Penn State roadtrip!

Well, I may not have updated this thing very often - but only for want of exciting activties not involved in simple collegiate survival. This weekend however was definitely an exception..... Started out normally enough for a drumline roadtrip - some what slow. Took us about 10 hrs to get to Penn State. Leaving at around 4:30 or 5 pm IN time. Definitely in the middle of nowhere!! There is one road in and nothing. Beautiful this time of year -during the day at least. Got our 6 cars set up and took a bit of a walk around the area and the stadium - claiming the The Pennsylvania State University sign and mildly desecrating the Joe Pa statue. Back to the cars to start tailgating and watch the sunrise. A few hours of napping cramped into cars, but staying warm at least, then up to begin tailgating in earnest. This is our ONE game to tailgate all season so we do it up right. Plenty of time for it on this trip since the game didnt kickoff till 4:30. Got to visit a good selection of Energy Mob types at Penn State too.

Our march to the stadium being good fans and ALL the way to the top! A surprisingly good view of the action for being so far above it. There we traded places with most of the people standing in the three rows behind us so that they could sit and we could stand the whole game. The only people who didn't move were a group that was standing along the wall anyway whose view we were not impeding. They changed their minds however after the first few plays and our first touchdown.... An usher was called up and in a very derogatory manner he told us all to sit or be kicked out. His claim that there were 'patrons' who had paid their $42 to sit - ignoring the fact that that was how much we paid as well. He even made comments about Purdue - definitely unprofessional. At any rate we all squeezed into too few seats since we had been courteous enough to move in the beginning. Two plays later Purdue got a first down and a few of us stood up to cheer. Moments after that a policeman arrived and forced two of our number to 'leave their seats or go to jail.' At least they weren't kicked out of the stadium - they were moved down to a lower level and let loose to find seats where they could. Hannah and Emily ended up sitting in the Penn state student section with our Energy mob friends - apparently the student section was not as bad as expected and the only bad comments were from those sitting pretty far away.
So anyway, a tense game. glad we pulled it off. An incredible atmosphere in Beaver Stadium. My car: Jon (snare), Amanda (his gf and a Tuba), Emily Essig (energy mob) and myself spent the night with Jess - a friend from this summer. Definitely more pleasant then driving straight back like almost everyone else did. Got up the next morning, headed out. Stopped in Altoona got breakfast and gas and hit the road. Only 10 miles after turning on the the I-70 turnpike the car starts acting possessed - locks turning on and off, speedometer jumping, surging engine. We pulled off right before the first tunnel at mile marker 123.6 and the car died. Thanks to moms AAA-plus card we got towed for free to the nearest town about 20 miles away. A sunday afternoon meant there would be no help that day so we checked into the Hampton Inn and enjoyed taking showers! Out to eat for dinner and a hilarious evening killing time in Somerset, PA....
The next day we took a taxi over to the dealership, carrying pillows, blankets, bookbags. As soon as we walked in they finally got the car inside and being looked at. A picnic lunch enjoying an absolutely gorgeous fall day and then just about 2 more hrs doing hw and attempting to memorize music. A new alternator and battery later we were on the road again! Awesome time on the trip home - left about 2:30 and got back to Lafayette at 9:15pm. Our team wins!! So now to attempt to get some work done with the few hrs left of my october break... sigh... New pictures up on the site as well

Summer photos!

http://www.edoud.fotopic.net/ for all of the photos from Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand

more band pictures then you could ever look at

for those of you who dont get enough pics of the band:
http://www.purduebandfan.com/

WARNING: if you have a slow connection do not bother! it will take forever

i thought i updated already...

So I thought I wrote an update since skydiving out in the glaciers of new zealand! apparently it didnt take if i did write something. A full day bus ride to Queenstown where the place was in full swing for ski season. Nice quiet hostel. Spent the next day out and about tramping around town - lucked out and had good weather. gorgeous setting. Glacial lakes set amongst snow covered mountains. Queenstown is more or less just a big ski base, so I almost felt bad not going - but when you are a horrible skiier its not as much fun to go fall down a mountain by yourself! So anyway, got my workout wandering these deserted trails up in the hills around town and down by the lake. The next day (thurs.) was my day of traveling back home: queenstown to auckland to LA to chicago to Indy. definitely got my frequent flier miles in. all a blur of course by now. called home from LA and got some friends that had moved in already at purdue to come to indy to pick me up.

spent a couple of nights on their couch - had to be at purdue on friday morning at 8am for band student leader training. Cymbal section leader this year - a bit stressful, but its got its good points. Lots of work before auditions even happened on Sunday. But luckily it turns out that I didnt have to march drill during band camp! almost relaxing! hahaha. So an entire week of band camp trying to get 6 rookie cymbal players into shape for the first game. Big tuba/drumline party on Saturday night to celebrate the end of my last band camp ever. time flies! We're going to have a great time this year - we're already getting along so much better and our group of student leaders is working together as versus the debacle that happened last year. I already know my only free weekend is that of Nov 6th! Time consuming to balance on the games i have to go to and those that we are taking drumline roadtrips too (northwestern and penn state)

Not to mention that I am supposed to be applying to grad school, taking GREs and of course finishing up classes. Nothing too bad in and of itself, just everything adding to make a decently hard semester. Friday and Saturday I'll be at mortarboard leadership camp at Camp Tecumpseh. Jumping right back into it.

by the fire...

so saturday my plan of having a drink at the pub and going to bed was foiled by the rugby match and hanging out with the group of irish i met on the glacier hike - never a chance of keeping up with them! anyway, made it to bed around 3:30... then an 8am bus to fox glacier. pouring in the morning on sunday. cleared up enough and i took a LONG hike out to the glacier by myself. also another short one around in the rainforest. so incredible to see this temperate rainforest leading right up a mountain side into a glacier. fox glacier is longer but flatter then franz josef. a nice hostel here too. the town of fox is much more quiet then franz josef. basically nothing here. but nice to be away from it all taking it easy. stayed up for awhile last night just watching movies with people. relaxing. a good sleep in this morning helped too. scheduled to go sky diving at 1pm so i headed over to the place around noon. very busy there as the weather was bad in the morning and some people had jumps canceled. watched the people before me go and the sky clouded over - when they got back thought the day might be over. sent up a promise to be good and the sky cleared more then it was before. so up we went - the other person jumping was a guy traveling from the czech republic. just the 2 of us and the 2 instructors up in this little cessna. all the way to 12,ooo ft. about the same height as mount cook i believe. actually got to really see all of the southern alps and look down on the glacier. above the low layer of clouds it is sunny and you can look out to the whole range. also watch the sun gleam off the tasman sea not so far away. and then over the site... shoved out the door and falling, screaming. not so much the fear as it was with bungi jumping. just awesomeness. falling at 200kph. watching the plane fly away and the mountains recede. hit the cloud layer and the parachute pulls you up short. then the glide down is silent, peaceful, watch the green get closer. gorgeous views. safe landing but still took my ears awhile to finally pop back to normal. an incredible experience. so lucky to get it in today! the rest of today has just been wandering, hanging out. tomorrow a bus to queenstown

ice cold..

so i'm in new zealand now for real. and it likes to rain here. got into christchurch on wed night - kevin felder - band friend studying abroad- met us at the airport and helped us get into town and to a hostel. emily and i ended up changing in the morning to this super nice all womens hostel down the street. free soup and even hot towels for goodness sake! spent thurs morning getting travel plans sorted. then met kevin for some wandering around - cathedral and botanical gardens, then on to 2nd hand shops. got myself a coat for staying warm. grocery store and back to the hostel for a bit. regrouped for dinner out at a pub. went on to the holy grail - huge sports bar downtown christchurch. there we happened to run into helen - or at least she saw me and emily and jumped us! she was there with some dukies leaving the next day for fiji. the four of us played a terrible game of pool and then headed off to bed. thursday emily and i took the transalpine train across from christchurch to greymouth via arthurs pass. rainy in the whole country that day. overcast but we saw some mtns. emily headed back and should be on her way home tomorrow. i took a bus south and arrived in franz josef around 5. walked around a bit then an early night. today did a full day glacier hike - definitely tiring but incredible to actually walk around on a glacier. a 2.5km walk out to it and then probably 3-4 hrs on the ice hiking up and down and all around. sneaking through crevasses and underneath worm holes. good times had by all! the ice is such an incredible blue - felt like i should be filming an imax movie. rainy off and on, but i guess it is the rainforest here. hung out with an american and some irish during the tour and am headed off in a bit to watch the australia v. new zealand rugby match down at the pub with them. headed down the road to fox glacier tomorrow and then on to queenstown. hopefully run into all of them there and have a big night wed! haha - will be rough first few days of bandcamp...

