Travel Blog

More pics for my other blog.

2009-05-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

Just some pics.

2009-04-28T01:23:00.000-07:00

Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Vienna, Belgrade

2009-03-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

So I don’t even think there is a point to me making another resolution to update my blog more frequently, because chances are I won’t follow through and I will just let down anyone who still checks this thing.

Since my last post, I spent about ten days in Romania, a few days in Budapest, a week in Prague, a few days in Vienna (where I had to pay an unexpected visit to the hospital), a day in Bratislava (which officially takes the cake as my least favorite city in Europe so far), and three days in Belgrade. I just crossed the border into Macedonia, and am on a train headed for Skopje, where I will spend a couple of days before continuing south into Greece.

I have had a ton of positive experiences (and some not-so-wonderful experiences) during my eastern Europe tour over the past month. Romania was almost all-around one giant positive experience. I loved Timisoara, made great friends there, and even ended up stopping back there before leaving Romania at the end of my trip. Bucharest was also nice, although I was ready to leave after spending one night and one day there. Sighisoara was deserted and beautiful, and I had a hostel room almost entirely to myself. Brasov was an excellent gateway for exploration of the Rasnov Fortress, Bran Castle, and Poiana Brasov, where I had the opportunity to spend a day snowboarding for dirt cheap. I stayed with a nice couple in Brasov who is doing education development work with Roma (gypsy) children in a neighboring community to Brasov. After three days in Brasov I set off for Sibiu, where I met up with a friend from my intensive language course that I took in September in Germany. She showed me around the city, which was a European cultural capital in 2007 or 2008 and has a lot of German influence (it is called Hermannstadt in German). On my second day in Brasov, Cornelia invited me to eat lunch at her place and I had one of the most touching experiences I have ever had in my life. After trudging through snow to get to the village museum and spending the morning there, I had a lot of hunger. We bused back into the city and then walked to her apartment. We walked by am abandoned orphanage and a Catholic church, then turned a corner, walked through a gate, ascended a flight of stairs, and we were there. I felt like it was connected to the church, but I figured that I was just disoriented. Before inviting me into her home, Cornelia had apologized profusely for not being able to offer to host me while I was in Sibiu. I told her not to worry about it, but she kept apologizing. When we entered her place, I immediately knew why she couldn’t host me. Her place is not terribly small for three people, but for the nine that once lived there it is insanely small. The apartment is made up of a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, which doubles as Cornelia’s mother’s room, and a living room, which is also Cornelia’s and her brother’s bedroom. After giving me the grand tour, Cornelia asked her brother where her mom is and he said in the church. Just then she walked through the door into the dining room. I was a bit confused, but I didn’t say anything. Cornelia asked if I would like to see her church and I said sure. I followed Cornelia back through her room, and she opened a wooden door and beckoned me through. Her apartment was a small portion of the church! We walked to the church balcony, where Cornelia told me her touching life story. Her father walked out on the family when Cornelia was 8 years old, at which time her mother took all eight of her children, ranging in age from five to seventeen, away from their home in Moldavia and moved them to Sibiu. She sought aid from a church, and a priest created this apartment for them in the church. They have lived there ever since, although now most of the children are full-grown adults and have moved out. At one time they all shared this small two-room apartment. All of the children have turned out very well, and after hearing this story and meeting Cornelia’s mother, she instantly became a hero of mine. I was also well fed, having some dumpling soup, sausages, bread, pickled vegetables, and a Romanian liquor (sounds like “pah-link-oh”). It was a great meal, and I left feeling full and grateful. Cornelia walked me to t he train station, and waited with me until my train left, even though it was almost an hour delayed. I headed back to Timisoara for two days before saying sayonara to Romania. I shared a train compartment with a Romania actress named Cristina, who I had some of the most incredibly genuine conversation with. We had such a good time talking together that she invited Patri and me to go out to eat with her friend and her oncewe arrived in Timisoara. We went, but the dinner ended up being kind of an awkward experience. I stayed with my host, Patri, again, and had a great time with her and Julia. I also had the chance to go to her parents’ house (which is REALLY nice) and eat a home-cooked meal that her mother made, which consisted of a soup, bread, a salad, and homemade chicken cordon bleu, which was delicious.

After leaving Romania I headed back to Budapest where I stayed for a couple of days, ate a ton of hummus, met some great people, and spent two days at a Turkish bath. It was a really relaxing experience, and was followed by a night of couchsurfing in Bratislava, which was beautiful but boring. I did have some delicious halusky, and my host was a nice guy, but I was ready to leave Bratislava far before my train pulled out for Prague.

Next comes a week in Prague, spent staying with my good friend Shannon from Semester at Sea. This was a great time, filled with an excessive amount of partying and storytelling. I took a day trip with her program to the Budweiser brewery and a small castle town in lower Bohemia. This was a blast. Aside from that, I sampled many Czech beers and ate a lot of food. I got the chance to meet her friends there, who are all great, had a really interesting laundry experience, and reminisced A LOT about Semester at Sea. By the time I left Prague, I was feeling pretty sick, but I had an incredible time there.

My plan was then to stop back in Vienna for one night, but that one night turned into three nights, one of which was spent primarily at the hospital. I was feeling extraordinarily light-headed, and was worried I was going to faint and that it would not end well, since I was traveling alone. At the hospital I found out that I had bronchitis and a viral infection. I was prescribed some medication and given an inhaler, and I tried to spend the rest of my time in Vienna resting up. Unfortunately this was pretty unsuccessful…I maybe slept 8 hours in three days.

I finally left Vienna, feeling sick as a dog, spent one more night in Budapest, where I ate some more hummus, met more nice people, and spent another unsuccessful right hours in bed (not really sleeping at all).

I left Budapest for Belgrade, where I rented a single room at the urging of my mom. This gave me the chance to rest up, and now I am feeling almost completely better. Belgrade was beautiful, but the weather was terrible (it has been almost this entire trip actually), and the food was very salty/greasy.

Now I am in Macedonia, and it is snowing outside…I was just thinking earlier on this train ride that I might have seen snow for the last time this season, and I certainly didn’t expect to experience any down here. The sun is setting, but it is a fairly dreary day so I can’t really tell. I don’t have special plans for Skopje, I will mainly just explore the city, eat some Macedonian cuisine, and try to rest up a bit more. My hostel claims to have a hot tub (but so did the one I stayed at in Sibiu), and I am pretty excited to hit that up. I am also excited about continuing onward and meeting up with a friend from high school at Meteora in a couple of days!

Eastern Europe Tour

2009-03-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

Hey guys!

Finally getting around to giving you all another update. Right now I am on a train from Timisoara, Romania to Bucharest, and there is about 4 feet of snow covering the landscape around me. Since I last wrote, I had my final exams, which were certainly not easy, then I left Freiburg at 7 AM the morning after my last test and had a 17-hour travel day to Vienna, which really should have been about an eight-hour trip. My first train left from Freiburg and arrived in Basel on time. My second train, from Basel to Zurich, was just a few minutes late. Then I boarded my third train of the morning, which was to take me from Zurich to Innsbruck, and then it was announced that there was a problem with the breaks. They ended up just getting a new engine to pull the train, but it took about two hours, so I arrived in Innsbruck about two hours after expected. I had about an hour to walk around, and it was a beautiful day…clear blue sky meeting snow-capped mountains, etc. The city seemed pretty nice. Anyway, I then boarded the train that was supposed to take me to Vienna, and they told us that the train would not be going any further than Innsbruck that day, but to stay on the train until they gave us more information. I think there was a problem on the tracks somewhere between Innsbruck and Vienna. They had all passengers get off the train and wait at the bus station for about an hour, then packed buses (standing room only) carried us to a small village called Jenbach, where we had to wait an hour and a half before we could finally leave for Vienna. I arrived in Vienna at around midnight, checked into my hostel, and found out that one of the girls in my hostel room and I have a good mutual friend. This is the second time this has happened to me this year (also happened in Madrid). On the way to Vienna I shared an apartment with a nice group of people from all over Austria. They all had strong accents, but once I spoke with them for a little while I had no problem understanding them. We discussed the economic crisis, Obama, etc. (frequent topics of discussion that Europeans like to have with Americans). This one guy worked for a financial firm in Switzerland, and he seemed very confident in his prediction that by the end of the year 2010 the US Dollar and the Euro will have the same value, and that shortly thereafter the US Dollar will become stronger.

It was snowing in Vienna.

I crashed at my hostel once I arrived, and got about six hours of much needed sleep before taking a train to Budapest in the morning. I arrived in Budapest around noon, checked into my hostel (which was great), and then gave myself a Budapest-in-one-day city tour. I also ate some of the best hummus I have ever had in my life.

It was snowing in Budapest.

I left Budapest at 7 AM yesterday for Timisoara, a beautiful city which is where the Romanian revolution began in 1989 and which is considered to be the country’s most cosmopolitan city. There was a one-hour time change, so my host picked me up at the train station at 1. We walked around the city for five hours (yet another beautiful city), and then we went to the supermarket and purchased vegetables and meat and made a traditional Romanian vegetable and pork soup, which was delicious. Julia, a good friend of my host Patri, joined us for dinner and then they took me out to a couple of their favorite bars. We didn’t stay out too late (only until about 1), and while I was out a received a text from my friend Valerie that she would no longer be meeting up with me in Romania. She said that a friend who lived on her floor (she studies in Lille, France) was stabbed in the hand about 10 feet away from Valerie and that, although her friend is thankfully okay, now is not the time for her to be globetrotting. She was pretty shaken up. I am glad that her friend is alright, and have no problem traveling around Romania by myself, but I would have preferred to couch surf the whole time, but booked hostels because Valerie wanted to stay in them and I hurriedly sent out e-mails last night, hoping to cancel my hostels in some cities, and cutting all the reservations to one. Hopefully I won’t have to pay for two people at any of them. After Bucharest, I plan to visit a couple of cities in Transylvania before finishing up my Romanian tour in Sibiu, where a friend from my German language course in September lives. After this, I will either head to the Low Tatras Mountains in Slovakia or to Lviv, Ukraine, I think…although Patri and her friend told me I could stop back in Timisoara and that we could take a day trip to Belgrade, Serbia, which I think would be really neat and was hoping to visit sometime in mid-March anyway.

It was snowing in Timisoara.

So far I have spent much of this break on trains, but it has been a great experience thus far. The couchsurfing experience I had with Patri was arguably my best one yet, and I have been extremely pleasantly surprised by Romania. I think there is much more money here than many Americans and western Europeans would believe, the landscape is beautiful, and the people are friendly and hospitable. English is definitely not widely spoken, but I taught myself some Romanian on my train ride over and yesterday Patri was with me everywhere and could help me with anything I needed. We spoke to each other in German, her and Julia spoke to each other in Romanian, and Julia and I spoke to one another in English, so it was a really interesting little language triangle.

There is an update for now. I am being cautious, but really feel quite safe here. I am very much looking forward to exploring the Balkans a bit more. Will write again soon.

Oh, and it’s snowing now.

Two and a half months later...

2008-11-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

I am finally getting the chance to write my first blog entry pertaining to my time here in Germany. I am sorry it has taken so long, but because I was without internet for my first seven weeks here, am keeping another blog for a foundation while I am here (http://www.daad.org/page/bloggers/), have started keeping a personal handwritten journal for the first time ever, and have nearly morphed into a sloth since my arrival, I have kept those of you who avidly keep up with my blog in suspense. Instead of backtracking and writing a separate blog entry for each segment of my life in Freiburg, as well as for each of the trips I have made outside of the aforementioned city, which already feels like home to me, I will try my hardest to update you on what I have done over the last 75 days in one concise (by my standards) entry.

As I sat in my parents’ L-Z-Boy Chair at 11 PM August 31^st, furiously scribbling all of the verbs that I was unfamiliar with from 501 German Verbs onto note cards, the familiar chatter of the detectives from Without a Trace filling what would have otherwise been complete and utter silence, my cell phone vibrated. A good friend of mine, Aliya (who spent last spring in France and I had not seen since December 2007), was on the other line calling to find out when I left for Germany. I told her I was leaving in six hours…she told me she would see me in two and a half. She drove up from Tucson and we desperately tried to catch each other up on what was happening in our lives while I packed last-minute and she helped me stuff way more clothes than should ever be able to fit in two suitcases into vacuum bags. I left Phoenix at the crack of dawn on September 1st, after having just spent a much needed week at home and getting the chance to see all of my family except for my brother and sister-in-law, as well as some of my closest friends. While my mom drove me to the airport, I tried to take in as much of the southwest desert landscape as I could, thinking that a year away from it all might actually make me miss the red rock and saguaro cacti for once in my life. I was fortunate enough to watch what will probably turn out to have been the most beautiful sunrise I will have seen all year by the time I leave here. I tried to acknowledge the fact that I was about to leave home for an entire year, but just sat there telling my mom it was not sinking in. When I hugged her goodbye, realizing that I had never before gone more than 4 months without seeing either of my parents, some semblance of what was to set in on my later flight from Atlanta started to sink in…

My plane touched down in Frankfurt-am-Main at roughly 7 AM on the morning of September 2^nd, and while I had not fallen asleep since I last awoke on the morning of August 31^st, I was giddy from the anticipation of the opening of a new chapter of my life, one which promised to be one of the most eventful yet. The train that was supposed to carry me and my 100 pounds of luggage to Freiburg had been canceled (the Deutsche Bahn has a reputation for being the most timely and efficient rail network in all of Europe, and canceled trains are nearly unheard of), and I headed to the Reise Zentrum (travel center) to figure out a new way to get to Freiburg. My entire conversation with the Deutsche Bahn clerk was in German, and I was so excited that he didn’t even try to switch to English once he undoubtedly heard my accent. This was promising, but boarding a train to Freiburg with no available seats was not. I spent the ensuing two hours sitting atop my backpack, moving all of my luggage from side to side as the platforms we stopped at switched from left to right, staring at the extraordinarily green landscape out the window, and trying to capture my impressions in my journal. After arriving in Freiburg, I took a taxi to the Sprachlerinstitut, where I was given the keys to my room for the next month, and given directions on how to get to my student apartment via Strassenbahn (streetcar).

When I opened the door to what would be my room for the next month, I for the first time wondered what I had gotten myself into. There were dust bunnies everywhere, at least 15 living spiders and two dozen dead insects spread throughout the room, bread crumbs behind the part of the bed where a headboard would normally be, and the room smelled like it had been abandoned fourteen years ago, although I was nearly certain someone had moved out just days before. Further exploration of my WG only made me more uncertain of the living situation I had gotten myself into: fruit flies harbored themselves in every nook and cranny that exists in the kitchen, and the kitchen itself had realistically not been cleaned for at least six months, and the bathrooms were in an equal state of disrepair. I had been warned against living in StuSie (Studentensiedlung am Seepark) by someone who had studied in Freiburg the year before, and tried desperately to land a room in a different building (Haendelstrasse) over the summer, but I never could have imagined StuSie would turn out to be as bad as it was. My feelings toward StuSie (while I am still not altogether sure I would choose it over a couple of the other Studentenwerk [residence life, sort of] options or a shared apartment in the city center) could not be more different today…

Two and a half months have passed since I opened the door to my first room in StuSie, gaping in horror and, although I unwillingly had to relocate to another room, I have come to love Studentensiedlung am Seepark, as well as the city of Freiburg and almost everyone I have met here. My first month was spent primarily on improving my German, as I took an intensive language course and spoke to my roommates almost exclusively in German. I didn’t leave Freiburg the entire time (with the exception of two day trips to Basel and the Alsace region of France), as I wanted to really familiarize myself with the city and establish relationships with Germans that I hoped would last through the year. My German did get much better, and I got so close to two of my roommates that I was actually sad to leave my filthy apartment when the time came for me to move. My language course went well, and we all got to know each other so well that we would go out some nights for a beer and invite our professor (he joined us on one occasion). I still see many of my Sprachkurs friends, who hail from five different continents and are some of the most fascinating individuals I have ever met. We had a ridiculously difficult final examination, but I did alright in the course and met people I hope to remain in contact with for years to come.

Since my first month in Freiburg I feel like I have done nothing but travel. I had pre-purchased a fifteen day in two months Eurail pass and wanted to get my money’s worth, so I went to Hamburg one weekend, Munich and Salzburg the next, followed by a conference in Bonn and a week in Portugal in Spain, then two weekends in Freiburg before spending a long weekend in Berlin. My most recent outing was to Brussels to visit a friend studying there. I will be traveling the next two weekends, and then I hope to spend an entire month in Freiburg before spending Christmas in Rheinland-Pfalz with my old host family, the Schmitts.

Each of my trips has been great, but my favorite three destinations so far were Hamburg, Portugal, and Berlin.

I would describe Hamburg as being the perfect mix between old and new, with Gothic facades meeting Art Nouveaux architecture high in the air. It has a thriving artistic community, surprisingly beautiful beaches, delicious food, and a nightlife like none I have encountered before or after. All of the people I met in Hamburg, including both of my couchsurfing hosts, were extremely friendly and helpful, and despite being a bit sick while I was there I had an incredible time.

Munich was great, and it wasn’t a coincidence that I hit it up during Oktoberfest. I couchsurfed there as well, and had the chance to meet up with two friends from Semester at Sea and a number of my friends from Freiburg. But when the time came to head off to Salzburg, I welcomed the opportunity to escape the pool of Mass (one-liter Steins of beer) I had been drowning myself in for four days. I had a completely dry experience in Salzburg, which accompanied by the fresh mountain air left me feeling healthy once more as I headed back to Freiburg. My couchsurfing experience in Salzburg was another positive one, and although an Australian was staying there as well (with his former German host sister), we managed to speak only in German the entire time.

I had a day to do laundry and appreciate Freiburg before catching a morning train to Bonn for a conference with a few other students studying here in Freiburg. The conference was great, and we stayed in a hostel that reminded me of the seemingly countless weeks I have spent at various camps in northern Arizona throughout the years. We saw a German history museum with a chilling holocaust exhibit, and ate dinner at a Chinese buffet on a boat on the Rhein (Rhine River). After the conference I met up with my friend Alison from Semester at Sea for three days in Lisbon. We took day trips to Cascais and Sintra, and stayed at the world’s coolest hostel, Travelers’ House Lisbon (one of my favorites, anyway). She flew back to Milan, and I took a train to Porto where I couchsurfed for a night before taking my first night train ever (to Madrid). I had a sketchy two-hour stopover in the middle of nowhere, Portugal (Encontramento), before my ten hour ride to Madrid. In Madrid I met up with my friend Danielle from Semester at Sea, and then got to spend two days with my good friend from school, Arizona. I spent my last day there with a friend who studies with me in Freiburg. While in Madrid, I was contacted by another two people I had no idea were even there, and met someone from Tucson who I have a ton of mutual friends with. I really liked the Prado and the Reine Sofia museums, and was so excited to see Dali’s The Enigma of Hitler and The Great Masturbator. I also encountered a painting I was unfamiliar with, Ponce de Leon’s Accidente, which is now one of my favorite works of art. I went to the “world’s largest nightclub,” a seven story shit show that was fun to experience once, but not a place I would hang out at if I were to move to Madrid. My favorite thing about Madrid was without a doubt the city’s most well known park, El Retiro. I left Madrid at 6 AM on October 18^th, and took five consecutive trains before arriving home in Freiburg at 2 AM on the 19^th. I had one day to rest up before classes began, and suddenly realized at about 10 PM on the 19^th that I had no idea what classes I was going to try to get into. I frantically perused the course catalogue, and settled on ten classes that I was going to visit the first week, before narrowing the number down to five or six I would actually take. The six I decided on are outlined below (sorry, I copied these descriptions from my other blog).

“Auschwitz Denken”, which is a look back at the Holocaust from a modern-day German perspective, and so far is one of the two classes that has captured my interest the most.
“Theorien der Internationale Politik,” which is an overview of different political theories as well as an introduction to international political relations. This course is pretty interesting so far, and the professor is great, although it is the toughest yet for me to follow.
“Green Business and Environmental Policy in Freiburg,” the other of my two favorite classes thus far. It is taught by the International Programs Director for the Department of Economics here and is designed specifically for exchange students. We have the chance to learn about the interrelation between economics and the environment in a city which has on several occasions been dubbed the “greenest city in the world.” The resources available here for this course is outstanding and we have three hands-on field trips planned already. I don’t think there is even the slightest chance I won’t follow through with this course. This course is taught in English
Grundlagen fuer Wirtschaftpolitik (Foundations of Economic Policy), one of two lectures I am enrolled in. It is a large class with a much more impersonal feel than most of my other courses have, but I have deemed it a great choice for my “Applied Political Economy” concentration at home.
Economics of Social Justice (also taught in English), a course in which the focus is on determining costs and benefits of promoting social justice in the different national economies today. As an active proponent of social justice and a budding economist, I think this class will give me some great insight on the settling of my political leanings with my natural economic instincts.
Lastly, but only because it is my last class of the week (on Thursdays at noon J), I am enrolled in a course titled “Deutsche Literaturgeschichte im Ueberblick,” and overview of German literary history, with a reading list containing works by Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist. I do not think there is a better way for me to integrate myself into the German literary world than by taking this course. This is my other lecture, but it is smaller than the Economics course and feels more intimate.

I am not sure if I will keep all six of these or drop down to five, as I am seriously struggling with a couple of them already and not sure I want to spend as much time focusing on my academic workload here as I do at home.

