PACIFIC NORTHWEST-ERN EXPOSURE

2011-05-25T20:16:00.006+03:00

The last few days of the conference were very conference-like, lots of talks, eating, networking etc. In the evenings we went out to different places in Chengdu. We found another tourist district with narrow historic lantern-lit streets and lots of things to buy. I especially liked the booth where you spin a wheel and it lands on an animal and the man draws that animal with sugar syrup that solidifies into a tasty lollipop:

We also saw this man smoking an extra long pipe, the smoke must have been cold and clammy by the time it got to his lungs:

and discovered an ancient chinese Starbucks:

At the end of the conference we went to dinner with a few of the chinese students who study in the US to a nice restaurant in downtown Chengdu where we tried mung bean juice, apple vinegar drink, chicken feet etc (see photo below)

Most of the food we were served during the conference was traditional Sichuan food and almost nothing had wheat in it and it was no problem for me to find tons to eat. At this restaurant, however, they had a lot of dumpling dishes etc. so we told the waitresses I couldn't eat wheat so to replace the dumpling dishes they brought me a giant bowl of warm sweet fungus soup. Mmmm...

The day after the conference ended, a few of us who were flying back to the US had an extra day and we used it to wander around Chengdu and to see the pandas! We took a cab out to the Panda refuge on the edge of town and saw truckloads of the cartoonish creatures, including some fuzzy unreal baby pandas that were wrestling with each other. I couldn't get a good picture of them because of the crowds around them, but I have plenty character-filled photos of older pandas

Afterwards, we randomly wandered around Chengdu. We found an amazing old temple downtown by chance. It was filled with curly-roofed buildings and giant buddha statues and a tower that had a thousand little buddhas on it. We wandered through the peaceful temple grounds. There were real monks wandering around all over the place. We had some jasmine tea in their tea garden along with all the locals who brought their own picnics.

That last night we went back to one of the night markets and had a fancy meal to end a week of extravagant Sichuan cuisine and departed the next morning for a long airplane ride home and lots of terrible airline food (the only food that I got sick from on the whole trip was United airline food....hm...). And with that, China was over. I think I'll go back.

2011-04-22T09:13:00.002+03:00

I put all my pictures online from the China trip: https://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k/EarthquakeConferenceInChengduChina#

On Day 4, we took a break from the conference that had just begun and embarked on a fieldtrip with the entire group of conference attendees this time. We filled three big tour buses. Everywhere we went, we formed a seismologist parade. I felt a little safer on the road this day since our huge buses had more momentum than most other vehicles on the road and also they were not nimble enough to make the hairraising types of maneuvers our little buses from the first two days made.

Our first stop was to a valley filled with farms where we found the fault scarp, this time a double step, on the edge of a construction zone/gravel pit. All 60 of us poked around the fault scarp and wandered through the farm fields where the new “terrace” popped up three years ago. All the locals just went about their business and hardly seemed to notice the swarm of scientists amongst their canola plants (see below). I guess they are used to it by now.

Our next stop was much more sobering, we headed toward the region of Beichuan, the worst-hit town in the earthquake and also, not coincidentally, where the maximum surface slip of the fault occurred. We first drove through the town, as we wound down the switch-backs in the road approaching the steep mountain valley town, what we saw was straight out of one of those apocalyptic films. Hundreds of ruined buildings tipped every which way, as if floating on a sea of rubble, landslides burying half the buildings and pushing the other half around like chess pawns. Part of the town was under water where the river was rerouted by landslides. Immediately after the earthquake it was impossible for rescuers to access the town because landslides took out all of the roads, and the narrow mountain valley topography meant there was only one or two roads to begin with, so the survivors were on their own for quite a while. One of the main Chinese seismologists said he was there soon after the earthquake, when the first outside rescuers finally made it in, and after seeing, and smelling, the death, destruction, and tragedy, he could not sleep for three nights.

We passed through the nightmare for now, heading to the edge of town where we found the largest vertical displacement along the fault of 9 meters! We had to climb up a hillside to get there. The scene we came across was of a three-story building still standing, but damaged, that abutted a huge hill 9 meters tall with a steep treeless slope. In the first picture below, you can see the house from far away, the hill at the right is the scarp, that hill wasn't there before! It rose out of the ground in probably less than a minutes time! The second picture is a view of the house from the top of the scarp, as you can see, the top of the scarp is higher than the house.

The owners of the house originally built there for the view over the valley, so this hill popped up 9 meters in a matter of seconds during the earthquake and blocked the view! Completely unimaginable. It’s amazing that a house so close to the scarp was still standing and structurally sound, though we heard that the grandmother living in the house was thrown out of the window due to the shaking and was killed. There were graves under big piles of rocks all over the hillside and people's belongings strewn about in the woods, half-decomposing. A heartbreaking scene to encounter: the detritus of ruined lives (see below).

The trip back through the ruined town prolonged the heartbreak. This time we stopped and walked around the road that they cleared of debris so people could come see the ruins. We all placed a yellow flower on the memorial to the victims near a huge landslide that buried a school containing 400 children. Bodies are still under the enormous pile of rocks, a chilling thought. After placing the flowers, we dispersed and walked around in awe and silence. I felt like I was being disrespectful to keep snapping pictures, but the sights were just so unbelievable I couldn’t stop even though it made me sick. Tour buses roared through town at top speed honking their horns to pick up and drop off tourists and many of whom were talking loudly and laughing like they were at Disneyland, and I couldn’t stand it.

Building after building was completely or partially collapsed. Many of them were pushed off their foundations by the landslides and stacked up against other buildings. Most structures had a collapsed first story (soft-story again), some had entire walls missing or staircases dangling from strings of rebar. Cars and motorcycles were crushed under concrete monoliths. Some buildings folded like decks of cards. A bridge across the river that led to a tunnel was transformed into a strangely beautiful waterfall arching over the river. This perplexed us for hours until we finally learned that there was a lake on the other side that overflowed due to landsliding and has been pouring out ever since.

There were signs in front of many of the buildings saying who was killed there, showing their haunting faces, and sometimes telling stories of bravery and rescue. The one small bit of humor I found, probably the only bit to be found in the entire city, maybe the entire valley, was a sign outside the building that once housed the "Beichuan State Administration of Taxation." The sign said, and I quote: “A heart devoted to tax career still exists as before, although homes were ruined. The survived employees of Beichuan State Administration of taxation displayed their vigor in the emergency moment and set out to deal with the first tax-involved business in the 15th day after the earthquake…Because of their outstanding performances, one of the survived employees was awarded with glorious title of National Model for Earthquake Emergency Relief”

To cheer us up afterwards, we all stopped at a restaurant for "hot pot" on the way home. Hot pot is a dish that originates in Chengdu where there is a giant bubbling pot built into the table, the outer ring has super spicy broth and the inner ring has mild broth for wimps. The servers bring a giant stand filled with plates of everything imaginable and things you don't want to imagine too, and you throw whatever you want into the boiling pot. They are adding congealed duck blood that I mistaked for jell-o in the picture below. It turned brown once it was cooked and actually tasted quite nice, for what it was.

2011-04-21T06:59:00.000+03:00

The conference proper began on the third day and all of a sudden everything got real formal, real fast. The rest of the attendees showed up in their fancy business suits and milled about donning nametags and networking. My fellow fieldtrip participants shed their duck boots and khaki hiking pants and donned shiny shoes and ties.

The day began with opening speeches from important seismologists from both China and the US. This was not quite on par with the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, but I was impressed at the gymnastic abilities of the waitresses serving tea during the speeches. They kept each and every one of our tea cups filled to the brim with hot jasmine tea during the whole ceremony, raising and replacing the ceramic lids without making a sound or distracting from the speeches. That's probably the least important part of the whole conference, but for some reason the formality and grace of the servers in China is fascinating to me. They always look so calm and composed, and there must be some sort of training camp to get them to all bow slightly and extend open palms just right, because they all know how to do it. Anyway, I digress.
After the opening formalities came the keynote talks from the seismo bigshots. After just a few years of being involved in science, I have had endless opportunities to listen to presentations that make me want to drill my eyes out with my pencil and curse the day Microsoft ever invented powerpoint. Scientists are quite good at making interesting things excruciatingly boring, which is probably why most kids would rather be NASCAR drivers and why I often contemplate dropping out of grad school and becoming a farmer/painter/acrobat. Most of these keynote talks, however, were not the typical science talk, they were of the rare variety that keeps me hanging on every word and reminds me why I ever liked science in the first place. There were a few more of these types of talks interspersed throughout the rest of the conference, I'd say on average there was a higher percentage of excellent talks at this conference than usual (but also plenty of eye-drilling talks too).

So the talks went on for the rest of the day, I had a poster that I presented on the work I'm doing with seismically induced landsliding in Seattle, but there wasn't really a designated time for poster presentations like there is at most conferences. People were supposed to view the the posters during tea breaks, but everyone, including myself, just wanted to drink tea and talk to each other. That was fine by me, my poster didn't really have any results on it, though it sure looked nice if I do say so myself. The staff at the hotel taped our posters up with black duct tape. The duct tape didn't hold very well so half the posters would come crashing down during talks, it was kind of entertaining to see the staff scrambling. They even taped some of the posters directly onto paintings on the walls. Anyway, I gained more from one on one discussions with people on the field trip, at meals and in taxi rides than I would have standing at my poster talking to people anyway.

The food for practically every meal was provided by our generous Chinese hosts. The first few days when we were on the fieldtrip we ate out at restaurants in the style I described in previous posts and I usually didn't know what I was eating. When we got to the hotel, however, they had a big buffet for every meal, including breakfast, which was great, but the downside was that they labeled the food! All of a sudden what had been my favorite dishes turned into pig ears or duck blood and pig trachea soup etc. etc. and my favorite foods quickly dropped down on the favorite list and I began to eat more and more apples, rice porridge, potatoes, and eggs. My favorite thing on the buffet was this juice from a fruit I had never heard of before called "pow pow juice." It had such an exotic taste! I figured it was probably chock-full of antioxidants that would cure every disease and it simply hadn't been discovered by US health gurus yet so I chugged glass after glass of it. Turns out they just labeled it wrong, a few days later they changed the label to pineapple juice and it lost all of its glamour...sigh...

Another good thing about the field trip days, besides blissful ignorance, was that there was no "class system." Grad students hung out with big-shot scientists etc. etc., but as soon as the conference began we started sitting at different tables, sometimes they even had an "important person" table up front with extra big floral arrangements. It wasn't mandated, just some unwritten rule about our new formal surroundings or something. At our first meal in the hotel I accidentally sat next to one of the leaders of the National Science Foundation and I ended up being the only person under the age of 60 without a PhD or two and hundreds of scientific papers to my name.

For the first day of the conference they threw a big banquet with endless amounts of fancy food again and all the leaders gave toasts. There were a lot of leaders, so the toasting went on for hours. The leaders from the US gave gifts to all the Chinese leaders in the form of baseball caps and t-shirts from UC Boulder (where the conference was two years ago). The irony was that all the gifts were made in China :)

After the conference I went with a few friends to a place called Jinli Road. This is a major tourist destination in Chengdu, it's a pedestrian marketplace where they sell Chinese arts and souvenirs out of historical buildings. It was a beautiful place, hundreds of glowing chinese lanterns floated overhead and the architecture was stunning, wood screens and curly roofs. I bought some souvenirs and for once I wanted to ensure that they were made in China.

A funny thing about having blond hair in China is that not only do people stare openly, but they also want to take their picture with you. I felt like a moviestar. Some people would ask and pose with us, but other people would just snap a picture real quick and walk away. My favorite one was when a family wheeled an old man in a wheelchair right next to where my blond friend and I were sitting on a wall, so close that they bashed his wheelchair into my knees. They snapped a picture of the old man and his two blond girlfriends and then wheeled him away quickly without ever saying a word or looking us in the eye like we were statues or something.

My favorite things about Jinli road were the 2000 year old shooting game (I got a bullseye!) and fresh squeezed sugarcane juice! Mmmmm....

2011-04-20T07:53:00.014+03:00

Day 2 in China: we hit the road even earlier today because we traveled further north to a town called Bailu (the “#1 township for love” according to a billboard). This town was under major reconstruction to repair the damage from the earthquake and they decided to turn it into some sort of fake Disneyland/Ching dynasty resort. As we drove in, we passed endless rows of blue and white temporary earthquake housing with people still living in them even three years later.

Our first stop in town was at the site of another unlucky middle school. In this case they were luckier than they could have been because the fault cut right between two buildings and did not collapse either one, just a small building that crossed the fault. So what was once a flat courtyard is now a big ramp.
(people walking up a ramp that used to be a flat courtyard)

The Chinese geologists dug a trench here as well to look for traces of previous earthquakes and again found a 3000-year recurrence interval and offsets for the 2008 earthquake of about 2 meters. Once again they are seizing the opportunity for tourism and they are building an earthquake museum (of course it is right across the fault…hmm…) where there will be a big shake table people can stand on to experience an earthquake.

We then walked around the town on the hill across the river. The old part of town is over there, it was heavily damaged. But what was most interesting was the new construction. They were reconstructing this old town into a cross between Disneyland and a Ching dynasty historical park. They had built a “castle” and some buildings straight out of Paris and/or Cinderella. Also some beautiful buildings in architecture from the Ching dynasty for hotels. They didn’t really mix well together, I would have left off the Cinderella themed buildings because the Ching dynasty style buildings are beautiful, with wood trim and elaborate wooden screens over the windows.

It’s amazing how they were building things though, much of it was by hand. Labor is cheap in China, as we all know. There was some machinery, like a tractor sized cement mixer and some trucks carrying things around, but there were also women carrying buckets of cement up the hill on their shoulders with a bucket hanging on each side of a shoulder yoke. Much of construction is done by hand, I even saw a group of men paving a wide road with hand trowels in another city.

The public toilet in that town was the most disgusting place I had ever been in my life. Public toilets in the part of China I was in at least, tended to have no doors and walls only a few feet high, much less privacy than we’re accustomed to. They never have western toilets because I hear that Chinese people think it’s gross to sit on toilet seats in public rest rooms, so they are either the French style squatting toilets, or long troughs that flow between the stalls that you have to squat over and when you look down you see everything flowing past from the other stalls. Not the most elegant situation. To make it worse, the bathrooms are usually disgusting, but the one in Bailu was the worst. I won’t describe it, but will just show the picture and just say that I now understand why it’s so important to take ones shoes off when going inside someone’s house in China.

Another interesting thing about this town was the bird cage hanging outside practically every shop and house containing a singing bird of some type. I asked one of the Chinese grad students about this and he said they have them for the tourists. People in Chengdu don’t see birds very often in the city because there aren’t any trees for them, he said, so they like to see them in the countryside. After that, I noticed the strange quietness around the city streets of Chengdu. No pigeons!! No junkos, finches or other city birds that thrive on trash in US cities that also can be lacking trees. I don’t really know why there weren’t many birds in the city, but I do know that we had pigeon served at our fancy welcome banquet. And they included the roasted heads, beak and all, on the plate so that we knew it was fancy expensive pigeon and not something cheaper. I had trouble eating that one, how could I with those cooked and sauce-covered eyes staring at me.

Moving on. We left Bailu and drove a long way through farmlands where a crop of something that looked like chives was being harvested by hand and piled on bicycles, three-wheeled trucks and in hand carried baskets to be taken (I assume) to market. We stopped in a town called Mianzhu where they are famous for making liquor, which was apparent from the brewing scent that permeated every inch of the town. We had lunch here, but they didn’t give us any of their famous liquor with lunch unfortunately, though we had some of the strong stuff later. It is called Baijiu (white brew), and is too strong to drink plain for my liking, but tastes like smarties sugar candies a bit and is really nice when mixed with medicinal Chinese herb brews.

Where we stopped for lunch, the earthquake damage was not apparent, but we drove just a bit further and all of a sudden we had reached a ghost town of earthquake destruction, it seems like there must have been really localized site amplification of the ground shaking for this terrible damage to be right near areas that did not seem that bad-off. At this site there is a clock tower that stopped exactly at 2:28 when the earthquake happened and still stands there today. I was walking slowly and snapping pictures of it and nearly walked into an open manhole on the sidewalk. I wonder how many earthquake relic tourists they catch in that trap each year.

Thousands of people were killed in this area, as was a massive statue of the ruler of the Han dynasty riding a horse. His head rolled off and was lying on the ground next to him along with some other giant heads.

Finally we left for our last stop of the pre-conference field trip to another small tourist village called Jinhua. Here the fault scarp was uplifted a mere 0.7m. What was more impressive was how small this fault scarp was compared to the towering cliffs several hundred meters high on either side of the valley. And how this small amount of uplift could be so powerful to cripple a huge factory complex nearby and turn it into yet another earthquake relic tourist site. (see seismologists joking around with a curious local in the field at the last stop)

There were many factories in this valley, just the one closest to the fault seemed to be crippled and still twisted and damaged with trees starting to grow on the roofs. Some further away that we drove past reminded me of what it must have been like in the early industrial-era factory towns in the eastern US. There was a big factory, and then not so far away a small town that was obviously built just for people to live in who work in the factory. Another thing I noticed here and in other places we drove through, most houses had small thermal solar heaters on their roofs as well as cisterns to collect rainwater. Why aren’t those more ubiquitous in the US? They make so much sense. Even if you can’t heat water completely through thermal solar, just partial heating can save a lot of energy.

We returned that night to Chengdu and moved to a new fancier hotel located in a garden along the river. There were live musicians playing in the huge marble coated lobby and a woman whose job it was to press the elevator button and indicate which elevator to use with a slight bow and outstretched hand. I shared a room with a graduate student at MIT who was from China originally and she was really nice. Our room was fancy, with slippers that were laid out for us each afternoon, a view of the river and a pair of gas masks. One curious feature was a window into the bathroom right where one would like to have a mirror.

That evening a few of us went for a stroll in the gardens around the hotel with its elaborate statues, living pagodas made out of vines, pigeon coops, colorful lights and water features. We tried to stroll on the path along the river, but the stench of sewage was overwhelming. Not the kind of waterway I would want to swim in. Regardless, it was a beautiful evening and I was so happy to be able to walk outside and be warm in the evening. It will be a few months before that happens in Seattle :)

2011-04-19T08:59:00.018+03:00

So I went to China last week (I back-dated all the entries to the correct dates, I'm actually publishing these April 30). I'm not sure how I ended up there, but I'm certainly glad I did. I attended the Sino-American earthquake workshop. The purpose of the meeting was to foster US and Chinese cooperation in earthquake research. The conference took place in Chengdu in the Sichuan province of Southern China, which is located in a basin near the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and also quite close to the fault on which the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake occurred.

As I embarked on my 24-hour flight (see picture of Kamchatka from the plane below) to a country where I didn't speak the language and didn't know a single human being, I was a little bit concerned. But luckily when I got to Beijing to catch the flight to Chengdu, there was a cluster of American-looking sciency types (i.e. plaid shirts, hiking pants and hiking shoes, backpacks, apple laptops) standing out in a sea of chinese men in business suits. It only took about 3 seconds of eavesdropping to confirm my suspicions because seismologists can't go very long without talking about earthquakes.

So me and my new companions hopped the last flight to Chengdu, found our chinese hosts and just before midnight made it to our hotel: the Longhu Beach Hotel. The hotel, as it turns out, has nothing whatsoever to do with Beaches, there aren't any beaches in Chengdu. I feared that I brought my bathing suit for nothing, but luckily the shower drain didn't work and the shower flooded the bathroom with water so I got to go for a swim anyway. It was a nice luxurious hotel though, they gave me slippers, a bathrobe, a fancy desk and armchair and complimentary dried squid snacks. They had free internet too, but my email literally took 20 minutes to load. I think that's how long it took China to read and censor all my emails. but enough about that.

The first two days of the conference were dedicated to a field trip with chinese seismologists where we explored the fault scarp, landscape changes, and damages from the 2008 Mw 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake. This earthquake was one of the greatest disasters ever to strike the Sichuan province, killing about 80,000 people. Many of the building collapses were schools filled with children, a tragedy that has generated controversy over shoddy building techniques used in constructing the buildings housing the future of China.

Field Trip, day 1:

Departure: We pulled our jetlagged bodies out of bed and climbed sleepily into two tour buses. But we were promptly awoken by the unique driving style of our drivers (and everyone else in china). This typically involves charging full speed ahead in the desired direction and speeding up if there is a pedestrian or other solid object in the way while blasting the horn. If said solid object doesn't jump out of the way in terror, the next step is swerving into oncoming traffic to pass them. I decided it was best to sit in the back of the bus where I could live in ignorant bliss about what was happening up front.

We sped out of the city into the surrounding countryside past endless small farm plots tended by hand and people sweeping the side of the highway with straw brooms. These scenes starkly contrasted with the ultra-modern infrastructure under construction all around them, such as high speed rail that hosts trains as fast as the TGV and new highways and overpasses.

It was apparent from the second I arrived that China has a big problem with air pollution. There is an ever-present gray haze that blocks out the sun, and objects in the not-so-distant distance fade rapidly into the gray ether. Though not an ideal situation, and frustrating to eyes used to seeing clear views, it can add a strange beauty to the landscape. It even provides an element of surprise. For example, as we hurtled closer to our first stop across what seemed to be flat farmland stretching in all directions, all of a sudden the faint outline of enormous towering mountains popped out of the haze, as if they had sprung freshly out of the ground (see a foothill in the haze below). We had come to the edge of the Sichuan basin, the southeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.

Soon after the mountains appeared and their outlines slowly became clearer (but never actually clear) and towered higher and higher above us, we entered what a sign in English called “tunnel region,” which turned out to be a quite accurate description, as we then darted through several multi-kilometer-long tunnels. Rumors says that they have all been built since the 2008 earthquake. The previous roads that followed the river were wiped away by landslides in the earthquake. An amazing engineering feat to build these tunnels so quickly.

First stop: The tunnels brought us higher and higher into the mountains, and after the last one, we popped out in the town of Yingxiu, high enough in elevation to allow some sunshine to penetrate the haze. What the sunlight illuminated was a landscape torn to pieces, first by landslides and debris flows, then intense reconstruction. Our Chinese geologist guides took us to a location by the Minjiang river where we had our first of many views of the fault scarp of the earthquake. At this place, the fault cut from where we stood, across the river and up a valley now filled with a newly constructed chute to funnel water from floods and debris flows away from populated areas. The ground on the hanging wall side uplifted 2.4 meters vertically at this location. The geologists dug a trench here across the fault and found offsets in the soil layers from the 2008 Wenchan earthquake and two others that they dated to have occurred about 3000 and 6000 years ago, suggesting a recurrence interval for similar earthquakes on this fault of 3000 years. (They are showing us a poster of the trenches they dug at this site)

Prior to the 2008 earthquake and subsequent studies, they had no historical record of any earthquakes larger magnitude 7 in this area and they considered the seismic risk to be relatively low… China has a historical record extending way further back in time than most places, but not back to the last event 3000 years ago. This highlights how much there is that we don’t know about where, when and what size earthquakes to expect in any one area because these judgments are often based on the historical record. Even the longest historical records for humans barely scratch the surface of understanding what happens on geologic time - yet another excuse to feel insignificant.

When the earthquake happened, the town of Yingxiu was devastated. Not only did many buildings collapse due to the shaking itself, but there were also massive landslides and debris flows that came down into the town, buried houses and also diverted the river through town. Now much of the town has been rebuilt with fresh houses and the river channelized way from it. There are so many people in China that they cannot simply abandon these areas near the fault so they just build everything back up again.

Stop 2: One part of town was not rebuilt, but was left in its wrecked state on purpose as an earthquake relic for tourists, the Middle school of Yingxiu. This was our next stop, along with many other buses of Chinese tourists. The Chinese have taken an interesting approach to recovery by leaving many of the damaged buildings intact and setting them up for tourism. I think this is a good approach because humans have a very short collective memory. Though I imagine it must be hard to live in Yingxiu and see the ruined middle school every day where maybe your children were killed or injured. See the memorial area below where people bring flowers for the dead and tourists come to see the ruins.

This stop was my first sight of real-life earthquake damage. Even from far away the sight of misshapen and twisted buildings knotted my stomach.

The first floor of one classroom building was completely flattened by the heavy floors on top. A student dormitory was just completely collapsed and no one could possibly survive inside, but luckily the students were in class at the time and those buildings fared slightly better.

Most buildings were mildly or severely off-kilter, with missing windows and walls, but furniture still inside. The poor construction was obvious, most walls had no rebar at all, just brick or unreinforced cement that crumble to pieces in an earthquake. Some select columns had some rebar, but it was so thin it might as well have been yarn. All of it was bent and twisted, at one location people were salvaging rebar from some ruins and they had a truck full of twisted metal that looked like fried noodles. At this place, just 40 children were killed, I say “just” because in many other places entire schools filled with children were crushed under the weight of the walls or in landslides. One of the prominent seismologists said that this town was lucky that only 40 died in the school, in some places the school collapsed killed hundreds. He still can't wipe from his mind what he saw when they began to lift away the rubble to find the children's bodies.

Stop 3: After our first of many such somber stops, we took a break from the tragedy to eat a traditional Sichuan style lunch in a newly developed tourist town in the mountains called Gaoyuan. This was the first of many meals eaten in the Chinese style. Everyone has a small plate or bowl and a pair of chopsticks, then the waitresses bring out plate after plate of food and put it on the center of the table, pile the plates in pyramids when the space runs out. Then everyone just directly grabs things with their chopsticks and moves it directly into their mouths or the little plate. Germaphobe Americans would not approve.

I quickly learned that the signature flavor of Sichuan food is SPICY! Some dishes are covered in piles of hot peppers (that you’re not supposed to eat, as some found out in an unfortunate way) along with spicy oil and shovels full of “Sichuan peppers” that make the tongue and lips numb and give a unique taste that I have never experienced before and therefore cannot describe. I also noticed that Sichuan food is extremely meat heavy…and not just any meat, but every meat. Nearly any part of any animal is fair game, including things such as pig feet and snout, many kinds of tripe, duck blood, sea cucumbers, trachea, tendons, weird looking fish with head and fins still attached and staring back disapprovingly, and many more unrecognizable things of which I probably don’t want to know the origin. And I ate these things, of course I had no idea what they were until a few days later. What a rapid transition I have made from eating no meat whatsoever for over 13 years to eating pig ears in just a few short months. They say eating pig ears improves hearing to pig-like levels. They also served us many different kinds of greens, and when we asked for the names, all of them were called “mountain vegetable.” Meaning that they are edible plants gathered from the nearby mountains, not cultivated. They were delicious.

Stop 4:

After lunch we strolled around the farmland near the restaurant in Gaoyuan because the fault actually cuts right through the village. This stop was more comical than tragic because the hanging wall of the fault that was uplifted popped part of a bicycle racing track a few meters into the air turning a regular bike race into BMX in mere seconds. Vertical offsets were something like a 2 meters at this location, you can see me holding up the uplifted bike racing track for scale.

Stop 5:

We then bused up some dirt roads into a rural valley with the fault running up the middle. We stopped by a steep gully where there appeared to be two houses, one on top of the gully and one below, but in fact that was once one house that was cut in half by uplift of about 5 meters at this location (see picture below)

The steep slope we stood over was new. Just up the hill from there was a closed restaurant and hotel. The building was fine, it did not collapse or have much structural damage from the shaking, but the main problem here were the giant boulders that bounced down the hill and crashed through the walls, including two neat holes punched into the walls of the restaurant in a scene straight out of looney tunes.