FijiBure

from the Auckland airport en route to Christchurch... Stayed up all night with friends on the 2nd, bus left thehotel at 4am... not so fun. and i was feeling pretty sick and stupidly popped some benedryls so was basically incoherent in my goodbyes. sad times indeed :( but emily and i made it to Fiji. we were met by Simon who was our homestay host. he drove us back to his family's place in Namatakula. His wife Judith met us out front and they almost immediately had us inside eating the most delicious meal i have had in a LONG, LONG time! fish cooked between plantains, octopus cooked in soy sauce, a plate of sliced tapioca, taro, and sweet potato, and meat in taro leaves. definitely slept well and woke up to a cloudy but not raining day. one of the sons, izo, walked us around the village - had to put on a sarong to be culturally acceptable. then the 2 other guests headed off to nearby Beqa island and we rode with them to the ferry to see the mountains. verdent is definitely the word. mountainous rainforests that run right up to the ocean along the coral coast. back and a huge, delicious lunch. Then Tema took us out walking on the reef during low tide and taught us to catch octopus! find it hiding in a hole, pull it out, then turn the head inside out and rip off the ink bags. we found 5... then tried some raw sea urchin.. back home we sat around in the kitchen with the women chatting for a bit. then had a kava ceremony with some of the guys from the clan. interesting root like taste for sure. not that bad though. makes your mouth go numb but didnt really have any cool effect on me or emily. huge dinner of parrot fish, eggplant, and chicken with noodles. then back to hanging out with the guys and impressing them with our drinking abilities. they all seemed to get drunk off the stuff but we didnt really feel anything different. left this morning fromt the Nadi airport and am now almost to Christchurch - just another 3 hr plane ride!

rainforest, full moon party, great barrier reef

so friday was all about finding free activities. jaime, emily, jenn and i headed over to the botanical gardens and found cool spiders and pretty flowers. wandered on the jungle boardwalk and hiked a trail up a hill to a lookout pt. then walked the 3k or so back to the hotel. had our fairwell dinner, free and tasted like it ;) then i finally had a night out on the town... back at 3am still though!
saturday, up early as per usual for a day trip out to green island with kashia, rob, mike, eric, and chris. i ended up being mom/troup leader since somehow we all ended up booking under my name? anyway, hilarious results of course. snorkeled for awhile, walked around, ate buffet lunch for a long time when it was pouring, slept on the beach in sun and drizzle, then went reef walking during crazy low tide. found awesome blue starfish, a reef shark that swam around my ankles, and a stingray! back to the hotel for a shower and then to the full moon party at AJ hacketts.. bunji jump out in the middle of the rainforest. great view from the top of the jump of cairns, the ocean, the gorgeous full moon too! not gonna lie, it was a little intense flinging myself off a tower 200 ft up. still makes my stomach drop to think of it! but apparently i got pts for style... so the energy mob onlookers tell me ;) i asked to touch water and ended up dunked up to my chest - soaked and laughing did way too many jangling rebounds back and forth. ah good times indeed. was dizzy for awhile after that! so another late night, but still...
sunday - today - up even earlier for our day trip to the great barrier reef for snorkeling. 2.5 hr ride out and then a long time snorkeling at the first place. amazing to immerse myself in such an incredible array of life! didnt use a wet suit as it made me float too well - bah to bouyancy! more of the energy mob showed up after lunch and we went snorkeling at another sight with lots of sea turtles. then on the way back boom netting - holding onto a net and being dragged behind the boat until most of us fall off. good times all around, a bit sunburnt now and swaying from being on a boat so long - now time to pack for fiji and nz... huzzah!

far north queensland

so spent all afternoon at 'the lagoon' which is the fake beach and ocean pool thing in downtown Cairns.  Goodtimes though as it was with much of the energy mob.  and let the record show that i am NOT sunburned!! finally learned how to use sunscreen maybe??  Anyway, got back, had a big meeting with activities to sign up for, and then went with Erica, Helen, Claire, Dan, and Mark to see what we thought was gonna be a live band. no such luck. just a dj... still chilled out, had a chai.  apparently i've got over my drinking stage - or i'm just that cheap ;)  went back and watched people heading out. too tired for that though. so to bed relatively early.  got up early as well as usual.  lucked out and managed to pursuade the correct authorities that a few of us should be allowed to go on the Duke program excursion.  So it was me, Dan, Mark, and Ben all hitchin a ride with the Dukies... a free trip!  huzzah.   So out to the Daintree rainforest for a 2 hr guided tour.  The aboriginal guide knew just about everything and i know i barely absorbed half of it.  awesome to actually  be walking around in a real rainforest... learned what some of the poisonous stuff was, where to find water in the tablelands, survivor-esque.  Then on to Port Douglas where we had a couple hours to just lay around on the beach and swim in the ocean. Such  a gorgeous coastline, I felt like i should be in a documentary or something.  more later!

They have a lot of wildlife in Australia...

Well, i dont really have much to update on.  they have a lot of bats in australia - and they are all GIANT. Classes are done though!! can't believe summer is running away from me so fast.  been spending most of my free time just hanging out by the beach.  felt unwell yesterday but have more or less recovered.  we are staying at a resort hotel which is incredibly awesome.  i'll enjoy the ammenities while i have them.  lots of japanese tourists in the area - so many that almost everything is written in both english and japanese.. crazy.  making plans to go snorkeling and such out in the reef and maybe rent cars with people for trips to the rainforest.  good times.  funny how i have almost completely stopped hanging out with anyone from my history class except for about 5 friends and another 5 acquaintances.... i put on the evaluation today that the whole thing would be a lot better if Georgetown weren't allowed to come.... not fair i know! there were some good people from there. still, yuck. anyway thank goodness the energy mob is around to always chill with.  alright,  out to the beach

Last week in Sydney

So anyway... I finished my gigantic history paper!! huzzah. definitely the accomplishment of last week.  Last Tuesday had an excursion around the Rocks area of Sydney with Bruce and Rawe - a great pictoral history with a free pint at the end ;)  quayle ale is good stuff!  lord nelson's microbrewery.  Met Jenn Fisher for dinner again on Wednesday - a great Indian place - with Emily and Helen.  Girls night.  Thursday finished the paper and went out with some engineers to The Palace to overcelebrate.  Friday got to get up crazy early for a wine tasting tour in the Hunter Valley of all things.  Tried about 16 wines plus 4 liquors of various sorts... 3 wineries and a pub were included.  I actually like the scenery best I think... rolling hills of vinyards with montains in all directions.  Saturday was the last day in the city and I tried to get in everything I'd been putting off.  Recruited Jaime to come along with me for company.  We wandered around Newtown for a few hrs. all sorts of bookstores, thrift shops and coffee/tea shops.  Then up to the Glebe markets and an insanely long walk (in the ever present saturday rain of course) through darling harbour to the rocks for a giant pancake dinner with the energy mob.  Sunday an early early flight and now i'm in beautiful sunny Cairns!!!

Rugby league to the blue mountains

So I lied about all the wandering that was going to happen on Friday.  I ended up going to the library and reading, etc for the history paper. of course not getting any work done really.  then it was time for rugby league - the sydney roosters v. the st. george dragons! an intense quasi-local rivalry.  luckily it didnt rain or anything and the roosters pulled out a win in the second half.  still dont really understand all the rules though... ah well.  walked back to the dorm with some peeps and hung out the rest of the night. watched braveheart i think. random!  then saturday, helen and i actually did get up, check email, and head out to wander the city.  went to the rocks markets again for a short while and then took a long walk down Pitt st. and Oxford st. all the way to Paddington - good way to see lots of the town.  more markets while there, then a bus to the west part of the eastern suburbs (which are really in the south)  to a neighboorhood called newtown which is jam packed with thriftstores and coffeeshops.  definitely good times.  cant believe we actually did everything on our list!  got back in time to watch the rugby union australia v. new zealand game.  (the same as my first rugby match ever watched!) sunday then one of the engineering girls, Kasha, organized a group to go on a day trip to the blue mtns and i tagged along since i've been hanging out with the so called energy mob so much more then the georgetowners anyway.  i think there were about 12 of us that went - a good trip run by oz experience.  went via windsor, then stopped several times in the blue mtns to hike a bit, have lunch and look off cliffs.  did the whole scenic gondola ride and rode the worlds steepest inclined railway - 52 degrees and open on the sides and top.  definitely felt like you could fall out at any time.  on the way back stoppped at featherdale animal park where they help injured animals.  got to pet a koala and a bunch of kangaroo/wallabies.  not to mention staring now the cassowaries, taipan, tasmanian devil, and fruit bats!  so alright, now i PROMISE to go do history work!

Sydney opera house

ah, i have left this too long again! so heres a wrap up of the past week:

saturday - as i left you, went downtown with Dukie program friends Helen and Nina where we wandered the area of Sydney market and visited the Rocks weekend markets for a couple of hrs. Finished up in the downtown area window shopping and hopped a bus back just as it started to pour. a quiet night for most of us that didnt want to get absolutely drenched. what sort of drought is this????
sunday - a massive plan for today was created the night before with Emily, Tam, Dan, and Mark. unfortunately rain usually does throw off the out of doors type plans. we did go to bondi in the morning and walked around the markets there for a while in the drizzle. again foiled from walking the entire cliff walk back to coogee so we took the bus. i'm pretty sure the rest of the day was spent doing nothing vital. thank goodness theres a big tv room and plenty of engineers to spend time fixing the numerous broken speaker wires and whatnot.
monday-tuesday - went to class, etc, etc. made it to the library to do some work even thought the dang place closses at 5pm!!! good lord. rough just because these were our first days of nice weather! monday had a history excursion to the hyde park barracks, st marys cathedral, hyde park, war memorial. walking around for about 3 hrs. of course at the end it started sprinkling. ack! walked down about 20 min to the opera house to see it all lit up and then headed back to uni
wed - class, whatever. finished paper #1 for environmental history. actually paper #2 if you count the short one for that class. grading is a joke and i shouldnt try even as hard as i do. habits are hard to break though! thought i'd allow myself to go out and celebrate and headed to The Palace down on Coogee with a hoard of studyabroaders. Danced for a few hrs till the place shut down at 1am. Then for some reason decided along with others that it would be a really good idea to go down to the beach (this place was right next to it) and jump in the ocean... haha. absolutely hilarious. defiitely a bit bracing as well!
thursday - class, gym, getting dressed up. luckily helen brought 2 of everything - actual nice clothes of the type that i dont generally wear or own. so got the little black dress and heels on and we both headed out. met up with jenn fisher in her office near circular quay (say it like 'key') then went with her and her boss for a quick bite before we headed up to the opera house. about 50 of our group there - in the back 2 rows of the ground floor. the opera was 'the mikado' definitely a good beginners opera as it is in english and funny as well! after that, wandering in heels - not so pleasant. randomly turned out that about everyone in the program ended up at the 'Three Wise Monkeys' bar downtown to listen to the cover band and chill for a few hrs. home relatively early and I still slept in! tons of sleep, most excellent. now i'm just supposed to get working on my 10 pg paper for history.... maybe later ;) i've got wandering to do through the thriftshop area of town. then a rugby match tonight! nothing like a good sporting event to get the bloodlust going. hopefully get some surfing in this weekend and maybe a trip to the blue mtns.

