To Infinity and Beyond

And Snow Will Make the Flowers Grow

2012-02-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

The day today is Sunday 19 February, and last night was the annual Caldwell Fellows Gala at NC State.

I begin with this tidbit for a variety of reasons: to recall the Caldwell-inspired week I have just had, to reflect on the Caldwell-inspired values of personal development and thinking big, and to remember the importance of the Caldwell family for bringing about positive tangible change on scales from NC State to the world.*

Recall
I have had the fantastic opportunity to welcome a Caldwell guest to Oxford this week. Kayla (NCSU '11) has been spending the year in Lyon, France teaching English and developing her own proficiency in French. Currently on holiday, she decided to make this pilgrimage to England in hopes of finding some holy grails of English literature. Aiding her in this quest, we spent the week examining sights around Oxford, checking out multiple libraries (pretending to be Shakespeare), eating at the Eagle & Child (pretending to be Lewis and Tolkien), and walking the snowy English countryside (pretending to be Austen and Dickens). We even found the first flower buds of spring!

For me, the highlight of Kayla's visit was our trip to London. To begin, we met another Caldwell, Sara (NCSU '08?) for lunch near her work. I thoroughly enjoyed talking not only about news from the Caldwell community, but also about living abroad, breaking down personal barriers, and recognizing the far-reaching impacts of being a (high-profile) leader. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce with Sara, so I look forward to visiting with her in London more often over the next several years!

From there, Kayla and I ventured up to the British Library. Having visited once already, I took pleasure in seeing Kayla divulge in the many incredible books and - especially - Jane Austen's writing desk. With waning time, we traversed London via the Tube in order to catch Evensong at Westminster Abbey. I must say that the acoustics were incredibly clear and that the organ/choir were, in a word, heavenly. I couldn't help but think back upon the concert Kalli and I heard at Notre Dame in November. Indeed, both were incredible, but the chamber-sized sound was just so crisp in Westminster that I was a bit more enraptured.

Finally, we walked across the Thames in hopes of finding dinner. Kayla fancied fish and chips, so I searched in vain along the waterfront by the London Eye. At last, dejected and wet from the mist, we decided to try our luck in West End, where we needed to be for Les Miserables. Thankfully, we found a real hole-in-the-wall chippy; it sort of reminded me of a small-scale Long John Silvers. We watched as the man deep-fried two frozen fillets. Sure enough, they were tasty (If it's deep fried it can't be that bad!) but not exactly gourmet. Les Mis was splendid as always, and we returned to Oxford, quite content.

It was fantastic having Kayla in town. As an added bonus, she fit in well with the Keble crowd and immediately clicked with my dance partner, Jenna. Hopefully I (and maybe Jenna too?) will get the chance to visit her in Lyon before her teaching program ends in April.

On top of all this fantastic-ness, yesterday was the second competition of four this term. Jenna and I were both nursing injuries coming into the competition, so we weren't overwhelmingly optimistic regarding our dancing. As it turned out, however, we had a really good day of dance! In the morning, we semifinaled in both waltz and quickstep (exact placings to follow), and in the afternoon, we placed 3rd in cha cha (our first cha final!) and semifinaled in jive. Unfortunately, we were the only beginners couple to even make the quarters in jive; I am really hoping that we as a team can pull it together before the championship in two weeks. Overall, Cambridge and Imperial are looking better and better while Oxford seems to be trapped in mediocrity land. Ugh.

Finally, tonight was the "Electricity-free Acoustic Open Mic Night" in the MCR. Six of us performed a total of about 20 songs by candlelight in the MCR. Aside from being unable to read my Bach Unaccompanied Prelude in the darkness, it was a wonderfully soothing evening. Charlie went first, performing three great pieces on guitar, including one that she wrote herself. Then, Luke (guitar), Vincent (banjo), and I performed seven songs - six Irish folk songs that Luke picked out/wrote, and the Bach Prelude. Finally Jess and Rose played some amazing music on guitar and mandolin, including a great song called "Shine On, Harvest Moon" from the first decade of the 20th century. It was a truly brilliant evening with really beautiful music.

Reflect
Last Sunday night's dinner was what they call "half way hall." This is because Sunday 5th week of Hilary marks the half way point for the school year and, for 2nd year students, the half way point of their Oxford education (Oxford undergraduate degrees are only three years, unlike the four requisite years in the US). At the year's half way point, it is a good time to reflect on how far I have come so far.

In many senses, being a student at Oxford is like being a Caldwell Fellow. The "work hard-play hard" mentality is in full effect here, and to some extent I think Trinity term will be even more intense for most people. Additionally, thriving here requires students to think big and think outside the box. One must make connections and develop a network to get the most of being at Oxford. In fact, it is practically impossible to avoid becoming immersed in social situations. The free flow of unique ideas perpetrated by the college system is excellent.

In other senses, Oxford is about capitalizing on Franklin Scholars-style opportunities.* In my own case, it is proving insufficient to merely study civil engineering. I am asked to tie in elements of several different fields to solve complex, interdisciplinary problems. The academics here are the real deal. Further, Oxford places a high value on isolated, mind-broadening experiences. Here, it is normal and encouraged for students to simply sit in a pub/kitchen/cafe/hall discussing current events or exchanging stories about travels. So-called 'graduate discussion evenings' highlight intellectual student presentations such as "Deobandi Islam: Religious Revival, Nationalism, and the Communalism Problem," "Build Your Own Molecular Robot," and "The Portrait of the Artist as a Cultural Celebrity." These opportunities - like the Franklin Lecture Series - promote cultural understanding, intellectual diversity and critical thinking.

In a final respect, being a student here can be extraordinarily normal. Perhaps that is hard to believe given the previous information, but one must remember that people are people; students are students regardless of cultural, economic, or other differences. As I recall from my times in Ecuador and China, I was surprised at how normally people lived their lives. Even at Oxford, it should be no surprise that students aged 18-25 get into the same kinds of nonsense as they would at NC State or at any other school.

So where am I? Am I engaged in my school and community? Do I give back as much as I take in? Am I a positive influence on those around me? How am I using God's gifts and talents to impact those around me for the better? Am I investing in the future appropriately? These are questions which I will seek to answer over the coming days, using the lessons learned from the Caldwell program.

Remember
As Kayla and I were walking through the countryside, we were discussing the merits of a romantic lifestyle. Then I realized: this is it! How much more romantic does it get than studying at Oxford with engineering, music, dancing, and friends in multitudes? Is this even real? On such an amazing weekend as this, it is thus only right that I think back to the Caldwell Fellows, reuniting together some 3800 miles away from here. To the program and the people that inspired me to "think big" and act globally, I offer my gratitude.

*NB: The Caldwell Fellows is a program at NC State University which promotes personal development through scholarship, leadership, and service. It is the oldest active scholarship at NC State, selecting approximately 25 freshmen each year to carry on the legacy of former NCSU chancellor, John T. Caldwell. The Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program is a double major program at NC State for students wishing to pursue studies in both engineering and the humanities. The program stresses the links between the two fields through seminars in Science, Technology, & Society (STS) and service/academic/social events hosted by the student-led BFS Council.

Brought to you by the letter haitch

2012-02-09T19:39:00.001-05:00

Well now, what a physically/mentally/emotionally challenging week and a half it has been!

Here's a road map for this blog post: challenging times, dance competition, snow, Super Bowl Sunday, research update, preparations for Kayla, culture corner, words of the day

First, as most of you already know, my grandfather passed away last Thursday, 2 Feb. I learned the news right after finishing a seminar about a modeling software and only shortly before heading to dance rehearsal. I was glad to talk to my parents via Skype about the situation, but I must have been visibly shaken since my (amazing) dance partner took one look at me as I walked into rehearsal and immediately knew something wasn't right. Anyway, without going into details, she was very good about listening to me talk it out and we ended up having a great practice... well... except when our coach singled us out for being a bit too intense on the floor, haha! Who knew you could over-dance? Anyway, still working on turning it back a bit...

On Saturday, Jenna and I dedicated our dancing at the Sheffield competition to grandpa's memory. I wrote "CEC 1928-2012" on the reverse side of our competition number, which, ironically, I just realized was 28. Unfortunately, that was one of the few real positives of the day. We had fun and we danced fairly well, but we never really got into a groove in ballroom. Furthermore, the Oxford team was missing some of its best competitors and the judges seemed to be fairly obviously biased towards the other schools. The team's best finish was 4th; Jenna and my best finish was 6th in Jive, unless you count the "Open Rock 'n' Roll" competition, at which we just goofed around (yay shag dance/swing mix?) and earned 5th out of 7.

When the competition ended, there was most of an inch of snow on the ground in Sheffield. We left at 8:30 pm but it was too late. What should have been a three hour ride turned into a near-six hour ride. Groggily, we rolled into Oxford at 2 am, tired, disappointed, and ready for sleep.

Super bowl Sunday rolled around early! I had agreed to host a super bowl party in the style of the MCR food nights I've been hosting, which meant that my alarm went off at 10 am so I could start pulling together recipes. My faithful dance partner - while not a Keble member - had expressed interest in helping to cook, so she joined me just after noon to go shopping. As usual, she was amazing, since I did not end up having any other help all afternoon. Jenna and I cooked from 2:45 to 8:30 straight, but finished right on schedule. The menu for 30? Guacamole, Tyler & Rachael's "Dip-dip," bruschettas, baked macaroni 'n' cheese, hand fried garlic buffalo wings, puppy chow (i.e. muddy buddy chex mix), sugar cookies (w/ blue frosting), and Jenna's own gloriously rich peanut butter-chocolate ganache cupcakes. Yeah, it was a lot of cooking, but everyone loved it! It was a massive success, aside from the fact that I stayed up until 3:30 am watching the Patriots screw up :-P Oh well.

Now a research update! On Friday of last week, I took a field trip to the Nuffield Orthopedic Center (NOC), where they have a gait lab. I observed an undergraduate lab, which exhibited the fancy equipment used to model a person's stride. Force plates, infrared motion cameras, cool reflective balls like in the movies... they had it all. Not only did I really find it interesting, but the professor was keen on helping me with my research. Since then, I have been reading medical journals to learn more about ground reaction forces, lateral displacement and forces, and footstep synchronization. Some time near the end of term, I will hopefully meet with my two advisers and the two NOC professors and hash out a more distinct research plan. Yay multidisciplinary studies!

So moving forward, I have yet another busy week ahead! For the second term in a row, I have the excitement of playing host for a friend from NC State. My friend Kayla, from the NCSU Caldwell Fellows, has been teaching English in Lyon, France this year. Currently, she's on holiday, so she will be spending a week in Oxford, starting tomorrow, before spending a week in Bath. I'm particularly excited for Monday, when we'll be heading into London for some sightseeing and Les Miserables!!

Of course, she's coming in tomorrow night, but it's currently snowing here in Oxford. Hopefully enough time will pass that planes/trains/buses aren't delayed!

CULTURE CORNER
The letter H. Pronounced "haitch," it is the 8th letter of the alphabet. It is used in words like hour (pronounced "how-er"), honest (han-est), and - my favorite - herbal (her-bal). Basically, there is no silent 'h' in British English. Why not? Who knows.

I think I'll also add here that they don't use the letter 'Z' (Pronounced "zee") but instead, they use the letter "Z" (Pronounced "zed"). Thus, the spelling of "hazy" would be said, haitch-a-zed-why.

Why? I don't know. He's on third and we're not talking about him.

On another cultural note, the British don't know about graham crackers! (unrelated: the name would be pronounced, gray-ham). While digestive biscuits are delicious, I understand that they provide the critical foundation for British s'mores. What a travesty!! I must bring gray-ham crackers back to England from the US in June...

Words of the Day
Flapjack. n. A chewy bar-like food consisting of rolled oats and a sweet, sticky glue-like liquid such as honey. It does not usually contain raisins, sultanas, chocolate, or other adulterations. syn. granola bar (which they don't have here).

Braces. n. An elastic cloth band that stretches from the front of one's trousers, over the shoulders, and attaches to the back of the same trousers. syn. suspenders (US)

Suspenders. n. A button that holds up a woman's stockings. syn. garter (US)

Railroad tracks. n. 1. A pair of parallel steel bars upon which a railroad train travels. 2. A system of mounts and wires used by an orthodontist to straighten a patient's teeth. syn. braces (US)

Haggis with a Side of Spam

2012-01-29T10:31:00.001-05:00

To begin this week's blog, I would like to clarify a point from my previous post. No fewer than three readers have pointed out an apparent misuse of the word cheeky. Upon further discussions (and some brief Googling), I have come to learn that cheeky can have multiple meanings. While the traditional definition of cheeky is someone insolent or wittingly snide, the British - and mainly the younger generations - have adopted a slightly different definition. In fact, this secondary definition does not have the inherently negative connotation of the traditional definition, but rather errs to the positive side of neutral. Nonetheless, my previous definition also needs a little refinement:

Cheeky. adj. 1. Displaying insolence or irreverence. 2. Someone or something deemed superficially good but exhibiting qualities of naughtiness or feigned innocence. A guilty pleasure.

As one can tell, the second definition is sort of a twisted version of the first, so while the connotations are oppositely polarized (positive/negative), the definitions are actually somewhat similar. Lest I digress into etymology, shall we call these definitions sufficient for our purposes? Thanks to all for raising the red flags - I now have a better understanding of the word myself.

*****
This past week has been rather full of excitement, and I daresay that the remainder of Hilary Term (yes, the remaining three quarters of it) will be jam-packed with action. If all goes well, you will totally get your money's worth from reading this blog.

Last Saturday, I had the fantastic opportunity to catch up with an old church friend here in Oxford! Mr. Watters - who co-led Potomac Baptist's youth program for several years with his wife - was in the middle of a business trip to London. After eating at the tasty "Fire and Stone" pizza restaurant, we walked the grand perimeter of Oxford, stopping in Keble, Magdalen, and Christ Church colleges to enjoy the scenery. I really enjoyed getting to see him again, since I have not had the chance to do so for several years.

On Sunday I went to an Anglican service in Keble chapel with a couple other grads. The choir and organ were beautiful, but it was quite sad that the service was attended by fewer than ten people! After the service, the priest invited us into the SCR (Senior Common Room, i.e. the fellows and warden) for a glass of wine before dinner. I hope to attend these 5:30 services more often; as I do, I will comment more about the facets of the Anglican church as compared to Protestantism.

Monday was yet another busy day. I hosted the first Acland food night of the term, featuring two types of chili, cornbread, cucumber salad, and tiramisu. It was particularly fitting (though admittedly coincidental) to make mom's chili since it happened to be her birthday. It was a huge success - 8 quarts of chili disappeared in under 30 minutes! The cornbread and tiramisu were also highlights of the evening, the former because of its non-existence in Britain (I brought a mix from the US) and the latter because it was just delicious. The only thing that was not perfect was that due to a time restriction, I did not let the custard cool/thicken completely before pouring the tiramisu... so the lady fingers floated. Oops! Now I know for next time. On a marginally unrelated note, I learned that my dance partner really likes to bake, so I have since engaged in a confectionary trading system. I receive cupcakes (chocolate, choc-peanut butter) in exchange for tiramisu and pumpkin choc chip cookies. That seems fair, right? Good thing we dance 10 hours per week!

Wednesday's excitement consisted of Burns Night. Robert Burns was a famous Scottish poet, particularly known for one Address to Haggis. To celebrate, it is evidently traditional to serve said terrible beasty - a sheep's stomach stuffed with minced heart, liver, and lungs - for dinner. I understand that the meal usually begins by reciting the Address to Haggis and dramatically cutting open the steaming, boiled stomach when dictated by the poem. Mercifully, Keble Hall kept the Address but chose to merely set before each of us a scoop of non-descript purplish-brown meat mush, filled with small white chunks resembling (but definitely not consisting of) finely chopped garlic. In spite of its unappealing appearance and contents, I actually kind of enjoyed it. The haggis had a nice spice which gave it a fairly decent flavour. My British comrades did say, however, that while it was "recognizably haggis," a significantly higher quality haggis is standard elsewhere in the country. The other nice part of the meal was the cranachan, a whipped cream-based dessert filled with raspberries, honey, oats, and (supposedly) a touch of whiskey. It was really good.

What's the best way to follow up a little haggis? A lot of SPAM! Or, perhaps I should say Spamalot! This Tony Award winning musical is "lovingly ripped off from" Monty Python and the Holy Grail and was showing in Oxford's New Theatre, on tour. All the great subplots were written in, including the Knights-Who-Say-Ni, the Trojan Bunny, the Dark Knight ('tis but a flesh wound!), and the Holy Hand Grenade. Believe it or not, the plot was even sillier than the original movie, thoroughly satirizing Broadway and the entire genre of musicals. Perhaps the best part was that even the actors were caught up in the show, breaking character once or twice, unable to contain their own laughter.

So that, in a nutshell, was Hilary week two. I mentioned before that the action will not cease this term, so here's a teaser of coming events:
-Dance competitions in four of the next five weekends (Sheffield, off-weekend, Bath, TBD location, Blackpool)
-A visit from NCSU Caldwell Fellows Alum, Kayla, who has been teaching English in Lyon, France this year
-Keble MCR music night in February, playing cello alongside guitarist Luke and banjoist (?) Vincent
-Planned musicals: Les Mis and The King and I
-A trip with the Clarendon Scholars to Stonehenge and Avebury on March 11
-A conference in London on 15 March followed by St Patrick's Day weekend in Dublin with a friend from last year's Belize Trip
-A visit with NCSU InterVarsity Christian Fellowship friend, Kaylee, who just arrived in England for a semester study abroad in Bath

CULTURE CORNER
Random tidbit, also following up from last post: remember how I was commenting on the interesting people here in Oxford? As it turns out, the other American in my civil engineering lab was NCAA's Female Athlete of the Year in 2010. Apparently, she's going pro in something other than swimming :-)

Words of the Day:

stash: n. any article of athletic clothing consisting of a team logo, the athlete's name, the university name, and probably an sponsor's name/logo. ex: Last weekend, I received my dance team stash, consisting of a hoodie and joggers.
kit: n. see stash. ex: The kit we ordered for the team is embroidered with everyone's names.
joggers: n. sweat pants or track pants, not to be confused with simply pants, which refers to someone's underwear.

*****
Finally, on a more serious note, I'd like to dedicate this blog to my grandfather. Over Christmas holiday, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. The surgery removed a one foot long section of his colon. While the surgery was initially successful last weekend, his health has since declined. Currently, he is being held in a medically induced coma.

Grandpa has always been an avid reader of this blog and a constant supporter of my travels and my academics. During this time, I ask for your prayers not only for him, but also my parents, my aunt, and my grandmother. Thank you.

Hilary-arious!

2012-01-18T18:45:00.001-05:00

It's a new year, a new term, but - big shock - the same old Oxford :-)

I don't really know what I'm going to write about in this blog post, so prepare yourselves for some generic rambling as I recount my first week back at school.

It all started last Sunday as I sleepily got off the bus in Oxford at 9:30 am. After unpacking, I went to Green's Cafe with a couple others for a cheeky bite to eat (see below) and then nearly fell asleep during the conversation. Immediately, I knew I was in for a disastrous re-acclamation to GMT. That night I slept amazingly, but over the next few days, I confess I had a bit of trouble falling asleep. Thus, I made up for it by taking naps during lunch time.

In the lab, my new years resolution was to spend more time reading journal articles and a bit less time pouring over models. I chose this because I realized that while the models are good practice, it's only through reading journals that I'll actually be able to formulate my own research subject. In truth, though, I think I'm getting along quite well. Sure, I work the same amount as the other freshers in my lab, but I'm of the opinion that the 4 of us exceed the average graduate fresher work week by 25-50%. It's not uncommon that freshers put in 4-7 hour days whereas I try to do 7-8. Don't worry, I don't plan to slack off any time soon :-)

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday we had our first practice hall of term. Even though it was -6 C when I embarked on the 30 minute walk to the gym, it felt great to be going to dancing again. Jenna is doing quite well and - in spite of spending the 2 hours trying to recall our routines - we're very optimistic about our dancing. Thankfully, my back seemed to heal just in time, as I am finally feeling comfortable with higher impact motions.

After dancing, I walked back to Keble with one of the other grads, Peter. Believe it or not, Peter has held internships with both Google and Facebook in the past two years, and as it turns out, he played a key role in coding Facebook's new "Timeline" layout. He was even mentioned by name in an article by Facebook for his instrumental role. Consider that one of the other grads I know is doing his DPhil with CERN's Large Hadron Collider (and will be taking his 2nd year there starting next fall), and you start to get a sense of the caliber of students here at Oxford.

Anyway, when we got back to Keble, I quickly made a change of clothes and then met a group to go see the Pitt Rivers Museum. Typical of European museums, it was jam-packed with specimens with relatively little background information. We did find the world's only extant dodo skeleton and we did find the peculiar collection of shrunken heads. I was particularly enamored, however, by the large collection of musical instruments. 90 minutes flew by and although I could have spent half again as much time looking at the area we covered, we didn't even make it off the ground floor. Looks like I'll have to go back some time!

On Sunday morning, I got up at 8:30, prepared for a little hike. My mission was to hike out to Botley, which is 2.5 miles from my dorm to the west. My purpose was to acquire a cello from a "business" (i.e. home) called Roger Claridge Violins. Mr. Claridge welcomed me into his home - the first English home I have been inside - and showed me into the back where his collection of instruments was scattered about. An hour later and a good deal of hemming and hawing later, and I walked out with a beginners cello. Yes, it's a little lacking in tone quality and it doesn't stay in tune very well, but I figured that hiring a cello for 3 months for 160 GBP was a better deal than shelling out 1500 GBP to buy outright a cello of my desired quality. Sadly (kind of), it's unsustainable to be renting a beginners cello every three months, so I'm pondering if I should just suck up the cost to buy the cello. According to Mr. Claridge, I should be able to sell back the cello with relatively little depreciation after three years. The reason I might not be able to afford that price is..... (hold that thought)

So after buying my beginners cello, I walked back into Oxford, stopping at the train station to procure a student railcard for cheap tickets! Once back in my room, I took my new instrument for a test drive with a sufficient amount of satisfaction (sort of like driving a used Honda when you should be driving a new Mazda 3.... but at least it's driving!). After the obligatory Sunday tea and cakes and the obligatory Sunday afternoon Tesco run, I headed into college for the first Sunday dinner of term. In spite of the potatoes, which were massively over-cooked, it was nice being back in Hall among friends. I do really enjoy this place a lot. That's why I finished the weekend by making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to share! It was a good weekend.