The first weekend after I started school Alison (the friend from SAS who is studying in Milan) came to visit me. I had such a great time showing Freiburg off to someone else for the first time, and Alison was so taken with Freiburg that it made me appreciate the city more than I already do. I did pretty much everything touristy Freiburg has to offer with her, most of which I had not done before myself, and I was duly impressed with the Schauinsland and Freiburg’s signature cathedral, the Muenster. I also showed Alison my favorite streets in Freiburg, took her to my favorite restaurants, etc.

The following weekend was Halloween, and Halloween in Freiburg isn’t too different from Halloween in the States, although the costumes here usually utilize more textile materials than costumes at home do. They also tend to be a bit darker than most of the costumes one would find at most US college campuses. I went to one Halloween party with mostly Germans, as well as one that was mostly Americans. They were both fun, and I was pretty impressed by some of the costumes that exchange students managed to put together in spite of their tight budgets and seriously condensed wardrobes.

Last weekend I went to Berlin. Oh, Berlin. The city had been talked up to me quite a bit, as a number of people I know who have backpacked Europe rank Berlin as one of their favorite cities, if not their favorite. I couldn’t help but have high expectations, and I will have to say that they were met but not exceeded. I loved everything about Berlin, from its excessive street art to the architectural differences one finds crossing from one borough into the next. When I first stepped off my train into Berlin’s mammoth new Hauptbahnhof (main strain station), I knew I was not going to leave the city disappointed. The four days that followed were filled with fantastic food (including the best doener I have found to date), non-stop sightseeing, and bitterness toward the sun for setting so early. I only used public transportation in Berlin twice, once to get from the Hauptbahnhof to my hostel (Wombats City Hostel, another really good one!) and once because it was required as part of a “free” city tour. I have never walked so much before in my life, and have also never enjoyed walking so much. I think I saw everything most tourists go to Berlin to see (from the outside, at least) and I had a chance to take an alternative tour of Berlin, which introduced me to a few of the successful squats that have been operating in Berlin since the wall fell down. I only had the chance to explore three of the museums in Berlin (Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish Museum, and one art museum), but plan to go back to Berlin one or two more times this year to see more. I spent the first two days exploring alone, and then my friend Jake met up with me and we saw everything I didn’t see the first two days (With some repeats), and participated in a pub crawl, on which we met a really nice Australian couple living and working in London. When Sunday evening came, I was far from ready to leave the tasty Thai, Indian, and Turkish food I had been feasting on for four days straight, but my legs were more than ready for the six-hour rest they received on the train ride home. Berlin is a place I would recommend to anyone and everyone. It’s like the Washington D.C. of Germany in the sense that there is a memorial of some sort every four footsteps, and also similar to D.C. when the political views of its inhabitants are taken into consideration, but Berlin is bigger than D.C. and its tumultuous history in recent years gives it a much different feel. I expected to like it a lot and I did.

This past week has been a dip in the rollercoaster that is a year abroad, not in the sense that I am depressed or doubting why I am over here or anything like that, but because I realized that I am going to have to put in quite a bit more effort into my classes than I have been and am kicking myself for not focusing from the get-go. I submitted an awful Protokoll (an analysis of the presentation given by another student the previous week of class, in which the Protokoller must address any points he or she believes were missed by the other student and present some questions on the topic), which was definitely a wake-up call for me. On Monday I had a paper due in my first class, the Protokoll to give in my second class, and a test to take in my third—it kind of felt like a typical Tuesday for me second semester of freshman year. The week ended well, however, with a field trip to my city’s recycling center for my Green Business class, which my instructor turned into an environmentally friendly excursion by offering to lead those of us with bikes on a bike ride to.

After the field trip I headed home and stuffed my backpack to head off to Brussels to see my friend Brittney and explore the city a bit more than I had the chance to do so when I was there this summer (I was only there for four hours, and the majority of that time was spent in presentations at the European Commission and the US Embassy). Unfortunately I was only able to stay one night, but in less than twenty-four hours I managed to have four Liege waffles, devour a sizeable portion of Frites with Curry-Ketchup, and sample a couple of beers that I didn’t get to try this past summer.

This brings me to now (breathing a big sigh of relief for having caught you up in far less space than I thought it would take). I finally have a relatively stable internet connection and have settled in enough that I think I should manage to post on here somewhat more regularly (I will try for twice a month but don’t want to make any promises). I moved from my first-story WG of 12 people to another building, where I live on the 7^th floor (8^th floor by American building terminology) and have seven roommates, five Germans and two Bulgarians (although a Russian and Ukrainian lived there when I first moved in). I get along pretty well with all of them, but still miss living with Gent and Jonathan, the two roommates I had grown close to in my first apartment. I now cook almost all of my meals, and am getting used to the German way of grocery shopping (almost daily and with total grocery bills averaging five Euros). I have a ghetto fabulous bike that I ride often, but not as much as I did when I first bought it. I recently joined a gym that is about ten minutes walking from my WG, and I am pretty happy with it although its fitness technology pales in comparison to that of CampusRec at home. I have a great group of friends from all over the world (although the majority of my close friends are from America), and am still meeting new people almost every day. I have fallen head over heels in love with Freiburg, its weather (starkly contrastive to Tucson’s or Phoenix’s), its cobblestone streets, its smiling inhabitants, and all it has to offer that unfortunately distracts me from my schoolwork. I spend way too much money on gummy candy, and probably consume roughly a kilogram of gummies a week (from my favorite shop, Gummi-Baeren Treff). I have discovered that I like dark chocolate more than I thought I did, and eat a bar after nearly every lunch and dinner. I had the opportunity to celebrate Obama’s victory with hundreds of German in my university’s cafeteria, where applause erupted every time the color blue filled the CNN screen. I have also come to really like my apartment, and laugh when I think back to the disastrous state my first room was in when I first saw it. My new WG is quite a bit cleaner than my last one, and we have a good cleaning schedule. I miss my family and friends, as well as the MV Explorer, but I am incredibly happy and feel very fortunate to be where I am right now. Also, as mentioned before, I have internet and my Skype is set up, so search for me or send me an e-mail if you want my Skype name.

I will try to post pictures as soon as I can, but my computer is unfortunately on its last leg, and its dysfunctionality combined with my weak internet connection make it pretty tough to upload pics.

The Journey Home

2008-10-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

I think the reason I waited so long to finish my post on Croatia has something to do with the fact that I was in denial for so long that my Semester at Sea experience came to an end, but, like all good things, it did. I disembarked the MV Explorer permanently (well, at least indefinitely) on August 22, more than a month and a half ago. Yet I still think about the experience numerous times daily. I am now studying abroad in Germany, and am having an incredible time here and know that I have a great year to look forward to, but even here I find my mind often wandering to Semester at Sea, the places that I visited, the things I experienced, and, most often, the people that I met. In only seventy days, I would venture to say that I met roughly half of the people I would now call my closest friends. But the thing is that there were so many amazing people on the ship that I met only at the very end, and some I didn’t even meet at all, that I also think I could have been just as close to. The MV Explorer had 600 of the most quality people one can find in this world aboard it this summer.

Many people thought that the leg home was going to seem to last forever, and for a few it probably did. This was not the case for me. Those twelve days were filled with (for me) play practice and the actual performance of “A Doll’s House,” the first ever full-length Semester at Sea theatre production, final papers, final exams, Sam Wiles’ comedy show, the Ambassador’s Ball, a commencement ceremony, countless community colleges, seemingly endless hours of sunbathing, 35 straight inedible meals, ridiculous dance parties on deck, a little bit of working out, meteor showers at 4 AM, sleeping less than ever, watching the water trail from the engines on the back of the ship alone late at night, and spending time with those I had grown closest to throughout the voyage, as well as with other great people that I met only in the final weeks.

If life were catered only to the wishes of those living it, I would still be on board the MV Explorer, living with Brett in room 4031, eating disgusting ship food with some of the people that mean the most to me, going to Wilkerson and White’s classes every day, and trying to make it through Global Studies most of the time. But for those of us fortunate enough to be here, life presses on, and thankfully so. If my life were spent entirely on Semester at Sea, it would truly be a joke, as I would have nothing to compare it to and no time to reflect on the experiences I had and what they mean in my life. I don’t want to make the Semester at Sea experience sounds heavenly, because it was far from it. I have already griped about the food plenty in this blog, sometimes classes could be a real nuisance, and plenty of students had serious bones with many SAS policies, and at times I would be included in this group of students. Life goes on outside the ship, and it is extremely hard to maintain good contact with family and close friends at home while aboard the ship, which can be a strain at times, especially when hardships strike your family or friends and you want nothing more than to be with them, even if it means leaving the Semester at Sea experience. I dealt with my fair share of problems while on board, but many students had far more difficult issues at home to tend to. Luckily the shipboard community and the friends that participants make on board can be so comforting in times of need.

I have wanted to participate in Semester at Sea since I first heard about it junior year of high school. Almost four years later, I finally had the chance to do so. I was extremely excited about my journey, and expected to have a great time, but I really didn’t think it was going to be such a life-changing experience for me, and I definitely never would have guessed I would have met so many incredible people that I will keep in touch with for the rest of my life. I learned so much about myself and about others while on Semester at Sea, in so many different ways, and in such a surreal environment, that I can say without hesitation, a month and a half after leaving the ship, that it has been the best experience in my life to this point. I didn’t think that I would feel this way, even a month into the voyage. I’m not even sure that I knew how much my Semester at Sea experience would mean to me when I disembarked, despite being a complete mess on the last morning, but with time to reflect I now know what the experience meant to me, and I cannot thank my parents enough for supporting me on my journey and my best friends back home for constantly being at my side, despite my constant jetsetting and unintentional neglect/lack of correspondence. I hope that you have all either had a similarly meaningful experience or will someday get to do so.

So that’s it. I know this post was a jumble of feelings and was filled with ambiguities (this is a public blog and I don’t want to get too personal with any randoms who may stumble upon it), but my Semester at Sea experience has come to a close. Actually, it came to a close awhile ago. I had a great reunion with my parents and my sisters (unfortunately did not get to see my brother and his wife before leaving for Germany) and a great weekend in Tucson with my closest friends, and I miss them and my family an outrageous amount and I think about you guys all the time. But I am here in Germany now, and as I discovered I should on Semester at Sea, I must live mostly in the moment, thinking of past memories but not dwelling on these moments (this includes SAS) and spending less time planning for the future than I always used to. I will start blogging about Germany soon (as well as put up SAS pics in these past ten or so entries). If anyone who reads this is contemplating participating SAS, and is still not sure whether the experience will be worth the money (be it loans, personal funds, parent’s money, whatever), please do not hesitate to e-mail me at Jase1219@gmail.com. I would be a liar if I said that Semester at Sea was for everyone, but I can answer any questions you may have honestly, and I will not hesitate to leave the negatives out.

Mom, Dad, Jon, Ali, Amanda, Steph--thanks again for all of your support. I love you guys!

Gabby, Christina, and Kerry, thanks for a great reunion and one last weekend in T-Town and for putting up with me constantly being out of town (or out of the country).

And everyone I met on Semester at Sea (and even those I didn’t), you guys are awesome and if you are ever somewhere near me I expect to hear from you. I wish you all the best. Many of you (you know who you are) made more of an impact on me than you will ever know.

And to anyone who may have been reading this blog, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it!!

Croatia

2008-10-17T03:19:00.001-07:00

Another day at sea (Croatia Day) was necessary to allow everyone the chance to process what we experienced in Greece before docking in another new and exciting country.

Days 1-3

When I peeled back my blackout curtain the morning we arrived in Croatia, I was greeted by a beautiful landscape that immediately looked to me like a fusion of Norway and Greece. Beautiful hills filled with lush vegetation rolled straight down to the water, islands were abundant in the nearby Adriatic waters, and red-roofed villas lined the beaches where thousands of people from around the world were having what must have been the most beautiful vacations of their lives. I breakfasted on the outside deck with Carly and we talked about her Croatian heritage and she taught me a few words in Croatian. Croatia was one of the three ports I had been most intrigued by since the itinerary for the voyage was finalized, but after anchoring and talking to Carly I was beyond excited for what was to come in the next three days. I was not disappointed, and, in fact, the only bad thing I can say about Croatia is that it was our last port, which made leaving it rougher than leaving all the other countries.

After breakfast I grabbed my backpack and headed up to the Union to grab a tender ticket. Dubrovnik was the only port we were tendering at, and the tender ride was a good twenty minutes or so. Once on land, my friends and I looked at each other. We were happy to be here, but really had no clue how to get into the city and how we were going to find our apartments. We went to an ATM to take out another type of Krone, or Kroner (for the last time L), and then bought bus tickets into the city center. We got off right by the Walled City, and the sight of ice cream made my mouth water because I was warmer and thirstier than I had been in a long time (probably at least since Greece). We met an employee who showed us our apartments in the walled city, and then I headed up to look at the ocean view villa with Becca and Jazmin. We were ripped off by our taxi driver, but forgot all about it once we toured our small apartment and then marveled at the view from our balcony. I was instantly glad I decided to stay off the ship for our Croatian experience. Once we threw our bags down and changed, we headed down to the Walled City for some pizza before going to the beach and meeting essentially all of SAS. The beach was called East-West, and was a beach by day and a club by night, and it would be our home base for the next three days. It was a beautiful pebble beach and supported every water sport imaginable. I went snorkeling every day, road the banana boat once, and did plenty of swimming.

So the first seven ports were all about immersing ourselves into different cultures for a few days and trying our best to observe similarities and differences across the places we visited, as well as between life at home and life in these places. Croatia was about relaxing and spending time with those that we had grown so close to over the previous sixty days. During the day I was at East-West for three days straight, leaving only to explore the Walled City once and to go to Lokram Island for a few hours. Lokram Island is a beautiful island that is accessible only during the daytime (nobody lives on the island and I believe camping is not allowed). The only ways to get there are by boat or by swimming. I took the lazier option of the two, and arrived to be greeted by the sound of millions of crickets chirping in unison. Normally crickets annoy me, but this was one of the most peaceful, relaxing sounds I have ever heard. The island has a number of rock beaches, hiking trails, and a lake in the middle (the Dead Lake) with a cliff to jump off of. I jumped off, and it was a ton of fun, despite the bruise I acquired on my rear end as a result of my awkward landing. I spent a few hours on the island and met up with some of my closest friends on the trip, and I recommend it to anybody going to Dubrovnik.

The first night was spent at La Feugo, a Latin bar known for being the craziest club in Dubrovnik. It was a ton of fun, although I must say I was weirded out a little bit by the “Chill Room,” where those who didn’t want to dance could go to watch the others dance on a giant TV screen…the bar is also known for its 1-liter drinks, which I later found out are really found all over Dubrovnik, and perhaps all over Croatia as well. Walking up the several hundred stairs (I think it was 490) to the villa I was staying in after leaving La Fuego was not fun, and I was rewarded by zero sleep as the sun was about to come up and I decided I should go to the beach and memorize some lines.

The second night I stayed at East-West, and had even more fun there than I did at La Fuego. At 4 or 5 in the morning, some of my friends and I wandered around the Walled City looking for food, and I contemplated going to another club, but the entrance fee was the equivalent of $50 dollars and once I found that out I dropped that plan. I got a couple hours of sleep before spending one last day at the beach.

Embarking the ship one last time was extremely difficult, and my friends and I stayed at the beach as long as we possibly could without missing the ship. We got on the ship, and had one last barbecue (probably the best ever). After the barbecue, Ryan (this kid who sang a hilarious song at the first talent show and instantly became a ship favorite) played guitar for about three hours after he and the band “A Band On Ship” (look at that play on words closely) stopped playing. I was one of a handful of people who stayed the entire time, and I don’t think any of us wanted the music to stop when it finally did. Croatia was the perfect last port and there could have been no better way to start the twelve-night journey home.

Griechenland.

2008-09-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Greece

Day 1

After one day at sea, we docked in Piraeus. I set off with some friends to explore the port town and find some pita bread with hummus before my first FDP at noon. Our FDP took us to the Acropolis, with stops at the Olympic stadium that was built for the 2004 Olympics and at a palace to watch a changing of the guard. It was very exciting being in Greece just days before the 2008 Olympics were to begin. Seeing the Parthenon atop the Acropolis was an experience similar to seeing the pyramids at Giza or the Eiffel Tower. It is one of those monuments that one sees pictures of on an almost weekly basis and that anyone living in a modernized society anywhere on earth could draw a sketch of without having seen it. To see it in person is completely surreal. I circled it, trying to imagine what it must have looked like when it was first built and reminding myself what an architectural feat it would be if it were built today, let alone thousands of years ago. After leaving the Pantheon, I went back to the ship and got ready to go out for Meaghan’s birthday, the first of three friends’ birthdays that I was to celebrate on the three evenings in Greece. We headed into Athens for a delicious Greek dinner (I had tzaziki with pita) and then a taste of the Grecian nightlife. Unfortunately for Meaghan, we docked in Piraeus on a Sunday, and in Greece most places are closed during the day on Sundays, and virtually everything is closed at night. We did eventually stumble on an open bar and we hung out there for a bit, but I wasn’t feeling too well so I bid everyone goodnight and headed back to the ship to rest up for my excursion to Delphi.

Day 2

We left for Delphi at 0730 and had quite a ride to our first stop, the monastery of Oseus Lucas. Our guide, whose English was so great I thought he was American, talked to us most of the way to a rest stop, where we had the chance to grab some coffee and a morning snack, and then continued to give us a Greek history lesson as we headed up the narrow, winding roads of a small village to the monastery. It turns out that our Greek tour guide grew up in the Netherlands, and English was his third language. He learned it with a British accent, but he has perfected the American accent for tours he gives to American groups. I was dumbfounded. Oseus Lucas was phenomenal, and I now have a desire to visit as many working monasteries as I possibly can and have an even stronger desire to get to Mount Athos while I am studying in Germany this upcoming year. We toured the main chapel as well as some side ones, and were allowed to wander around the courtyard and the monastery grounds as well. I tried a Greek Delight, which has the same consistency as a Turkish delight but tastes quite literally like roses. After an hour or so at the monastery, we drove to a large Greek restaurant perched on a cliff overlooking a dramatic Greek valley. The landscape was beautiful throughout our entire ride from Piraeus to Delphi and back, and it was ever-changing. I at times said it reminded me of Arizona, and Portia told me at times it reminded her of Colorado, and Caitlin said it reminded her of Missouri, etc. so it really was constantly changing. Our lunch was delicious, starting with the Greek salad, moving onto the plate of appetizers each of us got that I thought was our meal (we each were given four typical Greek delicacies to taste and each was of substantial quantity), and then onto the actual meal, which was a stew of lamb with vegetables, and finally the tasteful honeydew melon we had for dessert. I love Greek food even more now than I did before. After lunch we probably had about 45 more minutes of driving to Delphi, and once again I was impressed at the skill these bus drivers have to make it through these narrow streets without scraping buildings and cut the sharp switchbacks on the mountainsides without driving the bus straight off the roads.

The first thing we did at Delphi was visit the archaeological museum, which contains thousands of artifacts found at Delphi, the highlight for me being the statues of the twin brothers at Argos, who rumor has it went to sleep and never woke up after either completing some heroic deed or major athletic accomplishment (can’t remember quite which). The story made me think of the whole “dying during your prime” deal which is why we remember James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and (insert runner’s name here) in the way we do. And the statues themselves looked eerily similar to some that I had seen in the Egyptian Museum a few days before. The museum was neat, but walking up Delphi was even neater. Our guide told us that what we saw was less than seven percent of what used to stand at this thriving center for economic transactions, competitions, and exchanges of information across cultures. After walking up to the old amphitheatre, we were given the option to continue to walk up to the top, and the original Olympic stadium, or to just hang out or walk back down. I chose the former option and had to hurry to the top because we didn’t have much time. I am so glad I did, but after imagining the stadium filled with ancient Grecians cheering on the athletic heroes of their day and snapping a few pictures, it was time to head back down the mountain. We had a long bus ride back to Piraeus, but I was sitting next to Portia so we had fun talking to each other and gawking at the beauty outside the windows. We got back to the ship, and I changed quickly in order to meet everyone to go out for Marlee’s birthday. We went to this really upscale district in Piraeus that was a strip of 6 or 7 posh clubs, and I must say a good time was had by all.

Day 3

While I love all of the people I have spent time with so far on Semester at Sea, I also love traveling alone, and I decided I needed to enjoy a day by myself. I set off in the morning to explore Piraeus on a weekday, and found it to be much more bustling than it was on the Sunday we arrived. I just wandered aimlessly, stopping at a café for coffee and then a bakery to have some Loukomades, which I had been looking for since I arrived. The Loukomades did not disappoint. Then I tried to find some internet, and was able to get a very weak connection for a very short period of time. After spending an hour looking for an internet café (it was not an hour wasted because I was sure to take in my surroundings while I was searching), I gave up and decided to put on my swimsuit and head south in search of a nice beach. I took the metro into Athens, then got on a tram and just took it south until we were on the coast and I found a beach that looked nice and free. It was a free beach, and I think I was the only non-Greek person there. This was nice, and I spent the afternoon laying on the sand, jumping in the Aegean frequently to cool off.

After spending the day entirely by my lonesome, I was ready to hang out with people as I went back to the ship and went out for Lisa’s 22^nd birthday. Again a good time was had by all, and by the end of the night I decided I was broke from going out for three big birthdays three nights in a row.

