james shaw's blog

2008-08-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

A new post is coming. Sorry for the delay. Tim got homo-ed.

The Olympics at Beijing, We made it.

2008-08-11T23:03:00.000-07:00

Day 7 I think.

Today I attended my first Olympic event of my life. And it was memorable.

So we woke up early to make it to the event. Greco-Roman Wrestling. It was at the Agriculture University. Uncle James' driver took Tim and I to the stadium. Today There was actually some sun.

It was not as crowded as I thought it would be, but there was still a lot of people from all over the world walking around. They have some souvenir stands and everything is reasonable priced. We bought some stuff to bring back to people in the states.

North Koreans. How did they get out of the country?

Kazhakstan... is the number one exporter of potassium

From Outside

Wrestling Stadium

I brought my UT BME shirt because my boss wants me to take pictures with Olympic things. I didn't want to wear it around but I carried it with me and put it on for some pictures. Here you go, Cindy. UT BME and BEIJING.

The mascots for the Olympics. There are 5 in total each with a different theme. Read about them here.

http://en.beijing2008.cn/spirit/beijing2008/graphic/n214068254.shtml

They are so cute. They each represent an Olympic ring. And each on is named after the Chinese words "Beijing Welcomes You." The main one is this one.

Get out of my photo tourists.

His name is HuanHuan. He is a child of fire, symbolizing the Olympic Flame and the passion of sport -- and passion is the blessing he bestows. Huanhuan stands in the center of Fuwa as the core embodiment of the Olympic spirit. And while he inspires all with the passion to run faster, jump higher and be stronger, he is also open and inviting. Wherever the light of Huanhuan shines, the inviting warmth of Beijing 2008 -- and the wishful blessings of the Chinese people -- can be felt. The fiery designs of his head ornament are drawn from the famed Dunhuang murals -- with just a touch of China's traditional lucky designs. Huanhuan is outgoing and enthusiastic. He excels at all the ball games and represents the red Olympic ring.

This one is called Jing Jing.

Jingjing makes children smile -- and that's why he brings the blessing of happiness wherever he goes. You can see his joy in the charming naivety of his dancing pose and the lovely wave of his black and white fur. As a national treasure and a protected species, pandas are adored by people everywhere. The lotus designs in Jingjing's headdress, which are inspired by the porcelain paintings of the Song Dynasty (A.D.960-1234), symbolize the lush forest and the harmonious relationship between man and nature. Jingjing was chosen to represent our desire to protect nature's gifts -- and to preserve the beauty of nature for all generations. Jingjing is charmingly naïve and optimistic. He is an athlete noted for strength who represents the black Olympic ring.

You should read about the rest. Olympic spirit.

We made it.

Walking inside did give me goosebumps. The olympics at Beijing. The Worlds best athletes. We finally made it. It's very exciting to be able to see anything.

So today is not the super heavies. It was the 55 and 60 kg weight class qualifiers and finals. These little dudes are quick. China sucks at wrestling, they kept losing. We saw some pretty nasty throws as well.

Spencer Mango of USA being mounted by some dude. Get off me.

Like sweet popcorn.

Took this when I went to go pee.

I took this picture when I was peeing. Squatty Potty.

Hi I am at the Olympics.

This is for Cindy. I didn't want to put it on.

Highlight. We decided to go back outside to look for souvenirs. As we were leaving I see this huge dude and I think to myself I bet this guy loves wrestling. I look more closely. ALEXANDER KARELIN. The guy I wrote about yesterday.

AJSHOIQHR#RU(#_UFEW(H#RI!RHIHDIDGHI@H!!!!!

I was like OMG OMg oMg omG OmG. Tim take a picture of us.

His nickname was the meanest man on earth. The nickname fits. I was like can I take a photo. He looked at me and goes "Yes." In the deepest voice ever. Then he just looks at the camera. I go to shake his hand and he walks away. I awesome. I got owned by Karelin. Nice. I am glad the nickname lives up to the hype. This guy is the sickest wrestler of ALL time. The most feared man in Olympic history. Look at him. So mean.

See? Mean.

I was so excited, I wanted to do this to him. Come here big guy.

I think he just wanted to take a pee and was like get away from me.

We bought some more souvenirs and left. On the way out, I ran into some RUssians looking to score some tickets. Instead I was like do you like Alexander Karelin. Look at this photo. They were very excited and then dejected.

THis is them. "DO you have ticket?" "No, do you want to see Karelin?"

THen I took the train back home.

Getting around the city its relatively easy. There are olympic info stands all over the place and people willing to help. If you know English they can help you. World friendly. Good job Beijing.

Here is one stand.

We ate lunch and then Tim, Uncle James, and I went to go get a massage. It was going to be my first massage ever.

Am I supposed to get naked and wear this?

I expected some little asian woman. Instead I was very surprised. My masseuse was a rather large man. AND he was BLIND.

It was so painful. I was flexing the entire hour. He like dug his elbow into my back. I would like hold my breath and breathe really hard. He walked around pretty well. He kept asking me questions that I didn't understand. I kept answering yes.

Ow OW OW dude. Ow.

I feel no pain.

Then I had some apple juice and left.

I TOOK A PICTURE WITH KARELIN.

Went home. Watched China choke against Spain. Ate dinner. Almost went somewhere. But instead did not.

I am tired.

I TOOK A PICTURE WITH KARELIN.

-James KARELIN.

DUbya with Bill Gates. You didn't meet Karelin.

Alexander Karelin

No sir, I do not.

WEI GWOH REN - Foreigners

2008-08-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hello Blog

Day 6.

Today we relaxed. Woke up late. Watched USA own France. Ate lunch. Planned itinerary for the rest of Beijing.

Tomorrow our cousin Jimalyn scored us some tickets to Greco-Roman wrestling.

No attacks from below the waist. It's the homosexual one I think. Like if you give up a point, you have to lay on the ground and the other dude mounts you. Like hump you. Look at these guys. I think the one is kissing the other one.

SO random facts about Greco-Roman wrestling. Remember the name ALEXANDER KARELIN. From the former SOVIET UNION. Nicknamed the Russian Bear and the Meanest Man on Earth. ALthough he was not mean. This is guy is the most dominating Olympian of all time.

His conditioning, quickness, and incredible physical stature for his weight, perhaps combined with his dominance of the sport, led to him being known as "The Experiment" by much of the rest of the world. The term connoted the notion that his strength and skill were the result of some kind of scientific experiment. When asked why he thought he was called that, Karelin noted that others don't understand because "I train every day of my life as they have never trained a day in theirs.

Karelin was famous for his body lift, the "Karelin Lift," where facing the opponent who was lying flat on the mat to keep from being thrown, Karelin was able to lift the opponent from around his waist and throw him all the way over his shoulders, scoring from 2 to 5 points depending on the height of the throw. Karelin's ability to perform this throw against elite opponents weighing as much as 130 kg was amazing to audiences as well as other participants and observers of the sport.

Here are some stats about his career.

He was a wrestler in the 130 kg, 286 lbs weight class. He won gold medals in the 1988, 1992, 1996 Olympics. He went UNDEFEATED in the last 13 YEARS of his CAREER. He went the last 6 YEARS of his CAREER without giving up a SINGLE point. In the 1996 olympics, Karelin won with a separated pectoral muscle. His opponent had previously lost to him 20 times in a row.

He lost in the Sydney 2000 gold medal bout to a worthy adversary Rulon Gardner. More on him later. His first loss in 13 years. How is this possible. It was one of the biggest upsets ever.

Here is his career

1967	Born September 19 in Novobirsk, Siberia
1980	Takes up wrestling at age 13
1988	Wins Olympic gold medal in Seoul, South Korea; also wins European Championship
1989-91, 1993-95, 1998-99	Wins European and World Championships
1992	Wins Olympic gold medal in Barcelona, Spain; also wins European Championship
1996	Wins Olympic gold medal in Atlanta, Georgia; also wins European Championship
1997	Wins World Championship
1999	Elected to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament
2000	Wins European Championship
2000	Wins Olympic silver medal in Sydney, Australia; also wins European Championship
2000	Retires from wrestling

Karelin was born an astonishing 6,8 kg (15 lb) baby. Karelin holds a Ph.D. in Physical Education. He is also active in Russian politics.

Can you say HERO.

The man he lost to, Rulon Gardner is pretty amazing too. Not because he was a wrestler, but his amazing ability to SURVIVE. This guy survives everything. Read this. It's insane.

Rulon Gardner has had an amazing streak of luck with survival. While in grammar school, Rulon was impaled by an arrow in a show-and-tell incident. In 2002, Gardner was stranded on a wilderness snowmobile trip and had to have a toe amputated after suffering frostbite. In 2004, he was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle. In February 2007, Gardner and two others crashed a Cirrus SR-22 airplane into Lake Powell. After surviving the impact, they were forced to swim in 44 °F (7 °C) water for over an hour. The three survived overnight without shelter or fire in 28 °F (−2 °C) air temperature. His amazing luck streak continued when a fisherman, out of his usual route, found and picked them up in the morning.

I mean if you're going to lose might as well be to this guy. He is survivor man.

Rulon Gardner.

Ok. Then Tim and I went shopping. It was a pretty clear day from all the rain the day and night before.

A main shopping area.

Mall.

This looks like the players.

There is a lot of stuff to buy. We will come back another day when it is less crowded. It is a nuthouse. The official Olympic store is so packed. It smells like human BO. There are a lot of Wei Gwoh Ren's, foreigners. I was standing in line and this Chinese guy tried to cut me in line. I pushed him back with my elbow. OWNED.

Crowded.

Medal count.

Outdoor viewing

We will come back another day. Our cousin gave us free McDonald's meal vouchers. We just wanted the fries so we gave the rest to some homeless guy.

Trying to get home was terrible. We couldn't get a taxi to take us where we wanted. We don't know how to get back to where we live, so our Uncle wrote it down on a piece of paper. Too bad none of the cab drivers can READ. We had to call our Uncle and he had to give them directions over the phone.

More cousins are staying with us. They had a later flight and we all ate together.

Now I am going to sleep to watch some wrestling tomorrow. Nice.

-James

SUCK IT, FRANCE

2008-08-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

CAN YOU SAY JASON LEZAK. THE LEZAK KID.

THIS POST IS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE USA OWNS FRANCE. THEY TALKED TRASH TO US IN THE 4x100 SWIMMING RELAY.

THEY APPARENTLY HAVE THE WORLD RECORD HOLDER, AND CURRENTLY THEIR ANCHOR, 25 YEAR OLD alain bernard. F THIS GUY.

THEY SAID THEY WOULD BEAT US.

WHO CARES ABOUT PHELPS, HAVE YOU HEARD OF A GUY NAME JASON LEZAK. 32 YEARS OLD. OLDEST MEMBER OF THE US SWIM TEAM. HEART OF A LION.

alain bernard HAD A 0.59 LEAD ON THE AMERICANS AND JASON LEZAK. BUT HE GAVE UP THE LEAD AND THE GOLD TO THIS GUY. LEZAK'S LEG OF THE RACE WAS 46.06, BEATING HIS PERSONAL BEST BY 1.2 SECONDS. THE US OLYMPIC TEAM IN THE PRELIMINARIES SET A WORLD RECORD ONLY TO BEAT THE 15 HOUR OLD RECORD AGAIN BY 4 SECONDS.

JASON LEZAK. GET OFF ME.

PHELPS SWAM A 47.51 LEG, 1.3 SECONDS SLOWER THAN LEZAK

IN THE LAST 5 SECONDS LEZAK SAID HE JUST WILLED HIMSELF TO BEAT BERNARD.

FRENCH IN CHINESE IS FAH GWOA.

SUCK IT FAH GWOA.

FOR READING PLEASURE.

If Michael Phelps pulls off the great eight and gets that $1 million Speedo bonus, he'll have to cut a big share to Jason Lezak.

Said Phelps of Lezak: "His last 50 meters were absolutely unbelievable."

Long known as one of the great relay swimmers in U.S. history, Lezak vaulted even higher in that pantheon with a stunning last leg of the 400-meter freestyle relay Monday morning, overhauling world-record holder Alain Bernard in the final stroke to win the race for the United States by 0.08 seconds.

It was one of the most thrilling relays in Olympic history, and perhaps one of the most improbable comebacks. Lezak was nearly a body length behind Bernard, who not only holds the 100 free record but also announced his relay team would "smash" the Americans and derail Phelps' bid for a historic eight gold medals in one Olympics. (Phelps said the U.S. team knew the French were talking trash and it fired the Americans up.)

Instead, Bernard blew the lead, and Phelps and the rest of the Americans erupted on the pool deck when Lezak threw his right arm to the wall an eyeblink before Bernard.

It was the lone ecstatic moment for American swimmers in a challenging morning. But it was an incredible climax.

THIS IS HOW YOU GET ON ESPN, STAND NEXT TO PHELPS.

NICE TRY BERNARD.

GIVE ME THE GOLD

GIVE THEM THE SILVER, TRASH TALKERS

While the Americans whooped it up on deck, Bernard clung to the wall, his head down. The swimmer who had talked confidently of beating the Americans -- "smashing" them, some media reported -- was the last one to leave the pool.

"Alain is wounded. When you are the last swimmer in a relay and that you have the opportunity to bring a title of this importance to your country, you don't get out of this unhurt," said Claude Fauquet, France's team director. "But I don't think that Alain lost the race. It's Lezak who won it."

READ THIS

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/swimming/news/story?id=3528865

Beijing, City of Smog

2008-08-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

Day 5

Today we woke up to a nice blanket of smog. This was actually a good day. Look how clear it is. Nice.

Today was relaxed. We woke up, had breakfast, went to the other house, had lunch. Then we went out to a shopping center with Adidas, Puma, Nike, and other clothing stores to get some Olympic apparel. I bought some TEAM USA basketball shorts, blue.

This is a sick dry-fit judo shirt they had. However it costs 750 NT, or over $100 US.

This is a open viewing section for the olympics. You get security wand-ed before you can go in.

Go China.

Chinese people cheering for Chinese synchronized diving.

This guy won a gold.

We had some smoothies at Starbucks.

We couldn't get to the Olympic stadium today. It is a nut house. All the roads were closed for some reason. Then it started pouring down rain. WHich is good for tomorrow, because the air and visibility will be much more clear. So we will go tomorrow and ride the subway because we won't have a car tomorrow. Today Uncle James' driver took us around.

Instead we went to the art district in Beijing. It's pretty nice actually, a lot of modern art. But the rain was too much.

This is an eagle and nest on an invisible tree.

These are like babies.

This is like art.

On the way home through traffic I took some pictures. Tim is so sunburned.

I am Hellboy.

We went home and had some Peking Duck from apparently the most reputable restaurant for Peking duck in Beijing.

Then I fell asleep for 2 hours. I woke up and we watched Team USA play China. They estimated that over 1 billion people viewers would be tuning in, the most ever for a basketball game.

I feel like China likes Team USA more than their own team. Maybe not.

I hope you are cheering for USA in the olympics like this guy.

Dubya

I hate blogs.

-James

One World, One Dream

2008-08-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Day 4

So we woke up this morning and had breakfast at our hotel. It was pretty good. We ate with the Indonesian couple.

Back on the road. We went to Lukang. This part of Taiwan is known for the preserved streets and the oldest Buddhist temple. They also have some pretty good fried sea food.

This is awesome.. You are what you wear.

Food. Fried Monkey Shrimp.

Lwoa Bwoa Gao

More Fried Stuff.

Jhones Tsao and the owner of this restaurant

After lunch, we dropped off the Indonesian couple at the bus station. Pretty nice people. As soon as the get off the car, the AC breaks. It's so humid. Taipei is 2.5 hours away. I was so sweaty. TERRIBLE.

When we got back to Ren Fu, we took a shower and went to see my grandparents before going back to the city to eat with my aunt.

My aunt, on my mother's side, lives in Taipei and is a professor of accounting. We met her at Din Tai Fung, a famous place in Taiwan for Shao Loan Bao. It's so good. But since it was a Friday night, and it's so well known, you usually have to wait. It was in the SOGO mall. Tim and I arrived early and walked around the mall after we got a number. I bought this skin thing for my Mac.

Dinner was nice and it was good to catch up with my aunt. My aunt kept ordering food. Tim got owned.

You may have seen some of this stuff at DIM SUM.

Aunt

After dinner, Tim and I met up with Kat Tang, from Texas. She took us around to hang out and we walked towards the 101. Taipei is home to the world's tallest building.

Near the base of the building on the street we saw these awesome dogs laying down, why are they laying down. This trainer is so sick. Look at these golden retrievers.

Look at their buddy, Wishbone.

This one actually fell asleep

We hung out for a bit then took the MRT home.

Our cab driver who took us back to Ren Fu from the MRT station started telling us this really weird story. I was so confused. He talked for so long, Tim and I just looked at each other. He had a Beijing accent. Then it turned out that he was talking on his walkie talkie. Ehh.

We got in and went to sleep.

Day 5

We ate breakfast right down the street then went to talk to the grandparents for a while before we had to leave. My grandpa, Ah Dia, kept telling me to have 3 kids. And to have all boys.

He kept saying this chinese saying something about boys means money. So far he only has one great grandson with the shaw last name. All the others are either girls or carry their fathers name. So its apparently up to Tim and me. This was his number one priority. Apparently it is my number one priority now. The Shaw name must live.

Talking about something.

Along those lines, this is a noodle house with my name on it.

We said our goodbye to Grandma and got on the van to the airport. Ah Dia is coming with us because he is going to stay at another retirement home by himself for a week. He is apparently bored of Ren Fu. Funny guy.

At the airport we said goodbye to Uncle Ching and Ah Dia. He said "remember what you promised me" and then held up three fingers.

We checked in and got on the flight. It was ok, we got lunch. We landed in Hong Kong. Land of the Cantons. These are not my people.

Got on the next flight. We got haggen dazs ice cream with dinner.

I fell asleep during Iron Man. I woke up because we basically crash landed. Beijing International Airport. Now the largest in the world. It is redonkulous. This airport was built primarily in preparation for the 2008 Olympics and was finished at the end of February.

It is 1 of 3 terminals at Beijing Capital International Airport.

WIkipedia: Terminal 3 - if considered an airport on its own - would be the largest airport in the world in land size and one of the world's largest in capacity and land size (approximately 986,000 square meters). It is larger than London Heathrow Airport's 5 terminals combined with another 17% to spare.

Here are some pictures.

Thanks for welcoming me Yao.

After we got luggage, our uncle, grandma, and distant Yao family relative (from my mom' side) came to welcome us to Beijing. Usually my Uncle has a driver. However, because of the Olympics, his driver can only drive every other day. It goes by whether your car ends in an even or odd number. This is just one of the many restrictions that the Chinese government has implemented in anticipation of the Olympics to clean the air. The pollution in China is terrible. But hopefully the Olympics will inspire China to clan up its city. All the schools, factories, and enterprises have all closed. Many people have left the city.

Our Uncle has two houses. He, my grandma, and my cousin Jimalyn are staying in one, and Tim adn I are staying in another one. They are about 10-15 minute walk apart. We had dinner at his place, then went back to ours for the night.

Our cousin Jimalyn works for the USA house. This is where the US has its press conferences and such for the Olympics. Sometimes she sees famous people, like athletes, president's daughters, and David Schwimmer, ROSS from friends.

Anyways she goes to Georgetown University in D.C. She gets lots of sick Nike Olympic gear. I am very jealous. Anyways she managed to get us some House passes for one day on any day of our choosing. We will pick a good day where maybe Jennifer Anniston will be there. Rachel Green

She also got us these Olympic pins that you can't get anywhere else.

My uncle, Grandma, and cousin all got to go to the opening ceremony rehearsal on August 2nd.

So lately there have been a lot of threats on Beijing and the Olympics. Especially from this one group Urumqi Muslims from North West China. They keep sending video threats. Read about it here.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_fA5bjMZ6-RYv11uLlSCHMCdV6QD92DQ1BG3

Also there are lots of demonstrations all over the place that the government keeps shutting down. The Chinese gov has done a lot to censor the information out of China. Last week there was a bus bombing and there wasn't too much fuss about it. There was also a stabbing yesterday. The USA mens volleyball coach's father in law was murdered, and his mother in law was in critical condition. The attacker then committed suicide.

The attacker, identified as a 47-year-old man from the Hangzhou, in eastern China, jumped from the second level of the building, a spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Government Information Office told Xinhua.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/09/olympics.murder/index.html

It is hard to tell if it was a targeting incident because the gov says hat they weren't wearing any clothing that would identify them as specifically supported USA or related to the coach. A Chinese tour guide was also injured. Anyways who knows what the Chinese gov censors. They may even be censoring my blog. CHAIRMAN MAO IS A GREAT LEADER.

I was going to wear this USA shirt from Nike, but now I think that I don't want to get stabbed or bombed. My advisor/boss wants me to wear a Texas Biomedical Engineering shirt near some olympic building, but we will see about that. It's dangerous man.

Also, BERNIE MAC IS DEAD. How is this possible.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/09/obit.bernie.mac.ap/index.html

His show is no longer running, but now they need to find a replacement for Oceans series. Condolences to the Mac Family.