Still holding that thought? Great! So the reason why I might not be able to afford a cello is that I've started to think about some epic travel plans. Already one term down and the only three European cities I've been to have been Oxford, London, and Paris. Crisis! Picking up the slack, I booked tickets to go to Dublin, Ireland for St. Patrick's Day (a decision that was not half as spontaneous as I just made it sound) and I'm debating the merits of a multi-week trans-Europe train trip this summer. Imagine taking a few weeks to see Porto, Barcelona, Marsailles, Geneva, Florence, Rome, Athens, and Istanbul by train. Yes, it sounds intense... but that's how I like it: work hard, play hard. Alternatively/additionally, if all goes well, I'll also be able to make a couple quick day/weekend trips around England between now and the summertime. Perhaps Bath, York, Cardiff, Cornwall, the Lake District, or Edinburgh... the possibilities are seemingly endless, but the funding is definitely not... so we'll see about the cello :-/

Finally, here's a quick shout out to my Belize co-leader, Liz, who I believe is leaving the US today or tomorrow en route to Ecuador. She is beginning a two year Peace Corps stint to teach English in Ecuadorian secondary schools. Take care, Liz!

CULTURE CORNER
Today's culture corner is about exchanges! With 38 colleges in Oxford, there is a lot to see and do! Unfortunately, many colleges close their doors to outsiders, so the only way to see what other colleges are like is through exchanges. There are several types of exchanges: bar exchanges, dinner exchanges, 1-on-1 exchanges, so here's a quick synopsis.

Each term, Keble MCR host (side comment - note the plural verb after the ambiguously numbered group. This is always the case in British language... the BBC are... the dance team have.. etc) two exchange dinners. For each exchange dinner, there is a home half and an away half - you eat dinner (usually with pre- and post-dinner drinks) at the other college, and then the other college has dinner with you the next week. While the drinks can be good, one must be flexible enough to join on the preset dates and there are a lot of people to meet and interact with. I have yet to be able to attend one of these. (last term was Linacre and Nuffield, this term will be Merton and Hertford).

Bar Exchanges are similar to dinner exchanges, except the venue is at each college's bar instead of dining hall. This weekend, Keble MCR will be attending the away portion of a bar exchange with Magdalen College, and I believe the home half is next week. Since one of my lab mates is in Magdalen MCR, I will probably end up attending.

1-on-1 exchanges (name given by me) are the best. These informal exchanges occur when individuals from different colleges simply invite one another to lunch or dinner with them in college. Last week, I went to a lunch at St. John's College with another civil engineer and really enjoyed the opportunity to compare their Hall atmosphere and food with my own. It's also nice because one gets to know the other person a bit better than by just sitting in the same lab all day. I'll be inviting someone to Keble dinner on Sunday, and hopefully going to a dinner at Worcester sometime soon.

WORDS OF THE DAY
Believe it or not, I've picked two words which I am still working on inserting into my regular vocabulary. Rather challenging to define, I have chosen to focus more on the examples than the definitions.
Cheeky: adj. 1. a bit of something good 2. something positive ex: 1. After dinner, we should go out for some cheeky pudding. 2. I ran into Ellie earlier. She seems quite cheeky today.
Keen: adj. to have a desire for, or to really enjoy ex: Yes, I'm (quite) keen for a bit of cheeky pudding with Ellie at 8!

Merry Christmas, Part II

2011-12-21T14:10:00.003-05:00

"No man is a failure who has friends." -It's a Wonderful Life

Another year is behind us. I would have to say that 2011 ended as quick as it started, whatever that is supposed to mean. It has been a truly incredible year, however, so some reflection on the events that have transpired will allow me to look back from the future with fondness upon this time of transition.

January - It's hard to believe a year has passed, but I ushered in 2011 in Epcot at Disney World with my dear friend Kalli. The trip was utterly amazing. We had road tripped from North Carolina to see the Wolfpack beat West VA in the Champs Sports Bowl. Shortly after our return, I was notified of my interview for Oxford, at which my future supervisor recommended that I change my application from Masters to DPhil for funding purposes. The month was not entirely rosy, however, as mom experienced complications following her surgery and prepared to begin chemotherapy.

February - Looking back, February was practically non-existant, but at the time it seemed to crawl. Mom started chemo and started having side effects. In Raleigh, I spent hours upon hours working with the amazing Liz S. to prepare a team to travel to Belize for spring break. I also started spending a good deal of time at the Constructed Facilities Laboratory (CFL) working on Steven's steel bents, Chad's concrete columns, and my own (sort of..) pipe buckling models. I also learned that I was officially accepted to Oxford! Woo!

March - At last, spring break arrived! Liz, Dr. Jones, and I traveled with 14 other NC State students to Belize. With the exception of one hitch, the trip was essentially perfect. We had a fantastic time meeting the contractor, our hosts from TCGA, and of course the wonderful Bol family (in whose hotel we resided). The climate and weather were beautiful, we bonded as a team, and we completed an important project for the families of Silver Creek. We even got in some snorkeling, spelunking, swimming, and hiking. For most people, returning to the US was rather unexciting, but when I turned on my smartphone on the Newark Int'l Airport tarmac, I found out that I had been offered full funding to Oxford through the Clarendon Scholarship. My group flipped out and I was giddy going through customs. Believe it or not, the next week I took a beach trip to Corolla, NC with the Franklin Scholars, as my final spring retreat. It was a great trip, but hard to imagine it would barely make the excitement list for March!

April - By now, things were beginning to wrap up for the year. I had my last concert with the Raleigh Civic Symphony. My parents came down from Herndon even though mom was struggling mightily with chemo. Director Dr. Foy did recognize me for my five years of service to the orchestra, saying that I would be missed greatly. Honestly, I miss the orchestra quite a lot as well. As the year drew to a close, final banquets also took place - I gave my long awaited words of wisdom to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, playing the NCSU and Meredith Alma Maters on my cello for the first time. The next day - the day of the British Royal Wedding - I hosted my last event as President of the Franklins, the Spring Feast & Banter cookout. Oh yeah, and I ran a 10k. That was fun.

May - At the beginning of the month, I was still working hard at CFL while wrapping up things on campus. The Franklin Scholars hosted the annual senior awards reception, at which I received my Franklin key and the elusive Porter award. I was extremely happy to have my friends Tyler and Rachael there as guests, since they were such an important part of my life at NC State. In addition to the Franklin reception, I also went to the Caldwell senior send-off, where I was recognized along with the class of 2011 for graduating! That brings me to... GRADUATION! My parents and aunt came into Raleigh for the weekend of festivities, including two graduation ceremonies and an excellent brunch by the aforementioned Tyler and Rachael. I left everything in Raleigh and headed on a ten day Hawaii vacation with my parents, visiting the Big Island, Kauai, and Oahu. Aside from the scenery, beaches, canyons, volcanoes, food, and Pearl Harbor, the wildlife was the most amazing thing I saw. When I returned home, I stripped my room, repainted, and ordered new carpeting!

June - Mom's final chemo treatment was on my birthday, a truly great gift! After a week at home visiting with friends, I headed back to Raleigh to take up full time work at CFL. Outdoor work was hot, but computer modeling was monotonous. Thankfully, I was able to break it up by taking a long weekend to New York City with the aforementioned Tyler and Rachael, along with another good Franklin friend, Zack. We saw Billy Elliot the musical, ate in Chinatown and Little Italy, visited Ground Zero and Battery Park, walked Times Square numerous times, went up Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler building, ate lunch in Central Park, checked out the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of History, and went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I even ate some food cart gyros... and paid for it the next day.

July - For July fourth, I was fortunate to have the whole gang up from Raleigh to visit Herndon. Naturally, they included the aforementioned Tyler and Rachael, the aforementioned Zack, and also the aforementioned Kalli! We went to Harpers Ferry on a ridiculously hot day and attempted to go see the Capitol Fourth concert in DC the next day, but that ended up being (massively) rained out. On the fourth itself, however, we joined in the annual block party festivities, as mom and dad contributed some eight dishes including gluten free options for Kalli. It was massive. As July continued, I wrapped up a project for our partners in Belize which involved transferring twelve pages of hand sketches to AutoCAD, a computer drafting software. Work at CFL continued as usual while my roommate, Chris, and I packed up the apartment. At the end of the month, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

August - Finally moved home, I procrastinated on packing for England to spend time reading and visiting with friends. I worked around the house a bit, but mostly just enjoyed my time. I also moved most of my stuff back into my bedroom, nearly finishing the process that began in May. I also took two weeks to travel to New England with mom. It was wonderful seeing my grandparents, the aforementioned Aunt Carolyn, and my Uncle David. Hiking Mount Katahdin and Pemetic Mountain was were among the best highlights of the summer. I also enjoyed seeing the Red Sox's last good baseball game of the year (against the Yankees) and spending 2 days in the dark as Hurricane Irene blew through. Sadly, I missed the great DC earthquake, but dad (and the entire Herndon/Raleigh facebook community) kept me informed.

September - At last, packing ensued in full force. Final preparations completed, mom, dad, and I boarded a plane on 23 Sep for a week and a half in London. The sightseeing was incredible, as noted in an earlier blog post. Looking back, I think my favorite places were the British Library and the London Eye, and my favorite activity was seeing Les Miserables. It was yet another incredible week, leading up to....

October - Oxford! The last three months have really been a blur, but I will nonetheless endeavor to discriminate between them. October was challenging for me from an academic standpoint. The research was slow, and I had trouble finding value in my work. Thankfully, it was outside the lab that made October great. I picked up ballroom dancing, and totally had a great time with it. I met several new friends, in particular a girl from Poland, named Ania, and my eventual dance partner, Jenna. I was also introduced to the British language (to which I particularly owe thanks to my 'coaches' Ellie and Radhika), tea and biscuit culture (cheers to Dave, Sarah, and Rebecca), and bop culture (thanks Sam, Frank, Abe, and Shaun).

November - November was a really interesting month. I finally started to mesh with those in the lab, even though I know that I'm the only one working in my topic. In particular, I've become good friends with a New Zealander, Chris, and a French girl, Christelle. Chris and I are thinking of building a model railroad around the lab, but we'll have to invoke eminent domain to make it work. Outside the lab, Jenna and I danced in our first two competitions with great success! Competitions are a lot of fun, and I easily see myself becoming addicted to ballroom. Sigh... oh well. I also had the benefit of having the aforementioned Kalli come to visit all the way from Cincinnati. On her birthday, we went into London, had some gluten free fish & chips, rode the London Eye, and walked all over the place. We also went to Paris for three days and had a wonderful time. Indeed, the theme of her trip might have been photography because we now have over 1000 decent pictures to show. She enjoyed meeting the Keebleites, especially a fellow Wolfpacker, Glenn.

December - Even into this final month, the weather in Oxford has been wonderful. I anticipated unending rain, but in truth, the skies have been mostly clear during the day, only changing to drizzle at night. Undergrads left after the first week of the month and Oxford has since become quieter and quieter. Ice skating and squash with Kebleites contributed to a quiet lifestyle for me, bringing on a few pesky injuries. Such is life. Thankfully, there have not really been any activities to miss out on, so I have spent plenty of time in the lab chugging away on models. In six short hours, I leave Oxford, bound for the US. I'm really excited to be home, visiting the aforementioned parents and spending Christmas relaxing. On the 27th, I'll be heading to Raleigh to visit the aforementioned Tyler and Rachael, the aforementioned Kalli, and whoever else is available to catch up.

Now, surely, you can see that I've had a remarkably unique and unbelievable year. While the many journeys have been incredible, hopefully you can also see that none of this would be possible without my family and friends. To those of you reading, thank you for the profound influence you have had on my life! Keep in touch and see you in 2012!

Merry Christmas, Part I

2011-12-21T06:54:00.000-05:00

And a Happy New Year. But that's all.

Christmas. I know I've discussed it a lot over the past month, but I've had a somewhat surprising realization and a confirmation of my thoughts. I was in the kitchen last week talking with a Jewish girl from California, who is taking a year long study abroad from Johns Hopkins. We were broadly discussing religion in England and I was commenting how being a Christian in England feels much different than being a Christian in the United States. It was then that I realized that a particular phrase has been completely absent from my day-to-day life this winter:

Happy Holidays.

To me, as an American, it's hardly Christmas without having to interpret "Happy Holidays" to suit my personal tastes. Where did it go? England isn't so different than the US. How could it then be that English pop culture seems to only celebrate Christmas? What about Hanukkah (which started last night, by the way), Kwanza, etc etc?

I asked the girl about what it was like to be Jewish in England and the response was really interesting. I'll skip the details here, erring to confidentiality, but after comparing experiences, we came to the conclusion that it is generally harder to be openly religious here than in the US. Sure, there's a spattering of churches and presumably a reasonably sized population of people practicing many different faiths, but when religion arises as a topic of conversation among friends, it is almost exclusively from an objective academic or historical context. One could say that discourse observes religion under a microscope, from the outside looking in, as a scientist or social researcher would do; never from a (subjective) personal standpoint, where much of the value of religion lies.

Consequently, what happens at this time of year for a culture seemingly lacking openly religious people? All that remains is a secular holiday called Christmas. To some extent, "Merry Christmas" is like "Happy Holidays" in England. If you happen to be a Christian, then it's convenient that the secular holiday is the same, but if you practice another faith, then you extract what little meaning you can from the phrase and move on.

I'm not sure where the best answer lies in this complicated question: is it better to have a culture in which everyone whines and complains if their beliefs are not represented adequately, or rather a culture in which one faith's greeting has been chewed up in a secular forum and regurgitated as a generic holiday greeting? It's merely complicated by the fact that Christmas itself was originally a pagan holiday to celebrate the lengthening of days and the coming of spring, only to be adopted later by Christians as their second most important day of the liturgical year.

Who knows, but I do know my laundry is done and I need to pack so I can fly home for Christmas tomorrow. Look for a second, less philosophical blog later today as I recap a year of incredible experiences, new friendships, and unbelievable moments.

Odds and Ends

2011-12-13T09:37:00.001-05:00

In the first 9 hours I was awake yesterday, the following weather pattern ensued:

Showers
Total sunshine
Overcast
Rain showers
Snow Flurries
Rain showers
Total sunshine
Overcast
Hail
Rain showers
English drizzle....

Where am I? This weather is so weird.

Today, I woke up and it was bright, sunny, and 3 degrees C. A beautiful day, really. Naturally, however, it was overcast by 13:00 and raining by 15:00. The rain continues, even now... and it's still 3 degrees.

In other temperature-related news, I realized over the weekend that my room was colder than the corridor, apparently because the radiator wasn't working. I like sleeping in cool temperatures, but when I finally started freezing, I decided it would be good to fill in a maintenance request. Now I have a working radiator! It's amazing how good a little warmth feels in the winter time. Undoubtedly, it will be amazing come January when it is cold and rainy every day.

In the category of fixing things, by the end of this past weekend, I decided that my arm and knee felt great, and that I should play some light squash with some friends to loosen up. Well... the good news is that my arm and knee felt great, but the bad news is that I wrecked my back. How? I don't know. I called a doctor on Monday, but he (over the phone) said that 'back pain is common' and I should just take loads of ibuprofen and reassess later in the week. So here it is Thursday and - while I don't need the ibuprofen any more - I am still experiencing a fair bit of localized discomfort in my lower back and right hip. Words cannot express how not thrilled I am. I'll see how tonight goes and maybe I'll call the doctor back tomorrow.

What else is new? Last night I made stir fry, which was quite tasty. I borrowed a rice cooker with an aluminum bowl, but the lack of a non-stick surface meant that cooked rice became glued to the bottom. Some overnight soaking did the trick.

That wasn't really a particularly culturally-relevant story, but I figured I'd throw it in to show that life is still fairly normal in a lot of ways. It was also the first anecdote I could think of.

Well, tonight I figured out who I'm going to vote for in the Republican Primary in a few months (which is for me to know and you to guess). Yes, I still follow American news, but I have to admit, it's thrown into the mix of UK, EU, and world headlines. On that note, if you are not familiar with Google Reader, you should really check it out! It makes it extremely easy to pull in headlines from many different news sources, including - I assume - this blog! I am subscribed to BBC news, ESPN, Popular Science, an academic database (for my research!), and xkcd.com (a fantastic web comic). Check it out!

That's all for now. Can't wait to be home for Christmas next week, but until then, here I remain, soaking up Oxford (literally!)

Happy December!

2011-12-09T13:51:00.001-05:00

It's 9th week of Michaelmas term and pretty much all I'm thinking about is Christmas time!

Here's a quick post owing to the fact that I'm going to a housewarming party for one of my lab partners tonight and I only have 10 minutes to bust out the highlights of the week!

1. Christmas time is definitely here in Oxford. In fact, hints of Christmas started back in November because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here. Now I understand why people in the US occasionally "peak early." We just want to throw an extra holiday in there. Anyway, last Friday, Oxford officially kicked off the season with a Christmas market and festival! There was lots of food, including sausage rolls (think pigs in a blanket), mulled cider, European foods (German, French, Spanish), and sweets. There were also rides, handicraft stands, a stage, and festive lighting. In fact, Roger Bannister was in attendance to officially light the city's decorations! That was quite nice.

5 minutes to go...

2. UK news. If you haven't been following European news, now might be a good time to do so. Economic tensions are high, and they're spilling into the political landscape. Prime Minister David Cameron just went to a summit of Eurozone leaders and - with pressure from all sides in England- blocked EU-wide economic reforms in hopes of gaining financial protection for the city of London. Naturally, the rest of the EU wouldn't stand for London to get a security blanket, so now they are more or less teaming up against Britain.The next coming months will be crucial not just for the Euro, but for the political unity of the EU as a whole. Time will tell...

2 minutes to go...

3. Activities! With the undergraduates gone (term ended last weekend), things have really settled down. That means that as an MCR, we've had lots of free time. So what do most English people do in the evenings? Hit up a pub! There's nothing like a glass of hot mulled wine and some pistachios in the Eagle and Child on a chilly December evening. Admittedly, the weather has only dipped below freezing twice this term (tonight will be the third), but the wind has been rather brutal. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when the sunshine goes away next month in favor of rain. Blech.

Finally, we did actually go ice skating on Tuesday. I had a really good time... until I skated too fast, tripped on the teeth of my right figure skate (no hockey skates... booo) and went horizontal. Bobby Orr would have been proud, except at least he had pads! Now, three days later, I'm still wondering if I need to go get medical attention for my elbow and knee. Sigh... guess I'll see what happens to them this weekend.

Negative 4 minutes... oops! I'm off to eat chocolate mousse and tartiflette (the host is French :-D )!!

Speedy Passing of Time

2011-12-01T20:34:00.001-05:00

Just like that, the weeks have flown by. I anticipated thatthis might happen, but it was definitely not my intention to go a month withoutwriting. Nonetheless, I will do my best to catch everyone up on the events ofthe past month.

Research has settled into a fairly standard routine. Now inthe 8^th week of term, I have been spending my time in the continuousquest of successful MATLAB models. Since my research will seek to assess theeffect of pedestrian loads on bridge motion, it is relevant to begin bymodeling two main systems. First, I worked on developing a model of thedisplacement of a “single degree of freedom” structure. Basically, an ‘SDOF’structure is one that can only displace in one shape, such as a spring. If youthink of a vibrating string, the first degree of freedom has only two nodes, whichlooks like a bent archery bow. Like a vibrating string, structures also displacein harmonics. The first harmonic is thesimplest shape of deformation. At any rate, this displacement of a structure canbe modeled by a differential equation with inertial, damping, and stiffnessterms.

Having modeled the motion of a structure, I also started tomodel the lateral motion of a pedestrian. Existing research shows that thelateral movement of a person’s center of mass can be modeled as an invertedpendulum (like a mechanical metronome), in terms of the person’s foot placementand the horizontal displacement of the ground. Thus, since a person really hasan inverted pendulum for each footstep, I have been trying to develop anumerical solver (i.e. an estimator) to predict such motion.

Well enough about research. Last week was Thanksgiving and Ispent all day in the lab, hard at work… dreaming of turkey, cranberry sauce,American football, friends, and family. Indeed, I did reflect during the day,as I have so much to be thankful for. Let me count some of the ways:

-New friendships in the UK. I’m extremely thankful to havemet so many great people in Keble, the lab, and ballroom dancing. They havemade my first term an easy adjustment to international living, so I am reallygrateful for them. Something that I’ve taken to doing in my spare time (“sparetime?” I hardly know the meaning of the words) is cooking for lots of thepeople in my dorm. The first time I did it, I cooked American fried chicken andhomemade biscuits for 15. It was a huge hit, so I have since added a Mediterranean-stylepizza night with homemade crust for 25, and a fajita night for 15. It is agreat way to bring everyone together to catch up and enjoy conversation. This weekend– to up the ante a bit – a fellow American and I are going to host a grandThanksgiving dinner and gag gift exchange for 20+. The menu is quite extensive,but for whatever reason, I’m not particularly worried about it. Clearly I am myparents’ son. More to the point, however, the fresher grad students here inKeble have really bonded well this term, and I am really excited to have themas friends.

While I won’t go into too much detail on this here, I amalso really fortunate to have a great group of colleagues in the lab. Withstudents from across the world, we seem to have a strange mix of uniqueness (dueto background, lifestyles, culture, etc) and commonness (civil engineering,Oxford, traveling, sports, etc). They are a fun group to be with, and incrediblysmart to boot. I’ll certainly be learning a lot from them!

-Ballroom dancing. Dance has been an amazing addition to mylife! I have been very fortunate to be paired with a fantastic partner, whosename is Jenna. She’s finishing up her undergrad degree at UCLA in psychologynext fall, but she is taking a year of study here in Oxford. Lucky for me, she hasdone a variety of dance in the past. We’re both committed to success on thedance floor, so it has been and will continue to be excellent to work with herthroughout the year. For the beginners’ team as a whole, a good deal ofcamaraderie has developed among the 30 couples already, which makes therehearsals and competitions much more fun. Two weekends ago, we had our firstcompetition at Nottingham University. The competition began at 10 am and didnot conclude until 11 pm! Even though it was a long day of dancing, Jenna and Ienjoyed the competition atmosphere. On top of the thrill of the event, weactually placed quite well too. In quickstep (which we thought was our worstdance, haha), we placed third among all beginners. In waltz, we placed second,and we won the jive outright! Unfortunately, we didn’t even make the finals incha cha, which we thought was our best dance... but we are quite happy with theresults all the same! The second event was this past weekend at in Birmingham(hosted by Warwick University) where the competition was much fiercer. Ourrivals, Cambridge, went toe to toe with us, but we were surprised that Cardiffand Imperial universities placed even better than we. Nonetheless, Jenna and Iwere still fortunate to dance quite well – we finished 3^rd in jiveand 5^th in cha cha among all beginners, but we did not crack thefinals in either quickstep or waltz. We are both optimistic about our chancesin the spring, but we also know that we have a lot of practicing to do. So far,the plan is for each of us to do 50 spin turns per day until Christmas aspractice. Hopefully that will whip us into proper shape!