Surfs up on Bondi Beach

Well the past few days in Sydney have been incredibly busy - I feel as if I'm running from class to excursion to activity to doing work and finally to bed. The constant off and on rain has been a bummer too. It would figure of course that a city in one of its worst droughts would get rain from the moment I arrived. Yesterday after class I had my surfing lesson at Bondi. Went with several other people from the program. Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time we arrived and had to throw on wetsuits. The tide was in and the waves were high and strong. Usually they time lessons during low tide so the conditions are a bit easier - no such help for us! After signing our lives away (a list of dangers including interesting things like: 'you make be sucked out to sea' or 'you may be bitten by a fish or shark or stung by a jellyfish') we headed out to the beach. Streched and broke up into groups. We went out individually at first in attempts to jump on the board and kinda of stay lying down while riding a wave in. I have a distinct tendency to fall over when walking out and being hit by a wave and it took me a while to make sure my mouth and eyes were shut when hit, but I ended up doing surprisingly well. We went back to the beach and practiced standing up on the boards. Then again attempted individally and all together. You will be pleased to note that I stood up twice! and didnt fall off either - i was unanimously voted best in our group for my ride that went all the way into shore with enough time to pose like a surfer... and who would have guessed with my coordination? At any rate, I'm very tempted to take another 2 lessons. maybe audition for blue crush 2? haha. Anyway, Emily,Colleen, Evan, and I walked home from there which was quite a trek. Started along the gorgeous cliff walk that goes all the way to Coogee but turned inland when it got dark (about 5:45!) A quiet night as it was raining and I couldnt get enough motivation to take a bus all the way downtown in that. Watched 'The Gift' with a bunch of the energy engineers and then chatted with some of my group that got back early. Today I'm finally headed downtown to explore!

Uluru and Canberra

What better way to celebrate the 4th of July then by sitting on a bus from 9am until 3:30pm? Ack. way too much sitting for me! The scenery, I suppose, was at least a good way of really feeling the emptiness that is central australia. We arrived in time to drop our stuff off in rooms (most of the program stayed in a hostel/lodge type thing) or in my case a tent (wasn't bad, had a real bed in it afterall) and then they bused us out to watch Uluru while the sunset opposite it on the horizon. I must say now that it is one BIG rock. I've seen plenty of mountans and such, but a rock of that size is just a bit odd. Definitely much cooler our in the desert as well. Got down to below freezing at night which was quite a shock after the 80s and 90s in Darwin. Our bus driver instructed us to start taking pictures at 5:40 and continue taking them every 5 min until after the sun was down around 6:15.... in cahoots with the film industry! but he had a point in that the rock changes color slowly but steadily. Starting off with its normal red sandstone color and darkening/deepening. Spent the rest of the night bumming around what is apparently Yuluru - the town/resort that we were staying at. I walked back with Claire from the lodge where the other groups were staying - probably took us about 25 minutes, but we got to walk through almost empty desert and enjoy the stars and almost full moon. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy and we only got patches of the sky.
The next morning they roused us all way to early to go watch the Olgas while the sun rose opposite them in the horizon (20 degrees from Uluru.) The Olgas are a number of large rocks (each significantly smaller then Uluru but in total taking up a larger space.) College students are never incredibly cheerful when woken up at 5:15 and dropped off at an outlook to wait 45 minutes for the sun to rise. I think however this was even more beautiful then the sunset although it was definitely a cold wait. It took quite a while because of cloudyness, but the Olgas almost seemed to be glowing pink just as the sun peaked the horizon and colored the underside of all the clouds blue and pink. Next they took us all to the culure center at Ululru before finally driving us right up to the rock. We took a Mulga walk around part of Uluru led by an aboriginal family who was translated by a park ranger. It was incredible to hear the stories of ancient ancestors visiting for sacred rites. It was explained to us that although the aboriginal man spoke English, these tales were too powerful to tell in that language. The path up to the top of the rock was closed due to high winds, but I wouldn't have walked anyway after hearing of the importance of the path and the requests of the native owners to not climb. We probably got 3/4 of a mile around it to see several of the caves where men, boys, and women sheltered for thousands of years. T

hen, unfortunately, our group had to head back to the buses to catch our flight to Canberra. Only the history and Michigan state journalism classes went to Canberra for 2 nights. We went via Melbourne, where we saw rain for the first time on the trip. Then a short hop to Australia's capitol - on that flight in the late evening you could look out of the plane window and see along the western horizon a bright spectrum spread in a thin band while the rest of the sky was in darkness - cool! If you know anything about Canberra you know it's not an exciting place. It was a totally planed city first built in the 1920s and 30s to prevent the capitol being Sydney or Melbourne. As a park city everything is incredibly spaced out, and the almost downtown area we stayed at a hostel in was completely dead at night. Luckily the hostel showed movies on its TVs in the evening! The next day was hectic as we visited the National Museum, which has incredible exhibits featureing "Land, Nation, People" but is under some controversy as the current Liberal (think republican) govt wants to remove many of the apologetic references to the european invasion, and then the National Gallery with art work of Australians. Yet another quiet night in the hostel before visiting the War Memorial on Wed morning. Australians are very serious with their war memorials - there is one in every town no matter how small. Their impression of war is completely different from ours. In WW I, they see themselves as a sacrifice of the British empire, and since then the idea of 'mateship' with fellow soldiers has been more important then demonization of the enemy.

Yet another bus ride - 4hours this time through quite different scenery. Even in this terrible drought, NSW is relatively green, with rolling hills and pastures. One can definitely understand why original explorers who were thousands of miles and many months away from their home saw English hills and meadows. Moved into the University of New South Wales last night. The dorms are a tad ghetto, but I have my own room which is plenty big so I'm not complaining! More important - free breakfast and lunch! woohoo! Today we had our elective class before going on an excursion to the museum La Peruse which has an exhibit over the French explorer of that name who landed in Botany Bay the day after Arthur Phillip and the English first fleet claimed the continent. Seems like I've been in a whirl since arriving - but had time to walk around and orient a bit this afternoon. Hopefully I'll be able to get all my papers written this weekend so as too have no work the rest of the trip! Anyway, it's cold here too! such a shock for it to be winter with highs in the 50s. and of course I'm going surfing at Bondi beach tomorrow! should be great if i can avoid sharks and pnuemonia!

Alice Springs

Well I haven't really done THAT much, but I suppose that an update on location at least is deserved at this point. Monday and Tuesday of this week were great, relaxing, hang out around Darwin in the sun type days. I even managed to get up and out with people on Monday night! My elective class met on Wed. and Thurs. Environmental History of australia - taught by prof. Tony - a friend of professors Ray and Bruce. The first day was a repeat for almost everyone involved - most of the 18 of us are from history, wildlife and conservation, or the Duke program. We have watched some pretty interesting nature-type videos at least. Wed night my roomates and I took it easy and went to bed pretty early. However, Thursday was our last night in Darwin - not to mention Territory Day! Apparently July 1 is the only day that is legal for people to set off fireworks so they have to get a years worth in. Thursday is also the big night for the Mindil beach markets. I don't know if I've described them yet, but the markets start a bit before sunset and continue on until 9 or 10pm. Incredibly like a busy county fair - just replace tenderloin stands with those for chinese and various oriental food and the fried candy bar places with ones for smoothies. You can buy just about anything, from crocodile whips to tie-dyed clothes. At any rate, there was a huge official fireworks display from barges just off the beach. Then the unofficial display started. Along the whole coastline you could see and hear people setting off veritable truckloads of fireworks. Impressive in persistance even if they're just bottle rockets most of the time. Most of my group made a big evening of it, but for some reason I decided to chill out around the pool and just chat with people I hadn't seen for awhile. Friday morning was our flight from Darwin to Alice Springs. A public holiday here so everything was closed and Alice is a quiet town to begin with! Today I got to spend some time walking around, visiting the cultural center, etc. Just returned from the Desert Park where they have restored 3 different desert habitats and have various displays/seminars showing off bush animals. Tomorrow is the exciting 6 hour bus ride to Uluru!! What a summer!

Kakadu National Park

So I just returned last night from our 3 day/2 night trek into the bush of Kakadu. Good times indeed - even with GTers scared of mozzys (mosquitos) and giant spiders in tents (well, more understandable, but, really screaming wasn't necessary.)

Friday: Got up too early, packed (very little as i basically wore the same outfit just adding or removing a sweater as needed) and piled into one of two 15 passenger vans. It's a goodly drive out to Kakadu - about 1.5 hrs south and east of Darwin. First stop was for a Jumping Crocodile Cruise on the Adelaide River. Before boarding I got to hold a 6 ft. python... should be a good picture. Then onto the cruise where we traveled down the river baiting the crocs with chunks of beef dangled into the water causing them to attack/even jump a bit. Let me just insert here that this caused me to be even more upset that they did not tell us right when we arrived that salties (the agressive ones) were occassionally pulled out of the water at Mindil beach - the place where we went wading on day 2. good lord these things are huge, ranging from 3-20ft long, and really scary up close i would just like to say. plus there are tons of them - 1 every 100m or so it's estimated. Anyway, a further hour drive into the park to stop at Ubirr. This is a site with some of the most ancient known aboriginal rock art. Incredible to think that people were living there and painting 60,000-40,000 yrs ago. Most of the park is open woodland - lots of eucalyptis trees and dry, dry ground cover of spiky grass. This is the season for controled burns too, so much of the brush was on fire when we climbed to a lookout point at Ubirr. In one direction lay the plain of woodlands ending in the escarpment - a huge plateau covering hundreds of acres, and in the other direction lay 'stone country' rocky, rough, unkown land. We drove off and watched the sunset at a billabong near one of the uranium reserves in the park - saved only by civil disobedience in the 1980's. On to our campsite, where another group awaited our arrival to start dinner. Tents were all set up - even with bedrolls provided. We huddled around the fire and enjoyed kangaroo stir fry. Kangaroo is really good as a matter of fact, a bit like venison - dark, very juicy, lean. Then I wandered off with the wildlife and conservation class that was there on a spotlighting hike. Found a few birds in trees, lots of spiders, then went down to the billabong to hunt for crocs. None were found, unfortunately, although I was freaked enough by the Barramundi (fish) eyes that we found reflected. Unfortunately caine toads have migrated this far north and we found a couple of them. The bathrooms were by far the best place for wildlife though: huntsmen spiders, wolf spiders (these are both big, hairy, and very scary), lizards of all sorts, and tree frogs. always an adventure in australia!