We poked around, snapping pictures like seismo-razzi when this lady came out and started speaking vigorously to us in Chinese. Of course I didn’t understand what she was saying so I backed away slowly, unsure if she was happy or upset. I later found out that she was agitated because we came around taking spectacular pictures and marveling at the damage (just like many other scientists, tourists, and government officials before us), but then we leave and nothing changes. Still three years later no one has done anything for her or her family except take away pictures. Her building and her life are still in ruins.

Just up the gully, we came across a paved road built precisely along the lineation of the fault. A car was driving on it when the earthquake hit and the driver, feeling the shaking and thinking he had a flat tire or something, got out of the car to check. Upon realizing that everything was shaking and the road uplifting below his feet, the driver fled. The fault lifted up right along the road and tilted it as an entact piece to about a 30-degree angle with the car still on it. The sideways car is still precariously perched there today.

We continued walking along the fault, past roaming chickens, scruffy dogs and wooden shacks, until we came to a temple that was also located nearly on top of the fault. When we arrived at the temple, there were pink balloons, tables and tents set up, and a lot of people milling about. The clink of glasses, mahjong tiles, and Chinese mumblings drifted out of a newly restored building nearby. A wedding celebration was going on - and we crashed it! I felt weird about it, but our Chinese hosts just walked right up the steps towards the temple so we followed and everyone from the wedding came outside to observe the parade of scruffy pale scientists file past.

The temple had been relocated to this spot from higher in the mountains right before the earthquake. This was an unfortunate decision because now the ancient temple has been destroyed. Nothing left but the severed stumps of the columns, piles of bricks, and a giant Buddha statue. The enormous temple bell was resting on the ground and the locals had built a temporary wood framed shack around the Buddha statues. I had never been to a Buddhist temple before and I was kind of taken aback when I stepped into the dark shack and was greeted by an enormous colorful smiling Buddha.

A few of the scientists paid their respects to the Buddha (and to the power of earthquakes perhaps) by burning incense on an altar outside.

We decided not to crash the wedding feast. According to my Chinese friends, for weddings, the family set up what are called “stream tables” and all the friends and relatives flow in over the course of a few days, eat a lavish meal, then flow away and are replaced by new relatives.

Stop 6:

I’m still writing about the first day and I’m on page 5 of my notes, and it’s not over yet. Long day! We stopped next at a tea house in the countryside where we sat in a pavilion in a garden, drank tea and chatted. The pavilion was on a little island in a pond and the garden was sprinkled with living statues where they had woven plants into elaborate pagodas and giant vases.

The Chinese typically drink tea in a way opposite to what I learned in the fancy tea shops in Seattle. They use a big tall glass, not any sort of tea cup or mug, throw in a bunch of green tea leaves and jasmine flowers without any sort of filter, pour in the hot water and drink it straight with the leaves still in there. They don’t remove the leaves after 1-2 minutes like we do to reduce the bitter taste, the same leaves can sit there for hours. The waitresses come by frequently and refill it with hot water. Interestingly, this tea didn’t get bitter after a while, perhaps it is the quality of the tea.

I had an interesting conversation with a Chinese scientist about earthquake prediction over tea. Most of the seismology world has given up on earthquake prediction and moved to probabilistic hazard assessment, mitigation, and early warning systems instead. The government of China, however, has mandated that it is the job of seismologists to predict earthquakes, even though there are no clear or agreed upon ways to do it. There was one successful prediction and evaluation in the 1970s because there was a very noticeable series of foreshocks where a town was evacuated countless lives were saved, but many many more failures. Foreshocks are the only known and accepted precursor, but there is not way to tell if a given earthquake is a foreshock or just a small regular earthquake until after the mainshock arrives, so they are not very useful in prediction.

After tea, we once again clustered around big tables for another enormous Sichuan feast, this time the plates stacked even higher, but were placed on a huge lazy susan so one can spin the table until the desired dish is within reach (or spin it away if the dish in front is too disturbing, boiled pigs feet for example). My favorite dish was the warm coconut-tapioca soup with gogi berries. Mmmm… This time I found myself at an entirely Chinese-speaking table and for a while I was constantly asking people ‘what did you say’ until I gave up and just laughed when they laughed. The good thing about sitting at a table like that is they can tell me exactly what each weird looking food was, though sometimes it’s better not to know.

End of day 1:

After returning to Chengdu, in order to stay awake till a reasonable hour and battle jetlag, I ventured out with three new-found friends to the center of Chengdu. The center is sleek and modern, with bright lights and luxury shops and a huge pedestrian mall. It was jam packed with people strutting about in their stylish clothes and eating street food.

My favorite thing about street-life at night is the dancing ladies. After dinner, tons of ladies meet in groups on the sidewalks and public squares and blast traditional Chinese music from speakers and dance together like a slow motion aerobics class with a chinese flair. Vera and I tried joining into a few of these, but we were always met with glares, I guess I’m not as good as I thought.

Finally I returned to the hotel, flooded the bathroom again and to make it even better, this time I ripped the entire towelrack off the wall simply by placing a towel on it. Too tired to care.

2009-12-28T06:16:00.003+03:00

I have managed to go on one of my longest procrastination streaks so far...four months with no updates! I could give excuses but no one likes hearing those, so let's just say it has been a busy first semester of grad school. I spent September getting adjusted to my new home in the Earth and Space Sciences Department at UW. I started to learn about some of the projects I can work on and once I learned enough to get really into working on them, classes started and stopped me in my tracks. I really need to work my my multi-tasking skills.

I had time for a few outdoor adventures, including climbing Mt St Helens, before becoming bound to the indoors and glowing computer screens. That was a breathtaking hike, driving in was stunning in itself...burnt logs are still lying down in line with the blast direction like matchsticks, Spirit lake is still filled with floating logs as well which have been preserved from the minerals in the water from the 1980 eruption. I guess they are slowly sinking and the raft of the logs is decreasing in size, but when they sink, the heavier root end sinks first so the trees are upright and they are being preserved like this...an underwater petrified forest. Cool.

The entire landscape was absolutely barren at first glance but as we hiked along, the signs of returning life were apparent everywhere. The internet tells me that there are already fish back in Spirit Lake, though I can't imagine how they got there. Birds dropped them? Since this was a hike with my department from the University, we had special access to a path into the side of the crater that was blown out in the enormous landslide/lateral blast, so it wasn't a terribly difficult hike, and the view from the edge of the crater was unforgettable. In the center there is the dome that has been growing on and off since the eruption, it is sort of filling back up to replace what was blown away (Mt St Helens used to be called the Mt Fuji of Washington because it was so perfectly shaped). There has been other activity over the years, and some quite recently, so we didn't get to go past the edge of the crater. The dome, and in fact much of the inside of the crater, has little tendrils of steam coming out from hotspots all over, but in spite of all of this heat, there is a glacier that wraps around the dome and joins up with itself at the bottom. This melts into a stream which dug a canyon into the soft rocks there, this water is joined with hot groundwater and both flow into a raging steaming stream in a huge colorful canyon. After we descended from the crater rim, we also went to see where this stream comes out in a picturesque waterfall. I will post the pictures once I get back to Seattle, I left my camera there. This was back in September...I am a bit behind...

Other interesting happenings...there was a huge landslide near Mount Rainier that took out a highway and some houses, no one was hurt, but it was one of the largest in Washington's history. It also happened to make some interesting noises which we captured on some nearby stations for the seismic network and thus we became involved with monitoring the noises from this landslide as it continues to settle and groan under its new configuration. Furthermore...there is a giant 9km wide ancient landslide of which this new landslide is just a wee little corner...so there is interest in monitoring that to make sure it doesn't decide it wants to reactivate to join its little brother down in the valley. That would be a huge catastrophe and we really don't want that to happen. So we went there a few times to install seismometers (and poke around at a giant fresh landslide...not something many get to see, check out my pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k/NachesLandslideOct162009#). It was crazy...at the toe of the slide, a few houses were gone, but a few were intact but uplifted a few feet, there were giant fissures that opened up along the sides of the slide. All these features are quite similar to what is seen in large earthquakes. The riverbed at the toe of the slide was lifted up on top of the toe of the slide and they actually found fish up on top of the rubble. The slide blocked part of the river and caused flooding which unfortunately damaged houses that were not directly damaged by the slide. The entire scene was unbelievable, particularly unbelievable was how fast the response by the highway department was to rebuild a road. The road is the only access in winter to many people because the pass near Rainier closes at the other end of the valley so it was particularly important to get it done before the first major snowfall up there. We went back about two months after the landslide happened to remove some seismometers and there was a shiny new highway on the other side of the valley where there was just a field of cows last time we had been there just a few weeks earlier and they had made a new channel for the river. Unfortunately, the construction noise really messes up the seismic signals and covers up all but the largest noises coming from the landslide itself, so it kind of throws a wrench in our science except during a few hours in the middle of the night when they stopped working for the most part. Uh well...

The news seemed interested in what we were doing and they followed us around one day. This was a bit unnerving, they arrived to our group when I was up climbing a hill to put in some portable seismometers, and I was all sweaty and out of breath when we got back, but the camera guys and the reporter just ran over and started asking me questions...not something I was ready for, especially since I'm not exactly an expert on the slide...or anything really. Anyway, pieces of that ended up on the news in different bits two times, though I think the general populace forgot about it long ago so no worries. The best part is that I was wearing hiking clothes, covered in dirt and sweat, but I was wearing giant shiny fake diamond earrings. That is probably something the general populace will not forget, and I am just waiting to see my fashion trend appear on the streets of Seattle. I haven't seen anything yet but I remain hopeful.

Other than those wee glimmers of excitement, most of my semester was spent suffering indoors trying to finish my master's thesis so I could graduate from my Europe program in December (I did...somehow...), trying to keep up with my classes, I took way too many against the better judgment of my professors. I am starting to agree with my older fellow graduate students that classes just get in the way of my education...though I really need some of these math courses. No advisor or professor in my earlier college years ever even mentioned them as being crucial to do anything remotely interesting in modern science, but now that I am in grad school, every professor assumes I have taken them and that I have a full understanding of all the symbols and jargon and so on...confusing... it's funny because all this crazy math is an every day common knowledge sort of thing around the earth and space sciences department, practically like the ABC's, but the second I step off-campus it is the most ridiculous unnecessary waste of time that pratically no one would need in their everyday life. Most people don't even need algebra...some can even get away without arithmetic since cash registers do all the work. Weird world. Though I think it's even weirder that we need all these complicated mind boggling mathematical ways of expressing...or rather...approximating...what happens in the real world, but it happens in the real world without anyone having to write up an equation (or 50) to tell it how to happen. It just does of its own accord. And scientists spend years...or lifetimes...trying to emulate reality through computer modeling so we can better understand and predict what is happening/what will happen in the real world... looking at it that way, a lot of scientists are just fortune tellers with sophisticated tools and complex equations. I could save a lot of trouble and become a fortune teller and maybe be right the same amount of the time. Okay okay, just joking, I really like what we're doing and the more I spend time around a department that does cutting edge research, and the more I am around the people thinking up the problems to work on and doing the science (doing science...sounds weird), the more I am amazed at what we humans have been able to figure out with our little pink wrinkly brains. Our curse and our blessing. But I digress...

So yeah, weekends were spent working on my masters thesis and trying to keep up with classes. Most working days were spent in classes or in a multitude of seminars and meetings which leave only little fragmented bits of day in which to do any thinking. I miss slow European ways, at least I had time to think once in a while instead of rushing around from one event to the next in a frenzy of confusion. Though I very much prefer advisors who answer emails in five minutes rather than two weeks (and a million other things are better), but the pace of things, that is certainly better in Europe. (Admittedly I probably can't have five minute email responses AND the European pace of things...) Most people don't even take lunch breaks! They microwave something and eat at their desks. It pains me. I even would prefer standing in line for an hour with my friends for a subpar, but warm and complete with dessert, subsidized student meal in France, to eating a piddly pb&j sandwich alone at my desk in front of my computer. My goal for next semester is to get more people to take lunch breaks with me. We'll see if I can convince these Americans that sanity is worth coming in a little earlier. I'm not too optimisitic.

As for non-school stuff, I am still adjusting to Seattle and it's dispersed ways and gloomy weather, but I will admit it is growing on me a little. It really is a unique place, though it has the layout and public transportation of a poorly planned sprawling American city, it doesn't have the character. It is filled with independent businesses and interesting shops and it has a ton of really nice parks. There is a huge theatre and art scene, concerts galore, most of which I want to go to, but few of which I have time to. Despite being way too car-friendly for my liking, they are otherwise very environmentally concious, tons of people bike despite the ridiculous hills, nearly everyone recycles and there is collection of compost for everyone (except my apartment because the property manager thinks it will attract rodents...we sneak ours to the neighbors bin under cover of nightfall). People are really involved in local politics, I already voted in the first election...which was by mail which I really like...and we elected an underdog progressive environmentally concious candidate who biked to events and wants to make a lightrail system all over Seattle (of course they had one long ago before cars became so ubiquitous...why oh why did they take it out?)

My new apartment is great...much better than the slug-infested basement of my friends house where we were staying before (though it was more spacious and cheaper). It's really convenient to tons of bus lines, the bike path, two neighborhoods I like and it has an amazing sunrise view over the Cascades, a view of Capitol Hill which sparkles at night and we can even see Mount Rainier if you stand on the couch and look out the corner of the window...and of course it has to be clear...hah! We even have two foster cats that will be really hard to give back. Especially after ridding them of fleas and every other parasite that they came with. That was not fun. But the cats are so charming it's worth it. I will post some pictures of them and their mischief as well once I have my camera again.

So that, in a poorly organized picture-less summary, was my first semester in Seattle. The next one starts soon and I am taking fewer classes and I hope to go in with a more energetic attitude and I also plan on getting to the mountains more. Not going outside, especially when the mountains are so close and the Seattle weather is so gloomy, is a big mistake as far as boosting one's morale goes.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday, I am relaxing in Endicott as we speak, enjoying the marginally higher amount of sunshine here (according to brother Andy, Endicott only has 10 more sunny days than Seattle) and really enjoying the relaxing part. The next installation in the Allstadt Christmas movie series will be coming soon. Be prepared. Meanwhile, search on youtube for Allstadt and Allstadts for the previous two movies to keep you busy until then. Ciao!

2009-09-16T05:11:00.003+03:00

I've been in Seattle a couple weeks already now. I've already done almost three weeks of pre-class research for the seismology department at UW, I started the day after I got out here. I guess I should have given myself some more free time, but that was my way to force myself back into the American speed of things. Plus I had free time for the last two months or so (since I didn't do a whole lot of work on my masters thesis), it's not to bad to have some purpose again...plus I'm getting paid hourly until the semester begins - doesn't hurt.

The research is sort of interesting...I've mainly been working on a model of the Seattle basin that we can use to simulate what areas would shake more for earthquakes of various magnitudes coming at different angles and from different depths. It's mostly boring computer work but the end result is cool - assuming we can make the results match up with real data (if we can't, the model is worthless - you can make a model look however you want otherwise). We can even make movies of it now and you can see the waves propagating like in water, but with mysterious forces pushing them around in funny ways (due to differences in the seismic velocities of soil/rocks that it's going through). Though I can't claim credit for much of the cool results, the model is my office mates phd, I am just helping with some of the grunt work for now. But today I started looking at seismic data recorded on a curious landslide in Colorado. This one has some real potential to become my project...and I'm revved up about it because I feel like it's not going to be one of those narrow, dropping into a funnel, kind of projects. It has a lot of potential for expanding into multiple fields of study and hopefully learning some generalities that could be applicable to all mechanics of surfaces sliding against each other. The landslide behaves in some ways like earthquakes...it has faults with slidequakes on them but also slips silently and/or with a little noise.

So I was looking at the data today and I found this event with an intriguing look...it looked like an earthquake moving slowly up the landslide, gradually progressing to different sensors. A real Eureka moment! So I printed up pictures and sent an excited email to the two advisors for this project...and they swiftly replied with a crushing email pointing out that it looked an awful lot like a person walking up the slide...probably one of them when they were out there this summer collecting that data...so my excitement has been crushed, though admittedly it is kind of cool that you can watch someone progress up the slide. Maybe I can track the activities of bears crossing the slide using seismology. Would the scientific community accept that as a valid phd project?

As for real life outside of ze office, it's pretty good. Andy and I have gone hiking a few times, we went backpacking in the Olympic National Park and camped on top of a giant boulder next to a bright blue glacial lake below Mount Desperation or some other discouraging name. We've eaten every kind of asian food there is multiple times, seen a few friends who moved out here from Boston and I met a lot of Andy's oceanography friends. I haven't really made many of my own yet...there hasn't been a whole lot of opportunity really. It turns out it's a lot easier to make friends when you're stuck with the same group of people all the time like I was in Europe. Now I have to go find my own and no one is around...they are just starting to come back from various summer vacations and field excursions.

I got a purple bicycle and I put a basket on it today. Though Seattle is by no means the biking paradise everyone seems to rave about. The bike lanes are pretty sparse and if they are there, they go next to parked cars which can open their doors at any moment. Second, the city is full of hills which look more like mountains from the seat of a bicycle. The planners of Seattle just laid a grid over the land regardless of the topography below, so there are some pretty steep sections. Third, this city is HUGE! I am used to Boston and European cities, not vast sprawling neighborhoods extending for miles and miles in all directions, filled to the brim with parents with giant double decker extra wide jogging strollers. Everyone seems to have exactly two kids too...it's amazing. I guess people are just looking to replace themselves - either that or some magazine told them it was the perfect number. But I digress...the only thing that really makes Seattle bike friendly is the shear number of people who bike (mostly on waaaaaaay overpriced bicycles with shoes that clip in and matching outfits)... granted there are a few nice bike trails that go only to limited places...but if you happen to live along them, it's fabulous.

I found an apartment not too far away from one of the best bike trails and I'll move there in October so hopefully my commute will become a lot nicer than the 5 mile mountain climb death march/roll it is right now. It's on the third floor with a view of the cascades and it's right in between the two little neighborhood centers that I like...Wallingford and Fremont. They just put in new windows, there are already colors I like on the walls, there is even a dishwasher! Big step up from a kitchen 4feet wide in France and for sure better than cooking on the floor like in Italy. It is even going to be a big improvement on current living conditions... in a half-finished basement of my friends house. The entrance to the basement is almost outside even and my head almost scrapes on the ceiling and I stepped on two slugs two nights in a row - in bare feet. Needless to say, I am happy that the landlord is going to give the keys early so I can get out of here before October 1st. I'm pumped.

Orientation begins tomorrow so finally I'll get to meet some more of my fellow grad students. This weekend they have two trips for first year geology students. First we'll go to an island north of Seattle with interesting glacial deposits...then on Sunday...the moment I've been waiting for will finally arrived...V.I.P. access to the crater of Mt St Helens! I can't wait! Andy got my new boots for my birthday so I'll test them out on the desolate slopes of the infamous volcano.

Hm...what else...I don't know. I guess I'm readjusting alright to the US. It's hard to believe that a little over a month ago I had trouble remembering what it was like in the US, and I hardly feel like I was ever there. Oh the joys of having a foggy memory. I really miss my friends a lot though, I keep thinking that I will see them any day now. Plus I'm tired of everyone having the same accent and same way of life and blah blah. It's so bland.

Sorry no pictures today. It took two weeks to muster up the effort to even type an entry after working on the computer all day. Maybe next time.

Ciao.

2009-08-17T18:35:00.005+03:00

So I’ve been back on the land of the hamburger for two weeks now, touring the great state of New York, visiting family and friends and spending time with my long lost Andy P who flew to the east coast for a few days.

My reentry was painless to the US, no problems with the flights except for the girl in the seat in front of me who had digestive problems or ate too much pasta fagioli if you know what I mean. She also gave me her cold which I am still recovering from.

As we coasted in, my first view of the motherland was of the familiar arm of Cape Cod, and it wasn’t until that moment that it finally sank in that I was going home! The moment I had dreamed of for months was finally here! And it was so green, leafy and beautiful, even the highways and rows of McMansions looked beautiful just then. Every time I stood in those hours-long lines at the banks in France, or got on a bicycle or walked down the perilous streets of Italy, or when they didn’t pay us for months or when the bank stole my money and I couldn’t go to the doctor I thought to myself “I will survive this and make it home one day” and the plane didn’t even crash to be ironic! I made it and Andrea met me at the airport in New York, she even made a sign with my name on it in case I forgot what she looked like since she visited at Easter. And somehow we made it back on the subway to her apartment with my bags marked "heavy" in red, but we couldn't have done it without the kindness of strangers, which is something I really missed about America.

So Andrea and I spent the next few days vacationing in New York, me marveling at the free icewater, public toilets that don’t give you diseases, and the calm drivers and Andrea smiling and nodded patiently. She even bought me bagels, pickles, and juicy juice for my first breakfast back as I requested. There is nothing like a New York bagel, though they didn’t exactly live up to my recurring dream of sawing a ginormous bagel in half with a two-person lumberjack saw – but it was close. We drank wonderful wonderful beer on her roof while taking in the the Manhattan skyline…Harpoon, Blue Moon, Sam Adams…(hint: never go to southern Europe if you want to drink beer) wandered around the new Highline park planted on an old elevated railroad over Manhattan, explored new parts of Central Park (the Ramble!), which I think is the nicest park out of any park in the whole world I have seen, and visited Times Square because it’s closed off to traffic now!!! It was a bit of a letdown because I thought it was all of Broadway, but still better than before. We also went to Long Island to visit grandma, where I beat her for the first time in Scrabble (though there is still a dispute over the legitimacy of the word qi) so now I don’t have to play Scrabble anymore, and we all went to the beach to watch the huge waves still rolling in from recent storms and we got in some kickass boogie boarding.

Long Island is a land of contrasts. It is half strip-malls, fast food, and highways and parking lots filled with jerks driving vehicles ten times larger than anyone on Long Island would ever need – not the best place to be reintroduced to America, but the other half is green leafy bike paths, beautiful marshlands and beaches and nice local restaurants, and of course some of my relatives live there.

Anyway, to continue my all-inclusive tour of New York State, I went home to Endicott and saw mom for the first time all year and the rest of my family except brother Andy. Then FINALLY I met Andy P who I hadn’t seen in seven months, he flew in from Seattle for a few days. I was afraid I wouldn’t even recognize him, but luckily I did and it almost immediately felt like we’d never been apart even though, as it turns out, a year is a pretty long time.

Next stop on the New York tour – Adirondacks to visit Grandma and Grandpa, where we not only got in some good hiking and canoeing and bocce ball, but we also went with Anne and her friend to Enchanted Forest Water Safari where it was the 'Obese Americans in Bathing Suits' theme weekend. Maybe I’m just used to those mysteriously skinny French people, but if any cliché about Americans is true, it is definitely that one. And it’s got to be the processed food, corn syrup and driving everywhere, and I think the French would also add – the lack of stinky cheese crawling in microbes and the Italians would add the lack of rules about the timing and order of eating. I mean, I guess they have all the same processed foods and strip malls and car dependent areas as we have, but they’re by no means ubiquitous as they are here. Most of our towns don’t even have centers anymore where you can just go and walk around and just enjoy oneself, here we hop alone in little air conditioned metal pods on wheels from one stripmall island to the next with very brief interludes of sort-of outdoors between the car and the next freezer they call normal indoor summer temperatures around here. But I digress.

So we had a really nice time in the Adirondacks, and in Endicott, then Andy went home and I went with mom and Anne to visit family friends in Rochester to complete my tour of New York State.

One thing I really missed when I was in Europe was having greenery everywhere and open space. In New York almost every hill is covered solidly in forest or fields, with a few scattered farms. In Europe almost every inch of land is covered either in farms or houses, even the steep cliffs of the rugged lakes in the North of Italy (which I went to in my last few days of Europe when I wasn’t updating this blog, some pictures below). I’m not sure there’s any prettier place than upstate New York in summer, particularly at sunset. It’s not a dramatic landscape, just a nice gentle pretty one and I’ll miss it when I move out west next week.

So I’m back. It feels almost as if I was never in Europe now, only a few of my friends still remain there. As for reverse culture shock, which I got badly when I came back from New Zealand, but this time I thought I was just so glad to be back that I didn't experience any, but now that it’s sinking in that I’m home and all the people I spent every day with for the last year are far far away and I won’t see them for a long time, and now I’m starting to realize that I really did adapt to the European lifestyle, I have a hard time walking fast, in fact I don't even like it, I can stand in line patiently, I can just sit and talk forever, and I miss having a nice historic center of town to stroll around in the evenings, people watching. I miss walking everywhere on cobblestone streets among ancient buildings and and having a huge network of friends from all around the world to run into. Strangely I even kind of miss the stylishness of Europe, even if I will never blend into it. And I’m even starting to have warm memories about France now that the bank has mostly returned my money and the red tape entanglement is almost finished. Maybe I could even live there again sometime.

But it’s over, all good and bad things must come to an end, now if I could just finish writing that thesis I could start the next chapter of my life on the west coast!

At Michele's town, Iseo, on one of the lakes

Me and some south american buddies at our goodbye toga party

2009-08-13T06:11:00.001+03:00

I made it to America! A week and a half ago...but been busy touring the state of NY. Update coming soon.

2009-07-23T19:58:00.000+03:00

I am FREEEEEEE!! (almost) This morning I took my last exam and then immediately afterwards I recycled all the notes from the class. It was a french style course with a french professor and a french exam on subject matter that none of us had any background information on, so it was a disaster and torture but I don't care, it's over and I think I passed. I just have to write up my thesis and hand it in and then I will swiftly receive my master's degree in December with the graduation ceremony next May. Life moves so quickly here in Italy.

It's been a sad month though, one by one people are leaving for their home countries, as always it's hard to say goodbye knowing that I may not see many of these people who have become fixtures in my life this year for a long time, or maybe (though I hope not) never again. It's not exactly easy to visit some of my friends, because many of them come from those few countries whose governments are not exactly on spectacular terms with mine. My good friend Zahra went back to Iran today, and I couldn't help feeling sad knowing that it will be nearly impossible for me to visit her there (especially if Dad can help it, haha). I went to dinner with her and three other Iranians last night to say goodbye, and it's so strange that such nice people who I have so much in common with - decent, kind and enjoyable people can be represented in the world by those terrible men running their country (another thing we have in common...or had in common until this year...idiots running our countries). I hope that their protests are succesful, the last thing the world needs is more Ahmadinejad.

I said goodbye to my friend Anggi from Venezuela when I left France last month, to Suhaib from Palestine left for Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago, I will say goodbye to my friends from Pakistan, Colombia and the rest from Iran shortly. Why do so many of my friends have to come from such difficult places for me to visit...I just hope that things can change in the world, and I think the chances are better with the administration change back home. Luckily I have a lot of friends in more easily visitable countries also to visit until that change comes.

Luckily everyone seems to want to come to the US for PhD's or postdoctorates so my friends can come to me, and since we are all in the same field, I am sure I will run into many of them at seismology and earthquake engineering conferences (if I don't decide to become a painter) So all is not tearful, though it is sad knowing that we will all never be in the same place together again. I feel like life has been a string of such farewells. I guess that's just what happens when you spend your time jumping from one place to another, it is inevitable.