On another note. I am Jason Bourne. I think this was a picture from Bourne Identity.

We went back to the house Tim and I are staying at and watched some Olympics. In Beijing this is my first olympic experience. High def CCTV. China already has 2 of the first 7 gold medals. This chick doing the clean and jerk is ridiculous. She weighs 48 kilograms. That's 105.6 lbs. She cleaned and jerked 117 kgs. AIOFHODIE:LNFQW:KOFHIOEHFQREIHDIVD:SV:OEFIH are you kidding me. I am ashamed of myself. She owns me.

Goodnight.

James

This blog sucks. All I do is write this blog.

Also I haven't taken a dump in a while, does that mean I am constipated.

Went on a Tour

2008-08-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

Day 2 continued

After we left Starbucks, we went back to Ren Fu to meet my oldest Uncle and my Aunt. The plan was to go out to eat seafood, so we took a cab to the fisherman's wharf. The restaurant was closed, so we looked around first, then decided to go to another one nearby.

Fisherman's wharf

Our Uncle Pern met us at the restaurant and gave us our travel itinerary for the next day. Dinner was good.

We went back to Ren Fu and took some pictures.

Then Tim and I headed back towards Starbucks. We were only there for a little bit until James Mao called my brother for us to come hang out. The subway ride was so long. There was like 20 stops.

We met up J Mao and his teammate Bear and Bear's girlfriend. They ate while Tim and I had a beer. We played Big Two, kinda like Rich Man Poor Man. They play it for money in Taiwan, well at least Bear does.

After eating, we went back to hang out a J Mao's apartment. It was very nice, but he says it runs him quite a lot per month. Since Tim and I were wearing sandals, we couldn't get into any clubs. But J Mao has some friends from Texas, one of who we ended up knowing, that opened their own bar. So we went there instead.

I am not sure if we met any celebrities. It's hard to tell.

Then we took a cab back home, it was like 30+ minutes back. The MRT closes at 12:00 AM everyday.

Day 3

We had to wake up at 6:00 AM this morning. I slept like less than 4 hours. Me, Tim, and Uncle Ching went back to the breakfast store. Then we rode the MRT to a hotel called Caesar's Palace or something to meet our tour.

I expected like a bus and lots of people. It was a van. There were only 6 people. The driver and tour guide are included. So only FOUR people are taking this tour. Nice. The tour is called Fun Travels I think. That's what it says on the van.

Our tour guide is a pretty cool guy I think. He speaks both English and Chinese. His name is Jhones Tsao. This is a photo of him.

The other two people on our tour are a couple from Indonesia. They speak good chinese and some English as well. They are nice people, which we will find out later.

As soon as the tour got started everyone fell asleep. The tour guide was in the front on the microphone. I was the only person listening. WHAT THE F. I felt bad so I tried to stay engaged.

Tim is a homo and never stays awake.

After a while of struggling to stay awake I fell asleep. We woke up in Tai Chung, Taiwan's 3rd largest city. We stopped at this huge rest stop to use the restrooms and by food. The bathroom is gigantic. Tim says 150 people could pee at one time. Probably.

There is lots of food in this place. Tim bought some jelly beans.

Look at this happy kid.

I bought some shao loan bao. It was ok. 8 for $80 Taiwan dollars. The other couple bought a lot of snacks and kept giving them to me and Tim. See nice people.

Then we got back on the van and headed to Sun Moon Lake. Our next stop was Pu-li. I guess it is the town where Sun Moon Lake is close to. They have another shopping area/brewery.

You can sample a lot of their products.

This part of the trip sucked.

Back on the van. To Sun Moon Lake. Before going anywhere, we had a nice lunch with just the four tourists in a restaurant. It was $400 Taiwan dollars per person. Fairly reasonable. There were 7 dishes.

Tim and I learned more about our travel companions. They are from Indonesia. They have 4 kids both old and younger than us. I think the husband is a baller. He seems to look like he has lots of money. He has been to Sun Moon Lake before. Three times in total.

Side note. Everyone thinks I look older than Tim. I own that guy. Look how tan this loser is.

After lunch we hit the road again to tour places around the lake. First place. Some temple. I don't remember the name or anything about it. Just look at pictures.

From the very top

This looks like Walle. Waaaaaaaaalle.

Next place this aboriginal village. Our tour guide kept telling us to look at

pretty aboriginal Taiwanese girls. I imagined like polynesian people. Like dark skinned. They look just like other Taiwanese people. He took us to like a store where they sell tea and other things like jewelry and clothes.

After this one girl gave us a brief rundown of their town, which I understood like 1/5 of, they invited us to sit down and drink tea. They are pretty smooth talkers and good at convincing you to buy tea. Tim and I bought some for our Uncle. It normally cost $2000 Taiwan dollars but we got it for $1000. Like I said, they are good at selling things to tourists. The couple spent like $5000 Taiwanese dollars. OWNED. They bought some reindeer antler stuff.

Mom and Dad. Why did you not tell me that there are reindeer in Taiwan. And that you EAT and DRINK their ANTLERS. They had an entire antler on this table and used a paper cutter to slice chunks off. It was BLEEDING. I drank some antler tea. It did not taste good. Keep in mind, Reindeer shed their antlers so they are not killed for them.

Look at this reindeer. I am going to drink its antlers

Why are there reindeer in Taiwan. Do Taiwanese people believe in Santa Claus. Is Santa Claus secretly Buda.

Anyways then they made Tim and I wear these clothes and take a picture in them. They kept telling Tim and I to stay and get married or to take them back with us to America. They like to talk about having kids and stuff it seems like.

Next stop. Temple of the Monkey King or something.

You are supposed to make a wish then ring this bell three times. BONG

Master U-guay from Kung Fu Panda

Outside the temple were people selling hard boiled tea eggs. Tim bought me one and I burned my hand holding it. Every time we stopped, the couple bought more snacks to give to me and Tim and the tour guide to eat.

Next stop. Observatory. But it was closed due to like mud slide from a typhoon the week before. So instead different observatory.

Next stop, back to Tai Chung for dinner and checking into our hotel. I fell asleep and woke up so disoriented.

We ate dinner in some sort of gallery. I did not know what was going on. But they gave me hwoh gwoh (hot pot). It was pretty good.

Then we checked into our hotel. We have the rest of the night to do whatever we want. Tai Chung is known for its night markets. I like night markets. Last time I was in Taiwan, I bought some shoes in Taipei.

After we put our stuff in our room, we didn't do anything. Tim is a homo and had to apply for law jobs. So I fell asleep for 5 hours. We didn't get to go to the night markets. Now he is asleep and I am awake. And now I have to go to bed.

Bye.

James

Tim sucks.

Taipei, Taiwan

2008-08-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

The blog for this trip is per request from my mom and Uncle James.

Day 1

So I barely made my flight to LAX. I haven't really slept at all. My layover at LAX was from 8:10 AM to 4:10 PM. It was terrible. Mom, please do not use this flight agency again. Since I was 8 hours early, I could not check in. So I went upstairs to the dining area.

To kill time I found an outlet near a corner table and I sat there. I couldn't catch any wireless so I used my phone for internet and email. There is some way that you can tether your phone to your computer to get internet from Sprint High Speed and use it on your laptop but I am not computer nor phone savvy enough to do this.

I worked on some application stuff, then I watched Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis.

I ate a sausage and egg McMuffin. Pretty tasty. I haven't had McDonald's in over 3 years. I went pretty fast so that no one would steal my table. People are like vultures.

Then around 12 PM I checked into China Air. From then until 4PM I played this game called Bubble Breaker on my Treo. I broke the high score on it previously set by Tiffany Lee. Sorry :(

Our flight was delayed slightly because the plane had no power = no AC. Everyone was pissed. Then I stood in line for so long because my boarding zone was at the very end.

On the plane I was in 32 C, which is an aisle seat. I got owned by this Vietnamese family who wanted me to switch with their daughter 10 rows back in a middle seat. I had to sit between a father and son who did not want to sit next to each other but insisted on talking over me.

The flight was ok. All the flight attendants looked like my friend Helen from UT. (Farzin) It was hot too so I didn't sleep. On the place I watched Kung Fu Panda, Deception, Bank Job (fell asleep partially).

After I got my luggage, Tim (who had arrived from Chiang Mai) and my Uncle Ching (who lives in Taiwan) were waiting for me. My Uncle had a bright orange hat that our Grandpa made him wear so that we could see him better. He didn't want to but my grandpa insisted. It was pretty funny.

Our driver (Michael) took us to Ren Fu, a retirement community where my grandparents live. We stopped at KFC on the way because I was hungy. :)

When we got to the room, we watched some Team USA basketball versus Australia and then went to sleep.

This team is awesome.

But not better than these guys. Dream Team.

Day 2

Today's theme is death.

We woke up early to go say hi to my grandparents. Ah Diah and Hao Pwoa. We bought some Johnny Walker for my grandpa and Tim bought a scarf for my grandma and some slippers that were gigantic. My grandma put both her feet in one. Tim you idiot. So now we are going to give them to my oldest Uncle's wife. I forgot her name. Da Bwoa Mu.

We put the whiskey in my grandpa's drink cabinet. My uncle Ching tried to throw away this empty water bottle but my grandpa told him to leave it because he puts alcohol in it. It was funny. This is what students at UT do as well to take into football games. Nice.

My grandparent's are pretty funny. They like to talk about marriage, babies, and death. They kept telling me to help Tim 'chase girls.' He is a loser. My grandpa asked me when I was getting married and going to have kids because he said he has his first kid when he was 23. I still have time. Tim however has 13 days until he is 24. But he has time to find a nice Taiwanese girlfriend. My grandpa keeps saying that he only has two years left to live. After that he said not to come visit Taiwan anymore because it would be pointless. He says some pretty funny stuff. For example, the last time we were here, Ah diah said he needed surgery on his leg but he decided to forgo it. His reasoning was that he was going to die soon. Which I guess is pretty rational.

Later Tim, Uncle Ching, and I went to the train station area to eat breakfast. This is the same place we ate last year. Some yeo tiao and danh bing.

Train station: Tim and Uncle Ching

The restaurant is in here.

Then we went to Starbucks for some wireless. It was pretty cheap, 100 Taiwan dollars for 24 hours. Look at this homo.

We returned back to Ren Fu to eat some retirement food. It was pretty good but it lacks things like salt. Salt raises blood pressure which causes death.

This is us running to catch the bus.

My grandma and their servant. There was fish, asparagus, tieh banh neyo row, pork ribs, chicken soup, rice, fried shrimp. In the middle is a bowl of ice that I ordered, for the hot water. I am so thirsty.

My brother just told me that my blog is terrible. I agree, this blog is so bad. Don't read it anymore.

Right now I am sitting back in Starbucks.

Tim is really tan from his travels in Thailand an Cambodia. Being tan in Asian society is a symbol of poverty because it means that you cannot afford stay inside and must work outdoors. I told him to walk behind me as my servant.

James Mao called Tim, so we might hang out with him or something. Maybe go to his practice. Maybe hang out with some celebrities since J Mao is big time.

Tim thinks we should hang out with some celebrities. I went to google. Check out this link.

http://yummycelebrities.com/category/taiwan-celebrities/

James is not on this list yet, but hopefully it will be update soon. Nice

Shout out.

Mom, Tim is poor and can't pay his credit card bill.

That is all. Thanks.

James

Galveston Day 6

2007-07-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

Day 6

Friday

Last day.

I woke up late today, 7:45am to be exact. I haven’t packed yet either. So in the rush I left my phone. Whoops.

So today we only had a half day. We had our last problem based learning session. I really did enjoy these. I feel like they are a great alternative to large based lecture sessions because they provoke interaction from students. I tend to fall asleep in lectures, or everything else, so these keep me awake.

Then we had our last team based learning session. We finally had the opportunity to sit in on a real class. Dr. Levine had us join her class and participate in the discussions and tests. She broke us into two groups of 5 and we competed against the medical students in the case studies. We definitely have a lot to learn because we were wrong the majority of the time. It was interesting just to observe the learning environment the UTMB students are placed in. The format goes: individual testing, group testing, case studies, group discussion with professor. In the future, they should try to do more of this.

Then we had lunch and filled out our surveys before heading back to the hotel.

I did manage to get my cell phone back. Turns out I left my swim trunks and a t-shirt as well. Whoops.

We caught our ride back to Houston Hobby Airport. Check in was fine.

Highlight of the day:

So we are sitting at gate 27 waiting for our plane. I get up to use the bathroom and on my way back I spot this guy wearing a bucket hat over at gate 26. He seems like he’s trying to act inconspicuous, and he’s a pretty big guy even though he’s sitting down. I catch a glimpse of his face as I turn towards my gate and I stop. I thought it looked like Robert Horry but I couldn’t be sure. I sit down and try to get people from our group to verify, but we are all still kinda iffy. So I get up to check where his flight is going. Sure enough San Antonio. Yes sir, it was big shot BOB. What is he doing a Houston Hobby airport, flying Southwest. Oh well, I didn’t care. So I’m sitting one gate over trying to figure out if I want to go over and take a picture with him. But I was nervous. He seemed like he was trying to fly under the radar and thus far he was succeeding. I mean it’s Big Shot Bob, and no one noticed. He was also on his phone the entire time, maybe he was just talking to people to avoid people coming up to him. I decided if he ever got off the phone, I would go over. I had my window and I went for it.

Here’s what I said, “Mr. Horry, I don’t mean to be rude but would you mind if I took a picture with you.” Response: “Yeah sure man.” So I did, shook his hand and left him alone. I felt really bad though because people looked over as soon as I took a picture with him and started coming over to him. Crap, my bad.

Read more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Horry

Thanks Roberty Horry. I forgive you for checking Steve Nash in game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYC95MziMJk

Congratulations.

We landed at 7pm and my bro picked me up.

Anyways I had a great time in Galveston and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity. I definitely learned a lot about medical school and the application process and about UTMB.

Then stuff happened and I went to bed.

-James

Galveston Day 5

2007-07-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

Day 5

Thursday

Breakfast. Today was Biomedical Engineering Research day. We walked over to the biomedical research building on the UTMB campus. Doctor Jack Hart, the assistant dean for the BME department back at UT Austin, came to join us for part of the day.

The first lab we visited had to do with imaging of the eye and seeing what causes degenerative eye loss. Along with that, what sort of measures could be taken to prevent vision loss. Then we went to a lab that did research in imaging layers of tissue. This was somehow used in preventing transmission of STDs.

Next we listened about research in microscopy. Most of what she was saying made sense, but a lot of it was over my head. None of us are track 1, so it didn’t necessarily pertain to us.

Then we learned about cancer irradiation using sonar. And about removal of hair and tattoos using lasers. A lot of what we learned about had to do with lasers.

Then lunch, pizza. During lunch, one of the research professors encouraged us to stick with the path that we are on. The medical field needs more engineers to do research and solve problems. As engineers we have an advantage over just biology majors or liberal arts majors in medical school in that we can provide the problem solving skills interfaced with knowledge of physiology and biological systems. He also encouraged us to do research over medicine. I don’t know if many of us were swayed by him being that all of us were track 2 pre-med. Well, maybe he convinced Travis, he loves research. Anyways the medical field needs more BME-ers.

Ok then more research labs. The next research lab we went to was more down our alley. It had to do with designing a device that would better improve monitoring capability of technology. The main problem with the equipment used by surgeons and anesthesiologists to monitor their patients during surgery is non-portability and fragility. These researchers are working to design a machine that is durable and portable in monitor patients whether in surgery, in an ambulance, or on the battle field. The machine is designed to be more compact and could possibly be taken by medics into the battle fields to treat injured soldiers. The machine not only will have monitoring capabilities, but has the ability to replenish the patient with oxygen if levels are low, and the right amount of drugs needed Very cool. They have also designed other tools used by the army to inject drugs straight into the chest, penetrating deep enough with damaging the lungs or heart.

We had some down time before our next lab so we took a real quick impromptu tour of Old Red. Now for those of you who don’t know, Old Red is the original UTMB medical building in Galveston. Fun facts: UTMB, established in 1891, is the oldest medical school west of the Mississippi River. The campus is 84 acres and growing. UTMB has one of the best burn centers in the nation, and it’s patients receive the very best treatment. It has schools in medicine, nursing, allied health professions, and a graduate school of biomedical sciences, as wells as an institute for medical humanities.
During the Great Storm of 1900, the city of Galveston was ravaged and submerged under water. Nearly 6,000 people died. There is a famous story that goes something like this:

In September 1900, a powerful hurricane struck the upper Texas coast. Known as the
Great Storm, it is still considered the largest natural disaster in U.S. history. It devastated
Galveston Island and the Medical Department campus, but also strengthened the resolve of
UTMB to be here for the health of Texas. In the storm’s aftermath Board of Regents Medical
Committee Chairman Beauregard Bryan decreed via telegram to the Galveston campus that,
“The University of Texas stops for no storm.”

Old Red, also known as the Ashbel Smith building, was one of the only buildings that survived the storm and still stands today. The tour was really cool. We first stopped at the grand lecture hall. It was the room where they used to perform surgery on cadavers or patients. The seating is very stadium like so that everyone can see down into the surgery. They still use the lecture hall today, but no for performing surgeries. We also went and saw the dissecting rooms where many students can perform surgery on cadavers all at once. There are dozens of dissecting tables in one huge room. It smells really funky in there. Chanel

Our last research lab was in orthopedics. I was particularly interested in this research because I see myself doing some sort of sport medicine, perhaps orthopedics.

Then we went back to the hotel.

So before we left, some of the medical students we were shadowing suggested that we hit up a place called Sky Bar during happy hour. Apparently their sushi is really good and cheap during happy hour. So we went. And it was. It was sooo good. I haven’t had sushi in too long. During the process I got too excited and I bit a chunk off of my lip. It hurt so bad, especially with wasabi. But it was worth it. Good food.

But, it still was a bit pricey and I didn’t get full. The night was still young, so we walked to Fuddruckers and Michael and I split ‘the works’ burger. It was good. They had a pool table upstairs, so we played a couple rounds. Fun.

But I was still hungry, so we walked over to the ice cream shop for some dessert. The place is huge. They also sell clothing, decorations, and candy. I had an ice cream cone. The girls split this butterscotch sundae. Kim didn’t want any ice cream. Here’s why: her family owns their own ice cream shop. At first I told her that I thought she was lying and I didn’t believe her. BUT she actually does. It’s in Houston and its called Goodies. Her mom makes all the ice cream from scratch herself. She can make around 150 different flavors. That’s pretty freaking amazing.

Kim this was my plug for your ice cream store. You now owe me free ice cream, thanks.

But I was still hungry. I took comfort in the fact that I had leftover chicken in my fridge at my hotel room that I could still eat. The girls went to Starbucks.

Traditional limboWe went back and chilled. At one point, we started working out with my ab slide and did a small 10 minute workout. Then I ate my chicken and fell asleep. Tomorrow is the last day. Holla.

-James

Galveston Day 4

2007-07-27T18:50:00.001-07:00

Day 4

Wednesday

Breakfast at 8:00am at UTMB.

The first thing on the schedule for today was a talk given by William Winslade about the seriousness of brain trauma. Points from the talk: brain trauma is the leading cause of death for teens under the age of 19 (roughly). Usually results from some sort of accident such as a crash or fall and is a relatively easy injury to sustain. Tissue in the brain is highly dependent on a constant supply of oxygen. If the blood supply to th brain is cut even for a few minutes, the results could be drastic and long lasting. William Winslade was telling us how when he was a child he fell off a two story building and suffered serious injury to his head. Luckily the doctors were able salvage his life by putting a shunt in his head to drain the fluid and a metal plate. Somehow William lost no mental capacity or any motor function and lived a normal child/adult-hood. We also watched a video on the effects of brain trauma on other people in the hospitals that they had been seeing. Until relatively recently, we haven’t fully understood the severity of brain trauma injuries. I guess the major incident that has brought the issue onto center stage was the case with Terry Schiavo. We’ve all seen on TV how it drastically change her life and the lives of her loved ones. The video that William made was about 5 years before Terry Schiavo. Some of the cases we saw were very similar to Terry’s. It was just very sobering to watch home videos of this woman who previously was an amateur country dancing national champion to someone who could barely talk and process what you were saying.

Another interesting thing Dr. Winslade talked about was human response while in the vegetative state. We saw on TV how although Terry Schiavo couldn’t respond to any sort of human stimulus, she was awake and her eyes could move and blink. Personally I always wondered if she really could hear her family and the doctors but just wasn’t able to respond. In some cases, doctors have determined that the person isn’t able to see what’s going on around them because their retinas are damaged or detached. However, they have performed MRI’s and other scans on the brains of people in near vegetative states while prompting them to respond. For example they would say, “I want you to think that you are back home somewhere with a loved one.” Then they would step back and scan the person. They found that the certain portions of the brain corresponding to memories and emotions like happiness would light up. Very cool.