-Old friends. On 11 November, Kalli made the jump across thepond to visit and do some sightseeing with me. She was amazing for putting upwith my dance and lab schedule, and we really enjoyed Oxford and London a lot.I would have to say that the highlight of her visit was taking a three-day adventureto Paris. Last Monday morning, we left Oxford at sunrise and took the Eurostartrain across the English Channel. Actually, due to the long dance competitionthe day before, we were so tired that we slept for the whole ride. Once wechecked into the hotel, we walked to the Trocadero and La Tour Eiffel, where weadmired the sunset and took a ton of artsy pictures. I had a delicious crepefilled with chocolate, banana slices, and Chantilly (whipped cream). FromEiffel, we headed north, stopped at a grocery store for some cheese, bread, andwine, and found a beautiful bridge looking over the Seine to have our dinner.It was really an epic dinner! The last thing we did that night was walk theChamps Elysees, where they had a fantastic Christmas market set up. Littlebooths were filled with food, crafts, toys, clothes, and other Christmasyitems, and it really helped me get into the holiday spirit.

On our second day, we started in the Latin Quarter, which issouth of Notre Dame. There is one particularly narrow, cobble-stone filledstreet which is lined with some great stores. Kalli picked up some chicken androasted potatoes in a sachet (British and French for ‘bag’), and I grabbed twoyummy baguettes. We ate our delicious lunch next to the Pantheon looking downover Notre Dame in the distance. Of course, having stared at it from adistance, it was then obligatory to walk to the cathedral and take moreexcellent, artistic pictures. On a side note, I really like Kalli’s Canon RebelSLR camera… I think I may need to ask for one for Christmas ;-) Anyway, wegrabbed some gelato, listened to a really good street violinist, and walkedaround, admiring the area. Finally, we returned to Notre Dame for a choralconcert! Half the concert consisted of Bach works for organ – which werestunning in the grand cathedral – and the other half was comprised of choralesfrom the Romantic period.

For our last day, we spent most of the day in the Louvre. Wesaw the Mona Lisa, and we wandered around looking at the various paintings andartifacts from the Italian Renaissance and ancient Rome/Egypt respectively. Fora change of scenery, we also went and took a quick tour of the National OperaHouse, upon which Phantom of the Opera is based. As you can tell, it was a funtrip to Paris, full of walking and sightseeing.

Well, this post is bordering on epic novel, so I’m going tomove to the big finish now, even though I have so much more to be thankful for….

CULTURE CORNER

As anticipated, the arts in Oxford are quite prevalent. Onecan attend a concert, dramatic performance, or see some art almost any day ofthe week. Last week, I was able to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni and hear the Handel Messiah Oratorio. This week – amongst my choice of concerts – I amconsidering going to see A Man for All Seasons,which is about Sir Thomas More’s dissent of King Henry VIII’s move to initiatethe Church of England.

On top of those performances, a motion has been put forwardto campaign for Oxford to be recognized by UNESCO as the “book capital of theworld.” If you were to step into any of Oxfords dozens of libraries orbookstores, you would understand why. The wealth of knowledge is incrediblehere and it is amazing to be in such an academic atmosphere.

WORDS OF THE DAY:

Because I’ve faltered as of late, there are multiple wordsof the day today. Enjoy!

Aubergine: n. a vegetable with purple skin and fleshyinterior. Syn: Eggplant.

Croquette: n. a vegetable with green or yellow skin and acucumber-like interior. Syn: Zucchini.

Literally (pronounced: lit-tral-lee): adv. when somethingmeans exactly as the person says it does. e.g. Believe it or not, there wereliterally only five people attending that amazing performance!

Quid: n. slang for an amount of money. Syn: Bucks. e.g. Howmuch did you pay for those trousers? Oh, they were a great bargain, only 8 quidat Primark!

Rubbish: n. 1. Items that are of no further use and arediscarded. Syn. Trash, garbage. 2. Something that is completely and totallyridiculous. e.g. I can’t believe they served those terrible carrots for dinneragain. They were completely rubbish!

A Day in the Life

2011-10-27T20:06:00.001-04:00

Today, since it seems like a reasonably average day, I'm going to "Tweet" throughout the day!

7:15
Phone alarm goes off. Don't want to get out of bed, so I hit snooze for 10 more minutes.

8:10
Breakfast in kitchen consisting of a maple pecan croissant thing, some Tropicana Orange + Raspberry juice, and a yogurt.

8:20
Leave my dorm. It's the first proper dank, drizzly morning since I've been in England.

8:24
Arrive at my desk, in the building across the street. I'm the first one in. After checking e-mail, I turn to MATLAB, a mathematical programming software, where I continue my attempts to model a pedestrian's shifting center of mass:

y= u+(yo-u+A*sin(wb*(to-tau)))*cosh(OMp*(t-to)) + (vo/OMp + (wb/OMp)*A*cos(wb*(to-tau)))*sinh(OMp*(t-to)) - A*sin(wb*(t-tau))

where A=P/(1+(OMp/wb)^2) (MacDonald, 2008)

...it's going to be a long day.

8:50
The second person arrives, and we discuss the overcast skies.

10:00
Bathroom break! This is mainly to blow the massive amounts of snot out of my nose. Today is the first day that I can definitively say I'm not sick any more, thank goodness. Eight days was quite enough. Now I'm just in that awkward period where I experience diminishing (but annoying) residual drainage and the occasional cough.

10:30
Tea time!

11:30
Discuss research topics (and life in New Zealand) with a couple other students

12:00
Lunch time at Taylor's Deli & Sandwich Co with the Houston girl who just finished her DPhil in structural dynamics.

13:00
Presentation by the Laing O'Rourke construction firm about the Leadenhall building (i.e. the Cheesegrater) soon to be built in London.

14:10
Return to lab, only to realize that my wireless network VPN software has corrupted. Time to reinstall...

14:35
Success! Now back to MATLAB!

15:45
....still working on MATLAB.... convincing myself to stay focused... anyone know how to find vo??

16:15
Taking a lap around the inside of the lab to clear my head. Talking to other students about the infamous cello problem.

16:35
Only 25 minutes until freedom, but I'm getting back to work for the moment. Kind of skeptical that inspiration will strike in time.

17:00
Sure enough, it never came to me. In fact, I realized that my time steps are wrong too. Looks like vo and to will have to wait for tomorrow.

17:05
Back in my dorm.

17:30
Laundry in; debating dinner

18:05
Laundry moved; dinner (salad w/ hard boiled egg, feta, etc) underway

18:30
Leaving dorm, in the drizzling rain, for Latin dance practice.

18:55
Arrive at dance practice (yes, it's a really long way away, esp. by foot.)

19:00
Dance practice! 2 hours of cha cha, an hour of jive, and some exercises!

22:15
Dance lets out, I walk back towards the MCR.

22:40
Arrive at the MCR for a mojito. Most of the grads had been there for over an hour and were on the way out to a pub or somewhere. I chose to head back to the dorm with a small group.

23:00
Tea and biscuits in the dorm kitchen after taking my laundry out of the dryer!

00:00
Back to my room to fold laundry and catch the latest news online.

1:00
In bed, going to sleep. (Usually I go to bed between 23:30 and 00:30, but laundry didn't help)

Well, that was fun! Time to rest up so I can do it all again tomorrow.

WORD OF THE DAY: mate n. Someone's close friend of either gender. e.g. The other day I went out to grab a sandwich with my best mate, Joe. It was really great seeing him again after we went to (upper) school together.

On the 9th day of Michaelmas, my true love gave to me...

2011-10-19T19:19:00.003-04:00

Wednesday, 2nd Week of Michaelmas Term
Current conditions: 2 degrees C, lightly overcast, moderate wind

I've recently come to find out that there is a strange condition that hovers around Oxford every year known as 'Freshers Flu.' As you can guess, freshers flu is the strange sickness (not necessarily an actual flu) that is a result of gathering people from around the world while the climate heads south for the winter. Thankfully, I have avoided said terrible beast as it scuttled from one person to the next... until today. Sure enough, I woke up this morning with the tell-tale stuffy nose. I'm hoping it's not going to be very bad, but nonetheless, I need to take an early bed time. I happen to also be long overdue for a blog post, so here I am responding to duty. I think I'll "try" to keep it short, but we'll see what happens.

I suppose the question everyone most wants to hear about is research. After all, that is supposedly what I came to Oxford to do. Having met with my supervisors a couple times, I am now heading down the road en route to defining my research topic. Broadly speaking, my research will concern the study of pedestrian footbridges and understanding the cause and effects of significant, synchronized crowd movement. Essentially, that means I will be seeking to (1) understand why crowds of people seem to lock step with each other, (2) determine if such behavior affects bridge displacement, and (3) learn about how bridges can be constructed to minimize such effects. As my preliminary study progresses, I will certainly be limiting the scope of this project, but it seems to be a very interesting and exciting structural dynamics problem. The topic came about largely as a result of the London Millennium Bridge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAXVa__XWZ8), though such behavior has been observed on other footbridges as well.

Ok moving along here... The past week has been full of many enjoyable social events as well. Our MCR evidently has a reputation as being great for social interaction, and I definitely understand why. On most nights, some event has been available for everyone to come socialize and hear about each others research. From movie nights to wine & cheese with the Warden to gathering around a chocolate fountain, the events have been varied and fun. On Saturday, we all dressed up in our fancy 'sub fusc' (gown, black suit, white bow tie) for matriculation. This university-wide ceremony was our official induction into Oxford. The Vice Chancellor read a script in Latin which essentially boiled down to, "The academic dean has asked that you [the students] be accepted into Oxford by your meeting the entry level qualifications of the university. I now hereby admit you as a student of Oxford University." We then paraded out of the Sheldonian Theatre (more on the theatre in a later post) and headed back to Keble for lots of pictures and lunch. It was a bright, beautiful day, and we were quite happy to be officially inducted.

Another particularly notable event has transpired since my last post. At the freshers fair (where all the university clubs and societies vie for innocent students' time), I found the Keble rowing club. Excited, I inquired... dejected, I learned that practice was essentially every evening and every weekend day. Not wishing to lose my entire social life, I moved on from rowing to dancesport. What's that? Basically, it's Oxford's ballroom/latin dance team. Since the freshers fair, I attended a couple free sessions and decided that it would be fantastic to try out for the beginners team... which was the best overall team in the UK last year. Typically, they accept about 100 new beginners each year since many drop out. Optimistic of my chances, I showed up at the trials and got on the team! Ok... so they actually admitted every male who tried out (40) in a feeble attempt to offset the many ladies who showed up (70 admitted, many others rejected). So what does that mean? For 150 pounds for the year, I get 10 hours of dance training per week(!), the chance to compete in six competitions, I meet lots of people, I learn a great skill, and I get my weekly exercise in! First team practice is tomorrow and I'm psyched!

So the last major topic for today is food related! Having been formally educated on English biscuits (what we would call sandwich cookies) and tea (I'm a huge fan), I decided to treat 15 of my many new MCR friends to American cooking tonight.... a southern fried chicken dinner! I found recipes online for fried chicken and homemade (American) biscuits and executed them to perfection. Everyone was quite thrilled. The most interesting I found, however, is that buttermilk and shortening are foreign concepts here! As I ran from store to store today, desperately trying to find ingredients, I found exactly one brand of lard, which I had to substitute for the Crisco, and no buttermilk at all. Thankfully, it all worked out well using the lard and regular milk, and everyone was quite happy. Thus, I think I might start cooking on a weekly or fortnightly basis... woo hoo!

CULTURAL CORNER:
Since I need to get to bed, the cultural corner is going to be limited to the word of the day. Next time, it will be better...

WORD OF THE DAY: dodgy. adj. Something that is of questionable quality or origin. Also, an area or place that may not be safe or clean. Syn: Sketchy (US), Scuzzy. Example: "The common kitchen is due to be cleaned out. After weeks of use, it has become a bit dodgy looking."

London 2, Oxford 1

2011-10-05T12:33:00.000-04:00

How do you like your orange juice? Smooth, with "juicy bits" or with "extra juicy bits?"

Pulp aside, getting acclimated to England has been extremely exciting. Over my remaining time in London (through this past Saturday), we had the chance to see so much. Museums... the Churchill War Rooms... Greenwich... Buckingham... Picadilly Circus... They were all amazing testaments to the age and style of British culture. I have to say, my favorite stops were the British Library and the Queen's Theatre for Les Miserables. We had a wonderful time in the beautiful, record-setting heat as we saw the sights and soaked up the city.

But alas, all good vacations must come to an end. On Sunday, I parted ways with my parents, heading up to Oxford to set up and settle in. After some brief organization in my room, I meandered from my remote housing building over to the main college. The college is surrounded by the brick walls of the exterior buildings, so one cannot comprehend the amazement of the college's interior without entering through the main gate. The gate itself is a large, dense wooden door, resembling the front of a castle. Upon stepping inside, I was in a dark, arched entryway, again similar to a medieval gate. On the left is the Porter's Lodge, where everyone's "pidgeon holes" are located and from where the porter manages the comings and goings of visitors, faculty, and students. Proceeding ahead, the dark entryway opens up into a quad with a sunken, square, perfectly manicured lawn, bordered on all four sides by a tall, continuous neo-gothic brick building. The building's brick facades are mainly red with many ornate white and black brick patterns. Looking around, my eyes land on the quad's focal point: a brick chapel (cathedral) twice as high as the surrounding building, also elaborately decorated in brick patterns. Upon seeing such a sight on a bright and sunny day, I was completely blown away... and I remain so.

Within the college, I belong to the MCR, or "Middle Common Room," which refers to both a physical room and the entire body of graduate students. Thus, in future posts I may refer to "spending time in the MCR," referring to the room itself, or "attending events hosted by the MCR," referring to the group of people. The physical MCR room is a lounge on an adjoining quad within the college. The central part of the lounge consists of a wooden paneled, wood floored room with mahogany vinyl sofas and a bay window. The room also adjoins with two side rooms which act as game rooms/kitchen. My first event was a Tea and Cakes social which takes place every Sunday at 16:00. Many other freshers were there, so I had the chance to meet many of my Keble compatriots.

I quickly feel that I am going to fit in quite well in this college. The other freshers are very kind and sociable, coming from all over the UK (~60-70%) and the world. Among international students, the most are from Canada and the United States (5-8 freshers each... even one from NC State!), with others coming from Austrailia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Armenia, Slovakia, and elsewhere. Many are in MPLS - Maths, Physics, & Life Sciences - but there are also a lot of people in economics, languages, literature, and other humanities. I should also note here that the MCR consists of a balance of both masters and doctoral students. It's a really a unique and engaging atmosphere to live around.

After Tea & Cakes and a short break, the MCR reconvened for Prosecco before dinner. At any rate, we all enjoyed a glass of Prosecco and headed upstairs to dinner in the Hall. The Hall is a fantastically wonderful dining room. Entering the long room at one end, one is immediately struck by the formality of the room itself. Three long wooden tables with wooden benches stretch the length of the hall. On either side, large oil portraits of grey-haired academics look down from their massive golden frames. Then, one notices that the walls of the Hall are quite tall, stretching perhaps 30 feet high, evolving into an arched ceiling. Even here, the tile ceiling is elaborately decorated, this time with two (or three?) toned floral pattern. Returning one's gaze to eye level, the portraits extend all the way to the end of the Hall, where on the opposite wall, the distinguished portraits have individual lamps illuminating their foreheads. These distinguished figures look down over the head table, apparently reserved for the academic dons who will join us for formal dinner each night beginning next week.

Since that first afternoon, my daily schedule has been somewhat routine. Wake up around 9:00, spend the morning wandering around city center failing to purchase a mobile phone, procure some odds and ends at Boswell's department store, return to Acland (my residence - a remote building for almost all the grad students), pretend to work on organizing my room, and then proceed with dinner time activities. On Monday was MCR port & cheese hour followed by "The Legendary Keble MCR Quiz," in which we divided into teams of six and attempted to answer 61 questions. My claim to fame was correctly counting that only two letters in Scrabble have point values of two - D and G. One question was "In which conflict was the German Luftwaffe first involved following WWII?" A True/False round included the statement, "13 men have landed on the moon," which I believed to be false, but was actually true. It was a fun night of trivia as we continued to meet and interact with each other.

CULTURE CORNER
In this section of the blog, I will provide some extra juicy bits (or should I say extra pulp?) of information that I have discovered about British culture and provide a British vocabulary word-of-the-day.

-Mobile phones. In the UK, phone plans are rather confusing. There are 3 main types: Pay as you go, SIM only, and contract. Pay as you go plans mean you buy a phone and a set package of minutes/text messages/data. If you run out of those before 30 days, you "top up" for usually 10 Pounds (henceforth GBP). In a SIM only plan, you buy a phone and receive a SIM card with a nominal monthly allotment of minutes/texts/data. In a contract plan, you pay a monthly fee and receive a free phone (depending on the phone you want) and a monthly allotment of minutes/texts/data, but you are required to keep the contract for 18 months or 2 years (whereas a SIM only plan is month by month).

In the long run, a contract is cheapest, but evidently you cannot sign a phone contract unless you have British credit history... therefore, I have to make greater than 5 transactions on my spiffy new UK bank account before my first quarterly statement to get a contract plan. Until then, I am debating whether I should obtain a SIM only plan or just hold out with my room's landline phone.

Word of the Day: tariff. n. a contract or payment plan, esp. for a mobile phone. Ex. "My tariff includes 100 minutes, 3,000 text messages, and 250 MB data each month for only 15.50 GBP."

-Weather. While my parents were here, it was sunny and in the 70s-80s F almost every day. The day they left, a breeze came in. Since then, each day has been mostly cloudy and breezy with temps in the 50s. I hear that the overnight lows at the end of the week will be in the mid-high 30s. Hello real British weather.

Arrival, First Few Days!

2011-09-28T19:33:00.003-04:00

England!! Here I am in London and I can't believe it! Lucky for me, this place has been a blast so far. We've already seen so much, but rather than drone on endlessly (though I'm going to do so anyway), I've decided to take a different route....

The Top Ten Exciting/Interesting Things About My First Few Days in England (in no particular order)

10. English Breakfast... Baked beans are a must! Here, they're served more savory than at home. That is, there is more ketchup in them than sugar/molasses. Also, I love the breakfast bacon, which is more like a slice of ham rather than a strip of fat. (Vocab word of the day: a "rasher" of bacon = 1 slice)

9. Fashion... There is definitely a dress standard here that is much different than in the US. Almost no one wears tennis shoes or sweats, but everyone seems to be wearing a nice jacket, nice /or artistic shoes, styled hair, nice jeans, etc etc. Looks like I have some adapting to do!

8. Tower Bridge/London Eye... Thankfully the weather has been beautiful for us - in the 60s and 70s with few clouds - so the iconic bridge of London was simply stunning. Its dominating towers were connected by bright blue steel chains and that unique pair of beams high in the air. In pictures, it looks nice, but it is larger than life in person. Above the choppy Thames, pedestrians and motorists travel from bank to bank by the score (on the left side... see #3 below). I have to say, it's quite amazing. Also amazing was the London Eye, a giant ferris wheel resembling a bicycle wheel. The wheel almost never stops turning, which is good since one round takes 30 minutes. In the mean time, one can see the bridge way off in the distance and Parliament/Big Ben immediately below. We chose to ride at night when the wheel and cabins were lit deep blue, which was very nice.

7. Museums... We've been to two so far: The Natural History Museum and the British Museum. The former contained three floors of engaging exhibits on geology, jewels, rocks, fossils, and biology. After looking around for four exciting hours, we had to call it quits even though we had only seen half of the museum. In particular, I enjoyed seeing the excellent dinosaur exhibits - lots of skeletons with fascinating commentary and even some animatronics to boot. The British Museum was also somewhat overwhelming because of the number of excellent ("stolen?") artifacts. To me, the most exciting artifacts were Cleopatra's mummy, half of the Athenian Parthenon's frieze, and the Rosetta Stone. I'm glad I can now say I've seen the Rosetta Stone and the Hammurabi Code, which is at the Louvre in Paris (see my last 2008 blog).

6. Tower of London... Going in, I was expecting this to resemble Alcatraz - a medieval high security prison. While it has served as a prison for extensive periods of its 1000 year history, the Tower complex has also served as home for the royal family, a mint, a guest house, barracks, and home for the crown jewels. So when we went to actually see the crown jewels, I was thoroughly excited. I promise I am not a female, but WOW were those ornaments sparkly! Offsetting the fancy jewelry, we also got to see some jousting equipment, armor, and torture devices :-)

5. Churches... I've already been to St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. St. Paul's was very much a "normal" church with vast tile floors, huge vaulted ceiling, domed center, and huge windows. Don't get me wrong, it was quite impressive, but it was nothing compared to Westminster. Westminster was enormous. The vaulted ceilings were extremely ornate, with elaborate stone arches gracefully flowing down as columns to the floor. The architecture of the chapel behind the alter was every bit as exciting: a fancy pattern was carved into the ceiling above and grand wooden seats for knights adorned the sides of the room. The most peculiar aspect to the Abbey was the quantity of memorials and tombs. Being over 1000 years old, there is no underground crypt, but many important figures have been laid to rest there: Kings and queens, poets, scientists, writers, scholars, and other figures. Believe it or not, GF Handel (composer), Charles Darwin, and Isaac Newton are laid there. Darwin's resting place doesn't really make sense to me... but fair enough. In addition to those laid to rest, markers and placards commemorate other important figures who are buried elsewhere, like Shakespeare, Benjamin Britten (composer), and countless people I did not recognize.

4. Languages... This is perhaps the most diverse city I have ever been. I have overheard more German this week than I have since traveling to Austria three years ago. I've also heard plenty of Italian, Spanish, French, and Chinese... almost more of those languages than English! It will be interesting to see how Oxford similar or different from London.

3. Transportation... As is already well understood, the trains are amazing. National Rail is great, as is the Tube (subway). We've taken those everywhere so far. Today, we decided to ride on a double decker bus, which was also fantastic! Apparently the city did away with the double deckers in 2005, but massive backlash has led the city to reintroduce them. The fleet is new this year, and they are more than plentiful! It's not hard to see 4-6 buses at a time in downtown, which is great for getting from place to place. I loved the ride and being able to see over all the happenings of Picadilly Circus and Oxford Circus (huge traffic circles/shopping areas). Our other favorite mode of transportation has been walking. I swear I'm going to get hit by a car or bus, but I feel much better about that reality today: apparently Winston Churchill spent 8 days in a New York hospital after failing to look the correct direction on 5th Avenue in NYC! What an inspirational leader!

2. Churchill War Rooms... Located in a basement a few blocks from Parliament/Big Ben are the Churchill War Rooms. This is where Churchill's staff coordinated Britain's entire WWII effort. Like a ship, the quarters were tight with few amenities, but it was sufficient for Britain's leader to conduct his crucial business. Perhaps the centerpiece of the historic site was the Churchill museum, a large room with tons of exciting interactive exhibits portraying every aspect of Churchill's life. Naturally, the focal point was on his role on WWII, so it was extraordinary to see such a wealth of knowledge on such a fine political/military leader.