saturday: an early start, and we all packed up into 4WD toyota landcruisers for the journey out to Twin falls and Jim-Jim falls. An hour on unsealed roads before a quick stop to turn on 4WD. Then it was nearly off-roading it - a very bumpy, yet fun ride through the bush. Spotted some brumbies (wild horses) right off and later some water buffalo. Crossed a river higher then my waist which was a new experience, as cars at home seem to falter at a few inches of water... Arrived at Twin falls and we were taken down the gorge in a boat. Used to be that everyone would swim down the gorge to the base of the falls, but as salties have been sited and doing this eventually creates a film of sunscreen on the water, the boats are more environmentally friendly. There we enjoyed the falls - 2 falling more then 300m to a plunge pool with a white sandy beach. I sat in the shade with Bruce and Raylein (finally figured out they are in fact married and teaching the course with their daughter along for the trip) Both were very concerned about my sunburn and have been near adopting me to prevent further sun injury. Good times in all. Clambered back over the rocks, back to the boat, back to the landcruisers, and backtracked to a picnic site for lunch. The guides in my car were "traditional owners" Darren and Johnnie - definitely characters, loved to tell stories, and were amazing at spotting things like frilly lizards while doing 40mph on a bumpy track. Next stop was Jim-Jim falls. This required more of a hike to get to - 1 km. May not sound like much, but more then half of it was not a path, but simply clambering over huge rocks some of which were loose. Definitely a work out and I am proud that I had only 1 good fall and that was on the way out! At any rate, poor Darren had to keep reminding us to 'think like rock wallabies' especially the poor city kids (only a couple were bad) that did not enjoy the communing with nature. At Jim-Jim we were allowed to go swimming. The falls here were even higher - maybe 400m. And the plunge pool was harder to get to. Again, the gorgeous white sandy beach followed by a pool of water about 50 degrees F. A shallow layer of rocks separated it from a smaller pool about 30m across where one had to scramble across another rock barrier to get to the plunge pool. We all started out on this trek - despite the cold water. The scarriest part initially was that 30m across pool - the first place where you HAD to swim to get further. The water was incredibly clear and cold. When I first jumped in I was positive my heart would stop or I would hyperventilate 1/2way across. Just had to keep swimming and keep calm. Then on the rock barrier we found a black whip snake - dangerous - necessary detour. And then the last step to reaching the waterfall and standing beneath it - the plunge pool itself. It was about 200m in diameter, at least 30m deep - so deep it was black, and even colder - about 40 degrees. Basically no where to stop and take a rest if you got cold or tired. About 5 of our group made it to the falls and stood on a ledge beneath it as I arrived on the edge of the rock barrier. In the process 2 more had turned back halfway (GT boys!) and 1 had got scared and swam to the side. Well of course I couldnt not go, so I dove in and headed off. Eventually went a bit numb - but as long as you dont panic, it wasnt a hard swim at all. Just so gorgeous to look up at the sandstone cliffs surrounding the pool. Made it to the falls where I stood on a little ledge and let the freezing cold water pound down.. incredible let it be known - one of the best things i've ever done i think. At any rate, the rest of the day was making our way back to camp where dinner was crocodile and kangaroo. croc is actually a bit like chicken. honestly! even looks like it!!

sunday: now for driving back to darwin, the long way. An hour long stop at Noulangie rock - a place where art was being done by aborgines from 5,000 yrs ago up until the 1960s. Clearer and more colorful then Ubirr with another view of the escarpment. Many bushfires that day. The aborigines use the fire-stick method of farming - burning this time of year rather then waiting until the wet season when lightening strikes with ignite out of control fires. The eucalyptis trees WANT to burn - and produce oil and dry stringy bark to do so, this kindling is added to with the grasses that grow high and are incredibly dry by the end of the winter. The whole sky was hazy with smoke. Then the bus took us further to Gunlom falls where we had lunch, then hiked up to the top of the falls (another work out! specially being sore from the day before) where there were some lovely pools to swim in and a great view looking into the valley. Then 3 hours of driving - I finished my 2nd hand book "Down Under" by Bill Bryson which was entertaining and I reckon relatively close to fact. A stop at the Adelaide River Historic War Cemetary - our one history assignment of the trip and then another 1.5 hrs to Darwin. Today and tomorrow are free days which will probably involve lots of sitting, maybe a bit in the sun, wandering the town in the morning and evening, and going to the gym in the middle. Wed and Thurs I'll have the first classes of my elective - Australia Environmental History. Good times!!

Darwin

Lots of catching up to do:

Saturday night, ate out and hanging out till semi-late.

Sunday: woke up, went to the beach for a bit, orientation session from 2-4pm. they gave all 130 of us a brief overview of what to expect living in Darwin, including a 25 minute summary of Australian language/culture/history. Also our guides in Kakadu gave us a bit of an itinerary as each group is rotating in and out of the park. My "Australian History" program leaves early friday morning and comes back late on Sunday. Finished up the evening watching the sunset and wandering around down at the Mindil beach markets.

Monday: first day of class. bright and early at 9am too! Our classroom is a not so convenient 20 min walk away from the apartments. Ah well, at least I'll stay in shape! Class was actually really fun. Bruce (the prof) and Peter (the TA) are both from the University of New South Wales. We started out with a lot of role-playing/acting and interactive exercises. Ended with a movie and the 4 hour class was over. Managed to find the gym which was marked incorrectly on the map they gave us. so might actually get a bit more in shape this summer. That evening was a reception at the government house with "his honour" ted egan. It was great - free beer, champagne, mingling with random others, and tons of "nibbles" - sandwiches to spring rolls. And waiters to bring everything around on trays to groups of people. Then the governor spoke to us, sang a song as well since apparently he has about 20-30 albums, a nervous american coordinator added something, and some poor engineering student butchered a thank you speech. Then a night out on the town. After meeting a million new people at the reception - including Emily Essig, the Purdue girl I'm traveling with afterwards - I decided to quasi-detach myself from the georgetown-ites and hang out with the nerds for an evening. I must admit it just reminds me of being at purdue and going out. I'm somewhat more at ease just cause I atomatically fit in better with that sort of crowd. Not that I'm complaining about the History kids - plenty of good people and I do get along pretty well, just can't always deal correctly with the preppiness. So somehow was in bed by midnight anyway! We've had such early nights here so far. I at least have the excuse of English training.

tuesday: class again. This time with Raylein (female prof) about Aboriginal culture and women convicts. Not as exciting as the day before. Excursion in the afternoon to the Chinese museum where we did a few exercises describing how the Chinese have been important in Darwin since the 1870s or so. A stop by the library to be a nerd, get brownie pts, and ostensibly research my role-play for wed. - governor arthur phillip. That evening, our group had yet another excursion - this time for a sunset cruise out on the ocean. We took an historic pearl lugger out to the site where the US ship Pearly was sunk during WWII. Apparently we had quite a bit of navy stationed here, and Darwin was hit with several times the amount of bombs that Pearl Harbour was. Over the site where the ship sunk and 91 American sailors were trapped inside, we had a bit of a ceremony. Bruce talked about the bombings, Peter read Australia's "Ode" which they read at all services of this type, we each took turns reading the names of the fallen, and then threw roses into the water. Afterwards, in true Aussie style, we all had several glasses of complimentary champagne. The sunset around 7:20 or a bit before - it was the winter solstice afterall!! and it was incredible. hung out on the water for awhile before heading back to the dock, and dinner.

wed: well, that would be today for me. tomorrow for all of you at home ;) more class today. 10% of our grade done with now. We held a mock 'Royal Commission' to investigate the causes/means of prevention of the racial tension and violence that occured when the country was first being colonized. I was the first Governor - Arthur Phillip and had to speak as him during the investigation. Apparently we all got 10/10. again, its a rough class... haha. Then, we were supposed to watch a documentary but apparently Raylein's daughter had taped over it with Charmed. So we got out early, I hit the gym, then we had yet another excursion. We went to the Esplanade in Darwin to see the statues commemerating a German explorer, the US Pearly, and ANZAC soldiers. Also went to the telegraph house, did exercises about the pictures there, talked to the oldest morse code/telegraph guy in Australia - 96 yrs old! Then on to the Supreme Court, a cemetery, and finally the Northern Territory museum with everything from aboriginal art to natural history stuff to a NASA exhibit. Admittedly, pretty tired now but headed to the $5 BBQ!

arrival australia

So i traveled for 36 hours straight to get here - plenty of time to calculate that on the 24 hours spent on planes. it actually wasnt all THAT bad. watched several movies, got some sleep, started meeting people from the program in LAX - waiting in an absolutely hellish line to check in for the Qantas flight to Brisbane. And on the flight from brisbane to darwin over half the plane was made up of study abroad students. Almost everyone in the history program is from georgetown university with the exception being myself and other single random students from pitt, university of penn., drexel, george washington, western michigan, etc... the other group arriving with us was culture and media of australia students - almost all of which are from michigan state. at any rate, its been good times thus far. settled in at the apartments we're staying at - 3 other girls in the 2 bedroom, living room/kitchen, 1 bathroom apart. not bad really theres even a pool in the middle of the complex. went grocery shopping and got communal food. we get along quite well i think. even though i occassionally get sick of georgetown gossip... we went out last night to 'shenanigans' a bar on the main street. darwin is a pretty small town, but the territory capitol. australians at the bar were really friendly, plenty of free drinks - although i believe that would probably be due to the blonde/sorority types that i am now hanging out with as well as the fact that everyone at the bar seemed a bit, well, old... that wrapped up for us at 10 - i absolutely crashed when we got back to the apartment. this morning we were all up by 9 or 10 and decided to head to the beach - Mondil beach. We stayed out there for several hours as more of the group made it. couldnt really go swimming unfortunately as the water felt great. apparently its invested with jellyfish from oct-may, and even now you have to watch out for salt water crocodiles... we waded out pretty far - only up to mid-thigh - before psyching ourselves out and heading out of the somewhat murkey aqua water. so of course, i am now sunburnt, in record time. we walked back, ate, hung out at the pool for awhile and jogged over to this internet cafe. its about as hot here as at home, but less humid. so actually probably hotter. at any rate, orientation is tomorrow and class starts monday. what a holiday!

homecoming

i'll be getting on a train to get on a plane to go home in 6 hours. see you all soon!