We also talked somewhat about the ethics involved with people in vegetative states. Terry Schiavo is a good example that we all know. Another example Dr. Winslade presented to us was of a young man who was jumped by a local gang and nearly beat to death. He was in a coma for about 7 months until he woke up, but was in a vegetative state. Over time, he suffered many complications and had to undergo nearly 30 different surgeries. He had thousands of prescriptions, and required many forms of medical care including been transported back and forth been health facilities. Over the course of three and a half years, his medical bill accumulated to over $2.5 million dollars. SO the issue is that if he had no chance of ever recovering from his vegetative state, how long should his insurance company continue to pay his medical bill? Basically how long should they keep him alive? Well his insurance company wanted to cut him off but his father took ths issue to the press and the insurance company conceited.

Anyways so this was an eye opening talk on the prevalence of brain trauma and the issues that I often overlook.

Then we went to lunch. Afterwards we had our second problem based learning session with the same doctor we had on Monday. I’m a fan of these sessions.

For the rest of the afternoon, we were split up into two groups of 5. UTMB had set up a time for us to go to a learning session with Stan, the computerized mannequin we saw on Monday. I was in the second group, so we sat around for an hour and a half while the first group took their turn.
While we were waiting, playing spin chair pictionary.

Suggestion. This year’s program did have a lot of down time. Please do not misunderstand me, in no way at all am I complaining. A little down time is good to rest and recuperate, but at times I felt like we were sitting around for periods of time with nothing to do. Take this time for example, we sat around for a while. Just a recommendation, I am very grateful for the opportunity.

So during this time Mike Y and I discussed our idea for our quality improvement project. I think we got a good idea, we just need to work out the kinks. It has to do with outpatient discharge from the hospital and their medicines.

When it was our turn we walked down to the area to meet with Rachel, Dr Ainsworth, and the attending doctor, Doctor Levy. This guy is sick. He has done two residencies, one in surgery and one in anesthesiology. Understand this: that’s 5 years for surgery and 4 for anesthesiology. Nine years on top of medical school’s 4 years. Like I said, this guy is a baller.

SO when we get there, we did some random trivia for a while. Did you know that the only other organism in the world that carries leprosy is the armadillo? Yep, and it has 4 baby armadillos, all identical. Nice.

Ok back to Stan. Basically here’s the way it goes down. Dr. Levy will give us a scenario in which a patient has been brought in for a clinical reason. He will then go back to the computer room and adjust the mannequin to simulate the conditions he just described. We weren’t really sure what we were supposed to be doing with the patient, I suppose we were a team of anesthesiologist trying to stabilize the patient. I didn’t figure this out until the end though.

So the first scenario we got was a man involved in a car wreck. He sustained some injuries and complains of pain in his abdomen. Then Dr. Levy went to the back. While we were checking the monitors, Dr. Levy started talking to us through the mannequin It was great, he even pretended to injured. So we had no idea what to do. We would talk back. He wanted something for the pain, so we gave him morphine. Then his blood pressure dropped and his pulse went up. His O2 saturation also started dropping. We really had no clue what to do. We started giving him a random assortment of drugs, trying to slow his pulse and raise his blood pressure. We relied heavily on Dr. Ainsworth to guide us. Eventually he suggested we call in a surgeon to give an analysis, so we did. Dr. Levy came in and was like how am I supposed to give him an examination if he can’t tell me where he feels pain? He’s also asleep. Whoops. We then debriefed the situation and discussed the best options.

Next scenario, I forgot. Last scenario: chest pains, possible heart attack. We did better with this one and successfully stabilized him.

This was a great experience and I felt like I learned a lot more from this session than I would from reading a textbook. It provided a real life environment with unknown conditions and also pressured us to think harder and focus because a patient’s life was at risk.

Then we caught our ride home. We did absolutely nothing until dinner and we walked to a wings place for dinner. I had a whole chicken. It was spicy.

Michael and Travis

These guys are never on time.

Michael limbo.

Then we went back and went to sleep.

-James

Galveston Day 3

2007-07-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

Day 3. Tuesday.

Today we got picked up at around 8 and had breakfast again over at UTMB. The first thing we did was team based learning where we were split into groups and given questions to answer. Basically the message was we always perform better as a team than as an individual.

Lunges while waiting.

Then we had lunch with Dr. Ainsworth. During lunch Dr. Ainsworth prepared some trivia for us to do. We used the IR clickers that we use in Dunn’s BME 335 class to click in. It was actually really fun. He had a lot about Galveston, UTMB, and Texas history. I discovered that I have forgotten everything about Texas. For example, do you know what Austin would have been called?

Answer: Waterloo. You didn’t know that.

Austin and Galveston were voted by the people to be home to the state’s university and medical university. What town came in third in the voting?

Answer: Tyler, Texas. Are you kidding? We almost had to go to school in Tyler, Texas

Then we went to see the Harvey Simulation. Harvey is also a mechanical simulation used to train medical students and staff. It’s basically a rubber dummy that has the capability to produce a heartbeat and pulse. You can change the conditions that Harvey operates under. For example you could give him a heart murmur or simulate conditions after a heart attack. The pulse can be seen through the skin and raises up at various spots on Harvey’s body. The purpose of Harvey is mainly for diagnosis training. The teaching physician and the students are all give stethoscopes attached to a radio receiver that plays the heart beat for each individual person so that 10 people can listen in at the same time instead of one at a time. We learned how to diagnose different types of heart murmurs such as aortic stenosis or regurgitation. We also learned about where the aortic, pulmonic, tricuspid, and mitrial valves are. Harvey costs around $125,000. I forgot to mention that the simulation that we saw on Monday costs $250,000. Pretty expensive.

Then we went to have our badges made. This took forever and was incredibly boring. We talked to one of Dr. Ainsworth’s assistants Cheryl for a while. She’s awesome. So we finally got our badges made.

Here’s mine.

Notice the resemblance to this guy? Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock.

We went back to the hotel and hung out for a bit before going out to dinner. Since Chanel was the only person who drove, she took a group of us out first, then went back for the other group. I went with the first group and we walked around looking for a place to eat. Along the way I lost the Frisbee and had to climb into an enclosed area under a fence to get it. The rust on the bottom of the fence got all over me. I was pissed.

We ended walking 18 blocks and decided to eat at Salt Grass. Chanel and the rest joined us.

Waiting outside

Food, good. Dessert, good.

Then we decided to go bowling. We had to fit 7 people into Chanel’s 2 door civic. This was interesting. Bowling was a great choice. ISLAND BOWL. It was so much fun. Mike Y, Clair, Jing Jing, myself, Chanel, and Kim all bowled. Michael A did not partake. The reason is he bowls a lot and is pretty tired of it. However I think he’s really good and didn’t want to embarrass us. But he helped all of us improve our game. Pretty good instructor actually.

The bowling alley was kinda small, and we were pretty much the only ones in there. It was awesome. Then we headed back to the hotel in Chanel’s car. Along the way we somehow ended up in front of the really scary building in Galveston and got really creeped out. Then we went back and to sleep. Later.

-James

Galveston Day 2

2007-07-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Day 2.

Monday

First day of UTMB Galveston. First thing, breakfast. We got dressed in business casual and met up in the lobby to get picked up and taken over to UTMB for our welcome breakfast. It was supposed to be at the Harbor House at 7:45am but they didn’t really get there until 8:15am. We ended up calling Dr.Weigel who in turn called the people who were supposed to pick us up. Problem solved.

Breakfast consisted of muffins and some fruit drinks. At breakfast we met the program coordinator at UTMB, Dr. Ainsworth. He was in charge of us and all our activities for the week. He’s been at UTMB for over 30 years and he’s an awesome guy. After orientation we had our first problem based learning session.

Problem based learning is an alternative tool for teaching rather than lecturing. We are presented with a medical case that provides us with very little information. As a team we tried to figure out what the patient’s injuries were and the proper diagnosis to be prepared for when the patient arrive. A professor facilitates the discussion and we are all participating in the process. Gradually we are presented with more and more evidence and information so that eventually we can compare and see how close our diagnosis was. It was pretty interesting, I had a great time. I managed not to doze off, which is a huge step for me.

After PBL, we had lunch and listened to Dr. Jeff Rabek discuss the admissions process to Medical schools including UTMB. He gave great insight as to the selection process, interview process, and the reasoning behind all their logic. It gave us a good perspective on how applying to medical school works.

After lunch, we headed over to the patient simulation center where we learned about the mannequins that Galveston uses for training medical students as well as the staff. It’s basically a conglomeration of sensors and feedback devices. The mannequin can breathe (it’s chest moves up and down and you can hear it) it can blink, produce a heart beat and pulse, it can pee (you can attach a catheter and it can produce urine), and you can change the sex of the mannequin by attaching a wig and removing male genitalia. Underneath the rubbery skin are a bunch of sensors that are controlled by a panel in the room and also by a Apple computer in the back. The panel in the room controls the gases and mechanical pumping of the heart. The mannequin can monitor concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide as well as produce various levels of gases. The computer in the back can make the mannequin simulate various conditions a patient in the emergency room would have such as heart attacks or internal injury. The mannequin is mainly used by anesthesiologists for practice. You can inject it with various types of drugs and the mannequin will respond appropriately like a real person. Actually, you just inject water, but there is a barcode on each of the syringes that is read by a sensor on the mannequin that allows it to respond. The amount injected can also be measured, affecting the degree of response. So we played with it for a while, injecting it with epinephrine, adrenaline, beta blockers, and whatever we wanted to see what it would do. Basically we played crazy possessed doctor.

Checking out the tools

Awkward shot of the day. This is Rachel, she was helping us with the mannequin.

So they are really low on blood supply.Then we were picked up and taken back to our hotel. We got changed and some of us headed out to the Strand to walk around the shops. The town feels very much like New Orleans. There aren’t many people walking around and it’s kind of deserted. There were a lot of shops though.

These puppies were breathing. I checked for a pulse but there was nothing. Not as good as UTMB, but its ok.We came across the outdoor chess board and ran over.

Chanel + knight

Clair vs Mike. Game on

Clair + Chanel. Knight kiss

Me and Chanel.This guy standing nearby asked me if I wanted to play. I kind of wanted to but I figured since we were traveling in a group, I probably shouldn’t make everyone wait. He also asked Mike Y if he wanted to play. So we decided the two of us versus him. It was on. He was an older man and he wore the roll on sunglasses that the optometrist gives you after he dilates your pupils. I think he just sits there all day and plays people in chess. He was kind kooky and kept trying to convince us that he wasn’t that great at chess. The entire time we were playing he was acting like he was always in such a bind. Maybe he was being legit. Or maybe he was some sort of chess grand master and was toying with us.

Will Chamberlain, no relation to the basketball player. Grand master in chess. Member of the piss and moan club (shirt)Mike and I were doing quite well and I had him in a number of binds, but eventually I started getting impatient and just starting making rash moves. Long story short, we lost. He was like, ‘Ok um, I think I’ll go here… would you look at that? Checkmate.’ GRAND MASTER. So we thanked him and went on our way. Nice guy actually.

Time for dinner. We couldn’t come to an agreement on where to eat, so I decided on Italian for everyone. We went into this place called Luigi’s. Here comes a big mistake. As we were waiting to be seated, Travis picked up a lunch menu and started flipping through it. He was like, this doesn’t look to bad (referring to prices). Then one of the waiters came over and yanked it out of his hand. ‘This is a lunch menu.’ Then he walked up. This raised the first red flag in my mind. Walking in everything was classy. Second flag, this could be more pricey than I wanted. Then the menu’s. Wow, way overpriced. No one wanted to eat here anymore. They started setting down waters and bread. I was like, do we want to eat here? No one did. But do we just walk out? That would be kinda rude and embarrassing. The waiter came over and started listing the specials and stuff. The entire time I was like, this is my fault, how do I get out of here? We noticed at the bottom of the menu they said that they don’t split checks. So we used this as an out. We were like, ‘do yall split checks?’ He was like ‘no, I’m very sorry.’ ‘Hm, this is a problem. You guys want to go?’ Everyone said yes then we all got up and left. My bad guys.

We eventually found this place called Yagas, which was kind of a TexMex café. The atmosphere was much looser and the food more reasonably priced. So we ate here.

Food = good. Then we started walking back. Apparently Will Chamberlain, the old chess guy, had snagged another victim. It was close to 9:30 at night. His wife was still sitting there. Cute couple actually.

I don't remember taking this photo.

Harbor at nightSo we went back to the hotel and didn’t really do anything. Shower, bed, sleep.

-James

Galveston Day 1 (Week 3)

2007-07-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

Day 1 Galveston (Brackenridge Summer Internship)

Sunday

Today we traveled to Galveston for week 3 of our Brackenridge UTMB summer internship. Our flight was at 11:10am this morning, so we met at Austin Bergstrom at 9:30am. Flying out on this flight is me, Jing Jing, Clair, Rebecca, Kim, Michael A, Travis, and Meena. Michael flew out later and Chanel is driving.

We made our flight in time, it took about 45 minutes and landed around noon. The Galveston Limousine Service is supposed to be picking us up at 1:30pm so we had a while to kill before they got there. We are pretty much on our own, and this process was a little shady although I am not at all complaining. We have no idea where to find the limousine service, but we are BME’s and we figured it out. A limousine didn’t actually pick us up, it was actually a bus. We shared it with a bunch of people headed out on cruises. The ride took little over an hour and the pier reminded me of when I went on a cruise to the Caribbean. Anyways so then we checked into our hotel right on the pier.

The Harbor House. Checking in was also an interesting experience. We had no idea who the reservation was under. So we just started listing people’s names. Is it under Cindy Zimmerman? David Weigel? Ehhhh. James Shaw, Michael Achilleos, Mike Yim, Clair Hollingsworth…. Nope. Eventually we found out it was under UTMB for 10 people.

The rooms… wow. Amazing. Right on the harbor. We were all blown away. Okay time to address funding. I have no idea where all the funds that pay for the program and this trip are coming from. Maybe from tuition? But it really doesn’t add up. So far we’ve been given a Brackenridge hospital gift card for $300 dollars, the flight out to Houston, the limousine service ride to Galveston, the Harbor House stay for 5 nights, breakfast and lunch included at UTMB, and visa gift cards totaling $150, ride back to Houston and flight back to Austin. Tuition costs around $1600 dollars. There’s no way tuition is enough to cover the costs of everything. So I’m thinking maybe the UT BME department or UTMB perhaps? Someone from our group said that overall, this program cost $5,000 per person. That’s $50,000 for all 10 of us. I know that’s simple math, but I just wanted to reiterate. Wow. I just want to say on behalf of myself and everyone else, thank you so much. We all feel so fortunate and lucky to be part of this program. I really lucked out getting selected from all the applicants. This is a big deal because someone is investing a whole bunch of time and money in me. Anyways, thanks.

So then after we checked in and got settled, we decided to get some lunch. Our mode of transportation: feet.

Harbor houseSeeing how it was already 4:00pm, we made it as far as the Eat at Joe’s Crab Shack right across the parking lot.. 200 feet away. The food was so good. 1. Because we were all starving. 2. Because we used the Visa gift cards and free food always tastes the best. It feels so nice to finally have money as opposed to Europe when I had to eat freaking baguettes and Paninis all day long whenever we would go out.

Ordering food.

After lunch, we all kind of wanted to go to check out the beach scene. Seeing how we had no car, we walked it out. It was probably about a mile and a half away from us. The walk wasn’t that pleasant. For one it was so humid and hot. Two the mosquitoes. Seriously, are you kidding me? These mosquitoes are ridiculously vicious. Way more than Austin. I was getting bit through my shirt all over. I pulled out my umbrella to shield myself from the sun, Asian woman style. Hey don’t knock it; it works pretty well.

When we finally got to the beach, we got right in. You can wade pretty far out. The sand goes for at least 100 yards out. But the beach is less than glamorous. The beach is very narrow, the sand is kinda hard, and the water is brown. No one really wanted to get in past their knees. So we chilled here for a while, got some drinks, and made a human pyramid. Eventually I ended up diving in. At the time it was a great idea. But afterwards I immediately regretted the decision. I felt disgusting.

Dinner time. Time to walk again. In the distance we could see the storm clouds rolling in and they looked bad. Luckily Travis called his friend who was staying in Galveston at the time and he came with his pickup truck. It was perfect timing too because the storm was literally behind us as we were driving. We piled in and we to a restaurant called ‘The spot.’ It’s basically Fuddruckers combined with Pappadeaux. Seafood dinner. Very good.
Travis’ friend Nick was telling us about how his friend got ringworm from getting in the water. EHHHHHHHHHHHh.

From there, Chanel came an joined us and we went back to the hotel. We took a side detour so that Travis’ friend Nick could show us the most haunted place in all of Galveston. I was skeptical at first, but oh my God. It was so scary. I couldn’t get a good picture of it, but it looked like a scary insane asylum. There were these staircases that ran along the outside of the building. We just looked from the outside but you could see the lightning in the background which made it even creepier. I offered my Visa gift card to anyone who would spend the night there, but everyone passed.

Then we went back to our hotel and pretty much just crashed. Tomorrow we have to be down in the lobby at 7:45 am. We have orientation, some problem base learning sessions, lunch, and the patient simulator. It should all be fun. Later

-James

PS the mosquito problem is out of control. I have like 8 bites on me. That is all.

Munich, Germany

2007-07-09T23:42:00.001-07:00

Munich, Germany

Day 1. The following post dates for Wednesday July 4th, American Independence Day. Woot.

Last night/morning was awful. We left our window open and these flies got into our room. They kept flying by Bryan and my ears and landing on us like every 10 seconds. We kept twitching and convulsing to try to get them off of us. It was ridiculous, I was getting PISSED. I tried waking up a couple times to kill them, but I was never coherent/fast enough to kill them. I didn’t sleep too well.
Plus I was kinda itchy. Don’t know why.

We woke up and had breakfast downstairs. They actually had eggs and bacon. They also have the same rolls that everyone else has, I think they are called Keiser rolls. Hard on the outside, soft on the in. Cereal, yogurt, all good. But there were more flies. As;ljkfhga;lgjhw;orhg

We checked out, paid, and walked to the bus stop. As we were sitting there, Clair puts her right hand across her left side of her chest and starts reciting the pledge of allegiance. NICE. Independence Day in Germany. We all joined it. It was awesome. Then we had time to kill, so we started playing Uno and the bus stop. Rebecca and I won twice, Bryan once, Clair goose egg. It’s ok, 4th ain’t bad. At some point this lady cam and stood behind us and watched us. It was kinda weird She would laugh and stuff when we did and mumble in German. Random. But then she walked over to her husband and I heard her say the words ‘Uno.’ Apparently it’s an international game.Did nto know that.

The bus eventually came and we went to the station. Our next destination: Munich. We didn’t know what ticket to buy, so this nice guy working there helped us out. He spoke English because apparently he backpacked through the states. I didn’t know there was that much to see in the states. We bought a 5 person pass, cheaper, and walked to our platform. While we were there, we watched these people make out instead of doing their jobs, People like to make out here in public, a lot.

We got onto the wrong train and got kicked out. Then we got on the right one. The train ride was about an hour and 45 minutes to Munich. There were some more noisy Germans, but not to the extent of going to Forli. I bogged some on the train and tok pictures of people sleeping. When we got to Munich we walked to our hostel which was really close by. Good planning by Rebecca and Clair. We got our keys and paid. Up to the 5th floor. Bryan and I walked into our room and it looked like It had just been ransacked. Apparently, someone had just checked out and they hadn’t cleaned it. Clair and Rebecca couldn’t even get into theirs. I think someone dead-bolted it from the inside, if that’s even possible. So we dropped our stuff in my room, and left for them to deal with everything. We walked toward the Marienplatz, or marketplace, which is a very busy area. We found this place called the Augustiner Brau Mundhen or something. A famous brewhouse, which we will find out later.
We were seated and started ordering. For drink, tap wasser. Bryan, called his mom and found out how to say tap water in German. It turned out to be tremendously helpful. Leitungswasser
Nice Bryan. Saved us 4 Euro each. No one in Germany drinks tap water either, which is annoying. I got this pasta dish that was kinda good, Bryan got sausage, Clair got gulash (chili type soup) and Rebecca got a sausage salad. This was literally a plate full of sausage. I could see the pain on her face as she was eating it. It tasted like Vienna sausage which I guess is ok in moderation This was not moderation. She was literally distressed. We couldn’t finish it all. Ok so pretzels. This place has pretzels too, but there is a basket on every table. We thought that they would possibly charge us for them, but we each had one anyways. Then the waiter came back and asked us if we wanted more. Before we answered he just took a basket from the table over and put it on ours and smiled. So we figured on the house. Wrong. .90 Euro each. Swindlers. I actually got partially full. We paid and left.

We walked around the marienplatz some more and checked out a few cathedrals. We saw St. Michaels cathedral. We also checked out the local shops. A lot of them sell cuckoo clocks and beirsteins, beer mugs. It’ what Germany is famous for. Some of the beirsteins are outrageously over priced and some are ok. We saw Das Boot from Beerfest, but we couldn’t find one the right size. I thought about buying one, but didn’t want to deal with bringing it back. We also saw the biggest Beirstein in the world. It was huge. I thought to myself, wherever Travis is right now, his head is probably exploding.

So we kept walking and we got to a courtyard in front of some sort of palace or maybe it was parliament. Every hour, there is a show put on by the enormous clock with people dancing and music. It turned out to be a major let down. There as no music and it was entirely anticlimactic. BORING. We left. Then we walked to Church Frauenkirche, another cathedral with huge twin spires. The inside was similar to the church in Ulm. Much had been destroyed and rebuilt. We decided not to climb the spires, good choice.

