Sunday Favorites: How to Be a Great Guest

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! I wrote the following article as a guest post for The Karina Chronicles back on 4/12/12:


If you’re going to spend any amount of time traveling, chances are at some point you’ll be hosted by a stranger. These tried and true methods will guarantee an invitation to return:

Get Into the Culture

Do some advance research and find out all that you can about your Hosts' culture.  In Samoa, it's impolite to speak to someone seated if you are standing.  In Thailand, its very rude to point the bottom of your foot at someone. In some cultures it's not OK to refuse an offer of food.  Research will help you know what to do in such situations, but more often than not you'll be glad to accept -- like the time I was given fresh sugar cane in Samoa:

Delicious!  But let's speak at eye level, OK?

Don't Hole Up

Plan to be social at least part of the time.  You'll make your Hosts feel very uncomfortable if you hideout in your room twenty-four-seven.  If you need to sleep off some jet lag, politely explain but make plans to join them for coffee or a meal the next day.

Leave No Trace

Leave your clothes and toiletries packed away in your suitcase and take them out only when in use. Jump up and clear the table as soon as the after-dinner conversation has waned.  If you feel comfortable, wash the dishes.  Make your bed every day. When it's time to leave, strip the bed and leave everything folded neatly.

Offer to Help

While staying in New Zealand, I told the older couple with whom I was staying that I would love to help with any chores that needed doing. I had a blast all afternoon chucking recyclables at the dump with Henry.

"Get out your aggressions, Hexum" -Henry

Keep Your Word
If you say you're going to arrive at a certain time, stick to it.  Stay in touch about your plans and don't stay out too late unless arranged in advance. You'll feel bad if they lost sleep worrying about you.

Ask Permission
Don't assume anything.  Better to ask first.

Give a Gift, or Two

Bring a small token from your hometown or the last city you visited.  After you've gotten to know them a little better, a nice parting gift specific to their taste and personality is in order. If you’re unsure, treat them to a fancy dinner out.

Now it's Your Turn

Learn from your Hosts and vow to pay it forward the next time guests come your way.

Welcome Home, Kady and an Ode to A Lady Reveals Nothing

I know you think you have great friends.  And maybe you do.  But mine are better.  Guaranteed.  After 8 months away, they welcomed me home with a weekend place to stay, lunches, dinners, shopping, pedicures, drinks, and even a 'Welcome Home, Kady' party.  I was invited to my friend Kerrie's house, and all I knew was that there would be a 'surprise theme'.  I was having a hard time guessing what it could be...maybe everybody would wear a costume and we'd eat food and drink drinks from another culture? 

The night came and Josette told me that I would have to be blindfolded once we got in the car.  Ha!  So we WEREN'T going to Kerrie's!

We were going to Otter's in Northeast Minneapolis...where all my friends were waiting with a big sign, happy smiles and KARAOKE.  My favorite favorite favorite activity in the whole world. 

Teri even sang me a very special version of REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It, for which she had altered the lyrics to be based on this blog.

Try to sing it in your mind to the tune of the REM song.  I'm also including clickable links to the original stories from this blog so you can read up on anything that might interest you:

That's right it starts with Australia, koalas, snakes, and an aeroplane and Kady Hexum's not afraid.

Peeing in a wetsuit, listen to yourself burp - Don't forget the wombat, Tonka was the wombat.  Rollin in a SmartCar, grunt, no speed, the tires start to clatter just like a moped.  Pack on your back, but you bought a rolling suitcase, and an ugly stinger suit with really long arms.

Spank Me galley, smell of gas don't strike that match we might all blow up.  Fale fale sugar cane, and coconut juice.  Scuba diving, sun burn.  Solo now.

Uh oh, brewery, hitchhikers, bicycle with a motor.  Kady cooks, but serve yourself.

Hiking glaciers, listen to your finger bleed dummy with the monkey and the cat poop coffee.  Right?  Right.  Your Thailand buses, Summer-isms, snake wine, bed bugs, waterfall photos.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.  And more to come.

Sick O'clock watch the oscars, don't get caught in Cu Chi tunnels.  Slash and burn bus rides, listen to your stomach churn.  Pee behind a bull dozer, Korean drinking, Seoul fooding.  Eating fish intestines.  Jjin jil bang naked showers.  Light a candle, back in Minnesota.  Mess up guest room.  Watch your dad eat squirrel meat, uh-oh, this means Relax Underwear.  Acted a fool at Angkor Wat.  Kiss my grits I'm a waitress.  My dad has a uterus.  Offer me some Crocs, offer me a date after fart and I decline.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it. And more to come.

