pizza you have ever tasted, fresh fruits, and that nasty smelling oyster booth that somehow manages to always show up. The local movie theater is charming. Not too long ago, if eight or more people didn't show up for a movie they would cancel it, since the price of the movie would be more than the price of the ticket sales. If you drive out Roche Harbor road you’ll pass Mona, the Island camel and her little white alpaca friend. Mona is the #1 sassiest dromedary and she loves attention, so be sure to stop and say hello. Continue straight and you’ll come to Roche Harbor. Roche Harbor is a nice, quiet harbor during the winter months, but once summer hits and the tourists come, it is insanity. The Lime Kiln Café is filled with all manner of yachting folk. If you wake up early enough you can snag a delicious doughnut before they sell out. Fourth of July brings herds of drunk, bald men and too tan women. Every 4th, the dock hands jump off into the oily water after their nightly “colors” ceremony.

If you take a right on your way down Roche Harbor Road, and then another right at the “Lonesome Cove Resort” sign, you’ll come to Kylie’s grandma’s property. She owns three houses: the “Big House”, the “Cabin”, and the “Little Cabin”, but everyone refers to the whole place as the cabin. The cabin is waterfront property, and many nights have been spent sleeping outside in cots, staring at the stars. Somehow, no matter what is going on in your life, the cabin makes everything feel okay. There are no fears at the cabin, aside from the ominous seal noises and the occasional trespassing deer. When you walk in the doors of one of the cabins, you are greeted with the smell of cedar and wood and cinnamon and something that just smells like home. Kylie’s grandpa built the cabin from the ground up, and this love and care permeates throughout. The cabin is a mindset. It represents all of the dedication that went into its construction. It is a gathering place for friends, new and old. It is grandpa’s workshop, and grandma’s measuring cups, and the old green bunk beds, and the lamp that never works, and the little yellow wooden fisherman, and macaroni. The cabin is long walks on the beach and breakfasts of raspberries and toast in the gazebo and late nights spent laughing with friends. The cabin is every Fourth of July eating messy veggie burgers and laughing as the juxtaposition between the Aberle’s fun little sparklers and the neighbors nearly blowing up their house with massive fireworks. The cabin is family. Not immediate family, but everyone who has ever visited has been changed by the cabin is inducted into the island clan.

"Those who have lived it know how beautiful the experience is. It holds a place in one's heart, my dear cabin-goer. The people, the place; treasure it." -Jane Huestis

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

Favorite Places: Intro

Dear Friend,

What makes a place so memorable that you can't stop smiling or cringing when thinking about it?

From our personal experiences, we have two answers for you:

The People 
When we think of a place we have been, we often think of the relationships that were created, developed, or perhaps even broken apart while being there. This could evoke either positive or negative emotions, but other people always play a role in how you feel about a certain place. To help explain our thoughts on this, we thought of two scenarios regarding camping with friends.

Scenario #1: Camping with Friend A- Friend A absolutely loves the outdoors. Whether it's rain or shine, she can be found hiking, rock climbing, or kayaking. If you are camping with this hardcore and upbeat friend, you are bound to have a good time. Fallen tree blocking the pathway back to your tent? It's okay. Friend A will spend all afternoon scoping out an alternate route to home. Bugs? Don't worry. Friend A has five different types of bug repelling agents (including mouthwash for the ants). As you can see, your friend adores the outdoors so much that she has has the ability to look at any situation with a positive attitude. Sure, you may get lost or gain a few bug bites here and there, but hey- it's an adventure!

Scenario #2: Camping with Friend B- After your camping experience with this friend, you never want to return to the woods. Friend B is the type of person whose idea of camping is a three star hotel room a few miles away from the lake. Although you love your friend dearly, she is the worst camping partner ever. Fallen tree blocking the pathway back to your tent? You better start building an emergency shelter. Before you know it, it'll be dark and you might find yourself some raccoon friends. Bugs? Those creepy crawly creatures are all up to you, honey, because Friend B is too busy using up the one bottle of bug repellent you have. You better start praying that some deadly spider doesn't eat you alive. Let's face it- Friend B is not cut out for this type of adventure.

Although these two scenarios may seem pretty extreme, we hope we got the point across. People are a huge factor when deciding whether or not a place means a whole lot to you.

Individual Growth
A place's ability to help you grow as an individual can determine what makes a place special. Think of a place that you highly enjoy or despise. This could be anything from your family cabin, your school, or the park few blocks down from your house. If you look back on all the memories at these places, think about how each experience has contributed to who you are today. You know that the place is special when you realize you can't imagine life without it.