We continued walking and saw the opera house. We also walked into a museum which turned out to be a random experience. I think they were closing and there was no one in there, not even security really. We just walked through for 5 minute and left. It showed Germany’s part in the war, which was kidna funny. Basically it showed that they were involved in the war, but didn’t say what. Then they were bombed by the allies and rebuilt. Kinda missing a lot there.

We went to the hauf garten (gardens) and wandered for a bit. Found a monument to the unnamed soldier. There weren’t many tourists around here either. Then we walked to the Haurbrauhaus, which is probably Munich’s most famous attraction. It’s a huge beer garden. People from all over come here for the food, live music, and most of all beer. So we went here around 6:15 pm and decided we weren’t hungry, so we left with the intention of coming back.

We walked in a big loop to kill time. We got some gelato and then went to the Hard Rock café to use their bathrooms/watch their tv. Wimbledon was on and we watched Serena lose to Henin in the quarterfinals. Hopefully the other Williams sister will do better. So 7:30 rolls around and we’ve killed an hour, time for food and beer.

The place had gotten a lot busier than when we first went, which was understandable. So we made a loop around the place and couldn’t find an empty table. So we stalked people we thought were going to leave and got one finally. It was in the main room with the music and everything. We sat next to these German guys who apparently had been there for 4 hours before we had sat down. They basically just chill there and talk to whoever comes and sits next to them so they can practice their English, and get drunk. They were a lot of fun and I think one of them was hitting on Clair. There was also this old German guy with the hat an everything sitting there. He had been in there since before them, so the German’s claim. The guy had his own bierstein and walked up to refill it himself whenever it was empty. Nice.

Our waitress was an interesting experience. She was this older red headed lady with glasses who looked extremely bitter. It went downhill from the moment we ordered our drinks. Bryan got a traditional beer and Clair and I got a beer called the Radler, which is beer mized with lemonade. Really good actually. I figured when am I going to be in Germany again? Rebecca wanted tap water. When Bryan ordered it, our waitress was shocked. Tap water? She stood there for a while and then said in her broken English, “Germany does not like tap water.” And walked off. Oops. It takes her nearly forever to bring our drinks. It’s also near impossible to get her attention. I mena she’s really busy. She’s running around carrying like 12 beers at once, and other people are yelling at her trying to get her attention too. Eventually she brings them. They are 1 liter each. That’s a lot of beer. Bryan downs his right away, I take my time. We put in our orders and she left. I got a pork steak, which turned out to be really delicious. I regret not getting the pork knuckle, which apparently they are famous for.

So we had a great time eating, talking with the Germans, and drinking. Bryan had a second beer, then a third. That s a lot of beer. SO towards the end of our meal, this couple asks if they could squeeze in next to us. They looked nice enough so we said sure. Turns out this was a great decision, they were awesome people. So Mark and Natalie Weatherman. Natalie is originally from Wisconsin and now lives in Minnesota with her husband Mark. She is a German/Spanish teacher at a middle school and was bringing a group of high school students on a summer trip to Germany. She is fluent in German and it’s fun to watch her speak to the locals including our waitress. Mark works at a company that I forget the name of or what the do, but he came to join his wife in Germany after her program had ended. She comes over to Germany all the time but Mark doesn’t, so they decided to come to a more touristy area with Americans on the fourth of July. They were hilarious and we had so much fun talking. We told them all about our travels and they about theirs. Some highlights of that night. Bryan had 4 beers total, so 4 liters. Ridiculous. Germans left the table after like 5 hours, we don’t think they paid. These Korean kids tried to get the waitress’s attention, so they raised their hands. They apparently had a question.

Pissing off our waitress and the ridiculously slooooooow service. Mark extending his arm outwards while telling a story and clocking this Asian waitress in the face/shoulder. Hilarious. Mark pressuring us to get another liter of beer. Numerous trips to the urinal. Bryan slurred speech. Walking back to the hotel with Mark and Natalie. Not walking in a straight line (Mark). Skipping and feet shuffling (Bryan).

Eventually we made it back to the hotel and we all chilled in Rebecca and Clair’s room for a while. We watched the Office, Beach Day episode on my laptop. Then Bryan and I left. I took a shower while he passed out.

OK so the shower, FLOODS. Sick. It doesn’t drain and all the water comes out so fast. What I had to do was lather up, then rinse off. It was terrible. Bryan will have fun in the morning. I tried to tell him, but I don’t think he heard me.

Ok I am tired now from the day’s festivities. NIGHT

-James

Ulm, Germany

2007-07-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

Ulm, Germany

The following post dates for Tuesday, July 3rd.

Today was less eventful, but altogether a great day. Very rarely will you find me having a bad day. I just don’t have them. I’m awesome.

So this morning we woke up and had breakfast in our hotel in Friedrichshafen. High quality breakfast per usual. Seriously, when I get a good internet connection I’m going to rate the crap out of this place. It has been amazing here.

Then we went to go get ready. Bryan and I listen to music now when we get dressed. It’s usually the Scientist by Coldplay on repeat. The guy loves the song, what can I say. We walked back to the train station to catch the next one to Ulm, Germany. I really don’t want to leave Friedrichshafen, I love it here. It’s so relaxing and the people here are great. I don’t think I would run out of things to do either. I wouldn’t mind just lounging around all day. Plus we could easily take another ferry ride to Constance or go back to Switzerland to go to Zurich. There are lots of possibilities. But we booked hotels and we must go.

What do I know about Ulm? Einstein was born here. That’s about it.

So we bought our tickets to Ulm, it ended costing about 27 Euro for both Bryan and I, which is pretty fair I think. So the ride to Ulm didn’t take long at all. Trying to find the hotel this time proved to be much more difficult. Well, when I say that, I don’t mean for me, I mean for Rebecca. I just follow. So while she was trying to figure out the bus route, because our hotel was about 7 kilometers out, Bryan and I were taking pictures of this HUGE cathedral they have in Ulm. Rebecca says that this church has the tallest steeple of all the churches and cathedrals in the world. Wow. She wasn’t kidding, it was tall. I couldn’t fit the entire thing in a picture, which is basically my definition of being really tall. We didn’t go inside right away because we would be coming back, and Rebecca figured out the way so we left. So getting onto the bus was an interesting experience. We bought a day pass for all four of us, which only cost 3 euro a person. Nice. Getting onto the bus was a bit crazy. Everyone piled at the door and pushed. I owned this little punk kid who kept trying to push past me. I think they were still in the school year or something; a lot of the kids had backpacks. I’m not sure of their schedule.

Other thing I noticed. I hope I’m not out of line when I say that Germany, well Ulm has some very pretty girls. Bryan agrees. They are everywhere. End Tangent

So the bus ride took us way out of the city into the more rural area where we got off to look for our hotel. We got off a little early and had to walk, but we found it with relative ease. So Hotel Engel. I’m curious to see how this place will compare to Friedrichshafen. They definitely have their work cut out for them. They advertise a sauna on their hotel sign, so we might check that out. So we got up to our rooms. Not bad at all. Double beds pushed together and a couch. Rebecca and Clair had like a love seat so I guess our room was the hangout room again. Bryan and I seem to get the couches. So we dropped off our stuff and packed for the day’s activities. Rebecca has heard from people that we can kayak on the Danube, which sounds awesome and I’m really excited about that. Rebecca and Clair both brought swim suits, Bryan and I did not. But I have a pair of basketball shorts that will have to do. Then we were off back to the bus stop.

Our first order of business again, as usual, was food. It was close to 3 pm and we haven’t had lunch yet. So we wandered around and found this place called the Wirthaus Bretzel. They advertise pretzels as one of their trademark foods. We ordered some water from them, with the intention of getting tap water. Instead, we each got .5 liter bottles of Evian water that cost 3.70 Euro a piece. Are you serious. That’s so expensive. CRAP. Bryan got one of the beers they had on tap and it cost less than half of what the water did. No wonder everyone here drinks beer.

So for our meal, we all had this white type of sausage that comes with a salad and 2 pretzels. First came the plate with salad on it. It consisted of a couple leaves. Then came the pot of sausage. The sausage is white in color. Then came the pretzels. They looked delicious We got some type of sweet honey mustard with the pretzels. So we feasted. Well not exactly, afterwards I was starving. During lunch though it was funny. This pair of women to our left kept looking over at us and laughing. I was like, well that’s kind of rude. I was like, “Clair on three lets stare back at them.” She said ok. “1, 2, ..3” Clair gave them a stare down and I chickened out. Then the lady approached us and asked us if we spoke English. We said yes. She then proceeded to tell us that we were eating the sausage wrong. Apparently you are not supposed to eat the skin; you are supposed to peel it off. Nice lady actually. So we heeded her advice. From the restaurant, we headed back towards the church with the really tall steeple. Open the doors and here are the people.

Before we got to the church I was distracted by this chicken stand. They sell roasted chickens whole. It was awesome. I bought half a chicken for 2.85 Euros. Oh man, it was so worth it. It really made me full. I made a comment to the girls that they didn’t find too flattering. But I love how this group can EAT. After we eat a meal, we usually have dessert always, or we go shopping to buy more snacks. Bryan and I eat an entire pizza after Chinese food, and I eat half a chicken after a lunch. Nice.

So Clair, Rebecca and Bryan went in before I did because I did not finish my chicken yet. After I licked my fingers and went inside. The inside of the church had some amazing stained windows. Some of them were entirely intact while others I think were destroyed. I think this because some of the windows were looked modern while others still have pictures on them. So after touring the church for a while, we decided to climb to the very top of the steeple. This was a big mistake. Well not mistake, but a life threatening situation.

So the staircase is a winding staircase, and I swear it literally goes on for forever. I kept walking up winding around and around going upwards and i literally thought it would never ever end. I did get scared. At one point I got separated from the group for some reason because I think I was taking pictures. Anyways I could hear their voices at one point, and then I couldn’t hear them anymore. Turns out they went through this breezeway to another winding tunnel.
So I kept walking upwards looking for them. At the same time, my legs were burning and I was getting winded. At the same time as well I was getting extremely dizzy. So dizzy in fact that I need to stop and lean against the wall. Except when I would do this, I would look out the window and be terrified. Background on me, I am absolutely terrified of heights. Terrified. Eventually I met them at like a base level near the top. Then they wanted to walk to the very top. Oh my God. The staircase was even more narrow and winding. But if they did it, there was no way I wasn’t doing it. Before heading up the narrower part up to the top, Clair and I were trying to talk ourselves into it. Then this family o like four kids, a mom, and a dad with an umbrella appeared. They looked at this part and the dad literally tapped his umbrella twice on the concrete and said something in German, and up they went. It was like the freaking Von Trapp family. Now, I definitely have to dio it if these four year old little kids are doing it. Why aren’t they afraid?

So up we walked. I think on this part I was even more afraid. The problem was there weren’t two ways down the staircase. So if someone was trying to climb down, then someone had to literally hug the wall and you would have to squeeze by. More never ending steps. Eventually we got to the top and in a way the view was worth it. The wind and rain was kind strong which made it less enjoyable. I just simply couldn’t believe how high we were. The entrance at the top of the staircase was literally a little bit smaller than the width of my shoulders. I barely squeezed through. Also because I’m just so massive. Then we started walking back dow. This was less tiring but way more dizzying. I cant stand getting dizzy. I almost fell a couple times and took out Clair and Rebecca. I’d say the fear of death factor was about an 8, with 10 being gun pointed to your head or swimming with blood lusted sharks. On the way down, I was thinking, the view was totally not worth this at all. This is torture. They should pay me to do this. At the bottom we snapped a couple victory pics. Then I was like, can I get my money back, and the girl who sold the tickets overheard me and laughed. She was like our age. Then Rebecca was like, James, speaks English. Crap. She laughed some more. We were curious how many steps it was. I tried to count them but I got messed up at around 25 from the dizziness. Bryan counted 700ish. Official count, 768. Ridiculous. I no longer could walk straight and my legs were like jello.

Then we walked around for a bit. We checked out the twon hall, which in German literal translation is Rat House, so Bryan and Rebecca tell me. Interesting. Then we checked out this museum, but didn’t go inside. Then we checked out this place called Einstein House. So for those of you that don’t know, Einstein was born here. Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany to Jewish parents Herman and Pauline Einstein. But he moved shortly therafter. Yet Ulm like to lay claim to birthing arguably the world’s smartest human being ever.

Ok so Einstein house. It actually had nothing to do with Einstein. It was like an art school and there were people singing and stuff. This sucks. So we left. We saw these twin spires from where we were and decided to go check it out. It’s still raining at this time, so we decided to walk through this park/cemetery. I enjoyed it, it was nice. We eventually got to the twin spires, and it turned out to be a church/school. And we couldn’t get inside. Basically we couldn’t get in anywhere we went but the church. So we walked all the way back, a long ways. We split off and got our own dinners before catching a bus back to our hotel. I had some more Doner Kebaps, Bryan and Rebecca had Burger King, Clair had McDonald’s chicken nuggets happy meal. I refused to have food we could have gotten in the states. I can proudly say I didn’t eat any McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, or anything other fast food from America. Doner Kebaps baby. Then we all met at McDonald’s to eat it. First we sat downstairs because it was less crowded. Then they were shutting that part down so we went back upstairs. Then the manager tried to kick us out because we didn’t have any McDonald’s food. So we were like fine lets get desserts and he will have to leave us alone. I FAILED. I bought a McFlurry, sigh. But that doesn’t count. It wasn’t a primary meal. Then we sat back down, and since our entire meal wasn’t McDonald’s, he kicked us out anyways. So we went to eat at the Doner Kebap place. They would never kick us out. Nice. We watched fencing on tv for a while before catching our bus.

So we’re wet and cold and someone decides that we should all go in the sauna to warm up. Not a bad idea, let’s do it. Bryan and I didn’t have swim suits, so I just wore boxers and a towel. I’ve never really been in one of these for a long time, and it was interesting. I almost died of fluid loss. So we first get in and I’m doing alright. Then came the sweat, and it came with a vengeance. I was literally drenched. FYI on me, I sweat really easily and a lot. But I don’t smell. So I looked around and no one else was sweating. I decided to lie down, because hot air rises, and it did not help. The sweat was dripping into my ears and formed a pool at my belly button. There was so much sweat everywhere. I had to take a break outside and cool down. I couldn’t handle the heat. I was losing a lot of fluids, fast. I went back inside for round two. The sweat was literally dripping from my face and body at the rate of like 2 drops per seconds. I was blowing it like mist off of my lips. People kind of got mad at me because I was throwing sweat at them. So Rebecca set her watch and we were in there for 20 minutes. Well they were, I was in there for like 17. After the sauna, we took freezing cold showers, it felt so good.

Thenwe went back to our rooms and took real showers. I didn’t have an extra towel, so I dried off in my sweat filled towel. Hey don’t judge. I don’t smell, remember? Bryan bought this Jack Daniels Chocolate, which we ate. It was literally chocolate with Jack Daniels whiskey inside. Pretty good actually. Ok Bryan loves candy. No matter where we are, he’s always looking for a candy store or like a coke. And for some reason he doesn’t like to save any for later. He will always finish it when first opening. But he does share a lot, so thank Bryan. Then we watched soccer on TV, USA was killing someone. Clair wanted to do pilates, so I had her teach me. It was kinda hard, I enjoyed it. Thanks instructor Clair. Then we stretched for a bit and I hurt my shoulder. Then I passed out on the couch and everyone left. I woke up and crawled into bed.

Good night ULM,
-James

Updates!

2007-07-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

Ok friends,

So i have updated june 29th, july 1st, and july 2nd with pics, sorry it came so late i didnt have internet. please be patient i will have everything up eventually in a nice neat fashion with labels, please keep checking back.

Bryan and I are back from Germany safe and happy. Clair and Rebecca are safe in Germany, happy as well. THey fly back to London tomorrow. OK I come home tomorrow, ready the welcoming party.

-james

Gone To Switzerland

2007-07-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

Switzerland.

July 2, 2007

This was probably one of the best mornings I’ve had while being abroad. I had a great night’s rest and woke up refreshed. Then we walked downstairs to get some complimentary breakfast. It’s official, this has been the best hostel. The breakfast was very classy and I actually got enough to eat. There was cereal, rolls with butter, jam, and honey, various kinds of meats, yogurt, coffee, tea, fruit juice, fruit. It was soo good. I stole a couple apples for later. Then we paid for our two nights stay.

Then we went back up to our rooms to get ready for the day. I think most of the reason why this morning was so amazing was that we were going a at leisurely pace. I went back to the room, opened the windows, played some music, and stood at the window in my underwear. It was awesome. I think I got Bryan hooked on Coldplay. So we packed our stuff and headed out the door.

It was drizzling outside, but nothing unbearable and the wind felt really good. Our first stop was this castle church in Friedrichshafen. It towers pretty much of much of the town and I spotted it as soon as we got in yesterday. I don’t know much about it, but I really did like the architecture. We found our way inside, and I felt kind of out of place because there weren’t any people inside but us and this guy playing on the organ. But then again I really liked it that not only were we the only tourists in the place, but the only people there. The inside of the church was gorgeous. I really enjoyed it. Everything was so peaceful.

Then we walked around the grounds and found a secret garden, as Clair liked to call it. I wanted to go in, but there was a pretty tall wall. We followed it all the way to the shore. Bryan and I thought about climbing it, but chickened out. It turned out to be a good thing, because as we were walking away, this car parked out front the whole time just started up and drove away. This German dude was watching us apparently for a while.

So we made our way to the pier to purchase our tickets to get to Switzerland. We didn’t really know what we were doing so we found this ticket booth and were kinda looking around unil this German lady was like, “You want to go to Switzerland?” Us: “Jah” Lady “Well the ferry leaves in two minutes hurry shoo shoo.” So we ran onto this ferry without tickets, and tried to buy them on the ferry. Then the guy selling tickets is like, this ferry doesn’t go to Switzerland, tt goes to Constance, which is another German town on the lake. We all looked at each other and then I was like, “Exit the boat effective immediately!” Then we ran off right before it left. So then we walked around a little longer looking for the right dock and found it. We had the option of going to Zurich for a little more, but decided we didn’t have enough time, so we bought our ticket to Romanshorn, and then killed sometime before getting on the ferry. The security is pretty ineffective. Rebecca and Bryan walked right in and no one asked to check their passports. But Clair and I got stopped. Oh well, I got a stamp, nice. We were all very excited about going to Switzerland. It’s like what did you do to day? Oh nothing just went to Switzerland for a day, no biggie.

So we started out on the upper deck of the ferry. It ended up being a little too cold with the wind and rain, so we went down to the middle deck. This guy who works on the boat approached us and started talking to us. So apparently, he has two daughters both of which are studying in England as well. He lives in Germany but he has family in the states. His English was really good. Anyways so we told him about our study abroad experience and what we were doing in Germany. He was also telling us how the weather is supposed to be like this until Friday, which is the day we leave. That’s just great. Apparently the weather is a bit freakish and unusual. Then he proceeded to ask us why we were going to Romanshorn. We told him we just wanted to go to Switzerland. He was like, well Romanshorn is basically a dead end there is nothing to do there. We should have gone to Constance (which we didn’t do because we got off the ferry) or we should have gone to Zurich (which we didn’t do, because we felt like we didn’t have enough time). So basically we didn’t do anything right. He had to go back to work, but later came back kind of excited and started telling us about what we could do instead of Romanshorn. We could take a train to San Gallen (Saint Gallen I think Gallen means rooster so Saint Rooster) which is not that far from Romanshorn and has a lto more to offer with the old city centre, historical buildings, and shops. That sounded a lot better, so we took his advice. We got off the train and bought our train tickets to San Gallen.

Relevant tangent: Switzerland is kind of messed up. First of all, the speak Germany. Well at least they do in Romanshorn and San Gallen. Also their national currency is the Franc. What the heck. France doesn’t use Francs anymore. So why don’t they use the FREAKING EURO. This is irritating. Resume blog.

I really love how we do things on the fly. We don’t have much planned. We have an idea of what we want to do, but our ideas are so fluid and things change instantly.

So the train ride took about 45 minutes. I fell asleep per usual. When we got off, the first order of business was food. We found a tourist information center and asked for locations of historical attractions, shops, and restaurants. This younger girl who worked their was telling us about a fondue place that she really loved. We figured we might as well go get some Swiss food while in Switzerland so we made note of that. Then I remembered the last time I was in Switzerland, I bought this awesome Swiss army knife, one with like a metal grated cover. I don’t know where it is anymore, so I wanted a new one. Plus I need one to replace the one that the English police confiscated from me. This is my goal for today. So we asked this other lady about like a Swiss army shop and she directed us towards some sort of military store. Ok, so we had our bearings and we were ready to go. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the melting pot in Austin, but it’s pretty freaking expensive. But I was curious to see if it was cheaper here. Fondue here we come.

So the first thing we did when we got outside the doors was walk in the wrong direction. For about 20 minutes. Awesome. I don’t know what happened since I usually just follow, but it was fun anyways. Turns out we ended up near the military store that the older lady was telling us about. Except they didn’t sell Swiss army knives. Instead they sold automatic weapons and sniper rifles. Ehhhh.