So I have six days left to enjoy Europe, but I am tired of riding in Italian trains, not the most pleasant experience in the summer time, so I think my plans for going to visit the ever erupting volcano of Stromboli have been postponed. I will just enjoy my friends who are still remaining and maybe go on a day trip or two.

2009-07-08T21:40:00.003+03:00

We had a 4th of July party last Saturday night (actually was my Kazak friend's idea to celebrate!). It was great, I found overpriced sparklers at a toy store in town, we lit them all at the same time in the courtyard of Borromeo while listening to American Pie (oddly no one had Stars and Stripes Forever on their computers). And it's funny because my friends here are from all over the world, but many of them come from countries that also had to gain independence from Britain, and nearly all who had to gain independence from some other colonial power (except for the few western europeans present...sorry guys)...so really it is a day for (almost) everyone to celebrate...the beginning of the end of colonialism!

We ended the evening by playing Spud...a traditional game in my family often played at 4th of July celebrations where you essentially have to try to avoid getting hit with the ball or missing people with the ball. If you get hit or miss someone you get a letter and if you get four letters, spelling Spud, you have to go through the spanking machine. And this July 4th I was witness to the most multicultural spanking machine in the history of the world, unfortunately no photos were taken so we will probably not be accepted into the Guinness Book of World Records. Next time.

Happy belated Independence Day!

A few random interesting things I've learned during my stay here that are not related to the ground shaking:

1) In the former Soviet Union they REALLY wanted everyone to be the same so they required all left handed people to write with their right hand. My friend from Kazakstan said someone she knows who is older used to write with her right hand at school, and her left hand at home, and that is how she can now write with both.

2) All Vanuatu school children are required to bring a machete to school because every friday - "territories day" - they are required to share the chore of cleaning up the school grounds.

3) All my Iranian friends, coming from a place where religion is forced upon them, are way less religious than my Pakistani friends where how they practice their religion is more or less a choice.

4) Whenever my friend from Palestine tries to tell me "funny" stories from his childhood I never find them funny because they usually involve bullets coming through his windows or being woken up at night to Israeli raids and standing in the street in pajamas.

5) In Italy they say if you walk around in bare feet you will become deathly ill and you must finish one kind of food before you start another, no mixing!

6) According to at least one mother in Nepal, if you tuck the ends of an onion behind your ears, you won't cry while cutting the rest of it (or you make everyone else cry from laughing at you)

7) My Indian friend grew up in a village where there is only 2 hours of electricity per day. In this same village of 500 people, they often have two day weddings where up to 2000 people might attend.

8) Costa Rica was delivered its independence in a letter and the letter didn't arrive until one month after they were granted independence.

9) At an island near Vanuatu, it is an honor to eat the maggots from the corpse of the deceased...and a brother at my friends church was given one, then afterwards found out what it was and secretly spewed it up.

10) In Europe, and possibly the world, McDonald's and Coca Cola seem to be more popular than they are in the US

I have many more interesting things I've learned from my frineds here and from observations, but my memory is limited so stay tuned for more updates as things come back to me.

2009-07-04T12:59:00.006+03:00

Goodbye for Good - Grenoble!

Ok, big gap in my updates. I'm now back in Italy partway into my last class of the year. In between I went to London to visit Kate for a weekend, and finished up my stay in Grenoble, went on a nice hike in the last mountain chain around Grenoble I hadn't been to yet, went swimming in a chilly mountain lake with my french friends, went to lots of free concerts (including one where the people were moshing to marching band type music), strengthened my legs by staying in a residence halfway up the Bastille that also only had French toilets (extra leg strengthening) but a nice view in the morning and had (and still having) my last abusive battle with France - I transferred my money home, they did it twice because they're idiots and I have a very very negative balance in my French bank account, no money has appeared in my US bank account and the french bank is charging me 20% interest for their mistake. Lovely. This abusive relationship is over! For real this time. France is out of my life (once I get my money back). See how they like that! Though I will miss the friends I had to say goodbye to there.

So now just this one class left to complete, and one project to write up and I'm free! I'm counting down the days, but trying to enjoy these last days of European life to the max as well. This time in Pavia I am living in a different place, an old monastary that they turned into a residence for earthquake engineers - which seems a odd conversion but anyway I like living here. It's beautiful with tile floors and 20ft ceilings, stone stairs that are worn in the center from hundreds of years of monk footsteps, but also modern because there is a movie viewing room, a gym and a computer room and the furniture is from Ikea. Luckily it's also just around the corner from the best gelateria in Pavia so every night we make a trip there - though the best gelato in town comes at a price because it is also the reliable location in town for the mosquitos - always a buffet of humans to feed on there. The picture below is the view from my kitchen window...not too shabby. I can actually see the bells ringing in that tower.

Ah London...that was a fun trip. Good to see Kate and strange to speak English. At first it was confusing, I kept saying merci and excusez-moi, but then I realized how great it was to be able to communicate fluently and not have to think hard about how to conjugate my verbs properly when trying to say something in some other language to waiters and cashiers and general passersby. Anyway, I had a nice weekend there, we explored Kate's new neighborhood, ate lots and lots of wonderful vegetarian food (I forgot what it was like...and its like heaven), went to an electronica concert, had some picnics, saw lots of well kept gardens and other London landscapes. Went to a toy museum (see picture below)

It was nice. And not only because I could speak english and not be looked at as a freakshow for being a vegetarian, but also it was nice to be in a place that feels modern. In France and Italy I often feel like I am living in the past because the cities are ancient looking, there are cobblestone streets, castles and forts and 500 year old buildings galore and even the way of life often feels like the 'olden days'. You know...riding on rusty bicycles, hanging laundry out to dry, cooking food from scratch bought in little butcher shops, vegetable shops and bakeries (well in france they prefer hypermarches), actually using the shutters on houses etc etc.

Actually, to punctuate the modern feeling, we went to the Tate modern gallery, walked along the South bank of the Thames where there are all sorts of modern sculptures (see Dr Seuss trees above) and we went to a toy museum that made even me feel ancient because there were toys on display that I had myself not so long ago (and some that mom had), including the entire fisher-price sets that I think are still up in the loft at the cabin...see picture below...I believe we had all four in that picture and some others that aren't in the picture:

Anyway, for better or worse London is pretty much the same as America, we walked fast, ate fast, drank coffee while walking, even the streets and the stores and the people looked like home (though its funny because the first time I left the US, I went to Britain, and then everything seemed so different...). So the trip there was kind of a brief reintroduction to the life I'll go back to in less than a month!

So I will leave you with some photos from my last few weeks and then get back to work on my project so I can finish before I come home (fingers crossed):

Hiking in the Chartreuse Mountains with Clemence

Clemence and the sheep butts

Mountain lake we went swimming at near Grenoble

View from Dana's Room where I stayed two weeks - Halfway up the Bastille

2009-06-17T01:05:00.004+03:00

Quick update from France:

I've been staying with various friends over the past few weeks, now I'm staying in the room of a friend which is located halfway up to the Bastille in old barracks (I guess) but it looks kind of like a castle. Anyway, it's really old and only has french toilets (i.e. squat over a hole in the floor)...so between that and the walk home in the evening, my legs are going to be stronger than a T-Rex's.
The view is breathtaking out the window, and it's so quiet up here above the city, crickets and wind. It's nice. Too bad I haven't had much time to enjoy it since I have been at the lab working in front of the computer all day for the past few weeks :(

Though my weekend was quite wonderful, on Friday night I joined in on a barbecue with some Italian friends and it followed an extreme Italian schedule...I was ready at 6, expecting an American style bbq, but we didn't even leave until 11pm, and we started eating at midnight and I left for home at 2am.

Saturday I went on a hike with one of my french friends, she took me to climb up the Dent de Crolles (Tooth of Crolles because it looks like a tooth) in the only mountain range around Grenoble I hadn't been in yet. The views were amazing and the air was dotted literally by hundreds of hanggliders (who like to take advantage of the steep cliffs in the Chartreuse mountains for launch points). The hike was wonderful and I remembered what I had been missing living in the Po Plains of Italy. At some points the trail involves climbing down through crevasses or up cliffs using cables. There is even a cave where you can walk all the way through to the other side of the Dent de Crolles but we didn't, we just used it as air conditioning and for crystal scavenging.

Then the next day, I went with some more french friends to a lake not far from Grenoble for swimming. It was chilly and crowded, but refreshing and if you swam out far enough there was no one around but the strange diving ducks and their ducklings and the mountains all around. It was the perfect spot, but unfortunately the french section of my brain was having a vacation, so I felt anti-social because for some reason I couldn't speak or understand french. It made me wish I had had more of an immersion experience, because after seven months in France I should be relatively fluent, but I still have a long way to go and speaking english all the time did not help improve things.

So that's my quick update. Now I've been working long hours on the computer to try to finish up my project and make up for being lazy last week and all weekend. I have to present my results next tuesday...but I'm going to London for four days in between now and then...and I'm not even close to done...so as you can see, I'm under a bit of pressure. It's too bad because I want to ride my bike around more and go sit at outdoor tables of cafe's in the center since it's not so easy to do such things back home, but I'm stuck working on this stupid project that will probably not bring anything all that interesting into the world. Well, who knows...maybe I can make something of it.

Okay, that's all for now. Back to Matlab.

2009-06-07T00:45:00.002+03:00

I've been back in Grenoble for a week and it's been absolutely wonderful. It's bizarre, I was so miserable here for most of my previous six month stay, but for some reason I came back for more. It's like an abusive relationship, I couldn't stay away. But so far it's been great, mostly because I haven't had to go through any bureaucracy this time (yet) and I'm now used to standing in lines for long periods of time.

When I left everything was gray and dead and cold, and now everything is green and there are flowers everywhere and the air smells nice and the sun is shining. And I've been getting so much work done because I have an office here! And it's next to a window looking out on a bunch of trees and always smells like pine. ANd I've been speaking only french at the lab except with my supervisor which is fun.

I spent this week seeing all my friends left here, going all my favorite places, eating favorite foods and drinks that we don't have in Italy (a lot changes from one side of the mountains to the other) and enjoying being among mountain-y people with bad style again, no stilettos or designer sunglasses here.

It was weird coming back after being away 3 months, it was almost like coming home. And communicating in french feels like speaking english right now after being in Italy knowing very sparse italian. Even this terrible residence hall I was miserable in all those months found a little place in my heart somehow...but I won't be sad to leave it tomorrow after spending a week sharing this room the size of my bathroom in Pavia with Yvonne all week. I'm doing the rounds, staying a few days with each my friends. Ok, thats all for now because Yvonne is sleeping and the sound of a keyboard is amplified in this tiny room. Goodnight.

2009-05-30T21:16:00.003+03:00

I spent this week in class from 9 to 5 learning about tsunamis. My professor was italian. He could talk that whole time without even pausing to sip some water. Actually the last day he went past the end of class by 35 minutes without even pausing to breathe in...almost beating the previous record made in France when an even worse talker droned on 45 minutes into our lunch break without stopping for air. I don't know how they do it, these european professors. It's like the energizer professor...they just stand up there, look at their computer screen and talk talk talk to themselves. Amazing.

Anyway, even though the entire class content could have been condensed into one day instead of five, it was really quite interesting. Tsunamis are unbelievable. There was actually a tsunami more than 500 meters tall in a bay in Alaska caused by a landslide! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami, and here's a video about some guys in a boat who survived it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN6EgMMrhdI&feature=fvsr), though most tsunamis are nothing like that. Most are only a few meters high and they don't come as one huge wall of water, but instead like the tide comes in really fast and turbulently and then keeps rising and rising and rising (because tsunamis have an enormous wavelength). We actually learned about the tsunami caused by the collapse of the Santorini that I mentioned in my last entry, and interestingly, there was a local tsunami caused recently in Stromboli, a volcano island in Southern Italy. The most interesting part of that island though, is that this volcano is continously erupting and has been for thousands of years. And people still live on the island even though hot rocks shot out from the volcano occasionally land on their houses. The tsunami was not caused by the volcano directly, but from a landslide of cinders and lava rocks that have been building up on a steep slope since the volcano is always erupting. I am now determined to go there and see it before I leave here. Maybe end of July. I'll have my 4th of July fireworks a little late this year http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LHwI62uJfk.

The most jaw dropping day of class was when we studied the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, which essentially woke the world up to tsunamis in a very unpleasant way. More than 200,000 people killed, the Indonesian town Banda Aceh was one of the worst hit. We watched some videos survivors took and the destruction and sheer power of water is unbelievable. It went several kilometers inland, some say up to 50 meters in some places, though I think it was on average around 10 meters in the hardest hit areas. The water actually shot through one town, over a little hill and wiped out the town on the other side. Completely and utterly unbelievable. Some of the videos were really shocking, you could see people swept away and houses and couches and cars floating in the raging water, but here is one that is milder...this is in the Maldives, 1500 miles from the source. This video is interesting because the tsunami water is so clean and blue here. The Maldives are surrounded by coral reefs and not much mud as in other places. The wave height here was only a few meters, but the highest point in the Maldives is 2.3 meters above sea level...so...yea...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiBKrkpMQ1c

Anyways, enough about tsunamis, lets talk about other disasters going on in the world. Pakistan... as you all know there is a lot of trouble with the Taliban in the North of Pakistan, and several of my friends here are from the North of Pakistan. I was discussing the events with one of them, and he told me that the reason they are having so much trouble is because the Taliban is getting more and more supporters and members...the reason? he said it was because of the drone attacks by the US. Civilians are being killed by these foreigners, and hardly any militants, and he described it as..."its like if your own family slaps you, you aren't so mad, but if some outsider comes and slaps you, it is completely different" So we are the outsiders slapping them with killer flying robots...(what is this world? by the way) And the Taliban is getting more and more support because of it. But luckily, he said, the fighting was still 50 kilometers away from his town...or it was then... They must be really loyal to their fellow Pakistani 'family' because thousands and thousands of people are forced to flee their because of the fighting caused by the Taliban, and my friend said that no one is helping them or giving money (of course the US did give them money to secure the border and keep out the Taliban to prevent this sort of thing, but apparently they spent it all on nuclear weapons to fight India and now they are asking for more...though I think all this money is generally aimed towards buying weapons for one party or another, not so much for refugees) And then of course a few days after this conversation, there were some huge suicide bombings in Peshawar (which is exactly where my friends are from) and Lahore last week. When we talked about it he told me that luckily his family is all safe, but the bombers did it because of the oppression in the north. Hearing a native pakistani calling it oppression really surprised me because according to the newspapers I have seen lately (even Al Jazeera!), this is not oppression in the north, but rather bad-guy Taliban militants trying to topple the government! So who knows what reality is. Certainly not me, my reality is just what the newspapers and other various media outlets, primarily the Daily Show, tell me.

Ok, that's all for now I guess. Not too much new in Italy. I'm packing up to leave for France, so talk to you from there.

2009-05-24T20:21:00.004+03:00

Rewinding six weeks.....rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Greece! I decided to go to Greece to join Kelly on the first part of her trip one week beforehand. I was lucky because our course ended a week earlier than expected so I had an extra week added to my 10 day break between courses. I flew into Athens the day after my course ended and managed to find a girl I didn't know, Kelly's friend, at the airport, and then we found our way together to the youth hostel in Athens where Kelly and two other girls I also didn't know were waiting for us. We found that our knowledge of Greek letters from math class, once deemed rather useless, actually helped us navigate street signs etc. that were written only in Greek. Who ever said math wasn't useful. After emerging from the metro in the center of Athens at night, I was immediately awestruck by the glowing godly looking Acropolis towering over the city.

We spent the next day and a half touring the sites of Athens. Now, Athens is not the most pleasant city. It's quite dirty and crowded and there are a lot of stray dogs running around, old ladies who try to put a flower on your shirt with one hand while helping themselves to your bag with the other hand and so on, and astronomical prices (at least in the touristy areas where we stayed due to limited time)....BUT it was lovely for two days. We took a tourist train around the center, gazed at the guards with funny pompom shoes and a ridiculous kick-step (I wouldn't feel safe guarded by people who look so dumb...I think thats why they have real policemen guarding the presidential palace also), we walked through the tourist infested Parthenon...it was not disappointing (especially since European students get free entry and I am one!! woohoo!) through gardens and marketplaces and one disgusting enormous but intriguing meat market...and no matter where we went there were columns and other various ruins popping out (even in the metro stations!). I wish I could say that everything I learned in Greek Mythology class came gushing back into my mind, but I guess that knowledge is filed pretty deeply (or got taken out with the recycling), but regardless, it still felt like I was on a school field trip.

Actually the most shocking part of my Greek trip was being around so many Americans! Our hostel was filled with them, and it seemed like everywhere we went there they were. And to add to it, I was traveling with four other Americans...overload!!! I hate to say it, but seeing all of them really made me realize that the average American is quite a bit chubbier than the average European.

But even so, it wasn't so bad being around my own people for a bit, though I find many of them annoying, especially when I am outside the country. Actually, the first night I was hanging out in the hostel with all these Americans while Kelly and company were overcoming their jetlag. Some guy in a cowboy hat was reading the news on the laptop and he said in his Southern twang..."wow...there's bin' a shootin' in Birmingham New York, fourteen people killed" and my ears perked up immediately, first because I couldn't believe that another imbecile was allowed to get his hands on a gun, and that there was another tragic shooting so close in time to the nursing home shooting, and finally because I was pretty sure Birmingham New York doesnt exist.... It took me longer than it should have to realize it was actually Binghamton, at which point I practically went into shock. And even worse, it was at a civic center where a lot of my friends' families go, in fact I once volunteered to stuff envelopes there with my friend Hanh...so I was really worried it was someone I knew that was killed! I know they always quote people saying this in papers...but I always hear about these things happening, and they seem so far away, I never thought it could happen so close to home! And more importantly, how can we have such relaxed gun laws?!!! It's bloody insane!!!

It's well known around the world how terrible our gun control is in the US. I was talking the other day with my friend from Colombia and we were discussing her country and how it has a bad reputation for violence, corruption and drug lords, and at one point she said to me 'but you must know what its like, you come from a place that is not so safe also.' And at the time I said it wasn't true, that I almost always feel safe...but in the back of my head was the shooting in Binghamton, all the murders in the T-station by Northeastern's Campus over the years, the girl some of my friends knew who was shot in a burglary three blocks from my apartment, the two shootings across the street from me and so on and so on... and our Costa Rican friend who was in the same conversation, who comes from a place where they constitutionally abolished the army and gained their independence without any bloodshed and has hardly had any violence in its history just thinks both of our countries are crazy. I agree.

And another day I was telling my friend from Vanuatu about the time we were playing frisbee and Sarah got her nose broken and we had to walk to the hospital through the streets of Boston while she was dripping blood and alarming passersby because she looked like she was shot...and my friend said...'well I guess that could be more believable in the US' SO my point is...we certainly don't have a good reputation...and for good reason...and why oh why can people have such easy access to machines that are meant to kill people? Do we ever hear any stories about peoples lives being saved because somebody happened to have a gun? Is nobody thinking clearly?

And that actually was only the first bit of shocking news that happened during that trip...there was the disastrous earthquake in L'Aquila near Rome! And it was torture because all the news was in Greek and I couldn't get any information about what happened! The only thing I was able to decipher was the magnitude, which is a moment magnitude of 6.3, not huge, but most of Italy was built before modern day Earthquake retrofitting techniques, as I found out after returning to Italy, almost 300 people were killed and more than 65,000 people are homeless and living in tents or hotels, mostly those in towns quite close to the fault where ground accelerations were quite high. A lot of my friends here at the Rose School have been there to survey the damage and figure out what buildings people can safely go back to, some are there now because obviously the work is still going on...the pictures they've shown are not pretty. And actually Andy P lived there when he stayed in Italy, and the dome of the church he used to catch a bus in front of collapsed. The earthquake was a reminder to me that our work here is not just an academic circus as it sometimes seems to be.

Anyway, back to Greece. We took an early morning ferry to the Island of Mykonos, which is the most picturesque place I have ever visited...though it wasn't so great for pictures since it rained for most of our visit. Everything is pure white and quaint with accents of blue and red.

They even paint white squares on the sidewalks. Then the next day we took off to Santorini...my favorite...the only inhabited active Caldera in the world! The giant crater in the center is flooded with water, and serves as the enormous harbor for the island. Pulling into that crater on the Ferry was fabulous...I could see all the different volcanic layers and then creeping over the edges of the crater were all the cliffside villages, again all painted bright white. These houses are stacked like stairs going down the cliffsides, one house's roof is the patio of the house above it.

We didn't stay on the cliff edge, but rather stayed in a more affordable Villa/Hostel run by a guy we called dad because he drove us around and made us breakfast and told us to be safe. The two days there were fabulous...I went off on my own and rented a 4-wheel motorcycle...I wanted a scooter but they didnt want me to drive it :( but I still spent a day and a half of non-stop riding around the island...it was magnificent! Wind whipping my face and my hair, curvy roads wrapping around volcanic hillsides, the sea always in sight. I felt like I could reach out and touch it. Even though I was on a dorky 4-wheeler...I now understand how people get so crazy about motorcycling...I think I'll get a scooter when I move to Seattle...don't tell Dad. So I zoomed around to all of the sites, the Red Beach, the Black Beach, the cute village of Oia, Ancient Thira...Ancient Thira is the reamins of an ancient Greek town on top of the tallest mountain on the island...it is all that is left after the volcano last erupted less than 4000 years ago...it was one of the biggest eruptions on earth during human history and is thought to have caused the downfall of the Minoan civilization and also is thought to be the origin of the tale of Atlantis since the enormous crater filled with water was formed after the eruption. There is actually a sort of Pompeii on the island called Akrotiri...but I missed it because Greeks are even lazier than Italians and they close everything at 3.

We also went to some nice restaurants and experienced a bit of the famous nightlife. One night Kelly and I found ourselves at a dance club filled entirely with Greek high school students along with their chaperones which played only Greek music. They were all dancing on the bars and throwing things in the air and doing some sort of modernized traditional Greek dances that Kelly and I failed at imitating. Then afterwards we were escorted all the way home (a few kilometers!) by one of the random dogs that run around everywhere in Greece as if they were cats. The weird thing is that they all have collars and they are all more pleasant than most dogs I have met. I still haven't figured out why they are there, but I think the Olympics have something to do with why the ones in Athens at least all have collars.

Then right after I got home from Greece, I had Andrea and Kelly here for a week of Northern Italy! We went to Venice, which was packed like a mall on Black Thursday since it was the day after Easter and all of Italy goes out for an excursion, but we had a nice time getting lost and unlost, pushing through crowds and enjoying the beautiful sights. We also went to Verona, which looks like a cliche of Italy...castles on hilltops, tall narrow Romanesque trees, a Colosseum, lots of cathedrals and so forth. We even saw the supposed houses of Romeo and Juliet...though last time I checked they weren't real, anyway they were the homes of families with names similar to Capulet and Montague. We also had a day in Genova and Milan.

But the real highlight of our week was hiking between the five small seaside/cliffside towns of Cinque Terre. These towns used to be isolated from the rest of Italy, keeping themselves up by farming terraces on the steep cliffs, but since a train was built through (with a LOT of tunnels) the towns have become more accessible and since they are so quaint and colorful, obviously they have become rather touristy, and there are hiking trails that connect the five little towns and we did the whole thing and it was lovely. Most of the trails were along these terraces, sometimes the trail was only a foot wide with a ten foot dropoff into grapevines on the terrace below.

There were hundreds of lemon trees heavy with fruit and we strolled through many olive groves as well. There weren't really olives that time of year, but some hikers were searching for some anyway, and as we were sitting under some olive trees along the trail, taking a break and eating some jelly beans Mrs. Natoli sent me for Easter, we had the most brilliant idea! Instead of throwing those yucky black jelly beans away, we stuck them all over an olive tree right next to the path...muah hahahaaaa! I still laugh today as I think about those hikers taking a bite of an olive only for it to be a nasty black licorice jelly bean!!!

Okay...phew...I am almost caught up to the present in my journal entries...except for the month and a half since those trips - I had another class for most of it taught by an old American guy who is really famous but actually came to class a little tipsy a few times. My theory is that since the weather was so cold in the beginning and they turn the heat off on a certain day instead of when it stops being cold, he was so freezing in his room that he warmed himself up in the morning with a bit (or more than a bit) of duty free alcohol he got on the way over....haha...but anyway, he was still a better teacher drunk than many of my other teachers in Grenoble were sober, so it was quite a good class. And since then it's been graduation week for the students from last year (yes, things really are that slow in Italy) so we've had party after ceremony after party. My school bought an old monastary which they now use as a residence for students and faculty, but the church part they turned into an auditorium, but it really just looks like a nice fancy old church with a powerpoint screen installed...so we had some presentations in there and then a few nights ago we had a big party with dinner, dancing and drinking in this beautiful little marble cathedral...it was a bit weird to be doing the YMCA next to confessional booths and holy water fonts, but like I said, life in Italy is always interesting.

So now that all the celebrating is over, I'm back to a short weeklong class about Tsunamis tomorrow, and then next Sunday I go back to France for June to (hopefully) finish my project so I can be free when I leave Italy at the end of July.

Sorry for the long entry, but you've all been whining so long that I never update, so hopefully this will keep you quiet for a little while :D

I will leave you with a picture from our little day-trip to Lake Como yesterday. Ciao ciao.

p.s. keep your eyes open for new pictures soon-ish on www.picasaweb.com/allstadt.k

2009-05-17T01:00:00.003+03:00

Below: Picture my friend Michele took of Sunset over the Ticino river near the Ponte Coperto in Pavia when we had a huge flood a few weeks ago...the people in the houses across the river had to bring their furniture up to the second floor, but there wasn't too much damage...

So I know I have been pretty slack at updating this thing, and I am disappointed in myself because it is so true that the unexamined life is not worth living and I am afraid that due to my short memory, by not processing my daily thoughts and experiences I am going to lose all the lessons forever. I have to do something fast to preserve them! The problem is I'm in Italy and nothing is done fast (except driving of course) and this slow relaxed lifestyle is more addictive than nicotine. I now can proudly say I am able to sit at dinner for 4 hours, walk at 0.1 mph, and arrive half an hour late and think I'm on time. Quite a skill set for my resume, though not so helpful in getting my work done fast.

I actually find myself worrying about when I get back to America and spend time with my American friends again, they will still be going at the same old American pace and no one will want to sit for two hours at dinner with me or go for an evening passegiatta (stroll) through the city at a snails pace. I am even starting to like having people milling around all the time everywhere I go...in most of the US the sidewalks are lonely because everyone is isolated in their cars.

I think of all the years I was the first one to flee after an event just because I liked to always be moving, but now I'm becoming the last one to linger and I'm starting to wonder what I was always rushing away to all those years...another event to rush away from?

It becomes clearer every day that social connections are what make life good. When I think back on my time in France, for those first few months when I was so miserable: the isolated self-contained living situation, the ridiculous workload, and the culture shock made for a limited social life centered upon sharing a common misery, which I would have been even more miserable without....but it wasn't idea. But here, even though everything that was bad about France is much worse in Italy, and my best friends here are the friends from Italy, life is so much brighter because of the huge social network (lots more people in the program here from all over the world) centered on enjoying each others company, cooking together, meeting for evening drinks in the central square, tea parties, barbecues, and so on. All fun and games and little work, but I'm much happier as of late, and though I only have about two months left in Europe and I am looking forward to going home, I am beginning to realize that my perspective have evolved this year and though I often tell myself that Europe is interesting but not my kind of place, I think I'm going to miss it here. Of course such revelations always come at the end of something.