Day 4

I do not want to sound like a bum, since I spent the previous afternoon at a beach as well, and if you know me you also know that I have an insane passion for travel and am the last person to waste time while visiting someplace unique, but eventually one needs a break from castles, cathedrals, and museums, and that it was today was for me. Mike, Adam, and I decided to go to one of the many private beaches in Athens, and it was probably the most relaxing day of the entire voyage (to this point). We found a beach called Ble, which some other friends of mine had gone to the day before and recommended, and spent a solid five hours soaking up the sun there. It was a pebble beach, with blue and white lawn chairs and umbrellas that were extremely uniform, and the beach itself was remarkable clean. It was a beautiful day, and the water was a welcome reprieve from the scorching hot sun and I went swimming a number of times. When five o’clock rolled around, none of us wanted to leave, but we still hadn’t looked for any souvenirs and needed to be back on the ship by seven.

Overall Impression of Greece

Greece is a beautiful country with great food, an extraordinarily rich history, and an exciting culture, and what I experienced was only a small taste of this. My friends who made trips out to the Saronic Islands and other islands like Mykonos or Santorini said that each island had its own culture and they were all exciting in their own ways. While I cannot say that my experience in Greece was more educational than the one I had in Egypt just before, I can say that I am really fond of Greece as a country and look forward to returning in the spring and experiencing more of its beauty.

Egypt

2008-09-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

To put my Egypt experience into words is going to be infinitely more difficult for me than taking the AP Calc BC test junior year of high school was (which I failed miserably), but I am going to try my hardest to explain to you what I did and saw in Egypt.

Day 1

I set sail on this voyage two months ago without the slightest inkling that I would see the only intact wonder of the ancient world before returning home. Spending three days in Egypt was completely unplanned, but I embraced the opportunity to step foot on a continent I had never been on like only those who know me would believe. I woke up early to watch us pull into port, and was up early enough to see the sunrise over the water, wish was beautiful. After breakfast, I showered and waited until we were allowed off the ship, then set off with a pretty large group of friends to explore Alexandria on our own. We wandered the streets near the ports for awhile, soaking in the Arabic letters and our distinctly different surroundings. Eventually we found an ATM, and decided we should map our way to the famous library. It was very far, and we walked for so long we ended up stopping to eat at McDonald’s (to my dismay—I had lost this time), but it was neat because their fries tasted kind of healthy and they had McArabian sandwiches that were definitely middle eastern.

When we came to the Bibliotheka Alexandrina, I was floored to see such a sparkling new monstrosity in the midst of old crumbling buildings. It was a true marvel, and the treasures held within the walls were all the better. It is connected to a Hilton hotel, which also seemed pretty nice. We went to the museum in the library, where I had my first run-in with an actually mummy. The art and artifacts that lie in the basement of the library are astounding, and one could tell that every effort is being made to preserve these treasures. Unlike the Hermitage, and, as I would find, the National Museum of Cairo, unless something unexpected happens, these artifacts should be viewable to the general population for many years to come. The library was huge, and after looking at the museum we explored the library, eventually taking advantage of the free wireless internet access it provided.

We left the museum in the early afternoon in search of the Catacombs of Alexandria. On our way, we got lost in No Man’s Land. I am pretty sure no traveler has ever been where we were. Like in the parts of Alexandria tourists are meant to see, the streets (or dirt pathways) were lined with shops on either side, but these were not shops with Egyptian papyrus prints and Pashmina scarves, but rather shops that sold broken cabinets and cracked mirrors, used porcelain toilets and sinks of every color imaginable, phone keypads without actually telephones, chairs that could not be sit on because they had giant holes in them, etc. There was trash everywhere. I saw the carcass of a dog that was so decayed it must have dies at least four or five days prior to my encountering it, and I got the sinking feeling that the dog would never be removed from the street. There were deceased rats and birds everywhere. Yet people were going about their daily life. Men were getting shaved on barber chairs in the street while smoking hookah, women were walking about, dressed in full black burkas that looked stifling hot, and their children were minding their business until we walked by, at which point they would run up to us and try to touch us, take pictures with us, etc. We were treated as celebrities, and all these children wanted was a smile in return. One boy in particular took a picture with my friend Justin, and when Justin tried to give him a few Egyptian Pounds in return the boy denied the cash, but followed us for several minutes before his father summoned him to return to his daily musings. This short diversion through a very authentic part of Alexandria was extremely eye opening for me, and it surely sticks out as one of the most moving events of my entire experience.

We were walking around this area for about an hour before we decided that we were lost and should take cabs to the catacombs, and good thing we decided to do that, because we got to the catacombs within ten minutes of their closing. We paid our entrance fees, handed over our cameras, and explored as quickly as we could. The catacombs were very neat, not piled with bones from floor to ceiling like those I saw in Paris last summer, but neat nonetheless. We walked down a winding dirt path until we were probably a couple hundred feet underground, and we got to see a few tombs and vaults before the lights started flickering and we knew it was closing time.

After the catacombs, I walked back to the ship with Mike, Meaghan, and Lauren, stopping along the way to buy the giant growing duffel I had spotted earlier. The bag has since busted, but it did serve me well in getting all of my belongings home without being charged anything extra. We ate dinner on the ship, and then headed out to smoke some authentic Egyptian hookah and see Alexandria by night. Just a stone’s throw away from the ship, Mohammed the cab driver suckered us into letting him escort us for the whole night. At first, it was great, but he obviously took us to a hookah lounge where he got a major cutback, and then he tried to take us to this Egyptian wedding ceremony which he said was only a few minutes away, but it actually ended up being nearly an hour away from where we had been and when we told him we needed to get back to the ship he was pissed off. He charged us way more than he said he would, and we ended up only paying some of it because he had morphed from a kind, helpful, taxi driver who seemed to want to show off Alexandria’s best to a money-sucking fool with no sense of hospitality.

Day 2

We had gotten back pretty late, and I think I went to bed for about three or four hours before I woke up and packed my bag for Cairo. This would be my first SAS overnight trip, and I was very excited about it. We had a three hour bus ride from Alexandria to Cairo, and it reminded me quite a bit of the trek from Phoenix to Tucson, as far as scenery is concerned. On that drive, our tour guide Manal talked about Egypt for almost two hours before answering any questions any of us had. We asked about contemporary teen culture in Egypt, the role of women, and I asked about the labor market and the role of women and youngsters in the work force. It was very interesting, and Manal stressed the fact that the workplace is becoming more and more egalitarian every day, but something about the way she said it made me think she was trying to hide an unfortunate reality that still exists in Egypt today. Regardless, the ride was great and Manal really taught us a lot.

Our first stop was a temple near Sakkara, followed immediately by the step pyramid of Sakkara, the oldest known pyramid in the world. After visiting the Temple of Sakkara, we headed to an upscale restaurant for an Egyptian-style buffet lunch. It was delicious. After lunch, we went to the National Museum of Cairo, which has an extraordinary collection of works but is obviously in need of some serious refurbishment. I found out, however, that a new museum is going to be built, and its level of cleanliness and upkeep should be similar to that of the Alexandrina Bibliothek in Alexandria. This will be great for the artifacts in the museum’s collection. Despite seeing an incredible collection of Kind Tut’s, my favorite part of the entire experience was without a doubt the two mummy collections I saw, which had mummies ranging from 15 to 93 years of age at time of decease, most dating from approximately 3500 years ago. The level of preservation of these mummies is astonishing, and the mummy of Ramses II, who died at age 93, was perhaps the most impressive of all. Another particularly interesting one for me to see was the mummy of a young princess who had been mummified with her pet baboon, and the baboon was available for viewing as well as her.

After a couple of hours at the Egyptian Museum, we checked into our five-star hotel, which was extraordinarily nice and located what seemed to be only a couple hundred feet from the pyramids at Giza. Some of my friends had balconies overlooking the pyramids. I jumped in the pool, which was the perfect temperature, and then ate one of the best buffets I have ever had (I love Egyptian food!). At about 9 PM we went to the pyramids for the Pharaoh’s lights and sounds show, which was incredibly cheesy but great fun. It felt a little bit like watching Star Wars over the desert, as green laser lights danced off of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx for thirty minutes and a woman spoke of pyramidal history.

After purchasing a Hard Rock Café: Cairo shirt right after the show, we headed back to the hotel, where I smoked hookah with Mike, Beth, and Brad for an hour or two before going to bed for an hour and a half.

Day 3 (or continuation of day 2)

After a marginal amount of sleep, my roommate Rich and I were woken by a 4 AM wake-up call. I hopped in the shower, changed, grabbed my pre-packaged lunch, and hit up the bus. We drove to the pyramids at Giza, where we sat on a stone wall and ate our breakfasts as we watched the sun come up over the pyramids. It was one of the most majestic experiences I have ever had. Once the sun came up, it was time for our pre-arranged camel ride. As Mike and I approached the camels, I nudged him and pointed at a camel that had about six feet of foam protruding from its horse-like mouth. I said “any camel but that camel.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than did our camel driver, Mohammed, approach us and lead us straight to camel-Mc-foam-foam. I was certain this camel had a minimum of three infectious diseases and a remaining life-span of four minutes, but in spite of this, I listened to Mohammed and climbed aboard…

As it turns out, Izzy Dozzy (our beloved camel’s name) was a serious trooper. Not only was he a fantastic ride, but he gave us quite the thrill at the end when he so suddenly dropped his front legs to the grant I thought we were going to tumble over forward. Riding the camels around the pyramids at Giza was an incredible experience I will surely remember forever.

After the camel ride, we took a bus right up to the pyramids, where we had a chance to take pictures up close to them and explore the surrounding area. Kelly, Mike, and I were three of the lucky 150 visitors who were able to purchase a ticket to enter the Great Pyramid that morning. I felt bad for Kerry, Amanda, and Marco, because they all wanted to go in and were not able to get tickets in time. We entered the pyramid and starting maneuvering a long, narrow shaft straight to what must have been the epicenter of this true marvel. We reached the burial chamber in the center, which had a single tomb lying front and center, and even though it was mostly bare it was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had. I felt like we were in Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider as we had rushed as quickly as we could to reach this historical wonder, dodging invisible bullets and trampling over invisible skeletons.

After our adventure at the pyramids, we headed just a few hundred meters to the remarkable Sphinx and the temple right next to it. This was really neat to see, and we hung out for awhile and took a lot of pictures before moving on to our next stop, Cairo’s Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar was overwhelming, and I found everything under the sun except for the one item I was searching for, white cotton pants. After a couple of hours at the Bazaar, we headed to the Nile River for a lunch buffet and Egyptian entertainment cruise. The cruise was nice, but the entertainment was laughable. Before the Dervish and belly dancers came out, there was an air band. It was two guys lip synching terribly, one of them “playing” a guitar with his fingers strumming the air about two inches away from the chords, and the other pretending to play a keyboard. I took a video because of how hilarious I found this to be. The belly dancer was also not that great, but the Dervish dancer was really cool and I video recorded that as well. After the Nile cruise, it was time for us to head home. The bus ride seemed to be warmer than normal, but it wasn’t until about a half hour that somebody said something (Amanda went up to the driver and asked if he could turn the air any lower). Once she did this, it really started baking in there. It got so hot that midway between Cairo and Alexandria our bus had to pull over to the side of the road. Some of us got out because the 100 plus degree whether without a breeze outside felt better than the stifling heat in the bus. I started taking some pictures of what was going on, only to have Egyptian security come up to us and tell us that we could not take pictures of this area…I’m still confused about why.

Anyway, our trip made it back to the ship around on-ship time, and everybody ate one last ship meal before the massive breakout of Pharaoh’s Revenge (a strand of eColi that just about everyone on the ship caught sooner or later) occurred.

Overall Impressions of Egypt

Go!!

Leg 6: Naples to ?

2008-08-24T17:51:00.000-07:00

Leg 6: Naples to ~~Istanbul~~ Alexandria

The night after we sailed away from Italy there were two bombings in a working-class neighborhood of Istanbul. 15 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured. News of these bombings (which were suspected to be a terrorist attack) caused my heart go out to those impacted by them. I cannot hear about anything of this sort without feeling both compassionate and sympathetic, and I was touched when a student on board started a fund for the families of those who lost loved ones in the bombings. While these attacks were undoubtedly closer to home to those residing in Istanbul, and even those visiting Istanbul at the time, the shipboard administrators were faced with a difficult decision: to go to Istanbul or not go to Istanbul.

After a full day of waiting to find out what the decision was going to be, the moment of truth came. All members of the shipboard community were summoned to the Union, where we were not held in suspense for very long. Executive Dean Jill Wright opened the meeting by saying: “I will tell you all what you came to hear, and then we will discuss the decision. Because of the recent events which occurred in Istanbul, we will not be going to Turkey. We will instead be redirecting our route and docking in Alexandria-----------there was an eruption of cheers and the excitement in the room could probably have been felt by those south of the equator. Many students, faculty members, and crew were scared to go to Istanbul, but many had no probably voicing their staunch opposition to a change in itinerary. I would have classified myself as somewhere in between, but closer to the latter. Istanbul may have been the port I was looking forward to visiting most, it was going to be the most different from the United States, and we were less than twelve hours away when the MV Explorer made a complete 180-degree turn in the northern Mediterranean. But my real concern was that we were going to end up spending four days on a Greek Island, as rumors had quelled this concern among many on board. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to spend four days on Corfu, Mykonos, or Santorini, but I was looking for something different, someplace a little less western. And we were going to get it. Since our new port of call was announced just twelve hours before we should have been docking in Istanbul and there was an entire sea separating us from Egypt, we had an extra day at sea (With no classes) and as a result were given only three days to spend in Egypt, as opposed to the four we were originally to have in Turkey. The administration onboard the ship, and Jill Wright especially, handled the situation extremely well, and the field office worked tirelessly to create field programs for students and lifelong learners for Alexandria and Cairo, and they did an extraordinary job. I was extremely impressed by the way the change in itinerary was handled by Semester at Sea. Most of the students on the ship spent our extra day laying out in the sun, myself included. My friend Becca’s mom is an instructor on the ship, and since the deck was so packed, some of us hung out on her balcony. It was a great nice, and after the previous two days of classes was a welcome break. However, I spent the length of the day being particularly excited to sail into Egypt.

Italia

2008-08-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

Day 1

If Naples is supposedly the armpit of Italia, then I cannot wait to see the rest of this country. After less than one day here it is easy for me to see why many people who have been to Italy call it their favorite country without any hesitation whatsoever. After docking and eating breakfast, some friends and I set off to explore the streets of Napoli. To my surprise, it wasn’t that dirty and it didn’t smell at all. We roamed the city for about an hour before settling on a little café, where I enjoyed a delightful cappuccino and a tasty Calzone Neoplaitani. After enjoying these Italian delicacies, I headed back to the ship alone to find a ferry ticket for Ischia and to prepare for my climb up Mount Vesuvius. After being directed from one ticket office to another, I finally was able to purchase a ticket for an evening ferry to Casamicciola, Ischia. It cost a bit more than I had anticipated it would (17 Euro). After buying the ticket, I grabbed lunch and made my way to the buses for my SAS trip. The drive to the base of the volcano was spectacular, with views of the outskirts of Naples and the Mediterranean at times. Our tour guide, Vincenzo, was one of the best I have had on any of the field directed practica I have participated in. Once in the national park for Vesuvio, we started our way up the mountain, stopping along the way for scenic views of both Naples and the Amalfi Coast. Near the summit, Vincenzo stopped us to tell us some of the history of a crater that we had reached. There was some steam coming out of one of the sides of the crater. After a few more minutes of walking, we stopped again at a different section of the crater and Vincenzo told us a story about Futbol and then had the entire group shout “GOAL!!!!” on his count of three. The echo that ensued sounded just like the echo heard in a giant soccer stadium—I thought this was really neat. At the top of the mountain, local wine can be purchased at a very low cost. I drank some white wine and it was definitely better than most I have had. The walk down was much quicker than the trek up (perhaps only twenty or so minutes), and at the base of Vesuvius were free samples of cold bruscietta and Limoncello, both of which were spectacular. The tomatoes in Italy are like no other tomatoes I have ever tried.

We arrived back from Mount Vesuvius an hour after we were expected to, so I spent about three minutes at dinner and then grabbed my packed bag before walking to the ferry. Even though I left the ship roughly ten minutes before my ferry was scheduled to leave, I did not feel like I was in any rush whatsoever; the Italian way of life was already rubbing off on me. Fortunately for me, my ferry was delayed about ten minutes, and I made it to the dock before my ferry even got there. My ferry ride was beautiful, and we made one stop before my destination of Ischia.

I was blown away with Ischia before the ferry even docked. I had done my research on what to do around Naples months before leaving for Semester at Sea and knew that Ischia was a must, but I could never have prepared for the sheerly blissful experience I was about to have. The people on the entire island were some of the friendliest I have ever encountered, asking me if I needed help even when I was briskly walking to the destination of my hostel. My hostel, “Ring Hostel,” is the second best I have ever stayed in, falling just short of Budget Backpackers in Edinburgh. I would recommend it to everyone. It is owned by three brothers, and has the capacity to feel like home to people from all over the world. After connecting with some friends at the hostel, we set out for a late dinner of, of course, pizza. What I ordered was called a pizza, but it was actually another calzone. I was not disappointed, as it tasted infinitely better than the one I had eaten earlier, which was pretty tasty itself. After our delicious dinner, Alison, Caitlin, and I sat on a stucco wall at the beach for a little while and then wandered the town, eventually trying to find a way to get onto the grounds of a local castle at night. We were unsuccessful in this endeavor, but we were extremely successful in finding what was and still is the best gelato I have ever tasted. I ordered Panne Cotta from a street vendor, and no description of the exquisite taste of this gelato could do its truly mouthwatering flavor justice. Shortly after midnight we headed back to our hostel, where we all took advantage of the free WiFi for about an hour before turning in.

Day 2

I barely slept, and woke up the next day feeling far sicker than I had the day before. This was probably the worst day of my cold which has now lasted more than three weeks, but it was still one of the most beautiful days of my life. After enjoying the free breakfast of cereal and croissants that our hostel provided us with, we sat in the lobby trying to figure out what we wanted to do for the day. We had ambitious plans: go to the beach for a couple of hours, check out the castle in Ischia Porto, and then take a ferry to Capri and tour that island. Somehow we ended up remaining at the beach until 6:30 PM, and none of us have any regrets. This beach, although crowded, was one of the nicest I have ever seen. The water was perfect, and just about 100 meters from the shoreline were natural rock piles that one could swim to and then sunbathe on, being sprayed lightly by the sea and enjoying the light breeze and cooler temperatures that are usually found on the water. While the beach was great, the water and these rocks provided a great refuge to the scorching heat that one who lies on the beach there for too long is bound to experience.

The only time we left the beach all day was in the early afternoon to find some snacks and replenish our water supply. I had some delicious ice cream, a great little Pizza Margherita, and some fruit that is a close relative of the grape, but with clear skin and mammoth flavor-filled seeds. Whatever fruit this was, I miss it already. I ate the whole batch in about ten minutes. After a long, lazy day at the beach, we returned to our hostel to grab our stuff and then took a jam-packed bus to Ischia Porto, where we caught an 8:10 ferry back to Naples. We returned to the ship at around ten, and I went to bed shortly thereafter.

Day 3

Today I participated in another SAS trip, and it might be my favorite to date. We left Naples early to drive the entire length of the Amalfi Coast, which is one of the most dramatically beautiful shorelines I have ever seen. It rivaled that which my parents and I saw in Cape Breton just over a month prior, and in my eyes is on par with that which decorates the St. Andrews coast in Scotland, although the differing climates make the ecological beauty of the different shorelines hard to compare. The bottom line is that this was another day filled with natural beauty so intense that I felt like I could miss out on something spectacular with each blink of my eyes. We made stops in Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, and another couple of places where we were given free time to roam the cities, and we were served a traditional southern Italian lunch in Positano, with several courses of pasta, veal parmigiana, salad, bread, and cake, all of which was washed down by Limoncello afterwards. The views from our restaurant were breathtaking. The drive along the coast is not an easy one for seventy-foot buses to make, but our driver seemed to have no difficulty chauffeuring us in complete safety for the entire day. We returned late in the evening, and after eating a late dinner I decided to try to get another good night’s sleep, hoping that I could rid myself entirely of the bitter cold I have been suffering. I took some Benadryl, and was asleep almost as soon as I got into bed. About twenty minutes later, I was awakened by the ring of my room phone, which I had contemplated unplugging before I fell asleep. My friends wanted to see if I wanted to go out, and I muttered something before hanging up and unplugging my phone for the rest of the night. Unfortunately I could not fall asleep for the next six hours. I watched Saving Private Ryan in its entirety and read some of Chelsea Handler’s autobiographical laughing fest, Are you there, Vodka? It’s me, Chelsea. I might have slept two hours before my alarm clock serenaded me with the happy birthday song, signaling that it was time to shower and go explore Pompeii.

Day 4

Now I first heard about Pompeii when I was a junior in high school. Toward the beginning of the year, my APUSH teacher, Mrs. Burcham, told us about Pompeii, and mentioned an old-school brothel that served its clientele in the same manner McDonald’s around the world do today: the patron points at a meal on the menu, and in under a minute gets to enjoy the dish he has just ordered. Of course, Mrs. Burcham described this brothel in a much more comedic manner, and since that day I have been aching to see Pompeii.