Eventually we got to walking back in the right direction for a ways and found the old city center. The fondue place was tricky to locate but we didn’t mind walking. Bryan and I stopped in every store with a knife in the window looking for it, but were usually let down.

There is no difference in price between fondue in Switzerland in Austin. Screw that. Random food stand it is. We found one inside the deli. We all hat a bratwurst and Bryan, Rebecca, and I got some pasta. My food was surprisingly good. Rebecca’s noodles tasted literally like plastic. Sucks for her. Haha just kidding. We shared some of our food with her.

Now that we had some food in us, we were ready to go. Then we headed to the Cathedral of San Gallen. Before I get to that, the landscape of San Gallen is awesome. If you look not very far from the town center, you can see these massive steep hills with buildings and such going up them. I really wanted to go run up a hill, but only if time permitted. Ok so the cathedral. Didn’t know much about it, but I liked it. There is seriously a cathedral everywhere I go that just blows my mind. There was some sort of event going on later that week, so there was a lot of construction inside going on. But there was a huge massive dome and everything inside was gorgeous. I took pictures.

From there we walked around and looked for a bathroom. Bryan and I found these fenced off port-a-potties. There was no one around, so we moved the fence and relieved ourselves. These were some nice port-a-potties. They had sinks in them with a foot pump for the water. Nice. The girls kept looking.

Ok drinking water fiasco. So we found this one court yard that had this statue and two fountains under it. One shooting water upwards, and one spouting it out. I see a sign that says ‘Trinkwasser’ above the one shooting water upwards and I get excited. Trinkwasser sounds like drinking water. NICE. Anytime I see free clean water I get very excited. How am I supposed to fill up my water bottle. Answer: the one spouting it out. This one says ‘Klein Trinkwasser.’ Nice, clean drinking water? I felt it, it was cold. My life was complete. So I fill up my water bottles (plural) and ‘trink’ until I get full. All the while Bryan is on the phone, so I offer him some water and he drinks a lot. We tell the girls about it and we all walk to get some free water. Then it goes downhill. I see Bryan refilling my bottle on the one that shoot’s water upwards. I’m like Bryan, just use the spout. He’s like no, that’s not drinking water… Uhhhh What? Apparently the sign says ‘Kein’ not ‘Klein’ which means NOT in German. And ‘klein’ in German doesn’t even mean clean. I was like uh… oops. Bryan then looked at the bottle he just drank from and was like, “Damnit James.” Rebecca and Clair had a good laugh at this. I told them about the klein and they laughed at me some more. Ok so I realize my logic was off. I was just too excited to think. Here’s my question. WHY DO YOU DISPENSE NON SANITARY DRINKING WATER IN A VERY ACCESIBLE MANNER TO DRINK FROM? I CAN’T READ GERMAN. So Bryan and I had some bad water. At the moment I feel fine, and I haven’t got sick yet, knock on wood. I’ve had the water in London, the metal water from DAMTP in Cambridge, the water from fountains in Rome, the tap water in Paris, and now God knows what water in Germany. I must have a really strong immune system. Either that or now I have tapeworms. We’ll Bryan and I have tapeworms. Freaking Germany.

So then we headed to this library near the cathedral. Oh my God. I never could have imagined this place. It’s not very big, but it was gorgeous. I think this was how it was laid out in the past and has survived over the years. The place was basically frozen in antiquity. They preserve the floors by making you wear these huge slippers over your shoes when you walk in. Felt kinda goofy. Slip n’ Slide. There were no pictures allowed inside sadly, which greatly hurt me because it’s amazing inside. The shelves are filled with old texts, books, and atlases. I can hardly imagine the wealth of imformation they must have in there. They even have a mummy in there, I don’t know why. I love how everything was made from wood and the ceilings were ornately painted.

From them library, we walked around shops looking for some Swiss chocolate and Swiss army knives. There is a famous chocolate store in San Gallen but it’s closed on Mondays, of course. Every so often I would try to find the base of he hill but kept getting stuck at another building in my way. We found a grocery store and went inside to buy some snacks. Then we walked around some more. Eventually Bryan and I found what I was looking for. The Swiss army metal pocket knife. NICE. We each got one. I also got a ball cap with the Swiss cross on it, and Bryan got a lighter for his brother. This really made my day, I cannot explain my excitement. The girls went and got some pastries too. We are always eating, I love it. So we walked around a little more before catching the train back to the ferry.

The ferry ride back was breathtaking. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were breaking up here and there. The rays of sunlight were cutting through the clouds onto the water and the visibility was virtually endless. Gorgeous. Again, of course as we were leaving. We stayed on the top deck and watched the scenery. Bryan and I got bored and started doing pull ups. I know I’ve gotten weaker, but hey 27 pull ups is still good enough. Then it was the girls turn. They get an A for effort. Just kidding, they did good. Rebecca ended up grabbing onto Clair and like squatted her while she did pull ups. Pretty funny.

When we got back, we found the grocery store that the Chinese lady from the restaurant was telling us about yesterday and went inside for snacks and such. I bought water and a thing of apple juice. I love apple juice. We all bought lots of candy. I got the sour glow worms. And the sour coke bottles. We also got various snacks and Bryan got some body wash. Oh we were highly amused that vodka in Germany is wodka since they have no ‘V.’ We decided to split a bottle of Jagermeister. Bryan and Rebecca’s idea. I don’t like licorice much, but we’ll give it a try. There were these German kids that kept saying Konicheewah to me because they thought I was Japanese. Oh well, I didn’t care. I think Bryan may have given them the finger.

Apparently the store closes at 8 and the entire store was like herding us out. I think they were annoyed. No wonder they don’t like Americans, whoops. At the counter while we were paying, something catches my eye. It was a 2 gigabyte Kingston SD memory card for 16 Euro. I was like UHHHHH isn’t this a really good deal? Answer yes. This comes out to be around $25.50 American, which is a great deal considering mine cost around $27 off Amazon. I’ve been really annoyed since my 2 gig card broke the third day in London, and I’ve been having to use a 512 mb and 256 mb cards that I have filled completely on certain days. This tops everything. I am so happy. How random that it was in the impulse buy area of random German market. So from here we need food for dinner. Always about food.

We decided to go back to the Doner Kebap place that we had gone to yesterday. It was really good, cheap, and there was a lot of it. When we got there, the couple was so happy to see us. Bryan and I each had a pizza and a doner kebap. Clair and Rebecca split a pizza and a kebap. We took a couple pictures of them, then we walked back to our hostel. We sat in my room and ate the food while watching Russell Peters. He’s a comedian. Then we watched Talladega Nights on my laptop as well. Bryan and Rebecca have never seen it. Shake ‘n Bake.

After the movie we sat around and talked for a while then went to bed. Tomorrow we are off to Ulm, the birth place of Einstein. Pretty exciting. For some reason, I don’t want to leave Friedrichshafen. There’s surprisingly a lot to do here and I am so comfortable. The people are all so nice, makes it hard to leave.

Goodnight Friedrichshafen,

-James

Friedrichshafen, Germany

2007-07-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Friedrichshafen, Germany

This post dates for Sunday, July 1st.

Today has been an amazing day. Absolutely nothing went wrong.

So it started out kinda hectic. I went to bed around 4ish I think last night hanging out with Ani, Michelle, and Bryan and doing stuff on the internet. It’s funny, I have a tendency to say random nonsense when I am on the brink of falling asleep. For some reason I fell the need to say things. So last night they said I was saying something involving Dr. Diller as I was dwindling away. Anyways so Ani and Bryan escorted Michelle back to her hotel where she’s staying with her sister in London while I sat in the hallway on my computer and watched all the drunk people come back.

Ok problem. When I booked my flight for Germany, there was an error while the pay page was loading, so I had to refresh and resubmit my credit card information. Turns out I had book two seats on the plane under my name. Crap. So I tried to call them this morning at 8, but they weren’t open until 9. Bryan, Clair, Rebecca, and I are flying out to Germany today to travel one last time before heading home. I packed all my stuff and said my goodbyes to Laura, Jennifer, Ani, and Kacie. It was sad, I will really miss all of them. The transition from seeing them 18 hours a day to none at all will be hard for me. Then Bryan and I zipped downstairs and grabbed two rolls a piece and stuffed some jam into our pockets before heading out the door. I started to grab a knife to take with me so we could spread the jam and Bryan was like, “Dude, haven’t you learned your lesson?” Good point. I grabbed a spoon instead. Yes I stole it, I am a bad person.

As we were walking over to the Bayswater tube station, I got on the phone and called Ryan Air to sort out my problem. I was afraid since today was the day of the flight I would be out of lucky, but turns out, everything was fine. I was able to cancel it. Nice.
So while we were waiting for the train to get to us, Bryan and I broke bread and had some jam. I don’t know why it was so good. I noticed that I’ve come to really enjoy simple foods and to take what I can get wherever I can. The spoon worked well. So Bryan and I hopped onto the Circle line towards where Rebecca and Clair were staying in Gloucester. We made it to their stop almost exactly at 9:30 am, exactly as we had planned.

I’ve had a knot in my stomach since I woke up this morning because I was afraid of the unknown. For some reason I feel like something will go terribly wrong or that I didn’t plan correctly. The entire trip I have relied on all the girls to plan out where we would be going and which hostel we would be sleeping at, etc. All I had to do was carry their luggage and pay them money. Pretty good deal. But this time around I had to book all the flights and hostels for both me and Bryan, and I’m really hoping that nothing goes wrong on this Germany trip. So far, so good.

We got of the tube at Liverpool street station, where we would catch the One train to London Stansted. I left the spoon on the train. I don’t even want there to be a remote chance of me getting stopped for any reason. The train to Stansted took about 50 minutes. We got there with plenty of time to spare. Eventually we checked in and got a sandwich from Pret A Manger. The flight was fine, I took a little over an hour. Loved the scenery We landed around 4:30 pm and picked up our luggage. Now for the really fun part. We don’t exactly know where to go. And by that, I mean we have absolutely no idea where we need to be going. All we have is the address of the place. But we do have Clair and Rebecca, navigating champs.

I’m not even the slightest bit stressed or worried. I love not knowing exactly where we are going. I really wouldn’t mind getting lost even, as long as we’re together. Besides, getting lost always leads to something funny happening and good stories. So we figured out that the hostel is about 7 kilometers away so we would need to take the train. We bought tickets and got on not knowing if we were even getting on the right one. The train is really packed and I’m worried that we won’t be able to get on before the doors close. Clair made a funny comment. It went something like this; “I feel like I’m in a World War II movie and I’m fending for my life.”

So our destination is Freidrichshafen Stadt. It’s pronounced freed-rick-shaaf-hen. We get to our stop and don’t really know where to go from here. So we sent Rebecca into action and she found where we were supposed to go. Ok about Friedrichshafen. It’s a small town on Bodensee (Lake Constance) right on the border between Germany and Switzerland. Although much of the town has succumb to modern architecture, some of the buildings do still hold a flavor of the town’s history. From where we were, we could see the water and got distracted. We walked down to the shore, which was only about 100 yards from the station. It was kinda cloudy, but we could faintly make out the Switzerland coastline.

Random monument

Random artistic sculpture that i liked.

I started to skip rocks, something I like doing when I’m near the water. Everyone joined in. Some good times.

ClairThis German girl over heard us speaking English and wanted to talk to us. Her English was actually quite good, I was impressed.

Bryan, German girl, Clair, and RebeccaOk so somewhere along the way either getting off the airplane or skipping rocks, my Nalgene fell out of my backpack. I am very sad. I realized this while we were walking to our hostel, which was actually quite close to the train station. It was a very nice walk, because we could walk along the shoreline.

DocksRestaurant near the coast.

Ok so now for our hostel. Rebecca says that the townspeople refer to it as “the youth hostel.” It is very worth mentioning, and may be one of the highlights of our trip. Hostel Graf Soden Haus.

Bryan, Clair, and Rebecca about to walk in.

A-mazing. Wow. It’s not that big of a building, and the second we walk in, we get a very welcoming feeling. It was quite home-y. We get there around 6pm and the gentleman running the hostel had been waiting for us. He had our reservations printed out, arranged on the table for us to arrive. Check in took no time at all, and he was very kind. We walked up the flight to our rooms…

The rooms: Wow. I couldn’t believe how nice they were. Clair and Rebecca were in one room, Bryan and I were in the other, right down the hall from them. First the bathroom. Huge compared to all the other bathrooms I’ve been in. Clean too. I cannot emphasize enough the cleanliness of this hostel. The shower was surrounded by glass and had an interesting door. The door was in the corner of the shower and both slides slid open to let you in. Oh and there was a chair in the bathroom. Not that special except for the fact that there was enough room to put a chair in there.The room itself was so nice as well. Double beds placed right next to each other. It’s definitely not the same as sharing a bed with Michael, but I feel like Bryan and I will be getting to know each other pretty well over the course of this trip. We also had a futon and two chairs in the room.

So we are all really ecstatic right about now, running into each other’s rooms and admiring the quality of everything. I loved how the windows opened up like doors.

Bryan and the room. Notice the futon.

Clair and Rebecca with the windows

I could have just stayed in their for hours and enjoyed the comfort, but my stomach as usual was calling, so we headed out for food. Then, it started raining. Great. What a great way to put a damper on everything. The clouds looked really ominous and we only had three umbrellas for four people, so Bryan volunteered to get wet. Well actually he didn’t volunteer, he had no umbrella so it was default. Let the record show that we offered him sheltered under our and he refused. In case Bryan’s mom is reading this and gets angry.

WalkingSo we were walking, trying to stay dry, but we were unsuccessful. No one was complaining though, the rain was fun and we were all having a great time.

We took a detour and found this playground or spielplatz as the Germans call it. Oh man it was so fun. We got on the see-saw and did that for a while. It hurt, really bad. We got to much air and I kept slamming down onto the metal seat. Then we found this spinning play thing that you can sit on or hang from and spin around. I was a little bit worried because I’m not very good with spinning. Tangent: When I was younger we went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio. Everyone wanted to ride the “Frisbee” so I did too. Mistake. The Frisbee swings you back and worth in addition to spinning really fast. When I got off I had to lay down for 3 hours. It wasn’t pretty. Resume story. So I got on this spinning thing and it was awesome. Then we got on this other spinning thing where you sit. This was a lot worse, and I had to remove myself from the device. Rebecca apparently loves to spin and get dizzy. I don’t understand it. Keep in mind that all the while, it’s still raining. So we are getting soaked, which made it even more fun. It seems that we’ve been doing a lot of playing recently. Last Thursday in the field and then now in a playground. We left much happier people and I left a little woozy.

It was around this time that I realized nothing could ruin this day. Everything so far has been and I feel like will be perfect. This group is amazing and we make every situation as fun as humanly possible. I was talking to Clair just about where we have traveled thus far and what I have enjoyed the most. I was saying how there’s really not that much to see or do here, and yet I can’t understand why I’m having such a great time. She was talking about how its important to see the big things, but it’s also important to appreciate the smaller towns. I think she’s right. I mean I’ve been to England seen Stonehenge and everything else, Rome and seen the ruins, Colosseum, and Vatican, Paris: the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Versailles. You get the picture. I’ve seen some of the most amazing sites the world has to offer in about a month. Yet here I am in Friedrichshafen, in this small random town in Germany that probably most the world hasn’t heard about, and I’m having such a great time. It might be too soon to tell, but this might be my favorite side trip.

We stopped near the place where we skipped rocks to look for my nalgene but it was gone. Goodbye UT nalgene bottle, I will miss you. You’ve been a very good bottle. It’s ok though, you cost only $12.99 at the UT Co-op.

Then we stopped at a pharmacy, or apothecary as they call them to get Bryan some shampoo and body wash. That guy really knows the meaning of minimalist. It’s quite impressive. He barely has anything in his backpack.

Clair and the apothecaryThen we stopped at an ATM to get some cash.

So then we walked around for a bit looking for a place to eat, but apparently on Sundays, nothing is open. Eventually we found this Chinese place and I think to myself: oh great a Chinese restaurant in Germany, this is not going to be good food. Bad assumption. SO we walk up the stair leading to the restaurant and I see like a Buda statue, and I think: ok, Buda statue, might be run by some authentic people. The we go up further and I see a fish tank, not just any fish tank, but a nice fish tank. Ok then, may be classy. Then I see Chinese people. Nice. What are Chinese people doing in Germany, I have no idea. So they greet us. Gutentag. I figure I’d give it a shot and I said hello in mandarin. The older lady who runs the place immediately lit up and I could tell she was excited to meet another Chinese person in Germany. I assume it must be rare. So she leads us to our seats. From what I can see, the restaurant is very nice. I made a bad snap judgment.

Stained glass.The old lady then brings us over like tiny wine glasses with pineapple and some sort of wine cooler inside. I didn’t see anyone else with them, so I would like to think that she gave it to us on the house, basically because I’m awesome. Ok so we ordered our food, I had some soup and fried noodles, and everyone else had fried rice. Rebecca noticed that every table ahs these heating stand with candles in them. We don’t have this over in the states, so I found this a bit unusual. So the lady eventually comes over and starts talking to me in Mandarin. It was funny. Rebecca dn Bryan can both speak a little German, but not much, and Clair and I know hardly any. Here we are in Germany, and I’m using Mandarin to communicate. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to communicate with her very well, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I was doing great. I don’t think I’ve ever been more happy to know Chinese in my life. It was seriously our sole means of communication with this lady. So she asked about why we were hear and how long we were here for. She also told us about the town and why things close so early on Sundays. Oh and the hot plates. Apparently, they are very common here in Germany. The German people prefer it so that they can keep their food warm while they eat.

I think I finally appreciate the whole irony of the situation. Growing up as a kid, my parents always spoke Chinese and English to me at home, so I know the language, but not well. My parents put me in Chinese school four about six years and I absolutely hated it. They let me quit when I reached middle school. But my mom and my cousin Richard, and pretty much everyone told me that I would regret not knowing Chinese better when I got older. I didn’t believe them until now. I really do wish I had more time to learn to the language better, especially reading and writing. Are you happy universe? You won.

Over dinner Bryan was talking about how he had been to Barcelona before the Cambridge program had started and how he partially regretted not going back because he loved it so much. But then he sort of feels the same way I do. He’s having a great time too and I think it’s mostly attributed to the group. I know I’ve said this before, but it really is what you make it.

So the food was delicious, but it wasn’t enough for me, as usual on this trip. I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier, but I’ve noticed how the portions in England and the rest of Europe are much smaller than in the US. They just eat less over here. This of course has been a major problem for me because I need two meals just to get full. I know I have definitely lost weight while I’ve been over here, but that could be attributed to not working out. So I asked the lady if there was anywhere we could go like a supermarket to get food. She said everything closes at around 4pm on Sundays. Out of luck. So we paid, thanked the lady for her hospitality, and left.

Ok so in Germany, everyone is extremely polite. Danke here means thanks or thank you. Shon means much. So basically everyone around here says much thanks or thank you very much to everyone else. Your welcome is Bitte. Everyone here says Bitte Shon. So Danke Shon, Bitte Shon. Literally everyone we have encountered whether asking for directions, eating at a restaurant, or ordering kebabs, has been so kind and polite. The older Chinese woman thanked us probably 4 or 5 times as we were leaving. I really like this about Germany.

From the Chinese restaurant, we just started walking back, looking for a place to buy food. We tried a gas station, but even they were closed. Eventually in the neighborhoods we found this Doner Kebap/pizza. Doner is the certain type of meat they put in kebabs, or kebaps as the Germans call them. So Bryan and I went inside and we ordered a pizza. The family that worked there was really nice and trying to communicate was fun because they weren’t getting impatient at all. We took our pizza back to our hostel and ate it in our room. The girls came to our room and we watched Wedding Crashers on my laptop, I have it downloaded onto my portable hard drive. Good movie.

Now we are about to go to sleep. Tomorrow we are thinking about taking a ferry over to Switzerland for a day trip since we are so close. It should be awesome. I’ve also been here once before, but I don’t remember where. We are thinking Romanshorn.

Me blogging.

Guten naucht

-James

London, Again

2007-06-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Last day in London.

The following post dates for June 30th, Saturday.

So this morning we woke up and checked out of our room because we have a different room for tonight. We stored our luggage in the luggage room then headed out to do stuff. First we stopped at an ATM to get some money. Jennifer and Laura wanted to go check out where Princess Diana lived, Kensington Palace. This did not appeal to me as much, so Kacie, Ani, Bryan and I decided to go check out London tower and actually go inside this time. We decided to meet up later, perhaps at Wimbledon. We nixed the idea of going early and decided to go later in the afternoon.

So we rode the tube over to the tower. Entrance fee was 13 pounds. England has a bit of a dark history and much of it has had to do with the Tower of London. It’s a castle fortress that eventually became a prison. A lot of people lived/died here. We don’t really know where to start off when we go in and we decided that a guided tour would take too long for the short amount of time we had there, so we just walked around ourselves.