Oxford and more work avoidances

So Thursday morning, I decided to head to Oxford for a day trip. Unheard of for English people who would only consider the 1hr+ one trip for a longer amount of time - a weekend or a week! Walked into town and hit up the Ashmolean museum first - a free activity. I think it may well rank among the most random museums I have ever been to, containing statues from Egypt and Greece, printings from China and Japan, old English table settings, Italian rennisance art, coins, an exhibit of contemporary sculptures made from prosthetic legs, and 4 Stradivarius instruments. I spent some time wandering around the silent, musty, mostly devoid of visitors rooms. The music room was actually closed and I had to beg a nearby curator to open it up for me to see the Stradivarius violin 'Le Messie.' So the 10 min tour of a small room packed with instruments and 2 stradivarius violins, 1 guitar, and 1 sitar before being escourted out and told to hide the paper from the room so that no one else would know the curator opened it. Out again on the streets of Oxford, headed down by Carfax tower and then to Christ church College. Having so many separate universities reminds me a bit of Yale where everyone lived in "colleges." I must admit that I couldn't bring myself to pay to get into any of them. I mean, really, it is a school still! But I really enjoyed wandering the small back allies, peeking inside some of the less well known colleges, following people who looked like they might actually be students. I of course made sure as well to see the famous New College and Magdalen College. I got a kick out of just walking along a street and looking up to see a plaque that read something along the lines of "while living here, Sir Alfred Boyle discovered Boyle's Law and some other guy who i can't remember at the moment but know of made a microscope and identified a living cell for the first time." So, yeah, cool! Oxford reminded me a bit of Bath with more architectural diversity. After wandering for several hrs, I called it a day and hopped the train back to Bath.

So in other recent news, two of the Americans have now left: Les on Wed. and Dan today. We all keep going out the night before and our numbers are already dwindling. It's very odd to sit around a table with the people you've hung out with most the past 4 months and say that you'll never all be together again. I suppose that this is just a preview for graduation next year. I guess one of the consequences of spreading your friends out and around the world is that you'll be lucky to see them once every 5-10 yrs. At any rate, I haven't studied for the past 2 days. I know I can't totally blow off these exams... so I guess I'll go attempt to do some work now.

Amsterdam

Well, 3 exams to study for and I still decided to go to Amsterdam for a couple of days. At least I studied on the plane ride there and back! We left on Wednesday night and arrived in enough time to wander around the town viewing the night life. Stayed in a hostel on the south edge of the center of town, so large amounts of walking were the order of the trip. The first night we found our way into the red-light district, where apparently I did not go on my 4 hr visit to Amsterdam during a flight layover 2 years ago. Legal prostitution and scantaly clad women in red lit windows as a bit of a shock to my poor mid-western sensibilities. The stretch was basically swarming with American and British tourists. Amsterdam is an easy place to visit for them as everyone speaks English. Thursday, we spent about 3 hours in the morning doing a self guided walking tour of the city. Impressive architecture from several different eras - the traditional tall, skinny houses; occassional double-wide mansions, the huge Dam square where the original dam once stood and there is now the old city council building and WW II monument. All the while you have to keep dodging trams and a plethora of bicycles. Took a nap in the afternoon, and spent the evening at a comedy show and then enjoying a glass of Heineken. The way the Dutch drink their beer would be absolutely illegal in England - it's served in a half-pint glass with about 2 inches of head on top. Pints are relatively unheard of there. Friday morning we stopped by the Rijksmuseum, which unfortunately is under pretty major construction, and the Van Gogh museum, also under construction, and decided that we couldnt afford 9 euros each to visit them. Where are the student rates afterall! We then went to the Heineken brewery for a self-guided tour which included 3 glasses of beer and a free glass at the end. Spent a good 3 hours there, highlights being of course the foosball table and the beer. In the bar at the end, ended up meeting several other Americans and chatting for sometime. The bar tender kept giving us girls free beer upon request, and, as our group apparently looked like drinkers, people leaving seemed to invariably leave their free beer coupons with us. So after we finally got moving, we stuck with the 3 American girls, Jen, Emily, and Helena from Montana and Missouri. Helenas parents both went to Purdue... small world. Making it even smaller, Les ran into some guys he recognized from his University right outside the Heineken place. The afternoon was spent chilling, enjoying an actual sunny day, and stopping by the Anne Frank house. A long trip back, thanks of course to the quality (or rather lack ther of) service of Easyjet. So I'm back in Bath, recovering from such a great quantity of walking and attempting to get excited about my exams.... 10 days left in England!

Wales pics

pictures of the hike in wales are now up:
Pembrokeshire Coastal Path

Overnight to London

Started out on Friday by turning in my huge chemistry coursework! huzzah. then caught the 10:22 train to London. Turns out Jim and Dawn (Americans) were on the same train but headed to Oxford for the day, and Les and his parents (more Americans) were on their way to London as well. So arriving in the city at noon I had a good 5 hours of wandering - went to the British museum for awhile. Overwhelming and full of treasures plundered from all sorts of countries - just the Egypt section was mindnumbing. After that walked around the westside - Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Then over to the houses of parliament and all those necessary tourist things. I met Maree at Piccadilly Circus where we headed over to the East side for a few drinks before the show. Got to meet quite a large group of aussies and kiwis there that are living in london and are friends with Daniel and Maree (kiwis from my scotland tour.) Around 8, we headed over to see the punk show going on that night - Phineas Gage, Four-square, and Ten Foot Pole. Quite a good show, although almost ridiculously loud. You know its bad when I admit that! But anyway, definitely fun to be there with friends, moshing around a bit, but relaxed atmosphere in a kind of small venue. So finished up and back to Maree and Daniels place where I got to take over their couch.

Saturday morning woke up 9ish, met their flatmates, had a huge cappachino. Then went with the boys to a pub in Fulham to watch a rugby final. Very interesting for my first rugby game - Crusaders vs. Brimbees or somesuch. Basically New Zealand vs. Australia. So the bar was full of aussies and kiwis and even got an early license to start selling alcohol at 11am! haha. what a country. At any rate, good game specially being with all the staunch supporters. So did some drinking. Maree and flatmate Lisa got there a bit later and the whole group changed pubs to watch the FA cup final in the afternoon. Also a good game - its basically a soccer match where the best team from the premier league (the best) plays the best team from the first league (2nd best) Almost comparable to the superbowl champions playing the arena football champions. So one always cheers for the underdog. Especially when the other team is Manchester Utd. dang pretty boys! Unfortunately they won as expected, and then I had to say goodbye to my new and somewhat older friends and hop the train back to Bath. Now it's time to get some revision done!

Chester Trip

well just got back from a very quick trip up to Chester - right on the border of Wales and N. England. After my full day of lectures (2 of them plus a workshop and making sure my bio practical got turned in on time) I hopped on a train headed north. After the incredibly typical yet still painful delays, ended up in the Chester train station. Managed to find Beth, who I originally met back in Greece where she was working as a scuba diving instructer on Rhodes. Since then she's been in NZ and out west in the US as a ski instructer. Went out with her and a kiwi friend of hers that happened to be in the vicinity. A few drinks and now I have a contact in Christchurch who even has a car... Turns out Beth is going to be down under soon too - working skiing in Oz. Maybe meet up again for some free lessons! Anyway, went back to Beth's home near Wrecsam, Wales, met her parents, and slept in today. More gorgeous weather though, so we finally go ourselves moving and into Chester. Walked around town, saw the walls, walked along the river and had an ice cream cone. Good times catching up and so much sun is still a shock. At any rate, trains and more delays but I'm back and obviously avoiding finishing my big chem project thats due on friday morning.... sigh.

concert review

alright, since attending this 'alternative ball' thing is the only even quasi-adventure that i've done in the past week, I thought I'd give ya all a review of the bands there. and if you're thinking "i dont care cause i will never see these random english bands" oh well. ;)

kingskin - described themselves as 'grunge funk = funge' and i would have a hard time putting it better. first couple songs were nirvana-ish but then they moved into more funky beat type songs. good show. lots of enthusiasm. and their bass player had fuzzy tiger pants. that was good stuff.

no comply - hard core ska. female lead singer, screaming added by boys playing horns and guitar. also good show - however i dont know where the hell in england they were from, but i couldn't understand a word the girl said - not in the songs, but when she was just talking. also they had some technical difficulties which was no fun. definitely got the mosh pit going though

million dead - headliners from london. i would describe as heavy rock. a bit of screaming but not enough to annoy me. singer sounds a bit like the at the drive in lead singer. apparently on their way to being big or something. a little on the heavy side for me, but i thoroughly enjoyed the set

so all in all, i figure it was 8 pounds well spent. lord knows i need to get out to things like this more often. i was impressed at the small yet very enthusiastic crowd. the concert was at 'the venue' which is up on campus. probably only 100 people there or so, but a way better audience then we usually manage at the union at purdue. sucked to not know anybody as usual. but such is life. ok. thats all.

more new photos

yep, do it - click on the link to the right. More photos up in the Scotland folder and a few of the adventures incurred with my flatmates.

NOTE: you can now leave comments about any of my posts! so do it up!

Hiking in Wales

Quick update for those of you still checking this out. Headed West to Wales on Thursday morning. Clay,, Les, and I took several trains to arrive at Fishguard Harbor. We got there in the afternoon so had plenty of time to hike up to the village, explore, and settle in at the backpackers hostel there. Quite a quaint little place. Steve, the hostel owner, was full of helpful hints for our planned 2 day hike of the Pembrokeshire coastal path. Next morning we were up early and caught a bus to Cardigan, about 40 min away. Our hike began from the bus stop there out past Poppit Sands where after about 2 miles the actual trail began. It followed entirely along the coast with some spectacular views of the cliffs, caves, and rolling hills that make up the area of Welsh countryside. We took our time and even enjoyed the presence of some curious cows and newly reintroduced welsh ponies along the way. Walking along the path was nearly deserted. Plenty of ups and downs to make it an invigorating 17-18 mile hike. Around 5pm made it to the beach of Newport. The tide was out far enough that we cut a bit of mileage off by hiking on the beach itself - with boots off our toes got a bit of a rest. To finally get up to the village we waded through thigh high (for me at least) very cold water in the slipway. The youth hostel in newport was quiet and nearly empty so we got a home cooked meal and our own room. The 12.5 mile hike planned for Saturday was vetoed due to a knee injury that Clay incured on one of the down slopes an hour or so away from Newport. My semi-sunburn and blistered heel approved of the decision. We slept in a bit before heading to Fishguard on to Haversfordwest where we caught 3 trains back to Bath Spa. A long couple of days but well spent, good company and beautiful scenery. Now back to the work that I have been putting off for weeks!