And what a marvel Pompeii proved to be. After exploring the streets of this city that was covered entirely by ash for nearly two millennia, I was beginning to worry that I would not have the chance to see the brothel that Mrs. Burcham so enthusiastically described to my class nearly four years previously. Then, after three hours of looking at almost anything ancient that one could imagine, I found it. I felt like I was Indiana Jones and I had just found the lost ark of the covenant. My joy upon entering this heathen paradise I had longed so greatly to see could not be stifled. I am certain that every European and Asian tourist who was witness to my discovery thinks I am a sick freak of nature who should be held in isolation at Alcatraz until the sun no longer shines for me. If only they knew the background behind my overt excitement, they would have understood. The brothel was just as Mrs. Burcham had described it, from the stone menu to the rock-hard beds that occupied booths which provided for very little privacy. To say the least, I was not disappointed. I concluded my stint at Pompeii by touring the ruins of the many columns that adorned the city center and staring at the casts of a few of the 20,000 Pompeii natives that were buried alive by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so many years ago. It was looking at these casts that made me try hard to imagine what it might be like to be going about your daily business, when in the blink of an eye a volcanic eruption of apocalyptic proportions, shooting smoke and debris 90,000 feet into the air, turning the lights out on an entire civilization. My experience at Pompeii taught me two things: the inhabitants of Pompeii were extremely advanced for their time, and they were also extremely dirty-minded in comparison to what I imagine most ancient civilizations to be with. It is not only the brothel that leads me to this conclusion, but the countless examples of sexual graffiti that adorns the walls of the city as well as the abundance of phallic symbols that can be found throughout. After exploring the city, it is not hard to see why many believe that Mount Vesuvius’ most well known eruption was presumed by many to be a sign of God’s wrath against those it perished.

I loved Pompeii, and am bummed that I did not get the chance to see the archaeological museum in Naples, because it was highly recommended to me by my best friend Gabby and I believe that I would like it very much. But after I left Pompeii, I needed to satiate my appetite for one last Authentic Italian meal. I got a fried ham and cheese calzone that definitely got the job done, and had a slushie-like thing whose name I have since forgotten. My belly was satisfied, and with a couple of hours left before on-ship time, I decided to wander the streets of Naples once more. I was partially in search of some knock-off Ray-Bans, but I ended up buying a pair of very Euro-looking “Prada.” They have since broke. I ate gelato twice more, and then got on the ship for our set-sail barbecue, and mourned the end of our four-day stint in Italy.

Overall Impressions of Italy

Never before has a leisurely pace of life appealed so strongly to me. I love a fast-paced lifestyle, and have always felt that the slower pace should be reserved for vacations, but the Italians know what they are doing. I don’t see how anyone could be unhappy in Italy, and I think that anyone who has ever emigrated from Italy to any other nation must have had an extremely tough time making the decision to leave and especially following through with it. Ischia is now one of my top three favorite places, and Italy has without a doubt become my favorite port of call this far this summer. I have wanted to go to Italy for quite some time, and since my best friend is 100% Italian and has exposed me to some of the food and culture that Italians enjoy, this desire to visit Italy has only increased in recent years. However, I still did not expect to like it quite as much as I did. And I have only scraped the surface. I can now hardly wait to return to Italia, to go to Roma, Florence, Venice, Sardinia, Sicily, and a number of small cities and beach towns throughout the entire country. I cannot imagine how Gabby must have felt leaving Italy at the end of last summer, as it was a serious struggle for me after spending only four days there.

Antwerp, Belgium, and then some

2008-08-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

Day 1

So my sea (the Adriatic Sea) has been called for administration of passports first at every single port so far. The seas are supposedly called at random, but with each passing port the Adriatic Sea is either defying probability or they are letting us off the ship first for some other reason. I actually don’t know what sea was called first in Belgium, because I was on an FDP that left the ship at 8:30 AM and our group was allowed off the ship before even any of the seas were. Basically what I am trying to say is that I have gotten to maximize my time in every port because I have been one of the first people off the ship every time.

So my FDP on the first day in Belgium (July 14^th) was to the EU headquarters and the American Embassy in Brussels. We first went to the EU headquarters, where a spokesperson for the European Economic Community delivered a lecture and answered any questions we had (after he told us that most Europeans view the American economy as very different from their own and not socialist enough I asked him where the UK fit into this picture of Europe he was trying to paint for us). The lecture was pretty interesting, but most of what he talked about (especially the structure of the EU) I had already learned in my European Union class. The American Embassy was definitely an incredible experience though. We were addressed by a member of the foreign service (I think I might want to work for the foreign service someday) and also had a Q&A session. After leaving the Embassy, we went to the Grande Platz of Brussels and took some pictures before splitting up for a bit of free time. I had a waffle with sorbet on top (the waffles actually taste better here—it’s bizarre, but I think it might be the batter more than the way the waffles are prepared), then I ate some Belgian French fries (without mayonnaise), and then to top that off I got a Belgian beer. I was asking for a heart attack, but I had the full Belgian culinary experience in a time span of under twenty minutes, or so I thought. I went back to Antwerp, then set out to get some WiFi (which was super easy to find and free), and then I ate dinner and did some reading/catching up on schoolwork. I stayed in because I wasn’t feeling great, knew that I would need energy to go out in Amsterdam and for Mike’s birthday the next two nights, and I was exhausted.

Day 2

After a solid seven hours of sleep, I left on the world’s earliest FDP to go biking in the Flanders region of Belgium. We biked somewhere between 30 and 35 kilometres of the famous Tour de Flanders, Belgium’s most competitive as well as its most well known bike race. The ride was spectacular, and we biked through the beautiful Belgian countryside, which was dotted with windmills, water mills, and of course filled with cows. It was relatively strenuous, and it was quite hilly. I would also like to add that if any of you ever plan on biking on a bike with a racing over cobblestone, stand the entire time. I stood up for most of the cobblestone that we hit, but at the beginning I did not and I regretted it later. At the end of our tour we were all exhausted, but thankfully we had a three-course Belgian mail awaiting us. We had some kind of fish in a spicy yellow curry sauce and a salad of greens, ham, and a mustard dressing with balsamic vinegar on it. The salad was one of the best salads I have ever had, despite having been entirely different from any salad I had ever had. The main course was prime rib with, which was served medium rare and with a side of some potato and mushroom goulash. Once the main course was over the waitress brought us some French fries, but this was not the dessert—it was Belgian ice cream, and perhaps the best part of the entire meal. After lunch we had a little bit of free time to either check out the museum that is dedicated to the Tour of Flanders or just explore the city (It was called Ordenaarde, I think). I explored the city for a bit, went into three pharmacies looking for some sore throat lozenges (they had neither lozenges nor cough drops at any of the three) since I had a bit of a cold, and then I gave up and went to the bus. After the bus ride back, I packed my overnight bag and met Jill (whom I had just met on the bike tour) to go to the train station, since we were both meeting friends in Amsterdam. We hurried to the train station to try to catch the 5:59 train, but failed miserably at making it on time and bought tickets for the 6:59 train. We grabbed some food and beverages and then boarded our train for the two-hour ride to Amsterdam. We chatted most of the way (she goes to the University of Michigan) and the ride seemed to go by quite quickly. When we got to Amsterdam, we both had the names of our hotels and I had an address (which was not of much help) so we just set off in search for either of our hotels. We found my first, and Jill got direction to hers. We parted ways, and I met up with some friends in the hotel. We hung out there for awhile, and then went out to see the Red Light District at night and go dancing. It was a ton of fun, but we called it a night at 3 AM so we could get up early to enjoy the city.

Day 3

After eating breakfast the next day, Jessica, Alison, Charlie, and I set off to rent some bikes and enjoy Amsterdam. We found some fairly easily and for a reasonable price, then we started riding around without aim. I think we traversed the whole of Amsterdam, north, south, east, and west. The city is spectacular. The Dutch architecture lining the crystal clean canals makes for a very pleasant bike ride. We stopped by the Anne Frank House so that I could see it, but the three of them had gone inside yesterday, the line was long, and I knew that I planned on coming back to Amsterdam next year so I said we could move on. We biked in search of the Van Gogh Museum, but took a wrong turn somewhere (or failed to make a right one), and ended up biking the whole city again. At last we found the museum district, locked our bikes, took some pictures at the “IAMSTERDAM” sign, grabbed a bite to eat (I had a scrumptious ham and cheese sandwich), and headed to the Van Gogh Museum. It was 12,50 Euros to get in, and we didn’t even have a half hour to spare, so we decided against going in, grabbed some ice cream and Belgian waffles, and biked back toward the place we rented our bikes. On the way, we got stuck in between some cars and some pedestrians and there wasn’t much wiggle room, so out of fear of hitting anyone, I slowed down, ended up wobbling, and crashed into a street pole. The pedal pushed my foot firmly against the pole (I was wearing sandals) and there was a big crunching noise. I ended up breaking just one toe, but a couple of others hurt. By the next day my toe (the one right next to the big toe on my left foot) was completely purple. The bike ride was well worth it. After returning our bikes, we went back to our hotel, wrapped my toe and grabbed our bags, and then walked to the train station. After a pleasant two-hour ride (during which I caught up on journaling), we arrived. I arrived back to the ship just after dinner was done being served, but thankfully Alison, Charlie, and Jess had beat me and grabbed some food for me. I ate that, and then got ready to go out for Mike’s birthday. We went to a convenience store and started out the night by hanging out in the beautiful Grand Platz, and then went to a bar wear I tried a drink called a “gas mask” (it is blue and lit on fire, then shaken, and then after drinking the liquid the shooter must inhale the air), which was a cultural experience in itself. After the first bar we moved on to a karaoke bar, where I sang karaoke in public for the first time in my life. We sang “Bye, Bye, Bye,” “Apologize,” “Ironic,” and one of Brittany Spears’ earlier songs. It was definitely a fun night.

Day 4

I had intended on sleeping in today, but my roommate woke up really early to go to Brugges and after his alarm clock went off twice I was awake for the day (my roommate and I are still getting along very well—he rocks). I decided to wander around Antwerp for a bit, then ate lunch on the ship, and then went on my field practicum to Ghent. Ghent was very nice (an entirely medieval town). We had a tour of the historic city centre, with a castle and a cathedral that was really nice. The cathedral, while not as impressive as many on the outside, had some of the most ornate interior architecture and artwork I have ever seen. A very famous triptych of van Rijn’s is housed here, and that was very neat to see. I ate another Belgian waffle while in Ghent (although it was definitely the worst I had the entire time and I was sad that it would be my last for the trip), this one covered in warm Belgian chocolate (which actually turned out to be Belgium’s version of Hershey’s chocolate sauce). We had some free time to walk around at the end, and I went to a grocery store to buy a roll and some paprika shoestring potatoes to bring back on the ship (oh, and some gum). On the way back to Antwerp I memorized some lines for A Doll’s House, and when we arrived I just walked straight to the area where I had been getting WiFi for free the whole time. I needed to figure out my housing situation for Germany this upcoming year, which I think I finally did J. I made it back to the ship no more than three minutes before on-ship time, grabbed some dinner, and watched the ship sail away (even though it was pouring rain, there were a number of Belgians watching the ship as it left Antwerpen’s cruise terminal).

Overall Thoughts on Belgium

I loved Belgium. And Amsterdam. The bike ride through the countryside of Flanders was definitely the highlight of my time there, but the food may have been a close second (I am pretty excited about the food in all of the rest of the ports, especially the next one—Italy). Belgium is a safe place, and most of the Belgians I encountered were fairly friendly. I definitely want to go back to Brussels for another couple of days because I think there is a lot there that I need to explore. I also really want to go to Brugges, because my roommate raved about it and I have heard nothing but good things about that city from everyone I know who has ever been. It was also neat to be in Belgium during the purchase of Anheuser-Busch by a Belgian beer company and for the collapse of Belgian’s government (the Belgian prime minister resigned and there is currently no government, and apparently there is a lot of sentiment from people of the different regions for Belgium to separate into a number of countries, since there are distinctly different regions in which different languages are spoken. If this happened, all of the regions would most likely immediately become part of the EU).

Leg 4: Korsor to Antwerp

2008-08-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

So we had a short two days at sea between Denmark and Belgium, and our trip was drastically shortened in length because we were given right of passage through the Kiel Canal in northern Germany. Classes were good for these two days. I got my first global studies paper back and it was a B, which I was very happy about because it wasn’t super high quality by any means. My EU class was only about ten minutes on the first day because Professor Wilkerson wanted us to have the chance to watch us transit the Kiel Canal if we so wished. I watched, and it was pretty cool. It was pretty rainy the first day, but the second at sea day was nice. We docked in Antwerp ar around midnight on the second day (the night of the 13^th or morning of the 14), but we weren’t allowed to get off the ship until the next morning. It was really weird docking before I fell asleep. I usually have to wake up to watch us pull into a port.

Copenhagen, Denmark (and Korsor)

2008-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, Copenhagen. This would have to be the ship’s favorite port of call so far, as I heard a great number of students and faculty members alike muttering about how they would like to move to Copenhagen as we trudged onward toward Belgium. I myself reflected on my search to find a good fit for my junior year abroad (upcoming), and how Copenhagen had appealed to me and was one of the last three cities I was looking at for the fall semesters before I decided on spending the entire year in Freiburg. Had I chosen to spend the fall in Copenhagen, I would not be let down. Copenhagen is a marvelous city, filled with grand architecture, beautiful people, clean streets, an almost too-safe-to-imagine atmosphere, and a great night life.

We docked in Korsor, which is roughly an hour by train from Copenhagen. As we arrived in Denmark, the people of Korsor were outside playing the Rembrandt’s song “I’ll be there for you” (Friends theme song) and cheering for us. After being received in such a friendly manner, I felt bad that I was going to be taking off for Copenhagen immediately, but plans were set and we were not going to make any changes.

With Adam, Alyssa, Arielle, Julia, Steve, Mike, Marla, Lisa, Zach, Julia, Lauren, and maybe a couple of others, I headed off to the train station. The weather was nice while we were walking, even though it had been pouring rain in the morning, but once we got to the train station the rain came down again, and it was some of the most intense rain I had ever seen. Once in Copenhagen, we walked to our hotel, the Copenhagen Island Hotel (highly recommend it), and marveled at the upscale art deco hotel we were staying in for such a low price (mainly because we were packing 5 people to a bed). We grabbed some food at the mall next door, and then went out in the city centre.

We stayed out really late, but still woke up at a reasonable hour, at which time we split up and I took a canal cruise with a small group of people. We got off to look at some of Copenhagen’s main attractions, went to the Rosenkratz Castle, saw the Little Mermaid statue (which is as overrated as everyone will ever tell you it is, and then some), went to a really old church, checked out Star Island, a really cool area that has some old barracks or something and a windmill and a nice park (the island is actually in the shape of a star), and then went to Nyhaven. In the evening I went to Tivoli Garden with Lisa and Zach and we had a really good time. My favorite amusement park ride of all time has been replaced. They have the flying swings (like the cobra swings you can find at any carnival), but they raise up hundreds of feet in the air and you can see the entire city of Copenhagen from them. Of course the fact that the sun was setting while we were up in the air probably didn’t make me like the ride any less, but I think it would have been my favorite ride ever anyway. I want to let anyone who ever plans on going to Tivoli Garden know that you must purchase the multi-ride pass, even if you only plan on spending a couple of hours at the park. If you don’t, you will wind up spending much more money.

After a few hours at Tivoli we headed to Lauren and Marla’s hotel room to pre-game for another night out in Copenhagen. When we finally went out, we headed to an Australian bar (it had a sandpit, and all sorts of other Australian insignia), which was a ton of fun. This night was a blast.

The next day most of my group went to Sweden, but since I will be going there next year I wanted to see more of Copenhagen. Mike stayed behind with me, and we spent the day walking the streets, going into stores like H&M and Urban Outfitters (yes, in Denmark) and laughing at most of the clothes that could be found in them. Then we went to Tivoli (yes, I went twice), where I bought a multi-ride pass this time around and I think we went on every ride in the park. We ate some crappy Thai amusement park food, and it left such a bitter taste in my mouth that I decided I needed to have good Thai or Indian food that night. Back at the hotel, I went in the sauna and steamroom for a bit before going to an Indian restaurant with Alyssa and Zach. I had Chicken Tikka Biryani and it was incredible. Alyssa’s food was great as well. I definitely got my ethnic food fix for the night. After dinner we went to the Ice Bar, which was a blast. It was a lot smaller than the one in London, but it had ice benches (which the one in London does not have) and the cloaks were blue instead of brown, and there were a couple of other differences. After the Ice Bar, we hung out in the main city square for awhile, just soaking in our surroundings. Eventually two Danish guys came up and started talking to us. They asked about America and we asked about Denmark, and then they asked if we thought we were cool. Someone in the group muttered “no” and they laughed and said that they didn’t want to hang around us then, so somebody else said we definitely were cool. They were undoubtedly trying to flirt with a couple of girls in the group, but they ended up inviting us to a birthday party for their friend (there were a good ten of us so we were not scared at all and I do not think we made a decision based on poor judgment). We followed them to a really nice flat located on one of the pedestrian streets in the city center and we met the birthday boy and then mingled with Danes and a couple of Estonians that were there (one of whom told me she would host me when I visit Tallinn next year!). We taught the Danes the ‘Souja Boy’ dance and danced to Cotton Eye Joe and some other exciting American music. They were all amused, and it was a ton of fun. We stayed there until about 2:30 and then separated and went back to our own hotels.

The last day we had every intention of going into Christiania, but after storing our luggage in luggage lockers we decided to make one last stroll through the city centre, do some souvenir shopping, and eat a traditional Danish meal. We ate at the coolest restaurant, and it was actually very reasonably priced. I got a chicken and bacon sandwich that came with a delicious curry sauce on it and some incredible Danish country fries. Several people got open-faced sandwiches, one of the better known Danish delicacies. After lunch we walked to the train station and headed back to Korsor. After getting back to the ship, I tried to get some free internet in a public area (city hall type place) right next to the ship, but failed, and ended up doing some grocery shopping with the few Krones I had left (unfortunately about 150 Danish Krones fell out of my pocket on one of the rides at Tivoli and the ride was so crazy I couldn’t do anything about it—that is about thirty bucks). I got some chips, pretzels, chocolate, and of course Fanta, and I now have snacks to eat between meals since I tend to get hungry every few hours on the ship and am too cheap to buy grilled cheese and pizza on board, even though I hear the food is really good.

Once we were all back on the ship, some band (I think it was a school band) came and played some Danish music for us and all of the locals waved. They would have definitely seen us off if our departure hadn’t been moved from 9 PM to 4 AM (we were rerouted through the Kiel Canal). Korsor was lovely, and Copenhagen was AWESOME. You can bet I will be back before long.

Signing off from Antwerp, Belgium

---Jason

St. Petersburg, Russia

2008-07-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Russia was incredible. The city of St. Petersburg is filled with majestic architecture, and in pictures that are taken a distance away from buildings everything looks fantastic, but when you get up close you see how neglected everything is and it is strange to notice how different things can look from a different perspective. The best analogy I can give for the upkeep of Russia is to compare the Louvre with the Hermitage, as Paris and St. Petersburg are two very similar cities with some striking distances. At the Louvre, one always feels as if he is being watched by the museum workers that oversee each room. Everything is polished, and each room has different lighting and temperature in order to best preserve the treasures that lie within. The floor is clean. In essence, the Louvre is pristine. The Hermitage, with a collection that is actually larger than that found at the Louvre and quite comparable in quality, is completely different. I felt as if I could walk right up to a masterpiece (perhaps "The Return of the Prodigal Son"), remove it from the wall, and walk out of the museum without anyone taking notice. The majority of the rooms had no patrol, the docents that were in the museum were all either sleeping or half-dead, and the stench that filled the museum was rancid. Air conditioning was non-existent, and the lighting was neither tailored to the preservation of the artwork nor to the viewer's benefit. Pictures could be taken anywhere. This analogy sums up my experience in St. Petersburg, but I absolutely loved the city nonetheless. I went to a Russian ballet (Swan Lake), which was fantastic, went to a Banya (steam room/sauna that was co-ed and nude and an extremely cultural experience), took a river cruise at night, saw three marvelous palaces (one that was modeled after Versailles--Peterhof), had a few strong, yet smooth, vodka shots, saw a bit of Russian opera, walked by a man playing with his pet bear (no joke!) in a park--I took a picture and a video, ate dinner with two random Russian men that a group of us met on the street (they spoke no English, German, Italian, French, or Spanish, which were the languages that our group collectively had knowledge of), missed the 30-minute opening of the bridge that one can take from the island where most of the night-life and tourism is based to the island we were staying on (we had to wait for the drawbridge to close again at 5:30 AM), and I learned how to make a Russian dish that I do not know the name of (the food was similar to pirogues). Overall it was an outstanding time. I think St. Petersburg is undergoing dramatic change as its economy adjusts to the market system, and in just a few years I think the city will seem entirely different to a visitor than it might today. I will try to give a more descriptive account of my experience in Russia later on, but I was unfortunately unable to spend much time writing about Russia immediately after my visit.