We tried to hit up the big points on our map. Things we saw: the traitors gate, where I’m guessing traitors were brought in. it was a water area. The castle used to be surrounded by a moat. The white tower: lots of weapons and medieval stuff to see in there. King Edward’s bedchamber, I forget which Edward.

Traitor's Gate. Self explanatory.

Ani with armor.

Bryan and spears.

The White Tower

Tower Bridge.

Ok. London, more specifically the Tower of London has the biggest ravens I have ever seen. I mean these things are massive and creepy.

Oh my God.They must be the source of Edgar Allen Poe’s work. Seriously, these things scare me. There’s a sign saying they bite. Not cool. Anyone who raises ravens like these is automatically not my friend.

The highlight of the tour may have been seeing the Crown Jewels. It’s this huge vault with tons of old ruler’s dining utensils, clothing, crowns, tiaras, scepters, rings, necklaces, everything. There are parts where you just get on this people mover like in the airports and just slide past all the jewels. The largest diamond in the world is also here as well. I couldn’t take a picture of it, but it’s massive. It’s atop this scepter. Bling Bling. I felt like the crown jewels weren’t very well guarded or protected. I saw maybe one or two security guards and they were older men. I could have taken them. Granted there were these huge vault doors that were like 18 inches thick, but whatever.

Outside the Crown Jewels

Ani, Bryan, and I then did generate ideas on how to steal the crown jewels. The system: room surrounded by 18 inches of steel. Conservation principles: Conservation of momentum. The time derivative of the change in momentum = the sum of the forces on the system. Conservation of mass: What goes in must come out.

Soon it was time to go, so we used the loo and got a drink from a water fountain. Yes. The tower of London has a water fountain, very nice. Remember that if you go to London.

Ani.We needed to find some food. On the way in, there was this guy that kept chanting ‘buy one get one fish and chips.’ We figured we’d give a try and walked to the restaurant. This was just like a Churches Chicken. It was awesome. Probably the best deal for your money in all of England. Ani and I split this party pack of fried chicken for 8 pounds-ish. It comes with 9 pieces of chicken. Really big pieces. Underneath the chicken is about a 3 inch layer of chips (fries) lining the bottom of the square box. I think its supposed to feed 4 people because it comes with 4 drinks. Oh well, I’m up to the challenge.

Eventually Ani and I were defeated. We ate all the chicken, but the chips proved to be too much. I wasted food, I am ashamed. So the we caught the tube out to Wimbledon. It’s pretty far away and took nearly 45 minutes to get out there.

Ok so I am very weak willed when it comes to sleep. Bryan was like, we should probably sleep in shifts so that we don’t miss our stop. I was feeling good so I was like, alright I got it, Bryan you can sleep. He said ok. Keep in mind, this is right after the party pack of chicken. Plus I haven’t got enough sleep since I left my home on May 27th. Literally one minute after I tell Bryan it’s ok for him to go to sleep, my eyes are shut and I am gone. EHhhh. My bad. Everyone laughed at me.

So we get to Wimbledon and there are people everywhere, so we just start walking. The tube doesn’t drop you off right at Wimbledon. You actually have to walk quite a ways to get to the grounds. But the weather felt nice, so we didn’t mind.

The area looked very nice, it’s probably really expensive to live in the area. So voluteers direct us to where we needed to go since we had not yet purchased tickets to get in. First we had to go through security. Standard procedure, no biggie right? WRONG. Why do I always have problems with security.

This is the part where I almost get arrested in London.

I’m in front of Ani and the first thing we do is put our bags through the x-ray and walk through. Then the lady working the x-rays grabs my bag and asks if she can have a look through it. Sure, I have nothing to hide. SO she starts taking every little thing out of my bad as asked me what its used for.

Goes like this:
Lady: She pulls out my camera charger. What’s this
Me: It’s a camera charger
Lady: And what do you use it for.
Me: Charging my camera.
Lady: Pulls out my cell phone charger. And what is this.
Me: Cell phone charger
Lady: What is it used for?
Me: Charging my cell phone. I start thinking she is dumb.
Lady: Holds up cell phone charger. You could use this cord as a weapon.
Me: Uh, I guess so.
Lady: Holds up my gift card case. What is this?
Me: Gift cards. I use it for buying things. This is me being coy.
Then it takes a turn for the worse. I accidentally left my pocket knife in my bag.
Lady: Pulls out the pocket knife. What is this?
Me: Oh crap, it’s my pocket knife. (I just got it before I left for England from REI. It’s a tiny knife and I’ve used it quite a lot since I’ve been here for cutting various things. Simon once saw me use and told me not to carry it around with me. I listened to his advice, just left it in my backpack.
Lady: pauses then goes and gets the police officer standing guard.
Me: I look over at Ani, Kacie, and Bryan and start shaking me head.
The police offer asks me to come with him and we walk over to the side. I know this can’t be good.
PO: Why do you have this on you?
Me: I normally have it with me, I forgot I left it into my backpack. I’m very sorry.
PO: Do you know that it is a illegal to be carrying a weapon with you?
Me: Yes but I didn’t think a pocket knife would be any harm. I didn’t mean to bring it in with me.
PO: Well what are the rules where you’re from.
Me: Are you kidding? In Texas? People have GUNS. No body thinks twice about a pocket knife. Well, there really aren’t
PO: Not only is it illegal to have this, but it is a federal offense because the blade locks. Do you realize that I have just caught you trying to sneak in an illegal weapon? It is especially a bad time for you in light of the bomb threats yesterday. We are all on critical alert. I am going to have to arrest you and take you down to the police station.
Me: ADLSKFJLKJQWE”PFGIWENG:OIH@!@$!$&!($*&amp;amp;amp;!(*$^!t($&%^!$(&!^$)(!^$&$^#*&$^!qwifjh.
I start freaking out. Are you serious? (of course he was serious, why the hell did I ask him this)
PO: Yes.
Me: I’m so sorry, it was a mistake. Can’t I just give you the knife?
PO: No, I’m afraid it’s not that simple.
Me: Yes perfect. I am going to get arrested in a foreign country. I am going to get a criminal record here. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. I have nothing to say, I just stand there.
PO: Wait here, I am just going to go talk to my colleagues. He goes and rounds up a couple other police officers and they talk for a while.
Meanwhile Kacie, Bryan, and Ani walk over to me and ask what’s going on.
Me: I left my pocket knife in my backpack and now I am about to get arrested, you probably shouldn’t be talking to me. Go stand over there. I realized the serious gravity of the situation. But yet when I was talking to them I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe it was because I just couldn’t believe that this was happening. All I could think of is putting this on the blog.
PO: The police officer comes back with his fellow officers. They stand around me.
Me: Here it comes, criminal arrest.
PO: Here’s what were going to do. Since you have fully been cooperative and look like a friendly nice fellow, we aren’t going to take you down to the station.
Me: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
PO: Had you looked like this guy right here (points to one of his friends who looked kinda scary) we would have arrested you for sure. Then he kind of smiles. I guess he appreciated the humor in the situation? Instead this is what we will do. You will write out a disclaimer saying that you didn’t know the rules and that you willingly gave the knife to me. I will leave out that the knife was a lock blade, otherwise I would have no choice but to arrest you.
Me: Thank you so much. By now everything is ok, so I am relaxed. I start asking him questions as I fill out this disclaimer. What would have happened to me had I been arrested?
PO: Well, we would put you in handcuffs and into the car here and driven you down to the station to have you fingerprinted. It would probably take a little under an hour, then you would have been free to go.
Me: Oh that didn’t sound THAT bad. Oh. I’m really glad that’s not happening.
PO: Yes, you probably should be.
The police officer turned out to be a really nice guy. Towards the beginning he had a grimace and now he was smiling with me. Nice guy actually. I’d like to think that I avoided being arrested due to my smooth talking, charm, and good looks.
So I signed the disclaimer and he let me go. He told me to have fun. I said I would try. I really wanted to take a picture with my new buddies, but in lieu of the situation I decided not to. This was a good decision.

So Kacie, Bryan, Ani, and I walked away. I was still kind disoriented from the situation, and we all had a good laugh about it. Ani said that while I was being interrogated, the lady kept going through my backpack. She would pull out my tickets and stuff and ask him why I was Paris and Rome and what I did there. He of course didn’t know because he couldn’t come. Then she would pull out random things and tell him that I could have used them as weapons had I wanted to. Like the wall socket adaptor. The prongs are dangerous, according to this lady. The she pulled out my luggage lock. Weapon, courteously of Brinks security. Then she pulled out my carabineer and wa like these could be brass knuckles. LADY ARE YOU SERIOUS. Ani was like, really? Then he picked it up and held it and the lady put out her hands as if he had the intention to it her. She was like whoa put it down. Basically everything I own is a weapon. She probably should have confiscated my arms, legs, and teeth too. All weapons. It was also good that I didn’t take a picture of us walking through security because she checked my camera. Ani turned it on and she looked through my pictures. Had I taken any pictures of security that would have turned a bad situation into a terrible situation.

As we were walking we were joking around about if I had been arrested. I said it might have been an interesting experience, let alone a great story. Being arrested in another country? Sounds kind of exciting. Ani and Bryan whole heartedly agreed. Then Kacie was like I just want put out there that I’m glad you didn’t get arrested because that would not have been fun. This is true. She brought us back down to earth. It was good that I didn’t get arrested.

Throughout this trip I have been constantly running out of money. I had to call my mom to borrow some more from her. I am going way over budget, but who cares? It’s well worth it.

Advice: Don’t ever compromise your experience by having to opt out of traveling, doing random things, or eating food for lack of funds. Shell out a little more. When’s the next time you’re going to be in Europe?

So we bought a ground pass which allows you access to all the matches (maybe not centre court) but doesn’t guarantee you a seat (you have to stand) or a spot in any match. You have to wait in lines and get what you can. It costed 18 pounds. Well worth it I think.

The Board

Ok so when we got there, we met up with Laura, Jennifer, Rebecca, Clair, this other girl named Jennifer, and Laura’s friend whose name I forgot but I think it starts with a D. Or maybe a J. Call her DJ. Anyways so they were in line to try to get into watch Venus play on court 2. The line wasn’t too long, but it was moving really slowly because they can’t let people in until other people come out. Kacie, Bryan, Ani, and I decided to walk around and check things out before getting in line. I really wanted to see Venus or someone famous play.

So we hit up some men’s doubles matches on side courts all over. I had no idea who they were but I didn’t care. I didn’t get arrested and I was at Wimbledon baby! I was having a great time.

Mens Doubles.We went from court to court seeing who was playing, then went to watch some women’s singles. No one really famous was playing from what I could tell. Then we decided to get in line to see Venus play. She had already won the first set so I was hoping that we would be able to get in the stadium in time. As we were standing in line, I could see Venus walk past this entrance that was roped off. A second here and there. Still fun. As we were standing in line, it started drizzling a bit and they suspended play right as we were about to go up. This was good I guess because lots of people started leaving, so we were able to get in.

The rain, however, did not stop. It intensified. It started pouring for a while, so much so that our umbrella became oversaturated (if that’s even possible) and rain started falling through. I got wet some, but I was wearing shorts so it was bearable, just really cold. The other girls weren’t as lucky and all of their butts got soaked. I avoided this by sitting on magazines and newspapers. So we decided we were going to stay and wait it out. We got standing room at the very top and we weren’t about to just give it up. It rained and rained and rained. Are you kidding me. I want to see some tennis. While we waited I ate pretty much every snack that I had brought including Kacie’s orange and Clair’s peanuts. Around 6:30-ish, play was suspended indefinitely for the day. After the rain had just about let up. Well great, we saw no one famous. So we walked the grounds for a little bit and went to the gift store. I didn’t really see anything I wanted. Supposedly we can get a refund from Wimbledon, up to I think half of what we paid because they played less than 2 hours of tennis. But you have to mail it in and it seems like a huge hassle, so I don’t know if I am going to do it.

From Wimbledon we walked back to the tube and rode it back to Bayswater, to our hostel: Astor Leinster. I forgot to mention that this is the same hostel we stayed at for our side trip to London. We changed into some drier clothes, then Me, Kacie, Ani, and Bryan went out to find dinner. We walked apst a couple places until Ani saw an Indian food restaurant that we had to go to. Usually Ani is against going to Indian food, but apparently this got him really excited. We let him order all of the food and put him entirely in charge. He did a great job. We had four different chicken dishes, which were all delicious. With the chicken, we were also given these huge flat pieces of bread called nan. It was so good, You eat the nan with you hands and you dip it in the chicken sauce.

Food

Me.To drink, Ani ordered us these shake like drinks made from buttermilk I think. He also gave us like a background on the food that we were eating. It was fantastic and very reasonably priced. We ended up ordering more rice and nan to fill us up. Great job Ani.

After dinner, Kacie and I walked back to the hostel while Bryan and Ani went to pick up Michelle to bring back to hang out. I messed around on the blog and burned cds of Laura’s pictures for her. Michelle finally got here and we hung out for a while. We sat in the stairwell to pickup a wireless signal and I started to doze off. When I’m on the brink of sleep, I for some reason feel the need to start mumbling random nonsense. I think I was talking about Dr. Diller from what they could understand. I have no idea.

Michelle left and we goodbye for the very last time and Bryan and Ani took her back. I stayed by myself in the hallway for a while on the internet until Bryan and Ani came back. Then we all passed out.

All things considered it was a good day. Things may not have worked out well, but I enjyed the time I spent with my friends before I have to leave them tomorrow. I will miss them very much.

Good bye mis amigos,

-James

Farewell Cambridge

2007-06-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

Gooodbye Cambridge

The following post dates for Friday, June 29th

Today we leave Cambridge, forever. Most of this may be a little drab but I guess I’m writing this more for me to remember how everything went.

Since I got back from the club so late last night, I didn’t really have any time to pack. I left it all for this morning. And I woke up 30 minutes too late. I had so much crap to do. I thought about showering, since I haven’t since yesterday and I sweated a lot, but I didn’t have time. So first I threw down my suitcase and started shoving stuff in there as tightly as I could. I’m really glad that I brought an extra duffle bag for all the Cambridge wear that I bought for myself and people, otherwise none of it would ever have fit. Jennifer calls me kinda worried about a car bomb threat in the Picadilly area. I asked Simon about it, and he said that the police had neutralized the bomb, just the tube near the Picadilly Circus would be shut down, which meant all the other tubes may be slowed as well.

As I was packing I would think of something else that I had neglected to do. I still needed to write an inscription in the journal that I got for the Betson’s. So I stopped packing for a good 20 minutes to write them a short message. I made it downstairs at around 9:50 and I was supposed to meet Ani at the bus at 10:00. Dilema. Simon offered to give us a ride to the train station, which was extremely helpful in our time crunch. I could finally slow down. Simon and Karen had been working on an amazing English breakfast for my last morning at the Betson house. It consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, hash browns, toast, beans, and tomatoes. Oh my God, it was so good. I felt bad that I was shoveling it down instead of savoring it.

Wow

After breakfast, I presented Simon and Karen with the journal with my inscription in it. They absolutely loved it, or at least I hope they did. I went over to the family room where Harry was watching TV, and said my goodbye to him. Although he may be wild, he’s a really great kid that loves his parents. A couple nights before I left, Harry came into my room and we started talking. First I offered him some Bubbalicious. Then he asked me if I was really going to be leaving in three days. I was like yeah, I have too. Then he paused for a bit and said, “I will really miss you when you’re gone, James.” I was touched. I didn’t really know what else to say but, “I’ll miss you too Harry.” So today, as I was fixing to leave, I gave him a hug told him goodbye. I wasn’t abel to say goodbye to Lauren, but I wrote one in the journal that I left for them.

Next up was Karen. This was harder than I thought. I didn’t realize how attached I had gotten over the past month. I thanked her for all the hospitality she had shown me and for welcoming me into her family as one of their own. She has been one of the kindest people I have ever known. I think between the moment when I started loading up their van and actually pulling out of the driveway, I gave her a series of three hugs. We left right around 10:10 am. We picked up Ani, and headed off to the train station. I’m really glad that Simon offered us a ride because it took us no time at all.

During the car ride over to the train station, I was dreading saying goodbye to Simon. He and I had become the closest over the past month and we’ve shared many nice talks. After we unloaded our luggage, I said my goodbye and tried not to hug him too hard and hurt his back. I admire Simon very much. He has an amazing devotion to his wife and family and the connection he shares with his kids is amazing. Not that most father’s wouldn’t, but Simon would do anything for his kids.

I waved goodbye as he drove off and we met everyone else to buy tickets to get to London. This last trip will be me, Bryan, Ani, Kacie, Jennifer, and Laura. Michelle will also be coming with us, but she will be leaving shortly after we arrive in London to say with her sister who happens to also be there.

So while people were buying tickets, I was watching the luggage. I made a comment about how in the event that 10 people run over, grab a bag, and run off, they would be screwed and this guy thought it was really funny. He approached me and we started talking about how I had to watch the luggage of a whole bunch of girls. I was like, I know right? But I didn’t and still don’t mind. They do all the hard work, I’m just manual labor. Anyways so apparently th guy is from Wisconsin and said some other stuff I don’t really remember. Nice guy though.

So we boarded the train and left Cambridge for the last time. It was kinda weird holding a one way ticket out of the place, and it was then that it really sunk in that I wouldn’t be coming back for a long time, if ever. No more class, no more 10 mile a day bike rides, no more pubs, no more city centres, no more punting, basically no more a lot of things.

But it was nice to be back in London. I didn’t realize exactly how much time I had been spent in London. I added it up, seven days and one morning. Not bad. I was glad I was coming back because there is still a lot that I haven’t seen: Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, the Globe Theatre. And there were lots of things I wanted to see again. I was also very glad that Ani would be traveling with us. This will be our first trip I guess with Ani anywhere. Well there was Stonehenge. Anyways Ani’s a really funny guy and we get along well. It seems like the guy knows a little bit about everything. I usually default to him if I don’t know something. The guy also speaks Hindi and German really well. Ani this is all I will write about you. When we got to King’s Cross station, Bryan, Michelle, and I made our way over to the Dilke house to drop off our luggage with Nicole, our representative in London. She, like Layla, is very good to us and coordinates all of our activities in London.

Clair, Bryan, Rebecca, and I don’t need/want to carry our huge suitcases and bags with us around Germany. So I had to pack all my stuff into my backpack along with a laptop. We have to drop our stuff off today, because Nicole is not there on the weekends. So I forgot to factor in Saturday and Sunday’s clothes that I have to pack in as well. So it’s about a week’s worth of stuff crammed into my bag. I couldn’t fit exactly everything I wanted, so it looks like I’ll be re-wearing some of my things. It’s ok though, you can always turn things inside out. I also have axe, so it’s all good. I ended up having to stuff my toiletries into Clair’s bag.

So then, Bryan, Clair, Rebecca, and I made our way to the London eye via the tube to meet up with Jennifer, Kacie, Laura, and Ani. Jennifer and Clair have a mutual friends studying in Barcelona, and they made a weekend trip up to London for one of the girl’s birthday. We are meeting them at the eye too.

The London Eye
While we were waiting, Bryan and I went to a hotdog stand on a bridge and had hotdogs with grilled onions. It was so good. I have been craving one ever since our first week in London. We ate them immediately thereafter.

This picture looks kind of fake. Ok so around the tower for some reason are a bunch of storm troopers. Why? I don't know.
Ok so the London eye is basically this huge Ferris wheel with big glass pods instead of seats. It’s owned by British Airways and it rotates in one huge vertical circle so that you can see most of London from it.

The Big Ferris Wheel. Pretty cool actually. The main attraction I guess was parliament building and Big Ben next to the river Thames.

Parliament and Big Ben.I’m not exactly sure how high you get above London, but I know it takes about 30 minutes to make one complete revolution. I had a good time. Then Bryan, Ani, I had another hotdog, but this time we haggled. We got a pretty good price.

3 hot dogs wih grilled onions. 2 pounds a piece. From the eye, we went to the Tower of London at around 5 pm.

The Tower of London.

Clair Hollingsworth Jr.But they close at around 6, and it cost 13 pounds, so it wasn’t worth it. Perhaps tomorrow? So instead we split to our respective hostels to get ready for dinner. We went back to Kensington garden to relax for a while. I really love it there, it’s so peaceful.

Kensington Palace. Where Princess Diana lived.

Ani, Bryan, and Kacie just chilling.We stopped at the hostel for a minute, then headed back to Covent garden for dinner.

The area that we live in.
We went to a traditional pub and I had some fish and chips. Good.

Bryan and Ani

Kacie, I, and LauraThe girls wanted to find like a bar to buy a drink for the birthday girl so we walked around for a while looking for one. As we were walking these two middle eastern looking dudes come flying out of this café and these three other guys are chasing them.. Turns out, it was the café that we ate at the second day we were in London. Also turns out, the guys chasing the middle eastern dudes were the waiters. It was awesome. This one waiter swung at the middle eastern guy and missed, but the guy tripped and fell down. The other guy dropped his piece of pizza on the floor, but picked it up and continued to eat it as they ran away. The waiters were going to beat the crap out of these guys. Very nice.

