Hi everyone,

I've entered the Ultimate Adventure contest, but since I'm technically new to the site aside from that one blog entry, I figured I should let the people of i-to-i know a bit about myself aside from my trip to Tennessee. It's nice that my friends have signed up and voted for me, but more importantly are the regulars who will have to choose between me and five other deperate wannabe travellers if I make it to the final round. So, here I am (and check out my photos that I just added while you're at it!) and most importantly, don't vote for this blog entry - vote for my Ultimate Adventure entry.

Well, my name is Ester. I'm 28, and the most sociable cat lady you'll ever meet. I'm low on accomplishments that would impress parents, but I do feel like I've lived a really interesting life that is just getting better. My motto is "live life" and that's what I'm doing.

The thing I would most like to tell you about is my life philosophy that I formulated last September. Harking back a few months before that, I found myself wanting to float Pembina River for my birthday in June. I'd always wanted to do it, but could never organize the logistics well enough to get a group together. In fact, after many years of wanting to go, I'd never even seen it! I realized that the only way to make it happen was to take control of the situation and MAKE it happen. So, I found rides for everyone, and off we headed, and I had the most amazing birthday of my life. Pembina is gorgeous: it's a prairie river, very shallow and slow-moving. The local government tourism website doesn't mention this, but in the summertime (when it gets hot on the prairie), tons of people flock to Pembina with their inflatable tubes and mattresses to lie in the sun for a few hours, floating leisurely down the river (alcohol is optional but recommended if you're into that kind of thing!). It's really wonderful, and I had a flash of inspiration on the river where I realized that if I could live in one moment for the rest of eternity, this would be it.

Everyone's different, but for me, I love to get out and be active and partake in everything there is to appreciate about where I am. I figure it's more of a tourist attitude than most people have to where I'm from - Edmonton is an oil-driven city, and it's easy to think of it as small town or boring if you don't want to put effort into finding the fun stuff that there is to do. It's not a small town at all, actually - it's quite large, and yes, isolated, but there is a lot of stuff to do... but only one of everything, rather than the cornucopia of fun that there is in a bigger, more lauded city. I love places like that, but who says you can't make your own fun?

So, the summer that followed was brilliant. For some reason, I decided to make a list of everything typically "summer" that I wanted to do (some of which I had done before, some I hadn't) and over the next few months, I did everything on the list! I had never enjoyed life as much as I did that summer. People started biting, too, and by the end of the season I had a gang together to go camping and exploring with. I'm proud to say that after my prior years of not knowing whether I would get to do anything I wanted, and finally making it to Pembina, by the end of August, I managed to float Pembina FIVE TIMES. Quite a perspective shift.

Labour Day weekend (effectively the last weekend of the summer, for those who either don't celebrate Labour Day or know what it's like to live somewhere that has such a short summer, ha!) was the best. I went to my friend Jenna's cabin with a few friends, the weather was perfect, and we lived life to the max. We got to talking about my "checklist" approach to the summer, something I couldn't help but rave about, because I finally felt like I was really taking advantage of everything my city had to offer in the best season of the year. I was sad that summer was coming to an end, and Jenna pointed out that the only way to keep my motivation going was to appreciate the fall/winter/spring just as much as I had appreciated summer. And thus, Best Life Ever was born.

The rules of Best Life Ever are:
1. If you're going to complain/whine/criticize, go somewhere else. Be cynical about the government, not about fun.
2. If you have a choice between doing something fun and not doing something fun, always do it.
3. You only regret things you don't do; you never regret things you do. (With slight exception, of course, but bear with me.)
4. Whenever you're feeling down, light a sparkler.

I asked around for suggestions of fun stuff to do, and added them to my personal list. A master list was born, and the gang (that had already been formed in the summertime but was gaining momentum) set out to have the best year of all time. Fall was probably my favourite - we completed the entire checklist, and the weather was on our side. I dressed as Baroccoli Obama for Halloween! There were two parties that year, both Friday and Saturday, and we had so much fun dancing to Thriller in the fog machines at a backyard party, something that rarely happens in pre-Halloween-snowy Alberta. That fall was the fall of leaf fights. Then there was winter, highlights of which were skating and tobogganing. When it's cold and snowy, you still have to take advantage of it - I went skating most days at lunchtime at the nearby City Hall, and tobogganed my little heart out. Flying down a snowy hill on a GT snow racer is one of the best experiences a person can have. I also built the best snow fort of my life when it was -40C out - I may be crazy, but yes, that winter was the winter of snowpants. (Tip: If you live in a cold climate, don't skimp on good boots or snowpants, because it can change your attitude altogether!) Spring was fabulous, too, with much cracking of ice on puddles as the snow melted and eager adventures out into our beautiful Edmonton river valley. There are so many things we did, it's impossible to describe them all here - anyone who is interested can buy my book that I will be writing about it as part of NaNoWriMo. :D

I even got mentioned in an art zine called Papirmasse. Check it out here (and subscribe while you're at it, because it's an amazing concept): http://hellokirsten.com/PAPIRMASSE/february09.html

Best Life Ever isn't everything I am, but it says a lot, I think. On a totally sincere level, it was an antidote to a long-standing bout of depression that took over my life and kept me from doing everything I wanted to do. I've always liked the idea of living, but I didn't necessarily get to that point of full-blown *LIVING LIFE* until Best Life Ever popped up in my messy brain.

Ever since I was a kid, I've needed to travel - my parents met in Turkey and backpacked all over the world, and I vividly remember watching their slideshow at a Christmas party at, hmmm, maybe age eight (maybe?), and realized that travelling was my destiny. (It sounds cheesy, but this site is full of cheeseheads, haha!) I spent most of my teenage years planning trips that would take me away from what was a pretty unhappy time in my life. After high school, in 2000, I went to England with the intention of finding a job and living there, but I didn't find one on time and came crawling back. Ever since then, I've zipped from here to there around North America, but haven't really been back overseas since then. Once Best Life Ever came along, though, I realized that I would just have to make every year better than the last (a la having to make fall/winter awesome in order to keep the momentum going after the best summer of my life). The next logical step in life is to take my fun travelling style overseas, and this contest is perfect! The problem with overseas travel is that as much as Best Life Ever changed my attitude, it did not change my financial situation. Such is life.

Anyhow, I hope I've convinced you a bit more that going to Tanzania (oh my god, amazing!) is something that I would not only appreciate, but suck every minutia of experience out of and hold close to my heart forever and ever. In fact, it would change my life in a profound way. You might be concerned that I've only been to England and have kept my travels closer to home. No need to worry, though - I'm really adaptable and look forward to this type of experience. If I don't win, I'm going to have to find a way to get overseas somehow... is anyone looking for a roommate?

See you on the flip side. :)

• best life ever
• introductions
• passion