Bergen: "Europe's Most Underrated City"

2008-07-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Frommer’s Norway claims that Bergen, Norway is the most underrated city in all of Europe. After spending four days there, I can easily see why the writers believe that. After our first fully darkless night, the MV Explorer cruised through a fjord into Bergen harbor. It was a cloudy morning, but there was not rain yet. Even though I had seen dozens of pictures of Bergen, the stark contrast in the colors of the paint on the buildings that literally sit on Bergen Harbor left me speechless. After attending a mandatory Norwegian-US relations briefing, I set off to explore Bergen with Amanda, Jessica, and Krista (three girls from the group I have been hanging out with). We headed left of the harbor (away from both the city center and the tourist traps). I am so glad that we decided to do this because we stumbled upon narrow cobblestone streets in strictly residential areas that I would venture to say nine out of ten visitors to Bergen do not see. As we headed back to the ship it started to pour. I had the chance to use my Camelbak raincover for the first time, and after seeing what it looks like in pictures will probably not be using it again. I must say, however, that I am really glad I brought my Camelbak on the trip. I fill it twice a day and bring it everywhere with me.

After eating lunch on the ship (to save money), I went on a city orientation with Bryggen and Troldhaugen. Troldhaugen (Troll Hill) is a secluded area that Edvard Grieg chose as the base for most of his music composition. We got to see his house as well as a studio that has been built since his death. It was really neat. We also stopped at a church that was built in the 12^th century. After getting back into Bergen, I went straight to the library where I got on the internet for the first time in a week and a half. I do not think I have gone that long without using the internet since I was in 4^th grade. I headed back to the ship to meet up with a big group of people to go out and celebrate my friend Kevin’s 21^st birthday. We ate at a Norwegian pizza place, and ordered a hot and cold pizza that was really good. It had meat and veggies on the bottom and cold salad ingredients on top. After dinner we went to a few bars and had a really good time. I did not drink much at all because the average cost of a beer in Norway is the equivalent of 15 US dollars. I got back to the boat at around 2 AM, and went straight to bed.

The next morning I woke up at 6:30, grabbed breakfast, and then went on a tour to Lysoen Island and Ole Bull’s fairy tale home. Ole Bull, in case you are unfamiliar with him (because I was), was a Norwegian musician who made a huge name for himself in Europe and even became somewhat well known on the east coast as he spent his winters in Boston. The house was really neat, evidencing a mix of influences from all over the world, and it was the only building on all of Lysoen Island. Lysoen Island is an incredibly beautiful and peaceful place. The serenity that overwhelmed me while I was there made me think that this was a place Emerson or Thorough would have made home had one of them ever encountered it. After lunch Kevin (having just woken up), Charlie, and I took the funicular up Bergen’s famous Mount Bergen and then hiked to the summit. It took about three hours both ways and was one of the most spectacular hikes I have ever taken (maybe second to King Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh). The weather was beautiful, with barely a cloud in the sky and no rain all day. When we got back we were exhausted. We are dinner, and then went to hang out in Jess and Krista’s room where we journaled and watched Mulan, since it was playing on the loop (every night on the ship there are three movies that play over and over on three different channels).

The next day I participated in a tour called “Norway in a Nutshell.” It was incredible. We took a train to Myrgdal, where we then hiked to Flam and took the famous Flam Railway for awhile before stopping for a Norwegian Buffet (lots and lots of fish). We stopped in Voss for awhile to explore and then returned to Bergen. It was an all day trip and it was absolutely incredible. I saw some of the most incredible waterfalls I have ever seen and we climbed thirteen ridiculous switchbacks with a bus—I think that some of the passengers feared for their lives. Since it was our last night in Norway we went out again. We saw Heidi and some of our other Norwegian friends at the same underground pub we had been at on Kevin’s birthday. We went to a couple of bars before ending up at a nightclub called Downstairs. It was a ton of fun and we stayed out until about 5. We got ice cream on the way back to the ship. I woke up relatively early the next day and had a speaker talk about Norway’s history, even though she was supposed to be discussing Norway and its relationship with the EU. She was a fairly good speaker, and it was pretty interesting. I walked around Bergen one last time, stopping at Bryggen to explore it fully, before going to the library to use the internet for awhile. I thought the internet would stay open until 5, but it ended up closing at 4:30 and I got kicked out before I could post this entry.

My overall thoughts on Bergen and western Norway in general are extremely positive. It is a safe, beautiful place filled with relatively friendly people and I would recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to pass through it.

Leg 1: Halifax to Bergen

2008-07-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

This past week at sea has been the longest and the shortest of my life. The days at sea seem to drag on (not in a negative way, but in an I-can’t-wait-to-get-to-Norway sort of way) and the late sunsets don’t make things go by any more quickly. However, as we approach Norwegian soil it seems as if the past eight days have flown by. It seems as if I have known my friends on the ship for months, and we are already well into the daily routine of our course schedules an extracurricular activities, yet we are all still adjusting to the fierce rocking of the ship and close living quarters. In summation, half of the muses of daily life seem to be flying by while the other’s move along at a snail’s pace.

I am taking three classes, and so far I find each of them to be pretty interesting. My first class (which is at 8 AM) is called “The Business, Politics, and Culture of the European Union” and is extremely interesting. Our professor is from the University of Virginia and I like him a lot. Immediately following this class is Global Studies, which all students on board are required to take. There are two sections, both with about 300, and this class is a bit difficult for me to feel actively engaged in because I have not taken a 300-person lecture in quite some time, but the professor tries his best to keep things interesting. This is basically a history class (with a bit of anthropology) that will tie all of the ports that we will be visiting together, but there is a definite focus on Russia and tying Russia to all of the other places we will go to. After this class I have a three-hour break (I usually work out and then eat lunch and then sit on the deck and read for awhile if the weather is nice) before my third class. My last class is called “Russia and the Problem of Economic Development.” My professor is from England originally but has lived in Australia for upwards of 30 years and is an instructor at La Trobe University in Melbourne. This class is also enjoyable but we have in insane amount of reading for it.

In the evenings we have these sessions called “community colleges,” and there are one or two options a night and they are not mandatory by any means, but I have gone every night because I have found them to be some of the most interesting lessons I have ever had. So far I have attended one on the Euro, one called “What is Culture?”, and one that was all about GPS. These are all taught by faculty members, and usually about 25 or 30 people go, but most of the attendees are the lifelong learners on board the ship. The life long learners range in age from 23 to 87 or something like that. I think there are about 40 of them, and for them this is basically an extended cruise with opportunities to sit in on whatever classes they want to. They also can go on any of the field programs they choose to sign up for.

The meals on the ship are adequate, although I feel like I have been eating a lot of rice, pasta, bread, and potatoes, and everything is extremely salty. At night I have been hanging out with a group of about ten people, and I spend the majority of my time with them but have been making a point of meeting a few new people every day.

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on ship made me realize just how vast this body of water is. It’s been a long and short journey thus far, but I think that the next couple of months are going to fly by, since we only half a few days at most between each port from here on out. Norway is definitely one of the ports I was most excited about, and I am more than ready to put my feet on solid ground.

Leg 1: Halifax to Bergen

2008-06-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

I am just about done writing this post but am being kicked out of the library in Bergen. Will post ASAP!!

Halifax

2008-06-27T07:25:00.001-07:00

We set off at about 9:30 in the morning, and drove to Halifax, taking a detour to finish the drive we had started the day before along the Cabot Trail. While we could tell that the landscape we passed through was some of the best nature has to offer, visibility was not more than thirty or forty feet in most places and it rained almost the entire way to Halifax (a seven-hour drive, partly due to inclement weather).

Once in Halifax (where the weather was beautiful—55 degrees and sunny), we checked into the Holiday Inn and found a place to eat. We had wonderful Thai food, perfectly spiced and deliciously flavored). I drank a couple of Singhas (a Thai beer), and really enjoyed those as well. That night, I went to the Westin (where most SASers were staying) and met up with about thirty others who would be sailing with me. It was on this night that I met most of the people I am spending time with today. I stayed out until about 2 AM, enjoying Halifax’s exciting nightlife.

On the 14^th we went to the Citadel of Halifax, an impressive fortress where we went on a guided tour and then roamed the grounds of. We spent a couple of hours at the Citadel, staying until the noon cannon’s roar sounded across the entire city of Halifax. After eating lunch, my parents went to the parent event that Semester at Sea had planned and I was walking back to the Holiday Inn (after discovering that students were not allowed to attend the event) when I ran into some of the people I had hung out with the night before. We went to a Mexican Restaurant, and I had churros as a meal. Once my parents were done with their event, we went to a Canadian grocery store and then got some quality Indian food (I had the chance to eat some of my spicy foods of choice which I didn’t think I would be eating for quite some time). I spent some time with my parents, knowing that I would not be seeing too much of them for the next year plus L, and then went out with some Semester at Sea people. I stayed out until just after 1, and then headed back to the hotel for a couple hours of sleep before boarding.

Cape Breton, undoubtedly one of the most dramatically beautiful places on earth.

2008-06-27T07:24:00.001-07:00

The flight that my mom and I took from New York La Guardia to Halifax was smooth, and Air Canada is a great airline in my opinion. Halifax’s airport is also one of the nicest that I have ever been in. Customs went smoothly, and my mom and I met my dad in the terminal where he had been waiting for us for awhile. We got into our rental vehicle, a Chevy Uplander, and headed for New Glasgow. We spent the night at the Country Inn and Suites in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, which was nice. We set off super early the next morning (Thursday, July 12^th) for Cape Breton. The drive was spectacular, and my parents and I were duly impressed by the scenic landscape. Picture stark red and brown cliffs jutting out over a sea of every different cover blue imaginable to the human mind. Imagine dense forests with thousands of species of trees cohabiting the soil, ranging in the color from the lightest green to the darkest evergreen.

We spent the night at the Lantern Hill and Hollow, a bed and breakfast type place where we rented a private cottage directly on the beach. Even with the windows closed, we could hear the ocean waves crashing violently against the rugged shoreline. The cottage was incredible, a place I would love to spend a week or two at some summer. Our dinner was great, and my parents and I just lazed around in the evening, watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and sipping on tea. I slept like a king this night, getting eight solid hours of sleep for the last time in awhile (I am pretty sure I will never sleep more than five or six a night while on Semester at Sea).

My first ever Philly Cheesesteak.

2008-06-27T07:23:00.001-07:00

After my mom met up with me, we went to Philadelphia for a day trip on Tuesday, June 10^th. It was scorching hot and, once again, very humid. We both loved Philadelphia nonetheless. Neither of us had ever been, so even though the primary reason for our visit was for me to explore the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, we took a hop-on, hop-off tour and checked out the Liberty Bell and the historic district of Philadelphia. Our tour was amazing, and I was highly impressed by the aesthetic makeup of Philly, as well as the diverse architecture that makes up the city buildings. The residential districts on and around Pine Street were my favorite. We had lunch at Jim’s, which has been serving Philly Cheesestakes since 1929 (or was it 1939?). My Jim’s steak was my first ever, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After lunch, my mom and I walked from the Delaware past the Schuylkill River and started to explore UPenn. The undergraduate campus was phenomenal, and the law school was incredibly nice as well. After touring it, I can definitely say that I can see myself attending UPenn Law. We had tickets for a guided tour of Independence Hall, but since we spent so much time touring Penn’s campus (thanks for bearing with me, mom!!) we did not make it back to the city center for the tour.

Sidenote: My mom and I took Bolt Bus round trip from NYC to Philly, and I highly recommend this company to anyone traveling between major cities on the east coast. Out tickets were about $5 a person, each way, and the buses were clean, the drivers friendly, and the buses were wired with an incredible internet connection.

New York

2008-06-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been keeping up with my blog very well, as it is now June 16^th and I am going to try to catch up from June 4^th to now. Instead of keeping a daily account, I am going to split this into sections on New York, Philadelphia, and Cape Breton.

I flew into New York on June 4^th and stayed with my friend Jessica until the 9^th, when I met up with my mom and we stayed at the Manhattan Broadway Hotel on 38^th Street and 8^th Avenue. I do not recommend this hotel, only because I think it is far overpriced. The accommodations were fine, but for $250 a night, they were sub par (decent beds, paper-thin towels, and broken air conditioning).

Jessica’s dorm (Palladium at Union Square) was, on the other hand, extremely nice. Her roommates were all friendly, and it was great to get to see her again, although she had been hosting people in her room for like two solid weeks and I felt bad that I was keeping her from her normal daily routine.

Since I was fortunate enough to have gone to New York in the spring of 2007, I did not feel pressed to do everything that a first-time traveler to the city might try to do (i.e. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Empire State Building, etc.). Instead, I spent my time exploring the parks and visiting the boroughs outside of Manhattan. I walked almost the entire island of Manhattan my first day, traversing Central Park from the Southeast Corner (59^th St. and 5^th Ave.) to the Northwest Corner (110^th St. and Avenue of the Americas). I crossed the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, explored Williamsburg by foot, and then crossed back over to Manhattan. I explored the United Nations headquarters, and spent the better part of a day in Tryon Park, which I absolutely loved. I went to a Yankees game and explored the Bronx with Kristie, a friend of mine and Jessica. I highly recommend checking out the “Little Italy” in the Bronx, as I liked it better than that which lies on Manhattan Island. Kristie showed Jess and me her campus, Fordham, which I was also really impressed by. I went to Magnolia (a well-known cupcake establishment) and Max Brenner’s (a pilgrimage for chocolate lovers world-wide). Most of the food that I ate was delicious, and I had an all-around good time.

While in New York, I also had the opportunity to explore the German building on UN Plaza, where I met up with Brid, who works for the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dients), which is the organization that will be funding my experience abroad in Germany. I met up with my friend Danielle from school, and she happened to be staying in the same building from me, and we could see each other through our windows as we were across the Palladium Courtyard from each other. The weather in New York was very pleasant the first few days I was there, but the last half of my trip it was pretty miserable. The temperature was in the upper-nineties, with humidity levels hovering at or near a maximum.

I apologize for the sporadic placement of the events of my trip to New York, the simple sentence structure (“I,” I,” “I”). I do not think I have ever let so much time elapse between my actually travels and my account of them.

Getting ready for the longest boat ride of my life.

2008-05-31T22:12:00.001-07:00

So the simple fact that more than two months have passed since I returned from China and last wrote in this blog is an eery indicator of how quickly this next year of travel, study, and research is going to go by for me. I feel like life in an area I am familiar with, a daily cycle that is relatively routine, is flying by. Next year is going to be crazy...

So I haven't done any serious traveling since March. I finished up school in Tucson and came home about two weeks ago now. I have been doing some data entry for a professor, and living a pretty low-key, slowly paced lifestyle. But now it's time to get cracking.

On Wednesday I will fly to New York, where I will be staying with my good friend Jessica and exploring parts of New York City I have yet to see. I plan on going to Coney Island and the New York Public Library. I might also take the boat out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island since last time I went Ellis Island was closing for the day and we weren't allowed to get off there. Jess and I also have tickets to Rent, so I will get to see it before it goes off Broadway, and to a New York Yankees game. I am excited about both of these. My mom is going to be meeting me in New York and then we are going to head off to Philadelphia. Neither of us have been there so we want to revel in its historic glory and I also want to check out Penn's law school, which is currently one of my top two law school choices.

After a week in New York my mom and I will fly to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and meet up with my dad. We will then be dricing to New Glasgow and onto Cape Breton, where we will stay in a town called Ingonish. It looks beautiful. After we leave Ingonish we are going to spend a couple of nights in Halifax, probably check out the Citadel, and then I board the MV Explorer early on the morning of the 15th and will set sail that evening.

I am extremely excited about this voyage, but I have felt like I had so much time to prepare and suddenly I face no time at all. I have a lot of loose ends to wrap up before I take off, and I have to somehow pack my life into a couple of bags for the next eighty days. To further complicate things (and I am in no way complaining), I need to be sure that I leave my academic and personal affairs in a state that they won't have to be tended to much once I return because I will have about a week to pack up and prepare for my year in Germany. Oh man. I better get ready for some serious blogging.

In case anyone is wondering, I will be keeping a blog from Semester at Sea. I plan to update it frequently, but I don't think it will include pictures until I am gone. Internet on the ship is supposed to be extremely slow and it is also very expensive, so I plan on posting from internet cafes, and I don't think I will have the time to upload pictures to a flash drive and bring them with me to an internet cafe. I will try my hardest to get some pictures uploaded upon my return, but I cannot make any promises since I will simultaneously be busy preparing for my year in Freiburg, Germany.

Sorry if this was a boring post, but I don't think I have a strong following yet anyway, so chances are I am the only one who had to sit through this.

Signing off from Fountain Hills, Arizona,

Jason

Overall Impression of China

2008-03-24T02:17:00.000-07:00

March 24, 2008

Perhaps I should actually title this blog entry "overall impression of Shanghai," as I really did not venture too far from there my whole trip.

I slept for a few hours last night, but am wondering how I am going to make it through this 40-hour plus day. This morning I woke up a bit after six, and rolled out of bed at seven to walk with Steph to her school and look around. I helped her grade a few tests, and then took off to go shower, change, and pack. After I finally finished packing (I’m not sure it has ever taken me so long), I made my way to the bus station, where I took a sketchy van instead of a bus to the metro station. The sketchy van wasn’t bad, and I was glad I took it instead of waiting for the bus. I took the metro to Longyang Station, where there is this thing called the Maglev train that takespassengers the 30 kilometers that lie between the station and the airport; That’s roughly 19 miles. The train takes between six and seven minutes. Our top speed was 431 km/hr. I took pictures. I got through everything quickly at the airport, although when my baggage was examined the attendant seemed wildly suspicious of my contact case. I sure hope my baggage gets through…

Right now I am sitting at Pudong International Airport, with just about thirty minutes left before boarding for the three-hour flight to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I lay over for about an hour, and then I take the thirteen-hour flight to L.A. (much shorter than the flight here was) Once in L.A., I am schedules to have a six-hour layover but hope to get through customs quickly and catch an earlier flight back to Tucson. Then two hours later I will arrive in Tucson. Then I have two consecutive play practices, finishing at 1 AM. I have class at 8 AM tomorrow morning. It should be an exciting time.

Right now I am at Hong Kong International Airport again.

Signing off from Hong Kong,

Jason

Leaving Shanghai...

2008-03-24T02:15:00.000-07:00

STOP!!!!

Some friends in Xintiandi!!

The last of the delicious desserts I ate in China.
Iced urinals were common in upscale restaurants.

The SMIC School that Steph teaches at.

March 24, 2008

A Darn Good International Breakfast Buffet

2008-03-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

View of the Bund from a super nice restaurant in Shanghai.

A dessert made with tofu...hmmm.

Being a street musician for probably the only time in my life.

This would be the frog that I ate...

The German Centre, where I ate an Easter buffet brunch.

March 23, 2008

This morning we went to the German Centre nearby for an international brunch, that was absolutely delicious. I had some German Brezel and Schnitzel (a taste of what the food I eat next year should be like J) and also had some pretty good Thai Curry, a delicious waffle, and assorted breads, with Crème Brule and strawberry tarts for dessert. While the food was mostly western, it was actually really tasty. After brunch we walked back to the living quarters, and then headed off to the touristy area near the YuYuan Gardens for my last shopping extravaganza. I must say that I am not going to miss shopping here at all; bargaining is just downright stressful. We shopped for awhile, and I found an ugly growing suitcase to put all of my newly acquired belongings into on the flight home.

After shopping for far too long we went to the Xintiandi district again for another great meal, Taiwanese food this time. The dinner was good but the desserts were some of the best I have ever had. We ordered four monstrous dessert dishes to split between the four of us. It was a great last supper in China. We took some group photos in Xintiandi and then headed back to the living quarters, one last time for me.

The Muse

2008-03-24T02:12:00.000-07:00

The Muse, a Shanghainese Nightclub

The bar at the Muse.

Food preparation at a traditional Shanghainese food restaurant.

Mmm...jellyfish.
Incredible shrimp and pork dumplings.

March 22, 2008

Last night after I got back I went to Steph’s church again, Thanksgiving Church, to watch the youth group perform a play they had written, directed, the works. It was pretty impressive. Then after this we went out, Shanghai style. We first went to a posh club named Muse, which was very expensive just to get in to (even by western standards). Despite the cost, it was wildly popular, and once we got inside there wasn’t even breathing room. I had gone out with Steph and some of her friends, one of whom had friends from Denmark in town so they were there too and I chatted with the two of them for awhile. We stayed at Muse for awhile, and then once we all finally started dancing the DJ blew a fuse and the power went out in the whole place. It was a bizarre experience, because it was pitch-black but people were still crammed five to a square foot and you didn’t know which way was the exit or anything. Once we finally found the exit, we found people arguing fiercely with the bouncers, upset that they had paid so much money only to come in and have the power go out on them. It was kind of funny to watch, but I don’t think anybody received a refund. We left here to go to Xintiandi, where we planned to go to Paulaner, a German-style pub. However, it was just about 2 when we got there and the pub was closing, so we checked into a restaurant/bar by the name of Rendezvous, also in Xintiandi. There were a lot of older people here getting their groove on, and the atmosphere was extremely relaxed. We had a good time, staying for just over an hour. Then we decided to call it a night, taking a cab home.

I slept in a bit this morning, which was nice. When I woke up, it was pouring rain outside, as it had been all night and even while we were out the night before it had been sprinkling a bit. It didn’t look like it would clear up at all, and I had a few cups of the Jasmine tea I had purchased at Tea Mountain. Once Steph got back from tutoring a couple of her students, we went to lunch at an upscale Shanghainese restaurant (I don’t remember the name, but it is a chain and there is one in Los Angeles). The food was great. Even the jellyfish wasn’t that bad. And I also had tofu as a dessert for the first time ever, which was interesting and pretty good.