The other night I dreamt of Jen Aniston's fan light.  Then I went to zip line.  Diaper and high heels.  Dengue fever.  Granada 6.  Policeman with a Cerveza.  Turd burglar, I'm sick, Machu Picchu, boom!  You went around the world and dreamt of Ben Affleck.  Right?  Right.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it.

It's the end of the year as you know it. And more to come.

The Year in Review - 2010

You thought I couldn't make it, right?  365 posts in one year.  365 days with no real income.  100 showers.  EW!  You know it.

But here I am.  One year ago today, I quit my job and spent the following month selling everything I owned to prepare for a monumental trip around the world.  It was really hard because I liked my stuff.  I had good stuff.  The kind of stuff it takes years to accumulate.  Like my wine rack.  It took me forever to find a perfect wine rack that fit perfectly in the corner of my dining room.  Most wine racks only hold like 6 bottles of wine.  Or they're ugly.  But patience paid off and I found one on Craigslist.  And my dining room table.  I got it at a World Market that was about to close.  I found a couple of vintage blue bucket chairs that framed my fireplace perfectly from Vintage Modern Living out of Minneapolis.  All of my artwork - collected from local artists and friends...well, those I kept.  You can pry them from my cold, dead fingers.  Or the cold, dead fingers of the five or six friends who are graciously storing them for me at the moment.  And the clothes.  The clothes!  Since I've been wearing the same four outfits for about a year, I think back to my cram-packed walk-in closet with definite longing...

But really, I'm not feeling too too extra nostaligic at the moment.  Because even though I gave it all up, I got so much more in return.  For your viewing pleasure, some of the highlights of my 2010:

I got to hold a koala in Australia!

...hiked on a glacier in New Zealand

...experienced amazing hospitality, the world over.  (Samoan man sharing coconut from his yard.)

...saw Angkor Thom in Cambodia

...learned to surf

...went horseback riding in Guatemala

...swung from a rope into crystal clear waters in Laos

...watched a boat go through the locks at the Panama canal

...faced some very real fears.

...saw these buildings in Kuala Lumpur I've been dreaming about for years

...fed an elephant

...rode a motorscooter around Thailand

...learned to SCUBA

...Zip Lined in Nicaragua

...quality-timed it with my mom and dad

...and got to spend all summer with my favorite little boy in the whole world

What was your favorite blog post from 2010?  Comment me, I'm totally curious!  Here's mine.  Drum roll please.  Here, for your re-viewing pleasure:

Click here for my favorite blog post of 2010.

It's not over yet folks.  I'm not planning to go home anytime soon, so stay tuned for more zany adventures, fear-facing, and of course, more poop stories.  I haven't even begun to tell all of those.

I Heart Trees

(You may remember this poem as the one my shop teacher made me memorize and recite for too many tardy arrivals to his class. But I never forgot it.)

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast

A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. -Joyce Kilmer

And Hal, my dad.  My dad makes trees.  In fact he's kind of obssessed with them.  I call him Johnny Appleseed, because he's constantly planting trees.  Sometimes he just cuts off a branch of one tree and sticks it in the ground, and voila!  A new tree!  A tree that you better not accidentally scrape with the lawn mower because then you pretty much killed the tree and he'll never forgive you.  I often wonder if he would be as mad if somebody scraped ME with a lawnmower.  Probably not.  He'd probably suggest it was somehow my fault because, stupid, I got in the way. 

Remember this old Hal-ism? "I don't mind killing animals, but I hate killing a tree...unless it's already dead and I cut it up to burn it."

Maybe this is where I get my love for trees.  I love them.  I love taking pictures of them, and seeing their silhouette against the sky.  This year I have seen so many amazing trees.  Here are my favorites:

Bali

Australia

New Zealand, South Island

New Zealand, North Island

Cambodia

Laos

Korea

Panama

Samoa

Singapore

Thailand

But my favorite? My absolute favorite tree in the whole world? This little momma, located in International Falls, MN, on the way up to my job at Island View Lodge. I got to drive by this tree almost every day this summer. I kept meaning to take a photo, but never got around to it. You can't really see it in this shot, but there is a huge crook in the neck of this tree.  I can't get enough of it.  Finally, when I went to dinner with my parents at Island View, I made my dad pull over the car so I could take this shot in the rain. Me and dad and my tree.