1. British Library... I only saw one large room of the British Library, but trust me, it was more than sufficient! In an area about the size of three master bedrooms, the following artifacts are on display:
-The original Jane Eyre
-The original Canterbury Tales (illustrated text!)
-2 Septuagint bibles from the 4th Cen (in Greek!)
-The Magna Carta (1215)
-A Gutenberg Bible
-Da Vinci's Notebook
-Handel's Messiah score
-Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" (For Midsummer Night's Dream)
-a Beethoven sketchbook of Sonata in G Major (Opus 30)
-Mozart's marriage contract to Constanze Weber
-Shakespeare's First Folio (1623)
-Handwritten lyrics to "Yesterday" and "Help!" (which really pale in comparison to these other amazing works)

Having traveled in Europe before, I wasn't as blown away by these old literary artifacts as I would have been three years ago, but the concentration of all these texts in one room was really unbelievable.

With this all in mind, I have been extremely blessed to prepare to live an hour away from this amazing city. I am thrilled to be in England, and I can only hope that Oxford will be half as amazing as London.

Cheers!

Beyond Infinity?

2011-09-20T15:38:00.000-04:00

"This is a test of the Oxford Blogcast System. This is only a test."

Ok, this is not a drill. I'm only 3 days away from heading to England on what promises to be the academic experience of a lifetime. For anyone who has not heard, I am about to embark on a 3-year doctorate program at Oxford University. Yes, the Oxford University. While I have had six months to digest the fact that I am soon to be an Oxford student, it is still quite unreal to me. What will it be like studying in Oxford... for 3 years? There are so many things unknown about this coming experience, maybe it would be better to focus on how I got here.

Five years ago, I never would have dreamed about traveling internationally. One thing lead to another (thanks to the Caldwells, Franklins, RCSO, et al.) and I traveled to Ecuador for service and Austria for study abroad in 2008. Not having had enough, I went to China in 2009. In my mind, that cemented me as an international traveler. Between those trips, I conquered fears of language barriers, being alone in a foreign country, making connections, rolling with the punches, and coping with inadequate circumstances. This spring, I took the next step, learning how to be a leader on an international trip - a service-learning trip to Belize. With the proper training and help from my amazing co-leader, I found that I was quite able to handle such a leadership challenge. We built a team of students that could trust and interact with each other so readily. Undoubtedly, I will need the collective experience from all of these travels to reach my potential at Oxford. That said, I am very blessed to have the family, friends, education, and opportunities to prepare me for this experience.

So without further ado, here's some of the logistics with my Oxford blog. As you can imagine, spending 3 years in a foreign country is akin to running a marathon, especially in relation to a mere 6-week study abroad. Thus, I can't promise I'll blog every week, but what I will do is blog whenever I am able: I'll try to blog when I notice cultural similarities or differences; I'll blog when I travel to the European mainland; and I'll try to blog every couple of weeks or upon request. As with my past blogs, this will be the best place for you to learn about my adventures. If you have questions, feel free to ask! I would love to know someone is reading my blog, and I will be happy to answer!

Let the adventures begin!

Cheers

Friday, June 26, 2009, 7:00 AM (Raleigh, NC, USA)

2009-06-26T07:39:00.003-04:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is it. Six and a half weeks in the world's most populated country has finally come to a close. Here, I will describe the excellent time I had in Beijing and then wrap up this year's blog with some comments on the country.

We left Nanjing on a rainy Saturday night after a day of lounging around and playing cards. Our mode of transportation was an overnight sleeper train. The nonstop train was pretty fun- we played cards and watched a movie, then "slept" for five hours or so.

Unfortunately, the train got in at 7 am, so it was too early to check in to the hotel. Thus, we threw our bags in a storage room and headed straight out on our adventure. First, we visited the Ming Summer Palace. It was ok- the complex had a handful of buildings and a covered walkway encompassing a lake. It was really popular with the tourists, but there were many locals there as well - playing Christmas songs (common during our stay in China... I don't understand) on traditional instruments and enjoying the calm morning.

Next, we went to Tiananmen Square. I wish I could describe in words how impressive this place was. Of course, Chairman Mao looked out over the square from the Tiananmen (or 'Gate of Heavenly Peace'..ironic), but each side of the square was bordered by an important building. To the west is China's National Standing Committee building, where the highest officials of the communist party meet to choose policy. To the east is China's National Museum, currently under renovation but set to reopen for the World Expo 2010, hosted by Shanghai. Finally, to the south of the square is Chairman Mao's Mausoleum. Apparently, he lays in a crystal coffin on ice and is brought up for viewing from 8:30-11:30 every day. Creepy? I think so.

After taking in the square, we passed under the Chairman's picture into the Forbidden City. It was clearly a relic of dynasties past with it's traditional architecture and grandiosity. Each building along the central axis (the center of the city- the emperor's walkway in past times) was some building of heavenly peace. The Forbidden City was cool, but I was more impressed with Tiananmen Square. The thing about the Forbidden City was that it just kept going! Each building looked really similar to the previous ones, so it somewhat blended together. Nonetheless, it was amazing to think that generations of emperors walked along the pathway I had. Isn't that cool?

Finally, we returned to the hotel and cleaned up. Some of us decided to try out the subway and go to Hard Rock Cafe. It was your traditional HRC - expensive and generic - but it was still worthwhile. We had a fun evening.

On Monday (yeah, this is going to be a long blog post, but it's the last one so you can handle it), we trekked north of the city to see a section of the Great Wall. oooooh aaaahhhh special! Sure enough, it was great! It was huge! There were lots of stairs. I'm amazed that they could build a wall (not to mention a "great" one) over 3000 miles of mountains! I have yet to witness the pyramids at Giza, but I imagine this is a much greater feat of engineering. (I say this, but two people have already kibitzed at this notion, so I may be fighting an uphill battle! Now for a poll...) Anyway, we spent an hour climbing up a steep section of the wall and the view was amazing! Did I mention that this was the best weather-day of the entire trip? We had temperatures in the low 90s and a crystal clear blue sky. It was beauuuutiful! I could have spent hours up there. You have to watch out letting this civil engineer admire a public works project ;-)

After only an hour and a half, we continued our journey by visiting the Ming Tombs. In particular, we visited the tomb of Ming Chenglu, the emperor responsible for moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and constructing many of the famous sites we visited: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, connecting segments of the Great Wall, and others. The tomb itself was covered by a dirt mound about 100 yards in diameter. Apparently, it has never been opened, so he lays in there just as he did hundreds of years ago. One day, I want to be cool enough to be buried under a mound with booby traps and secret passages. That would be fun.

Tuesday was our last full day in China. To begin, we visited the Ming Temple of Heaven. It is 38 meters high, but built completely without nails or fasteners! It is a round building with three tiers on the outside but only one open hall on the inside. Centered on a circular pedestal of three levels, it was larger than life compared to the bare square courtyard it stood in. Clearly, an emperor wishing to worship the gods would have no distractions with such a prominent structure to focus their attention. Even more impressive was that the roofs were painted a rich, deep blue and the timbers were all painted in the vibrant teal, dark blue, and gold colors that marked many of the ancient structures. It was so impressive!

In the afternoon, we finally got a taste of 21st century Beijing by seeing the Olympic green and buildings. First, we walked in and around the Water Cube. I got to see where Phelps won his eight gold medals! It was a stunning building and I could only imagine the intensity of being there during the Olympics! Next, we walked across the plaza to the Bird's Nest stadium where the ceremonies and track and field events were held. Even though the stage was being set up for a concert, we were still allowed to walk down on the track where all the events happened! Not surprisingly, it was an enormous stadium! I took plenty of pictures and tried to absorb what it must have been like to see athletes from across the world gathered there! If you had told me last August that I was going to stand on the floor of the Bird's Nest, I would have paid much closer attention to the opening ceremony! No worries, however - I got it on DVD for 100 Yuan ($15)!

To wrap up my trip, I spent my evening with two "Peking" activities - duck and opera. I found a restaurant that said "Beijing Duck" over the door, so I went in. Unfortunately, the only sold the roast duck whole. Undeterred, I purchased my $27 USD duck and worked my way through the mu shu wraps. They were sooo tasty, but I could only eat half the duck. *sigh* Next came the opera. The performance consisted of two 30-minute shows. Neither had a very succinct plot (the words were projected in English- that's how I know) but the music was really cool. The orchestra consisted of traditional Chinese instruments and was generally quite percussive. The performers were dressed in bright, elaborate costumes with standard Beijing opera face paint. In spite of the open ended plots, I had a great time and I'm definitely glad I went. It's just a shame that no one else wanted to spend the money to join me!

Finally, on Wednesday we headed to the airport and returned home. Beijing's Central Airport has one of the largest terminals in the world, so it was cool to look around and admire the structure. What wasn't cool was sitting at the gate (on the plane) for 2 hours while they determined which route over Siberia was optimal. Ugh. But 20 hours and 2 flights later I was finally back in Raleigh. Woo hoo!

Well, now I'm back. Six and a half weeks in China. Looking back, it's kind of hard to believe it went so quickly. While I was there, a lot of things seemed just like home- skyscrapers, food, people at work and play, traffic everywhere, and the sun rose and set every day. But now that I'm home, I see plenty of differences; there are many little subtleties that made China worth visiting and studying. From cultural intricacies to facets of politics, China has held a history separate from anywhere I have visited before, yet its rise and fall as a global power through history makes it inextricably tied to most countries across the globe.

This may seem like a contradiction, and in truth it is, for China is a country full of contradictions. It is a country that conflicts old with new traditions; eastern versus western ideals. The contradictions are everywhere, but to discuss them in detail would be too much for the limited scope of this text. Nonetheless, the people and the culture were generally very friendly and I will remember my experiences as long as I live.

So what now? I've traveled to Ecuador, Austria, and China. At this point, it would seem logical to expand my horizons to Australia or Africa, but even in the places I've visited there remains much to see and do. I am already excited for my next international opportunity, whether by internship, study, or independent travel... but for now, I'll merely meditate on the things I've seen and learned in China.

Friday, June 19th, 5:00 PM (Nanjing, China)

2009-06-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

Goodbye Nanjing

Happy Friday, everyone! It is with mixed emotions that I write this last post from Nanjing. I intend to spend most of this post discussing the city as a whole and remembering some of the highlights of my stay here. Before I do that, however, I also did a few things this week worthy of mention.

This week’s class was about thermodynamics. I don’t know why, but the material seemed difficult to me. I thought the test was hard, but in the end, I still got an A+ for the course. Woo hoo! My afternoons this week have also been somewhat relaxed. On Monday afternoon, I returned to the Confucius Temple. Again. Obviously I really enjoyed spending time there. On Tuesday, I think I took a nap and hung around the hotel with the group. Nothing special there.

Wednesday’s excitement was going with Jeffrey to get a massage. I’ve never had a massage before, but at 45 Yuan ($6.50) for an hour, I couldn’t pass it up. The guy who did my massage was pretty young, and therefore I question if he knew what he was doing. He massaged my head, arms, legs (front and back), back, and neck. It was great except for my back… where I was sore for about a day! Oof. Nonetheless, it was a fun experience and (I’m fairly sure) I’m glad I did it! After the massage, Jeff and I found a corner stand and bought some authentic salted duck! We one half of two different types: light and dark. On the spot, the lady took each whole duck and hacked it (skin, bones, and all) into neat, cross sectional slices. They put each in a tray and we returned to the hotel with our duck. It was very tasty but also very salty! YUM!

On Thursday, I went for a walk before playing Chinese Chess with Jun, one of our student guides. My record against him is 1-2 now… and only because he let me win when he taught me. It’s quite the game, that’s for sure. It’s fairly easy to pick up the rules, but learning strategy is a completely different matter. Oh well, I have a set, so now I’ll have to teach some people and see if I can get better at it. After chess, we had our closing banquet with our SEU hosts. As usual, the meal came complete with a variety of foods I hadn’t ever tried, the obligatory fish with head and tail, and even a plate of snails! The snails were SO good… I definitely want to have more of those! Mmm. Anyway, there were many gifts to be passed around and we had a nice dinner.

Earlier in this post, I said I wanted to reminisce over my time in Nanjing, but now I think I’m going to leave a cliff hanger. Instead, I think it would be more appropriate to look forward to Beijing. Thus, here is a schedule of our remaining time in China. Currently it is almost 4:30 pm Beijing time or 4:30 am Friday EDT. For the next 24 hours, I will be finishing up packing, relaxing with the group, and maybe going to see one or two more casual things in Nanjing. We will have a couple meals as a group, but I also hope to have a couple more corner-store dumplings. Hmm- should I have rice, meat, or red bean? Or maybe I should have a sesame ball? I don’t know. Maybe all of it.

Tomorrow, we’re catching a 9:30 pm (Sat AM EDT) train out of Nanjing Railway Station, on the north side of Xuanwu Lake. Apparently we have soft berth tickets, so we’ll be able to sleep during the 8 hour or so train ride. For a comparison, Nanjing is at almost the same latitude as Atlanta and Beijing is at the same latitude as Philadelphia. It may not look far on a map, but looks can be deceiving. Arriving in Beijing on Sunday morning (Sat PM EDT), we will probably stop by the hotel and then head on our way. I don’t know what we’re seeing each day, but before we depart Beijing on Wednesday, we will be visiting the Great Wall, the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and (I think) Pearl Market. In addition, evenings are on our own, so I may attempt to go see an opera and/or meet up with the Caldwell group who happens to also be in Beijing, preparing to leave. We’ll see.

Our Boeing 777 flight leaves on Wednesday at 4:10 pm (Wed AM EDT) and arrives in Chicago at 4:30 pm CDT. How about that 20 minute flight to go half way around the world?! We will clear customs *crosses fingers* and then catch an 8:55 pm CDT flight that will arrive in Raleigh just before midnight.

Thursday will be my final blog post with highlights from Beijing as well as enough reminiscing, comparing, and concluding to make everyone tired of reading. After all, I have a 13 hour plane flight (and a “D” seat… UGH!) to write everything I can think of!

Sunday, June 14th 2009, 11:41 PM (Nanjing, China)

2009-06-14T14:45:00.002-04:00

Today was the last Sunday in Nanjing. It’s hard to believe that we’re up to our “lasts” but sure enough, five weeks have passed since we departed the US. Thankfully, this week provided some excellent opportunities for me, so I now feel as if I’ve really taken advantage of the city.

Tuesday – it seems so long ago – we all went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. The memorial remembers the 300,000 civilians and soldiers who died when Japanese troops raided the city in late 1937. From mid-December through January 1938, the Japanese killed, looted, and raped anyone they could find. They forced civilians to line up in front of mass graves, where they were shot one after the other. People were killed in every way possible: burned alive, beheaded, stabbed, bayoneted, and others. In the end, over 20,000 cases of rape were reported. It was an inhumane slaughter.

The memorial had two parts. First, guests were led through a comprehensive museum of accounts, artifacts, and descriptions from the massacre. It was amazing to read so many accounts of what happened- from locals who escaped (one was at the bottom of the pile of corpses when they burned them with kerosene to hastily) to Japanese soldiers to international witnesses who set up a refugee zone. Two things particularly stuck out to me in this museum. After reading about the deaths of all the innocent civilians, I can only wonder what the Chinese think of the atomic bomb. We in the United States like to say that it saved lives in the long run, but who were we to destroy the lives of so many innocent people? The other aspect that made an impact was Nanjing’s source of international aid. Within the city, Dr. John Rabe set up a zone for Nanjing refugees. Many fled there, seeking medical and emotional aid. Along with Dr. Rabe, several embassies and the League of Nations also contributed support. It seems like a great and noble effort until one realizes that Dr. Rabe was a German ambassador with Hitler’s support! How could the Germans condemn the Japanese-inflicted genocide immediately before committing their own holocaust! The world is upside down. Wednesday’s shooting at Washington’s Holocaust museum proves that as a fact.

The other part of the memorial was a mass grave. We walked around the circumference of the grave – a “field” of tan, baseball-sized granite stones – before entering a climate controlled room that showed an archeological excavation. Skeletons were mixed and piled close together. Signs showed readers where victims had been bludgeoned, stabbed, and carelessly buried. I will definitely never forget it.

Just as I was feeling bitter towards the Japanese for the atrocity they had committed, I read a quote from someone I cannot remember: “What we must remember is history, not hatred.” Indeed. Like the holocaust, we must never let such suffering fade from our memory, lest history repeat itself.

After finishing at the memorial, I desired to reflect on what I had seen, so I walked to nearby Mochou Lake Park. I wandered amongst the ponds filled with lily pads and along the walkways that surrounded the lake. A dragonboat team was practicing about 70 yards off shore while families and couples meandered about carelessly. It was very peaceful; just what I needed.

On Wednesday and Thursday I wandered aimlessly after class. It was good to get out and see parts of the city with no particular destination! I also studied for my Friday test, which went very well.

On Friday, we went to see the Presidential Palace, originally constructed in the Ming Dynasty but since occupied by many heads of state. The complex included many buildings joined by covered walkways, some ponds and fountains, some gardens, and plenty of rocks. Most notably, the palace was occupied by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the Nationalist Party until the Communists moved the capital to Beijing in 1949.

I thought the best part of the palace was a museum to Dr. Sun. It followed the story of his life and how he fought so hard for democracy. He went to school in Hawaii but used Chinese populations in San Francisco, Japan, Taiwan, and China to build a revolution strong enough to overthrow the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Following the successful revolution, he established a constitution and resigned from the presidency to show he was not another power-hungry dictator. Unfortunately, his successor reverted to old ways by 1914, and Dr. Sun was forced to mount another revolution. Unfortunately, the second revolution failed and he spent the rest of his life campaigning for unity between the north and south and for democracy as a whole. He died of liver cancer in 1925 in Beijing. In his will, he wished to be buried in Nanjing, so his body was reinterred at the current mausoleum on June 1, 1929 (80 years and 2 weeks ago).

Yesterday was my last full Saturday in Nanjing, so I wanted to take full advantage of it. Thus, I set myself three goals: spend an entire day in town, touch the Yangtze River, and visit the Jinghai temple. Thus, I decided to walk an 11.2 mile loop of the north-west part of the city. If you’d like to see my route, go to this link: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2912437. As you can see from the map, I began by walking due west on Beijing Road. I passed the Jiangsu Provincial Government building and the Nanjing Institute of Art before reaching the Qinhuai River. From there, I followed “the mother river of Nanjing” northward. The sun beat down, but the river walk was pleasant (even with no one around). Finally, about 4.5 miles into my trip, I reached the junction of the Qinhuai with the Yangtze. The coast of the Yangtze was lined with private docks – low scale fishermen who were not fishing at all. There was no water access and it was very quiet. Unfortunately, I had to cut in a block because the road on the water’s edge ended. Seeing high rises being constructed all around, I was confident in my location, but as I cut northward again (4.7 miles to 5.4 miles on the map), I realized I was in a completely different part of Nanjing. Gone were the clean streets and fashion stores of downtown. Gone were the VWs and Audis. Here, there were a few taxi cabs, a couple buses, and an otherwise sketchy neighborhood.

Now, I should say here that I never felt in danger while walking this stretch of road. I got plenty of stares and I felt really out of place, but people seemed to go about their normal business. As I said, the street was dirty. A row of really run-down 2-floor concrete shacks lined each side of the street and dingy laundry seemed to be hanging everywhere. The curbs were often filled with murky liquid (it hasn’t rained in a week) and people were sitting around outside cooking food, playing games, and talking with neighbors. I wanted to take a picture, but you couldn’t have paid me to take my camera out of my backpack on that street. It was… a cultural experience.

Finally, I got back on the road following the river. Immediately, the surroundings improved, and normal civilization was back. Go figure! This time, there was a wall between the river and the road, but from what I could tell, the other side was home to some small scale industry, perhaps manufacturing. After a bit, I reached the intersection where I had to turn and I was about to give up, but I saw the next gate was actually open. I neared the gate, thinking I might quickly duck in to take some pictures and duck out. Thankfully, it was a yacht club and restaurant! Imagine that! So sure enough, I got a couple pictures of me touching the Yangtze. The third longest river in the world. One Saturday mission accomplished.

Cutting away from the river, I made my way toward the Jinghai Temple. The Temple was also built in the Ming Dynasty, to recognize and honor the famous Chinese explorer Zheng He. Almost a century before Columbus, Zheng He set out from Nanjing with China’s first naval fleet. He traveled to many adjacent countries via the Philippines and around the Indian Ocean. Most significantly, his friendly tidings toward foreign nations resulted in many international exchanges for China. It was truly a cultural and economic highlight. So it makes sense that a temple would be built to honor such a worthy explorer.

Yet that is not the only history lesson to be learned from the Jinghai Temple. Moving ahead a couple centuries, the British had dominated the world’s waterways and the opium trade was high (pardon the pun) in China. When Chinese leaders decided to ban opium, however, the British resorted to military force to reopen the trade. Finally, after two years of one-sided battle, the British marched into Nanjing in 1842. The Chinese settled for a “treaty:” 2.1 million silver Yuan and Hong Kong. The treaty was signed in the Jinghai Temple and consequently, the temple was also a central point of celebration in 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to China.

All this fun is actually making me much more interested in East Asian history – much more than when I was taking it in AP World History. Mrs. Hoisington would be so proud. Haha.

Well, from there, it was pretty much a straight shot back to the hotel. Straight shot for four miles, of course, but straight none-the-less. Oh yeah, I also came across several consecutive shops that must have been seafood wholesalers. One had a million shellfish. In the next, a half dozen guys were dragging huge ice blocks around. In the third, roughly 20 bins were filled to the brim with water… and EELS! Well, maybe they were water snakes, but they looked like eels to me. Millions of them. Squirming everywhere. It was glorious. I took a few pictures and smiled with one of the guys there.

So, that was Saturday. All three missions were a resounding success. It was a fantastic day.

Today was a normal Sunday. Church was great once again, and I went back to the Confucius Temple market with a bunch from the group. It was a good day.

Anyway, three days of class and an exam are all that’s left. That begins tomorrow! In the next episode, I’ll probably wrap up Nanjing with some general comments and observations. Bye until then!

Monday, June 8th 2009, 9:16 PM (Nanjing, China)

2009-06-08T17:01:00.000-04:00

Monday, June 8, 2009

Today we were sitting in class as Dr. Brown reviewed the schedule:
-Exam tomorrow on Vehicle Dynamics
-2 classes of Electric Circuits
-Exam Friday on Circuits
-3 classes of Thermodynamics
-Exam next Thursday on Thermo.

The End.

We only have 11 full days left here in Nanjing and 16 before I arrive back in the States. In some ways I still feel like there’s a lot to see, but then again, I’ve done a lot too.

So, when I last posted, we were about to begin vehicle dynamics. It has been a piece of cake! Without being cocky, I expect to get a grade in the mid 90s on tomorrow’s open note test, and I haven’t studied yet.