After lunch we met some of Steph’s friends at the metro station nearest them to play some music/sing street-style for the locals again. People seemed to really enjoy it again, and I told them all that they should really do it regularly (not for the money, because it doesn’t really pay well, but for fun).

We played for awhile, and then headed back to the living quarters. Steph had to teach piano lessons, so I went up to the room and took care of some e-mails and then when she was done I went with her and some of her friends to a Sichuan (or as we would say, Szechuan) restaurant. It was really good, and I ate some frog for the first time ever. After dinner, we went back to the apartment and Nicky and I entertained the others by rehearsing a scene for Closer before we watched Music and Lyrics. I hadn’t seen the movie before, and ended up quite enjoying it.

After the movie, I stayed up for a bit memorizing some scenes and then went to bed.

The "Venice of the East"

2008-03-24T02:10:00.000-07:00

The Gardens in Suzhou

A room inside of the Gardens

The largest river that runs through Suzhou (it stretches from Beijing to Hanzhou)

A Pagoda in Suzhou

Zhouzhuang: The "Venice of the East"
March 21, 2008

I set off this morning on my third Gray Line tour since arriving in China. After a two-hour bus ride, my three travel comrades, out tour guide, and I arrived in Suzhou. We went to a garden (I will add the name in here when I find it) that was very pretty, but reminded me a lot of the YuYuan Gardens I went to in Shanghai on Monday. After this we went to the silk factory, where we were able to observe the production of silk from worm to fabric. This was pretty neat, and was of course followed by an opportunity to purchase some silk products. I gave in, splurging on gifts for family members. After this, we had lunch at a western place, which I would have to say was a bit to my dismay because we were supposed to be served another traditional Chinese lunch. However, the two previous Chinese lunches were so spectacular that I wasn’t going to complain. The western food was not so great though, and it was strange eating with silverware.

After lunch, we stopped at “The Grand Canal” for some pictures with a bridge and a pagoda (I have noticed that many of the pagodas I have seen here look extremely similar to one another) before driving forty-five minutes to Zhouzhuang, the “Venice of the East.” Zhouzhuang really is a marvelous place, and while I have not yet been to Venice I imagined the canal set-up to be very similar to that of Zhouzhuang. We took a canal cruise, on which we were serenaded in Mandarin by our punter (who I must say cannot sing much better than I can). This cruise through the canals of the water village was the highlight of my day. After the cruise we were given a half hour for shopping, and I bought more souvenirs and gifts than I had combined up to this point.

Right now we are on the way back into Shanghai, stuck in the middle of some horrible traffic.

The Chinese Cold

2008-03-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

The flag of the National Communist Party

A Chinese Post Office Drop Box

Expo, he is the symbol for the 2010 Expo

The Pearl TV Tower

March 20, 2008

This morning I woke up feeling quite unwell. I have definitely caught a nasty Chinese cold. I didn’t have any pressing plans so I lay in bed for awhile after awakening, but failed to fall back asleep. I showered, dressed, and set off for the day, again grabbing some lunch at the tasty noodle place near the Living Quarters. First on the agenda for today was the Memorial to the First Meeting of the National Communist Party. This was another neat museum (it was not just a memorial). After this I went to the park nearby Xin tian di and memorized a few more scenes for Closer (I am extraordinarily behind). Then I went to Nanjing Road en route to the Bund Tourist Tunnel. I exited East Nanjing station from a different exit than I normally do, and stumbled upon a massage parlor…

Now people have been telling me to get a massage here because the masseuses are usually qualified and the massages are cheap. My feet ached, I wasn’t feeling well, and so I figured what the heck. I was taken up five flights on an elevator only to find prices with descriptions that were slightly different than the ones outside. And by slightly I mean three times as much. Due to this unexpected change, I settled on a sixty minute foot massage, which actually turned out to be about a seventy-five minute full body massage. So if you are getting a massage in China, don’t pay too much attention to the descriptions. My theory is that if you get a massage that specializes on one part of the body the masseuse or masseur will get bored after awhile and just start massaging your whole body anyway. Regardless, I had a very nice full-body massage for the equivalent of ten U.S. dollars.

After the massage I finally made my way to the tourist tunnel, which was really just a freaky deaky lights show underneath the Huangpu River. In my opinion, it is a waste of 50 Yuan and I would not recommend it. After the tourist tunnel, I headed to the metro but was stopped by a man who was desperate to sell me a purse. Since I had a couple of specific purse requests, I followed him the “one minute” to his “shop” he had asked, and left after being told the bag I was looking at would cost me 1,000 RMB. (Side note: 1 RMB=1 Chinese Yuan=1 Quay=1 CNY=.15 USD) There are several names for one Chinese dollar. After escaping that trap I headed to the metro, and had a guy who wanted to shine my shoes (yes, this guy wanted to shine my cheap and filthy boat shoes?) start to chase me. I told him no and walked briskly away (for those of you who don’t know me, my brisk walk is a light jog for most human beings, and a sprint for most Chinese human beings). Well… he kept on chasing me, finally catching up to me and spraying some white goop that strongly resembles bird poo on my left shoe. When I continued to walk, he finally gave up. I was not happy. This white “shoe cleaner” is still on my shoe and I can’t get it off.

When I returned to the Living Quarters, I grabbed some sweet bread from a street vendor and stopped by my room to drop off my new possessions and grab my Bible before heading off to the bible study Steph invited me to. The bible study was a great experience, and I realized that I really enjoy listening to non-native English speakers tell personal stories, because their word choice often makes me think about things in a different light than I otherwise would. The food at the bible study was potluck and was also quite tasty (Asian, thank goodness). After the bible study a few of us went to Starbucks and Steph started to play her guitar. We could tell that people in Starbucks really liked it, so we moved on out to the metro station when Starbucks closed and Steph played for two more hours while we sang along. We put out her guitar case for donations, and she ended up getting a surprising amount. People were really into it. Street vendors were bumping along, asking us to dance to the music. Several people came off the metro and approached us, asking us for the titles of some songs and trying to find out if we were a band. If Steph had a CD and had copies out there with her, I am sure that several would have been purchased that night. She is truly talented though. I told her she sounds like Jewel, but better.

We got back pretty late and I had a tour really early, so I went to bed right away but could not fall asleep for a long time unfortunately. This was the first time I have had trouble falling asleep since I got here. Anyway, I got a few hours which was enough to be chipper this morning for the day I had ahead of me.

Traipsing around Shanghai

2008-03-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

A pizza hut in China; the pizza huts are all geographically themed (the servers here are in turbans); this shot is blurry because the cashier was staring at me for taking a picture...

Under the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition; a traditional 1930s Shanghai street

Model of the PuDong skyline

This is just a small bit of the most amazing scaled-down city model I have ever seen.

Countdown to the 2010 World Expo, which will be held in Shanghai

March 19, 2008

Today I slept in until about 8 since I didn’t have a tour to wake up for. I woke up and updated my blog and tended to my e-mails before setting off for the day. I ate lunch at the noodle place I went to the first day, and got the same dish and added more spice to it. It was delicious. Then I went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition/Museum, which was spectacular. The museum has the history of Shanghai’s zoning and architecture, as well as a scaled-down replica of Shanghai that blew my mind. There is also a lot of information on what direction Shanghai has gone in for the past several years, and where it is headed (in terms of infrastructure, tourism, business, etc.). I highly recommend this museum to anyone coming to Shanghai. After this, I went to a couple of parks to sit down at and memorize some of my lines for Closer. For dinner I went to this restaurant called Element Fresh with Steph and some of her friends. It was primarily a western restaurant, but I ordered off the China Tastes menu and got some black pepper chicken with rice. It was really good. After this we headed back and I fell asleep almost instantly (this is becoming routine for me in China).

Hangzhou: Heaven on Earth

2008-03-24T02:06:00.000-07:00

Standing in front of the Geat Pagoda, 13 stories

Tea Mountain

Giant teapot at Tea Museum in Hangzhou

My Chinese tea customs instructor!!

All of the buildings in Hangzhou are COVERED in advertisements, no windows!!

A man-made bridge built an extremely long time ago, through the fog.

In front of the Nine Creeks' waterfall

The Westlake in Hangzhou; it's stunningly serene

March 18, 2008

I woke up at 5:30 this morning to be sure I would make it to the JJ Oriental Pearl in time for my pick up. Little did I know that the buses didn’t start running until just before 7, so I was forced to take a taxi and arrived at the hotel extremely early. It was okay though because Helen, our tour guide, also arrived early before the van and we chatted for awhile. She was also my tour guide on the previous day. It was pouring rain this morning, and it took us more than three hours to get to Hangzhou. It was fine though, because Helen is a great tour guide and we also had Becky and Rob (from Indiana) on our tour again, with their daughter Ali this time.

We drove through some rural landscape on the way to Shanghai, which was exciting for me because I had not seen any on the ground since arriving in China. My first impression of Hangzhou when arriving was shock at the size of the city. It has a population of around 6 million, and I was expecting a little village. The buildings were covered in advertisements from the second story to the top story (no windows). Regardless of the size, it had a very nice air to it immediately.

We first went to the giant pagoda, built 1,000 years ago. It was 13 stories tall and quite nice. After this, we headed off to a waterfall called Nine Creeks. This was very pretty and felt very far away from the city, even though it was only a few minutes. Next we went to Tea Mountain, where China’s best green tea has been picked and dried for nearly 2,000 years. We went to this place that shows how tea is dried and has the history of the mountain, and then we had a proper Chinese tea and learned the tea customs which was great. Our tea instructor was fantastic, a cute little Chinese lady with the sweetest accent I have ever heard. This might sound crazy, but if you watch the video I took and listen to her voice you will agree and maybe I won’t sound so strange. The tea ceremony was wonderful, and was followed by another traditional Chinese lunch, which was of course delicious. After lunch we took a boat on the famous West Lake, a natural lake in Hangzhou that dates back more than 2,000 years. This was a very beautiful experience, and we had the chance to see the picture of the three underwater pagodas that grace the backside of the 1 Yuan note.

After the boat ride on the lake we headed back to Hangfzhou. The ride was very long, nearly three hours again. I asked the driver to drop me off a the first metro we came to, and I took the metro for about an hour and then got on a bus to try to get the address to meet Steph and Angie for dinner. I, however, happened to get on the wrong bus (first time!!) so I got off at a stop and took a taxi to the restaurant where Steph and Angie were eating. It was only a minor fiasco. Anyway, I had western food (a club sandwich) for the first time since arriving in China (actually since before leaving the states because my last two meals there were at Chinese and Thai restaurants and we were of course served Asian food on the planes). The sandwich was good, but I like the food here so much I would be fine not eating western food for the duration of my stay here. After dinner I went right to bed.

Shanghai Highlights

2008-03-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

The Bund at night

The PuDong skyline at night

Shanghai Museum

The opening of a freshwater oyster

Jade Buddha Temple Courtyard

March 17, 2008

This morning I work up very early (around 4:00 AM) and could not get back to sleep. I lay in bed for awhile, and then got up around 5:30 to start getting ready for my tour. After some coffee I left the apartment at 7, at the same time Steph was headed off to her school, which is just a stone’s throw away from her apartment. I got some warm soy milk and ran to catch the bus to the metro. I got off the metro at Century Park, where I flew a kite yesterday, and walked to the Jin Jao Sofitel Hotel where I was to be picked up by my tour bus. I arrived extremely early, so I ate a coconut Danish and some Chinese pastry while I was waiting. The tour “bus” came, which was in itself quite an interesting manmade creation. Oh, and on a sidenote, I learned today that seatbelts are only installed in front seats in vehicles over here (still not sure why).

After making another pickup, our tour’s first stop was at the Shanghai Museum, where I viewed collections of Chinese furniture from the Qing and Ming dynasties, Chinese coins dating back to the days before Christ, and incredible pottery and porcelain collection dating back to the Neolithic Age, a collection of Chinese dress through the ages, and some other pretty exciting stuff. After seeing the museum, we made a stop at a freshwater pearl factory, where we watched an employee bust open a five-year old freshwater oyster with several dozen pearls inside. I was suckered into buying some jewelry here for my family members, despite telling the saleswoman I was not going to buy anything no matter how long she begged and how low she made the prices…go figure. After this, we headed off to the Jade Buddha Temple, which was really neat. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any pictures of the “Jade Buddha,” but I got to take pictures of everything else, including a fake Jade Buddha!!

We dined at a really neat traditional Chinese restaurant, with intricate décor and live entertainment (umbrella dancers and some other forms of entertainment). The food was great, and it was served family style, with several meat dishes, one vegetarian dish, soup, tea, rice of course, and fruit for dessert. Fortune cookies don’t exist here, by the way—or at least I haven’t found one yet and I have eaten each of my meals at a Chinese restaurant. This concluded the morning part of the tour, and we went to another hotel to pick up three more tourists before heading over to the French Concession. The French Concession is a beautiful area, with architecture that was screaming my name and a lot of upscale restaurants with foods from all over the world (there was even a German Biergarten). I also think I located the Communist Museum that Kathy had told me I needed to find, so I am going to definitely go back and try to get in to see everything. We walked through a park in the Concession, and then got in the car to go to Yu Gardens. Outside YuYuan I was hounded by watch salespeople again, and I also got to see Shanghai’s (and maybe China’s) first Starbucks. It was established in 2001. So the Yu Gardens are fantastic. I walked through the gates expecting a myriad of blooming flowers to present themselves to me, but instead realized that the beauty of these gardens is in the rockwork. Rock is imported from other locations and assembled in ways that are aesthetically pleasing. I guess that having a top-notch rock garden in China is like hitting the nirvana of feng shui. After the gardens we went to the Bund, where I had already been, and looked at the skyscrapers from across the Huangpu River again. Having seen this, I skipped out a little early and walked down Nanjing Road where I did some window shopping (purchased nothing!!) and then got myself some sugarcane lemon juice for the metro ride back to Steph’s apartment.

I went to dinner with Steph and her friend Angie at a Szechuan restaurant, and the food was delicious. My favorite dish was this spicy fish dish, which is bizarre because I am normally not the biggest fish fan. I finally tried some Tsing Tao, and it was pretty good—very flavorful. After dinner I crashed.

Chinese Kite Flying.

2008-03-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

East Nanjing Road, a major shopping district
The PuDong skyline during day

The Bund

Kite flying in Century Park

Steph flying the kite in Century Park

March 16, 2008

So this morning I went to the Thanksgiving Church, where Steph sings and plays the guitar (and I think the drums as well). She is pretty impressive. The church service was nice (in English, so that helped), and I also realized that even though I will be in China for Easter this year, I will have the opportunity to go to church. After church we headed off to this place called People 7, a really posh restaurant, hidden and not advertised at all, for lunch. I can honestly say this place is the coolest restaurant I have ever been to. To get in, one needs to enter a code using a grid of holes that fit human arms into them. After getting in, I was floored. The restaurant is basically a giant warehouse, reminiscent of the settings one can choose for a Halo battle on X-Box, but with the most modern décor imaginable. The serving staff was dressed very professionally, and the bar was the most ridiculous of any I have ever seen. We were there for the lunch special, which consisted of a green salad, a seafood soup, two meat or tofu dishes from the menu, all you can eat of the best rice in the world, and then tea or coffee for dessert. That is per person, two dishes per person. The total was 38 RMB, which is just over $5, but due to the crappy exchange rate I used to change money it was about $6.20 for me (boo hoo). I could not believe it. This meal in a restaurant with the same ambience would easily cost $80 plus, and well over a hundred in a city like Los Angeles or New York. So after we ordered, Steph told me I had to go check out the bathrooms…so I did. I figured there would be something funky about them, due to the method of entry one must use at the front door. And there was. The bathrooms are another guessing game, as they are designed with a door knob that one might think would twist and open the door. Ultimately one has to push on the side of the door without a door knob, but I only figured this out after pushing on every other side, knocking, and speaking to the door in my many attempts to get it open.

So after a good few hours at the restaurant (it was a delicious and leisurely meal), Steph and I headed out and walked around that area of the city for awhile. We passed a candy shop where the employees wore these little hats as part of their uniforms—I wanted to take a picture with them, and regret not doing so, but I didn’t buy anything so I thought it might have been rude. Oh and yesterday I was a target for watch sellers, today it was “hashish, gentleman? Hashish? Ha.

So after Steph asked what I wanted to she told me about these dessert drinks that consisted of aloe, mango, and coconut milk. Naturally I wanted to try one. We ordered them and set off in search of a park (there are many “parks” in Shanghai, but not so many parks, if that makes sense). It seems as if every other metro stop is something Park, but most of them are technological parks or something of that sort. We decided to try out Century Park, and after getting off the metro stop there and walking for a few moments we found an honest, legitimate park, the “Central Park” of Shanghai, I would venture to say. Outside the park I bought a kite, and then we found out there was an entry fee as well, but it was all a miniscule amount to pay for the fun we were about to have. The park centers around a gigantic lake, which a river runs into. It is also filled with all different sorts of foliage, and I took a ton of pictures of trees I had never encountered before. In searching for a place to fly our kite, we stumbled upon an amphitheatre. At first I thought we would have to find a new location, as it seemed to be Lover’s Amphitheatre, with couples spread out and cuddling, but there were giant grassy areas like none we had found yet and it was coming up on park closing time. So with mild trepidation, I started to fly my kite. I got it off without a hitch, and set it far into the sky. I forgot how much fun kite flying is. And this was all very appropriate, because just yesterday on the plane flight I started to read The Kite Runner, and was thinking to myself how much fun it would be to fly a kite.

We left the park and headed back to the apartment, stopping along the way for some delicious flatbread—I think I will buy this flat bread every night that I have left here. Then we got back to the apartment just in time for Steph’s Chinese lesson, which I sat in on. I had the chance to meet some of her fellow teachers, and they were all very nice. I would also say that my Chinese vocabulary is up to about twenty words now. After the Chinese lesson we hung around for a bit while Steph taught one of her friends how to play the guitar. As soon as we got back to the apartment I crashed again. And I have been trying to update my blog for the past two days but can rarely find a wireless connection here.

And my streak of jetlag immunity continues...

2008-03-24T01:57:00.000-07:00

The River Yangtze from the Air

The water was really this color
Since I was traveling alone, I had to practice taking pictures of myself

PuDong International Airport

My first meal in China. It cost about $1.30.

March 16, 2008

I stayed up until almost 11 last night, and woke up this morning at 8 AM feeling refreshed and ready to go, although I do think my lungs took a hit from the intensity of the pollution Shanghai has to offer. Perhaps some day soon they too will pass a Clean Air Act.

So after my arrival yesterday, I swiftly proceeded through customs and received my bag at baggage claim, only to be greeted by a man who came up to me and said “taxi?” and nodded. Why yes, I think, I am looking for a taxi. So I follow the man for about seven seconds until I realize that he is leading me in the opposite direction of the signs that say “taxi” and the taxi line. I tell him thanks, but I want to go to the taxi line. He pushes, but I don’t budge. I went to the taxi line, and quickly thereafter boarded a taxi for the ride of my life. This was unlike and rollercoaster I have ever been. My taxi driver did not stay in any lane for more than 2.5 seconds at a time for the entire duration of the taxi ride (about 30 minutes). He honked several times, and not only cut people off, but started to pass people while he was at a parallel level on the street with them. He did this all while talking on his cell phone. But he didn’t seem worried, so neither was I. It was kind of enjoyable, and for any of my family reading this I felt like he would have fit right at home driving in the Dominican Republic.

I beat Steph to her apartment, and let myself in with the spare key she had left for me. She returned home just after I got here, and we quickly set off to explore. I had my first traditional Chinese meal at a noodle bar, and the whole dish cost me about $1.50. Not everything is that cheap here, unfortunately (I paid a little over $3 USD for my first water bottle). After this, she showed me how to use the buses and the metro and I got a metro card. We went to East Nanjing Road (a huge tourist trap and shopping area) and walked down to the Bund, which is the best place to see the Pudong (New Shanghai) skyline from across the Huangpu River. It really is a marvel, with such a mix of skyscrapers. Some of them look pretty ugly during the day, but at night really beautiful (I went back later on in the evening). Once my fascination with the Bund subsided slightly, Steph and I walked a few miles to this area of Shanghai with traditional Chinese architecture, and that was so neat!! I want to go back soon, but since it is near the Yu Gardens I think I will be going through there on my tour tomorrow. We had some traditional Chinese desserts (some pumpkin cake things and then these hot dough balls filled with sesame paste. I am being quite adventurous with my eating habits here.

After spending a few hours walking around this architecturally historical Chinese area Stephanie had to get back home to teach a piano lesson, so I headed off to the Bund again to see it by night (and wow, look at the pictures above for proof of its awesomeness). I spent a good hour there and then headed back to the metro station, where I took a bus to the bus stop nearest Steph’s, and then walked back to her place.

After that, I took my first shower in a good 48 hours, and was to pass out.

Weather update: it actually got quite nice here today, upper 50s or maybe even 60 and the sun was very bright; no rain. It cools down very quickly at night though and I wished I had taken more than my light jacket with me on our outing by about 7:30 at the Bund.