A few things about the Italian and/or french lifestyles that I wish we could adopt back home:

1) Cooking food from fresh whole food ingredients
2) Shopping in smaller locally owned shops, even if it means paying more
3) Air drying my clothes
4) Walking everywhere possible (even the elderly walk or bike everywhere in the center!)
5) Lively bustling city centres with lots of outdoor cafes and bars
6) Aperitivo (buy one drink and eat all the food you want for free!)
7) Evening strolls
8) Window shopping (their displays are so beautiful...in fact there is not much else besides what is in the window to some of the tiniest shops)
9) Gelato shops
10) French Boulangeries (bakeries)

Ok, that's all I will write for tonight because it's already 1:30am, but I set the lofty goal for myself that I would write something in the blog before today was over. I'll update a bit on my Greece trip and what I've been up to the past month hopefully tomorrow...but in Italian time that could mean next week :D

2009-04-30T00:59:00.003+03:00

Sorry, haven't updated on my two trips yet, I have been paying for all that fun in Greece and around Italy by working in front of the computer all day since my return to catch up and since I haven't had the energy to be in front of the computer extra to write a post...though I did put up my pictures: www.picasaweb.com/allstadt.k

I will write about my trip one of these days, but for now just look at the pictures :D

Ciao.

2009-03-26T23:10:00.002+03:00

After giving it a few weeks time, I have come to the conclusion that though France was a much nicer, more comfortable and convenient place to live, living in Italy is much more interesting.

As I may have mentioned, I purchased a bicycle that could have been used by Mussolini it's so old and every morning I have been riding it from where I live on one edge of Pavia to the complete other side of town, under the railroad tracks and across the highway to Ugly town where the University is. The first section is down a cobblestone street which causes chunks of metal to fly off my bike...Pavia is filled with these cobblestone streets - charming but VERY impractical, even on foot but of course Italian girls still wear heels I can limbo under and somehow still walk from shop to shop to bar to disco.

The second part of my journey is down Corso Garibaldi, the wrong way down a one way supposed pedestrian only street which is narrower than a Boston alleyway, but is one of the main roads of the city. Somehow cars drive both directions, pedestrians wander unpredictably like they've been drinking too much and old ladies on bicycles pedal slower than they walk and aim to kill...

If I may digress for a moment...Italian old people are the hardiest old people I have ever encountered in my life. At an age when most American old people wouldn't be allowed out of the nursing home, these old ladies are riding rusty bicycles in the middle of busy roads, orthopedic shoes and all. And the bus is filled with them...Italian bus drivers are the craziest of the craziest, I think they must make bets with each other to see who can make the most passengers fall down in one day...but it's never the old people, they climb up the mountainous bus steps with a cane in one hand, push their way through all the young punks into the bus up to the bus driver, where they shout/talk at him and stand there while he tries to shake her off like a bug by driving even crazier (if possible). But the old lady never stumbles. I try to see the bottoms of their shoes as they climb off the bus to see if there are suction cups or magnets but i haven't seen anything yet. Meanwhile I am falling all over the place with the other passengers like we were in a mosh pit. These old people can also can be found wandering the streets of every Italian city, but there is a particularly large horde of them in Pavia, they walk everywhere (unless they want to shout at a bus driver, in which case they take the bus) - no old person in the US would be doing that, they're found peeking out from behind the wheel of giant old sedans of course - anyway, old men in particular have figured out the perfect stride to take up the entire sidewalk, no matter how wide, and no one will be able to pass and is forced to walk at the same speed for the lenght of the entire city.

Anyway, I slalom through that mess on my bicycle, going very slowly because my breaks weren't born yesterday either. I take a few more roads through the center, zig zagging past the hyperhighpriced boutiques, each the size of large refrigerator boxes (everything is unbelievably tiny here) lining the streets (Italians will pay exorbitant prices for something they think is of high quality...WalMart would never make it here). Finally I reach the edge of town and I have to ride on the big roads with Italian drivers. This is the scariest section, I think Italians have special attachments to their cars that make then sound extra scary and aggressive when approaching bikers and they have a button on the dashboard to release a puff of smoke as they go by. But the more dangerous part is the cars parking and unparking on the sidewalks and other places they shouldn't be which results in them making very unpredictable movements in random directions, and of course they never look behind them. No one in Italy is ever looking where they are going, usually they are looking at themselves in the rearview mirror or if they are walking, they are looking at clothes and jewelry and shoes in the shop windows that they may want to attach to themselves to look better in the mirror. And not just girls...Italian men have an equal number of clothing shops, if not more than women, and they certainly have more styles of shoes.

Anyway, I ride this frightening route without a helmet, first of all because I can't find one to buy (someone stole the one I had in Grenoble...of all the lousy things you can do...), and second, because if I did I would be arrested by the fashion police, which I am convinced actually exist here (I've seen them...policewomen on bikes with faces caked in makeup and ultra-long styled hair flowing out from under their police caps). Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that everyday life in Italy is VERY interesting...all that in just a 20 minute bikeride to class...

Life is also interesting at home. There is an interesting dynamic with our cleaning lady. She comes every day, makes my bed, mops the floor, and snoops around my room. Last week while snooping around she found a swarm of ants having a party in my food storage area. I came home and my floor was covered with dead ants with a can of poison sitting in the middle smiling at me. I am not sure where she sprayed it...I think everywhere...but I haven't died yet...so...

Also, where I live there are a lot of rules...no moving the furniture, no putting things on the walls, no having guests overnight, no using anything that uses electricity, no breathing or moving and so forth...and of course we break all the rules and she knows it even though we hide our hot plates and water boilers before she comes. She essentially covers her eyes in a Schultz from Hogan's Heroes way ("I see noooothing!")... The best one was a few days ago our friend who doesn't have his apartment yet was sleeping on the floor of one of my female friends who lives here, and in the morning he was leaving her room to go to class just as the cleaning lady was rolling her cart of chemicals out to start the day of snooping...when she saw him she gasped, dropped her broom, covered her eyes with one hand and pointed to the door with the other...hahhaa.

You may ask how the (alleged) main reason for me being here is going...classes are surprisingly great, my teacher is American and doesn't use powerpoint (thank god!), and though it's only a 3 week class (was supposed to be 4), I've learned a surprisingly large amount. It's so great to have a real teacher again...those french teachers were terrible (mostly, a few were good). I already have a final next week and then next friday I am using my extra week to hop on a flight over the Adriatic Sea to meet up with Kelly for the Greece portion of her trip. Then immediately after I get back, Kelly and Andrea will be here for a week and we'll do some Northern Italy adventuring.

That's all for my babbling for tonite. Now I should do some work...Don't worry, I'll only do just enough to convince myself that I'm not on a elongated vacation...

2009-03-15T13:20:00.000+03:00

So tomorrow I start my first class in Italy and end my month of sort-of freedom. We'll see if there are any improvements from French courses. Though it's an American professor so I'm hopeful.

Last week I took a little trip to Florence to visit an old friend from high-school and to have a look around, then I went to Rome for a few days by myself and then to Pisa on the way home. It was a nice trip, but I walked so much and didn't stretch out my back the whole time so I was in a lot of pain for most of it...someday I'll make my back better.

Anyway, the sites in these places were so beautiful I didn't notice the pain most of the time. In Florence we spent a lot of time catching up on high school gossip and reminiscing. We walked all over Florence several times and got lots of gelato and she and her Italian introduced me to all sorts of new Italian cheese and fresh pasta dishes and so forth. We wandered around the covered marketplace and I found some interesting cuts of meat including cow face (see below) mmmm...

We looked at jewelry on the famous Ponte Vecchio...a real old bridge with shops on it. The Medici family (they used to rule Florence and a bunch of other places - as you can see I'm being real historical here) actually made a secret passageway above the shops on this bridge connecting their palace on one side of the river to the palace on the other side without having to walk among the common folk. Of course now the streets of Florence are not filled with common folk...they're filled with Americans...SO MANY AMERICANS!!! AAHHHHH!!! I hardly heard any Italian. Apparently Florence is the most visited city in Europe by Americans. Seemed to me that all the most annoying American exchange students go to Florence.

The last day we climbed up a hill in the evening and had a nice view of the sunset over Florence and also of the bronze version of David's butt (see below).

Then early morning next day Beth sent me off to Rome where I spent two days walking non-stop and trying to see everything I possibly could. I started at the Colosseum, which was cool, but not as exciting as I had always imagined...I find that is true of most famous landmarks. There wasn't too much left inside and there was no signs or information as to what each thing was, you had to have a tour or hand over some dough for one of those annoying audioguides and I don't like sharing earwax, or spending money. I eavesdropped on a few tours but they weren't saying anything too interesting that I didn't already know from Gladiator. After that I wandered around the forum and paladium, which was the area with all the temples and where they had the big victory parades and so forth, and the palace where the emperors lived. I also stopped by Circus Maximus where they used to race chariots but it was just a dirt patch. I guess I should work more on my imaginative skills next time I go. The Paladium was kind of meaningless because I had no signs or people to tell me what things were, though I did eavesdrop on one tour where they were saying that the emperors used to have huge feasts and eat hundreds of dishes for ten hours and they would have their slaves stick feathers down their throats to make them throw up so they could continue eating. Sounds like a great party.

I had a nice free tour in the Forum though. Some guide was feeling happy because it was a nice day and he just was giving free tours (though all of us were suspicious the whole time about why the tour was free...I was expecting a religious rant of some sort but it never came). Anyway, he told us about the Temple of Romulus with the original doors that still work with the same key even though they were buried for thousands of years, the Temple of the Vestal Virgins where girls were chosen at a young age to train 10 years, then serve ten years, then train new virgins for ten years. At the end they could choose if they wanted to leave or not, many stayed because they were the most respected women in all of Rome. If they chose to remain Vestal virgins forever, they had to remains virgins or else they would be buried alive with a candle and a loaf of bread to think about their sins.

He also recited some of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' and it was considerably more enjoyable than when we read in the English class. For some reason it felt more relevant. We also saw where Caesar was supposedly cremated. People still put flowers on the rock to this day. On the Ides of March (today!) he said there would be an enormous stack of flowers there. Wish I could see it.

Let's see, I don't want to go on for hours, but I also saw the Vatican and some mummified popes in glass cases (I think I saw the most recent one that passed away...there were old ladies crying around it) and the Swiss Guard in their hilarious costumes. Didn't see the pope though. Then that night I went and watched the Pink Panther 2 in Italian because there's not much else to do if you're a female alone in Rome and don't want to be heckled by Italian men on street corners. Anyway, the Vatican was actually in the Pink Panther 2! The pope too, though not mummified.

Interesting fact: Italians talk freely on their cell phones during movies...full conversations...and no one cares. Not too surprising though, Italians like to talk.

Also saw the Palladium which is famous for its miraculous dome...forget why...and the Fountain of Trieves. Rome is full of beautiful fountains but this one was by far the best. You are supposed to throw a coin in to ensure that you will come back to Rome, therefore the fountain is plagued by people posing and throwing coins in. I didn't...I might not go back to Rome...but that's okay, it's expensive and there are many places to see in the world.

I walked through a beautiful park on a sunny afternoon with no coat on, walked along the Tiber River and laid in teh sun on its banks. This river floods a lot and is filled with garbage and as a result, all the trees along its banks are decorated with garbage up to their tops. It's like a row of Oscar the Grouch-style Christmas trees. There was also a wrecked boat on its banks in the middle of town, not an old boat either. Every day it becomes more apparent that Italians aren't so quick in maintaining and cleaing things.

Anyway, on the way home I stopped at the leaning tower of Pisa and got talked at by some old Australian guy on the train about his personal communications through which he gives advice to Obama and Hillary and also about what the weather would be like this year in Pavia (based on something inside him he said) and how he thinks there is a place for me in heaven if I'm good to other people and how Ohio is his favorite state based on internet research. I just wanted to look out the window at the sunset over the ocean.

2009-03-14T13:14:00.000+03:00

I just found the strangest thing on my computer contained in a folder with the installation files for some program a teacher in France gave us for doing seismology things...what do you make of it? Why does a french prof have such a letter about daylight savings time on Indian reservations?

2009-03-06T14:34:00.003+03:00

I moved to a much nicer residence in the center of Pavia instead of the industrial outskirts. The building is something like 500 years old. My ceiling is about 15 feet high and made of beautiful old wood with giant cross beams and my furniture is nicer than any furniture I have ever had! I even have my own bidet...not that I know how to use it. Anyway, this residence feels very italian.

There is a cleaning lady who comes every day during the week and makes my bed and sweeps and mops all the floors and cleans everything EVERY DAY! It's so crazy. The only problem is that there is no kitchen, but we have a microwave and a refrigerator so it's not so bad, plus it gives me an excuse to eat out more!

Today I am going to Florence for the weekend to visit an old friend from high school who is teaching english there and to see the sights...it's supposedly the most beautiful city in the world according to multiple sources. Then on Sunday I might go to Rome for a few days or I'll go to Pisa and Genoa, I haven't decided yet. But I have nothing to do in Pavia until Wednesday so I have to do something.

2009-02-28T01:10:00.002+03:00

I made it alive to Italy. I was quite the center of attention, dragging my overweight bags up tiny train stairways and down tiny train corridors, but I managed to find my way to Italy with all of my worldly possessions. My arms and shoulders are scorning me today, but its ok.

Pavia is a really beautiful old town with cobbled streets and covered bridges over the river and quaint 500 year old buildings...but I am, at the moment, living in a terribly ugly residence in the industrial outskirts (which is also where the ugly university is), but next week I will move to a residence in the center in a 500 year old building with really high ceilings and giant doors and roman tile floors...but no kitchen :( Its worth it to me though, to not spoil my stay in Italy with a horrid residence like this one and to allow me to continue my morning bike rides. And maybe having no kitchen will help me make more friends...Hi, I'm Kate, want to be friends? Can I use your kitchen? Or I'll eat out every day. Italy hates vegetarians just like France does, but it's easier for us here because of all the pasta and vegetable dishes they have with their meat. I approve of Italian food so far.

Tomorrow I go to Milan for the morning with Yvonne for the Carnival of Milan, then we will meet Galina, again coming from France, at the central train station and take her back with us.

Overall Italy isn't so bad...but I think I am starting culture shock again...but now I'm not shocked from the differences with America, but rather the differences from France. How much shock can one person take?!! I found myself outraged that the cafeteria didnt give us pitchers of water and that there was no tram and no bike lanes, and that no one understands me when I forget I'm in Italy and speak french to them...Definetely not shock coming from American now.

Anyway, I went to the center tonite with Claudia, my Italian friend who was in France with us, and we went to a wonderful place where for 6 euros you can eat whatever you want and get one free drink, but I forgot that in italy they care mucho about style and I got many scorned looks at my white socks with black shoes. Too bad for them. More wrinkles. Then I rode home on Claudia's bicycle with one flat tire (because the buses stop at 8pm) to be welcomed back to my residence with a locked gate...for which I have the key, mind you, but the handle was broken. So after 20 minutes of searching for another entrance to no avail and calling everyone I knew, again to no avail, I locked the bike outside the fence climbed over, jumped down into the bushes and stumbled out into a pile of mud. And now I will finally rest my weary eyes. Goodnight.

2009-02-25T00:09:00.004+03:00

Me and my sistahs on the Bastille

I've been told by several anonymous parties that I'm a wee bit behind on updating this thing. I plead guilty. Before I could blame it on being so busy for class, but now I have no excuse. I haven't had class for the last 2 weeks and it has been wonderful. I have started to really like France. All of a sudden the buildings are beautiful, the food tastes so good, the streets are charming, the language is fun to speak, the birds are singing, there are rainbows and unicorns...Why does this sort of thing always happen when I'm leaving. Now I have to go to a new place and start the cycle all over again.

The biggest event that happened since I wrote about my adventures is Paris is Dad, Lizzy and Anne came to visit. They were here just 3 and a half days but we managed to squeeze a lot into it. Lizzy wrote about it in her blog if you want a new and interesting point of view http://allstadteurope.blogspot.com/

Our first day we went to eat dinner at a creperie and managed to stumble into a very French birthday singing celebration. We all sang along with French songs and banged on tables and ate galettes and grepes, drank some champagne for the Birthday boy, who was also the guy who makes the crepes, and me Lizzy and Anne found ourselves singing a camp song for a bunch of French people (see Lizzy's blog for a video). We were all friends by the end of the night, celebration is a universal language. I think it was quite a nice French cultural experience for all. I couldn't have planned it better. In fact, if they ask you, tell them it was all on purpose.

Then we went cross country skiing the next day at my favorite ski place in the Vercours mountains that has 160km of trails!!!! Even dad went with his injured knee and everyone made it down the big hill without falling (though I think a few of us fell on an uphill or two, hehe), followed by a day wandering up the secret stairways and passages of the Bastille above Grenoble, followed by a day of exploring the Roman remains and quaint streets of Lyon. We even managed to make some meals in my tiny kitchen and all of us managed to eat in my tiny room for a few dinners. I won't go into much more detail on their visit though, since Lizzy has already, but I think a good time was had by all and it was really nice to see them. Last I heard they survived Paris on Lizzy and Anne's french skills and made it back to London.

(Lizzy and Dad looking out on a Roman Amphitheatre in Lyon)
(Lizzy and Anne skiing)

So since then I've spent the last few days cleaning out my cubicle of a room...I can't believe how much I have managed to accumulate in this little shoebox. I managed to sell some of it and I'm giving the rest away. It's been really refreshing to get rid of all this junk and to fit all my belongings into one suitcase and one backpack. I just wish I had a bonfire to burn my school papers, but it seems that they frown upon having bonfires in this residence hall :D Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I really like the process of moving.

Just one more day here in France, I hope its a nice day tomorrow and I hope I can see my favorite mountains. I probably won't write before I leave for Italy since its at 8am thursday morning and you may have noticed that I'm not exactly updating every two hours, so see you Italy.

Just to close...a few important things I've learned during my stay:

1) It's okay to pick your nose, even while you're talking to someone
2) You must always say Bonjour when you enter an elevator or a shop
3) You must always say Au revoir when you leave
4) Baguette also means chopsticks and magic wand
5) Protesting is the national sport
6) Socialized medicine is not so bad
7) Socialized University stinks
8) Never walk in front of a french driver
9) If you're a female, you must wear high boots, if you're a man you must wear sports pants with elastic ankles and Nike sneakers
10) If you're a man, the world is your toilet, if you're a female, the only toilet you want to use is your own

2009-02-07T22:10:00.004+03:00

From the top of la Tour Eiffel

So France is coming to an end. This morning we said goodbye to five of our classmates who left for Italy because they have their first class on Monday at 8:30 (no rest for them...poor guys). It was actually kind of sad, not because I will never see them again...I'll see them all in less than three weeks...but because it is the end of an era. Granted, an era that I have often been not too thrilled to have gotten myself into, but not because of my classmates, they helped me keep my sanity (mostly), and I realized last night as we were looking at pictures of our times together that I actually have a lot of good memories of my time here with these people. On a day to day basis my vision has been clouded by the small things, but as always, with time those insignificant small annoyances fade into the background and I have the benefit of a really short memory so maybe sometime soon I'll look back on France fondly.

Anyhow, as for what I've been up to...as I mentioned, I was in Paris a few weeks ago for a few days getting my Italian visa and being a tourist and it was simply lovely. I like France again. A few highlights...we went to a night mass on Sunday night at Notre Dame with the arch bishop and though I had no idea what was going on, and not only because it was in French, I was happy to just sit there taking in the cavernous gothic cathedral illuminated with flickering candles and evil looking chandeliers and filled with a thick cloud of incense. I could just sense Quasimodo lurking in one of the dark corners with his gargoyle friends. At the end of the service they played a incredibly dark piece on the organ that struck fear into my heart and shook the entire building, I was afraid the flying buttresses would fail.

We spent the good part of a day exploring the Louvre...I ignored the art for the most part and walked around like an idiot with my head tilted back taking in the ornate ceilings. I tried to see all of them, but there is 6 miles of gallery space in there, so I might have missed a few. The best was Napoleon's Apartment - I didn't know such ornateness existed. I wonder if he was afraid to sit on his furniture? Maybe he kept it covered in plastic.

We also went up the eiffel tower, rode on the famous bateaux moche (ugly boats) on the river seine at night (the one tourist attraction that was TOTALLY worth the money), visited some other museums and churches, saw the arc de triomphe, lots of places from Amelie and Moulin Rouge and ate in a lot of restaurants, most notably one in which I tried escargot. It is definetely gross, though Yvonne didn't mind it too much because they eat sea snails in Vanuatu.

And the best was we went to a Scottish pub and watched Obama's inauguration with all the other Americans in Paris. It made me homesick hearing so many American accents, but it was fun being the only american there who brought along a Kazak and a Vanuatuan to watch it too. It was funny because we were sitting with an asian-american woman which I found perfectly normal since most of my high school friends were asian, but after she left, my Kazak friend mentioned that she didn't look like an american at all and it surprised me actually because I thought she looked very American and it never struck me before what people from other countries think Americans look like. It's always interesting looking at your own culture from the outside. In fact I think it may be the only way to really know it.

Since I had so much fun in Paris and fun is frowned upon by my professors (or so it seems) I had to pay for it and spend two weeks as a prisoner in my room studying and working on projects, leaving only for a few hours at a time to take exams designed to completely crush your morale and make you reconsider a career as a hairdresser. I think French exams are the teacher's way of cutting you down to size and reminding you that they know more than you do and are far superior...except I can say that I know more about writing in english than they do (there were quite a few mistakes on the exams), so that raised my morale a bit (a very wee bit). Now all is over except one presentation and 9 hours of class and one masters thesis. No problem.

p.s. Thanks for Yvonne for the Paris photos (since I'm such a dummy and forgot my memory card)

Me in Front of Amelies Cafe!

2009-01-23T00:39:00.003+03:00

Just got back from four days in Paris. I will write about it next week after my two biggest exams ever are over with, but I will say that it was quite possibly my best four days in France yet. AND I got my Italian visa and it was one billion times easier than getting my French visa, which I think is a good sign for Italy.

I finally remembered to get new batteries for my camera, but this time I forgot to put the memory card back in it - it's always something - so I will have to wait to put pictures up until Yvonne posts her pictures. Sorry. But there are a lot of pictures of me wearing a beret, so brace yourselves.

On our last day we were lost in Montmartre and all of a sudden I looked over and there was 'Le Cafe des Deux Moulins,' the cafe where Amelie worked! I didn't even know it was real! What a moment of destiny. I had an excellent cup of chocolat chaud and a croissant served by the slowest waitress in the world. 100% french experience.

Before I get back to studying/slowly going insane, a quote by Bill Bryson from his book "Travels in Small-Town America" that I got from Aunt Jenny and Uncle Greg for Xmas (thanks if you're out there):

"I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored... But then it occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar."

2009-01-17T22:18:00.004+03:00

My Andy left two weeks ago and since then my daily schedule has immediately gone back to crazy and there hasn't even been time for it to sink in that he already came and left and I won't see him again until this summer. A lot will happen before then. It's tiring thinking about it. But for the ten days he was here I was 100% content to be where I was for the first time since I arrived in France.

The ten days of Andy's visit flew by. He arrived on Christmas Eve, and he was understandably jet lagged and despite a valiant effort to stay awake fell asleep quite early on Christmas Eve. That's okay, Santa came sooner that way. We made a little Christmas Tree out of my palm tree and had a mini-christmas morning of present opening. It wasn't exactly the same as Christmas morning at home, waiting at the top of the stairs until Dad in his slippers gets his old clunky video camera to work until we could run down and tear open our presents carefully wrapped (supposedly by Santa...but I am starting to suspect Mom) in a different paper for each one of us. I'll be glad to go back to Christmas at home after two years in a row away. Unfortunately me and my siblings were not coordinated enough to make our traditional christmas movie cross-continental, but that just means we'll have to make two next year so look out world.

After a relaxing Christmas Day spent strolling in a pleasantly empty city and along the Isere river and eating a very unique Christmas dinner with my classmates (I made some sort of mutant stirfry that I accidentally dyed purple with red cabbage and Galina made Kazak food), we fled the next day to Geneva. You can't just go to Switzerland...you must flee there...maybe I watched Sound of Music one too many times, but to me it just seems wrong to use any other verb.

Geneva was nice, but kind of disappointing because it was not very different from France except it was more expensive and the cars don't stink of pollution as much. I liked Bern, Thun and Kandersteg where I went this summer a lot better. But we enjoyed ourselves, spending most of our time just wandering around the city, going to a few museums, and my personal favorite...beating Andy at Chess for the first time in my life on a giant chessboard in the park for the world to see! I think that the pressure of the Swiss people mulling around analysing my every move (not joking) helped me a little.

Unfortunately we didn't make it to the Red Cross museum or the United Nations or CERN, mostly due to laziness, but we had a nice evening walking along the lakeshore at night finding all the trees decorated with lights scattered througout the city as an art/christmas thing. My favorite was walking out to a lighthouse on a island at the end of a long bridge that was illuminated with green lights. There is something about standing in the midst of a huge body of water at night, a vast vacuum that can't be seen or touched or known. It reminds me that I'm small and there is still some mystery in the world. A reminder we need once in a while.

After Geneva we went to a small town in the mountains of France called Annecy. Annecy was wonderful and I wish we had spent more time there and less in Geneva. It is the Venice of the Alps...filled with quaint old buildings lining canal streets, a castle overlooks the village and all is perched on the shore of a glacial lake reflecting the mountains on the other bank.

The rest of Andy's time here we mostly stayed around Grenoble and went to hundreds of French Cafes (Andy's real amour is French Cafes) but we took some trips into the mountains for skiing and snowshoeing adventures. Like most of our adventures, each excursion ended with us on the side of a mountain on a trail ten levels too high where we then would realize that the sun was setting and the last bus was leaving in half an hour at which point we ran/skiied/tumbled our way back before darkness sunk in. I love our adventures.

Sadly, Andy P had to get back to Seattle for his next semester to start, but he was immediately replaced by Andy A so I had no time to be sad about it. Andy A and I did some Grenoble things, but unfortunately I had to gear back into school mode so I didn't have enough time to spend entertaining him (well...I did it turns out...but French teachers don't tell you class is canceled until its too late to do anything that day anyway). We did go downhill skiing at a resort near Grenoble one day. My legs weren't too happy with me for not going skiing the last five years and for not having good skiing technique, but it was fun to once again fly down white slopes even if the slopes were scattered with rocks and swarms of French people. The scenery from the ski slope was so wonderful I frequently nearly skiied off cliffs because I was looking too intently at it. I didn't have my camera, but the rugged frosty peaks and cirques and sheer faces fading off row after row in the distance are almost worth living in France for. The back of the ski area went down (on the best trail in the whole ski area) to a cirque with towering cliffs on all sides and a frozen lake in the center. Here is the School of Under-ice Scuba diving... there were holes cut in the ice and apparently people were under there. I considered trying it, but I figured I can get away with mountaineering and stranding myself on mountain slopes at dusk in winter but I think if I started scuba diving under ice Dad might come and personally extract me from France and put me under 24 hour surveillance so I decided not to.

Andy A went skiing on his own at another resort the day I had to go back to class, but I was worried all day because we actually got a ton of snow in Grenoble (which everybody tells me is rare but I am starting to doubt) and I figured his bus would fly off the mountain and he wouldn't know how to say help in French or he would be swept away in an avalanche or something, but he survived and didn't miss his flight the next day (though the bus driver to the airport apparently tried to help him miss it by driving to his own house to pick up his lunch on the way making them arrive an hour late at the airport).