So not much new really. Random news is that I was running on Saturday while wearing a Purdue shirt of some sort, and two people on bikes came from behind me and yelled 'go purdue' at me. So of course I yelled something similar back, and they stopped to have a chat. Turns out they were a brother and sister from Ft. Wayne of all places and they'd been living in England for the past few years. All of their family has gone to Purdue so it was quite nice to hear a friendly accent.

Sunday I went on the residence halls trip to the Eden project in Cornwall. http://www.edenproject.com/ A VERY long bus ride - about 3.5 hours each way. But I managed to mostly finish my chemistry flash cards. It worked out perfectly since Sunday was the one day of sun in the past week! Spent a good 4-5 hours just wandering the impressive biodomes - one is the largest greenhouse in the world supposedly. The whole thing was worth it just to see what a pineapple plant looks like. Got a chance to work on my English tan while wandering the grounds. Quite a nice day trip, and back for a couple of parties on the floors below mine.

A bank holiday today meant no classes, and I've been attempting to cope with not doing very much. Class on Wednesday and hopefully to Wales on Thursday for some serious hiking.

New Photos

Go look at all the pics I put up! (Link to the right)

Sunshine in England!

Well, nothing quite so spectacular as the three week spring break saga, but here's what I've been up to. As of this week I will only have 2 hrs of class mon and 2 hrs on wed. Apparently since my biology class was meeting an incredible 3x a week, lectures finish nearly a month early. In my biopolymers class, I tend to chuckle under my breath as the lecturer explains DNA replication, PCR technique, and DNA fingerprinting... The class that is somewhat of a worry is synthesis of medicinal compounds - lots of complicated reactions that quite honestly i have a hard time getting enough motivation to memorize. plus a course work of retrosynthesis/synthesis of a compound. ick. having so much free time really just makes it worse if you ask me.
The sun has been shining here, with pleasant weather in the 60's/70's for a record 4 days! Everyone gets a little out of control - just sitting outside all day basically and going out every night. Went to the Bell on Wednesday to hear some live music with peeps from my field ecology course. Thursday went to play poker with the Americans. Friday night my flat had a going away party for Claude who returned to Luxembourg on Sat. Homemade lasagne and sangria made for a quality evening. Most of the rest of the weekend I attempted to spend outside - running, a cookout on Sat., sitting in Victoria Park with the flatmates and pretending to make chemistry flashcards sun. afternoon. Last night went with Mandy to see Kill Bill 2, a quality film indeed even though I probably should've saved my money and gone to some weekday matinee.
Well I'm off to enjoy the sun for as long as it lasts!

Wild in Scotland

Thursday night: arrived in Edinburgh, bus to city center, without trouble found my hostel, checked in and wandered the streets. Went up to the Edinbugh castle which is quite spectacular at night.

Friday: Met the tour group at 8am. While waiting I ran into Sophie and 2 other people from the Ireland tour! Such a small world - they were headed out on a 4 day tour that same day with the same company. I made sure they had my email and wished them well before heading out with my 7 day tour. A bit of history from guide Jack as we drove out of town amongst Easter holiday goers. An interesting group of 16 total, all older then me by 3-10 years, and 3 couples with 2 other individuals engaged as well. Mostly Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, me and one other American. A drive to Stirling for the William Wallace monument and story. Trough Rob Roy country to Glen Coe for lunch and the story of the massacre there. The highlands are beautiful - shrouded in clouds. Past Ben Navis and Fort William. A stop at Castle Eilean Donan and finally the Isle of Skye was in view. We stayed at nearby Plockton in a wee bunkhouse was all ours. I walked with a few others on a muddy trail through impressive, very fairy tale-esque native pine forests. Back for a massive homemade meal and of course trip to the local pub.

Saturday: Drove across the controversial Kyle o Lochash bridge, which has the highest toll per meter of any bridge in Europe, onto the Isle of Skye. A gorgeous place with mountain vistas in every direction and always a blanket of clouds. Stopped at an abandoned church and graveyard to wander and admire the view of the Cuillin range at Elgo. A roadtrip to Portree for lunch. Jack had been swerving to pretend to hit all the sheep that kept wandering in the road and we had already noted his near obsession with feral goats so we got him a very feral looking stuffed sheep (of course name Feral) to be the mascot of the trip. The main road is a very bumpy 2 land and all others are shady single lane buisinesses with 'passing places' North of Portree we stopped for what Jack called a 'proper walk' of a couple of hours. Up to the base of the needle on the Stow. Incredible view! The Cuillins on the Isle and the Torrins on the mainland and clouds had lifted leaving a beautiful sunny day. A visit to kilt rock - didn't look THAT much like a tartan to me... but I am rather jaded having just seen the Cliffs of Moher. We stopped to take pictures of hiary highland cows (coos!) On the way back to Plockton, we wandered into the fabled glen of the fairies. With wee fairy mountains and rivers, I of course made a few offers to keep the brownies (say it broonies if you're Scottish!) on my side.

Sunday: Not only celebrating Easter Sunday, but also the birthdays of Ariane (canada) and Daniel (nz) who both turned 24. We took a while finding all our easter eggs, then headed off to a nearby sea loch - close to Lochlorran - were fisherman Neil MacCray took us out on his boat to help fish for scallops. Once the musles, crabs, numberous starfish, whiskey bottles, and nudabranches had been separated out of the catch we got to try scallops raw and whole. Doesn't get much fresher then that! A picnic lunch while watching seals at Lochlorran. Further on we stopped for a walk and skiped stones on beautiful, clear Loch Marie. Luckily saw some feral goats on the way to Scotlands highest waterfall... not that high! Then on to Ollapool for groceries before arriving at our hostel, a restored manse, in Inchnadamf, land of deer which everyone tried to feed bread. Quite a celebration that evening. Ritual singing of the national anthems then a late night party. Angela taught us a few quite odd New Zealand drinking games.

Monday: Lots of driving not good with the rather hung over birthday kids. Especially on the crazy single lane roads in the highlands, so several stops were made at gorgeous, sandy, North Atlantic beaches. Made a loop from Inchnadamf and worked our way along the coast. Stopped at an incredible beach near Durness for lunch and a bit of a run around and sand castle building. Quick look at nearby Smoo caves and we headed further North where the landscape changed from moutains to rolling hills covered in scrub and heather. Our ferry left from Gills Bay for an easy 1.5 hr crossing to St. Margerets Hope on the Orkney Islands. Had the hostel to ourselves and the local pub was conveniently located next door. It was mostly taken over by our group, but it was fun chatting with the locals and attempting to understand the accent. Dave (probably 70 or 80) told us about his time traveling as a diver for the off shore oil companies to Canada, Australia, and S. Africa. Drinking is truely a profession here and he told us that his job isnt for those who care about family or love. "I'm not much for love, I'm more for drinking and smoking." That pretty much says it all. A quality evening of sampling the local whisky - Scapa and Highland Park.

Tuesday: A raw, rainy, windswept day, but you can't let the weather stop you. We drove up from South Ronaldsey crossing Churchill barriers, causeways created during WWII and saw some of the remaining block ships sunk during WWI to keep German subs out of the Scapa flow. A quick stop at the Italian chapel, built by Italian POWs that were here to build the causeways. Northeast on the mainland onto the Deerness peninsula where we checked out the Gloup (blowhole) and had coffee on the VERY windy cliff to send our thoughts into the wind. On the return, we stopped just long enough to steal 4 huge turnips (neeps) from a field for dinner. In the main city of Kirkwall, we went to the cheese making factory to see a bit of action and sample the famous cheddar. Wandered around the pedestrian street and St. Magnus' Cathedral which is made completely of the local red sandstone. As the rain picked up, we headed off to see the neolithic monuments: The stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brogar, Skara Brae and Maes Howe. The first two are made of standing stones nearly 6 m in height. Only 4 remain at Stenness, but the Rigng of Brogar is impressive. Pouring rain and wind - very authentic Orcadian weather. We were all soaked by Skara Brae - a 5000 yr old village that was covered in sand dunes until the late 1800's so is well preserved. The comfort they lived in is impressive - beds, dresers, a hearth, storage, tools, and sewage system. Off to Maes Howe - an ancient tomb of the same era. Huge slabs make up the underground chambered tomb which is covered in Norse runes. 1000 yr old grafitti proclaiming things like 'this is written very high' and 'i'm the best at writting runes with my grandfathers axe.' We headed back to the hostel for a most traditional meel of neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), cheese, oatcakes, and Kranacan (sp?) for desert which is raspberries steeped in whisky and then mixed with cream and yogurt and toasted oats. The boys on the trip had been drinking for hrs but we cuaght up quickly at the local pub. Somehow I managed to get a few free drinks of Scapa - maybe it is an advantage to be the youngest! Slan javar! (scots gaelic for cheers! reapeated rather constantly on this trip)

Wednesday: Slept in before running around a beach on south Ronaldsey. The ferry returned us to the mainland where we stopped at John O'Groats for the obligatory photo op. Then headed on to a castle of our own, Carbisdale Castle, that has been turned into a youth hostel. Spent plenty of time wandering the creepy paintings and statues, looking for secret passage ways. Then watched the celtic vs. Vila Real football match. We all ended up staying up late drinking in one of the lounges and playing a strange variation of Trivial Pursuit.