Some fun things: they have Tang in a bottle here (way cool, and pretty tasty—I had some today), you can buy tea in a can and it is presented very similarly to beer in a can, and they have these frozen treats that look like popsicles but are actually gigantic frozen gummies on a stick (they last a long time and do not melt on you).

My first impressions of both Hong Kong and Shanghai have been very positive, although I think it is safe to assume that most Chinese vendors believe that watches are the most desirable possession to any white man, because I was asked about 89 times today/this evening if I wanted a watch (aka “watchy, watchy!!), and the second-most frequent purchase request I was burdened with were these gooey pig toys, with a total count of just 4.

From the air...

2008-03-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong Runway

"Welcome to Hong Kong"

Hong Kong from a distance

Hong Kong from the air

I was high rolling, for once in my life.

March 15, 2008

I am currently flying over the Chinese countryside, speckled with hills and rivers throughout. It is both serene and surreal to me—I cannot believe that I am in China!! The flight I took from Los Angeles to Hong Kong was fifteen hours and the longest flight I have ever been on. The impression I got of Hong Kong from my very short time there was a good one. It is a blessed with natural beauty and filled with skyscrapers. Hong Kong International airport, apparently considered to be the best airport in the world for all five years it has been in existence, is a man-made marvel, completely modern yet with a homely feel to it. I can imagine feeling like I have truly been welcomed home when arriving at that airport if I lived in Hong Kong. On my first flight I watched a handful of films, my favorite being “Atonement,” and my least favorite being “No Country for Old Men.” However, I cannot fairly rate the latter because I could only stomach the first twenty minutes of the film and decided to switch to another movie shortly after. I also dozed off a couple of times on the flight, thanks in part to the nighttime Airborne my wonderful mom discovered for me. This was nice, because I arrived in Hong Kong not completely exhausted. I do wish I could have stayed in Hong Kong for a day or so, and hope to return there for an actual visit sometime.

My flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai has been great thus far, although we just hit a nasty patch of turbulence and I feared that the vibrations might crash my computer. This airline, Cathay Pacific, has done nothing but impress me. I am on a short two-hour flight right now, yet we were served a full meal (rice rolls and pork, with fruit, yogurt, a croissant, apple juice, and coffee). My previous flight had three full meals and a midnight snack of Cup Noodles. I recommend Cathay Pacific to anybody flying to Eastern Asia. We are about to start our descent into Shanghai, so I must stop but I will write later on and hopefully have the opportunity to post this then as well. I am extremely excited (with only mild trepidation) about setting foot in Shanghai without any accompaniment or knowledge of the Shanghainese dialect, yet alone Mandarin Chinese period.

China Bound...

2008-03-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

So I am sitting here thinking about the fact that I will be in China in just over a week. I have never before been so nervously excited about a vacation. I think a lot of this stems from the reality that I was going to be staying with a friend who speaks Chinese fluently, but my friend unfortunately had to return home to the United States. So now I am going to this foreign land, with a language which has characters I am completely unfamiliar with, essentially all by myself. Now if you know me, this seems like something I would love, and quite frankly, I am truly excited about this journey and think I will love it. However, since this will be the most adventurous thing I have ever done, my nerves are a bit on edge. I also think that once I have done this I will feel like I will never again get to feel this same way about an upcoming journey, and I don't want to lose that feeling.

That's really all I have to say for now, but I will hopefully have the opportunity to update this blog while I am in China!!

Signing off from sunny Tucson,

---Jason

P.S. Oh, and that travel internship I was referring to in my last post--I applied for it. I unfortunately made the video at the very last minute and my camera died while I was in the midst of shooting so my video is of such low quality I doubt I will even be contacted for an interview, but I shall let you know!!

Travel Bug

2008-02-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

So I am at home for the first and most likely only time of the semester. I love my family, and I wish I had the opportunity to come back more, but unfortunately I do not. Fountain Hills has been receiving an uncharacteristic amount of rain, and as I was riding home today with a friend I noted aloud how green everything was. It appeared as if there was moss growing from desert floor, and the bushes that are usually dry and a dull green color were so lively. It was shocking.

Anyway, I am sitting here just thinking about the traveling I will be doing over the next year and I am so excited I can't even wait. I also found out about this internship STA Travel has (it is really competitive and I am not even sure if I will apply for it this year yet, but it is so cool). Basically whoever gets the internship gets to travel the world for free, and with a stipend!! In exchange, the intern just needs to blog, take pictures, and take video. Sweet deal, huh? And totally my thing. We'll see what happens.

I am utterly exhausted, and do not have much more to say right now other than I just watched the sun rise on the Freiburg webcam I located (is that creepy? I hope not).

Signing off from home in Fountain Hills, Arizona,

---Jason

Blog name

2008-02-13T11:20:00.000-08:00

So basically I am unsure about the name of my blog, while my initial goal was to make it sound modest I don't think it is modest enough and I almost think it has a pretentious undertone. I'm not sure why I am that unsatisfied with it, but I am. I do plan on making this a long-running blog, so I want it to have a good name. If any of my zero avid readers has a suggestion for me, I would love to hear it. I may right in here before China, but I am not sure. So if you are looking at this blog now, look again in a month because I will be in China and for sure have some fun stuff to write about!!

---Jason

San Francisco

2008-02-12T08:50:00.001-08:00

So I just got back from San Francisco late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and it was my first time ever in that city (aside from having layovers at SFO). I was there for a conference, and unfortunately the schedule was pretty packed, but I still found time to see a bit of the city.

I arrived on Thursday night/Friday morning at around 3 AM, and took a taxi to the Powell Hotel on Powell Street, which I would say is pretty nice and in a great location, but I must warn you that the entire hotel has a minor foul smell to it. I checked into the hotel, turned on CNN to find out what was happening in the world, and went to bed, fully intending to wake up at 7 AM and explore the city for a bit. Well, my alarm went off and I felt like sheisse. I reset my alarm for nine and tried to fall back asleep. I couldn't, so I finally got out of bed at about 8:30, showered, dressed, and wandered around the area for a bit before going to the conference center at 10. The conference was held at San Francisco State University's extension campus, which is essentially on top of a giant upscale shopping mall. It took me awhile to find room 610, where all of our events were to be held.

The conference went until seven, and after that I went to Chinatown with some newfound homies of mine and we headed toward the North Shore. We returned to Powell Street at around midnight, and decided to get some Thai food at a place that was open pretty late. While the restaurant we chose did not have the atmosphere of an authentic Thai restaurant, I was served the tastiest red curry I have ever feasted on. After eating, we returned to the hotel and went to bed. I once again had ambitious plans of waking up early (5:45 to be exact), but this time to go to the Golden Gate Bridge and watch the sunrise. I asked on Friday night if anyone wanted to join me. One girl was mildly interested, but she ended up not waking up in time to join me.

So my alarm went off at 5:45, and while I felt like I could have fallen back asleep until 8 when I would have had to wake up for the conference, I hopped out of bed, dressed, and made my way toward landmark of the East Bay area. I passed Union Square, and sat there for a bit just admiring the architecture of the buildings around me, before moving on. According to a map I had, the Golden Gate Bridge was just more than a mile from my hotel. Well, according to my perception of the map at least. After several minutes, I sensed that I was getting close to water, and then bam, I was directly on the water, staring at a bridge that was definitely not red. It turned out to be the Bay Bridge, and I looked down at my map only to realize that the Bay Bridge was indeed a mile from my hotel, and that the Golden Gate Bridge was a solid fifteen miles plus...

I watched the sun rise over the bay and it was really pretty. I reflected on a bench for awhile, snapped some pictures, and then stood up to trek back to my hotel to change for the conference. In the time I was sitting on the bench, an entire market had sprung up, so I stopped by a few of the vendors and tried to purchase some honey sticks, but the vendor didn't want my change and would sell no less than three--maybe she should take an Econ class, because while she was going to give me three for a dollar, she neither had change for a five nor would accept ninety-seven cents in exchange for one miniscule honey stick. I am sure her profit would have been at least 82 cents.

After the conference was over, I had about a half-hour before I needed to get to the airport, so I wandered around town looking for the H&M I knew I had spotted the previous day. After finding an all ladies H&M, I walked toward the H&M with menswear, which happened to be on Powell Street, no more than a block from my hotel!! On the way, I passed two creative homeless men. The first was sitting on the ground with a styrofoam cup in front of him; a sign resting on his lap read "No need to lie. It's for drug(s)." No less than a minute later, I passed by a guy who claimed he was collecting money for alcoholism research--this one elicited a chuckle on the inside. Anyway, I found my H&M, purchased a new beanie, and then set off for the airport.

I was upgraded to first class for the first leg of the flight thanks to my dad's ridiculous amount of dividend miles. Once I boarded the puddle jumper in Phoenix I ran into my friend Mercedes, whom I sat next to for the seventeen minute flight to Tucson. It was nice catching up with her for all of a half hour, and she was nice enough to drop me off after arriving in Tucson.

So, San Francisco ranks in my top ten U.S. cities, but doesn't quite make the cut as one of my top five. I still recommend going there, and I hope to return someday because I think there is much more to see that I did not get the chance to.

Signing off from the Econ 200 class I am a preceptor for,

Jason

The District

2008-02-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Just thirty-six hours after returning from a week of roughing it sleeplessly in Oracle, Arizona, I took off to Washington, D.C. for the American Way Foundation's Young People for the American Way conference. Accompanied by fellow Student Body Senators of mine, Seema and Dustin, I made my way to the airport at about 4 AM. We had a short layover at DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth International), during which we spotted Blake Shelton. Actually, Dustin spotted him but it was probably more exciting for me than for either Dustin or Seema. It was cold in Dallas, and for the first time ever I saw my breath in the corridor on my way to board the plane.

I thought Dallas was cold...When we arrived in D.C. it was snowing. This was ridiculously exciting and I am not complaining at all. It had been snowing for much of the morning, but it was probably just around freezing or a little bit above, because massive chunks of snow slid down the overhang above the Metro and landed with massive thumps onto the train tracks. I got a great kick out of this.

Young People For the American Way is a social justice leadership conference that empowers college students around the nation to develop blueprints for social justice on their own campuses. I strongly encourage any young progressive leaders to apply.

We were put up at the Capitol Hilton, which is the most lavish hotel I have ever stayed at for a conference. One of the girls from the University of Arizona, Kendal, had a view of the White House from her window--we were only two blocks away!! Coincidentally, the Republican National Convention was also staying at the Capitol Hilton while we were there. This reality was the brunt of many jokes while we were there.

The conference schedule was pretty packed, and allowed very little time to explore the city, but that didn't stop me and some of the others from doing what we could to enjoy the nation's capital while there. The first night Seema and I, along with Kelly and Seema's roommate, went monument hopping at midnight. This was a blast, and we were blasted with cold air for most of the time. I highly recommend seeing the monuments on the mall at night. They have an incredible air about them in the dark and there are very few people out looking at them, which makes the whole experience more moving and personal.

On my birthday, we went to look at the White House at like 2 AM; this was a ton of fun.

On the last day of the conference, Seema, some friends from Columbia we met (Liz and Zach), and I played a little bit of hookie to look at some art and eat some ethnic food. We went to both the Renwick Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. I preferred the National Portrait Gallery and highly recommend it. There was a really interesting collection on display while I was there (don't remember the artist's name), and the Renwick Gallery had a Native American art exhibit, which just wasn't that exciting to me I think because I have encountered so much of it growing up in the Southwest. For lunch we decided to go to a Burmese restaurant, called Burma, which I I really liked. I had some spicy mango chicken dish that was absolutely delicious. None of us had ever eaten Burmese food before. That same night we went to an Ethiopian Restaurant and that was incredibly interesting. The Burmese food, while different than anything I had had before, contained spices and flavors that I recognized; the Ethiopian food did not. I had absolutely no idea what I was eating (with the exception of the hint of sourdough flavor I made out in the flat bread we used to eat off of). I didn't care, and I really liked it, but it was just so completely separate from anything I had had before. That night, after dinner, I went to GW to meet up with my friend Liz (whom I met on my last trip to D.C. in November of 2006), and we hung out at Starbucks chatting for several hours. I walked her back to her dorm, then made the trek back to the Capitol Hilton, a bitterly cold walk at two in the morning.

All in all, the conference was great. I met a lot of really neat people, some of whom were from my school, and I was glad to get to see some of D.C. and try some new food.

Right now I am at McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas, waiting for my connecting flight to San Francisco, where I will be this weekend for a conference. This will be my first time in San Francisco, and I am certainly excited about it. I will try to write shortly after my return about my experience though.

Long Overdue...a post on Oracle, Arizona

2008-02-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

So it has been nearly a month since I drove back down to Tucson with my friend Seema, only to head off to Oracle, Arizona as a camp counselor for the next week. I was at A-Town from the 9th to the 15th, and it was a great time. Anytime Arizona is a social justice camp designed to break down the barriers that have held up age-old stereotypes and allowed new ones to be created over the past several years. The program is, in my opinion, nearly flawless, and I like going to the camp as a counselor more than I do as a delegate. Anyway, this is a travel blog, and instead of writing seven pages about the program itself (which I could easily do), I will try to focus on Oracle.

Oracle is a small town just a bit north of Tucson, but the temperature is usually ten to twenty degrees less than it is in Tucson at any given time. Triangle Y, a YMCA camp and host to the first ever A-Town is a traditional wood cabin/campfire/best-food-you-will-ever-eat-in-your-life camp. This was my third time at this campsite, and while I have grown more fond of it (and the food there) over the past year and a half, I must say that this camp is substandard in comparison to most I have been to. The landscape around the camp, however, is pretty breathtaking. I went jogging every morning, and the way the morning fog hovered over Peppersauce Canyon made it look like there was a giant lake filling in the once barren holes of the area. There is, however, not actually an Oasis of this sort, but the mirage I saw each morning allowed me to imagine that there was.

A-Town was great, and I hope to be a counselor again in the future.

Next post will be on Washington, D.C.

---Jason

Leaving Dallas

2008-01-07T23:24:00.001-08:00

This morning I woke up a little bit after 8, and threw on some clothes before heading down to the brunch that Stephanie’s parents threw for those staying at the Crescent. It was scrumptious, and I had the chance to see my brother and his wife one last time before they took off for their honeymoon in Hawaii. After brunch, it was time to pack and head to DFW. We got through check-in and security so fast, that my family (minus Jon) decided to dine at TGIFriday’s to kill some of the time we had before our planes took off. We ate, and then I hugged my dad goodbye (he was headed off to Florida, where he is currently working) and we went to our gate. Just before I boarded I ran into Tom, my cousin’s husband, and said goodbye to him before heading home to Phoenix. We had a pretty turbulent flight, which was much to my liking, but now I am back at home, with just about 36 hours before I head back to Tucson for my last semester in the States before spending a year in Europe!!

A bit on Dallas: Before visiting Dallas, I had this preconceived notion that it was going to be this ultra-conservative, arid, landfill-like city that sprung up in the middle of the country and has survived due to its industry and the people who have remained there because of their families and what not. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to like it any more than I did El Paso. WRONG!! I was stunned when I arrived last June and saw a sprawling picturesque landscape that was about as green as Germany and a skyline that I would easily consider to be one of the top five I have seen yet. While the city is noticeably conservative, it is not in any way, shape, or form overbearing. People were very friendly, accents were not that hard to understand, and the West Village reminded me faintly of midtown Manhattan. I returned to Dallas in the fall, only to see some of the most brilliantly colored leaves I have ever seen. And now I have been there in the winter as well, although while it was in the twenties the first day we arrived, it had hit seventy by the time we left and so I feel like I have seen Dallas in the springtime as well. It has been marked on my travel map as one of the top fifteen places I have been, and it is a place I would definitely consider living someday, especially if my brother and his family are still residing there far in the future. So if you ever get the chance to go to Dallas, I would highly recommend visiting. It's not a tourist trap, but it is a very nice city.

Wedding Bells

2008-01-07T08:23:00.001-08:00

I woke up the next morning and barely had time to help my Grandpa get ready before I needed to be at Jon’s for the pre-wedding party. It was pretty low key, just hanging out at his house watching sports and exchanging stories while stuffing our faces with pizza and subs. At 4 o’clock we all put on our tuxes and then boarded the limo bus at 4:45 for HPUMC. At the church we were given a nice room to hang out in until we were needed for the wedding. Pictures were taken, and more stories exchanged before we were finally called in for the wedding. I had never been in a wedding before, so this was pretty exciting for me, and I was thrilled that my brother asked me to be one of his groomsmen. The ceremony was incredible, and the pastor was really good. I must say that I have never ever felt surer that Jon had found the right girl for him before this ceremony though. They didn’t take their eyes off of one another for a single second throughout the entire ceremony. The vows came and went, and before I knew it, my brother was married and Stephanie Glass had become Mrs. Jonathan Blake Ernst. It was all pretty surreal, but in a very good way. After the wedding, we walked through the courtyard and back outside the chapel, where we waited for the guests to leave so that we could reenact the wedding for the photographers. After this, we boarded the limos again for the reception at the Crescent. The reception was just great. They had a live band, which played wonderfully. The cakes looked pretty cool, and the dinner was absolutely delicious. While in line for dinner I ran into my brother’s old girlfriend, Renee, and her husband, and I felt terrible because I didn’t recognize her at first glance. She’s a sweet girl, and it was fun catching up with her. I also got to catch up with several family friends throughout the evening. I danced a bit, like Pinocchio on fire of course, but before I knew it the band had stopped playing and everyone was called outside to grab rose petals to throw at the bride and groom as they boarded a Rolls Royce to signify that they had just been married. And that’s how it happened. That morning my brother was a single man, and my immediate family had six members, and by night time he was married and I had a new sister. I really cannot express just how happy I am for the two of them though, and I wish them bliss in the coming months and an extremely joyous life as a married couple.

Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner

2008-01-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

I woke in the morning and the first thing I thought of was, “Wow. This is the last day my brother will be a part of my family exclusively. Now I know this is supposed to be a travel blog, but these last two visits I have made have been pretty family/friend centered, which is why I haven’t just been writing about buildings and restaurants and the culture I have been exposed to, but I will try not to get carried away too far from the purpose of this blog here. Regardless, I am convinced that I have the best brother in the world, and we have grown much closer in just the past six to seven months, so this weekend really meant a lot to me. After getting dressed and ready, we headed to Sammy’s Barbecue for a really good Texas-style lunch. I had been to this restaurant before (when I visited my brother in June), but I would really recommend it to anyone looking for a casual place to have lunch in Uptown Dallas. After eating at Sammy’s, my brother drove me to his place to borrow some of his clothes to wear to the rehearsal dinner, since I had left all of my dress clothes at school. On our way to his neighborhood, we passed my cousin Bill and his girlfriend Andrea walking around the area where my brother and his fiancé used to live. Walking into my brother’s closet was like walking into Men’s Wearhouse again, and I am glad Jon gave me some suggestions because I had like 8 suits, fifty shirts, and thirty ties to choose from, and permutated that makes for a heck of a lot of possible combinations. I later was happy to find out I wasn’t the only one who forgot nice dress clothes for the rehearsal dinner, as my brother’s soon-to-be father-in-law also had to borrow a tie from my brother. After this Jon dropped me back off at the Crescent, and my older sister Allison and I decided to wander around Dallas for a little bit. I showed her the apartment complex that my brother and Stephanie used to live in, and basked in the glory of the old houses turned businesses that populated the area. When we got back to the hotel it was time to get ready for the rehearsal. I got dressed, and my family piled in the car to drive to Highland Park United Methodist Church, where the wedding was to be held. The rehearsal went off without a hitch, and then we headed off to Maggiano’s for the rehearsal dinner. I had the chance to say grace at the dinner which I was really excited about, and I also got the chance to drink a bit of Peroni, which I was also pretty excited about. The food was great, but what happened after is what I will remember when I think of this night in the future. Jon played a slide show of pictures they had made of Jon and Stephanie from birth until now, with mostly individual pictures of them with family and friends but with a superimposed picture of the two of them at each age, until they got to the present and had pictures of them right now. Then Jon stood up and gave gifts to each of his groomsmen, with a speech to go along with each one. He said the kindest words to me, and I was so moved by the fact that he saved my present for last. I got up there and gave him a hug, and I definitely had tears in my eyes. After giving each of us our gifts, he asked Stephanie to dance. And I know it must have taken a lot of balls to ask her to dance alone with him in front of 80 people. Those of you who know me know how I dance and, well, my brother and I are pretty much equally talented in the ballroom. His best man Ben said it well when he told Jon he danced “like Pinocchio on fire.” Jon must have been taking lessons, because he did a great job dancing with Stephanie. After this the microphone was available for anyone to say any words about Jon or Stephanie. After several people had already gotten up and I could tell the open mic was winding down, I got up there and gave a completely unprepared and earnest toast to my brother and Stephanie, and man did I get choked up while I was up there. My brother has always been such a good role model, and despite what an annoying, obnoxious little brother I must have been in my younger years, Jon never made me feel bad about it. I also spoke about Stephanie, and how I knew she was a keeper when she made such a genuine effort to get to know my family and me on her first visit to our house for Thanksgiving in 2006. Jon and Stephanie are seriously just about the most perfect young couple I know, and I am so thrilled for the two of them. The dinner lasted pretty late, so by the time we got back to the hotel I crashed.