In the world of extracurricular events, the past few days have been fun, but not very busy! On Thursday, I tested the taxi system for the first time by getting a ride to the Purple Mountains, with a goal of seeing the Observatory there. To gain the necessary elevation, I hopped on the Zijinshan Ropeway. Crossing one peak and climbing another, the ropeway covers 1.4 horizontal miles and climbs over 1300 feet. The ropeway was like a ski lift in that I sat on an old park-style slatted bench with a sketchy “lap” bar (it was really about a foot off my knees and didn’t contain anything). The bench hung from a steel aircraft cable that covered the entire 2.8 mile distance. Even though benches were spaced every 20 ft or so, I only saw 4 people going the other way as I went up. Lots of empty benches and a 100-foot drop made the ride… well… eerie! Once I became acclimated to the height and the peacefulness, however, it was actually very pleasant.

So, I went allllll the way up, looked around, and then came haaalllllf way down, where the Purple Mountain Observatory was located. The observatory, built in the 1920s, welcomed the modern age of astronomy to China. They have apparently made a number of discoveries there, although the facility seems somewhat limited. While visitors were not permitted access to the main telescope or room, there were a few displays and some astronomical tools from the dynastic period. Did you know that this year is the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first telescope? I didn’t either.

After riding back to the bottom, I walked back to the hotel – only 2.5 miles – and called it a day. On Friday, I returned once again to the Confucius Temple shopping area for some more fun wandering and spending. I bought myself a Xun – a Chinese ocarina. It is excellent, but will take some practice to do anything relevant with.

Saturday was also a somewhat unexciting day. We took a day tour to Lishui, where we visited a park and had lunch. The park was somewhat fun. Our tour guide showed us a shallow fish hatchery and told us we could attempt to catch one if we wanted. Since we didn’t, he jumped right in, stalked a couple fish for a few minutes, then grabbed one! It was unbelievable! We applauded as he held his fish up happily. After that, we wandered around the park some more before getting on a boat to see a natural bridge. For anyone unfamiliar with a natural bridge, it occurs when a stream creates sink holes, which in turn erode lower layers of sediment over millions of years. In this case (like the natural bridge in Virginia), the result is a deep ravine with a narrow bridge joining the cliffs. That pretty much summarizes Saturday.

Sunday, Sunday. A small group of us decided to try going to church. It was really quite an amazing experience. Here in China, the Christian church is government run. From what I understand, it’s about 90% legitimate, but there’s supposedly some hogwash too. I don’t know, I haven’t been. That said, we chose to go to Nanjing International Christian Fellowship. NICF is a church for foreigners in Nanjing. To get in, one must have a foreign passport. It’s completely led by volunteers in English and the speaker rotates on a weekly basis. The most surprising and exciting thing about the experience was how international it was. As I’ve said before, Nanjing is 98.5% Chinese. Well, I think the other 1.5% was at this service! I’m sure 25 or 30 countries were represented by the couple hundred in attendance. At the beginning, they asked new attendees to introduce themselves. In addition to us, the other new attendees were from India, Lebanon, the Philappines, and Zimbabwe. The guy who gave the announcements was British and the guy who gave the sermon, African. It was truly awesome to see such a group of people, united by all being foreigners and Christians. There were contemporary songs, communion, a Sunday school orchestra performance of Via Dolorosa, an offering, and the sermon – just like home! In fact, the preacher even gave a lawyer-tax collector joke. I guess some things truly are international!

Anyway, it’s time to wrap this up and get to studying. After tomorrow’s test, we will be going to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, remembering the 1937 rape of Nanking. I perceive it will be a lot like D.C.’s Holocaust Museum, though I haven’t been to that either. Thus, this promises to be interesting, informative, and memorable. Until next time, zai jian!

Wednesday, June 3rd 2009, 10:46 PM (Nanjing, China)

2009-06-03T16:56:00.002-04:00

Greetings and salutations!

Today, of course, is Wednesday, June 3. A little higher level mathematics will reveal that I have been in China for three weeks and one day and I will return to the United States in exactly three weeks from now. I don’t particularly have much to write about in the way of events, but the majority of this post will discuss interesting tidbits and quirks that I’ve come across in the first half of my trip.

Sunday, we had class. After class, I worked on my paper for a bit, listened to a presentation about innovative construction by the local DOT (some of the most creative bridges I’ve ever seen- and they offered employment too!), went to dinner, and studied for my exam.

Monday – my birthday – I had a difficult time with the exam and spent all afternoon writing my paper. In the evening however, the hosts were sponsoring a farewell banquet for my Traffic professor, who is returning to the States tomorrow. I pretended like it was a birthday banquet. There were 23 courses in all! It was excellent too. Funny thing about banquets in China… they serve wine and beer. Typically, you don’t drink until someone toasts something or someone. Well, plenty of people toasted me. Good thing I brought my water along and the wine was weak!

On Tuesday, I went to class, then wrote my paper and studied for the final exam.

Today, I took my Traffic Engineering final exam (which went really well), then I spent the afternoon relaxing in my room. Exciting? I think so.

Tomorrow is the first day of CE497 – a crash course (pardon the pun) in vehicle dynamics, electric circuits, and thermodynamics. After Traffic, this course promises to be a piece of cake: no paper, no final, 3 noncumulative tests. I’m excited.

So there’s the scoop on the week’s activities, but now for a sort of rundown on some of the observations I’ve made. The order here is in stream-of-consciousness, and I can’t even promise that the following rambling will make any sense at all, so you’re welcome to turn back now, before it’s too late!

1. Music.
I have yet to find a good theatre performance. I saw a poster with two traditional instruments, but I can’t read Chinese, so I took a picture. I just need someone to translate it. That said, I have heard some music. The lady on the boat was playing the pipa. Since then, I’ve crossed paths with a few poor/homeless people playing some amazing music. Of course, being a sucker for awesome traditional music, I’ve tipped them. The first occasion was a man and women performing over the weekend. As far as I can tell based on memory, one was playing a dizi and the other a qinqin. I think. They were very good. The second occasion occurred today, as our group passed a man playing…uh… Well, based on a photograph and some research, I think he was playing a Sanxian with a bow. That’s my best guess anyway. Whatever the case, it was really beautiful sounding!

2. The sidewalks.
All sidewalks here have a row of tiles running their entire length. Each square tile has a two by 6 grid of raised rectangles that run parallel to the sidewalk. At corners, the tile changes to a grid of raised bumps. It took us a while to learn why these are everywhere, but it’s really quite clever. More extra credit to the first person who can come up with the right answer!

3. Street signals.
They all have countdown timers until the next phase. When you’re stopped, a red timer signals when the next green is. A green timer accompanies a green signal to tell when a yellow is coming. Of course, yellows also have a timer of 3 measly seconds! I think this is a great system that should be adopted by the States!

4. Elderly people playing games.
At the nearest street corner in the mid afternoon every day, one can find 40 to 50 people sitting in the shade, four to a table playing mah jong or Chinese chess. I intend to take my new Chinese chess set and take on someone, with no intention of winning. I have a feeling, if I went, sat down, and set up a board, someone would come up and play me. How cool would that be?

5. Bartering.
I’m not good at it, but getting better ;-) It’s everywhere, and I think being foreign helps. Every vendor has an identical calculator. You ask how much it costs (they understand that, haha), and they type in a number. You type a lower number. The process continues until an agreement is reached. It seems to me that they’re pretty quick to lower the price – I almost feel bad that I’m cheating them out of their product, but it’s their system. As an example, the price of something I wanted was 260 Yuan. I countered with 130 (and I should have started lower!). After about 90 seconds, we agreed on 150. That’s the way it goes.

6. Common Foods.
Sure everyone knows about rice and noodles, but having been here three weeks, I’m seeing trends in other food as well. Watermelon is served as dessert for every meal. Fish is never deboned and everything is cooked in oil. Interestingly, a popular banquet food here is crawfish! Having some crawfish boil experience from home, it fell on me to teach some in our group how to eat them. Naturally, they don’t use Cajun spice, but the best ones I’ve had were baked with cheese! Dinner foods (noodles, rice, green beans, dumplings, rolls, etc) are served at breakfast… with hot fruit juice! Finally, napkins are few and far between. I think that’s China’s attempt at being green, but I haven’t verified that theory yet.

7. Construction.
The design-build process for most projects (sky scrapers, bridges, subway, etc) is under five years. Small scale projects such as pedestrian and two lane overpasses are completed within one year. I’m jealous.

Well, that’s it for now. I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head, and I have to get to sleep. In the next installment, I’ll continue the list if I come up with anything else!

Sunday, May 31st 2009, 1:48 pm (Nanjing, China)

2009-05-31T21:11:00.002-04:00

Greetings once again from Nanjing!

Today is Saturday and I think my last post was Tuesday, so I’m afraid a lot of time has passed. Sorry about that! Nonetheless, there really isn’t too much to write home about. Well… I tend to drag everything out, so we’ll see how this goes. Without further ado I present “This Week.”

So as you recall, I was preparing for our field trip. We (16 students, 2 leaders, 2 adult hosts, 1 Chinese student guide, and 1 driver) piled into the 25-passenger van and headed out of Nanjing at 12:30 pm. The first transportation-related landmark we were to analyze was the beautiful expressway that was intended to blend into the landscape. In addition, we pulled off at a service area so we could marvel at how well it fit into its surroundings. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but the Chinese government is all about “going green” and being more environmentally friendly. While this sentiment is far from reaching all walks of life, it has definitely affected the philosophies of every agency we’ve worked with thus far.

A little later down the road, we stopped at another service area. This time, the focus was different. Instead of being green, we admired the building’s architecture: a near replica of London Bridge. Yes, at a service area. We were shocked. Ten minutes later we continued our transportation journey. Finally, by about 3:30 pm, we arrived at Huaxi (pronounced Hwa-she) Village, the self-proclaimed “best village in China.” While I personally question that statement, I found the village to be an excellent study of appearances. It is the first place in China I’ve seen single family homes, but they were aligned in a perfect grid pattern, each identical to its neighbors. In addition, we drove along a nice, touristy store front, but upon climbing an observation tower, we realized that the stores just hid a water treatment plant. Finally, they took us on a tour of the village greenhouses. It turns out that the quantity of vegetables grown there is insufficient for the village, so the greenhouse is merely kept for tourism purposes.

Oh yeah, did I mention the replica Arc d’Triumph, Sacre Coure, Great Wall, and Tiananmen Square? Hmmm… yeah, I thought it was weird too.

Leaving Huaxi, we backtracked slightly to Jiangyin, where we were spending the night. From an adjacent hill, we looked out over the Jiangyin suspension bridge, the 6th longest suspension span in the world. For comparison, the Golden Gate ranks in at 9th. Unfortunately, we did not cross the bridge since people (our hosts) were trying to get us to dinner. Sometimes I think transportation engineers just don’t understand how amazing such structures are. ;-) Maybe one day they’ll learn.

The following day, we rose bright and early to continue our road trip. Leaving Jiangyin at 8:30, we continued eastward. Our first stop was to visit the Sutong cable stayed bridge, the longest such bridge in the world. Because cable stayed bridges place loading directly on each tower, spans longer than 1 km have never been achieved… until the Sutong. Unfortunately, the smoggy sky made it impossible to see the opposite bank from the exhibition center, and consequently the bridge was partially masked by haze. Even still, it was remarkable to see how ridiculously high the towers stretched. Standing on the bank definitely provided a sense of insignificance. For clear pictures, see Wikipedia or Google. Else, you can e-mail me if you’d like a couple of my own pictures from the bridge.

Looking at a map, you will see that the Sutong Bridge is about three-quarters of the way from Nanjing to Shanghai. Thus, we had a long drive ahead of us once again. It was made even longer by the addition of yet one more stop: the Taizhou Suspension Bridge. Currently, the Taizhou Bridge consists of three half-constructed towers. Seeing a suspension tower rise from the earth adjacent to an impoverished community was a sight to behold – another strange technological façade. Upon the bridge’s completion, however, it will essentially be the world’s first double suspension bridge. Each of the identical main spans will stretch 1000m over the Yangtze with a pivot in the middle. Combined with an opening date planned for 2013, the Chinese are clearly on top of their civil engineering game.

Finally, we drove back via the Runyang Bridge. This bridge also features two spans, joined at the center of the river on a small island. The northern span is cable stayed and the southern span is the fourth longest suspension span in the world. We didn’t stop – just drove over and admired. So, in summary, we saw the current longest cable stayed bridge, the world’s 4th and 6th longest suspension spans, and the construction of the world’s first double suspension span (which will be the longest suspension in the world). It was crazy.

Ah Friday. Dragon Boat Festival. As I quickly found out, celebrations and activities are few and far between, sort of like our Columbus Day in the United States. Honestly, if our professors hadn’t told us it was a national holiday, I would have thought Saturday came a day early this week. Still, I tried to find some sort of fun to take part of. Sure enough, I purchased two zongzi- one was zhu rou (pork) and the other was jujube (Chinese date). Unwrapping the bamboo leaves was a challenge because the rice was so incredibly sticky, but the taste made the struggle well worth it. After eating my zongzi, I walked around Xuanwu Lake, the big lake at the foot of Purple Mountain. There weren’t any festivities, but many families and couples were out enjoying the sunny day. Children played on playgrounds and almost every park bench was taken. I guess it was great to see how the people here enjoy their time off, but it turned out to be quite similar to a holiday in the States.

And now, today. I began today by trying to track down a theatre in the center of town. I’ve been hoping to see some kind of musical performance, but nothing is listed online. Sure enough, I found the theatre, but apparently today was a “Cosplay” event – costumed roleplay. Therefore, every teen around the theatre was dressed in an anime-style costume. It was kind of interesting, but I deemed my search for a performance schedule to be impossible.

Continuing on my way, I went to the Zhonghua Gate. This gate was built in the 1430s as part of the Ming Dynasty city wall. The gate (which resembled a small fortress) has three partitioned courtyards and a sort of bunker area in the front. Each partition had an iron gate that could be dropped down at a moment’s notice to limit invaders. But even with multiple gates and a drawbridge, Zhonghua was where Nanjing fell to the Japanese in 1937. Oops!

While spending time at the gate, two pairs of people decided to begin conversations with me. The first pair was two guys who were about my age. I did not catch their names, so I’ll call them Mark and Robert here. Mark did not speak any English, but Robert said he had visited Boston in 2007, so his English was ok. He wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing. We took a few pictures and communicated as best we could. As we walked, we went into a room that displayed a raid siren. I asked them to explain the sign, but Robert’s English was not good enough. Just then, the second pair of people walked up: a guy and girl who also appeared to be my age. I didn’t catch their names either, so I’ll call them Joe and Lauren. Like Mark, Joe didn’t speak any English and Lauren’s English was very limited… so no one ended up explaining the siren. Oh well.

Anyway, Mark and Robert left and Lauren and Joe followed me to some of the other display rooms. I tried to ask questions about what I saw, but her comprehension – and consequently her responses – were confused and scattered. In spite of this, it was surprising that we were able to communicate using small phrases and words in context. I was impressed at both our diligence and patience in attempting to communicate. Best of all, they seemed to enjoy spending time with me, so we saw a couple more rooms and then I had to continue on.

Leaving the gate, I walked to the nearby Confucius Temple, which I heard is also called Fuzimao Street. You may recall that I have visited there already, but I chose to return to do some more shopping. I was quite successful too! As I was looking for postcards, however, yet another guy said hello to me. He introduced himself in Chinese and then said his English name is Luis. Ok, so I was really quite impressed with Luis’s English speaking. He connected his thoughts well and it seemed his only limitation was vocabulary. Even at that, however, his vocabulary was fairly advanced. Of course, he was totally enthralled to be talking to an American, so we wandered all around the temple for about an hour, talking mainly about differences between American and Chinese students. It was really interesting to hear about America from a Chinese student’s perspective. “I heard Americans…” “I heard students in America …” Most of the things he had heard were right on, too. It was clear he was enthralled by the idea of modernity – a very American idea. He even commented that China was too traditional for his liking. He wanted to know if I had been to Miami and New York. “New York is also called the Big Apple. Do you know why that is? I really like New York. It’s very modern.” I have no idea why NYC is the Big Apple. Is that bad?

He said he hopes to come to America some day after he graduates in accounting, perhaps permanently. I told him not to be so hasty because China has a lot of benefits too. Even though he doesn’t like the Chinese education system, I told him that was the reason why China was moving up in the world and America is not.

Well, I could talk a lot more about our discussion, but this is already an exceedingly long blog post. I can share more later if anyone is interested. So we bid each other good bye and exchanged email addresses. I returned to one last store and actually sat around and “talked” with the family that ran it. By “talk,” I mean that we used a calculator to show each of our ages, and then they shared some seeds with me. For my first test, they were curious if I could use chopsticks, so I picked up a seed on my first try! Whew! My second test was actually eating the seeds. These seeds were quite similar to sunflower seeds: oblong shell with almost no flesh. The coating was very tasty, but I was incompetent at cracking the shells open with my teeth. They could all crack the shells perfectly in half – I mangled six or seven and then gave up. We had a good laugh. At last, I bought what I was looking for and they gave me a bracelet as a gift of friendship. They wished me well, but I think they want me to come back again to say hello. Maybe I’ll master my seed eating skills first!

At long last, I returned to the hotel, wiped from walking about 13 miles in two days after spending about 10 hours driving in the two days before that. What a week! Anyway, I have a test coming up and a paper due Wednesday, so time to get back to work. Thanks for reading and I’ll write again soon!!

Tuesday, May 26th 2009, 1:03 pm (Nanjing, China)

2009-05-26T05:30:00.001-04:00

Ok, class. I’ve received some questions from you all, and apparently the assignment was harder than I anticipated. That said, you can turn it in for extra credit, but it won’t be graded.

On a more serious note, here it is Tuesday in Nanjing! I’m sad to say that we did not have Memorial Day off. Nor did we celebrate. Nor did we have fireworks. Nor did we go out to eat. In fact, I spent my Memorial Day studying for a test. But hey, this Thursday and Friday we will be celebrating a Chinese National Holiday, the Dragon Boat Festival. Reading up a little ahead of time, the Dragon Boat Festival features boat races to honor the spirit of water dragons, considered to be the most powerful dragons (and they provide water for crops). Moreover, the festival honors a 3rd century BC poet, Qu Yuan, whose counsel was rejected by a king. Qu Yuan threw himself into a river, and the villagers raced their boats around to try to find him before he drowned. Failing to find him, they threw rice into the water to prevent the fish from eating his body (I don’t understand that). To this day, one of the central foods surrounding the festival is zongzi – bamboo leaves wrapped around sticky rice with a sweet or salty filling. I’ve seen these in the grocery store already, and I’m really excited to give them a try this weekend!

This past weekend ended up being somewhat uneventful. On Saturday, we were planning to go to a soccer game, until discovering that the game was actually Sunday. Oops! So instead, we headed south to the Confucius Temple market. Like many touristy areas, there wasn’t really a temple as far as I could tell, but tons and tons of shops selling mostly identical merchandise. You’re supposed to barter for everything, but I didn’t remember that until it was almost too late. Thankfully, I only bought a few things and I intend to return at least once more before the end of the trip. I also had my picture taken with a statue I presumed to be of Confucius. It was a pretty jovial statue, so I gave it a high five.

On Sunday, we took a nice, slow start to the day (i.e. most people were recovering from a fun night out on Saturday) before heading to the 3 pm game at Olympic Stadium. The game was between the Jiangsu Sainty and Chongqing. The general admission tickets were 50 Yuan each, which is about $7. To better cheer for Jiangsu, almost all of us purchased blue Sainty jerseys, at a cost of 60 Yuan ($8.50)! The stadium was pretty cool, except it had an interesting mix of obsolescence and modernisms. A crisp, clear jumbotron displayed the score of the game, yet there was no game clock anywhere! The stadium’s capacity was probably around 50,000, although it was only one-quarter filled. At least there were crazy soccer fans though! A couple people from our group motivated the crazy soccer fans by whooping and hollering before, during, and after the game, so we had quite a fun time. Even better, Jiangsu won by a score of 4-0! The first two goals were scored in the first 15 minutes and the last two were scored in the last 10 minutes. Jiangsu combined good defense with a hail-mary style offense that worked remarkably well. As I said, we all had a great time and really enjoyed seeing the home team pull it out.

The only other item of note right now is that we’re getting ready for our field trip to visit some transportation-sites of interest. We leave tomorrow (Wednesday) just after noon, and we’ll return to Nanjing on Thursday afternoon. Depending how interesting the festival is at that time, I may or may not have the opportunity to post again before Sunday. Zai Jian!

Friday, May 22, 2009, 9:24 PM (Nanjing, China)

2009-05-22T16:41:00.001-04:00

One week of class down!

So it's Friday evening and here I am writing a blog post. I guess I'll find something to do eventually- I think someone mentioned ping pong.

But before that, it's only right that I should update everyone on the week in Nanjing. We've had 5 classes, the equivalent of about 9 weeks of class during a normal semester. Our first test was Thursday and focused on questions regarding traffic in Nanjing. What is the background growth rate? 10-15%. Would light rail work on Beijing Rd (next to our university) and why? Determine the trip assignment for Hunan Road shopping area. It's actually been very interesting.

Dad will be proud because we briefly touched on Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements. Naturally, I remember writing a mock EIS for scouts... good times, good times. I've also enjoyed class because life in DC and travel to various international cities has given me a great perspective on modes of traffic. Peds, Bikes, subway, busway, bus lanes, light rail, heavy rail, street cars, cable cars, people movers (monorail!) etc etc etc... I wonder if I've seen it all?

Never fear, I have also done other things this week too. Since I don't remember what I discussed in Monday's blog (and blogger is still blocked), I'll just start there. Monday afternoon, we heard from Mr. Wei Xia, Vice Director of Jiangsu's DOT. One notable fact was that Jiangsu has the highest population density of any province in China, and consequently has 60,000 bridges and almost 90,000 miles of roads! In addition, the DOT here has adopted a philosophy that "A driver's mistake should not cost his/her life." I think that's a bold statement that goes beyond roadway design- can technology be developed to make up for stupidity? If so, is that foresight or dumb luck? In addition, can it be done without overdesigning a road or structure? I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.

Tuesday afternoon's guest lecture was by Mr. Huang Kai, Dean of International Students (I think) here at Southeast University. He spoke to economic development in the province, but more interesting was his travel experience. Since he earned his PhD in Connecticut and is a world traveler, I asked him what we should gain most from our trip or what we should tell people at home. In his response, he said that this is a time of globalization. He said to tell people to travel abroad and meet someone from another culture. And most significant to me, he said to come back to China. This made me recall a part of my trip to Ecuador in which the Maestro (construction supervisor) said, “Remember Ecuador. Remember the people, remember the country, come back again.”