So we find this random bar called the Crooked Surgeon and figured ok this looks fine. So I’m walking towards the back in the group and Clair and her friend Lydia come walking out. I’m like, “what’s the deal?” Clair goes, “um it’s a gay bar.” I look over her shoulder and there are literally 40 dudes standing there. Then I think to myself the Crooked Surgeon. OH MY GOD. Get out immediately. So I turn for the door, and the bouncer stops us and is like, “no worries, it’s not a gay bar, there just happens to be a lot of guys standing there. He also tells us that it was gay pride day and some of the guys could be gay, but it’s not a gay bar. So we decide, ok then go upstairs and avoid all the dudes.

Hm. I forget the first girls name. I think it starts with a J. Then Crystal, Clair, and Kacie.
We sat up there for a while and the girls had their drinks. There was a Cricket game going on in the background so Ani was explaining the rules to Bryan and me.

I ran into the bouncer going to the bathroom and he pulled me aside and was said, “by the way, this is a gay bar.” I started freaking out again. But he was just kidding. Apparently he and his buddies were having a good laugh at this. It’s all in good fun but I don’t want to get hit on by any dudes.

He did this periodically through the night. Nice guy actually. So after we finished, we talked for a while before heading back to our hostels. My room is just me, Kacie, Laura, and Jennifer, just like the sleeper train. Ani is worried about his snoring problem so he chose the single bed with 8 strangers. We have our own shower and toilet which is really nice. Oh and Bryan couldn’t find a hostel, so he is sleeping on our floor. I feel really bad for him. The floor sucks, I could never do it. But he’s a tough guy, so he can handle it.

So I finally get to shower after like almost 48 hours. By this time I am sufficiently dirty. But here’s an interesting fact about me. I don’t smell bad, ever. I could be covered in sweat and if you smelled my clothes, it would just smell like water. Basically I am awesome.

Tomorrow we plan on going to Wimbledon, and I’m very excited. I’ve never been to a professional tennis match, let alone the biggest tournament of the year. I hope I see some famous people. Ok sleep time.

-James

One Final Hurrah.

2007-06-30T18:08:00.001-07:00

Final Hurrah.

Following post dates for Thursday, June 28th.

Last real day in Cambridge, England. Sigh. So much has happened in the last 24 hours and I couldn’t have asked for a better last day.

So I stayed up last night studying and was supposed to wake up early to look over some stuff, but that failed. I had a light breakfast this morning because today was the today of the great race. Against what I’m not sure, I guess a race against time. So normally I leave around 8:07 to meet up with Clair and Rebecca at 8:10 to go to DAMTP. But Since Garrett and I would be going a little faster, we left around 8:26ish. He used his stopwatch to time it. Here we go.

So he met me at my house before we started the clock. That means that he had his heart rate and blood pumping by the time he got to my house. We ‘sprinted’ the first like 5 minutes of the ride. I was so winded. We took the bunny trail as a shortcut. This was highly dangerous. 1) Going around turns you can’t see if anyone is coming, so basically if there’s someone else, it’s 100% guaranteed collision. 2) the path is ridiculously narrow, barely big enough for two bikes to pass one another. 3) the road is so bumpy, especially at high speeds. My cheeks were jiggling.

By the time we reached the end of the bunny trail, I had caught my second wind, and I was good. The fear of death factor didn’t really seem to slow us down at all today. I mean we were really cruising. We ran red lights, went through round-abouts out of turn, weaved in and out of cars. Highly dangerous stuff, Lance style. But we did hit a couple lights that killed us. I felt bad making Garrett take point the entire way. It was because he knew the way, and I wasn’t as sure. But I know that it is hard to take point because it’s hard to set and maintain a fast pace. It’s far easier to follow someone. We should have switched, but I wasn’t thinking. I am dumb. I thought about drafting off him and then pulling to the front like they do in pro-cycling teams. Slingshot Engaged.

So we made it to DAMTP in one piece. More importantly, we made it there a lot faster than I thought we would. The official time: 16 minutes 40 seconds. If you are reading this, you had better be amazed. It normally takes 30-35 minutes at a moderate pace. We nearly cut that time in half. My goal was 18 minutes. Shattered that. My only regret was the ridiculous stop lights. We lost a couple of minutes on those alone. We could have done 15 minutes, I’m sure of it. Goal accomplished.

The aftermath however was not pretty. We had about 20 minutes before the test, and I definitely needed every single one of those minutes to recover. It was bad. Towards the beginning of the exam, I could not breathe in deeply without gasping or wheezing. And my ears hurt real bad form the cold. Other than that I was good.

The exam went very well. I say that now that I already know my grade. But I mean it was hard, but fair. After the exam we all went to lunch very happy and relaxed people.

Afterwards, we had a difficult time trying to decide what to do. The possibilities were literally endless. It was a gorgeous day. Punting, playing Frisbee, going to a pub, going shopping, taking a nap, whatever we wanted, we could do. We were done with class. So we debated what to do for a while, and ended up in the Churchill field with the Frisbee. So first we threw the Frisbee around for a while, but couldn’t get a game of ultimate going. Then we had the brilliant idea of making a human pyramid. I forget whose idea it was actually. So this was tricky because we wanted a photo of it really badly. So first go around, we built it and I set my camera on 30 second timer. Since Kacie and Laura were on top, we would build it, then she would push the button and run up. 30 seconds is a long time, we were dwindling. But then we tried the 10 second timer, that worked better.

After the pyramid came a conglomeration of every childhood game we’ve ever played. Chinese freeze tag, cat and mouse, duck duck goose, the hand pushing game, leg wrestling, and Garrett’s random game. It was the most fun I have had in a while and I don’t think I have laughed that hard for a long time. We played for over an hour and it was amazing.

Then we broke off to do a little shopping before heading over to Studio Cambridge to return our things. I needed something to give to my host family, and I had remembered them saying that they wished they had a journal for their guest students to write notes to them while studying abroad. So I went to Waterstone’s and bought one. Nice.

Then returning my bike. This was hard for me. Over time, we have become one and now we are apart. I really would like to try and calculate the mileage we have accumulated over the past month. I wager over 200 miles. Pretty ridiculous, maybe its wrong. Eventually I will find the time to figure it out.

After returning our bikes, we went back to our respective homestays via the bus. I hate the bus. I literally waited over 40 minutes and the bus ever came. I was pissed. I missed my bike greatly. It was so much faster.

I got ready for dinner and took a group photo with the Betson’s for my own personal log.

Dinner was at the Soriento hotel, near Jack’s fish and chips. It was great, great job Layla. Dr Diller commenced the night with a farewell speech and Mrs. Diller handed out the grades. No I am not going to tell you what I got exactly. Let’s just say that I am content.

After dinner, we walked over to the Rock pub and said our goodbyes to Susannah, Natalie, and Garrett. They will be greatly missed. As well, we had to say goodbye to Layla as well, which was sad.

A group of us decided to go to a bar near the cineworld just for fun around 11:30 pm. Turns out they close at 12. Bu they recommended an international club in the city centre called Ballare. Hm. We gave it some thought and decided we were going to go. But first, I had to go back to Cherry Hinton and get my shoes since I was wearing sandals and violated dress code. We took a cab. I haven’t been in a car for over a month. Oh my God, it went so fast. I thought I was going fast on my bike. No. I can’t wait to go back to the states so I can drive.

So the club scene was pretty interesting. I never knew that there was this side of Cambridge. There were so many people there: mostly international students but other people to like random old men. I almost didn’t go, but Clair talked me into it. Turns out it was so much fun and I’m really glad I went. There were a lot of random weird dudes in there that would come up to us and just stare at the girls while they danced. So we devised a good system. The girl would come into the middle of us and we would form like a shield around her until the dude left. At some point, Clair was sitting down and this guy came over and grabbed her arm and started pulling her. She was like uhhh. I had to push the guy away. Don’t worry though, everything was fine. We stayed till it closed at 3 am. Towards the end, we were all covered in sweat and reeked of smoke. Nice. I just wanted to say that Deepa loves to dance more than anyone I know. Ask her about details.

So we called a cab and went back home. I crawled into bed around 4ish and I haven’t packed yet. I figure I’ll just do it tomorrow.

Our one final ride in Cambridge was over. Goodnight Cambridge.

-James

Last Day of Class

2007-06-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

So today was the last day of class. Tomorrow will be our final exam. This program has been absolutely amazing, and it has gone by too quick.

We worked on radiation problems then conducted course instructor surveys for the class and Dr. Diller, just like back home. I hope our input can make the program for next year even more amazing, if that’s even possible.

After lunch at Churchill, some of us went back to the room to study for a bit. We found it difficult to study and really wanted to go play ultimate Frisbee, but couldn’t get enough people to go. Sigh.

So instead of ultimate, we do frisbee spinning. Ani belongs in some sort of circus or something. he's realy good at it.

ehhh

This picture is after Susannah had assaulted this family of ducks. She is a bad person.

I went back to the market to buy a couple more things, then headed home for some Spaghetti Bolognese. Compliments to chef Simon. Then for dessert a banana split compliments of Karen.

Harry and his friends Mitchell and Joel Oh my God, I am so full. I can’t move. I went up to my room and hugged a pillow for a while. Then I watched Harry and his pals Wii it up with Sonic the Hedgehog. I feel kinda old watching them, I don’t know. I am so out of touch with video games these days. I couldn’t even keep up with what they are doing. Last console I played on was the N64, which my brother sold. Tim you idiot. I used to play Goldeneye and Mariokart 64, the two greatest games ever invented. Bowser baby.

This is a picture of a sunset right outside my house. It's gorgeous.

Garrett came over for a little to help me out with some of the concepts. He's a really smart guy. Thanks Garrett. Sorry we couldn't play ultimate frisbee or basketball. But tomorrow, we are going to do the Tour De Cambridge and try to see how fast we can get to DAMTP tomorrow for the exam. It's harder going there, but oh well. Last day anyways, we have to turn in our bikes. We're gonna be really sweaty for the test tomorrow as well. Might need a change of a shirt. Lance, here I come.

Now I’m upstairs catching up on the blog instead of studying. Hope you appreciate it.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

Jump on it,
James

Treats

2007-06-27T12:15:00.001-07:00

Post dates for Tuesday, June 26th

Quiet peaceful day.

So today in class, we got our test back. I did fairly well. One of the test questions had to deal with heat flow, using brain freeze from ice cream as an example. Dr. Diller thought about treating us to some ice cream, but didn’t know where. So the seventeen instantly suggested Thortons, an ice cream shop in the city centre. It was settled, we would go after lunch.

Ok since breakfast this morning, my right bicep has not stopped twitching. In class and lunch like 4 hours later it's stil going. At times the muscle spasms had been so bad it's messed up my note taking. What the heck. So I wikipedia-ed twitching.

A spasm is a sudden, involuntary contraction of a muscle, a group of muscles, or a hollow organ, or a similarly sudden contraction of an orifice. It is sometimes accompanied by a sudden burst of pain, but is usually harmless and ceases after a few minutes. Spasmodic muscle contraction may also be due to a large number of medical conditions, however, including the dystonias.

I think what I has was called a Fasciculation. Nice.

A fasciculation (or "muscle twitch") is a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction (twitching) visible under the skin arising from the spontaneous discharge of a bundle of skeletal muscle fibers. Fasciculations have a variety of causes, the majority of which are benign, but can also be due to disease of the motor neurons.

Whatever it is, it won't stop. But I digress.

We all met up afterwards and Dr. Diller treated all to two scoops. It was delicious. Thank you very much Dr. Diller, we had a great time. Then we all broke off to finish up the homework that we were assigned. Garrett, Natalie Susannah, Rebecca, Clair, and I went to Waterstones, a bookstore, to study. It was very cozy.

Afterwards I went to the marketplace to buy some more stuff for people. I wish I had discovered the markets sooner instead of the retail store. I’ve been ripped off. You guys seriously owe me. I ended up spending about 90 pounds. That’s $180 dollars, on other people. S:LDKFJSD:LKGS:JFBA:LKFJAPIBHASIFQAWPOFJA”PDOFVJS”DAPOFVHSD”VP.#$@%$#!#$!%$&^%$

Then I went home and had fish and chips. For dessert, bread pudding via Karen Betson. Delicious.

Then a group of us headed over to Robin Hood Little John’s pub for some dessert and drinks. Good times. Then we went home and that is all.

Ciao,
James

Exams and Games

2007-06-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Posting for Monday, June 25th

Test # 2.

So I woke up early this morning to study a little more before class. I felt a little ill prepared, but I suppose I was ready. I felt like the exam was fair and I did alright, but we’ll talk about that more when I find out my grade.

Lunch at Churchill college yet again. The lady working the cashier office I officially do not like. Everyday I have got the same amount of food and I have never gone over. Somehow today I went over by 4 pounds. 4. I just started handing her things off my tray. I was like here’s the milk back. Now how much. Here’s the banana back. Now how much. Here’s the granola bar. Now how much. I ended up having to pay her money on top of my lunch voucher. UPSET.

We didn’t have any homework assigned to us, so a group of us went to go punting. Well first, people did some old homework that was assigned last week and I went to buy stuff for people. This is where I am losing all of my money. Then I went inside Cafe Nero on King's Parade and sat and blogged.

Cafe Nero.
Then I fell asleep in the cafe. Then I met people for punting.

For those of you who don’t know what punting is, it does not involve kicking any sort of ball. Punting refers to boating in a punt. A punt is described as a flat bottomed boat with a square cut bow designed for small rivers or other shallow water. Originally used as cargo boats, punts today are almost exclusively confined to pleasure trips on the rivers mainly in Oxford and Cambridge. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the ground with a long pole. I know it seems inefficient when you think about it, but it actually works quite well once you get the hang of it.

here's an expert punter we saw.

So it was me, Bryan, Kacie, Jennifer, and Laura. Bryan had gone once before, so he was our experienced instructor. Kacie got a coupon from Layla for renting a punt, I think it saved us a couple pounds or something. So we get the punt for an hour and everything after that is pro-rated. You can either rent a punt or hire a "punter?" Bryan took us out first to show us the technique and everything. Then Jennifer, Laura, Kacie, and I went last. It was actually really fun and relaxing. I had a great time. It’s a little tricky at first, but eventually you get the method down.

Getting started. Me and Jen

Bryan, Kacie, and Laura.

Bryan ducking.

He likes to duck.
Jennifer's turn. Notice the mouth.
Moving trees out of the way

touching the bridge

Laura giving it a go.

Kacie.

This Japanese guy had no idea what the heck he was supposed to be doing.

Here’s what you do, now that I’m so experienced. So I hold the pole against the back of the punt and let it slide through my hands downwards until it hits the bottom of the riverbed. The movement of the boat forward should drag the pole across the bottom and you use your weight to lean on the pole to propel yourself forward. Bad descriptions I know, but think about it logically. So what about steering? Couple ways to approach this. You could just push off the river bed on a certain side of the boat to steer yourself. But what I like to do is use my pole as sort of a rudder and move it across the water in the direction I want the boat to go. It’s actually quite difficult to do this, but surprisingly, it works very well. Also, since so much of th epole goes in the water, when you pull it out, a lot of the water will get on your shirt, don the sleeve, and on you pants. Deal with it.

Interestingly, I was told that there was once a road underneath where the river runs now. So the center of the riverbed is hard rock as opposed to the side, which is dirt. In the event that your pole get’s stuck into the dirt, you may have trouble getting it out and it could pull you over the side. You are supposed to twist the pole loose.

Me. Pro.We had relatively no problems other than a couple collisions with other punts and the side of the river. Everyone did really well.

Post collision with some people.
Apparently while we were in Paris, a group went punting. Of a boat of 4 people, Garrett, Susannah, and Diane all ended up in the river. It's realy quite dirty, so it's not advisible to get in.
We got a couple of great photos, including some in the back of King’s College which look exactly like some of the post cards we’ve seen. As the group that went before us last year, I highly recommend punting to all who visit Cambridge.

King's College, from the back.

By the river.
Bridge.
Sky
After punting we headed back to our respective homestays for dinner. Simon made sausages and mashed potatoes and black pudding. It was good as usual.

sausages and mash, notice the black pudding at the top of the plate.

Simon wearing my hat and glasses

Harry Betson.

However there is something I must address about the English and "pudding." It never really is pudding. Black pudding is actually some type of blood sausage. Yorkshire pudding is bread rolls. Pudding is not what they say it is. Don't believe them.

After dinner, some people went to hang out at Chili’s. But Rebecca, Clair, Natalie, Susannah, Diane, and I decided to attend a piano recital held at Clare Hall that Dr. Diller invited us to so I could culture myself more.

Action shots riding over: Clair
Rebecca aka supergirl

The featured pianist was a girl named Li-Chun Su from Taiwan. I forgot how old she was, but she was amazing. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a recital like this, but I had a great time.

Rebecca and Susannah at intermission.

Natalie and Clair

Me and Clair

Rebecca

Diane

She played Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, among others as well. It last about an hour and a half with a 15 minute intermission and 2 encores as well. Most of what she played was from memory, which was incredible. I suck at the piano I have concluded.

The soloist Li Chin SuWhere it all started. An old piano at Clare Hall.
After the concert, it started raining and got really cold while we were riding home. I took a nice hot shower and did nothing. It was nice. The end.

- James

Au Revoir, Paris

2007-06-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Paris

The following post dates for Sunday, June 24th.

Last day in Paris.

So no weird stuff really happened last night. Well while I was showering, Michael who was sleeping, for some reason got up and turned off the bathroom light. I was showering in the dark. I got out real quick to see what was going on and I see Michael climbing back into bed. Again, no recollection of this in the morning.

All we had planned for today was Notre Dame since we didn’t get to it yesterday. We woke up around 9:30 and checked out of the hotel. We left our stuff in the storage room before taking the metro over to Notre Dame. I think I’ve been here before as well but my memory is a little hazy. We took pics outside before going inside.

Now before I proceed, there’s something that I like to talk about called the Vatican factor. It’s very similar to the ‘wow factor’. So far out of all the cathedral, churches, chapels, and basilicas I’ve seen, nothing has been able to compare to the combination of the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. So the Vatican Factor for the Vatican was obviously very high. In a way, from all the traveling we’ve done and things we’ve seen in the brief stay abroad, we’ve become somewhat desensitized to amazing works of architecture, history, and art. And this applies to more that just cathedrals, but everything else. Well, at least it has for me, I don’t know about anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, in no way at all am I belittling anything that I’ve seen.

So back to Notre Dame. Standing inside, I felt like I was not as impressed with it as I was with other cathedrals. So I forced myself to take a couple steps back, figuratively speaking, in order to appreciate where I was. Inside was gorgeous. I felt bad because there was a service being held, given that it was Sunday, and all the tourist were walking around snapping photos and being noisy. I was one, but at least I had the courtesy of turning off my flash. There were gorgeous stained windows and side chapels all throughout the cathedral.

Eventually it was time to leave so we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and walked to the train station. Everything went relatively smoothly: we got there in time, got through customs fine, boarded the train, sat together, no annoying Germans or little children. Nice.

Sadly however, we had no time for food. So I went to the café on the train and had two bags of Lays potato chips. Hunger quelled, but in no way satisfied. Everyone slept pretty much the whole way back.

Incident: So we put our stuff (luggage and souvenirs) up top on the luggage racks. But the train can turn quite a bit going back so our stuff kept falling on these people behind us. Oops. Oh, and it stank. These other people behind us had terrible body odor.

So we got back to Waterloo at around 4-ish and had some sandwiches. I had two more bags of chips. Still hungry, miss home cooking. We then made our way to Liverpool street, where we caught our train back to Cambridge. Took around an hour and 15 minutes.

The bike ride home was pleasant. Felt good not walking.

I made it back to the homestay just in time for dinner. This time, Karen was the cook. She made a traditional English roast lamb dinner. It was so good, I nearly cried. It’s been too long since my last home cooked meal where I actually had enough food. It was roasted lamb with garlic and herbs, fried and steam potatoes, steamed vegetables, and Yorkshire pudding. There were three types of sauce. A white sauce for the vegetables, gravy for the potatoes and meat, and mint sauce for the meat as well. All I can say is, Lauren and Harry are two lucky kids to have two chefs in the house.

After dinner, I went over to Clair and Rebecca’s place to catch up on what I had missed out on and study for our exam tomorrow. I am somewhat stressed about it, hopefully all goes well. Probably bed late tonight.

Dreaming of heat transfer,
James

Crème de la crème

2007-06-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

High Class Saturday.

Following post dates for Saturday, June 23.

Day 3. Today’s theme was wealth.

So woke up and were ready to go today at 8:15 am. More stuff happened last night. So I came back to the room after Michael had gone to sleep and this is what happened:

Me: Rummaging through my stuff.
Michael: Hello?
Me: Um, hello.
Michael: hello?
Me: yeah what’s up
Michael: James?
Me: Yeah, what.
Michael: Oh I thought you were trying to take my stuff. Goes back to sleep

Then in the middle of the night, Michael said I was rolling around and grinding my teeth loud enough to “wake the dead.” I know I do this. It’s a problem, if you want to call it that, I have. My dentists says I have abnormally strong jaw muscles due to grinding my teeth. I can’t seem to replicate the noise consciously, only subconsciously. But it is loud. Apparently if I don’t wear my mouth guard on a regular basis, I will have no molars by the time I’m 50. My mouth guard is supposed to last me 10 years, I’m on year two and I’m already through it. It is bad.