So that is my Christmas Story. Won't make a Christmas Classic movie, but I thought it was pretty great. And now, with the visit of the Andy's over, I was immediately greeted by a welcome back week-and-a-half of working non-stop on the neverending conveyor belt of projects haunting my every waking and sleeping moment, resulting in me not leaving my room except to go to class all week. How pathetic. But today I feel better because our professors took us all cross country skiing and bought us a fancy lunch up on a mountain top and tomorrow I am going to Paris with Yvonne and Galina to get our visa for Italy but mostly to spend four days in Paris. We'll be haunted by the exams (which are our entire grade) coming up in two weeks, but I'm willing to ignore some ghosts to spend some time reliving my favorite movie of all time, Amelie. I probably wouldn't even be in France if it weren't for that stupid movie :)

(p.s. pictures from andy's picasa website. thanks andy)

Just wanted to add a scary thought I had today as I was watching Northern Exposure. In case you don't watch Northern Exposure like a freak like me, the main plot of the show is that Dr. Fleischman, a New Yorker, gets stuck in a small town in the middle of Alaska to pay off his medical school loans. Throughout the whole series, his anger at being stuck there and the fact that Cicely, Alaska is a tiny backwater town filled with quirky people and is nothing like NYC clouded his vision so much that he never did realize what a nice place filled with beauty and quirks and well-developed wonderful characters he was living in. I always wanted to reach into the screen, grab him by the shoulders and give him a good shake. I think I am becoming like Doctor Fleischman. Will someone reach through the screen and give me a shake? My life is pretty good and interesting and exciting despite the many many things I complain about every day. I need to uncloud my vision. I can't be a Doctor Fleischman.

2008-12-23T23:49:00.003+03:00

I made it! I never thought I would, but I survived to finish all the reports and projects and exams piled on for the first weeks of December. Since then I have not thought once about earthquakes because I've been too busy at last enjoying Christmas time in Grenoble and visiting a few towns in the South of France and tomorrow Andy P comes!!! Now I just have to find a way to make time slow down a little bit...I know a few ways but I don't think Andy will want to spend his visit studying theoretical seismology, even if it does make it last longer.

This weekend I went with my friend from Italy to visit some towns in the South of France. First we went to Avignon, the same city where I was stuck this summer with Sarah on our horrible day of travel across France. However, this time is was considerably more enjoyable. The pope actually was based in Avignon for a while - I didn't pay enough attention to my audioguide to tell you why, but nine popes were there instead of Italy and they built huge palaces and walls and bridges and so forth. We toured the old popes palace (see above), which was basically an empty run-down castle so it was boring for my Italian friend who has seen much better, but any castle is cool to me. The bridge was better...there is a famous song called "Sur le pont d'avignon" which means On the bridge of Avignon, about this bridge. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sur_le_pont_d%27Avignon) it is a common preset song for Yamaha keyboards, so maybe you know it. But the lyrics translated to English go: On the bridge of Avignon, there we'll dance there we'll dance, on the bridge of Avignon, there we'll dance all in a circle. But we didn't dance because we were concentrating on not getting blown off into the Rhone River by the hurricane force winds whipping around Southern France on Sunday (see picture below)...maybe we should add a verse to the song...sur le pont d'avignon, tourists get blown off in the Rhone, off the bridge of avignon, tourists swim tourists swim la la la...

After that we went to Arles, where Van Gogh cut his ear off (and also did some nice paintings), though due to a "Social Movement" read: strike, all trains in that direction were canceled, so finally we found a bus, but we didn't get there until it was dark, so I may never know what Arles looks like in daylight, but it's quite nice at night, I must say. I see why Van Gogh thought it was a nice place to paint.

Then to Marseille where the next day we just walked around. I wanted so badly to go to the island just offshore that holds the Chateau d'If where in the story by Dantes that we read in French class, the Comte de Monte Cristo was held unfairly as a prisoner and learned his swordfighting skills and grew angry from vengeance and so forth. Unfortunately everything fun in France is closed on Mondays, so the boats weren't going there, but I walked along the corniche along the sea for a long time and took many pictures of it. I like Marseille. It is not so popular among tourists because it's a bit dirty and one of the most dangerous cities in France. And it was dirty and smelly and filled with cars with tiny or nonexistant sidewalks for pedestrians, but it reminded me of Alexandria actually, so I really liked it. The french had a lot of influence in the building up of modern Egyptian cities so I guess that's why they look alike. The sea was beautiful and the weather was so warm I was sweating in my coat, some people were swimming, and men were playing volleyball in speedos on the beach. That last bit was not my favorite part of Marseille at all.

By the old port (where the plague was introduced into Europe by rats coming off ships, if I remember my plague class correctly) there were people selling all sorts of repulsive fish. These fish were fresh. Too fresh. Half of them were still flopping around in the pans of water, and the sellers were ripping the skins off in a way that reminded me of pulling off a really sticky band-aid. I thought I was going to vomit. I have an irrational repulsion and fear to fish (whcih I find quite rational, they are disgusting) and this was not helped by my walk by the port of Marseille. Why anyone would ever consider touching, or worse, eating a creature that looks like the fishy (and slimmer) version of jabba-da-hut with extra slime and spikes and ooze is beyond me.

Before catching the train back to Grenoble, I climbed up to the church on the hill overlooking the city. The hike up there felt like a hike in Arizona, the same plants and everything. It was nice and peaceful compared to the hullabaloo and pollution below and had quite the view.

Pictures from this trip are up: http://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k/Decembre?feat=directlink

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

2008-12-10T23:25:00.003+03:00

I returned to my favorite city, Lyon, for the annual world famous fete des lumieres (festival of lights) last weekend. My camera batteries died as usual, but here is a link to a site with an album of photos: http://www.lumieres.lyon.fr/fetedeslumieres/sections/fr/lyon_et_la_lumiere/album_photos. The festival started as a festival to thank Saint Mary for saving the city from an epidemic of cholera or the plague or some disease like that, but now it has become more of a show, an attraction...and attract people it does...4 million people go to see it, including me and my friend Claudia. It was a more attractive option than another night studying boring (now a noun). We only had a few hours so we ran around town to the main attractions where we saw them turn bland buildings into disney-like magical creations, set a building an abandoned train station on fire with lights and fill another building up with water and make fish swim in it (with lights too..don't worry). I had roasted chestnuts (marrons chaud) and mulled wine (vin chaud) and had a real nice time. Below is a picture overlooking the fete des lumieres from the hilltop.

The funniest thing about the festival was the plethora of Indian phonies putting on shows. On every corner there was a group of people playing those pipes from South America but wearing the traditional costumes and doing the stereotypical dances of the North American Plains Indians (headdresses and such) and pocahontas outfits. I guess Europeans are really into that. I asked one group what tribe they were from and she said ecuador. Hehe.

I also went for the first snowshoeing expedition of the season. It was wonderful, the weather was half blizzard/half clear so we got the best of both worlds as you can see from my photos below (and more at my www.picasaweb.com/allstadt.k). I spent most of my time at the back of the line as you can see from my photos mostly of people snowshoeing swiftly away from me, but it is torture to be not in the back, on hikes here, the French all walk so close to each other like trail horses with their nose in the butt of the one ahead. It's hard to enjoy the mountains (which is the reason for going, no?) when all you can see is the stylish backpack of the guy in front of you. But I can't change a culture...not my country...I'll just linger behind with my pink, green and blue mismatching clearance rack outfit, thats where the outcasts belong.

Going on this snowshoeing excursion, it surprised me how serious they are about avalanches here. They made me carry a shovel and a probe (the probe to poke in the snow and see if it says ouch and then use the shovel to dig if it does) and we had to wear sensors that send out a signal so people can find you. Avalanches claim a lot of lives though, I heard that three people just from the Geology Laboratory died last year in avalanches. It makes me a little less excited about all the snowshoeing and ski hiking I wanted to do...though it would be cool to see an avalanche...as long as it's not while hurtling towards me.

On this hike I met a guy from Romania who did his PhD at SUNY Binghamton. Small world. When he talked about his first impression of Binghamton he wondering what kind of place was this that had no city center?' And that reminded me of one thing that I prefer in France/Europe over the US...their downtowns are vibrant and alive and lacking the empty storefronts of most American downtowns. I don't know how they do it, they have these hypermarches and giant big box stores just like us that destroyed our city centres, but somehow they still have their downtowns filled with small quaint owner-run shops and cafes. If I asked a French person, I bet you a hundred dollars they'd say it's because stores can't be open on Sunday. Another interesting thing is that here the 'inner city' is where the rich live and the suburbs are filled with really tall buildings and poor people. Backwards from us.

For some reason last weekend Grenoble set up a giant ski jump and cross country ski racetrack in the park near my house and they trucked in snow from the mountains (maybe it's to prove to the Olympic committee that they are capable of holding winter games...they want them back in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their last olympics) Anyways, it was nice to get to watch xc ski racings and ski jumping 5 minutes from mi casa.

There is one thing France really does right...socialized medicine. I experienced it for the first time Monday. I went to the doctor early that morning expecting there would be a long line since there is always a long line for everything here. There was no one there, I went immediately to see a nurse who took my symptoms (or whatever it was I said in broken french) and gave me an appointment for that same day. No one asked for any insurance information or where was I was from or even my French social security number which is for medical stuff. So weird. Then I went to my appointment later and didn't have to wait at all again and the doctor was nice, though it was a little weird that she told me to undress in front of her and I got no gown and she didn't leave the room, she just stood there watching. I heard from my friends that for x-rays you have to walk around naked. Culture difference abound. Anyways, she gave me a prescription right then and I went to fill it and I didn't have to wait for 20 minutes like at CVS, they just grabbed it right while I was at there. I only have the social security without a 'mutuelle' (which covers the costs not covered by the state) so my prescription wasn't fully covered. They kept asking me to make sure I didn't have some other insurance card that I forgot about to cover the rest and they apologized that I had to pay something. It cost 1 euro and 60 cents. Boohoo.

2008-12-03T23:23:00.003+03:00

I have some new adventures to post about but I have to get a lot of work done tonight so it will be coming this weekend. For now...here's an interesting article about US universities to contrast with that last article I posted about French ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html?em

Which is better? Fancy schmanzy universities with high tech classrooms and impressive facilities and good teachers (sometimes) for $15,000 tuition a year, or bare bones state funded education with virtually not student support and no attention paid to pedagogy for $600 a year (of course that price doens't take into account the higher taxes French citizens pay to fund this).

2008-11-24T02:00:00.002+03:00

Two interesting articles:

article on the French University system - I mistaked the dorms in teh picture for some dorms at my university...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/world/europe/12france.html

article on the decline of cafe culture : ( it's funny how they make smoking bans and drinking less during the day a bad thing...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/world/europe/23cafe.html?pagewanted=1&hp

2008-11-23T23:14:00.006+03:00

Pickles are found in the world food section. As is peanut butter. And they are both overpriced. My favorite American delicacy - peanut butter pickle sandwiches - are very worldly here.

I paid 4 euros for cheap foam ear plugs...and it was the best 4 euros I ever spent. I don't care that it's just two pieces of foam that cost 1 cent to make, the relief is priceless. At last I don't have to be tortured by my neighbor's midnight band practices, alarm clocks left on in vacant rooms, jackhammers and fire alarms (you wouldn't believe how noisy France is). Silence is truly golden. Relief.

Anywho, I went to Lyon the other week. I love Lyon. It's the second biggest city in France (but not really that big) and it's filled with beautiful old buildings and cathedrals and roman ruins and big squares. If you push on random doors, some of them open and you can walk into beautifully restored enclosed (but open to the sky) entrances of 500 year old buildings (see pictures below). We saw about ten of them and each one was more beautiful than the next, the city of Lyon just started giving money to buildings so they can restore these courtyards and I think it's money well spent.

They also have a cathedral and Roman ruins and a beautiful old neighborhood up on the hill, and with the subway pass you can take a trolley that goes on a cable up the hill (see picture). So cool. We had a nice French lunch with our French tour guides (friends of one of my friends) and wandered the streets the whole day.

I also went on a nice hike last tuesday since it was a holiday from school (celebrating the end of WWII). It rained a lot, but it was lovely and I feel like each hike gets better and better, not necessarily because of the scenery, but because I have better and better conversations in French. We saw some mountain goats.

Last weekend I went with my French friends to a French Ball. I was expecting chandeliers and big dresses in a palace or something, but basically it was a bunch of French hippies doing traditional dances in a community room under a library. Not to be stereotypical, but the combination of French people + hippies + sweating from dancing so much = SMELLY! I still have the horrible stench of that room in my nose and it's been a week. But really it was fun besides that. There was a live band of a fiddle an accordian and a guitar, and everyone knew exactly how to do every dance (except for me and my friends...we caused a lot of car crashes on the dance floor) so it was fun to watch.

Yesterday me and some friends went ice skating. I forgot how fun ice skating is! I haven't skated for years unless you count playing broomball, but no skates or grace is involved in that sport. Once I remembered how to skate I had a blast, though it's a little scary in France because the same chaos that rules the roads and the hypermarches carries over to the ice rink. But I think I'm starting to get accumstomed to the chaos, so I only nearly died once when some guy suddenly decided to skate in the opposite direction. The greatest part was when I was standing with my italian friend and we were trying to figure out how to skate forward, jump/spin and skate backwards so she asked this little French guy who had been showing off all night, but he didn't speak English...but another guy who was hanging out on the other side of the wall trying to look cool overheard and got excited because he spoke English and had another chance to look cool, so he jumped over the wall in a Fonzy sort of way with his leather jacket and tight pants and said "my name is Tooooooooooooom" as he fell in the most clumsy way possible onto the ice. Hahaha. So great.

Except for those exciting events, my life has been pretty much school school school. I never knew it was possible to spend so much time studying yet still know so little about ones classes. It's a whole new experience for me. I don't know where the time goes though. I often spend the entire day on weekends in my room without leaving, just studying, and by the time I finish reading two papers and doing one math problem it's midnight. I don't even have time to brush my teeth anymore. I don't know how I got so slow (or how time got so fast). But it's okay, I rather like that time is going fast because it means Christmas will be here soon and Andy P will be here, and then soon after this crazy semester will be over sooner and then I'll move to Italy and have a relaxing semester (only three classes instead of 8!) and I'll learn Italian and travel and then soon it will be time to go back home and move to Seattle! Then time can slow down for a while (but of course it only will get faster...or so I hear...like a toilet paper roll...the closer you get to the end the faster it goes...I just hope I'm not so close to the end...that'd suck).
Ciao.

2008-11-09T15:45:00.006+03:00

I instantly became more popular Wednesday. Thank you Barack Obama.

It was interesting being in an international environment at this time in history. It amazes me how educated everyone is about the US elections. Some knew more than I did. Tuesday night my neighbors instructed me to run up and down the hallways screaming as soon as I found out that Obama won (though I was fairly confident they didn't actually want me to do that). On Wednesday morning I received many congratulations on the election and thanks for my Obama vote (I didn't mention that McCain actually won in the county I voted in). Everyone was sighing with relief. Even the grumpy librarian told me that she could finally breathe now that he won...but she was worried that someone would try to assassinate him.

The entire world is celebrating that we have finally put our money where our mouths are now that we have elected an African American President...(though I sometimes wonder how this is true if there has never been a female president...women aren't even a minority...but I guess that got put off for another election...)

I was lucky that Kate Conmy came to visit me for the few days around the election so I had a fellow American to spend election day with. Due to the time difference we weren't able to watch the results unfold real time since we both highly value sleep, but we did set the alarm for 4 am to see the results. Before taking Kate to the bus Wednesday morning, we watched Obama's acceptance speech together. I always get tears in my eyes when he speaks. Even if he fails at fulfilling the lofty goals he has set for his term, just the fact that we finally have a president who can move people and unite people with just words is something big.
I just hope he doesn't get dragged down by the lofty expectations everyone is throwing on his back.

It was wonderful having Kate come visit. I didn't realize how much I needed to see a face from home. We spent three days doing French things like drinking wine and coffee in sidewalk cafes, making too many stops at the Boulangerie, buying desserts in tiny cups at the grocery store (very french). We climbed the Bastille and had a picnic while taking in the wonderful view of the snow covered mountains and caught up on each others lives.

We also visited the dark side of French culture...the mall. The mall is more American than American malls and it is fully embraced by French people. We went into the hypermarche Carrefour and I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I get all panicky and stressed out when I'm in hyper big French stores. I couldn't figure it out until a conversion I had with some classmates the other day about the differences of personal space bubble size between countries. In Europe, the bubbles are very small. The smallest is Italy, when you talk with an Italian they put their face approximately -0.5 cm from yours. The more you back off, the closer they come. French bubbles are a bit bigger, but not much. While standing in line, people will stand about 1 cm from you. Yesterday at Ikea a lady was standing so close to me she kept hitting me with her baby. And when I ride my bicycle, cars come within a few centimeters of me and with each other and don't think twice. American personal space bubbles, on the other hand, are huge. The best example of this contrast is from when I was camping in Iceland this summer. Icelandic campgrounds are just big fields with no assigned sites. I would set my tent up as far away from others as possible, and all the other Americans with me would do the same. Then we'd come back to the site a few hours later to invariably find that Europeans invaded and set their tents up within a 2 meter radius of our tents. It was hard to believe that people would actually set themselves up that close to us when there was a giant empty field available. Europeans like to invade personal bubbles.

My personal bubble is on the huge end of the hugest, and at a hypermarche like Carrefour at any given moment there are 10 french people dancing around in my bubble trying to hit me with their grocery carts and doing their best to stand in the exact same spot I am occupying...so voila, I figured it out. That is why France stresses me out, I am constantly being invaded.

Biggest piece of news: I finally received my scholarship money!! It still doesn't feel real. I was convinced that some bureaucrat somewhere was having a nice vacation with my money. Of course we received our scholarship money immediately AFTER our weeklong vacation. I believe it was planned this way by our professors who wanted to force us to stay home and study instead of using our vacation to enjoy life and see France. It worked, and consequently I have no interesting stories to tell about my vacation. I didn't even go hiking. Blah.

One fun event of my vacation (besides Kate's visit of course, but I already told that story) was Halloween. Being both an amazing holiday and American, it is copied in France, but they have a lot to learn. Me and my classmates were by far the most dressed up people in all of France. French 'deguisements' included such elaborate costumes as witch hats and bunny ears. In contrast, with practically nothing to work (since we hadn't been paid and brought eveything in one suitcase) we managed to dress up as two nerds, with tape on the glasses and plenty of pens in the pockets, we also had a golf pro, a gangster and a pirate. I dressed up as a desk...my inspiration came during all the vacation hours I spent sitting at my desk studying...(pictures will be forthcoming once I figure out whose camera that was). I attached every item that was sitting on my desk to my person, including staplers, writing utensils, telephone, scotch tape, lots of sticky notes and papers, paper clips. It turns out there is a great unmet need for scotch tape at Grenoble night clubs (good business idea?), so I had none of that left by the end of the night. The great disappointments of Halloween in France include 1) No candy is involved, 2) No jack-o-lanterns.

But vacation is over now, back to class....

Last night, I met some hiking friends for a few drinks in the center. The center is breathtaking at night. It really looks like what I imagined France would be like. Beautiful old buildings, majestic fountains, brick pedestrian walkways and so forth. Before going home we took a stroll to the pedestrian bridge over the Isere river...one of the best places to be at night in the world in my opinion. The river roars under the bridge, the moon was reflected on the chocolate colored water, quaint old stucco buildings with colorful shutters line the banks. Quite nice. Wish I had a picture for you. You'll just have to imagine it yourself.

Ciao.

(Pictures here complements of Kate C)

2008-10-21T00:33:00.002+03:00

Sorry it's been a while since I last updated. Every spare moment I have I'm either studying or thinking about how I should be studying. And my spirit has been so drained by a stressful life in France that it's hard to muster the inspiration to write something that won't be depressing. But I think I can do it now, since I can't sleep anyway because my next door neighbor decided to start having band practice at midnight and my wall is literally made of paper.

So the big exciting event of the last few weeks was learning how to mountaineer. I signed up for a beginners trip, the only thing beginner about it was they provided us with helmets and harnesses and talked for a few minutes on how not to die. But it was all in French so I didn't understand what they said...then they just tied a rope around my harness and connected me to three other people and we went. I didn't see how being tied to three other people was keeping me safe. It seemed to me that it just increased my chances of falling off the mountain by three, because if any of them fell I would fall with them. But they must have explained this in the French bit and I missed it. Though I was a little suspicious when they tied me up with all the other foreigners (i.e. Germans), maybe that was their way of promoting the French language. Those who don't speak perfect French will fall of the cliff because they missed the safety information. I wouldn't put it past them...

But I didn't die and it was amazing...we traversed an arrete...basically a pointy spine of the mountain with hundreds of meters of dropoff on either side. There was one bit called "le rasoir" where I was pretty convinced I would spend my last minutes on earth...but we survived (you can see the picture of me and my Germans traversing the razer). Though it was kind of insulting when these old men not even using ropes nimbly climbed past us. The mountain goat we saw didn't have a rope either, but that wasn't quite as surprising.

Other than that my existance has been pretty miserable. 3 hour class...study...3 hour class...study...ugh. I really am starting to think that it is worth paying thousands of dollars to go to University in the United States. They only pay 400 euros tuition (plus the 60% taxes your parents pay) here per year, and that's about the value of what you get. Three hour long classes, not a clear or interesting word comes out of any of the teachers mouths. The windows don't close, there are always men mowing the lawn right outside the windows when class starts. The teachers use only powerpoint, but they write so small you can't read anything anyway. The buildings haven't been changed at all since they were built in the 1960's. Sometimes I feel like I'm in one of those fallen civilization movies and I should be running in around in rags fighting over 100 year old canned food in the ruined buildings. Though in this case I wish the jungle would encroach a little faster, at least it would look nicer. And the worst thing of all is the bathrooms. They all lost their toilet seats 20 years ago and no one bothered to replace them (I still haven't figured out who would steal toilet seats too...but that's a question for another day). My friend told me that her building only has Turkish toilets (also known as French toilets) which is essentially a hole in the floor that you squat over. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I really think a US education is worth paying 50 times more for, even if just to have a toilet seat, a mirror in the bathroom and a printer somewhere on the campus that works...oh...and a library that doesn't close at lunch and right when class gets out.

Ugh...now that I've got my venting over with...let me move on to other subjects. Actually wait, I also want to vent about how I still haven't been paid a cent of my scholarship money. It's a month overdue, and we all got eviction notices from our residence because we didn't pay our rent (luckily the residence is understanding after a few phone calls from our program director). Some people have been wearing the same pair of pants every day. I'm one of the lucky ones, I have two pairs. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since my first week here. Ridiculous. Where do they expect us to get money to live? Europe is so ridiculous and slow and backwards. I will not be living here after this year.

Okay, now my venting is really over. Moving on. I had lunch with my friend from Palestine the other day, and we got to talking about the situation over there. I don't know much about it, honestly, just that every day the paper says there was another suicide bombing in a marketplace or that Israel was occupying some territory it shouldn't be and no one was doing anything. But he told me the details he knows personally of it, from the Palestinian point of view, a side that rarely gets heard. The most shocking thing he told me was that last time he was home, he was sitting out on his balcony and he saw a man in a tank below his balcony shooting and killing 7 year old boys, and as the boys who escaped tried to save their friends who were shot, they got killed too. My friend, the same friend who jokes around and laughs more than anyone else, has seen 7 year old boys killed right outside his house by a maniac soldier in a tank (provided by the US Army) and he can speak about it calmly. I have never even seen a dead person, and I don't know if I can tell that story that I didn't even see without crying. It's a crazy world we live in. And there is no one to punish the crazy tank operator. The US has vetoed most of the UN resolutions that would have enabled any sort of control over the Israeli army's actions...and the US veto cannot be overridden. My friend told me that there was a soldier who killed a boy by smashing his head with a rock...and the family was one of the rare families that were able to take an Israeli to court and the decided punishment was that the soldier had to pay a one cent fine. Talk about spit in the face.

My friend is from the occupied territories and Israel refuses to give Palestinians Israeli citizenship (because then they could vote and of course would not vote the way Israel would like). So Palestinians have no citizenship and had no passports for a while...they used to use other arab passports like Jordan or Syria...(now they have travel documents from Palestine, but it of course makes traveling difficult). But they are essentially citizens of nowhere with no rights and no voice (which is why suicide bombing came into the world...the only way to have a voice). And when the Israelis first came in the late 1940s, a lot of Palestinians fled to protect their women from the Israeli soldiers who were rumored to be cutting their stomachs open. So they locked up their houses tight and fled but they kept their keys around their necks. And then when they came back (if they came back), Israelis were living in their homes and still are 60 years later. So the key around the neck has become a symbol for a stolen land. And now the ones who stay either live in refugee camps or live inside walls that Israel has built not around cities, but a maze within each city. FOr example, in my friends city, there are 400 Israeli settlers in teh center of the city, and to protect them, 100,000 Palestinians must live with these walls and checkpoints and military rule. It infuriates me that so many US tax dollars go to support what is essentially a return to the days of slavery and oppression that we just recently came out of (or arguably still are coming out of) in our own country. Black people were not allowed to be citizens or to vote in the same way and for the same fears. But I think maybe this situation is worse...and we are funding it. But what is the solution? I have met so many disillusioned ex-Israeli soldiers in my travels. They often take off after their mandatory service in the Israeli army to travel the world and escape from the horror of what they just had to forcibly go through.

So it is good to hear the other side of the story. Of course both sides are guilty of perpetuating this conflict, but one side gets a lot more help and has a lot more voice than the other. Of course the Jews experienced one of the most horrific bouts of oppression in all human history during WWII that has brought me to tears as well, but I don't think that gives Israel the right to inflict the horrors my friend has seen on another group of people. That's just passing on the pain and moving the problems to another part of the world... There is so much injustice in this world. What to do?

On a lighter note, I went for the nice hike last weekend in the colorful autumn woods. It made me miss carving pumpkins and drinking cider with donuts. Mmm...

2008-10-06T00:18:00.002+03:00

The mountains around Grenoble were given a layer of icing on Friday night...and on Saturday I went for a hike in the icing. There was more than a foot of snow everywhere, and in many places there were drifts up to our waists. Most of the hike we couldn't see more than 20 meters because of the snow and fog, but then once in a while a window would open in the clouds and the view was breathtaking...well...see for yourself...

The clouds were billowing and curling around the mountains, there were miniature tornadoes of snow spinning on the hilltops and around us, and every rocky crevice on the mountains was highlighted with frosty white. It was weird to be running down slopes covered in a meter of snow at the beginning of October, because I remember being pleasantly surprised as a child when we had really early snow on Halloween...and it was only a few flakes. I guess Endicott isn't quite at 2500 meters - that might make a little difference.

I even found a few frozen raspberries on our descent. A good dessert for a good hike.

This hike again we spoke only French, and I understood and was able to say so much more than my last French hike 2 weeks ago. It's strange...it's as if the French language is slowly diffusing into my brain without me noticing it. I find myself understanding overheard conversations and without even trying. And sometimes after someone says something to me I can't remember if they said it in French or in English. Swimming in an ocean of French helps...though it would be better if my classes weren't in English...plus I'm tired of the teachers asking me how to pronounce words in English because it means I can't daydream without being discovered. I guess it's technically better that way, but it's just so easy to drift away when the classes are 3 hours long and I can see the mountains out the window.