So I really got to thinking, what do these two experiences have in common? Why should people in Ecuador and China want us to return? Is it that we Americans pump money into their economies? (well, yes, but bear with me..) Is it that they want us to have pity on their living conditions? Or maybe it’s something more meaningful. Maybe we provide a glimmer of hope that not all foreigners look down on these countries. How cool is that?! Here in Nanjing, the population is 99% Chinese. We have been asked on multiple occasions to be in pictures simply because we’re Americans. People point, stare and laugh at us. They shoot photographs when they think we’re not looking. Why is that?

Well let me examine the corollary. Pick any block of any street in any metropolitan city in the United States. I guarantee that during the busiest part of the day, you could walk down the street and count people of at least three different races. And people think there’s no diversity in the US! Those people should come to China! I went two days without seeing a foreigner as far as I could tell. So, maybe we as travelers do bring money into the economies of countries such as China and Ecuador, but we bring something else too. We bring the hope that there are people around the world who care to learn what life is really like behind the façade of government.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that governments don’t represent their people very well. Therefore, don’t read FoxNews, BBC, or your favorite newspaper and say, “Oh, the Chinese Communist party just restricted trade with the US; their people must be dumb.” It’s not true. Furthermore, don’t let the French (or anyone else) make judgments about Americans because of Bush, or Obama. How do you accomplish both? Go to China! Go to France! Go somewhere! That’s the only way to do justice to learning about a country.

Whew. That was a long soap box, but I think it was necessary. At any rate, after Tuesday’s talk, Mike and I tried out the city’s bus system by taking a trip to the Yangtze River Bridge. The bridge, with its one mile main span, was the first bridge to cross the Yangtze River and the first double deck bridge in China (if I’m not mistaken). The top deck (4 lanes + 2 sidewalks) stands approximately 200 feet above the water and the second deck (2 railroad tracks) about 120 feet high. In addition to the main span, the bridge has over one mile of approach ramp on each side of the river. Most stunning was the high quantity of traffic on the bridge. Trains ran every couple minutes. The lanes were constantly busy with cars, trucks, and mopeds. Even the pedestrian walkways served as (dangerous) travel lanes for mopeds, bicycles, and pedestrians. It was intense!

On Wednesday, our own Dr. Hummer gave an afternoon presentation on Unconventional Intersections which proved to be quite interesting! I think I’ve become a fan of the Median U-Turn (or Michigan Left Turn). Look it up on Wikipedia! Wednesday evening was devoted to studying, dinner, and studying. Sad!
Thursday afternoon and this afternoon were both very enjoyable. Yesterday, we had the opportunity to visit Nanjing’s Tunnel Management Center. Big room, lots of video camera monitors, people with buttons… you know the drill. Next, we took a quick run through Nanjing’s Urban Planning museum, where they had a 1:850 scale model of the entire city! The model filled up an entire room and the viewing was best from the second floor. In addition, the museum had a video with light display to point out Nanjing’s many highlights on the map. It was really REALLY cool! Finally, we took a boat ride on the mother river of Nanjing (an inlet off of the Yangtze). While on the boat, we enjoyed eating yummy lychee nuts (no one knew what it was… except me. I said, “It’s a lychee!” “A what?” “A lychee!!” Anyway, look it up on Wikipedia if you need to.), bananas, sunflower seeds, and tea (they drink tons of it here- it brings good luck). In the mean time, we listened to someone play the pipa (I had to ask what that was… so look that up on Wikipedia too)! It was really beautiful-sounding and I now want to hear more traditional Chinese music. From what I understand, however, it’s hard to come by since the Cultural Revolution (you may need to look that up on Wikipedia if you’re under 30) did away with a lot of that. ANYWAY, it was a fun afternoon!

Today, we went for a tour of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Mausoleum. Located on Purple Mountain, the mausoleum is located at the top of an epic 400-step staircase. It’s really interesting how Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (yeah, look him up on Wikipedia too) is revered like George Washington is in the States. Of course, the strange thing is that the Nationalist party he established in 1912 was the party overthrown by the Communists in 1949. Nonetheless, he is revered. His mausoleum was decorated in simple blue and white (Nationalist colors), and his coffin was carved in his likeness out of granite. It was really quite spectacular!

So, I suppose that’s about all for now. Tomorrow, we’re going to be soccer hooligans for the afternoon. I’ve never been to a soccer game as spectator before, but the game tomorrow is between the Jiangsu Sainty (Nanjing’s team; see Wikipedia) and Chongqing Lifan. The 3 pm game will be held at the Nanjing Olympic Stadium, on the southern side of town. I understand the Sainty is pretty bad, but hopefully it will be fun all the same. I’m interested to see what stadium food is like here in China. My guess is noodles and corn on the cob. Man, they love some corn on the cob on the streets. I haven’t had any yet, but tomorrow might be the day.

Next anticipated post: Monday or Tuesday.

Homework: Before next class (next post), look up the following terms on Wikipedia:
-Median U-turn
-lychee
-pipa
-Cultural Revolution
-Dr. Sun Yat-Sen
-Jiangsu Sainty

Monday, May 18, 2009, 9:00 pm (China)

2009-05-18T16:04:00.005-04:00

Wow, almost Tuesday. I've been in this country for one week and it feels like it's been a year. Thankfully, Vienna was the same way. I guess there's a certain period of adjustment for these kind of trips that makes the first week seem like an eternity. I haven't even really done anything yet! Here's hoping each passing day is filled with more excitement and more notable experiences!

Today was pretty good. Apparently, we're taking the class (Traffic Engineering) with about ten or twelve Chinese students. Although they must have known what they were getting into, I feel bad for them- their understanding of English is good but not fluent by any means, so their understanding of class discussion is slow. In addition, there's a clear difference in standard of living. We all had laptops. None of them do. As an introduction, we were all asked to stand, state our hometown (yeah nation's capital REPRESENT!), and say what mode of transportation we use. Of course, we all have cars. They all have bikes. That made me feel kind of awkward. I don't know if I was ashamed or embarrassed or what, but definitely awkward. So since our notes are on the computer, Dr. Hummer asked us to intersperse and pair up with the Chinese students. My partner (whose full name was really long, but told me to call him Yuan) is really nice, but he had difficulty grasping what we discussed. Nonetheless, class went well and hopefully three hours of traffic every day won't be a drag.

After another *lovely* cafeteria lunch, we returned to the hotel for some relaxing before our guest speaker. The guest speaker was Mr. Wei Xia (pronounced "Mr. Sha Vey"), the vice director of Jiangsu province's DOT. The presentation was also given to a lot of Chinese students who I perceived were graduate students in their School of Transportation. Well, it was a cultural experience for sure. There were two simultaneous powerpoints: one in English and one in Chinese. Mr. Wei gave the presentation sentence by sentence in Chinese, pausing so his assistant could translate into English. It was interesting to hear their innovations in highway design, but the 2-hour lecture was pretty long for most of us!

So those are the highlights from today. Dinner was at a somewhat western restaurant, but I had chicken curry. And before anyone accuses me of eating non Chinese food- have no fear, I couldn't taste it anyway. Stupid cold. Oh yeah, don't worry about swine flu either, because my temperature is still 36.8!

That's all for now. It's only been a day since my last post, but the words just kind of came out, so why not have another one? I'm sure I'll post again soon! Bye for now!

Sunday, May 17, 2009, 5:00 pm (China)

2009-05-17T12:48:00.000-04:00

Greetings family and friends across the world! Today’s blog is coming from the 11th floor of the Liu Yuan Hotel in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. It has been an eventful couple of days here in Nanjing as we have settled ourselves in and are preparing to begin class tomorrow.
On a government front, it has been very interesting. The day after posting my last blog, blogger was censored! I clicked on my bookmark and a blank page comes up. No text. No explanation. Just the browser’s telltale statement, “Done.” Youtube is the same way. On that note, I will be posting here via my girlfriend, who has excitedly volunteered to login and post my stories on my behalf. Thanks Kalli!
The other wonderful government-related item of the past few days is that Jiangsu province has reported its first confirmed case of Swine Flu. In accordance with provincial decree, we – dirty Americans – are required to take our temperatures every day until Tuesday and inform them if anyone is over 37.5 degrees Celsius. Yesterday afternoon, I caught a cold (ugh!), but thankfully my temperature reads a cool 36.8, 0.2 below normal body temperature. Nasal decongestants are working wonders too!
So enough about that. Let’s talk Nanjing. Arriving in Nanjing Thursday afternoon, I was immediately struck by two things. First, the city is very green. No, I’m not talking about recycling or clean diesel buses, but rather the shear quantity of trees that line every street in the city. The trees appear to be in the maple family, have solid trunks, and branches that reach out at 90 degree angles at about 7 feet high. If you made a strong-man pose with your fists angled outward, you would get a good idea what these trees look like. It’s very pretty. The other thing that struck me was the quantity of smog. At no time since arriving on Thursday have I seen a blue sky. The sky has been cloudy most of the time, but even with today’s “sunny” weather, the sky is gray and visibility is limited to 5 miles or so. It’s not pretty. If it doesn’t clear up at all, I may need to start looking at pictures of blue skies and puffy white clouds so I don’t forget what they look like!
The people here are indeed very nice. Thursday we had dinner with our host and student guides and Friday, they showed us around campus. They even put up signs all over campus and in the hotel reading, “We welcome the faculty and students of NCSU for civil engineering study abroad.” The warm welcome was very nice and helped us to feel right at home.
Since our meals in Shanghai, the food has improved drastically (or maybe we’re becoming accustomed to it)! We have had a lot more dishes that Americans would think of as Chinese- chicken or beef with noodles, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, egg drop soup, etc. Friday, we were on our own for dinner (the welcome banquet was delayed as part of the swine flu regulations), so many of us walked around looking for food together. Sadly, most of the group needed a break from Chinese food and stopped at KFC. Six of us, however, stayed the course and ate next door at a Chinese chain restaurant. I had spicy noodles and they were exceedingly good. I will definitely be returning there!
On the topic of food, my eating schedule looks like this: Breakfasts are provided by the hotel – buffet style with hot juice, toast, dumplings, noodles, cooked vegetables, and other apparent leftovers. Lunches will be in the school cafeteria as long as we can stand it. Imagine the quality of cafeteria food in the US with the menu choices of China and you understand how bad that could turn out! Finally, dinners will be whatever is convenient when evening rolls around. I assume Chinese, but that may not last too long.
So far, we have not done too much in Nanjing. Friday was spent touring the main and new campus. On Saturday, we were given a really broad tour of the city by bus. We drove to a number of sites, but due to the rain, we chose to stay on the bus. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a grocery store. That was pretty exciting. I noticed more American brands such as Oreo, Chips Ahoy, and Coca Cola but there were plenty of unfamiliar products too. One could buy fresh squid and eel in addition to a myriad exotic fruits and packaged goods. Employees were all over the store giving out free samples and talking over PA systems to convince shoppers how excellent the products were. In a promotion area, they were featuring Oreo wafers. Adjacent to them were some snack-sized yellow, white, and tan pouches. All the writing was in Chinese, but I decided to be adventurous. Thus, I picked up a yellow pouch and went to pay for that, a Fanta, and some chocolate-filled Koalas (lol- very yummy!). Once back on the bus, I opened my yellow pouch to determine what was inside. To my surprise, I found it filled with green, flat, leathery seeds. I bit into one and it was immediately apparent that I could not chew through the skin, so I split it in half with my hands. I asked our guide what it was and she said (after looking in an English-Chinese dictionary) it was a bean. Upon asking if I had to cook them, she said, “Yes. Fried.” We all burst out laughing. Sadly, I have no access to a pan and oil, so it looks like my leathery, tasteless beans are going to go to waste. No worries. I had fun.
That evening, I hung out with one of our guides, Jun. He bought me a Chinese Chess set as a gift and taught me how to play. It’s actually somewhat different than traditional chess, and it’s really fun! Afterward, we went to dinner in a sketchy hole-in-the-wall restaurant that a lot of the students like. Yeah, it was sketchy and somewhat unsanitary. I don’t know if I’ll do that again, but the noodles were pretty good.
Today, seven or eight of us finally branched out a bit by going to the Hongshan Forest Zoo. To get there, we walked to the Metro and rode four stops. The single Metro line here was completed only a couple years ago and a second line is in progress. To enter the Metro, the rider purchased a plastic chip from an automated kiosk by selecting their destination stop and inserting the appropriate amount (either two or four Yuan ~ $0.25-$0.50). Then, the rider passed through the turnstiles by holding the (apparently) magnetic chip against a sensor. To exit the Metro, the rider would insert the chip into an electromagnetic slot. It was really cool.
The zoo itself had benefits and drawbacks. It was surprisingly big and there was plenty of shade and interesting terrain to climb. The animals were also quite cool: three pandas, some Bengal tigers, ostriches, emus, peacocks, elephants, and a variety of others too. Unfortunately, however, we all realized that these animals were not being kept in the best condition. Water areas were very unclean. Plastic litter was in some animals’ cages. Most disappointing, however, was that most of the animals were kept in very small areas. As an example, the tigers (separated from each other) were each limited to an area less than the size of a hotel room. The poor gray wolf lay in its cage with significant chunks of its hair falling out. Even the birds were limited in their range of flight. Perhaps this was done to ensure guests would get to see the animals, or maybe there just wasn’t enough money to make larger cages, but either way, these cramped conditions were no way to house animals.
In any event, we had a good time in spite of becoming slightly depressed. Riding the Metro and walking the streets were fun, and I’m excited to do this more over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, tomorrow, Monday, is the first day of class. Class starts at 8 am and lasts three to three and a half hours. In addition, we will also have a guest lecturer tomorrow afternoon- Mr. Xia Wei, Vice Director of the Jiangsu DOT Highway Bureau, will be talking about Highway Construction in Jiangsu Province. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

2009-05-14T08:09:00.000-04:00

Ni Hao!
As I write this, I am on a bus heading from Shanghai to Nanjing. The trip will take us 4 hours, so I figured I’d be productive by getting some writing in. So let me fill you in on the trip so far.
*dreamy flashback sequence*
It all began dark and early Monday morning when Kalli and Mrs. Hulse took me to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. I entered terminal 2 at about 4:45 am with a few mini-bagels in my pocket and two stuffed bags ready to embark. After checking in, I headed to the gate, where I began to meet my fellow travelers. A couple of us played cards and I thought about how crazy it was that I was going to China! By 6 am, we boarded our flight to Chicago, and we were off. I was out like a light.
In Chicago, we had an awesome 3 hour layover (sarcasm intended). We sat around over breakfast and talked about assorted stuff. More cards. More anticipation. Finally, at 11:30 central time, we took off from Chicago on a Boeing 747-400. The pilot announced that we would be taking a polar route- 300 miles from the North Pole, down through Russia and Mongolia, then finally through China to Shanghai. Unfortunately, our group was scattered around the plane, so I did not really talk to anyone the entire trip. Instead, I took a Tylenol pm and was out for the count. 6 hours later, I finally came around, but we were only half way there! 13 hours and a half was a REALLY long time to be on the plane, but frequent snoozing helped pass the time.
So finally (after another couple hours of napping), we landed at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport! Even though the sun had never set, the local time was 1:30 pm Tuesday. Pulling into the gate, the pilot announced that quarantine officials had to take care of some business before we could disembark. Soon, men in Tyvek suits, goggles, and facemasks boarded the plane with their handheld laser thermal imaging units. They approached every person, pointed the handheld at their forehead, and took a reading. Thankfully everyone in our group passed the thermal reading even though one person was held because he checked “cough” on a swine flu symptoms form… he was soon released.
After clearing customs, we met our tour guide, loaded onto a bus, and headed into the city. The weather was in the low 60s, and even with the heavy smog, it was still cloudy and threatening rain. We went to dinner in an ornately decorated boat on the Huangpu River.
I suppose I will interrupt my story here to talk about food. Our four major meals in Shanghai were all really similar. We would arrive and sit down at two family style tables. In the center of each table was a large, circular, glass turntable. From out of nowhere, waiters and waitresses would bring all manner of plates and dishes of a wide variety of food. Vegetables, fish, chicken, bean curd (tofu), soup… and mystery substances. I suppose about one-third of the food I have consumed I haven’t been able to identify conclusively. Most of the food has tasted good, but there have definitely been dishes difficult to stomach too. Thankfully, since each meal has been family-style (lots of dishes spread around), I have probably already consumed over 50 different dishes. A lot of it has been fried, a few things served with head attached (fish, chicken), and there has been plenty of rice, eggs, and dumplings as well. So, because there has been sooo much food already, it will be difficult for me to identify particular items. As the trip continues, however, I will “identify” and describe a few specific foods that I really appreciate… or not.
And now, we return to our intrepid traveler… After dinner, we headed to a river boat cruise. Shanghai- a gray and seemingly drab city – came to life at sunset. All the sky scrapers had elaborate neon lights and I felt that we were taking a cruise around Manhattan! It was really a spectacular 30 minute ride, except we were all extremely jet-lagged. Thankfully, my pictures have and will continue to remind me of our boat around Shanghai. Finally, we took the bus to the Shanghai Swan Hotel. It was 9 pm (9 am EDT), but it felt like 4 am. I was soon asleep.
Yesterday, my roommate Kevin and I found ourselves wide awake at 5 am, ready to start the day. We grabbed breakfast at the hotel and meandered around until meeting the group at 8:30. To begin, we went to the Shanghai Museum. This museum featured paintings, calligraphy, jade sculptures, ceramics, and currency from the area’s history. I was particularly fond of the calligraphy, which was extremely artistic. Too bad I can’t read any of it!
After the museum, we visited Shanghai’s Pudong TV and Radio Tower. The tower resembles a spaceship with a tripod base and a pair of giant purple spheres. The tower is comparable to the CN tower in many ways: similar height, awesome glass floor, lots of tourists. It was awesome. I realized I’m doing pretty well on towers. I’ve been up the Seattle Space Needle, CN tower, Washington Monument, Eiffel Tower, and now the Pudong TV tower.
Following the tower, we grabbed lunch and went to some ancient gardens and a market. The gardens were peaceful, but we somewhat rushed through them. In the adjacent market, we quickly learned that Shanghai is known for peddlers selling fake Rolexes and other cheap goods. They were everywhere… and I guess we kind of stuck out in a crowd of Asians. I saw a couple things I really wanted, but since bartering was the name of the game and lunch was starting to hit me pretty hard, I passed up on shopping. I hope I didn’t miss my best shopping opportunity for the trip! *sigh*
From the market, we went to dinner, where I poked around at some food and wasn’t feeling too adventurous. Finally, we ended the day by going to see an acrobat show – Cirque du Soleil style. It was amazing! Nonetheless, I was exhausted so our return to the hotel brought some much-needed relaxation.
This morning, we checked out of the Swan Hotel and went for some shopping on Nanjing Road. Nanjing Road reminded me a lot of the shopping street in Vienna. There were many big fashion stores, surrounded by a variety of food places. It was amazing to see how open the economic situation is. Companies such as Lacoste, Wrangler, Nike, Apple, Rolex, Brooks Brothers, Starbucks, KFC, Hagen Dazs, Sony, McDonalds, and others were well represented there and around the city. In fact, I haven’t seen very much evidence at all of the communist government that supposedly limits political and social freedoms. It will be interesting to see how Nanjing compares to Shanghai in this regard.
After spending time on Nanjing Road, we visited Shanghai’s Jade Buddha Temple. The temple was remarkably peaceful and quiet, so I enjoyed having the opportunity to look around. That said, I felt strange looking around and taking pictures of the temple, especially because it was being used by worshippers. Just like the churches in Europe, I wish photography and visitations were limited or prohibited, because tourism just doesn’t belong in a place of worship. But that’s their choice.
*end dreamy flashback sequence* So after lunch, we boarded the bus and hit the road. By the look of things, this part of the country is an unending terrain of concrete houses and distant high rise buildings. It seems to be mostly flat, but mountains in the distance promise some interesting terrain.
Well, we just pulled off to a service area, so I’m going to go get some water and maybe a snack. Next time I write, I’ll be in Nanjing! Talk to you again soon!

Preparations for China

2009-05-05T14:34:00.002-04:00

6 days and counting!

Here are a couple business items:

-Due to the fact that we're beginning our trip with a tour of Shanghai, my first post will probably be Thursday 24 or Friday 25 from Nanjing (minus 12 hours, eastern time). If I happen to have internet in Shanghai, what a pleasant surprise that will be for everyone!

-China has internet censorship. Therefore, I may not be able to use blogger.com for my posts. In that event, I will be posting on an NC State blog that I have set up at the following address:

http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/wheresdannow

If both of those fail, I will post updates on facebook and send updates through personal contacts.

Now for packing...

Countdown to China

2009-04-26T23:36:00.002-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls-

Welcome to another great summer of travel posting! The 2009 edition of "To Infinity and Beyond" will feature six weeks of travel to everyone's favorite communist country, China. As of now, it is only 2 weeks and 6 hours until our plane takes of from Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Here are some other basic details of my trip:

When: May 11-June 24
Who: 16 NCSU Civil Engineers
Why: To study abroad in China. The program features two courses: Traffic Engineering and an intro to Electrical Engineering/Thermodynamics/Vehicle Dynamics class
Itinerary:
-May 11-12: Fly (via Chicago) to Shanghai
-May 12-14: Tour Shanghai
-May 14: Travel to Nanjing
-May 15-June 20: Nanjing program; class to be held 8:30-11:30 each day with afternoons free
-June 20-21: Night train to Beijing
-June 21-24: Tour Beijing, Great Wall, Olympic Sites, Forbidden City, etc.
-June 24: Fly back to Raleigh (flight leaves at 4:10 pm in Beijing and gets into Raleigh at 11:55 pm, including a short layover in Chicago. HA!)

So, one and all, let another excellent summer begin!

PS - In the event that Blogger.com is subject to government censor in China, I will be emailing blogs to one of a couple friendly assistants who will post on my behalf. :-)

Utrecht, Brussels, Paris, home at last

2008-07-08T10:09:00.002-04:00

Well this is it. Today's blog is going to be really long, but, sadly, it's the last one for my trip.

So, going all the way back to Thursday, I took the day to visit Utrecht. Much like Delft, Utrecht was filled with shops and people bustling around, eating food and ice cream, and seemingly just enjoying the day. I started my day by visiting the railroad museum, which had lots of interesting diesel and diesel-electric trains...but was really aimed towards a younger audience. None the less, I looked around, climbed through a couple trains, and then made my way out. Next on my list was to climb the city's Domtoren or Cathedral Tower. 465 steps took me to the top of the tallest cathedral tower in the Netherlands, as well as allowed me to see some really big bells! Then, fitting in with the crowd, I pretty much wandered around for a couple hours eating french fries and ice cream.