Hopefully you are starting to think of some of your favorite places. This was just a little introduction to a short series of posts beginning tomorrow. Over the next three days, we are going to describe some of our absolute favorite places in the world...so stay tuned!

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they holy you- you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences- like rags and shreds of your very life. 

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

Clothes

Dear Friend,

We all know that it's what is on the inside that counts, but that doesn't mean that we don't enjoy dressing up and feeling classy. We've outlined some of our favorite outfits for each season below.Sorry for the short post tonight, but we have a lot due this week and not a lot of time! We promise to post longer, more thoughtful posts later on in the week. For now...

Fall
-Brown boots
-Grey leg warmers
-Dark jeans
-Sweater
-Scarves
Winter
-Hunter boots
-Jeans
-North face jacket
-Stripey gloves
Spring
-Cropped or colored jeans
-Sweater with blouse
-Sperrys
-Messy bun
Summer
-Short shorts
-Colorful tank
-Flip flops
-Ray Band sunglasses

Again, we apologize for the quick post.
Happy Veterans day!

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -Mark Twain

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

Twitter

Dear Friend, 

We have exciting news for you...we joined twitter today! The link to our twitter is...drum roll, please.........

twitter.com/dearfriendblog 

If you have a twitter account, be sure to follow us! We'll be giving daily updates on our blog posts and you may even see some daily tweets of wisdom from us. Feel free to tweet us with any questions you have and we'll do our best to answer them. This twitter account will be a form of communication between us and our readers (shout out to Ireland...you guys helped us gain a few hundred page views in the last few days!). We are super excited about this, so we've decided to dedicate this post to twitter.  

Twitter is a fun social networking site that allows people to send and receive 140 character messages known as "tweets." This helps people receive the latest breaking news, stay in touch with friends, celebrities...there is so much to do and so many people to follow! Twitter is sort of like a universal brain- everyone is able to share their thoughts, which are then compiled into one great mind for everyone to see. After some experience with our personal twitter accounts, we've come up with a list of "Do's" and "Don'ts" in the world of twitter. 

Do's

-#hashtags

-follow Taylor Swift :) 

-be witty 

-retweet things you find joy in 

-space out your tweets

-promote yourself or others (but not too often!)

Don'ts

-#toolongofhashtagsthatconfusepeople

-write a novel

-complain about people without using names to gain pity 

-take yourself too seriously

-tweet anything you will regret later

-let it become an obsession 

#followus

Yours truly, 

Kylie and Catherine

Challenge: Ants

Dear Friend,

Each day we are met with challenges, some bigger than others. Some days our biggest challenge is getting out of bed, other days we are faced with deadlines, friendship problems, and other hurdles. Even though challenges are, well, challenging, they do provide opportunity for growth if we're open to the expansion. Like Albert Einstein said, "In the middle of growth lies opportunity." This guy knew what he was talking about. The two of us have had plenty of challenges of our own. We are installing a new post series: Challenge. We will give ourselves challenges, and then blog about the outcome (unless it is totally anti-climactic). We'll start with an unplanned challenge that happened in February


Challenge: Deal with an ant infestation at 4 AM in Palestine.
Rules: Silence. Don't wake anyone else in the house up. Kill all ants. Get rid of evidence.
Date: February 22, 2012

Over mid-winter break, the two of us went to Jerusalem with classmates and some teachers. The trip in itself was quite the roller coaster of emotions. Besides being half way around the world and away from my family and other friends, we were in one of the most dangerous places in the world. This event took place during our first morning waking up in Palestine. We had gone to bed very late the night before. The day had been so emotionally draining, as we had listened to stories from Claire Anistas, a victim of intense Israeli harassment. Her stories and wisdom were a lot to handle and we were exhausted. Also, this was the point in the trip that everyone was getting sick. We woke up at 4 AM to the call to prayer (the novelty had worn off and we just wanted to sleep). The two of us were sharing a queen sized bed and our friend Nathalia was in a smaller bed on the other side of the room. 5 minutes after being woken by chanting, I (Kylie) looked over to see Catherine leaning over the side of the bed. At first I thought she was sick, but then she jumped up on to the bed into a ninja pose and screamed.

We had an ant problem.

Our noses were running and our heads were pounding and we felt terrible, but in less than two seconds the two of us were standing on our bed and looking over as hundreds of ants crawled around on the floor and all over our stuff. Being the resourceful girls we are, we grabbed two things of mouth wash and began to pour them over the ants. Even though ants don’t usually bother us, the amount of them was insane and it was 4 AM in Palestine and we was sick and tired and delirious. Nathalia was freaking out about a huge spider in the bathroom, as well as a lack of toilet paper and it was just a bad situation all around. All we could do however was laugh. We couldn't believe the situation we were in, but it really strengthened our friendship. We took the challenge of staying quiet while being attacked by ants (at this point they were crawling all over the bed) head on and tried to deal with it with as much grace and poise as we could muster because what else could we do? Might as well find the humor and positive side in every situation because that’s more conducive to productivity and learning than being grumpy.

