Hola from Mexico

Happy new year everyone (wow, it is already February!). Bruce and I were suppose to travel back to Oregon on Feb. 2nd but we extended our stay down here in Cabo San Lucas until Feb. 18th....lucky us.

I have been keeping up on the blogs, and want to contribute my two cents worth:

1) My passions.....I really am passionate about everything I do. I have always been the kind of person who throws herself wholly into any endeavour, having said that if I had to pick a few favorite passions they would be:

a) TRAVEL, I have been to 17 different countries and have many I want to visit and revisit. I love the smell of a new country, trying the food, digging into the history, walking on cobblestones streets that were built centuries before, sitting in a cathedral and having the light from the stained glass fall on my face as I picture what it was like in the past. Crawling over crumbled castle walls, lifting a pint in a local pub, seeing the dungeons and running my fingers over the crevasses of some one's scratchings that are long dead....., trying the mass transit whether it is the bullet train in Japan, a cruise up a fjord in Norway or the crazy taxi ride in Mexico it always gives me a thrill.

b) BOOKS, my mother gave me the gift of reading when she signed me up for the "Happy Hollisters" book club. I use to anticipate my next months books and read them cover to cover, then reread them again and again. I have memories of going on camping trips with my family and staying in the back of the suburban and reading a Happy Hollister book. Later in my teen years my mother gave me the J.R. Tolkien series and I lost myself in the fantasy land of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series. I love to read anything from a good "slutty" historical romance to something deep and disturbing (not scary). My love for books has been a gift I have been able to share with my sister Kay, she has opened my mind and heart to so many things with her passion for reading. I will never forget the thrill she got when she purchased a "library" of books from someone, it was very moving watching the emotions on her face when she would describe her new treasures.

c) ALL THINGS GROWING IN THE GARDEN, my earliest memories of growing things are from our little house we lived in in Creswell. My father tended a flower garden....I have grown many things over the years and have always carved out a little space for plants everywhere I have lived. My house at the beach was overgrown with blackberries, now I have over 50 lavender plants, it makes me feel good.

1) My favorite reads of all time:
a) The J.R. Tolkien series
b) The Diary of Anne Frank
c) The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follet
e) Atlas Shrugged - Ann Rand
f) The Angelique series (period romance set in France)
g) Snow falling on Cedars

3) My Thoughts on Suite Francaise - I really enjoyed this book and felt heart broken that she could not complete her Suite of novels. I liked Storm in June better than Dolce because I felt closer to the characters for some reason. It was very interesting to see how the "class" system was in place but how war stripped that away. The conflicting emotions in Dolce reminded me a little bit of the Welsh girl, you almost felt sorry for some of the Germans. I enjoyed the book, but really enjoyed reading the Appendices at the end, it humanized the whole book for me.

So, I think this brings me up to date. I read the blog from Linda about taking a time out on the book club. I would really like to continue, so maybe she can just rejoin the rest of us later?????

Toni