Last week I participated once again in
- the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. Created by Misha Collins (an actor most famous for his role on
Supernatural
), and raising money for the charity
, this video-and-photo hunt challenges people to move outside their comfort zone, attempt the impossible, and also perform random acts of kindness along the way. I participated last year and this year, since I was going to be away from my team, I roped some colleagues in the UK into helping me. It made for a fairly busy second week in Southampton, as I was arm wrestling movie theatre employees for tickets to
Guardians of the Galaxy
, creating art installations out of dishes (complete with artist statements), creating monuments to the founder of Rubber Gloves, Harris Packard, and dressing up co-workers as fish, the Flash and Batman for various ridiculous things.
One of the major challenges on the list was to climb one of Table Mountain (South Africa), Mt. Fuji (Japan), Mt. Sinai (Egypt), Mt. Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), or Mt. Snowdon (Wales). Being only a 5 hour drive from Wales, my paralegal Indy and I decided to give it a go, and got up very early last Friday morning to make the drive to Wales.
Wales (what I saw of it), was everything I hoped it would be. Beautiful, idyllic, friendly, with sheep running everywhere...and don't forget the delicious, delicious Welsh cakes. Snowdon was breathtakingly beautiful and we met up with several other teams at the summit, who we then walked back down the mountain with. Without GISHWHES, I would never have gone to this beautiful place, or made new friends. Plus it gave me like, 28,000 steps on my Fitbit for the day, which was rad.
I wish we had stayed overnight, but instead we undertook the drive home, after getting down off the mountain at 9 pm or so. We arrived home in the very early hours of Saturday morning, and I spent most of the weekend recovering, binge-watching Orphan Black and chilling out. The remains of Hurricane Bertha hit Southampton last weekend, and you've never heard anything like the wind and rain that whistled around the flat all weekend. At one point the skylights in my flat, which is right on a pier, blew open and hail started pouring in. I stumbled around the apartment on stiff-post-Snowdon legs, pushing the skylights back in with a pole, only to have them blow open again minutes later. It was probably a comical sight, but I felt like I was in some sort of carnival game, trying to anticipate which one would blow open next.
I'm up in London now, which is obviously much more familiar turf. I'm making a list of all the sights I was too lazy to see when I lived here, thinking I'd have all the time in the world, and am determined to check them all off before I leave in just over two weeks. I am getting very homesick and lonely and at least this will give me something to do, rather than wallowing in those feelings. I've also been asked to be a reviewer of submissions for some of the GISHWHES video tasks, which will keep me busy watching some of the craziness other GISHWHES teams around the world got up to. So, lots to keep me distracted. 16 days until home.
I texted my brother to let him know I was in Wales. He made a joke about needing to get Welsh cakes and I was pleased to be able to text back this photo, saying, "Oh you mean THESE?"
Just breathtaking views on Snowdon, and so different from our BC landscape.
Indy and I at the summit of Snowdon.