Lessons Learned:
-Mouthwash kills ants immediately. Note: always carry mouthwash.
-Try to find humor is situations that are not humerus at face value.
-Sickness makes everything worse.
-Positive thoughts are always helpful.
-Kylie and Catherine would make excellent CIA agents.

We hope you enjoyed challenge #1. Please comment or tell us about challenge suggestions and we promise we will try to get to them all as long as it is not too illegal or dangerous.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." -Helen Keller

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

Early Mornings

Dear Friend,

What do your morning routines consist of? After you wake up, you probably roll out of bed, change into the day's clothes, brush your teeth, and have some breakfast- or something like that. But have you ever really thought of that moment when you open your eyes from deep sleep...that moment when you first wake up? This moment doesn't mean much to people, but for us, it's one of those little things in life that make us happy. Of course we've wondered about "night thoughts"- where do we "go" when we sleep? Some of us experience some crazy dreams where others just black out. But we digress..."night thoughts" is a totally different post. For now, we are just going to try and make sense of early mornings.

So what makes early mornings so special? Well, when we first wake up, it seems as if our minds are full of absolutely nothing...if that makes sense. If you don't understand this, try thinking of your mind as a computer. At night, you shut down. This means that your mind is simply focusing on resting for the next day. However, in the mornings, you turn  on your computer and wait for it to "boot up." Entering your password and logging on gives you the "a-okay" to start the day. This is how our mind functions in the morning, but we are most concerned about the period where our minds are "booting up." Clearly, we are awake- the computer is on. However, we have no access to actual documents on the computer because we haven't logged in yet. Thus, minds are blank. We call this "the moment of bliss." This time is not very long, but it is crucial when starting your day. This is a time where you can just lay in bed without having to worry over your problems. The two of us often have a lot of things on our mind. For example, we are in the midst of the college process...I think that's all we really have to say...to keep this short, we are very busy. But we digress. We love early mornings because we just don't have to think about things like college. When these moments of bliss end, it is a bit of a bummer. But you should be thankful you got to wake up in the first place!

I love early mornings when it feels like the rest of the world is asleep and you're the only one who's awake and everything feels like it isn't really real and you kind of forget about all your problems because for now it's just you, the world, and the sunrise. 

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

Giving

Dear Friend,

Sometimes we get into the mindset where we think we are the center of the universe. Events are planned according to our own schedules and people's actions are in our best interests- the world must revolve us. It is definitely important to take care of ourselves, but becoming so wrapped up in our own interests can lead to  selfishness. It is imperative that we step back from our own lives and take a moment to look around. It doesn't hurt to become concerned about others, in fact, it should be our duty as fellow human beings to be interested in the welfare of others. We need to learn how to give. Being able to put aside our issues so that we can give back to others is very important. But what does it mean to give? In this post, we have decided to share gifts we have given people- both physical and priceless.

Physical Gifts 
When you hear "physical gifts," you probably think of the gifts you give to your family and friends on their birthdays. These gifts can range from buying a new watch or paying for their dinner. Today, the two of us helped carry out a very special event at our school. We planned a surprise day full of fun activities for our school to enjoy- we brought everything from bouncy castles to go karts on campus. These physical gifts can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but they all have one meaning- to show that we care. We wanted to give back to our community and planning this event helped us show people that we appreciated them.

Priceless Gifts 
These gifts don't have a monetary value attached to them. They can be as simple as lending someone a coat on a cold day or writing a handwritten card for them. You don't have to pay a single cent to give these gifts- it's more about the thought behind them that counts. In our lives, we give the gift of joy to people (at least we hope we do). Roald Dahl once said "If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." Positive thoughts are key in spreading happiness to others. If you are the type of person to complain a lot and put your problems above others, then there's no opportunity for joy to arise. As we said before, it doesn't cost anything to bring joy to people- it just takes your time and effort. This can be very difficult to do, but just take deep breaths and put a smile on your face. Something that you think is meaningless can mean a great deal to someone else.

Giving to others can cause a chain reaction. By putting someone else's needs before your own can be a great example to people. If we all give either gifts to each other every day, we guarantee that people will be more loving and happier.

"It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving."- Mother Teresa 

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine

P.S- Thanks to the person who suggested this blog post. You know who you are. (Suggestions for posts are always welcome! We want to know what you want to read.)

[If you are reading this in your e-mail, please check our blog online as some changes may have been made.]