Thursday: An early start for the long drive back to Edinburgh. Stopped at the battle of Culloden, a very moving place where the last Jacobite rebellion was crushed in 1745 which lead to the repression of the clans, bagpipes, and the Gaelic language. We then did a trip around Loch Ness to hunt for Nessie but no siteings. We all napped in the bus until we stopped at Edradour distillery - the smallest distillery in Scotland. Took the tour and our free dram. Quite a good, and apparently very rare, whisky. Arrived back in Edinburgh around 6:30 and said our tearful goodbyes. A few of us at least were spending the next couple of evenings in town anyway. Mike and Hayley, Aussies working in Edinburgh, had a flat and let me crash at their place for the 2 nights I was there. A whole group of us: Kiwis Zac and Angela and Daniel and Maree, Canadian Ariane, Mike, Hayley, and I all went out for a pub dinner and a few drinks.

Friday: Hayley and I drove to the base of Arthurs seat, and hiked up with just enough time to enjoy the view in the last sun of the morning. Made it back down before the rain started. Met up with the others for coffee and some stovies (mashed potatoes/turnips/somesort of meat) at a pub. Then got to spend some time being tourists and wandering the town. Did a bit of shopping - looked for a CD from The Corries - basically the sound track of our trip. Headed back to Mike and Hayley's apartment where we made a huge stirfry and Daniel, Maree and friend from home Veronica, and Ariane came over to hang out and chat. I went out with some of them for a bit. Just a couple of pubs and a take away place since Veronica had been working out in the highlands for 6 weeks where there are no late night takeaways! Anyway, said our goodbyes, although I've promised to come and visit Daniel and Maree at their place in London for some nights out on the town enjoying the live music scene.

Saturday: got myself up early for the 7 hour train ride back to Bath. I had been dreading it, but it went so easily I have restored my faith in my ability to travel for long periods of time. It was great to finally unpack, go for a run, SHOWER!, do laundry, and catch up with the flatmates I havent seen in 3 weeks! At any rate, congratulations to those who have read the ludicrously long update! Hope it has entertained a few of you at least

Field Ecology in the Gower Peninsula, Wales

Saturday: Made it up to Uni just before 9am. On the bus met another girl going on the field trip, Luisa. Met a few more people on the 3 hour bus ride (alright and took a nap too.) Arrived at the Worms Head Hotel, got changed, and headed straight outside to get working... in POURING rain. sigh, it is Wales afterall. We went from collecting random bus to practicint island biogeography theory by lifting up rocks and counting species underneath, to checking Gorse flowers (gorse is this prickly yellow bush) for the presence of moth larvae. Very wet and cold from the neverending wind, we had a chance to change before dinner, and afterwards we had a seminar session going over the day and expectations for the course.

Sunday: Set off on our longest walk of the trip a bit after 9. A lovely day despite the damn wind. We headed up the gower head, looked at some dung beetles, thought of possible projects, walked further and disccussed different lichens. Walked down through a caravan park into the sandy dunes for our pack lunch. Explored in the sand dunes catching snails to examine polymorphisms in shell banding at 2 sites. My group, Louisa and Sarah (biologists) and Georginia (natural sciences) decided on our project to go to anvils that thrushes use to crack open snail shells to see if the proportions of shells of various banding patterns is the same at all anvils. A 40 min walk back along the beach to examine life on a vertical rocky shore: lichens, barnacles, agi, molluscs, etc. After class that evening, we all went to hang out in the bar a the hotel - the only bar in town. Soon became a place for us to meet, do our work, and get a beer before the evening seminar. I did kindof enjoy being the only, somewhat random, foreign student with 18 English students, and several English profs. I'm sure they enjoyed giving me crap about it, but I got a kick hearing all the random stereotypes and it was all in good fun.

Monday: A short drive to three Cliffs Bay for exercises in the woodlands and coast. In the woods we did some symmetry measurements on wild grlic leaves, spent time looking for cool bus, and did an experiment to determine the % male and female that a buttercup population is. Hiked up, stopped at a ruined castle for lunch and to practice a bit of fractal dimensons. On the beach we tested habituation in edible periwinkles and took data to test for randomness in the number of small snails living in dead barnacle shells. A lovely hike back over rocks, the sun finally came out and I was even wearing short sleeves for a bit!

Tuesday-Thursday: These days we were working on our group projects. We had the longest walk of any group, all the way to the sandy dunes. But it was quite fun to scramble around them looking for anvils and finding all sorts of random things. I ended up making 1 pound 30 plus a credit card, and George found a pretty nice football. Anyway, Wednesday night we did number crunching and worked on finishing our paper. Thursday morning were our 12 min group presentations. Went off without a hitch, and we handed in our group paper and individual report on class exercises just before getting on the bus back to Bath. An entire course done! Arrived back at Uni at 4pm, just enough time to repack and catch my 7:30 flight to Edinburgh.....

Ireland trip continued...

Alright, after the 2 week intermission it is time to finish describing the Ireland trip with my parents.

Wednesday: Heading North from Kilarney to Galway, we stopped mid-morning for an intense Gaelic football rematch game, and then just barely caught the ferry across the River Shannon. Next stop were the incredible Cliffs of Moher - think of the huge, sheer cliffs used in the Princess Bride. An intense wind added a bit to the excitement of crawling on my belly up to the edge and looking over. Lunch was had at Doolin, the capital of traditional Irish music, and we continued on to stop at The Burrens. This area is basically just a large slab of limestone that was pushed up from the bottom of the sea millions of yrs ago. Very little water, and less soil, but somehow an amazing ecological diversity. In Galway, we were celebrating Dad's 50th birthday with style. First at Richardson's pub were dad bough everyone a mini-guinness (a shot of kahlua with baileys on top) and I finally had an Irish car bomb (half a pint of guinness that you drop a shot of whiskey+baileys into.) We moved then to The Keyes for some excellent traditional music. Of course requesting the 2 songs that we had learned on the bus - Sweet Molly Malone and The Fields of Athenrie (sp?) Finally a few of us stopped at a club to dance for a couple of hours. Plenty of good crack (means good times!)

Thursday: A drive from Galway to Derry through spectacular scenery. We stopped at the Shrine of Knock where the virgin Mary appeared to the locals in the 1880s. Then stopped at a beachfront town in Co Sligo where after a bit of wandering, quite a few of us had seaweed baths. A unique experience: You have a private room where you steam yourself for about 10 min and then jump into a tub of hot water with clean, green seaweed in it. The seaweed has been treated previously so that it gives off all sorts of oils. After sitting in that for about 30 min, you come out all clean, soft, and in my case very pinkish! We then drove through Donegal to arrive in Derry, our first city in Northern Ireland. A town with a sad history. We went on a walking tour of the city to the 'Bloody Sunday' monument, the murals created nearby to honor the hunger strike victims, and along the old city walls to the peace wall that surrounds the small protestant community on the catholic side of the river. Everything in town shuts down at 5:30 and people still disappear from the streets until much later. Back at the hostel it was pizza and homemade punch. A group of us headed out to the Bogside Inn, located very close to the Bloody Sunday monument and apparently a traditional IRA hangout - leave your arms with the barkeep. Definitely a local experience. The walls were covered with pictures of the Troubles, and the locals showed us their gunshot wounds. Next, off to Padder O'Donnells where some Irish music was being played. The parents went home soon after, but I stayed out with a group that tried to get into the club The Metro. Unfortunately, it was closed even though it was only 1ish. We wandered a bit in the streets, didn't see any of the predicted drunken youths throwing things at the walls or police. At any rate, back to the hostel - next to one of the largest police stations in western europe!

Friday: After spending an inane amount of time trying to get the bus out of the street between the hostel and the police station (everyone parks illegally since the police never come out of the station) we had a bit of an accident with a pole in a Sainsbury parking lot. Despite that less then propitious start, we headed straight to the Giants Causeway. An interesting geological formation. Lnch was at a nearby village before driving out to a national trust area and walking across a very old rope bridge to a windy, beautiful island. The ground was soft and good for jumping around on while being blown around by the wind. Then we booked it to Belfast where I made Steve drop me off at the airport (made it at 7 for my 8pm flight) Quite a send off when you can get 30 odd people to wave at you from a bus as you're going into an airport. Made it to Bristol, waited a long time but finally caught a train back to Bath and got in around midnight. Just enough time to shower, repack, and get ready to leave in the morning on a field ecology course!

Ireland trip

First night: We checked into the hostel and walked around downtown Dublin. Admiring the kilts that everyone had on for the Ireland/Scotland rugby match that was on that evening.

monday: We met the paddywagon tour in Dublin, there were 32 of us on our bus. Headed immediately south stopping at Cashel Rock, a couple of castles, and a trip to kiss the Blarney stone. We stopped for the night in Kilarney were we went out for a pub dinner and then many of us headed to The Grand for a couple of hours of excellent traditional Irish musicians.

tuesday: Based from Kilarney, we drove to the Dingle peninsula. Stopped along the way to run around on a few gorgeous beaches. Eventually made it to Dingle for lunch. Spent a couple of hours attempting to attract the attention of the local dolphin, Fungie. Some of the South African boys on our tour (the group was a lot of Australians, 1 Kiwi, 4 Americans, and about 10 South Africans on gap year.) even jumped in the rather chilly water to try to get his attention. We drove a bit more of the Ring of Kerry and stopped at the point of the peninsula. On the way back to Kilarney, our guide let us out to run around and taught us the rules of hurling and gaelic football. The latter became quite popular with our group and whenever we needed to run off some energy we asked to stop and play.

wednesday-fri :sorry but i have to go to wales NOW! i'll finish updating later!

Avebury

Well, this will hopefully be a very fast update. Mom and dad arrived a week ago, met me here in Bath, and we all rented a car from the Bristol airport. A very tense ride ensued as dad practiced staying left and using roundabouts. At any rate, we made it to Avebury unscathed just after sunset. We stayed at an excellent B&B right in the middle of the stone circle there. The rooms were gorgeous and a huge breakfast was included. The next day we spent wandering around the region of the circle. We headed south first, past ancient Silbury hill and visited Longbarrow, an ancient burial site. Once again off-season worked in our favor. Then we followed the avenue of stones on the female side of the circle back to Avebury and explored englands largest stone circle before walking across several hills on a country lane to the quarry where the stones came from. It seems that even most of the stones in Stonehenge came from this area. Avebury was definitey worth the day visit. We drove back to the Bristol airport then and caught our plane to Dublin! I'll try to get a bit of the Ireland trip in here before I leave.....