A Visit to a very Special School

Teri and I were able to visit a Special Needs School while in Samoa and it was quite a treat.  They have kids separated by their year, and years one and two are together, and also years three and four and so on.  Kids who are deaf, have Autism, Down's Syndrome, and any number of physical or development disability go to school here.  I learned enough Ausland sign language to tell the kids that I flew here from the United States and that I was leaving Wednesday.

If you want to spell out your name in sign language for the rest of your life that's fine, but what you really want is for a deaf person to give you a "sign name".  Only a deaf person can give it to you, and then instead of everybody spelling it all out, you get this little sign and it's just for you.  Tonga gave me my sign name.  It's the letter K, which is basically like a peace sign with your thumb in the middle.  Then you take the 'K' and move it across your forehead, in the sweep of my bangs.  Cute, huh?  I felt so honored.  I like the sign too and that makes me feel spesh!

So here are some pics of the kids and their teachers.  They were excited to meet us and I wish I had more time.  I would have loved to spend the day there.

The little boy laying on the floor is called Frances, and he has Cerebral Palsy.  His aide showed me his spelling test and he's quite smart.  He wasn't feeling well that day so he got to lay down.  Look how he smiled when I asked if I could take his picture!

When I'm under the gun, everybody suffers

I am trying to make this blog interesting folks, but with internet access at an all-time low, I have really been trying to type fast and may be missing some major punch lines.  Later I think of something hysterical I could have said...

Like, I could have written "I am writing to you from the future...don't bother with that lipstick."

Oh well.  Today I bought a un-underwire bra, or an underwireless bra.  It's something I have been dreaming about since wringing out my clothes that first day in Samoa.  So today we went shopping in Sydney and I was having trouble finding any bra with no underwire.  I thought for a minute that "they don't have them here".  And then finally I found one.  Just one option.  At the check out line, shining like a beacon of light.  Two immediate drawbacks.  Pink in color, and displayed in a Hustler box, with a total hoochie on the front with huge huge huge you-know-whats.  But I really thought that the actual product was something I totally needed.  And so I opened the box, verified it's contents were small enough for me and bought it.  Afterwards I threw away the nasty garter that came with the bra.  For your information, I'm wearing it right now and it's perfect for this climate.  Unfortunately it says Hustler on it.  I'm hoping that with just one or two days of sweat that will rub off.  And soon it will be that familiar light brown color for bras and the pink will be gone too.

Fah-Lay

People sort of live right out in the open in Samoa.  Their homes are open air. They call them Fale's.  Pronounced Fah-Lay.  Anyway, so you take your shoes off at the door.  And it's extremely rude to speak to somebody if you are standing and they are sitting and so you need to go inside the house and then sit, cross legged on the floor.  Then you can begin speaking.  And DON'T point your bare feet at anybody.  If you're a Westerner, they relax this rule for you a little bit and you can stretch out your legs, but you need to cover your feet with a mat or a scarf or something.

Sometimes there is a big house, or a main house, with the Fale out in the front yard.  Then they have another house for the kitchen and another for the bathroom.

These are some pics of a beautiful Fale we visited. Here there were chairs to sit in, and so the rules about sitting on the floor don't exist.  But still don't talk 'down' to somebody sitting in a chair.  Sit first.

Helen's dad chopped us a sugar cane and we ate it!

Then, coconut juice!

Internet Access Spotty, and Armpits Crotty (that means Sweaty, I just made it up)

Guys!  No internet access for 5 days makes me very anxious.  What if somebody dies or something!

So I'll just make a small post.  Have you ever heard of the International Date Line?  I guess I had, but didn't realize this simple fact:  In Samoa, it's like 3pm, right?  In New Zealand, it's also 3pm, but it's TOMORROW!  And they are only separated by a 5 hour flight.

So, when we left Samoa at 7am, we arrived at 7pm the NEXT DAY.  We lost a whole day in transit.  Plus we had to stop in Tonga, a small island, and New Zealand and had some major layovers.

SO, right now I'm in Sydney.  I have some more to say about Samoa though.  This heat is extremely hard for me, I think I'm a Minnesota Flower.  ha!

In September, Samoa switched sides of the road.  They used to be on the right hand side, just like us in the US, but then they switched to the left.  The reason I think is because cars are cheaper and easier to come by if their steering wheel is on the right side of the car.  Well, imagine how hard it would be for a whole country to one day just switch sides of the road.  The government was just going to put up a few signs.  The people protested, and so the government actually did a pretty good job marking the road with arrows and even for pedestrians wrote LOOK RIGHT with an arrow on the cross walks.  Because, if you're crossing the road you can be killed if you use your habits and look the wrong way first.