PARIS!
The last hurrah for my Europe trip was Marjorie and my weekend trip to Paris. We caught a 7 am train out of Rotterdam, however, so we could make a pit stop in Brussels, Belgium. Why? To see the Musical Instrument Museum, of course! We saw hundreds of instruments from all over the world and from all ages and it was really quite cool. In addition to the museum, we had to get Belgian Waffles from the Grand Market...and see the peeing boy sculpture. Then we continued on to Paris.
So, getting settled in by about 3:30, we immediately jumped in to city stuff. First stop: The Eiffel Tower! After only a 30 minute wait, we climbed 600 stairs to the first/second floors before hopping on an elevator to the top. What a marvelous view! The tower is a lot bigger than I imagined it would be, probably because I figured it would be comparable to the Statue of Liberty. So after admiring the view and picking out all the landmarks for a while, we moved on to our 2nd attraction, the Louvre.
Thankfully, Friday nights are special at the Louvre - free for students from 6 to 10 pm! So, when we showed up at 8, we just walked right in, no line, no cost, but TONS of art. The shear size of the building from the outside is almost oppressive, and looking at a museum map, we knew we'd never get to see very much. Thus, we hit the highlights - Mona Lisa, Aphrodite statue (Venus di Milo), and the Hammurabi Code. All very cool and impressive.
But, the CRAZIEST thing happened. The 4th of July...standing literally 30 feet from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Marjorie and I are talking when I hear to my side, "Hey, didn't you go to Herndon?" Well it was none other than Sara from my Algebra 2 and Precal classes, and the Herndon music department! She's going to be a senior this coming fall at William and Mary, she's been living in Paris for 3 weeks! Now seriously, what are the chances that I run into a former classmate on the 4th of July, in Paris, at the Mona Lisa?! It was quite an interesting evening.
After dinner, we walked back to the Eiffel Tower, where we admired it's bright blue spotlighting and about 10 minutes of random strobe lights all over the tower at midnight!

Saturday came overcast, drizzly and cool weather, but we were undeterred! First, we went to Notre Dame and walked right in, looked around, and got in line for the tower. After about a half hour (and 2 crepes), we climbed to the top and took a couple pictures posing as gargoyles. We also noticed that the line for the church went all the way across the square to the street. Talk about good timing! From Notre Dame, we took the subway (an adventure in itself) to Paris's Catacombs. In 1810, the Parisians were getting diseased from an overcrowded cemetary, so they decided to move all the bones to an abandoned quarry. So what do you do with 6 million bodies? Apparently put them in pretty patterns....yeah...it's somewhat overwhelming, and then almost numbing. It was hard to believe it was a tourist attraction (just like everything else in Paris), but there we were, walking through, shocked at the massive stacks of bones. Very...unique.
So, leaving the catacombs, we walked all the way to the Arc de Triomphe, probably a good 4.5 miles from the catacombs. The weather had cleared, and it was really really nice out. The Arc proved to be quite the monument from Napoleon! It's really big. A ceremony was being held underneath it to rededicate their eternal flame and tomb of the unknown soldier. Their ceremony seemed a lot like our memorial ceremonies here at home, veterans with flags, various ceremonial procedures, and a band playing patriotic songs. Nonetheless, there wasn't too much to see, so we continued our clockwise journey around town by heading up to the Sacre Coeur, the Church of the Sacred Heart. While the church is really beautiful on the outside, I was really actually depressed with that part of our day. Getting off the subway, we were immediately shocked at the dirty, crowded streets filled with tourists mingling with sketchy off-market dealers. Needless to say, I kept my hand on my wallet the entire way up the hill to the church. The place was packed with tourists, including 2 guitar players on the steps of the church playing American rock and roll. I couldn't believe it! It made me sick to be American, knowing that this beautiful church was being disgraced like that. Thus, we made a quick round of the church and headed on our way.
We continued clockwise to the Bastille, where we found some dinner at a small restaurant (it was already about 22:00, but still quite light out) before getting some hot chocolate and admiring Notre Dame at night. With all our walking around, we returned to the hostel at 1:30 and quickly went to bed.

Sunday was yet another beautiful day, and we spent our remaining time walking the waterfront of the Seine, seeing the Musee d'Orsay (a truly strange museum of 'leftover' art), and walking the length of Champs Elysee twice. We ate baguettes and ice cream, looked in a few stores, and took it easy. Then, we caught our train back to Rotterdam.

As I said before, this is it. Yesterday was really the only bad day of the entire 5 weeks, thanks to both airports. While I caught my flight, 2.5 hours is apparently barely enough time to check in (1 hour), go through customs (40 minutes), and go through security. Our plane got in an hour early, but half the baggage went to the wrong carousel...and the rest of it (including my backpack) disappeared. First they said that our bags were all on the same baggage cart....somewhere at Dulles. Then they said they found it...then they said they didn't find it and we were to fill out delayed baggage reports. Thankfully, my bag was delivered home at 10 last night and everything made it home.

So, to sum up, it has been a truly unbelievable and amazing 5 weeks. I made stops in 8 countries (13 cities), spending overnights in 5 of those (6 cities). I heard 5 different foreign languages (German, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, and French) but still coped quite well. I visited goodness knows how many churches, museums and landmarks, and learned a lot of history of various places in Europe. I took around 2400 pictures, which I will be downloading and distributing appropriately over the next week. I ate so much good food, saw lots of concerts and performances, and met a lot of people. I hope to return to Europe, and especially Vienna, soon.

Thanks to all of you who have read my blog over the past 5 weeks! I hope you've enjoyed some of the stories I've passed along, and I hope I've successfully conveyed what a fantastic trip it was. Right now, it's hard to tell what my next big trip will be, but without a doubt, I'll pick this up again whenever that comes around. Thanks again!

Dan

Netherlands Post Script

2008-07-02T18:01:00.002-04:00

PS.

I've decided that the difference between Dutch and Deutsch is just about 2 letters. Honestly. Now, that may be making a molehill out of a mountain, but I actually find that many words are REALLY similar between the 2 languages. Very interesting, huh??

Around the Netherlands in 80 Hours

2008-07-02T16:57:00.002-04:00

Having spent 3 days covering 4 cities, I think I've had a pretty nice overview of the Netherlands! Monday-Rotterdam
Tuesday-Amsterdam
Today- The Hague and Delft (and Kinderdijk!)

So let's begin. Rotterdam. The second largest port in the world, according to Marjorie. I guess I believe it too since it has a really long waterfront, however I haven't really seen that many barges since being here. Who knows. To start off my day, I went to Delfhaven, where the Pilgrims left their church for England on the Speedwell in 1620. I looked around the church in awe since I am related to one of the Mayflower Pilgrims and one of those who remained behind in Holland. Of course, having been to Plymouth Rock in MA, it was special to have seen both ends of the journey.
Leaving there, I took a long walk through the city, over the Erasmus Bridge, back over the Williams Bridge, and then to the apartment. There really weren't too many inspiring things to do in downtown, largely because it's such a commerce center. However, when Marjorie returned from work, we walked around the park close to her house and ate at a pancake place for dinner (they eat a lot of pancakes...imagine a cross between our pancakes and crepes). Now, lest you accuse me of not doing very much, I did walk close to 10 miles on Monday in crossing town!

Wednesday's journey took me to Amsterdam, using the commuter rail. Now, I've never been to Venice, but I bet it looks a lot like Amsterdam- canals EVERYWHERE! I began by visiting the famous Anne Frank house and annex, where the Frank and van Pels families spent years in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. The house was pretty inspiring in that it is just tough to imagine there could be so much hatred in the world that people have to live like rats! I'd like to think things are different today, with today's liberation of 14 hostages from Columbia. It's hard to tell.
Leaving the Anne Frank House, I wandered to the Vincent van Gogh museum, where I enjoyed some 200 pieces of his collection, including The Potato Eaters, Field of Wheat and Crows, and many others. It's unbelievable that he made around 2000 works (1100 sketches and over 800 paintings) in just the 10 years he was an artist! Such talent! It's just too bad that talent often goes unrecognized until it's past... Anyway, the rest of the afternoon, I wandered around Amsterdam, checking out a couple churches, finding the state house, and walking back through the train station (accidentally catching a corner of the Red Light district...whoops; yes, it IS sketchy at 4 pm).
So what could make such a day better? LES MISERABLES! Marjorie and I headed downtown for Les Mis at the New Luxor Theatre and it was very VERY good. It was great to hear that familiar music again and to hum along some of the lyrics, even though they sang it in Dutch. I'd even have to say it was significantly better than the version that came to D.C.'s National Theatre in '05! ahhhhh...

Well, that brings me to today. For today, I tried to hit up 3 particular sites. First, was Den Haag, or The Hague. If Rotterdam is the commercial center, and Amsterdam is the cultural center, The Hague is supposed to be the political center. I think I found it to be my favorite city of the three however. There was a lot of interesting stuff to check out, and so little time to do it. I toured the Peace Palace in the morning (home of the International Court of Justice and International Court of Arbitration) and went to an M.C. Escher museum (he's apparently Dutch..who knew?). So I definitely had fun in the Hague (I might go back tomorrow, we'll see). Then I went to Delft, saw the Oudekirk (Old Church), which has a 75m tower that leans some 2 m to the front....and it looks terribly awkward! Nonetheless, as long as it doesn't fall, I think it gives it a lot of character and I think I kind of like it! Inside the church, Antony von Leeuwenhoek (improved the microscope, "Father of Microbiology") is buried close to the tower, under an engraved floor tile, with a monument near by! Who knew?!
Now, I was going to go to the Delft ceramic factory, but I wandered around the center of the quaint old touristy town for a couple minutes before I came to the realization: "I don't even really like ceramics. Why am I here?" So, in the interest of time (and remaining
interested in what I'm seeing), I left to go find the Kinderdijk (or Kinder Dike). As many of you may know, this is the home to 19 18th-century windmills, used to pump water out of the fields, back into the Lek River. It took a while to get out there by bus, but it was really quite fascinating. As with any windmill, these involved gears, shafts, and paddle wheels, but these - unlike those at home - were not for grinding meal but rather to move water. Wind turns blades, blades turn gears, gear turns crankshaft, crankshaft turns gears, gears turn paddle wheel, paddle wheel moves water a monstrous 1.4 m up. Where are my Mech E's when I need them! Surely they could have got some better production than that, no? Ah well, that's what happens in pre-industrial revolution Europe.

Anyway, that's a summary of events here. I don't really know what I'm doing tomorrow, but Friday (Happy 4th everyone!), Marjorie and I are off to PARIS, via Brussels! Depending how things go, I'll try to post again before I return home, but if not, I'll be back on Monday, at just about 3.10 Eastern time! Can't wait to see you all then!

A Flying start

2008-06-29T19:11:00.002-04:00

Dan! You just spend 12 hours on the train....what are you going to do next?

Take a train, of course.

So yeah, my wonderful 12 hours of train riding was actually really enjoyable! I saw lots of countryside, marked with the transition from Austrian rolling hills, to German mountains, to low hills, to the extreme flatness that is the Netherlands. Since crossing the Netherlands border, I've seen more livestock than I think I had in about 5 or 6 years combined! It's everywhere- cows, horses, sheep...all of them just grazing away in the vast expanses of fields separated only by starkly straight canals (which are also everywhere here).

Today for excitement, we left Marjorie's excellent apartment at about 8:30 to catch a 9:20 train en route to Texel Island, one of the north most points in the Netherlands. We needed 2 trains, a bus in Den Helder, and a ferry to get there, which took us until around noon to arrive. Once there, we stepped off the ferry and each rented a bike for the afternoon.

Unfortunately, the size of this island is not to be believed. Except roughly an hour break for lunch, we biked CONTINUOUSLY and still only saw roughly half the island. Yes, we covered over 20 miles by bike in about 4 hours. Most of the time was spent looking out over fields of emptiness, punctuated on the horizon by a scant row of trees. One of their claims to fame is their mountain, Den Burg, a whopping 50 feet above sea level. There was also a city there, but we were rushing to get to the North See side of the island....which proved to be extremely difficult. We weren't able to see the See by bike, but after the bikes were due at 5, we caught a bus to Den Koog, an excellent restaurant district really close to the water.

Anyway, I feel it's worth taking a step back to the beginning of our trek. About 7 miles in, we came to the lovely and charming village of Oudeschild on the eastern (Wadden See) side of the island. There, we found a hotel/restaurant and grabbed some unbelievable Dutch food. I had 'Bitterballen' which is pretty much a mystery meat paste inside a fried falafel-sized sphere. Very very good. Even better, however, were Marjorie's "hot snacks." Her lunch, of which I don't presently remember the name, was stuffed miniature envelopes of meat and/or stuffing. It was really, really good. We also got some french fries, which are apparently eaten all the time at meal or snack. Interesting?

Well, what an unbelievably long day. We got back here at midnight, so we're very tired. Tomorrow, I'm seeing Rotterdam, but beforehand, I'm taking some rest on my own and it's going to be great. Perhaps I'll discuss more of our sore details later, but for now, I'm really tired.
Dan

PS, Marjorie reminded me that we ate ice cream in Budapest too, so I ended up having ice cream 8 consecutive days! It was peerfect. Which reminds me...apparently Ben and Jerry's has its sole plant somewhere around Amsterdam. How cool would that be?

PPS - Les Mis has been and is showing in Dutch. Enough said.

Auf Wiedersehen Wien; Hallo Rotterdam

2008-06-27T17:53:00.002-04:00

Good grief; it's Friday night (almost midnight), I haven't packed, and I can only think about how quickly this month went by!

Before that, however, perhaps I should recap the week:
-Mon- Leopold Museum featuring lots of art, specifically by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, two of the Secession's most renowned painters.
-Tues-Went to visit Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Johann Strauss, who reside in consecutive plots at the Zentralfriedhof. We had an excellent lecture on music (mostly about Gustav Mahler)
-Wed- The Vienna Museum, which has artifacts from the Vienna area dating back to the Roman Empire. Then, I took a tour of the State Opera House (somewhat disappointing) before going to the Musikverein to see the Vienna Mozart Orchestra play a concert. The only non-Mozart piece was the encore, On the Beautiful Blue Danube, by Strauss. Beautiful concert in a beautiful hall.
-Thurs- Went to the Nashmarkt, a sort of daily farmers market. I picked up a box of excellent raspberries and a box of Ribisel...aka Johannisbeere...aka currants. I don't think I'd ever seen raw currants before. They're apparently native to Austria, and they're very sour. yum! We also had our program-concluding dinner at a heurigen (winery) north of town. The food was great...as was the wine.
-Today, Friday- After our class's goodbye party/lunch, I went to the Instrument Museum at Hofburg Palace. There, the museum exhibits a huge collection of old and ancient (as old as the 11th cen.) musical instruments! The woodwinds were actually wood! I also saw an Edison wax-cylinder phonograph and listened to a recording of Strauss's orchestra, the only remaining original recording of that orchestra. Too bad I only saw 2/3 of the museum before closing. I guess I should have allotted my time better... Next, a few of us went to the Volksprater, an old amusement park. The highlight of this park is a 200 foot diameter, 111 year old ferris wheel (Riesenrad)! Also special is that each ferris wheel car is the size of a small tractor shed! What an engineering marvel for 1897.

I guess the other notable thing this week was my mass consumption of ice cream. I rediscovered the ice cream I ate on the 2nd day and decided that it's the best ice cream in the world. For only 2 Euros, I could get 3 huge scoops! Thus, I made it a point to go get 3 scoops of ice cream there every day this week! mmmmmmm...

Well, that was a ridiculously fast month. Tomorrow at 8:40 am, I catch my 12 hour train to Rotterdam. I intend to look out the window, read a lot of the Lord of the Rings, and write my Arts in Vienna final exam (200 words on each of 4 prompts, flexibly due this weekend by email). When I get home to VA, I'll put in some overall thoughts and discussions on my cultural and experiential impressions of Vienna, but for now, I just want to say that it has been such an AMAZING trip. I intend to also make a list of all the things I did while I was here, but I know that will take quite a while to compile. No one here can believe that we're finished up, but many here openly state that they're excited to get home. Admittedly, I'm excited to get some real sleep, since 6 and a half hours per night is starting to wear on me. Nonetheless, I have one week left, and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot in the Netherlands- Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the North See, windmills, the home of the Pilgrams...and of course Brussels and Paris.

If you have any sightseeing ideas, let me know by reply post or e-mail! Good bye for now, and good bye sweet city of Vienna!

Hungary? Grab a Snickers.

2008-06-23T12:19:00.003-04:00

If Prague was a tourist trap, Budapest is a business center. So I know after that line, you expect me to say that we had a pretty boring time in Budapest, but in reality it was really awesome. Friday, Mary Brooke, Marjorie, and I got in around 4ish and we walked a couple laps around the center of the city, went up Gellert hill on the 'Buda' side of the Danube, and went to and admired St. Stephens Basilica (in Pest) for a while. After sunset, we walked down to the river again and waded a little in the river. It was quite refreshing. The funniest thing about Friday was that I went to the bank when we got there and apparently I had multiplication and division issues because I took out the smallest denomination: 1000 Forints. I thought I was getting roughly 40 Euros but when my Kebab wrap was 600 Forints, I realized I ACTUALLY got out about 4 Euros. OOPS!!

Saturday, we did a lot! It was extremely hot, and now all three of us have some extreme tan lines. We got up and caught a "hop-on, hop-off" bus and went up to Heroes park to the sounds of Hungarian Dance No. 5. We looked at the cool monument, walked around the little castle and park, row boated for a half hour, and then went and found a giant hourglass! To our best guess, the hourglass measured a year (since the sand was about half gone and we're in June). It was gi-normous!
So then we got back on the bus and crossed over to Buda to see the castle...on the hill...JUST like Prague and Salzburg! Imagine that. Well, this one was the most 'castle-like' of all of them. It had a royal palace, a big church (Matthias Church), and a peasant quarter, all in the same walls. It was very cool! We enjoyed the excellent views over the river at the Parliament building (the most excellent neo-gothic building I think I've seen in Europe) while drinking some lemonade in the shade and listening to a violinist and a hammered dulcimer.
After the castle, the bus took us up to the Citadel, on Gellert hill. It gave us the best view of the castle, the river, and the parliament amongst the rest of the city. Finally, the bus took us to Margaret island, where we put our feet in a spring fountain and grabbed a decent (unfortunately not Hungarian) dinner. Ordering was tricky; the menu was printed in Magyar (Hungarian), German, and English, but the waiter only spoke Hungarian. Thus, when Marjorie tried to ask for the waiter's recommendation, we all just kind of stared at each other for an awkward minute.
Dinner finally done, we walked over the bridge from the island to Pest (the East side of the river...maybe I should have said that earlier). We wanted to catch "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" the musical in Hungarian, but when we got to the theatre 15 minutes before curtain, hot, sweaty, and gross, we decided to pass. Instead, we went to a grocery store and picked up a few random unique snacks and hung out at a park. The sausage we obtained was a bust because it had chunks of solid (thus inedible) white bits...fat maybe? I don't know. So that was the end of Saturday.

Sunday was yet another toasty day. Two Floridians from the hostel joined us in our search for the famous Statue Park (Szorpark). When the Soviets pulled out of Hungary, they didn't want the statues to be destroyed, so the Hungarians took all the statues in Budapest and put them in a random park about 5 miles outside of town, in the middle of nowhere. So after some interesting use of public transportation, we admired all the statues and got lots of interesting pictures. I enjoyed seeing Lenin's feet (surely you've seen the picture of his body being pulled down) on a plinth all alone.
To conclude our weekend, we went out for an excellent Hungarian lunch. The three of us split 3 dishes- a pork in cream sauce with dumplings, Hungarian Goulash soup, and a fish I'd never heard on pasta with a mysterious orange-colored sauce (it was the waiter's recommendation to me). All were to die for! Best of all, I loved the spicy paprika sauce served with bread. After two slices of bread, my face was on fire for the next 15 minutes, but it was sooooo good! Well, after that, we walked back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, then headed for the train station. It was a wonderful weekend and we enjoyed every minute (except the ridiculous heat, which has followed us to Vienna!)!!!
Well, one week to go in Vienna; one week following in Rotterdam/Paris. This week will be really busy and really hot, but as always, promises to be great fun!

Yet another craazy week

2008-06-19T18:01:00.002-04:00

Hello everyone once again!

So where did I leave off.....ah yes, Prague. So Monday was the BIG Austria vs. Germany game in the first round of the Euro cup. Throughout the day, I saw jerseys for both teams all around town! It was unbelieveable. Naturally, we decided to go to the fan zone....like everyone else in Austria and Germany. Arriving at 18.45, the plaza between the Rathaus (city hall) and Burgtheater was already PACKED. Now, I have never been in a crowd like this in my entire life. I say this because once you wedged yourself in, there was literally NO WHERE to go. Impatient fans often just pushed the crowd, almost knocking people over. It was so crowded, one of the other group members and I (we got separated from 5 others who were with us) watched the first half with people pressing up on each side of us. It was nuts. For the second half, we pushed our way down to the Ringstrasse, where we had a little bit more room to move around. I also got a huge sweet pretzel and man was it good! Unfortunately Germany won 1-0, but it was still great fun.

On Tuesday, I went and checked out the Stephansdom (St. Stevens Cathedral), the single-towered landmark of the city. The four of us went inside, admired the excellent (but simple) gothic architecture of the 1300s, and then returned outside. We found out that 3.50 Euros bought a chance to climb the south tower, so one of the guys and I took up that offer. 10 minutes til closing was no match for us as we climbed up the 339 steps in under 5 minutes, took some pictures, then charged back down, wobbley-legged. Next on our schedule was to meet up with the rest of our study abroad group for Austrian cooking night. We made Wiener Schnitzel (using turkey), potato salad (different than the US!), cucumber and tomato salad, and for dessert, Apfel- and Topfen-strudel! mmmm good! Finally, to finish off the day, I picked up a fellow Caldwell, Marjorie, from the airport. She is interning in the Netherlands this summer with Unilever and she's joining two of us study abroaders on our trip to Budapest this weekend.

Wednesday was fun because our classtime was spent visiting the Secession muesum just outside the Ringstrasse. The Secession was a movement started by a bunch of turn of the 20th century artists to reinvigorate art. Its leader and first president was the famous Gustav Klimt, whose "Beethoven Frieze" adorns the walls of the museum's basement. After class, I met up with Marjorie at the train station, where we reserved our tickets. Then, we headed over to take a look at the Karlskirche (Church of St. Charles). We chose not to pay 4 Euros to go inside...but I might go back there next week. We'll see.

Wednesday evening was the most exciting part of this week. Three of us went to the Rote Bar at the Sacher Hotel for dinner. Complimentary starter: Shrimp with sauce and pastry with caviar. Very good! Then, I had the "Sacher Tafelspitz mit Apfelkren, Schnittlauchsauce und Erdäpfelschmarrn" (Beef filet with Apple-horseradish and chive sauces, with Viennese potatos). Naturally, dessert was my first slice of official Sacher Torte. OOOOhhh, was that good. And we paid like it was good! 40 Euros for me, our total for 3 people was 144 Euros!!! Well, we got our super fancy meal in, and I loved it. So why the fancy dinner? Well, it was OPERA NIGHT. The Staatsoper (State Opera house) was right across the street, and we met the entire group for Verdi's Don Carlos. Now I'd never seen an opera before, but this was amazing! Spoken in Italian, little individual screens translated into either English, German, or French. We had Loge seats on the 2nd level, so we had a great view of the orchestra. Obviously, the music was great, as was the performance overall! What an evening.