Dallas: Days 1 and 2

2008-01-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

After arriving at DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth Airport), my family and I took the shuttle to the Hertz rental car, and got into the sweet white Cadillac Deville that was ours for our four days in Dallas. We drove to the La Quinta (yeah, high rolling), and checked into our hotel room for the first night, which was actually quite nice. We met up with my Aunt Linda and Uncle Jim from Chicago, and then we headed over to Jon’s house, and hung out there with Stephanie until Jon got home from work. That night we drove to a Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth (where my brother went to school at Texas Christian University), and I got to meet Stephanie’s mom for the first time. Dinner was delicious, as I now enjoy Mexican food, but my favorite part was the praline that I coaxed Stephanie into helping me fund for dessert.

I slept very well that night, waking up the next morning to a frosty temperature somewhere in the mid-twenties. Jon drove to the La Quinta and met us all for a breakfast, the last family breakfast we were to have before he got married. After breakfast I ran some errands with my brother, and we picked up my tux and some of his wedding attire at Men’s Wearhouse. After this I just hung out at his house, doing data entry for the Econ department while simultaneously watching sports. My dad and Uncle Jim were golfing, and the girls were all out shopping. Eventually Jon and I hit up Subway for lunch, and then my family went to check into the Crescent Court Resort for the duration of our stay in Dallas. The Crescent, a product of the Rosewood chain, is a really nice place, although it is not somewhere my family would ever stay if we had to pay full price. My brother used to work at Crescent Court, pretty high up in the office building of the Court. Throughout the day family members started trickling in and I greeted them as they came. Finally at just after 7 o’clock all sorts of family members of mine made the walk to Mattito’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant nearby the Crescent. I ordered the stuffed jalapenos, but was already full on chips and salsa by the time they arrived. After dinner we walked back to the Crescent via the Stanley Korshak shopping district and met up with my Aunt Jean and Uncle Dave (who flew in from Northern Ireland for the wedding) at the Palomino Bar and Grill. This part of the family I used to see a minimum of twice a year, but I had not seen either Jean or Dave in a good three or four years so this was really thrilling for me. I am hoping to visit the two of them on my way to Germany in the fall. We chatted until around 1 AM, and then all headed up to bed.

Ringing in the New Year in Naperville

2008-01-02T07:58:00.000-08:00

Brittany and I woke up around nine this morning and got ready before heading off to her Oma's townhouse. We drove through the snow (it snowed pretty much from the time we left Chicago the night before until I left on January 1st) to her Grandma's place, where Oma had made us a traditional German snack of rolls, meet, and cheese, with marble cake and strawberries for dessert. It was all delicious, and after we ate we played a game of Rummy 13, my first official game ever. I edged out Brittany, which was pretty exciting. Oma, unfortunately, did not have much luck in this one. After this, we dropped some food off at a family friend of the Smith's house (Gert is her name). Then we headed back to Brittany's house to prepare for the party that night.

Net we went shopping at Jewel, where my Aunt Peggy works!! We got back to Brittany's, and hung out until dinner. All of the other Arizonans who were visiting came over that night, and we had a ton of fun. At midnight we went running through the snow, and even tried to build a snowam (I had never built one),, but the snow wasn't packing. We went back inside, bundled up for warmth, and then turned on Mean Girls.

After Mean Girls, I headed upstairs to sleep with my flannel sheets one more time (I need to get some of those).

The next morning I woke up at 9, only to find out that my flight was going to be delayed at least an hour (it ended up being delayed for three). It was STILL snowing, but I really didn't mind. Brittany and her mom dropped me off at the airport, and I got through checking in and security pretty quickly. Once we finally left, the flight went very smoothly. Unfortunately I left my brand new North Face jacket shell on the plane, and while I realized it right away, it was too late by the time I got back to the gate. It seems as if somebody had already taken the shell and made it his own. If anyone finds a trilithium triclimate North Face with a missing hood, let me know!!

Now I am sitting in the airport with my entire immediate family (save for my brother) as we are waiting for our plane to leave for Dallas for my brother's wedding. This is something we have all been looking forward to for quite some time now, so hopefully all will go well!!

Signing off from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona,

Jason

"What's that $hit flying around?"

2008-01-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

This morning we went to church, and it was the first Lutheran church service I had been to in probably just about a decade. I was baptized Lutheran, but my family stopped going to the Lutheran church when I was pretty young, and since I have been to a church service for just about every denomination you can think of.

After church, we went to eat at Panera Bread, where I got some Italian panini and chicken noodle soup. Both were great.

After Panera Bread, we took a train into the city. It was cold and windy, but I loved every minute we spent there. We went to Millennium Park and gawked at the bean for a little while, before watching people ice skate in the outdoor rink. After this, we walked down Michigan Avenue for some shopping. We went into Express, H&M, and then the big mall down there (forget the name). We snacked all day long, eating popcorn from some famous popcorn place, Auntie Anne's pretzels, and then Billy Goat's Tavern for dinner. After Michigan Avenue we headed to Navy Pier, walked around for a little bit, and then headed to the Tavern for dinner. On our way to Bill Goat's, I started to notice some bits of white flying around. It looked like it could have been ash, and I thought it was possible that it was snow flurries but the skies above us weren't even cloudy. So I asked Brittany, "What's this shit flying around?" Well, as it turns out it was snow. She laughed uncontrollably at the absurdity of my question.

I got a triple "cheesebogah" at Billy Goat's wqith chips, and it was all delicious. Brittany took advantage of her status as an exclusive legal and drank a couple of drinks in front of me.

After dinner, we left for Union Station, figuring that we had plenty of time before our train left. Well time slipped by, and before we knew it we had about 5 minutes to go 7 or 8 more blocks to the train station. We sprinted through the snowy streets of Chicago, and missed our train by a minute. The next one left two hours and ten minutes from then. We wandered around Chicago for a bit longer before returning to the train station, where we bought a deck of cards and Brittany taught me how to play Rummy 13. We started in the station, and then finished on the train. The train ride home was a pretty laughable experience.

We were met by Brittany's mom at the train station, and then we went to Blockbuster to rent Saw II and Saw III for our horror movie marathon. Saw II, which I had previously seen, seemed just as clever to me the second time around. Saw III, however, I was not a fan of. If you are reading it, just take my advice and don't watch it. Thanks.

We went to bed a bit after 3, and had to wake up pretty early for the day we had in store.

---Jason

It's a bird, it's a plain, it's a...snow fort??

2007-12-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

So I am obviously an Arizona kid, because until late last night I had never even heard of a snow fort. Now, I have been inside one.

I woke up around 11 today, and Brittany and I went to this place called Noodles in downtown Naperville for lunch. Aside from my mom's homemade, I had the best mac 'n' cheese I have ever had in my life, with some delectable flat bread on the side. It was freezing outside, and I loved it. After this, we went to another friend's house and met up with some other UofA kids for an incredible sledding/tobaganning session. This was one of the most exciting things I had done in an incredibly long time.

After the sledding, some relatives of Brittany's came in from the city for dinner, and we had a delicious meal of dumplings and pork. Her relatives gave the Smiths the series "Planet Earth,"
which was so much fun to watch and I want to watch the rest of the episodes.

That night we went to a hookah lounge with some other UofA friends and played Apples to Apples while smoking passion fruit mojito flavored hookah--a good time was had by all.

---Jason

Waking up in this sleepy little town...

2007-12-29T03:27:00.000-08:00

So, I'm not in Telluride, but dang is this town incredible.

I guess it's more of a city, actually. According to Wikipedia, Naperville has about 130,000 residents, and it was voted the second best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine. Let's just say I can see why.

I woke up to an incredible snowstorm this morning, absolutely astonishing. It was just after 8 AM, and I couldn't fall back asleep, so I headed downstairs and started to read a bit of A Separate Peace, waiting for Brittany to wake up. Her mom woke up a bit after I did and served me coffee, cereal, and this incredible pumpkin cake.

Brittany came downstairs around 11, and I pretty much forced her to take a walk with me. We walked in the snow around her neighborhood for a bit and got soaking wet, but I didn't care. I loved it. Snow is still incredible to me, every time I see it. We ran into some neighbors that Brittany babysits for, chatted with them a bit, and then went back inside.

Shortly thereafter, Brittany had her mom take us to downtown Naperville, which must have been one of the coolest places I have ever been. After her mom dropped us off, we walked to this place called Giordano's where we shared mozzarella sticks and an incredible deep-dish stuffed spinach pizza. Although it was a bit heavy on the spinach (for my personal taste, and that of Brittany's), the sauce and cheese and crust were so delicious, and the atmosphere so grand, that it was really enjoyable nonetheless.

After we ate, we stopped by the bank so that Brittany could cash some checks and then it was tourist central for me. I took pictures of everything, from random city statues to the flowing near-freezing river to Naperville's signature phallic structure, the Millenium Carillon, where musicians play there tunes on special occasions and such. Brittany showe dme all sorts of other things around town, including this historic center of Naperville that seemed so freaking cool (they act out the whole one-room schoolhouse, milk Bessie the cow, write on the chalkboard thing to this day), and then after walking outside for at least a good hour Brittany's mom picked us up. We stopped by Jewel, which is the drugstore/grocery store that my aunt works/worked at for several years, and then we stopped by a churchish building so that Brittany's family could donate some clothes before heading home.

Brittany had complained about her feet being cold, and didn't believe me when I said mine were fine. They probably actually were colder than they felt, but I was just too excited to notice, but when we got back to her house the fire and hot chocolate both felt so good to me. Her friend Laura came by with her dog Tippy, and it was exciting to get to meet her. After that we sort of lounged around, and I chatted with Brittany and her mom for awhile. They showed me their Christmas village and ornaments and told me all of the stories behind every piece, which was really neat. I think that people who celebrate Christmas and have those little villages should start adding a piece of significance each year, and always remember why they decided to purchase that particular piece in that year. It is a really neat idea.

For dinner we headed off to some family friends of the Smiths and had a great time. We had a delicious homecooked meal (beef, hash brown casserole, sourdough bread, and cooked carrots) and it was really fun listening to them all exchange stories from the past. The two families have been good friends for quite some time.

After dinner we came back and Brittany had a couple of friends over and we played Apples to Apples and drank more hot chocolate and it was a ton of fun. They finally left, anf Brittany and I chatted for awhile before I came up here and read before writing this blog entry. Now it is about six in the morning here and I really need to get some sleep.

Sorry that this post is mostly personal stories, but I wouldn't consider Naperville to be a highly touristy place. It certainly is wonderful though, and I will be urging my parents to look into buying some property here and moving back to the Chicago area!!

---Jason

A First-Class Experience

2007-12-28T00:29:00.000-08:00

So I am in Naperville, Illinois, enjoying knowing that it is cold enough to see my breath outside.

I left Phoenix at around 7:45 aboard U.S. Airways Flight #9 (I had never before been on a single-digit flight before), flying first class thanks to the use of my dad's dividend miles number. I have grown to like U.S. Airways a lot, as this is the third time in just about a month that I have been upgraded to first class for free on an airplane flight (the other two first class experiences were my only other first class experiences, ever). It was amazing. I was waited on constantly, and had a full-sized chicken meal with mashed potatoes (which I didn't eat because I, sigh, do not like mashed potatoes), a salad, and a dinner roll. We were also offered additional snacks. I was sitting next to a nice guy from Denver, and we talked about how incredible first class was (he had not flown it many times before either). He also made me try his Boze headphones, which I have heard a lot of buzz about, and holy crap they are amazing. I never thought I could convince myself to pay more than one hundred dollars for headphones, but I just may have to invest in those at some points. They block out all other noise, even the buffer you hear while taking off in an airplane. The feature film on the flight was "Nancy Drew," and I am not going to recommend that movie to anyone based on the fact that the acting is borderline horrendous.

So the flight landed forty minutes early, which I think is a record for any flight I have been on, and my friends Brittany and Jackie were waiting inside the airport to meet me. After I got my bag from baggage claim, we went outside and there were heated lamps in the parking garage (I had never seen ones like this before). I thought that was pretty cool. As we were driving to Naperville, I admired all the dead trees around us--Chicago is such a beautiful city. If I had to guess, I would estimate that this is my seventh or eighth time in Chicago, but the last time I was here in the winter was for my first Christmas, which I have no recollection of. My parents both grew up in Chicago, and the majority of my extended family lives in Chicago suburbs. My dad, however, absolutely refuses to come back to Chicago during the winter time, as it is the reason why he and my mom left Illinois in the first place. On the freeway, we exited on the left side (exit 1D) and it was a pretty neat experience. Naperville is beautiful, and we drove by many nice houses on the way in, and I saw a little bit of clumped up dirty snow that got me all excited (Jackie told me not to eat it)!!

We got to Brittany's house at around 12:30, and I met her mom and we sat by the fire, watching a special on Niagara Falls, for a bit. Then we went down to the basement where I got a tour and met Brittany's cats. They are two of the friendliest cats I have ever encountered, and I was pleasantly surprised that they actually let me pet them. After this, we came upstairs and I settled into my room and got to see all of Brittany's awards that are displayed on her wall.

This brings me to now. I am really looking forward to these next few days. Brittany is a great friend of mine and being in Chicago in the cold just makes things that much more exciting!! I am hoping to wake up to snow in the morning!!

Off to read a bit of "A Separate Peace," my all-time favorite book, which I was gifted by my little sister for Christmas.

Signing off from Naperville, Illinois,

Jason

About Me

2007-12-27T13:12:00.000-08:00

So, I will give a brief introduction of myself, in case anyone is wondering who I am and where I come from when reading this post.

At the time of this entry, I am a nineteen-year-old sophomore studying Economics, German Studies, and International Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. I am a native of the state of Arizona, and while I have recently grown to appreciate the beauty that this state has to offer, I plan on living in either the Northeastern United States or the United Kingdom upon graduation from my undergraduate studies. I enjoy cold weather, and love seasons.

I was born and raised in Lake Havasu, Arizona, where I lived until the age of nine. At age nine, my family relocated to Fountain Hills, a suburb of Phoenix. I am the third of four children, and have a brother who is 8 years my senior, a sister 6 years older than I am, and a younger sister who is two years my junior.

Growing up, I wanted to be a film star. I was an avid little actor, and have appeared in some twenty plus plays/musicals in my day, the last one being "The Poet and the Rent" my senior year of high school. My passion to act did not go dormant, but I just don't have it in me at this point in time to run off to Los Angeles, uneducated and broke as a joke, and try my luck among the thousands of others trying to be discovered. Fortunately, I have several other strong interests and would be more than happy to hold a job that does not relate to acting at all. At this point I am fairly certain I will attend law school, but only after working odd jobs for a couple of years after college. I want to be as sure as I can be that law school is for me before I embark on that three-year adventure. My number one law school at this time is NYU, followed by UVA, GWU, and BC. I would like to practice law at some facet of the international sector.

Aside from traveling, I thoroughly enjoy a good read (both fiction and non-fiction), Broadway productions, exercising (I won't say "working out" because I just don't get to the gym as much as I should, but I love a good run, hike, or scuba diving), college basketball (huge Wildcats fan), movies, intellectual conversations, tracking the weather, meeting new people, and trying new things.

So where did my wanderlust come from? I'm not exactly sure. The first trip of note that I took with my family was a three-week motorhome tour of the national parks of the Great American West, and even though I was only six years old (I lost my first tooth on that trip), I remember being so excited about each new type of tree or rock I saw, and I love roaming freely through the wild open west.

I also spent most of my childhood summers in Benzie County, Michigan, near Traverse City, on a sprawling farmland with a great magnitude of acreage. This is where most of my fondest childhood memories stem from, as I reminisce on the simple life I enjoyed during those summers: helping my grandparents prepare meals and drying the dishes after dinner time, inventing all sorts of sports with bouncy rubber balls in the backyard and pretending that I was several different teams competing against each other as I played, the giant tree swing that my Grandpa handcrafted before I was even born, and so diligently put up every summer upon our arrival, running through the tall grass to play in the giant lone Beech Tree on my grandparents' property, picking raspberries in my Grandma's garden, searching for Petoskey Stones at my Great Uncle's lakeside property in Beulah, rafting or tubing down the Betsy River on warm summer days, watching the fireworks glow above Crystal Lake, eating the world's best cherry pie at the Cherry Hut in Beulah Michigan, and so many more things that I feel as if I could go on forever. Those were the days though, and that was when I had the chance to run wild and play in the green grass that I always felt so deprived of growing up in the Mojave Desert.

I guess I have always been an adventurer, and based on what I have just written it should be no surprise to me that I ache to see the whole world. However, it is only recently that I have been able to start making this constant craving of mine become I reality. Until age 15, I had not left North America. It was only after my freshman year of high school that I was able to participate in a three-week, all expenses paid German American Partnership Program that allowed me to spend just shy of a month in a small village nestled between the Black Forest and the Rhine River. I realize that I was fortunate to have been able to have this experience at such a young age, even though I write as if it took far to much time for me to have the opportunity to explore another land. It was on this European stint of mine that I first aspired to set foot on all seven continents, and my borderline unhealthy obsession with travel has only spiraled outward exponentially since then.

There you have it, a little bit about your host, Jason Ernst.
Once again, if you ever have any questions about anything in this blog at all, or want me to elaborate on any of my experiences as a vagabond, e-mail me at ernst@email.arizona.edu or Jase1219@gmail.com. I may not respond immediately, but I am pretty good at getting back eventually.

So begins my travel blog...

A new blog, a permanent blog?

2007-12-26T15:48:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Since completing my most recent travel blog, and considering the fact that I have quite a few trips planned in the next two years and hope to travel extensively throughout my lifetime, I have decided to create a single blog to journal all of my travels in. I do one day hope to be a travel journalist (not as a primary occupation), and traveling is arguably my number one passion. I have created this blog as open to the public, but will probably write it as if it were more personal, just a heads up, in case you are looking for a completely objective place to read about certain locations on Earth--there will probably be references to personal life experiences I have had with those I know and love in this blog from time to time. There will be, however, detailed accounts of the places I visit, ranging from the attitudes I perceive of the people around me to the level of aesthetics I observe in the architecture, and everything in between. I will give recommendations, as well as let my readers know what I think they should try to avoid while traveling. I will also discuss events that I experience personally.

In case you want to read about my summer 2007 cruise to Alaska or the time I spent studying in the United Kingdom (also summer 2007), with trips to Paris and Germany, the links to those blogs are below:
Alaska: http://jasoninalaska.blogspot.com/
The UK, France, and Germany: http://jasonsummerineurope.blogspot.com/

I will probably post an entry about myself in the near future, just kind of an introduction of sorts so that you can get to know your host a little bit as you read about my adventures around the world, but other than that I will probably not write day to day entries.

Here is a preview of what is to come based on trips I have planned out in the coming months/years:
December 2007: Chicago, Illinois
January 2008: Dallas, Texas; Oracle, Arizona; Washington, D.C.
March 2008: China (primarily Shanghai)
June 2008: Halifax and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; Bergen, Norway
July 2008: St. Petersburg, Russia; Copenhagen, Denmark; Antwerp, Belgium; Naples, Italy; Istanbul, Turkey
August 2008: Piraeus, Greece; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Norfolk, Virginia; Freiburg, Germany (I will be studying here for the next academic year)
September 2008: Munich, Germany
October 2008: Berlin, Germany; Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid, Bilbao, Granada, Valencia, and Ibiza, Spain; Lisbon, Portugal
November 2008: Bruussels, Belgium; Normandy and Nice, France
December 2008: Cork, Galway, and the Inis Islands, Ireland; Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland
January 2009: Amsterdam, Netherlands
February 2009: Prague, Czech Republic; Krakow (with Auschwitz visit) and Warsaw, Poland; Vlinius, Lithuania; Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia; Helsinki and Tampere, Finland
March 2009: Rovaniemi, Kemi, and Tornio, Finland; Haparanda, Boden, Uppsala, Stockholm, and Gothenburg, Sweden; Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Milan, Genoa, Monterosso, Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence, Siena, Orvieto, Rome, Taormino, and Mount Etna, Italy; Vatican City
April 2009: Palermo, Agrigento, Messina, Villa S. Giovanni, Bari, Ancona, Ravenna, Venice, Verona, Como, Menaggio, Italy; Patras, Thessaloniki, Ouranopolis, Dafni, Mount Athos (hopefully!!), Athens, Greece
May 2009: The Hague, Delft, Breda, Netherlands; Brugge, Belgium; Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Salzburg and Vienna, Austria
June 2009: Budapest, Hungary; Brasov and Bran, Romania; Graz, Austria; Interlaken, Jungfraujoch, and Geneva, Switzerland
July 2009: Scottish Highlands, Scotland

I am extremely excited about each one of these visits, and have scoped out each one as best as I can to try and make sure that I will see as much as I can in each place while I am there. Beyond this, I hope to travel to all seven continents on Earth (yes, even Antarctica--ESPECIALLY Antarctica). This next year will set me back a lot and I will probably not be able to do a whole lot of traveling (unless I land a traveling job, which would be wonderful), but I plan on saving as much as I can to continue my travels.

If I had an endless bank account, my first five travel journeys after my year abroad would be:
1. Thailand
2. New Zealand
3. India
4. South Africa
5. Tanzania

Alright, I am going to finish up this post because I have some work to tend to, but stay tuned for an entry about myself, followed by some exciting entries about my travels around the world!!

Oh, and if you ever have any questions about any of my journeys abroad or entries I post, either comment on the journal entry or shoot me an e-mail at Jase1219@gmail.com.

Signing off from somewhere near Phoenix, Arizona,

Jason