This sign in a taxi made me laugh, but I thought it's probably pretty helpful.  We met a lot of people who admitted they hadn't driven since the change.

Chapped in Samoa

Traditionally, people here wear the lavalava.  (Skirt).  I mentioned before it's for men and women.  It's respectful to wear your lavalava when you go into town or walk around anywhere, so I have just been wearing long skirts every day.  Super comfortable and wonderful, right?  Not with these thighs.  They've been rubbing together something fierce.  It hurts.  And so the only solution is to wear the running shorts that I brought.  They are compression shorts, and are made of breathable fabric -- polyester and lycra probably.  They totally solve the problem of the rubbing thighs, but cause a whole other problem of being very HOT.  It's so so so so so so so hot here.  I can't really describe it, except to say that it's like crawling into the fat folds of the man in the sauna inside of Satan's bathroom.  So naturally by the time you're towel-dried out of the shower, you need to towel-dry your sweat again within five minutes.  It's too hot to put on sunscreen, but you have to, and then you sweat it off right away.

Anyway I only brought one pair of compression shorts and I wore them once, hung them in the window, wore them a second time and today they were in the wash.  So thighs rubbed together again.  YARG.  Also, it's necessary to wear a tank top under your shirt in order to catch the sweat, but it just makes you hotter.  Also, there is no air-conditioning in the hotel.  Also, there are mosquitos and they are eating me alive.

And yet, I LOVE this place.  It's so beautiful.  A total paradise.

We just found out today that it's really not OK to wear a bikini to go swimming.  You really should wear shorts and a T-shirt.  People here are incredibly modest and conservative.  I'm glad that I brought clothes that work within those guidelines, but it can be pretty uncomfortable to be so covered up when it's 178 degrees.  Celsius.

Never point your toes toward somebody in Samoa, this is VERY rude.  But we have to take our shoes off at the door.  It's hard to remember.  But kinda cool to walk around our hotel in bare feet. 

I MISS FACEBOOK.  I had a dream last night that I could get on facebook and I had a lot of notifications and it made me really happy.  But, it was just a dream.

The gecko.

We have no access to facebook from the computer in the lobby here at Princess Tui, due to a huge bill for bandwidth use.  Something about uploading photos.  So anyway, this is the only photo I'm going to get to upload from this computer this week.  It's a good'n though.  Check out this sucker.  Laying on my PILLOW!  Ick.  I still have four of those things looming overhead as I type this.

Today was very slow and lazy.  I'm really sick, and so I just wanted to sort of lay around all day.  I started The Thorn Birds, which is set in New Zealand at the start of the 1900's and is really good so far.  I hung out at the hotel lobby until about 2pm today.  Teri and I then walked to town and had lunch and beers at the same place from yesterday.  'Twas nice.  We sat there for two hours, and then we walked to the grocery store but it was closed and so then we got an ice cream cone at McDonald's.  A decidedly less exciting day today and yet that is exactly what I wanted from Samoa.  I'm having facebook withdrawal.  I'm hoping that Nancy or Beata was able to post our recorded song from Sunday's session?  Anyway, I'll get some photos up as soon as possible.

Hotel manager is now yelling at staffer so I gotta get out of here.  Uncomfortable.

Samoa, Bro-a

We arrived very safely to Samoa this morning at about 5:30am.  Our flight was 10 hours long and I was able to sleep for about 6 hours, maybe more.  It was GREAT.  Nice plane, brand new seats, lots of movie choices...I watched "All About Steve" with Sandra Bullock and also I saw three episodes of a new show from HBO called Bored to Death.  I like Jason Schwartzman, and he's cute as a writer/total loser-turned-private-detective. 

So, anyway, here are some highlights from Samoa:

It's one thousand degrees, so there's no way to look pretty.

Men wear skirts. 

Men cops wear skirts.