Today, Thursday, our Arts in Vienna class met at the Schloss Belvedere (Belvedere Castle), the summer residence of Prince Eugene (fought off the Turks, woo hoo!). The castle (which looks more like a Baroque mansion) has a great skyline view of Vienna, which gives it it's French name Belvedere or "Beautiful View." It's upstairs ball room is where the joint occupation of Vienna ended in 1955, but now it houses an art gallery- Klimt, Sichle, a couple Monets, and some others. Also there is "The Kiss," Klimt's most famous work (gold, silver, and oil on canvas-ooh ahh, special). As usual, we had a great time. Afterwards, I met up with Marjorie, and we went to see the Modern Art Museum in the local Museum Quarter. Perhaps the most interesting piece to me was a 4 page blank musical score marked "Pastoral Symphony"....but blown through with about 30 airgun holes. Irony? I think so.
In the evening, I introduced Marjorie to Wiener Schnitzel and local potato salad before we headed over to the FanZone. Tonight's game featured Germany against Portugal, and it was really a lot of fun (especially because we could breathe!). So, as you can see, it has indeed been a pretty busy week, but I'm looking forward to seeing what this weekend brings in Budapest!

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time for Indiana Dan and the Search of the Lost Budapest!

Czech it out!

2008-06-15T15:14:00.002-04:00

Woo Prague!

So, once again, I have managed to cram an inordinate amount of stuff into one weekend! Our Prague trip started Friday morning with our 5 hour bus ride (with 2 stops). On arriving in the city around noon, it all seemed very strange to us. Of course, we couldn't understand any signs because they were written in Czech, and all the buildings looked really eastern European. It didn't help that it was an overcast, chilly day, because - no joke - it really resembled what you would think of a Soviet Eastern Bloc country. We went to take out money (Czech Kronen or Crowns) so we could 'grab' some lunch. Ordering was somewhat tricky, as we used a combination of English, German, and hand signs to tell what we wanted. My 2 slices of Bacon pizza set me back 50 Crowns (CZK).

OH YEAH, I forgot to mention that it's roughly 15 CZK to the dollar or 22 to the Euro. So we were all walking around with 500 CZK bills...a lunch for 5 was 1880 CZK...and admission to the Jewish museum was 600 CZK. MADNESS!

So anyway, the rest of Friday, we went on a tour around Prague Castle and saw some of the highlights of downtown, such as the Astronomical Clock, the Dancing House, the shopping district, and the Jewish Quarter. Then, after an excellent dinner of stir fried pork and veggies and potato salad, we chilled in the hotel.

Saturday was the height of craziness. A group of six of us started off at around 10.15 taking the streetcar downtown. We walked through Wencenslas Square (i.e. the Good King W... who was a Czech king) en route to the Communism Museum. Ironically, it's next to a McDonalds. Actually, it was a very good museum for understanding Czech history in the past century. After the museum, we walked down to the Vltava (Eng-Moldau) River, checked out an island, then walked along the river towards the Charles bridge (and the shopping district). After some window shopping and some lunch, we turned off of the main drag to see what some other inner city streets were like. It was all touristy.

So, from the "new" part of town, we crossed the Charles bridge in search of 2 landmarks. First, we found the Infant Jesus of Prague at the Church of our Lady Victorious. This statue was made and given to the church in 1631 and supposedly has done many miracles since. There's a Wikipedia page about it if you want more information.

So after that, we went on a search for some wall that looks like the inside of a cave. Yeah, I know that's obscure. It was too. Turns out, it was in the courtyard of the Senate building, so we checked it out, along with plenty of other tourists who were there. The courtyard actually had some really nice gravely walkways, an outdoor classical-style stage, some hedges...and a flock of free roaming peacocks. So we admired the peacocks (including an albino alpha-male...he was a beast!) and the children chasing them around the courtyard. (the peacocks were smarter)

Finally, we walked back across the river, through the shopping district in new town, and through Wencenslas Square back to the streetcar to return to the hotel. There, we grabbed dinner (WIENER SCHNITZEL! YUUUUMMM!) and took a few minutes off before heading back downtown. Apparently, it was Prague's annual Museum Night, where some 30 museums were open from 19.00 til 1.00 for free! Additionally, buses ran between museums to make it easier to get around. So, we went to the Veletrzni Palace of the National Gallery to view some modern art! It was quite fun, though we didn't have enough time to do justice to the gallery. I wanted to see the Dvorak museum or another music museum, but the group consensus for art worked out pretty well. In the lobby was a row of urinals: above alternating urinals was written "This is not art" and "This is art." Enough said.

Today, Sunday, we got up at a similar time, checked out the Jewish Quarter again, walked through old town, walked the Charles bridge again, and went through the shopping district one more time (= 5 total times...impressed?). Then we returned to the hotel, and our entire group left to return to Wien.

So, I had a great time in Prague! Our little group did so much, and truely had a lot of fun. I'm sorry others in the Vienna group didn't quite enjoy it as much as we did, but hopefully it was still ok for them. As for the city, the downtown and old town areas were really nice; all the streets were cobblestone and featured the standard baroque architecture. The river was beautiful, especially with the Prague Castle in the background. Nonetheless, the outskirts of town (where we were staying) still had the earmarks of a country recovering from a long period of political turmoil. The local population is older rather than younger, but it would have been hard to tell that with the population of tourists downtown.

I can only hope that next week, when I venture off to Budapest (where they speak Hungarian and use Hungarian Forints) that I'll get yet another aspect of Eastern European life unlike Vienna or Prague.

This week at a glance:
Mon- Austria v. Germany- FAN ZONE!!!!
Tues- How to make Schnitzel, sponsored by the Internationalle Kulturinstitut
Wed- Dinner at the Sacher Hotel followed by a Verdi opera at Staatsoper Wien
Thurs- TBD
Fri- BUDAPEST!

Museums anyone?

2008-06-12T12:22:00.003-04:00

Well its been another week, and so now I have some more fun things to talk about! It seems like we finally buckled down to working on museums here in Vienna.

Tuesday after class, we headed out to Schloss Schonbrunn once more, but this time to hit up the Tiergarten (animal garden). The Tiergarten is the world's oldest zoo, having been founded in 1752! We were all surprised how large it was, and how many animals they have from all over the world. In particular, I enjoyed seeing the emu and piranha (strange combination, huh?), as well as the myriad other animals (birds, traditional animals, koala, penguins, etc) that they had.

Yesterday ended up also being a lot of fun. I went with a couple guys to the Naturhistorisches Museum and it was incredible. Unlike museums at home, this natural history museum has almost no information-just specimens. But holy cow, did they have a lot of specimens! Fossils, birds, gems, mammals and things from all over the world. Supposedly, they have the most expensive mineral collection in Europe, and they have a full collection of meteorites! How cool is that? I think I spent a good 3 hours there, and for only 3,50 €!

To finish off the week, we went to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Military History Museum), and saw lots of guns, some tanks, assorted artifacts from both world wars, and tanks! The most interesting thing, however, was getting to see the automobile and uniform worn by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand when he was assassinated in 1914 (which of course started World War I)! Definitely impressive to be in a place that has such a long history.

Anyway, that's all for now. Tomorrow we're leaving for Prague at 7 am. It's going to be a loooong 5 hour bus ride, but this weekend should be tons of fun!

The hills are alive with the sound of muusic!

2008-06-09T16:42:00.002-04:00

Where to start about Salzburg...

BEAUTIFUL

That should do it. Now for the slightly longer version. We took a train out Sat morning and by the time we got to our hotel, settled, and lunched (fancy restaurant too!), it was around 2 pm. From our hotel in new town, we walked to old town, meandered (i.e. squeezed) our way through the streets, and saw some of the sights. Mozart's Birth house (the inside left something to be desired), and the Fan Zone were the two biggest highlights from the afternoon. Unfortunately, it started downpouring, so we scurried back to the hotel and watched some Duck Tales (auf Deutsch!) on TV. That evening, we went up to the castle above town and saw a quartet play some assorted Mozart pieces, including Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in a Romanesque chamber! PERFECT. After the concert, we went back to the Fan Zone to watch the end of the Turkey-Portugal game. Then, even though Turkey lost, their fans still decided to have a party/parade through the streets. Go figure. That's dedication.

On Sunday, most of the group was going to go to Hitler's retreat spot (the Eagle's Nest) or into the Salt mines below Salzburg. That was until they found out that passports were required (since both tours crossed the German border). OOPS. 3 others and I, on the other hand, planned to take the Sound of Music tour (the original one...apparently that's important). So we saw the lake and back facade of the von Trapp mansion from the movie (which is now owned by Harvard University, go figure), the gazebo, the church in which Maria and the Baron were married, and some of the countryside around Salzburg!

After some more roaming around old town, a couple of us grabbed a WONDERFUL lunch at "Spaghetti & Co" (I had picante pizza- salami, corn, ham, peppers....soo good), and then we caught the train back to Vienna. What a wonderful town. Beautiful hills. Great atmosphere. You get the idea.

So today, after class, people were a bit tired and under the weather, so it was generally agreed to take a night off. Naturally, that was just what I needed! I used the opportunaty to go see "The Sound of Music" musical at the Volksoper! It was amazing! Because it was in German, a bunch of the lyrics had been changed (C, D, E... instead of Do, Re, Mi... for instance). Thankfully, they projected a rough English translation above the stage so people (cough. Americans. cough) could still follow the story.

So that pretty much wraps up Salzburg! I'm really glad I had the opportunity to follow it up with the musical here in Vienna too. I hope Prague turns out as nice as Salzburg did! Anyway, until next time, thanks for reading!

Laundry, eine Kirche, and the Danube

2008-06-06T15:09:00.002-04:00

So last night was "fun with clothes" night as I found out how to use the laundry machines here. I thought there were a lot of settings on machines in the States, but here, you have to pick your temperature (in degrees C), your material type, your length of drying (in minutes)...how complicated! Oh yeah, and you have to pay with a laundry card, naturally making use of the confusing card reader. So I put my clothes in, poured some powdered soap in the wrong slot (I used 'vorwasche' (prewash) instead of 'hauptwasche' (main wash)) by accident, then couldn't figure out the card system. Good thing another resident came in and offered his help..in English! Then I had to dry my clothes for an hour and a half on high heat because the dryers are pretty poor. Just what you wanted to hear about, right?? Well, at least the clothes are clean.

Today for our Arts in Vienna, we went on an excursion out to the Church of St Leopold (Leopoldskirche), completed by architecht Otto Wagner in 1907. This church is interesting because it was built simultaneously with the mental hospital which it serves, so everything in the church had to be extremely functional. Unlike all other Catholic churches, the front of this church faces south (instead of west) so the two huge windows on either side of the pews would allow a lot of light in (important for hospital patients). The pews are designed for only 4 or 5 people, so if necessary, it would be easy for a doctor to get to a patient. There are no paintings on the marble walls, but instead 2 small and 1-87 sq ft mural in the front. There were many other things making this church extremely functional (including a drop-by-drop holy water dispenser...safer for the patients than a bowl) but it is also extremely artistic and symbolic. Wagner designed the building AND everything inside it, right down to the instruments to be used by the priests. Naturally, this was more different than any other church I had ever seen, but it was spectacular - definitely a feat of architecture, art, and civil engineering.

After our tour, a handful of us decided to go check out the riverfront. We walked close to the Ringstrasse, and went into the Votivkirche (Votif church or Church of Thanksgiving). Much like a traditional catholic church, the Votivkirche had mamoth stone pillars and remarkably high, arched ceilings. The towers outside looked like thin, white Christmas trees reaching up towards the sky. I was thrilled, once again by the amazing architecture (by Fenstel, before 1900). The rose window above the pipe organ was a beautiful work of art...but so was the entire church. Apparently, the Viennese didn't really like how 'perfect' it was, instead preferring the more scarred look of the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral, which has 1.5 towers), which had been around much longer. Honestly, both seem remarkable to me, but I will compare again after having the chance to see the inside of the Stephansdom hopefully next week.

So, having looked at the Votivkirche, we hopped on an U-bahn and made for the riverfront- not the canal adjacent to downtown, but the actual river in all its...glory? Actually, the river was pretty excellent, probably rivalling the width of the Mississippi, however, we saw it in a more industrial-empty part of town, and there wasn't really anything else to experience aside from the river itself. Actually, the U-bahn station we got off at was right next to the Stadium where the Euro is going to be (starting tomorrow!), so I guess that was something to look at. But other than that, there wasn't much at all.

Finally, we went in eine Lokal (a small restaurant) for dinner. The waitress was very nice and we shared some thoughts and a couple laughs with each other about our time in Vienna. She spoke broken English, so we had fun (not sarcastically) with our broken German explaining things to each other. Our enjoyment was topped off when one of our group members asked following our meal, "Könnten wir bitte erzählen" (Can we please explain?) when she meant "Könnten wir bitte bezahlen" (Can we please pay?)!! We all laughed a good deal about that.

Anyway, that's all from me for the weekend. Tomorrow we're off to Salzburg, so I'll post again either Sunday or Monday. Aber jetzt möchte ich ein Eis! (But now, I want an ice cream!)

Sommernachtskonzert

2008-06-05T12:46:00.002-04:00

When we last left our intrepid adventurer, he was debating whether to go to the Schonbrunn Palace to see the Vienna Philharmonic...

And so I did! We took the U-bahn (Unterbahn= subway) out to the palace where the free concert was being held. Arriving 20 minutes before the start of the concert allowed us to take a few pictures before packing into the crowd. And man were there a lot of people! I'm sure if it had been nice out, people would have been sitting down, but unfortunately, the rain led people to remain standing...and to put up their umbrellas! So getting a view was a bit tricky, but we found a nice spot. The stage itself was covered in a half-cylinder translucent covering that not only blocked the rain but also provided a screen for assorted moving, colorful lights. On either side of the stage was a jumbotron that showed the Philharmonic up close as well as different scenes from around the city. After the first piece, we decided to stroll some of the palace grounds while listening to the music. Thus, we grabbed an ice cream and walked some of the Baroque style roads (wide gravel paths lined with tall, uniform trees) outside of the sitting area. It was splended, in spite of the constant drizzle! Amongst the pieces performed was the finale from Orpheus in the Underworld (i.e. the Can-Can), some Strauss, a Copeland...great music. As it turns out, I'm really glad I went because the other 3 Vienna Philharmonic concerts this month are already sold out! Glad I got to hear them!

Yesterday, we did nothing but homework. I had 90 pages to read for Arts in Vienna as well as a bunch of work for German. So we stayed in.

Today, after class, a bunch of us went to a residence office to turn in a form stating our intent to reside here for a month. Then, we went on a casual stroll around some of the shopping district before coming back to the dorm. On our way back, however, who should we run in to but Evangeline Lilley (Cate from "Lost") and Billy Boyd (Pippin from Lord of the Rings)! I would have never recognized either of them (seeing as I don't watch Lost and I didn't know Pippin's actor's name), but a couple people in our group did! So, they ran ahead and got a picture. Apparently Evangeline refused the picture but said they could have one with Billy. Hence, there's now a picture of 2 of our group members with Pippin. How cool is that?

Anyway, I haven't done my homework for tomorrow yet nor had dinner, so I'm going to go take care of that now. If something interesting comes up, perhaps I'll put off homework some more and go out tonight. Who knows. Speaking of food, Bratwurst mit Senf (with mustard) is really, really good! I think I'll be quite pleased with a month of that, fresh aufschnitt (cold cuts- salami, pastrami, etc), and the delightful pastries I've been having for breakfast!

Classes

2008-06-03T10:40:00.003-04:00

So today was the second day of class, and I've already come to the decision that it is going to be a looong month of work. The classes themselves are pretty enjoyable (assuming I get enough sleep the night before). My German class includes me and another student from our group, 2 students from U of Washington, a Polish student, several Chinese/Taiwanese students, a student from Serbia, and someone from Mexico, making 13 in total. Our teacher takes enthusiasm for teaching to an entirely new level, as it seems that she is always laughing about something. I think that's good though, since I would otherwise find it difficult to make it through 3 hours of German. She certainly gives a lot of homework though. Yesterday we had 5 reasonable exercises to do, but today we have to write a letter (to a prompt) and do 3 pages of work.

In "Arts in Vienna: 1900," we've had 2 lectures going briefly over the political history of Vienna, especially between about 1500 and 1918. I had never really understood the political climate of this region, but it's really quite interesting! It seems that in the years leading up to WWI, all the nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire seemed to love 60-year emperor Franz Josef, but rather dispise everything else. Hitler - who hated Vienna (or was bitter about not being accepted to art school) - loved Vienna as the capital of an empire, but hated the fact that Franz Josef and the empire were so multiethnic. In fact, he apparently tried to make WWII Berlin somewhat of a replica of Vienna, but even admitted that he would never be able to match what Vienna had. Confused yet? I don't blame you. Anyway, this class should live up to its expectations! Tomorrow's lecture: Architecture and the Ringstrasse.

Tonight, if the weather clears up (and I get enough work done), I plan to go to the Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of Emperor Franz Josef, for a classical music concert. I'll report back on that next time I post.

PS Eurocup2008 fever is in the air! They shut down a portion of the Ringstrasse yesterday for the fan zone and construction crews are working feverishly to build stages, press boxes, jumbotrons..the whole bit! Did I mention one of the fan zones is on the President's lawn??

HEAT

2008-06-01T18:39:00.002-04:00

I think this is going to be an exceedingly hot month.

There is no air conditioning here. Streetcars...HOT. Classrooms...HOT. Temperature...HOT.

But worst of all...my dorm room. See, the sun rises at 5:30 here, and shines directly into my east-facing window, directly onto my bed. And yes, we have a black-out screen, but with the blackout screen down (like a concession stand gate), no breeze comes into the room. A dilemma to be sure. So, until I track down a fan somewhere, I guess I´ll just wake up at 6 a bit sweaty every morning.

Actually, today it thunderstormed big time (with hail!!!), so hopefully it´ll stay overcast and be cooler tomorrow.

Enough ranting about that for now. So what did I accomplish today, on my 21st birthday? Well, I didn´t drink anything alcoholic today, if that´s what you´re thinking...I got up at 11, walked around a bit with some of the group, went on a walking tour of old town (the middle), and had dinner. It was pretty excellent! Old town is unbelievable! From the magnificent churches to the medieval corridor-style streets, I was fascinated! Mozart stuff is everywhere (two homes, the place of his last performance, his death place, etc), and the city is really rich with history. We went in this BEAUTIFUL Jesuit church, filled with colors and golden sculptures and architecture.

Having almost completed the tour, we stopped to get some gelato. I chose himbeere of course (raspberry) and it was...heavenly. It tasted like I was eating straight raspberries without the thick sugar and creme taste of ice cream. SOOO GOOD. I think I´m going back...SOON.

Classes start tomorrow at 9, and it is already 0:58 in the morning, so I guess I´m going to hit the sack. But stay tuned for more adventures!

First full day!

2008-05-31T16:39:00.002-04:00

Oh man, this trip is going to be pretty excellent! Let me name the ways:

-my roommate (whose name is Harold), is from Guatemala. It seems he´s actually pretty similar to me in that he doesn´t party much, keeps the place clean (both apparently rarities among the dorm residents), loves music (playing guitar, drums, and bass), and he´s been here studying Industrial/Mechanical engineering for two years (shoutout to my various IE/ME friends from school!). The only thing I´ve found difficult so far is that his computer (which he´s been nice enough to allow me to use) is spanish, so many of the keys are in different places! It´s going to be an excellent month though.

-This morning, we took our placement tests, and I got into level B1,2 (level 6 out of...14 I think). I placed fairly evenly to a little ahead of most of our group though, so I hope it´s not too hard!

-Then we went hiking through a bunch of vineyards north of town, up this hill with a great view of the city. It was definitely a healthy climb but we only covered a couple miles round trip. It was also exceedingly hot and humid (90ish would be my guess), but don´t worry, I´ve downed about 2 Liters of water today.

-Foodwise today was also pretty good. Schnitzelsandwich (fried chicken sandwich), Fanta (much different than that in the States), and an excellent dinner featuring assorted sliced cooked meat (ham, pork loin, chicken) with assorted brot (bread) and kase (cheese). Naturally, since we were hiking through vineyards, dinner was served with (we assume) a local red and white wine as well as grape juice. I could only down one glass of red wine...so I guess wine isn´t really my thing.

Well, tomorrow´s another day- I think the only thing planned is a city tour, which should be pretty fun! The place is hyped up for Saturday´s start of the Eurocup and there are banners, gear, painted busses, etc, etc. Tomorrow, I think I'm going to look into tickets to see The Sound of Music, The Barber of Seville, and/or My Fair Lady at the Volkstheatre this month. Interested in joining me?

Arrival in Vienna!

2008-05-30T15:00:00.002-04:00

Well, I made it!

Thankfully, everything was on time- flights, meeting with the director, getting to the dorm - except for my head. Jet lag is harsh, but hopefully tomorrow will be normal. It's 9 pm here (3 pm EDT) and I'm getting ready to head to bed, but we still did quite a bit today. After getting in at around 13:00 (how I'm going to refer to Austrian time from now on), Dr. Kube said, "ok, you guys can hang out and I'll meet you all here at 9:30 tomorrow morning!" (*groans*) . So, we spent the afternoon walking the area around the dorm (twice), grabbed some pizza (yeah, I know...we couldn't find a restaurant that was between a cafe and a fancy place) and we got to know each other a bit. Then we walked around some more, sat in a park, admired some architecture, and came back to play cards.
Ok, I can't think straight because I'm on way too little sleep, SO, good night and hopefully I'll write again tomorrow (after our placement interview, ahahhhhh)

San Francisco

2008-05-25T13:43:00.003-04:00

Ok, so I partially lied...before my trip to Austria, I went with the family to San Francisco for a week! We hit up Cable cars, the Muir Woods, all three awesome bridges (Golden Gate, SF Bay Bridge, and the San Meteo Bridge), Alcatraz, and even an SF Giants baseball game! What an adventure. I must say, though, I spent a fair portion of my time in SF thinking about Austria. Now it's only 4 days til I leave, and I haven't packed yet! I'm definitely getting excited though! I got my Euros ($453 gave me only 255 Euros...BLECH) and I have purchased pretty much everything I need. Woo hoo!

Welcome

2008-05-04T19:07:00.000-04:00

Welcome everyone to my travel journal! As I have the opportunity to use the internet in my travels, I will update this with my latest happenings! So what's coming up on the travel schedule? VIENNA. I'm leaving May 29 to go study abroad in Vienna for a month. Enjoy the blog and PLEASE leave feedback!
Dan