The language of seismology - math, waves, engineering and so forth - is also slowly seeping into my consciousness...but the same method of diffusion doesn't work as well for seismology, it turns out. Too bad. Force feeding seems to work better, but my soul prefers to play minesweeper and write in my blog. Tomorrow I'll start force feeding, I'll become the foie gras of earthquakes.

It seems that the more I progress in my studies, the less I know. Instead of learning more and more, I am learning how much more and more there is that I don't know. As each layer of complexity is peeled away, ten more are revealed. I feel like a fool stumbling and grasping at the air towards a goal that moves further away each time I reach for it. I guess there's a lot to know in an infinitely big universe (of course we don't even know if we know that it's infinite...sigh....)

One of my profs says that when a phenomena is written off as too complex, it's not actually complex...we just don't understand it so we call it complex. Even the most confusing and mysterious phenomena are simple, but they are just governed by rules that we don't yet know and by processes that we can't yet observe.

2008-09-29T17:10:00.005+03:00

I know I know... it's been five days and I still haven't written about my birthday, but I was waiting until I got the pictures since I have left my hypothetical readership with photoless entries so many times this year.

So first things first...I woke up on September 24th and I felt completely different! Waking up for the 8,397th time (counting leap years and subtracting the three nights I stayed up all night) has really changed the way I see things. I feel so much more mature, more able to take on the challenges of each new day, to grasp this world by the reins and take it for all it's worth...

Actually, I feel the same, but I always dream about the Birthday where when someone asks me how it feels to be a year older, I can actually give a satisfactory answer. But it was still a great day. This is the first Birthday where I got kissed by everyone in my class (on the cheek...don't worry Andy). Americans don't like kissing very much, and I'm glad for that because most of my classes had more than 9 people in it, that's a lot of germs to catch.

If I may digress for a moment, I feel like since people kiss each others cheeks a billion times a day here, that there would be a great acne epidemic, but there isn't. Along the same logic, I'd think that most of France would have lung cancer, that they would all be dead in car accidents, and would be fat, but none of those are true! I don't get it! I have no idea how they escape these things while Americans are plagued by these problems despite being much more conscious about all of them. If you asked a French person for a reason, they would probably say 'it's the microbes,' because this seems to be the reason for everything. "Don't be afraid of the microbes," they say. (This is also why they tend to smell a bit and why they eat cheese that looks and tastes like a brick of blue mold) This is also the reason my hiking partners gave for why they weren't afraid of drinking untreated water from a mountain stream when there was sheep poop all over the mountains. It's the reason for everything in France. They aren't afraid of the microbes. I really wouldn't be surprised if a French person gave me that reason for why they haven't died in a fiery car crash yet - they would find some way to make that connection. Bacteria in France are the most loved bacteria in the world.

Back to the central theme of this entry: Me! My Birthday! I spent the morning loitering around the front desk to my building because I got a notice that I had two packages waiting for me in the front office. Of course September 24th seems to be the one day of the year where the door person gets a 5 hour lunch, so I had to leave for class at 2 with my packages still trapped, tortuously, just behind the locked glass door. France is going to give me a nervous breakdown. I can feel it.

I finally got my packages after class! Thank you to my family and to Andy P., I now have plenty of remedies to culture shock and mementos from home. They made me happy! And Thanks to Gram and Gramps too of course for the package I got last week...I'm already almost done with those books they're so good.

We all decided during class that we would go out to dinner to celebrate. Almost everyone came...but that might be because Michele, our resident Italian, wrote on the blackboard that I would be buying dinner for everyone. I didn't.

I chose a Thai restaurant because I have been craving tofu, especially fried tofu dripping in a nice Green Thai curry sauce with some baby corn and pineapple perhaps? Turns out in France, Thai restaurants don't even have a single dish for vegetarians, let alone tofu...biggest disappointment of my life. I had some soggy vegetables on rice for my birthday. Uh well. It's always a big deal and embarassment to be a vegetarian in France. I have been trying meat a bit as a result, but I refused to eat that stuff on my birthday!

After we all walked home. My classmates would not allow me to walk past the fountain without running through it...so I did...but then I would not allow them to walk home if they did not also go in, so everyone ended up wet...whether they liked it or not (as you can see by the picture below)

Then we got back home and they got me a cake, I got to hear the Happy Birthday in Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian and Italian and we had some homemade blackberry alcohol from Italy and I talked to my family on Skype before I went to bed. Overall a wonderful day!

Thanks to everyone! Birthday's always remind me of how lucky I am to have such caring family and friends!

2008-09-22T12:30:00.003+03:00

I went to the post office this morning and this woman started talking to me in line. When she found out I was American, she began a monologue about how she wished that France had been there with us in Iraq. We lost many American lives at Normandy to save them from the "dirty" Germans, but this time when we asked for help, she said, France stood safely with their new German friends while the US, Britain and Italy went and lost lives to take out that 'evil dictator.' This surprised me of course, and she admitted she was one of the few who thought that way in France.

I, of course, don't agree with her, I think that France was smart to not go, they saw with clear eyes perhaps, the lack of evidence for the WMD's and all that, which in hindsight everyone in the US wishes we had done...but it was eye opening to hear such things from a French person. Of course then she went on a tirade about the Arabs that are taking over France, selling drugs and using the money to open kebab shops. "Thirty years ago," she said, "everyone in France looked like you, but now they are all arabs!" ... interesting trip to the post office.

This weekend I went on my first all-French backpacking trip! We climbed 2000 meters over two days into the Belledonne mountain range, we camped by Lac Blanc, which is a strange shade of pale green due to the glacial 'rock flour' washing into it from the glacier above. We climbed up to this glacier and beyond it to the pass above. It was the tiniest, cutest glacier I've ever seen. It used to be a lot bigger, same sad story as most of the other glaciers in the world...global warming...

We spoke French the entire weekend, which means I missed half of what was said, but I definetely improved a lot. Of course the three other people I was with all spoke English more or less, but I resisted the urge to speak it. Everyone in the world seems to speak English. My dutch friend thinks its sad that I don't have a secret language to use to talk about people without them knowing, dutch is better for that. I never thought about it that way...but its true, people always know what I'm saying! Augh!

One girl on our backpacking trip was from Romania. I had an interesting conversation with her as we shivered in the tent about her childhood memories in Romania during the fall of communism. Her parents had a photocopy of George Orwell's 1984 translated in French and this was something they could have gone to jail for. Her mother was an alipinist, but she couldn't go to the real mountains in western Europe to climb because under communism it was forbidden to travel. And she told me about how 50 years of communism - being forced to work for the "common good" - has left her country now with an attitude lacking any sense of communalism at all...no care for the environment, for the common good...anything. Nothing in history ends without leaving a scar...

It was interesting the contrast between my childhood memories and hers. She remembers her mother being worried when her father was late coming home at a time when the communists sent tanks to stop the protesting crowds and many peopl were dying (there were bullet holes in the outer walls of her house). In contrast, my most horrific childhood memory was when I accidentally sprayed windex in my face and I thought I was going to die but I couldn't tell mom because she told me not to touch that bottle. She remembers that Christmas day communism fell because she and all her cousins got the same identical scarf for Christmas - the only thing available in the stores for the parents to buy, while my strongest Christmas memory was the wonderful day that I got my American Girl doll.

She said she still has lingering habits from growing up with communism like the rule that you never talk at school about what is happening inside your own house. Even after communism was over, this habit remained because for 50 years they were so used to being afraid that people were spying on them (and they were...because the if the communists caught you with a forbidden book for example, then they wouldn't punish you if you agreed to spy on your friends). She also wasn't used to trying different foods, because when she was little there were only 5 different foods that they had to eat...rationed of course.

It's easy to forget how lucky you are when you spend all your time around people who are just as lucky...

Okay...on a lighter note: some pictures from my backpacking trip. The rest are on http://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k

Lac Blanc and the Belledonne mountains behind

A hermit's cabin. He wasn't home.

The cute little glacier

Snacking at the beginning of our hike

We were way above the clouds.

Descending in the snow.

2008-09-18T20:08:00.003+03:00

I have a confession to make. I, Kate Allstadt, consumed the flesh of another living creature. I know, I know, its bad. I feel like I have become a lesser version of my previous self, I have fallen almost as much as I fell the time I got my first cavity. But here's my excuse: I always say that I am only a vegetarian in the United States, because it is the US meat industry that I am against. When I am in other countries, the food, including animal byproducts, is a part of the culture that I need to experience. But of course, I rarely actually do... Granted, I did eat a few weird boiled sea creatures with my chinese roommates in New Zealand, and when I was in the Bahariya oasis in Egypt, I had a bit of fish but it looked more like a diseased snake, so I'm not positive it was actually fish, it was, however, positively disgusting. I guess the middle of the Sahara is not the best place to try fish for the first time in a decade.

But those instances were nothing compared to what I did on Monday. I jumped off the cliff and ate two big slabs of pork roast. And I know saying this is going to come back to haunt me later in life (or sooner if my brother ever reads this), but I actually liked it. I had dinner with a retired French couple, and I didn't want to go through the chaos of telling them I didn't eat meat because the French are very sensitive about all matters related to food...so I just ate and drank whatever they gave me, which included pork.

It was a lovely meal though, this couple is involved with couchsurfing, and I had requested to stay with them when I first got to Grenoble but they were out of town, so they invited me over to dinner once they were back in town. The traditional French dinner is unique. First, you have an apertif...a before dinner drink...we had peach wine served with tiny bread sticks. We talked for a while in the living room, then we moved to the kitchen for dinner. First we had tomatoes with capers, mustard sauce and wheat germ. We all sat there awkwardly looking at it for a while until I realized they were waiting for me to go first. Then they brought out the main dishes...rice with zucchini and mushrooms and the infamous pork roast. It was delicious! Wine is served with dinner too. Then after that course is a light course of cheese and bread, followed by a dessert of fruit and chocolate.

The couple spoke only French, so I got a lot of practice in, and they were very patient with my bad grammar and they also spoke very slowly and simply so I was able to understand just about everything. Though they are retired now, the husband (whose name I forgot...eep) was a researcher at the University and the wife, Line, worked with children and their parents. It's something we don't have in the US, but here in France, the government pays for new parents to have this person to work with them with their questions and concerns and so forth. Everyone gets their own real-life Doctor Spock. I heard they're running short on kids here in France...low birth rate...so I guess they do as much as they can.

We had a discussion about why only Tabacs and Boulangeries can be open on Sundays, and turns out the government wanted to allow businesses to open, but the businesses refused! Small business owners said that if anyone could open on Sundays, the big stores like Ikea and the Hypermarches would have no problem, but small businesses would be hurt because they can't afford to pay people more to work on Sundays or they don't have enough employees so people wouldn't get their Sunday to be with their family. I guess it makes sense, and there is a billion times more small businesses here in Grenoble than in the US where stores are always open. Maybe that's part of why.

The rest of my week was pretty typical. I stood in lots of lines, went to some classes, learned some things, realized I need to learn a lot more things, rode my bicycle (bought a helmet! though I feel dorky wearing it)... Today I signed up for the hiking club on campus and I'm going hiking with them this Sunday!

Sorry, no pictures still. My camera stinks, it breaks my heart to even try to take pictures because they always turn out disappointingly blurry and discolored. I'll have pictures once I get around to finding a new camera.

2008-09-10T17:47:00.004+03:00

Things are going well here in France. Classes are kicking into high gear...really fast. And keeping up with them is going to take a lot of effort on my part because there are a lot of physics and engineering equations and math and terminology that they just don't tell you about when you study geology. That's why it's a good thing I'm doing this program since I will be working with people from all three disciplines in my career...that is...if I ever make it past all this crazy math.

It's interesting though. Every class I learn something (or more often way too many things) that are completely new. Every time I read a chapter in a book I have a personal Eureka moment as more and more pieces fall into place. This one bit I read the other day I found interesting and very ironic: In the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, there were sand blows that shot rubble out of the ground that had been plowed into the bay after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to create more waterfront property and get rid of some of the debris. Today I spent several hours trying to come to terms with the fact that people actually use imaginary numbers for something.

I've also been learning more and more each day about French culture. One thing that is very hard to get used to are the business hours here. They have a 35 hour work week here by law. So in other words, things are hardly ever open. Stores open late...like 9am, then close again at lunch...for 2 hours...that is a normal lunch break here. Then they open again but close around 5. Saturdays the hours are even shorter or nonexistant, and on Sundays nothing is open except for the 'Tabacs' (tobacco stores/convenience shops) and the 'Boulangeries' because French people need their baguettes and pastries every day of the week. Mmm...and the bread is so good. I have three different loafs of fresh baked bread sitting in my room. I don't know how people ever get anything done though, because the businesses are really only open during normal work hours...but people have to work during their normal work hours. When they are free, at lunch, after work and on the weekends...everything is closed. Possibly the only exception to these working hours is, unfortunately, the jackhammer operators working outside my window from 5am to 8pm. Of course.

Another aspect of French culture that is very different from the US is safety awareness. Nobody wears bike helmets here unless it matches their Tour de France outfit. I actually haven't been wearing one either because I haven't purchased one yet. It's kind of nice to have the wind blowing through my hair though...and it saves me the money of buying a hair dryer. Plus I don't want to look like a nerdy American. I think wearing a helmet is about equal to wearing a pocket protector in the US. French people are so cool when they ride their bikes, they don't even use hands. They're always riding along with their arms crossed, I wouldn't be too surprised if I saw someone doing Sudoku while commuting to work on their bike.

It's very safe riding bicycles here though because there are bike paths all over the place that are separate from the cars. There are bicycle traffic lights, and signs and all sorts of good stuff. Along every river there is a path just for cycling that goes for 10s of kilometers. Me and my friend Percy went for a bike ride yesterday in the cold rainy weather. He had never been in air so cold (55 degrees today) since he is from Peru. I wonder if he'll still like France once winter comes.

The cars are tiny also...of course they don't have to worry so much about being run over by bigger cars like we do since all the cars are tiny. My friend Elodie just bought a car about the size of a Honda Civic hatchback...and she said it was a lot bigger than she had wanted but she got a good price for it. I laughed.

I have also been learning about the countries my classmates come from. One of my classmates comes from Kazakstan. She is clearing up the misconceptions I had about Kazakstan from 'Borat.' I don't think I will tell her about this movie, I think she would eternally hate the United States. It actually costs as much to live in her city as it does to live in NYC. Also, Kazakstan was a completely nomadic country until the Russians arrived at the beginning of the 1900s. So there is no literature or anything in the Kazak language, there were no real schools really...so when the Russians came in, learning switched to Russian. Most of the country is Muslim, but she isn't because her ancestors came from Germany after the 1st world war...a lot of people went to Kazakstan because the economy was so bad in Germany at that time. But then of course after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kazak economy was just as bad. She doesn't like to eat bread because when she was little that was all that they had to eat for a while and she's sick of it. There are no lakes or rivers there, but its the ninth largest country in the world. A lot of it is desert actually. But there are also mountains and such.

I've also talked a bit with my classmate from Palestine, though I want to continue our conversation some more. He lived in Dubai for the past 5 years working as a civil engineer. Dubai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world I think, and he was alone in charge of multi million dollar projects because the developers only want to hire arab engineers (because they aren't afraid to stand up to the police) He said when the police came and told them they couldn't work because it was past midnight and it made too much noise...he just would say 'write down the fine and we'll pay it' and they'd keep working. He'd have to work for two days straight because if he didn't the company would lose millions. Crazy stuff. I want to talk more about what it's like in Palestine so I haven't learned much about that yet, but he did tell me this interesting fact - engineers doing the same job as him that are from the United States get paid way more than any other nationality (pay rate goes by nationality for some reason) because the arabs need to keep the Americans happy. An arab king, I can't remember who, put it best 'we are the dogs of the Americans.' They are, because if our government doesn't like what a king is doing, we just replace him (of course we don't promote democracy there because then the people would do what they want and not what we want). Interesting.

Now, I must go get ready for dinner. I am going over to a retired French lady's house for dinner. My first dinner in a real French home!

A bientot!

2008-09-09T17:20:00.003+03:00

So there are a few ideas circulating in the United States about french people. One: that they are mean. This is just not true. I actually haven't met a single mean person yet. I guess there are some somewhere, maybe the ones in the touristy areas in Paris or something, but there are also mean people in the US and in every country. Though I wouldn't blame the French if they were grumpy and mean all the time with all the lines they have to stand in to get anything done. Yesterday I simply wanted to find out why the internet company hadn't sent me my modem yet. First I went to the internet store...waited in line for half an hour to talk to one person, who answered my question in 10 seconds - my modem was in the post office waiting for me...of course no one cared to tell me it had arrived, I guess the postal service here requires its customers to use mind reading skills. They sent me to the wrong post office of course, but I didn't know that until I had waited in line for another half an hour. That post office sent me to the right one after spending 10 minutes making sure it was wrong, and of course i had to wait in line for another half an hour at the next one, and then once I was able to talk to someone it took me 20 minutes to convince her to go look for my package (because I didn't have the number of the package, just my name) and of course it took 2 seconds to find it after all that. Every errand I try to do ends up like this. So I applaud the French, they have to deal with this every day and they are remarkably ungrumpy.

Another conception people have about French people is that they smell. This one is true. Young people don't smell too often, but older people...well...older men over 30 years old pretty much all smell. I guess they lose the energy to shower as they get older. But it's not awful, I'm just not used to it.

A third idea people have is that French people buy their bread in one store, their fish in another, their brie in another. This is half true. All these little shops exist all over town, and there are several big outdoor markets open every day where small merchants and farmers sell their produce and cheese and sausage, but they also have grocery stores bigger than ours where you can buy everything you would ever want. Hypermarkets.

So moving on...this Sunday I went with the other students in my group to climb the Bastille. Not the famous one from the French Revolution but the fort that is up on a mountain right above Grenoble. You can cheat and ride a telepherique up, you sit in a little glass ball that floats on a string up to the top, but I'm too poor to cheat so we walked. After enjoying the view across the city, we walked around up at the top and found a long tunnel/cave that you can walk through, it was straight out of a movie, I wouldn't be surprised if they have used it in a film before. It was also a bit scary because I noticed on the way out that the tunnel is carved right into a fault (probably because the rock was easier to carve there), I could see the lines scratched into the rock when it moved (called Slickensides if you must know). I don't think it would be so great to be in that tunnel when an earthquake happens.

This week the real classes have started. Yesterday we had a course on geophysical methods where I learned that when a tree moves in the wind, the roots vibrate and create seismic waves. These waves can actually be used in some cases for seismic investigation of the subsurface. Today we had a tour of the geology laboratories where the Prof showed us this experiment some scientists are working on where they built a glass model of the great pyramid in Egypt, and they have put a seismometer on each step. Then they blow simulated wind (compressed air canister?) on the pyramid and try to see if they can use this to locate holes in the building. If they succeed with this small model, they will then take this to the actual pyramid to see if they can find any undiscovered chambers.

2008-09-07T12:16:00.005+03:00

Once again I am failing at keeping my blog up to date...truth is it has been nearly impossible to get internet access here! I have to go to a giant grocery store (bigger than Wal-Mart if you can believe it) to use their free wifi because my internet connection is taking far too long to work and costs far too much...haha. That's France for you...slow and expensive. The bureaucracy is insane and full of catch-22's because you need every paper already to get any of the papers you need to do anything and they send you all over the place to wait in line to talk to someone who will tell you to talk to someone else. I will never complain about bureaucracy in the US again. But all the paperwork hopefully will be wrapped up by next week...j'espere!

But it's been an amazing week so far. My first three nights in Grenoble I didn't have my apartment yet, so I couchsurfed (http://www.couchsurfing.com/) for three days. My first day, when I was VERY jetlagged, I stayed with three student teachers. I'm glad I did instead of staying in a hotel (which was very appealing when I stepped off the plane after losing a night of sleep) because they were wonderful, showed me around Grenoble, took me to the market, but mostly we just sat around and talked and laughed and drank tea in english and french au meme temps and they watched me trip over things due to my jet lag. So thanks to couchsurfing I already have three french friends.

They took me to a party this tuesday, we rode bikes about half an hour into the foothills to their friends house. As many know, French people kiss each others cheeks as a greeting instead of shaking hands or hugging or something...so upon arrival I had to kiss the cheeks of 20 people...40 cheeks! A bit different for me. Since then I have kissed the cheeks of many a stranger...it will take some getting used to. The party was fun, I mostly spoke french the whole time, though many young people speak some english, but with a VERY strong accent. Riding back was beautiful, it was late and had rained, so everything was shining in the street lights as we rode past old stone houses and through the old centre of town. Wonderful.

My next two nights I spent couchsurfing with a french woman who just moved back here from India after four years. She had both a french AND and indian accent when she spoke English. She also has a friend from India who just moved here. So the three of us spent the first day rock climbing...I haven't climbed in so long that I had 'Elvis legs' as they call them, when your legs shake uncontrollably Elvis style. I made it up a fairly hard route...but after that my muscles were so jell-o-y that I couldn't even climb into bed, let alone another route. I think I might get back into rock climbing. The next day we went hiking about an hour from the city. We climbed up to a lake. On the way we met these two old French people, one man was 80 and the woman was 65 I think. They have both lived in this region their whole life. We hiked with them most of the way up and they taught us plant names, corrected my french (particularly when I accidentely said the word for 'ass' instead of 'tail'...what can I say, they sound the same to me!), and the man told us stories about the war in these mountains...he was a teenager then. He had to pick fruit for the germans and his father was helping a jew escape over the mountains to Italy where they weren't sending jews away, but he got caught and was sent to a work camp in Germany for two years. He also showed us where a bomb had landed...now there's a perfectly circular little pool.

Monday, I finally got my apartment. The room is tiny, but it will do for six months. I have my own VERY small kitchen and my own bathroom. I took a trip to Ikea with another girl in my program. She's from a tropical island near Austrailia, but it turns out despite that she is very susceptible to sunstroke and I had the brilliant idea of walking to Ikea on a very hot day...it turned out to be a lot further than it looked on the map and I nearly killed her...but it was worth it because we got cheap pillows and blankets and dishes, though I forgot to drink lingonberry juice. I went back yesterday...I rode my bike in the pouring rain because it seemed the only logical thing to do on a rainy saturday and arrived soaking wet to find that the cafeteria was closing!

But the room isn't too bad. I can see the mountains out my window, and the sun sets right behind them (see the view at night shown below...that colorful streak is the tram). And its near the center of the city and a big park and the football stadium. Though yesterday the lock to my door got jammed and I spent the whole day sitting around waiting for various people to come open the door and then fix the lock. I got to spend some quality time with the guy who sits at the front door yesterday.

We had some meetings this week about the seismology program. I think it will be really hard, but I can't wait because I'm a nerd. Lots of math and physics and even some computer programming...eek. The other students are great...from alllll over the world: Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Kazakstan, Palestine, Vanuatu, two from Italy, and me. An Iranian and two Indians will be coming next week. As you can see, several of those countries are enemies of the US, but the people are great and we all get along really well, maybe we'll work on some peace accords between classes.

2008-08-24T03:43:00.002+03:00

Made it home. Got my visa. Unpacked and almost repacked again to leave for France on wednesday.

I finally got to see my pictures, you can see all three trips at this website:

http://picasaweb.google.com/allstadt.k

though there aren't too many pictures from crossing the USA because my camera wasn't working well and most turned out blurry so I didn't bother posting them, but andy has a lot of beautiful pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/andypicke

2008-08-16T10:13:00.002+03:00

Sorry for not updating for a long time. I'm not dead. Just in the wilderness of the great big United States. Turns out it's easier to keep a blog in Egypt than in Europe or in the United States. Who knew? Anyhow, we made it to Seattle today after visting many parks in between the last time I wrote in this blog and now. I'll fill in those details later...maybe...though I have a busy couple of weeks ahead of me as I approach the end of my vagabond days, heading towards a semi-permanent home in France. Though I don't have a visa yet...stupid embassy... The longest I have slept in the same place in a row was nine days...on the farm in Italy...mostly been one night here one night there since I graduated. I'm tired. But it's been fun. Sunday at 6 am I fly back to New York City where I will make attempt number 2 at supplying enough documents to please the French Consulate (and will, of course, visit some friends).

Tonight was pleasant. We met up with my friend Brian who I used to work with to go sailing. He works at a yacht club, and one of the perks is he gets to take the boats out once in a while. So eight of us sailed around Puget sound with chips and salsa and champagne as the sun set behind the Olympics. It wasn't bad. : )

I'll (maybe) polish up this blog once I get back to New York and have a bit of time to breathe again (and faster internet). Until then, no pictures still. Sorry.

Ciao.

2008-08-03T07:53:00.003+03:00

It's interesting going on a road trip across the United States immediately after traveling through Europe for a month. When I was in Europe, I would get defensive when people had stereotypes about the US: that everything is big - cars, people, food portions, the land... that we are wasteful carbon emitting polluters and so forth. That we drive everywhere, even around the corner to pick up a gallon of milk... I took great pleasure in telling people that we actually ride subways, and bicycles, that everything isn't big, in fact apartments in Boston are very small, and many restaurants serve healthy delicious food and that most people I know are incredibly environmentally concious, recycling is widely available, and there is a waiting list for hybrids. I enjoyed declaring that portions in restaurants were also big and unhealthy in Europe, that the people in Holland, haughty because they ride bikes and we drive cars, didn't even have any recycling...they threw aluminum straight into the trash, and the recycling bins in most other countries (except Germany) were filled with trash. But now that I have spent the last week or so driving across the rest of the United States I realize that my view of the United States has been very skewed by living in the east, particularly in Boston, which is, as I realize now, more like Europe than the rest of the US in some ways.

Everyone is really big out here... at every stop we make, at least half of the people are overweight (except when we go hiking), the cars are way bigger than they need to be, there are still giant SUVs and jumbo RVs with trailers, despite the gas prices. Food is big and unhealthy, I forgot about the overabundance of fast food restaurants with fat filled menus, particularly out here in the west where I can barely get by as a vegetarian, my meals usually consist of cheese and starch, that is, if I can actually find something I can eat, haha. And most restaurants have disposable everything, spoons, plates, cups, and rarely have recycling bins for the plastic bottles, instead they are thrown in the overflowing trash bins. In Europe hardly any restaurants had anything you could throw away besides napkins. Air conditioning is always on full blast in every establishment, I go from Sahara desert to Antarctica by walking into a gas station. When we were camping in the Badlands, Andy asked the RV next to us to turn off their generator since it was loud and smelly and it was 11 pm anyway, and the woman said "ohhh, well i don't know, they don't have electricity at this campground so we won't have our air conditioning if we turn it off. I'll have to talk to my husband about this" Unbelievable. What kind of camping do they think they are doing? Haha. It wasn't even hot out. And of course they didn't turn off their generator because this is the land of the free and they can do as they please.