Week in Review

so yet again way too long between posts...

Last Sunday, I picked up Mr. Andy Butler from the airport and helped him get to Bath. Ditched him the next day to go to all my classes (and a wine tasting seminar...) On Tuesday we departed Bristol airport for Dublin with about 6 other Americans most of whom are studying at Bath too. We rented a pretty nice apartment (meant for 5 people, shared by 8-10) just across the river from the temple bar district. After a short time wandering, we began drinking and bar hopping. Dublin was absolutely packed and in a celebratory mood getting ready for St. Patrick's day. Sampled my first guinness and decided its not bad at all... I might even like it better then beer. Just not the sort of thing you can chug. Well, I did see it done, but only by the Irish. The next day, we somehow managed to wake up and make it outside by about 10:30am.... INSANE! To get really good spots for the parade. But the parade didnt start until a bit after noon, so too much waiting. The parade had a bit of a different style then those I've seen in America. Mainly fewer floats and more groups of children dressed up in costumes, walking, and beating on all sorts of instruments. A lot of the groups were from America - mainly high school marching bands and bagpipe groups. After the parade and a break, a few of us went to the Guinness storehouse, did the tour, and imbibed our free pint of extra cold on the 7th floor with a panoramic view of Dublin. The second night of drinking began, and the entire city was overloaded. Every bar was packed full. In the second to last one we ran into a group of 3 irish policemen who seemed incredibly entertained by the guys in our group. Ended up hanging out with them and getting good stories until about 4am that night. Woke up early again to fly back to Bristol and spend the rest of the day asleep.

On Friday, Andy and I went to London for the day. Coerced him into seeing all the sights and walking across a bit more then half of the city. After dinner went to see "Fame" the musical. Definitely a good show, and I tried my best to remember some of the moves that could possibly be converted to cymbal visuals... haha. The next day I made sure that he made it onto a flight back to the US and returned to Bath via London. Enroute I got to see a huge security alert/bag blown up at Gatwick airport as well as walk by the huge protest march in London. Many group protesting everything from the one yr anniversary of the US invading Iraq to Israel to Blair/Bush to white power to the apparent colonization of Cuba, Venzuela, and Brazil. Lovely to see the communists, anarchists, and hippies all coming together like that....

At any rate, I've been recovering from the week and getting ready for the last week of classes before 'Easter holidays.' Don't worry too much if there is not another update until mid-April since break is 3 weeks long!

The Paris Hitch photos are up - just click the PHOTOS link on the right!

Well this past week has been quite an adventure.

On Tuesday I participated in a pub quiz - quite a common thing over here. My team of 5 came in second and won 75 pounds despite my terrible showing in the nature/science category (I mean, really, they did NOT teach us in bio that a group of frogs is called an army!) At any rate that was enough to get me 15 pounds and our team invited back to some sort of 'championship round' pub quiz in May.

Early this week, I also convinced one of the American guys to hitchhike to paris with me. This is not quite as random as it first appears - the university of bath has a group called RAG which is basically a charity organization and raises money in many different kinds of ways. The link describing the hitch is here: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su4rag/events/hitch/ Think along the lines of Bowling for Big Brothers, Big Sisters type of a charity fundraiser. At any rate, we are supposed to have 50 pounds each of sponsership. This would not have been quite as much of a problem if we had a) decided to do this a month ago instead of the week before and b) we actually knew people here in Bath. As it is, since neither of us have check books, we couldn't write them a deposit. We did spend a lot of time on Wednesday and Thursday wandering around and bothering people for a pound or two, but there is really no chance of us making all the money. Ah well, we will try our best for sure, but as the only two random international students that did the hitch, hopefully they wont get too mad if we dont quite get 50pounds each.

So anyway, the hitch! Started on Friday morning.. way way too early. Got to the uni and signed out around 7:45am. We were given these bright red t-shirts reading paris hitch 2004 and info for when we were in france. With giant red t-shirts on, Les and i proceeded to the hill down from campus. In retrospect, I am still amazed at how fast we were able to move while in England. We actually caught a ride down the hill, and then after about 10 min of walking towards the M4 motorway got a hitch all the way to Reading. Driver was Dave - a mechanic at the Porsche factory in Reading. Did a pretty steady 110 mph all the way there - a measure of how much people here ignore the speed limits, but are more polite drivers in general. Dropped off at the roundabout, we made a sign to get to the M25 that goes around London. Couldn't have been more then 10-15 min when we got picked up again by Mike and Mandy in a BMW. Leather seats and driving a stead 90 mph, they even took us around the M25 to a spot they thought would catch any traffic going from London to Dover. Mike, retired, had had a rather important postition at Disney and got to spend some time Eisner bashing. Incredible how nice the people were that picked us up. Well, unfortunately, the spot was not as good as anticipated since it was kindof hard for people to stop and it seemed like no one was going to Dover. And it had started raining a bit too, but we were under a bit of an overpass which helped. A little over half an hour trying to get a ride, we were reconsidering our strategy when a lorry driver pulled over for us. Our third ride was a french guy who spoke very little english but who was going all the way to the ferry docks in Dover. Lorries are slow, but we were happy just to have been picked up. He dropped us off right where we entered to get on the ferry. On the ferry, we ran into two other groups doing the hitch. When we phoned into the university of bath to tell them we were leaving the country, we found out we were the first batch to make it to the ferry, and since Les and I had left last, we were technically ahead of everybody. Trouble was that it seemed like no one was going to Paris from Calais, or even to the highway that leads toward Paris. After scouring the boat, one of the groups got an ok from a family in a car that barely had room but would take them all the way. Although they told us not to get off the ferry at Calais without a ride, we thought we might have to do just that. There was an English lorry driver, however, that was going within 45km of Paris, and was nice enough to let all four of us that were left squish into his cab. Quite an entertaing 3.5 hr drive with Steve - got to dispense with some of the stereotypes of Americans, and generally have a good time with Steve and the other team. Steve had to drop us off when he turned off of the A1 and this happened to be just past a toll in the road. Now we had problems since it was getting dark, it was nearly impossible to get any of the cars to see our signs, there were now 4 of us instead of 2 groups of 2, and hitchhiking is illegal in France. At any rate, we spent an energetic 20 min trying to get a lorry or slow car to stop when some of the road-crew workers came by and told us that we had to stay farther out of the road or the police would arrest us. As we re-grouped on the side of the road, a bus just happened to pull over... A miracle for sure! Turns out that, there had been about 3 teams on the ferry from Dover that went an hour after ours and that the only way close to Paris had been in this empty bus that the driver Neil was taking to Charles de Gaul airport. The driver had just happened to see our shirts and pulled over to make the bus half full of paris hitch people. At the airport, only 25 km from Paris, we almost gave into the temptation to take the bus or train into town like a couple of the teams. But to do this proper, we had to hitch a ride at least to somewhere we could catch the metro. We headed to one of the arrivals terminals and stood outside near the lines of taxis. Every single person that was getting in a taxi we asked... or at least pointed to the french phrases that were in our info packet - for a ride. In a surprisingly short amount of time, a french guy agreed to let us hop in on his taxi. His English seemed relatively basic, and I'm sure that didnt fully grasp what the heck we were doing, but it was a ride into Paris! After a flat tire on the way (it would only happen to us you know) we were let out right at a metro stop. Then it was just a matter of getting to the Eiffel tower - no problem! We signed in at about 12.5 hours or so. Not bad at all really. The people with the fastest time ended up being the team that caught the one car going to Paris when we were on the ferry. Probably beginners luck helped a bit too... We had made it to paris in 6 rides, and some people had had 6 rides just trying to get to Dover. Turns out that by 2:30am on Saturday, all but 3 teams had made it and they were all going to spend the night in Dover.

So dinner, and then a night in a hostel. Yesterday was spent walking - from the Bastille near where our hostel was along the river via Notre Dame, the Lovre, and the arch de Triumph to the Eiffel Tower. It can be quite hard to kill 14 hours without spending tons of money. Around 7, we headed back to the Tower and met with quite a large group from Bath that was just hanging around. Went to the grocery store to get some celebratory 92 cent wine (!!) cheap alcohol at last! And everyone spent the remainder of the time in Paris boozing it up in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. After the group photo, we finally got on the coach for the ride back around midnight. Caught the 6am ferry to dover, and arrived back in Bath around 10 this morning. Well, as that is the longest post EVER I'll just end it by saying I'll try to update the photos soon.

Another week gone by... Nothing incredibly significant happening on this side of the pond. Still in search of a job. Trouble is that in a few weeks I'll be off traveling for 3 weeks straight... so now I'm searching for temping type positions. Wednesday night went out with a bunch of british management post-grads. Definitely hanging out with a different crowd here then I would at home. Quite honestly I miss my network of fellow science majors. Since my chem classes meet just once a week it's been hard to meet anybody more or less gain confidants that would cover/take notes for me if I were gone. At any rate, the real excitement came on Thursday when it snowed! As I have no classes on Thursday, I got to watch it from the comfort of my room and enjoy the view. Apparently it was chaos outside. Less then an inch, which all melted by the next day. But they shut down buses to/from the university at 5pm, everything closed early, my flatmates that drove home where in the car 1.5 hours to get back as apparently a bus had slide off the road and blocked traffic. The next day headlines all read 'Chaos in the Snow!' haha. Obviously these English are not quite used to snow. So this weekend the goal is to search for a temp job, enjoy my reading, and make a bit of headway in writing my senior honors thesis for dr. waser. I suppose I should make the best of this afterall... this is the last time for a long time that I anticipate doing such great quantities of nothing....

What you've all been waiting for - I got my pictures back today! They should be up on the internet. Obviously I didn't quite know what I was doing, so every picture taken thus far is in the same gallery. Sorry if it causes problems for those with slow internet connections....

So go here: http://www.edoud.fotopic.net/