200 years ago, cannibalism was happening, and every family was responsible to take turns turning a member of the family over to the High Chief to get EATEN.  Well, the son of the head of state conspired with a family whose turn it was.  He switched places with the sacrificee and requested that he be wrapped in the palm leaf face-up, instead of the usual face-down, and this was to teach his dad a lesson.  It did, and then there was no more cannibalism on the island.  Our shuttle bus driver, here-on out to be called by his name, "Tao", built his house on that very site, and no matter how many hurricanes come, he rebuilds the house because that history is important to him.  Also he has 15 kids, and is a chief of a small village himself.  The village is called Fasito tai.  He said his job was to 'keep everybody in line'.  We drove 38 kilometers to our hotel and all the while he told us fascinating stories of the islands' history.  I noticed that everybody hangs their laundry out to dry.  All homes are open-air and have doors and windows open with no screens.  I see dogs running around as Tao tells us how the school term has just begun and that children wear uniforms from primary school all the way through university, and if they have no uniform, then they cannot go to school.  He talked about how passionate he is about keeping the rubbish picked up.  "A clean environment is a healthy environment", he said as I noticed yet another bus drive by packed with about 150 people.  These buses travel the islands and seat about 35 people, but they fill up quite quickly and so everybody just sits on everybody else's laps.  Nobody stands, as it is disrespectful to stand and talk in the presence of your elders. 

It's very humid here.  There are palm trees, hibiscus, all kinds of plants that we can only see in the summertime back in Minnesota are just growing willy nilly everywhere.  A season of Survivor was filmed here, I'm not sure which one, or if it has even aired yet...my mom will know.

Samoa became independent from the British 45 years ago, and was the first Pacific Island to do so.  They are very proud of this, and enjoy making their own laws.  We read that in 362 villages, there are 18,000 chiefs!

Everyone is in everyone else's business, according to our shuttle bus driver, and so everybody honks and waves at everybody else.  He said all cars need a good horn.

After Tao dropped us off at the hotel, we checked into our room, which wasn't quite what we were expecting.  I could have sworn that we sprung for the private bathroom.  There wasn't one in the room...but my memory is pretty terrible lately and the down-the-hall-bathroom wasn't THAT far away, so I decided to crash.  And, you know how you always turn down the covers to check and make sure the sheets are clean?  I did that, and a lizard darted across the bed.  Gecko more like, but it freaked me right out.  As I type this, there are 7 geckos crawling on the ceiling.  This morning, when that gecko darted across my bed, I must admit that I second-guessed this entire "year off" nonsense.  What the heck am I thinking?  I am not a gecko person.  I am a clean, clean, no bugs, screams at spiders kind of person. 

This year is all about conquering fears, though, and here's the first one:  sleeping with geckos.  Of course I have a cold and have to breathe through my mouth, which means it'll be hangin' WIDE OPEN for all the lil' things to crawl inside and take a nap.

AAAAAAAA!!!!

A day of traveling

Web cammin' it.

Today started at about 7:30.  I went to bed about 2am or so...so exausted from packing and cleaning that I totally crashed.  But woke up pretty well and got to work packing right away.  Somebody called last night and offered to buy my couch and I told them I was leaving and they probably wouldn't be able to pick it up by noon the next day.  She said she would, and so just like that, the leather sectional is sold.  I got the cash about an hour before I was picked up by Teri and her brother.

I have been creating this massive pile of stuff earmarked for my year off, and it was all in a pile.  The pile was dangerously bigger than my backpack and that concerned me, but I was determined to 'make it work', Tim Gunn style.  So this morning as I began shoving stuff in my backpack I started to panic.  It didn't fit.  I eliminated some unnecessaries, and crammed and crammed and finally got the zipper shut.  But this isn't going to work for my trip because you need excess space in your bag, and so I'll be doing some more eliminations along the way.  I'll probably chant "You're Fired!" or "that means you are out.  Auf Widersein" in my head as I decide that a skirt is simply weighing me down.  When I got to the airport, the scale wasn't working, but I was SO curious about the weight of my bag.  I wanted to weigh it and then I realized that maybe I'd be over 50 pounds and then have to pay for excess weight. 

45 pounds, baby.  And as soon as I use up that SPF in Samoa, I'll be 44.5 pounds.  It'll happen.  So now there is a 10 hour flight and I'll wake up on the beach.  We have a week there.  The week of relaxing and planning our four weeks in Australia.

I'm wondering...Teri is always late, and I'm always late, and we're both a little flighty and goofy...who's gonna get us on task?  Nobody. 

Let me tell you how WEIRD it was to shut the door on my house for the last time.  I can't even explain it.  I felt so anxious.  I ran through all the stuff in my head I was surely missing and realized that I did in fact forget my Melatonin and Vitamin C.  I can forget sleeping peacefully on this long 10 hour flight.  DANG!  I got greedy and slept all the way to Chicago and then again all the way to Los Angeles. 

And why do I feel so BAD when the lady just mopped the bathroom and I walk in there?