But I'm also struck by the beauty and openness of this country. While Europe was beautiful because of its cities, America is beautiful because of its open spaces. The National Park System has been an incredible feat and has preserved the most precious lands for all to see...and boy do they get out and see it. Every National Park has been just packed with people. I don't think anyone could argue successfully that there could have been a better use for this land. It is unfortunately kind of self defeating though when parks become so popular... it's encouraging that more and more people are wanting to experience the wilderness, beauty, and solitude the parks offer, but as more and more people come, the less wild, beautiful and quiet the parks become. I think the parks are doing a good job at managing this though from what I've seen. And every state also has an abundance of State Parks and county parks and so forth. The green space is overwhelming. And the people are so much friendlier here, everyone says hi on the hiking trails, you can have a nice conversation with a stranger just because of the license plate on your car (every seems to know someone from Massachusetts), and despite how it may seem, services in this country are run much more efficiently and faster than anything in Europe. A line behind one person is considered long here, while a line with only 50 people is considered short in Europe.

Enough comparisons. I don't mean to bash either one or say which is better than the other. They're just different and it's been really interesting touring the two right in a row, it makes for better comparisons.

This morning we hiked up Harney Peak, the highest point east of the Rockies. Stunning views of the Cathedral Spires and the rolling Black Hills on all sides. Then we cooled off afterwards in Sylvan lake, a small mountain lake surrounded by big towering granite cliffs. Then off to Devils Tower where we watched people climbing and now to Gillette, Wyoming, where we're camping with all the bikers in an overpriced campground to avoid the even more overpriced hotels. Stupid bikers. I am so sick of their rumbling motors. Someone needs to invent a motorcycle muffler that works a little better. Off to the Grand Tetons tomorrow. Still no pictures up, sorry, internet is just too slow for that sort of thing.

2008-08-02T05:06:00.005+03:00

(Pictures will be forthcoming once I am no longer on a slow satellite campground wireless network...I can't believe a campground has wireless!)

Well, I finally caught up with my blog, you may have noticed about 20 new more recent journal entries. It's hard to keep a blog going when there isn't a computer for miles. Now I'm no longer in Europe, but rather 3/4 of the way across the United States in South Dakota. I skipped a bit from my last entry when I was getting ready to leave Italy. I'll have to summarize from the farm on Italy to a campground in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Let's see...leaving Italy was a disaster. I actually wrote a journal entry (on paper) that day, but I decided not to post it because I was basically just venting all of my bad mood onto paper so I didn't have to carry it anymore. I was just hot and tired from wandering around Milan all day(my flight wasn't until midnight), time was moving sooooo slowly and every little thing went wrong...though nothing big so I shouldn't have been whining. Anyhow, the good part of that day was when I took a train from Milan to Pavia, the town I'll be living in starting next March for the second part of my masters program...and man oh man is it beautiful. Milan was big and hot and full of cars, Pavia was small and cooler and full of bicycles and cobble roads, a silky river cuts through town and the part of the University I found was a self contained butter yellow complex full of airy archways and balconys and elaborate staircases. Breathtaking really. I think I'll be happy living in Pavia for 6 months.

Anyhow, once I finally got on my plane out of Europe, I landed in Iceland and spent a day and a half relaxing in the cool, clean air. It helped me recover from the chaos of the last month. Don't get me wrong, the chaos was great...I love chaos...but I was pooped. I spent $25 on the best lunch ever at a vegetarian restaurant, went to a few crazy modern art galleries (the insanity of Icelanders is best expressed through their art), a photo exhibit or two and then I just hung around waiting for time to pass and for bedtime to approach, since I was unbelievably jet lagged.

I soon found myself back in Boston, reunited with my dear Andy at last (not my brother Andy, my boyfriend Andy...don't worry)! Then almost immediately we struck off on this road trip from Massachusetts to Seattle. I won't go into great detail because Andy has in his blog (www.andypicke.blogspot.com) but we skimmed quickly over the midwest with a stop at the Indiana Sand Dunes - gorgeous but bordered by steel factories and nuclear power plants, in Madison, Wisconsin to visit some friends. Madison was a nice comfortable small city with a Frank Lloyd Wright terrace, a capitol building-like capitol building and a free zoo. I liked it. THen off to a state park called Devil's Lake where we climbed around on a cliff with strange boulder formations from glaciers, then the Spam Museum, which was actually well done and made me a fan of spam for a few minutes even though I'm a vegetarian and I have never actually eaten Spam, then a well done Lakota Indian museum and then the Badlands, in South Dakota.

I had been to the Badlands already and it was pretty much my favorite stop on the last road trip I did with my family so we decided to stay for two nights, but after I had donated several pints of blood to the mosquitos (it was so dry! Where did they all come from), a run-in with a RV and a noisy smelly generator in our campground and extreme heat, we left a day early. Besides, Andy and I had walked every trail in the park except one by 2 in the afternoon, there wasn't much left to do. So we headed to the Black Hills where we are now. I love the Black Hills. No mosquitos! And though it is one of the most touristy wilderness areas I have ever visited, it is still peaceful and beautiful. I even feel at peace despite the 8.7 billion motorcycles zooming around (there's a big biker festival going on right now). And the air smells so nice, filled with the faint vanilla scent of the ponderosa pines. We spent the day doing touristy things like gazing at Mt Rushmore, driving through herds of bison and touring caves. I think we will end this fine day with a touristy game of mini golf accompanied by some soft serve ice cream. Mmmhmm.

2008-07-18T05:05:00.001+03:00

I am sitting on a bench in the barn watching the first rain to fall in a month. The smell is delicious and the colors have turned richer. The rain brings that feeling of satisfactory melancholy that I think everyone likes once in a while, no matter how happy. It allows you to feel melancholy without actually being sad.

Our days in Italy are waning, and in less than a week everyone will be speaking English, I’ll eat dinner at a normal hour, and I’ll have butter on my bread (no one gives you butter with bread here!!!) I’m looking forward to going home after two months of wandering, granted I start on a bit more wandering almost immediately and then I’ll only be at home a week or two before shipping off again.

The rain is pouring down now, maybe the cracks in the dirt will close up. Though the dryness doesn’t seem to have hurt the crops any. There is an excess of fruits and berries on every tree and bush, though I guess the vegetables are a bit small.

It has been so nice to spend these days on the farm, relaxing even, despite the screeching baby that I swear must be possessed by one of those evil black death flying creatures that the death knights, I forget their name, ride on in Lord of the Rings. The sound is almost identical. I’ll be putting off child rearing for a looooong time after these ten days. I can’t believe my mom went through this horror so many times. How is she still sane? Thanks mom!

It’s raining so much now that I think I may have stranded myself in the barn, though I suppose I could wade through the foot deep puddles, but luckily I have a ping pong table right here next to me with that fancy function where you can fold up the other side to play against yourself. I’ll be playing like Forrest Gump by the time this here storm stops. Ciao.

2008-07-15T05:04:00.000+03:00

The thing about traveling the way we traveled for the first 3 weeks of this trip is that one has no time to process anything. I saw so many new and interesting, beautiful things that make for good photographs and stories to tell once I return, but nothing is life changing or influential in the ever changing world-view we each have without the time to process. There is no lull in which to contemplate ones expanding awareness and the place one wants to have in it. It’s almost as if I never went to these places or saw these things.
It’s like eating one food after another in a quest to experience all the dishes. But without pausing to ‘cleanse your palette,’ you just get tired of eating its hard to savor each dish. Ok, well maybe I am trying a bit to hard to make this metaphor fit, but the point is – now that we are living life slowly on a farm in Italy, I have all the time I lacked before – times ten – to think. It’s almost too much now, like a catastrophic flood of thoughts that were trapped behind the dam of busyness. Thoughts about the past, the future near and far and about how I want to change/mold my life based on what I’m seeing of how different people live.

Enough sappy talk. A few interesting bits I’ve observed in Italy:

Breakfast consists of tea, cookies, warm yogurt, bread (sometimes) and jam. Sometimes the jam is just eaten by the spoonful, but more often spread on cookies and mixed into the yogurt. I miss cereal. This breakfast is way too sweet. I’ll blame my dislike of sweet things for breakfast on my mom who never would buy froot loops or cocoa puffs no matter how much I begged. I miss Raisin Bran and oatmeal!

Lunch is the biggest meal on the day, at least on farms (though at least on this farm, still too small for my big American belly – I’m so hungry!) and dinner comes 2 hours late and is a tiny salad or side dish or something small. The small portions are a bit hard on my stomach, but probably way healthier, especially since almost all the food comes from this farm, and if it doesn’t it’s organic.

Driving is as crazy as they say it is. I had an epiphany yesterday…the reason they put handles on the ceiling of cars is in case an Italian should ever be driving. My life relies on being able to hold onto that handle!! Here it is all tiny mountain roads 1.5 cars wide for two lanes zooming around corners at top speed (they never heard of slowing down around turns). They swerve at the last second to avoid a catastrophic crash. The motorcycles are the craziest. Oh, and seatbelts are often forgotten or broken. Italians are not sticklers for safety like Americans are. Hardly anyone wears helmets while bicycles, and if they do, it’s just because it matches their Lance Armstrong biking outfit. Fabrizio and Ester don’t have any of the plastic contraptions every parent with small children in the US has to keep cupboards closed, corners dull and stairways off limits. I guess their kids are still alive though, but it makes me so nervous. Sometimes they just lay the month old baby on the porch swing and leave him there.

Life and work moves so much slower here. I feel like I’m always just sitting around, doing an hour or two of work and then sitting around the same amount of time before working again. It’s hard for a busybody like me, but I do enjoy the afternoon siesta that spans from after lunch until 4pm. In Spain, our host Ismael, got out of work at 3 in the summer – just because. Don’t want to overexert, eh? And of course Europeans get at least a month of vacation per year. Sigh. Anyhow, my hand is cramping up. Ciao.

2008-07-11T05:04:00.000+03:00

(Pictures coming)

After our first day of work, I’ve come to realize how disconnected the society I come from has become from the origins of the things that sustain us. Here, almost everything is homemade from ingredients right here in the soil. The amount of work is so much greater, yet there seems to be ten times more time for relaxation. Almost too much relaxation for me. And ten times more pleasure comes from everything. Here, the circles are nearly complete. Dirt to plant to crop to flour to cake to septic system to dirt, or chicken scraps for uneaten or unwanted food to eggs to cake. We worked for three hours putting wheat in bags, lugging firewood on the tractor back to the farm to dry, making bread and pizza in an oven fired by this firewood, and pruning chestnut trees, yet we still fit in a 3 hour siesta (which needs to be instituted in the USA), a one hour lunch, an evening stroll and a leisurely dinner. Fabrizio spent most of the afternoon just playing his daughter Stella. How many fathers in America have the time (or desire) for that? Despite all this work, everything moves slowly, and often we all just pause and stare out at the rolling hills. Though granted its not as idyllic as I make it sound. The baby Flavio never stops crying and Stella is a source of endless noise and chaos (as most 2 year olds are). And pruning trees wasn’t the greatest – flies in my ears, thorns in my legs and no water in my mouth (my fault, I forgot it). But really, I don’t mind all that. It’s worth it all even for just one moment like this, a windy evening, darkness falling, seated on terra cotta tile steps, not a motor or sound besides the crickets and wind. Wind like this always brings change, perhaps here a change in my perception of a normal way of life? Happiness and good living? I would want to stay in this moment forever if I wasn’t missing certain people back on the North American continent.

2008-07-10T05:03:00.000+03:00

(I'll post pictures for this entry once I have faster internet)

We have finally made it to our last stop of this epic journey, Italia. We’ll be here for 10 days, so at last we can slow down and relax and do some farming. It feels so right to be here, and so Italian. The farm is 40km from Bologna, on top of a hill with a large terrace overlooking rolling hill after rolling hill of farmland and forest. The house was built in the 19th century, but a bomb destroyed half of it during WWII because this area was a boundary area. Our hosts Fabrizio (Italian) and Ester (Hungarian) spent three years after they graduated college rebuilding this farm, they lived in a small campervan for that entire time. It is now a beautiful, genuine, Italian farmhouse rebuilt with green architecture in mind. Decorators can only dream of imitating this sort of look on Trading Spaces.

The couple and their two small kids are almost completely self-sufficient, growing vegetables, making jams from the fruits and berries they pick from their land, growing wheat to sell and also to make their own flour to make their own bread and pizza dough in their wood fired oven using wood they cut themselves each year.

Solar panels, wild herb tea, fresh fruit trees with the sweetest plums, figs and apricots I have ever tasted. And except for the noise of the children (who cry an awful lot more than I remember my sisters crying), it is so quiet here. Now that the kids have gone to bed, it is only the crickets and the mosquitoes buzzing in my ear. The cool summer air smells like hay and the moon is giving me just enough light to write by. This is such a comfortable happy home. I wonder why everyone isn’t clawing to live like this? Will I find out in the next few days? Haha.

2008-07-09T05:01:00.000+03:00

(Pictures will be posted soon! Just text for now)

The 18 hour journey across France was worth it for the fresh air of Switzerland. Kandersteg is a tiny town consisting mostly of the international Scout Camp and some small tourist hotels. Everything else is farms and mountains. Daniel has been so welcoming, allowing us to take up all the floor space in the tiny flat the scout camp gave him (he is my friend who is from Sweden who I know from New Zealand…he has just got a job as Environmental Coordinator at the camp). The three of us went hiking together the past two days. The first day was foggy and drizzly, and we had no idea how high the mountains were because we could barely see 50 meters in front of us. We hiked up to a glacial lake nestled in the mountains. We could only see the other side of the lake once in a while when the clouds lifted a little, but we could hear the roaring of a giant waterfall over there echoing through the fog.

In Switzerland, almost regardless of where you hike there will be a chalet hotel or restaurant at the top and a cable car that you could have taken up instead of sweating your way up. And there was a chalet or two up by this lake, but we preferred to eat bread and cheese on the rocks in the rain by the lake. The mysterious mountains decided to reveal themselves once in a while for a few seconds when the clouds parted. Seeing the height of the mountains for the first time in this way magnified their enormity because where I had assumed there was only sky, the clouds parted and revealed a massive wall of rock and ice towering above us. It was staggering. They looked a lot smaller the next day when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

In addition to restaurants, there are cows everywhere you hike in Switzerland, no matter how far up you hike (well, maybe theres a limit somewhere, but I didn’t find it) you hear the jingling of their cow bells. Each cow seemed to have a different note, so it was like surround sound wind chimes. I heard rumors that each farmer had a different note cowbell, so when it comes time to herd them in, they can sort out the cows…though I don’t know if I believe that, because why not just put a farmers name on the cowbell so you don’t have to have perfect pitch to find your cow. But it’s a cool idea, I hope its true.

We walked past a field of bulls grazing on our trail at one point. I was rather nervous walking two feet away from a bull after learning from looney toons that I should expect the bull to paw the ground and shoot steam out its nose before sending me into outer space, but they actually were quite docile, and Daniel actually scratched their noses. Augh!

Our first evening in Switzerland (not counting the night we arrived at midnight, delirious from 18 hours of trains), we cooked dinner together and ate with Daniel and his friend from Germany who also worked at the camp. It was a nice slow meal, and we just sat and talked for hours afterwards, it was nice. A very European meal I’d say.

The next day we got up early and started on a 26 km hike up to the glacier that is the source of the Kander river for which the town Kandersteg is named (steg means bridge). The trail was essentially 3 giant steps, a steep climb up to the Gaster Valley, the Kander River raging as it poured down the cliffs. At the top, restaurant number 1, they served ice cream though so I approved of this restaurant. Then flat roads for a looong time, followed by a second climb, another restaurant and some flattish roads, and then finally we were beyond the cars and restaurants for our third step oup to the hill above the glacier at 2411 meters. No restaurant here, but a lot of ice. All in all we climbed 1200 meters, not bad for our first Alp hike. It was a breathtaking day, everywhere I looked. Beautiful waterfalls dribbling off mountains or out of caves, enormous folds in the rocks, fields of wild flowers of every color imaginable, alpine forests. I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

Switzerland is such a strange country. Their military is everywhere, and all the soldiers look like kids. The train we took into Kandersteg was full of 18 year olds in army garb drinking and waving machine guns around, they were returning from their weekend of leave. And there were military planes, tanks and trucks everywhere. They say Switzerland is the only country where the military planes can’t get up to full speed before they’re out of the country. Hehe. In Thun, which is where the main army base is, the streets were just filled with soldiers and officers, but I didn’t see one female military anything. At least that I saw, maybe they exist, but I’m doubtful. Women is Switzerland couldn’t even vote until the 1990’s!! Unbelievable.

Anyhow, in Kandersteg, the military dug a secret complex for the government in the mountains, and often looking up at a shear cliff of a mountain I would see a little window or two halfway up. Daniel said that on September 11th they moved the Swiss government there…just in case.

Also, Switzerland is SO expensive. A regular meal costs $25 or more, and the Swiss Franc is about equal to the US dollar, which makes it even more depressing. Because at least with the Euro I have the impression that things aren’t too expensive…at least until I look at my bank statement. I just won’t look.

Trains go everywhere very regularly, even if there is no one on them. As do cable cars and trains-like things that climb up at ridiculous angles to lookouts on mountains. And in the cities, at least those two we visited the day Daniel had to work, Bern and Thun, there were almost no cars driving downtown so you could pretty much walk in the middle of the road – except when the buses came, which was pretty frequently. It made the atmosphere absolutely wonderful. Though the mountains, buildings, churches and turquoise rivers certainly helped. The river in Bern was a particularly bright shade of turquoise (because it is filled with rock flour crushed under the glaciers so it reflects the sun just right to look that color) and was moving at an alarming speed. I would never even consider getting in that water, nor would anyone in the safety conscious USA, but the Swiss were having a grand old time swimming in it. One guy undressed down to a speedo, put his clothes in a dry sack, and jumped into the raging river with it and floated downstream. One of the more unique commutes to work I’d say. The public swimming area in Thun was also in this river, and at the end of the swimming area there was a grate to catch you from drifting away.

All in all, Switzerland was absolutely worth 18 hours of torture on trains. It’s the most beautiful country in Europe (and that’s saying a lot because every country is beautiful so far).

2008-07-06T07:17:00.003+03:00

(When the sun rises, it rises for all)

France has been trying its best to make me dislike it. There was our escapade in Paris I already described, then when we arrived back in France after Madrid we couldn’t get our phone card or credit card to work to call Sarah’s friend we were staying with. Then we asked a nice lady if we could use her mobile phone (French people seem to be rather nice in general, despite what rumors say), and then we just got the answering machine to Sarah’s friends mobile and her house phone, though she should have been home several hours earlier, though it turns out she was actually still at work somehow. Then when we went to make our train reservation to go to Switzerland, we learned that the trains we wanted were all full so we’d have to get up at 5 am to catch six trains to crawl across France to the other side. Then when we woke up at 5 to start catching those trains we missed the first tram to the train station so we had to walk half an hour in the rain with all our luggage to get to the station. Then, our first train was two hours late because the track caught on fire, so we missed our next 5 trains and had to formulate a new plan to get there, which we mussed up a few times by getting on the wrong train etc etc, one train lady told us there was no way we could get to our destination by that night, we’d have to stay over in Geneva but we proved her wrong, we got there at 11:59 by hopping on trains we didn’t have reservations for and sitting on the floor. I felt like the Van Trapp family sneaking off to Switzerland. On top of all this France is doing to make me hate it, there is of course the ridiculously tedious and stupid visa process I am going through to get there for my studies next year. It’s a million step process costing hundreds of dollars and at least one trip to New York City. Ugh bureaucracy.

But in spite of all the stress France is inflicting on me, I love it. Its my favorite country so far. Everything is so beautiful. The countryside, the villages with their matching orange roofs, the majestic architecture of Paris, the people are not assholes at all, they are actually very nice (but maybe its because I speak their language? Perhaps that is the difference?), even the waitresses are nice, and you don’t even tip in France. And of course their wine is very good. Sarah’s friend is so friendly and hospitable and made us feel very welcome in her home. Anyways, I don’t know why, but somehow France is my favorite country. Its like an abusive relationship, but I am blinded by love. I can’t stop taking pictures because everything is so picturesque, I love speaking French (though I have a long way to go I think), I love the architecture, the old buildings with tiled roofs.

Yesterday, Sarah’s friend Gaelle (picture with Sarah at left) who we are staying with took us to a small wine producing village, Saint Emilion. I never knew villages like this still existed in the world. Granted it is kept that way mainly for the sake of tourists..but still… It was like the village in the movie Chocolat, but real and with wine everywhere. We wandered around in ancient wine caves (containing not so ancient wine), we went on a tour of a winery which included a tasting, we climbed an ancient tower overlooking the village and the surrounding vineyards and drank wine in a tiny village square. C’est la vie.

Bordeaux itself was magnificent as well, especially at night. The wide Gorgonne River flows like chocolate milk, churning through the arches in the old brick bridge (see picture at night at left). Church towers peak up over the ol stone buildings. We spent a morning browsing at a flea market and buying old French trinkets (viewed from a tower we climbed in picture below).

Pictures of St Emilion, wine caves, and wine tasting:

2008-07-03T11:16:00.004+03:00

(Just added more to the end of this entry and added pictures - sorry for the weird formating, the blogging program just isn't cooperating so deal with it.)

Just one night in Barcelona, but each second was oozing with beauty. We got there in the morning on our overnight train...in great need of showers and so forth, but of course there was a problem with our reservation at the hostel that took just long enough to solve that the showers closed for cleaning right ten minutes before we untangled the problem. C'est la vie.
In the middle of the night, I woke up when we stopped at the border of France and Spain and there was just enough light to see a tiny ancient looking red roofed stone town with the Mediterranean glowing dimly in the moonlight just behind it.

The architecture in Barcelona was incredible. It reawakened my desire to be an architect. Even our hostel was gorgeous...it was an old palace of middle eastern influence perched way up on a hill (view from our room and interior shown below) overlooking the city. From our bedroom you could see teh sparkling lights and palm trees of Barcelona with the sea just beyond it if the pollution wasn't too thick.

The architect Gaudi really should be credited with making Barcelona such a jewel (that and the Olympics I suppose). He designed many houses in Barcelona, as well as Parc Guell, the most fantastical crazy park I've ever strolled in (picture at left). His style is organically influenced, with no sharp corners, and tiles on everything, broken tiles around the rounded corners. And the shapes are all swirling and colorful. Parc Guell has the largest park bench in the world (also a scene takes place here from one of my favorite movies - L'Auberge Espagnol). Sadly I didn't have time to sit on every inch of it, though it was tempting.

(At left is the longest park bench in the world with a view of a Gaudi building in the background)

The architect in me agreed to pay an exorbitant amount of money to go into one of the houses he designed...Casa Batllo, but I maintain that it was worth every penny! I felt like crying with joy at each new room I wandered into. So much thought was put into even the tiniest piece of this house. It was designed with the sea as inspiration, my favorite was a courtyard that was blue, with a bubbly look, that went up something like 15 stories, the tiles got bluer and bluer towards teh top, adn the windows got smaller and smaller. Just this one house reawakened my love for architecture and design that I have been stifling under rocks and glaciers.

Spain reminds me of Egypt. The narrow streets, the style of buildings (exception being the Gaudi buildings of course), people everywhere on the streets, sometimes just sitting around doing nothing, tiny shops with very specific stock, men whistling as you walk by, and the weather is about the same. Dry and sunny. And they all speak a language I don’t really understand, though I think people in Egypt spoke better English than people in Spain do. But Spain is cleaner, though it smells like poop sometimes, there’s less traffic and people actually stop at red lights – mas o menos.

Our last day in Barcelona we tried to relax because we were museumed out from the 5 museums we did the day before. So we went to the beach. Right next to the city. It was wonderful, sparkling water, sunshine, and we were pleasantly surprised to find beach lounge chairs and umbrellas we could use! An hour later we learned they weren’t actually free, the guy running it didn’t put a sign up with the cost on purpose and then waited until we were nice and relaxed and didn’t want to leave. Then he demanded 15 euros for sitting there, assuming we were so comfortable we would just pay. We promptly left, he underestimated the cheapness of American students. We were relaxed out anyway, we’re Americans so we’re not good at relaxing. Before hopping on the train to Madrid, we took a cable car over to the hill where all the Olympic facilities are. It was kind of like a small pilgrimage for me because the Barcelona Olympics are the first I remember ever watching and I thought it was the coolest thing ever…I watched the entire gymnastics competition while sitting upside down on the couch, practicing for the next Olympic games.

Anyhow, after that we went to Barcelona for 3 nights. We stayed with Sarah’s sister’s friend, Ismael, who we didn’t actually know, but he was incredibly generous and welcoming. He had a nice apartment, but not very big so I slept on a love seat and Sarah slept on the floor.

Madrid has a lovely atmosphere and its people have discovered an ideal way of life I think. Life is slow, they take a siesta in the hot hours of the afternoon (though I could barely sleep in the heat of the night, I don’t know how they are able to sleep in the heat of the high afternoon), at night everyone is out on the streets eating dinner (often after 10pm) and drinking vino and just having a jolly old time. On weekends people party until the wee hours of the morning…5am, 6am. I would be incapable of staying up that late, luckily we weren’t there on the weekends so we only stayed out until the modest hour of 1am because Ismael had to work the next morning.

Somehow though, Madrid didn’t really speak to me despite it’s beautiful cobble streets and wonderful atmosphere. It just lacked the charm of Barcelona and the other cities we went to, and it seemed to lack a unifying something. No famous landmarks really, and it just seemed fragmented to me somehow. Maybe its just because I wish I spoke Spanish so I didn’t feel like a fool.

My favorite moment though, was actually a conversation I had. I was just sitting alone on a park bench outside the Prado Museum waiting for Sarah, I get sick of looking at Frilly collar portraits and Jesus paintings pretty quickly, but Sarah can stare at them all day. I think its because she knows whats behind them and I don’t. Kind of like how I can stare at rocks all day. Anyways, I was sitting there and this old man with a cane hobbles over and sits down next to me. After a time, he asked if habla-ed espagnol. I said no, so he kept talking in Spanish (he didn’t speak English, like most Spaniards). We somehow managed to have a pretty decent conversation despite each mainly speaking words the other didn’t know. I shared my peanuts and we talked about how I should hold my purse closer because it will be gone in a second in Madrid, we talked about photo exhibitions in Madrid (I went the next day…they were awesome), we discussed the importance of wearing sunscreen, the political candidates for American president and the importance of good friends. Before he hobbled away, this old man I had spoken with in broken Spanglish for just 15 minutes kissed me on both cheeks, the Spanish hug/handshake…but weird for me to have this stranger so close to my face.

It’s hard keeping track of greetings since we’re switching countries so fast. I think this is a problem we wouldn’t encounter if we did a bus tour or stayed in hostels, but since we’re staying with people in each country, we have to greet them and say our tearful goodbyes, it’s important to know how many kisses, if any, etc. I usually kind of hesitate, and dodge this way or that to see if they are going to kiss one cheek, or another cheek, or if they’re going to just hug which results in really awkward, boxing match farewells. Uh well.

For future reference: in Holland they grab your head and kiss you 3 kisses, alternating cheeks, in France and Spain its two gentle kisses, one on each cheek with no head grabbing, and I didn’t observe any kisses in Germany or Denmark, just hugs or handshakes, but maybe the people there thought we Americans would be weirded out by kisses so it’s not conclusive that they don’t kiss cheeks there.

2008-06-28T22:26:00.004+03:00

Our first couchsurfing experience was absolutely wonderful. Couchsurfing is an online network of people who are intersted in hosting people who are visiting from other countries and surfing on others couches. Its a way of saving money, but that is the secondary motive, the real purpose is to serve as a way to share ones own way of life and to experience the true culture of a place visited, rather than that solely from a tourist point of view as displayed in museums and guidebooks.

So we stayed with Janneke and Wouter in Haarlem, a city about 15 minutes by train from Amsterdam. Haarlem is similar to Amsterdam in that its very old with beautiful architecture and is crisscrossed by canals and bike lanes, but it is so much more pleasant and calm. When we first arrived, Janneke and Wouter cooked us a traditional Dutch dish (I forget the name, but it was mashed potatoes with cheese and endives with optional bacon on top). We ate this delicious meal on their roof deck that was accessed by climbing out the kitchen window. From this deck you could look out over all the old rooftops and church towers across Haarlem (see pic below), I half expected Burt to come out with his chimney sweepers. After dinner they made us hop on the luggage racks on the back of their bikes, and drove us with their own muscle power to the train station..dutch style. They brought us to a soccer game watching party in student housing in Amsterdam (the student housing was literally made out of train shipping containers). They were all cheering for Russia because they met each other in Russian class, but Sarah and I were secretly cheering for Spain since we´ll be in Spain the night of the final...so it will be exciting of course. And Spain won! Can´t wait till Sunday. I was amazed at how many languages were flying around at the party. As english speakers, we don´t have to learn langauges, so we don´t, but these people know so many because they need to since their languages are so small. On the trains, sometimes annoucements are made in four languages!

The next morning we borrowed our hosts bikes and biked the 20km path to Amsterdam. Its interesting because there is actually farmland between these two cities, while in the US there wuld have been sprawling suburbs and mini towns filling the space. It was so nice to bike just a few minutes out of town and find goats and cows and waving grass. Amsterdam itself was quite the opposite from the relaxing bike ride. I felt more stressed out here than in Cairo. There are cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, trams, thousands of bicycles, pedestrians, and no matter where you stand you´re in the way of one of them. Sarah and I did some touristy things, but mostly spent our day getting lost and then unlost and trying to bike in the first bike traffic we´ve ever encountered. Helmets are considered very dorky and I didn´t see a single one...so it was extra scary.

The photos at left show me with bikes by one of the many canals, one of the many legal drug shops that you see, usually right next to an old cathedral or something - a strange combination, and last, the view from the little cafe we had lunch in, where you can buy anything in the shop, including the plates your lunch comes on.

The best stop of the day was the Anne Frank House. It was unexpectedly moving to be in the same house that the famous story we learn about from age 10 took place, and heartbreaking as well. The museum presented the simple, but wise, words of this little girls in such a way that it brought tears to my eyes. It displayed the horror of this abominable piece of our history, seen through the eyes of a child that should be living carefree, and really made me realize how important it is to prevent humans from getting so carried away, as they so often do. Even now. Take Sudan. If my tax money has to be spent on war, I want it spent on wars that stop atrocities like these, not start them. Sigh.

Anyhow, on a lighter note, after another fine Dutch meal with our hosts, we all got on bicycles and rollerblades and set off through the posh neighborhoods of Haarlem to the sand dunes that encircle a swimming pond. It got dark as we rode back along the canals and down cobbled streets. Janneke waterskiied on her rollerblades behind my bike and sarah rode on Wouters luggage rack. It was such a heartbreakingly wonderful ride. The cool summer air, the lights sparkling reflections in teh canals, the old buildings dimly glowing in the street lights, the breeze in my face, the creak of each pedal of the bicycle. I wish such moments could last longer.

2008-06-28T16:26:00.003+03:00

Our quick 7 hour trip to Paris between train connections started out poorly. We wasted two hours just standing in various lines trying to get metro tickets. Europeans love lines I´ve discovered. The luggage lockers broke and stole my money, and I spilled juice and pasta all over my feet in the Supermarche. I like to make good first impressions on cities I visit, like that time I walked into a glass door at a yacht club my first time in Seattle.

Anyhow, once we got the chaos out of our systems, we had a nice lunch (minus some juice and pasta) on the banks of the Seine with a view of Notre Dame.

Paris has a very distinctive style, and they love big open gardens and courts and giant fountains with majestic sweeping views of their palaces and other miscellaneous architectural wonders, centered perfectly. Nearly every inch of these wide open spaces was occupied by a tourist taking a pictures or tourist predators taking money, particularly on a warm summer saturday. We walked along the Seine to all the famous places, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf, La Palais de Le Louvre and of course La Tour Eiffel. All was just as I have always imagined Paris to be. Cafes everywhere, accordian players, palaces and townhouses of that distinctive Parisian style with beautiful landscaping everywhere, always carefully calculated. But as beautiful as it all was, it wasn´t moving at all like the other places we visited. I didn´t feel even a hint of what it was like to belong in this place like I did in all the others so far. But I suppose that is the problem with having only 7 hours and wasting two of them standing in line in such a full city.

Another time I´ll give Paris some more time, but for now we´re on our way to Barcelona on an overnight train, and I just watched teh pink sunset over the yellow wheat fields of France.

2008-06-25T12:05:00.003+03:00

I like Germany. I always get along well with people from Germany. Its also a very laid back place...at least in Northwest Germany...AND the cheapest place I've encountered yet on my trip, which maybe be the cheapest overall it seems, but I'll find out. Another thing I appreciate is that the people aren't very stylish here, and I really mean that in the nicest way possible. I don't feel like such an unstylish slob here with my old so-last-year (or 5 years ago) clothes. In Denmark and Iceland every girl (and often guy) had the latest styles (which unfortunately is 80's style clothes right now). I never saw one person in jeans and a t-shirt or a sweat shirt. Even my Danish friend dressed up more than I EVER dress up when we met for lunch, and she was just studying all day. I would love to live in Copenhagen, but I don't think I will ever be stylish enough.

Anyway, we've been visiting my cousin, Michael, in Germany the last few days. He moved into a nice house that is nearly in the countryside this year, and its been a great place to stay...you can tell he's moving up from poor student status to real person. He even bought a pool today. I'm still very far away from that point, seeing as I am homeless right now and don't know where my next apartment will be except that it is probably in Grenoble. We spent the first morning here at the dentist, such an exciting introduction to Germany. When I first asked Mike to make me an appointment here, he told me that I would have to be sure to pay in cash...so I won't lie...I was a little skeptical...but this dentists office was pretty much the nicest building they have ever let me into. It had marble and glass with black leather seats and manicured gardens in the back. We had to wait like two hours, I think because they weren't sure how to manage a person without insurance...but finally the dentist came in and fixed my tooth in a matter of minutes, and he even spoke English. The strange thing was neither he nor the technician wore gloves. I assume they washed their hands, but then after touching my drool, he shook my hand and Michael's hand without washing his hands. So we'll see if I catch any diseases, haha. But my tooth is fixed and it only cost 57 euros. Thats almost what the cost was with insurance when I got the filling that broke back at my dentist a month ago.

We also saw Bremen and the fanciest museum ever...which was actually an emigration museum. They made it feel like you were emigrating from Bremen to the New World. They actually had a giant harbor scene inside, and the side of the ship moved up and down in the water, my favorite was an imitation toilet that you had to sit on to watch a slide show about toilet facilities on ships through the ages. We also had a tour of the labs in the institute that Mike works at...though we couldn't see his algae lab for fear that his boss might find him : )

Yesterday we hiked with the dogs in the mud flats...you can walk for hours and hours and not reach the end of these vast flats. We didn't walk that long and we got to a river we couldn't cross eventually, but it all looks pretty similar in the mud. Crabs, worms, mud, water, snails and general yuck. It felt nice on the feet. The tide comes in really fast here because its so flat and you can be far away from shore and have to swim back several kilometers so they don't allow people to walk past a certain time, so we didn't stay too long because the water was rising, but almost had to stay when Michael got stuck a foot deep in the mud (see picture below where I am laughing at his misery). We also almost lost the dogs when they decided to chase some horses way far off across the mud, but luckily the horses were faster and they gave up eventually.

After an afternoon bike ride through the countryside (note the picture of me on a bike that is way too big), we had a nice indian dinner and scientific arguments at the house of Michael's friend, and then went to a Phillipino Karaoke Bar downtown where we essentially had our own private Karaoke Bar. Sarah and I sang a killer version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Its amazing how many touristy things there are to do here, even though it is a rather small town, and a poor one at that. They have a hotel shaped like a sailboat like the one in Dubai and they have a giant pickle shaped building that is going to be a shopping mall with climate zones from around the world that will be finished next year. Today we went on a really slow, hot and boring boat tour around the harbor amongst enormous ships and took a stroll in the zoo, but I spent most of the day in a sneezy fog. I forgot that I have spring allergies because I haven't been in Spring for more than two years as I was in New Zealand and Egypt for the two previous Springs. Some allergy pills are kicking in now, but my nose is still a faucet. Lovely.

Tonight we will watch the Euro2008 match between Germany and Turkey, and then after we will watch the real match as the Germans and Turks beat each other up in the streets (there are a lot of Turkish immigrants here). I'll make lots of popcorn and maybe sit out on a lawn chair.

Amsterdam tomorrow.

Picture below = windmills along the autobahn...Mike's car didn't fall apart!!

2008-06-22T00:51:00.003+03:00

Sarah and I just departed from an enjoyable two days in Denmark. The whole atmosphere of Copenhagen was so relaxing and comfortable. There were hardly any cars, literally thousands of bikes, even old ladies were riding them, and the people were so friendly even though we were tourists. They all speak perfect English. I found Sarah and my Danish friend Kristel with no problems at the Norreport train station and Kristel took us to her friends apartment - it was so generous of her to let two strangers stay there while she was away for the weekend!

We spent two days wandering around the city, visiting museums and parks etc etc, but mostly soaking in the atmosphere. Tivoli Gardens was one of my favorites. Its a famous old amusement park in the downtown area. It reminded me of the idyllic amusement parks of olden days portrayed in the movies that I never thought existed. Wonderful elaborate architecture and fountains and gardens and a real professional orchestra playing music (dad would love this place) and an old fashioned pantomime show that would have made sense 500 years ago. We also rode on the tallest spinning swings ride I have ever ever ever seen, it was like 10 stories high at least, and we were up spinning over Copenhagen in those dinky little swings, but the terror of it was far outweighed by the view and the calmness that ride always brings no matter how high you are.

On the way home I bought a beer and drank it while walking down the sidewalk since its legal to do that there, so I figured I ought to. Of course I am so used to strict ol' Boston that I felt like a criminal, especially when three policemen came running at me full speed clutching their guns. It wasn't until they ran past me to a shop that was probably being robbed that I realized that three policemen with guns is overkill for one person drinking from an open container, particularly when its legal. Its funny that it was in Copenhagen that I saw police pull guns for the first time in my life, especially since no one even locks their bikes up, but I think a shop was being robbed or something. Don't worry, no one was hurt, though I probably shouldn't have told this story because now you'll all be worrying. I think they were just potato guns and the policemen were doing a drill : )
Anyways, I'm tired of typing and in Germany now after a slightly chaotic train ride (though it was awesome when our train drove right onto a ferry to get across the baltic sea). I'll update once my fingers recover from typing three entries in in a row. Ciao.

2008-06-19T00:31:00.004+03:00

Last night in Reykjavik. Last night in Iceland (though I'll be back here for a day on my way home in July) Somehow I survived being camp manager without too many mishaps. We just have to pack up camp tomorrow morning and I'm free! Off to Denmark. It's been an interesting month and I've seen and done amazing things. But I'm ready to leave this practically arctic island for warmer waters (and a much smaller group to travel with). We spent our last two days before returning to the civilization of Reykjavik at a place called Landmannalauger.

It is located in the uninhabitable interior of Iceland. This area is much different from most of Iceland in that its lava is primarily rhyolite instead of basalt, so it is more explosive and much more colorful once it has cooled. When we arrived, I was not impressed because the wind was whipping and rain was pouring and the clouds were so low that the blue red and orange mountains were out of view. The wind gets so powerful here that the campground provides piles of small boulders that you lug over and drop on the edges of your tent so it doesn't blow away. Only two tents collapsed while we were there : ) But the clouds lifted that evening after a few hours of huddling in our tents, and Andy and I were able to go on one of our "strolls" that invariably ends up being a hike for which we brought no provisions (because we always want to go just a little bit farther, haha). We walked over the towering obsidian lava flow adjacent to the campground (you can see the flow viewed from above in the picture above) to a steaming fumarole backdropped by the most colorful mountain in Iceland. It's streaked with red orange and blue with steam and fluorescent sulfur deposits oozing out of its sides.

That evening we soaked in the famous hot spring near the campground. One river emerges from the lava flow boiling hot and another freezing cold and they mix in the hot spring, but really, it ended up being a boil-freeze spring, most uncomfortable, plus it is rumored to contain duck itch, so I didn't linger. Next day, me and five others went on a longer hike up the colorful mountain and along a ridge line above the valley which actually is the caldera wall of a 18km wide crater. Later, I actually noticed that a picture of this trail is used in an advertisement for a tour bus company but there is no way you would get a tour bus up this mountain. I won't even attempt to describe the hike...but it made a perfect ending to a great trip. The best part might have been sledding down slopes that were still covered in snow on the butts of our rainpants. Much better on the knees than walking down...but not so good for the butt, as evidenced by my bruised tailbone...see a view from the hike in the picture below that Andy took of me.

Then we packed up our wind weary camp for two final days in Reykjavik. My camp managing duties were mostly over, the biggest task being giving away all the food and supplies we had left over which wasn't too unpleasant. Andy and I spent our time going to museums, galleries, parks and cafes in the city. Art in Iceland is rather young since they spent most of their earlier years trying not to starve to death instead of painting, so all of the art was crazy contemporary stuff, some rather disturbing. My favorite was an exhibit where only one person at a time was allowed in. You were closed in by a big refrigerator door into a very dark white fog filled tunnel that you had to navigate with your hands. I ran into a few walls. The tunnel just ended up getting smaller and smaller so 15 minutes later you were stuck in a wedge and had to turn back. Made me appreciate what it might be like to be blind, deaf, and lost.

Anyway, we also walked through the University of Iceland, it was rather industrial looking and completely lacking in charm so again I feel my decision was the right one. At the end of the day, after a $12 falafel, we went to the volcano show - filmed by a volcano enthusiast icelander over the last 50 years. he was actually the guy selling tickets too, though I don't think he gets around so well on volcanos anymore. The show was amazing, all footage filmed by that one guy showing all of the places we had visited over the last month while they were erupting.

Right before going to the airport, we stopped at the renowned Blue Lagoon. It is a gorgeous bluish colored steaming geothermal pool, you can't see more than two inches into the water. But it wasn't all pleasant, the silica mud in the water and that you are supposed to smear on your face stung, and it made my hair feel like straw and cost $30 for an hour or so of soaking time. Thank god Northeastern paid for it... and then I flew away to Denmark and there ended my Northeastern career. Farewell Northeastern. Hello Europe.

2008-06-14T00:14:00.003+03:00

We've had an adventurous couple of days...we've done a few more glacier hikes, the most notable one being when we completely traversed Skaftafellsjokull. We hadn't planned on doing so that morning, but our professor got really excited about it and thought that since there were big rocks hanging over our heads looking like they were going to fall where we got on the glacier, we should go across the glacier (3 km and many many crevasses later) to where there might not be lots of rocks hanging over our heads...ha! This was probably my favorite hike yet, but since several in the group had bad knees and such and many more completely lack common sense, it could have ended badly...but didn't. Once we made it across after safely navigating the glacier, we had to walk waaaaay further down along the side of the glacier to get out with way more loose boulders above our heads and chasms and cliffs and it was rather treacherous, but again, no one died, only one person got hurt a little and it was a lot of fun. But then once we got to the end of the glacier, the one cell phone we had wouldn't work so we couldn't call our driver to come pick us up now that we were 10km away from camp (we had sent him away for the day thinking we would be walking back to the campground from the near side of the glacier and wouldn't need him). Some pictures from the hike below:

I tried to stop a car to ask to use their phone...they were very hesitant to stop and to roll down their window, though I thnk it might have had something to do with the fact that I was holding an ice axe? When they finally realized I wasn't an axe murderer, turns out they were french, so I got to use my french at last but still their phone didn't work so we walked back anyway, even though our one girl was injured. Uh well.

The next day I stayed behind at Skaftafell National Park where we were camping while the rest went and did their geology exercise counting lichens or cobbles or something boring and I hiked a 15 km loop up towards teh Vatnajokull icecap. It was certainly not a clear day, but before I went up in the clouds, I had a wonderful view of the glacier we had crossed the day before. And though I couldn't see down when I was up high, the clouds blowing around me and the mysterious gloom landscape was beautiful, particularly the vibrant green moss that softens the hard edges of Iceland. Once in a while the clouds parted and I could see a sun illuminated valley below with a small almost-glacier in it. It was a wonderful hike and a much needed escape from the whiny voices of the group... I'm not much of a group tour kind of person I have learned.

On our way to Skaftafell, we stopped at the Jokulsarlon lagoon - filled with enormous and dynamic icebergs. One iceberg cracked in half while I was standing there. It just tipped way up in the air like the sinking titantic and smashed back down in the water, sending gelatinous waves onshore. Such a strange and beautiful place. There were seals swimming between the bergs. They actually filmed two James Bond films there, I saw clips of them in the glacier museum in Hofn.

Now we are in Skogar for two nights, camped at the foot of the most beautiful waterfall, Skogafoss. If you walk really close to the falls, in the mist, you see a rainbow that completely encircles you. Today, I again stayed back while the group did their geology (though I forgot to send the lunch cooler with them...whoops! A symptom of my horrible allergic reaction to the wool that everyone has bought).

I hiked up on the plateau above Skogafoss, following its river. The river has cut a deep dark mysterious mossy canyon thorugh this plateau, filled with spectacular waterfalls, so while the students were counting lichens on rocks, I was witnessing one of the most beautiful rivers I have ever seen. The track goes for 6 days and ends in Landmannalauger, our next stop. Someday I want to come back and do the whole trail, but today I just turned aroudn at lunch, came back in the rain to take a cold shower that cost 200 kroner (about 3 dollars). A let down to an otherwise marvelous day.

2008-06-09T12:40:00.004+03:00

There are two dentists in Hofn, and both are on Holiday. What luck. I guess my tooth will have to wait. I stayed home today to try to get my tooth fixed, but I guess I´ll just have to relax now in a nice quiet house with a computer all to myself. Oh darn.

Yesterday we walked on a glacier for the first time. It was a beautiful day for it, we could see the entire glacier as we drove up to it, and a bit of the ice cap above it.

To get to the foot of the glacier, the bus had to drive along a long skinny levy holding back a giant glacial lake, when we reached the end, the bus went to turn around, and sunk into a big pile of gravel that was actually just overlying mud. The tire was half underground. All 21 of us grabbed onto a big rope tied onto the back of the bus and pulled while the bus driver backed up. No good. Then we dug out the wheels some more and half pushed and half pulled. No good. Then we put all the heavy people in the back of the bus to try to lift the weight off the front wheels while the other half pulled. Still no good. So we just went and climbed on the glacier and our bus driver called in a tow truck.

Walking on this glacier was different from the last time I walked on one...maybe because no one was carving steps for me this time, heh. We were down at the bottom of the glacier on ice that was melted on the top so it had a rough surface. We were also wearing crampons, which I found to be similar to what I expect velcro shoes are like. You can walk straight up and down steep ice slopes like a gecko. Though I was stressed out the whole time we were on the glacier because I was around 20 other people, 19 of whom had never walked with crampons, and 15 of whom were flailing their ice axes around and dancing in their crampons on sheer slopes. I am very grateful to have not ended up with a crampon stuck in my side or an ice axe in my foot. There were some little holes in the ice with water draining into them, one went down 50 feet or so and I still couldn´t see the bottom. What had looked like tiny cracks from afar turned out to be giant crevasses and towers of ice. It made it difficult for us to travel too far on the glacier, but it was very Dr. Seuss-like to look at anyway.

We left the glacier early to get back to the grocery store to buy dinner. Everything closes really early on Sunday´s here, if it opens at all... we had checked the hours before we left, but when we got back an hour before we thought it was going to close, it was closed! Turns out the sign that we had looked at was for a different store. So I had my first major challenge as camp director...scraping together a dinner for 21 from gas station food and whatever food we had left. Luckily we had some flour left...so we had pancakes again. Hopefully today the group will get back before it closes because if they don´t, we´ll be having pickles and cereal for dinner.

2008-06-08T11:39:00.003+03:00

It poured last night in Hofn, and the wind was incredible, it was nice to fall asleep to, especially since our roof is corrugated iron (like all roofs here). Hofn is located on a peninsula between harbors and open ocean, so it is rather exposed to ocean. But this morning the perpetual clouds that have been hovering over Hofn the last three days we´ve been here have lifted and there is sun. We can see the mountains and several small glaciers and a glimpse of the giant ice cap, Vatnajokull. We took a trip to the foot of one glacier the other day, but didn´t go on it. The glaciers look different here...the water is brown, not turquoise, like all the other glacial rivers I´ve seen. I think it might either be due to the lower angle of the sun or because most of the sediment in the water is basalt...which is black. I´m not sure which.

So, since I seem to be developing a pattern of one medical catastrophe per trip, the filling I got in a tooth a few days before I left has somehow fallen out...I´m not sure how, since the filling was between two teeth and the top is still intact...the side of the filling is poking out between my teeth and feels like a popcorn kernel skin stuck there. I guess I´ll have to find a dentist sometime while I am here...though I´m not sure how good my chances are of finding one here in this tiny town. I´ve also been having a lot of migraines, which is a pain in the butt since it renders me practically blind for a few hours. I think it´s either because of all the perfume people are wearing or some preservative in the food here, but I hope they stop.

Yesterday was our day off...because it was our bus drivers day off. I had a nice lazy day wandering around town and going to the Sundlaug (swimming pool). Every tiny town has a swimming pool with several hot pots of various temperatures and a big pool that is about the temperature of a hot tub, but is for swimming laps. This is one aspect of Icelandic culture that I am very fond of...though they have very strict washing guidelines before you go in...you have to wash the 'red zones' (displayed on a sign) without a swimsuit on before you can enter because they hardly put any chemicals in the pools. This is difficult for us Americans used to excessive modesty. At the pool in Reykjavik they even had a woman wandering around making sure you were taking your swimsuit off to shower...she actually confronted some of the girls in my group and made them take their suits off. Weeeird.

Today we´re venturing onto a glacier. We all have our crampons and ice axes, but none of us know how to use them, so I hope I don´t end up with a crampon in my face. On that note, I´m going to go put some sunscreen on so I don´t turn up looking like a cherry.

2008-06-06T11:09:00.002+03:00

Note> I wrote this on paper yesterday

At this moment we're driving next to a huge lake that is separated from the ocean by a barrier beach. The lake is dotted with thousands of swans, the young swans all hang out together in this lake until they are old enough to pair off and breed. I don't often think of swans as wild animals - rather as decorative birds in a park, but here they are wild and very common.

Before this lake is the most dangerous road in all of Iceland, and we just drove on it in a giant bus. The road is part of the Ring Road, Icelands main connecting "highway" and is the only way to get around Iceland here without going allllll the way around the other way. This road is not paved at this spot because it is basically built on the side of a giant landslide, the road is 100's of feet directly above the ocean, and sometimes the road just randomly slides into the sea, or is wiped off the mountain by a landslide from above. This was one of those times where I was helpless because my life was entirely in the hands of another - and in this case, in the hands of our grumpy old bus driver.

2008-06-04T17:20:00.005+03:00

It seems that everywhere we go, we leave behind disaster. 2 days after we drove through Selfoss, near Reykjavik, there was a 6.3 magnitude earthquake there. This is Iceland's biggest earthquake since 2000 I think. It´s hard to get news of it because the papers are all in Icelandic and my comprehension has not yet reached the level of a 3 year old Icelander. I bet I´d know more about it if I was in the US. We didn´t even get to feel any ground shaking because we were way on teh opposite side of the Island by then.

Then, yesterday, we heard news that a Polar Bear had drifted onshore on an iceberg from Greenland at a place we had been just two days before. This is a very rare occurrence, happens about every 15 years or so, and also a very dangerous one because the bear has been floating for quite some days with nothing to eat, and once it gets on shore, there are lots of fat juicy and slow humans waddling around. Polar Bears are known to predate humans, even when they aren´t starving. They shot it almost as soon as the first person saw it. The bear had almost no meat left on his bones. The bear will go the Natural History museum. If I was the Polar Bear, I would have just swam through the Puffin colony we saw yesterday. Literally millions of puffins were just floating offshore. Unfortunately they were too far away to see in any detail.

Our main stop yesterday was to visit the site of the 3rd or 4th largest flood on earth. The flood happened about 2000 years ago when several volcanic eruptions took place under Vatnajökull - the largest icecap in Iceland. The incredibly hot magma of course melted tons of water, creating an enormous flood, the river channel was tens of miles wide in places and tens to hundreds of meters thick, leaving ripple marks bigger than houses. We ate lunch at a horseshoe shaped canyon that was once an enormous waterfall, The plunge pool is still filled with water. Today we drove across the entire bed of the river and it took us half an hour at least. Now the river is a large desert filled with black sand dunes and lots of wind. I still have dust in my eyes.

2008-06-02T17:10:00.004+03:00

It was a full day around Myvatn today. We started by climbing a giant tuff cone, then dropping down the other side into Dommelgangur (the Black Castle). Dommelgangur was once a giant blister filled with lava, it eventually popped and the lava puss oozed out, but it left behind a craggy black mazelike wonderland. The picture below is Andy on the tuff cone.

After that, we went to see the rootless craters - the result of explosions that occurred when basaltic lava flows came in contact with the lake water. However, I hardly saw the craters because the midges were so thick. I stood in a smoke cloud of midges, the buzzing was deafening, and the flies tickle your face and try to hitchhike all over your clothes. Throughout the walk, more and more midges latched on, they particularly liked my green backpack. Several girls in the group are having a miserable time here in Myvatn, particularly after that hike - but I think the beauty and otherworldliness - and the amazing birds - far outweigh the fact that if you walk ten feet in grass while wearing sandals, you wind up with hundreds of squished bugs on your feet.

My favorite stop of the day was at the location of the 1780s and 1970s Krafla fires - or fissure eruptions. Walking on the lava from the 1970s eruptions was unspeakably amazing to a volcano enthusiast. It was as if the eruption ended last week, because there were open fissures and steaming craters everywhere, not to mention the heavy sulfurous air draping the landscape. In some places you would almost burn your hand simply by placing it on the ground. There were flow structures and lava tubes galore, and nearby was an enormous geothermal power plant complex spewing steam high into the sky. Pictures below are from there...note the great strength I have acquired since being in Iceland.

Yesterday, we found a trail not far from our campsite that lead to a huge fissure with giant toppled basalt columns. A metal staircase took us down into the fissure and then a chain led down into a deep warm geothermal pool in the bottom of the cavern. Some people in the group went swimming, but I had just returned from a dip in the geothermally heated swimming pool, hot pot and cedar sauna, so swimming in a crevice filled with lukewarm stagnant water and the cooties of my dirty comrades wasn´t so appealing, despite the novelty of swimming in a fissure. We found another similar (but hotter and less stagnant) hot pool in a lava tube further away, but we´re all too tired to walk that far today.

I saw my first sunset of the trip yesterday night. It started at about 11pm and ended at about 1 am when the sun started to rise again. This perpetual night thing is growing on me, but still, I think that the second I see nighttime again I´m going to fall asleep instantly.