Ok at one point I wake up in the middle of the night and Michael is sitting up staring at me. I can see his silhouette from our window. I was like, “Michael what are you doing.” No response, just staring. “Um, go to sleep.” Then I rolled away and went back to sleep. Neither of recall any of this in the morning.

Ok so to the day’s activities. Our first destination was Versailles. I’ve also been here before, but again, I really looked forward to seeing it, especially the gardens. So we had to catch a train from Paris to Versailles, it took about 25 minutes. Then we walked from there to Versailles. Not much has changed except they are having some huge renovations on the front and it ruined a lot of the pictures. Because of time we only bought tickets to see the palace and gardens. I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t go see Marie Antoinette‘s estate. I’ve never been, but apparently it’s more impressive than the palace. SO we got our audio guides and made our way through Versailles. Extremely extravagant and impressive.

The tour didn’t take as long as I had thought it would. We went to the gardens in the back at around 12:20 pm. Now they were amazing. I forget the acreage but it’s huge. Apparently there were special showings in the gardens at 11:30, 3:00, and in the evening, but we weren’t able to see these. The fountains weren’t on as well. So there is one main path that overlooks a long square pool lined with trees. Branching off the main road are pathways into the gardens leading you to various fountains and such. The weather was absolutely perfect.

We left the palace and went to eat a light lunch before heading back to Paris. Michelle, Lesley, Deepa and I split off and went to this cafeteria for some food. We met this French guy that the girls all thought was really cute. His name was Arthur. Anyways, he was first commenting on how impolite Michelle was for not covering her outh when she yawned, but he was only kidding. Then he talked about how loud Lesley’s laugh was. Then he thought Deepa’s name was deeper. They took a picture with him.

We caught the next train to Paris. Our next stop was the Arc Du Triumph and the Champs Elysees. This is a very high class area. I actually do remember rather vividly that we ate here on the street. On the way over, I was like, guys we have to have some crepes from a stand at some point. I happened to say this ight next to a stand, so we did. It was amazing Buerre Sacre. Buttered with sugar. So good.

So the girls were really looking forward to going shopping and we split off for about an hour and a half. I went off by myself and hit up the Adidas France store first. It was incredible. The biggest Adidas store I’ve ever seen. I could have easily spent over an hour in here The had this console that you could stand at and design your own shoe. There were camera sensors that picked up your finger, so you could use it as a mouse and a crosshair followed wherever you pointed. I made my own shoe and it cost over 150 Euro. It was dirty. I also checked out a lot of the gear that was way too pricy for me. Everyone in there seemed to be mostly upper class individuals. The things here were almost twice as expensive as in the states and most of it was soccer related. Then I went to the Nike, Paris store. This was less impressive but amazing nonetheless. They have personal shoe designers in the bottom floor that consult you on your shoe. I should work here. I found a basketball rack as well and I couldn’t resist. I haven’t touched a ball in over a month now and I’m about to go crazy. I picked on off the rack, found a bench and dribbled it for about 10 minutes. Nice.

We reconvened at the Arc Du Triumph where they were having some sort of procession, possibly a memorial. There was a band, soldiers, and veterans. Very cool.

It was getting closer to dinner, so we decided to eat before heading over to the Sacre Coeur, which is more of a night time scene. We found a nice little cafe near the base of the church. I had vegetable soup, steak with fries, and another crepe. Service was rather slow and terrible. This seemed to be somewhat of a trend in Paris. Maybe we were going to the lower end of restaurants, but who knows.

Making our way up to the Sacre Coeur is somewhat of a challenge. First, the sea of bracelet makers. So as you walk towards the gates, you get literally stopped by these African guys who loop this piece of string around you finger. You try to tell them you’re not interested, but they are some very smooth talkers. At first I didn’t know what they were doing, so I just watched. They start doing all this stuff with the sting, making a design. All the while they talk to you about where you are from in stuff. They kept saying “I love America, I love America. Hakuna Mattata, I love America.” Then they talk about South Africa. At some point they strap it around your wrist and tie it up. I know that there’s really no point in trying to get out of the sale, so I’m just going along with it. My guy noticed that I was traveling with a pack of girls and was like, “You know, this bracelet will give you magical shagging powers.” I was like ok, thanks. He cut the excess string off and I gave him 2 Euro. Kinda fun. I looked over and saw that Laura and Michael had also got roped in as well. Michael was pissed. It was so funny. After the guy was done, he forced Michael to keep giving him more money. Then he and Michael did the handshake where you pull the other person towards you and do like a pat on the back. Michaels face was awesome. He was so pissed and disillusioned. Turned out the bracelet was a good idea, because there were more waves of these bracelet guys as you moved closer to the steps. All you had to do was point at your wrist and they instantly liked you. Nice.

So Sacre Coeur is a chapel on this very steep hill overlooking Paris. There are a lot steps to reach the top. Michael and I decided to run up them, which turned out to be a very bad idea after food. I felt sick near the top, but the view made it worth it. You can see nearly all of Paris. The sunset in combination with the city lights really created a relax atmosphere. It was very much like the Spanish steps in Rome. People from all over come here at night to sit on the steps, drink, play music, and dance. These two guys were playing a lot of oldies and everyone was singing. We looked around outside for a while, then went inside for a little bit to check out the chapel. It wasn’t as big as some of the other’s that we’ve been to, but still very cool nonetheless. We went back outside and found a nice spot on the grass to lay until the sun had fully set and it started to get dark.

We waited here for a while mainly to relax, but also to let the sun completely set before going to the Red Light District, another great night scene. We left around 10:45 pm and made our way over. First we stopped for dessert, I had apple tart, good.

Now the Red Light District is basically the ‘sex district’ of Paris. The Moulin Rouge is here, in addition to various other adult shops. It is a highly sketchy place, especially at night. But if you go at night, you get the full effect. While we there, I had a ham and cheese crepe at this stand right next to the Moulin Rouge. I couldn’t help myself, it was so cheap and good. I wasn’t even hungry. But hey, when in Paris.

Anyways so walking around, the girls were getting hit on pretty much left and right. Now, before you get worried, know that we were all fine and in no danger whatsoever. But I walked in the front and Michael walked in the back. Eventually we had seen enough and took a couple pictures, so we headed home. Last night in Paris. L Sad. We stayed up for a while hanging out and playing songs on my laptop before going to bed.

Tomorrow the only thing on the agenda is Notre Dame since we didn’t get to it today. Then we will be headed back to Cambridge, where dreams come true.

Viva La France.

-James

City Of Lights

2007-06-25T18:32:00.001-07:00

Day 2

Ok day 2, here we go.

Well actually, lets start with last night. Weird stuff happened in the double bed that I am not too happy about. At some point in the night, I rolled over and put my arm around Michael. I woke up kinda slowly, then realized what I did and freaked out. I was like Michael, I’m sorry, move that way. He was like “huh? What?” I’m like MOVE. That was it. Uncomfortable.

Breakfast. Well the breakfast at the hotel cost 7 Euro. Screw that. Jennifer, Kacie, and Laura all brought bagels. Smart. The rest of us did not. So on our way to the tower, we stopped at a Brasserie along the way (I think it means bakery) and had some pastries. I was telling Michael about last night, which he apparently had no recollection of. I wonder what else will happen tonight.

Eiffel tower. Even though we were there last night, it was still amazing to look at from afar. It really never gets old.

Ok so weather in Paris. Before we left we looked up the forecast to figure out how we should pack. Overcast, windy, and rainy all week. Well that’s just great. It actually turned out to be great, but more on that later. So it’s windy and cold. I did not pack correctly. I have only t-shirts. So it’s a little cold, yeah.

We bought our tickets and took the elevator to the very top. This brought back old memories. I took a whole ton of pictures. I thought about back when Tim and I were there and we had the regular film cameras. So picture taking was greatly conserved. But not anymore. I took a LOT of pictures. We went up to the outside platform and it was so cold. From the top, we could see rain clouds dumping rain in various places and they were headed right for us. The rain hit us really hard. We went and hid on the face that was shielded from the rain and wind. It was more bearable. Eventually the rain stopped.

After a while, we headed back down and looked for a place to eat before the Musee’ De Orsay. But before we left the tower grounds, it started pouring again. We only had 3 umbrellas with us at the time and 8 people. Well, Lesley actually went to meet her friend in Paris for lunch, so 7 people, 3 umbrellas. For a while, we decided to wait it out. So We picked a nicely leaved tree and made a shell by combining our umbrellas. It was pretty effective. Michelle was in the middle and received the most shelter.

The rain wouldn’t let up, so we decided to brave the storm. We paired off under umbrellas, one with three. We walked passed restaurant after restaurant looking for a cheap place to eat. We settle on this little bakery. It turned out to be really affordable and delicious. Pretty much every bakery will make your usual pastries. But in addition to that, there are always pre-prepared sandwiches, paninis, pastas and pizzas. I had a pizza and a hot dog. Nice.

Musee’ De Orsay. It’s an old train station that had been renovated into a museum gallery. Walking into the museum, I got major Déjà vu and realized that I’ve been here before. Whoops. I’m not complaining at all or anything. I don’t mind seeing some of the same things again. Most I want to see again. The museum has various types of art: sculptures, photography, pottery, and paintings. The featured gallery is impressionist art. Big hitters: Monet, Renoir, Manet, Cezanne, and Van Gogh. I don’t really know how to describe paintings in a way that I could convey how they looked without sounding somewhat presumptuous/gay. They looked nice. Jennifer really loves the Impressionism era, especially Monet, so she was having a great time. The rest of us did too. I think I recognized some of the paintings we have in our home in Austin, so I snapped a couple of pics of those.

We left at around 5:45 pm to go to the Louvre. Now I know what most of yall are thinking. Going to the Louvre at 6 pm? Yes. Here’s the reasons: 1. Not enough time to dedicate an entire day. 2. It’s cheaper later at night 3. less crowded and touristy.

So we went in through the grand pyramid in the middle. Oh, I’ve been here too, but I really looked forward to going again. Mainly because I’m more educated and cultured now, or I’d like to think so. Also I’m looking forward to seeing some exhibits I haven’t seen before and seeing my old pal again, Leo. Walking into the Louvre brought back so many memories. I recognized the inside the best. Not much has changed. I spotted the café that we ate at and the gift shopped where my mom almost got pickpocketed. This is a funny story. So my mom almost got her purse pick pocketed by this man but she caught the guy. She got really angry and her face turned red. Not just for a little bit, but for 2 days. Red. Funny. Ok moving on.

We split into pods and attacked the Louvre. I started at the ground level and worked my way up. I hit medieval Louvre, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Roman Greek, Roman Egypt, and Italian sculptures. There is simply just too much to see. Most of it I breezed passed, but I did stop at what I recognized to be famous. Like the Venus de Milo. Roman statue of Aphrodite.

Things I’ve noticed. There is still a lot of room left in the Louvre for much more stuff. Like especially in the lower levels. For the Venus De Milo, It was the long corridor with absolutely nothing but the statue at the end. Suspenseful buildup I suppose. Time was dwindling fast, so I headed over to grand gallery area with all the famous paintings. I had forgotten how amazing it was. It was interesting how much I could recognize from some of the classes I’ve taken, like classical mythology. Anyways so I saw pretty much all the paintings in the gallery, I won’t try to describe them. A favorite section of mine was right next to the grand gallery, an area called large font French paintings. They were absolutely breathtaking and enormous. I was trying to figure out if they painted them horizontally or vertically with a large ladder. Either way I didn’t really care.

The Mona Lisa. The most recognizable face on the planet. There weren’t that many people crowded around it when I went, so I could stand at the very front against the railing. I spent a good amount of time just staring at it. I don’t know, as cliché as it sounds, the painting is really entrancing. I’ve seen the painting before hundreds of times in my life before, but never like I did today. It’s amazing how much I noticed now that I never noticed before. Like how the horizon is off behind her and how there were trees and I think either a river or road in the background as well.

I don’t know anything about art, but I was also thinking about why it was so famous. It’s 15th century, which is pretty old and it was painted by one of the world’s most famous artists, Da Vinci. But then again, Da Vinci has painted so much. So why is the Mona Lisa so much more famous than Madonna of the Rocks or the Last Supper? Everyone knows that the woman Da Vinci painted in the Mona Lisa has a bit of a smirk n her face, which presents a bit of mystery to the painting. Subjects of paintings in the past usually are never smiling. Maybe that’s why it’s so famous?

Ok the Da Vinci code movie was wrong on many levels. I was just thinking about the scene in the beginning in the Grand Gallery and it’s nothing like the movie. I don’t know where they filmed the movie then. Imposters.

So I sped through as many paintings as I could until the museum closed at 9:45 pm and we had to leave. Time for dinner. We went to a nice Italian restaurant near our hotel. I had seafood risotto. We had a good time. By the time we get done, it’s well past midnight and we have an early start tomorrow, so we headed back and went to bed. So tomorrow the agenda is Versailles, Champs Elysees, the Sacre Cour, and time permitting, Notre Dame. Goodnight friends.

-James

Post Script
Is Paris the city of lights or city of love?

Paris, France

2007-06-24T16:39:00.001-07:00

Paris, France.

The following post dates for Thursday, June 21^st.

We made it. But first, the rest of the day.

Woke up, packed, blogged, breakfast-ed, went to class, ate fast lunch, headed to train station.

Ok so now to Paris. On this trip there are only 8 of us: Me, Lesley, Deepa, Laura, Jennifer, Michelle, Michael, and Kacie. This is the first trip that there are more people staying in Cambridge than traveling. I suppose there are a couple reasons for why this is. 1. We have our second exam on Monday, so there won’t be much time to study. 2. Many people are traveling afterward or have traveled before hand, so Paris isn’t exactly a priority as of now. 3. Some people (Ani) are restricted by their government and can’t go anywhere.

So first we took the tube to the Waterloo train station. We got there well before hand and went through security and the such. Getting on the train was painful. So our cabin was overrun with little children, and they were sitting in our seats. This French lady kept telling me to go sit in the other cabin, and I kept showing her my ticket saying, “You are in my seat.” Then his funny English dude was like, “Usually we have to sit in our assigned seats, but in France, you must adapt to the situation.” So we moved to the other cabin and got settled. THEN the freaking adults the kids were traveling with decided that they should move to the CORRECT cabin and we had to move AGAIN. So we had to fight through the aisles and get over these little children. Then this older kid called me Jackie Chan, at which point I started running little kids over, smashing them into seats, and pinning them bent over chairs. Excusemoi. Jennifer and ran over some many kids. Evetually we got settled again.

The train took around 3 hours, and we lost one due to change in time zone. So we step outside the train station and don’t really know where to go. This is when we turned to our secret weapon Ms. Lesley Latham. Now what Lesley failed to tell us for the entire time we’ve known her is that she actually went to middle school in Paris. She can speak French. She knows what she’s doing. Thus we turned to her and she came through. We navigated our way with little trouble to our hotel. This trip, we decided against staying in a hostel due to time constraints, availability, and convenience. I was a little sad at first because we would be paying more, and my bank account is running low (Mom if you are reading this, it means I need to borrow some money. Merci). But the hotel turned out to be really great, props to Jennifer and Laura. We ended up staying at a Best Western. So the way it worked was the eight of us basically had a section of the hotel entirely to ourselves. Four rooms, 2 people each. Here’s the pairing: Lesley and Michelle, Me and Michael, Jennifer and Laura, Kacie and Deepa. It was great, we all kept our doors open and just walked from room to room and hung out. I brought my laptop, as always, so I could play music and we all could hear it. I think the song of choice on the trip was Home, by Michael Buble. It was very Parisian. Ok the only draw back was the bed situation. Every room had only a double bed, if even a double. It was kinda small. So Michael and I have gotten to know each other over he trip, but this should make us a whole lot closer literally and figuratively. Hopefully no weird stuff happens in the middle of the night or he will be sleeping on the ground. Just kidding. But seriously, no weird stuff.

Ok so we unpacked and rested for a little bit before heading out for some dinner. We were recommended to this café within walking distance from our hotel. The food turned out to be really great. I ate this lamb dish with French fries. 15 euros, but delicious. When I think about it, if you read through this blog I don’t think you’ll find a single instance where I haven’t liked what I ate. Anyways we all had great conversation and laughed a lot. I really like our group.

So the plan next was to go to the Eiffel Tower for a special showing that they would be putting on at midnight. Today the 21^st of June is the longest day of the year. The lady at the hotel said it was going to be special but we didn’t know what it was going to be. Anyways so the walk over was a lot of fun and we made our way over just in time. The tower is normally lit up at night but tonight they turned on sparkling lights all over the tower. It was ok.

Just kidding, it was really impressive.

Background on me. I’ve been to Europe before and Paris was one of our stops. We spent the longest time of all our stops in Paris. Thank you to my parents Alex and Ping for the amazing vacation. So, I’ve seen most of the sites in Paris. But that was summer of 8^th grade, so about 7 years ago. I’ve really looked forward coming back since I didn’t fully appreciate and enjoy where I was.

Tangent completed. The tower was gorgeous. We found a nice spot and laid in the grass and just watched the lights. We snapped a few photos and then walked around for a bit. There were so many people there at night. Mostly native Parisians hitting on tourist women, our girls included. Jennifer and Laura had an encounter with some guy who enjoyed talking really close to their face. But they were able to avoid him. Not that this guy was a threat or anything, but I probably should have been around somewhere nearby. Sorry girls.

After the tower, we walked back. It was pretty late at night and we almost missed the last metro. Actually, one of the lines was closed down, so we had to walk a couple blocks to get back to the hotel. Again Lesley guided us the entire night and we got there relatively easily. Great job Lesley.

Ok it’s time for bed. We have a really busy day ahead of us tomorrow. Back to the Eiffel tower to go to the top, the Musee’ De Orsay for some impressionist art, and then the Louvre to top it off, with stops for food dispersed in between. Au Revoir.

-James

hello

2007-06-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

hello friends, most the blog entries for paris have been written. however, due to time constraints and an exam tomorrow, i have not yet had the time to update or add pictures or arrange pictures from previous post. but i will soon. stay tuned please.

we appreciate your patience,

-james

June 20th, Wednesday.

2007-06-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Not much happened this day of Wednesday June 20th, 2007.

Went to class, went to lunch.

Oh outside Churchill in the fields, they were having I guess an end of the school year party. They had all these things set up out side to play on. American Gladiators, bungee thing, boxing, food, and the biggest game of jenga I've ever seen.

We saw these guys and couldn't resist.Me and Garrett battled it out.

Watching from the window

It was awesome. Then Clair, Natalie, and I crashed the food line. Then ran away.

Theives

Did some homework after lunch.

Studying diligentlyPlayed hangman.

Natalie, I believe the movie is Pulp Fiction

Susannah and her heat transfer skull and cross bones.

No idea when or why this picture was taken. But Ani, Michelle, Lesley, Deepa, Bryan, and Michael.

Rode home.

Had dinner: Shepherd's pie. Compliments to Simon, the chef.

Met with Susannah, Natalie, Garrett, Rebecca, and Clair to do some homework at the park. We sat on this skateboarding half pipe.

Skateboarding ramp: Clair, Rebecca, Garrett, Susannah, Natalie

Walking downStudy hard.

Best moment of the day. So were doing homework when we hear this random slow squeaking behind us. We turn around to see this guy wobbling around on his bike then he strays of the path and ends up in the grass. He then gets off his bike and tries to walk. But it seems like his legs are giving out under him and he keeps stumbling around. The guy can hardly walk. We think he might be hurt or having a seisure or something, so I'm watching him really closely. He almost falls over a couple times, at which point I run over to make sure he's ok.

Conversation:
Me: Sir, are you ok? Do you need any help?
Guy: Um, too much to drink. (Smiles)
Me: Uhhh... Do you need help getting home.
Guy: Store to get some cigarettes. (smiles)
Me: Alright well, be safe.

Then I walk off, but keep looking back to watch him. All of a sudden, he stops, turns then looks at me, smiles, then gives me the big thumbs up. Are you kidding me? It's 7:30. I've never seen anyone that hammered that he couldn't walk. This guy was all over the place. I almost expected him to get hit by a car. We all had a good laugh.

This was him, the drunkard.

More homework. Then the squeaking again. Our new friend made it to the store and now was coming back. His drunken stupor has not seemed to improve. This time he fell over into the grass. Multiple times.

Trying to get back upThis park is great for people watching. I would advise to not go through here at night.

We also saw an odd couple in which a man was holding hands with a woman who was also holding hands with another woman. So we tried to figure out their situation, we figured, man and wife + sister? Then the man let go and it was just the women. Awkward.

Then I went home, and was super bored. I watched Shrek 1 on tv with Simon, Karen, and Harry for a little while blogging. Then I did a whole bunch of push ups and my ab slide. Yes I did bring it, but I haven't used it in a long time. Lots of days off, sigh. Getting back into it when I get home will be hard. Christian Quinto, if you are reading this, I am taking days off. Disappointing.

Anyways, then I showered, packed for Paris, and went to bed.

Tomorrow is Paris. I'm very excited, it should be amazing. I'll try my best to keep yall posted, so keep checking back.

Au Revoir,
James

Tea in Grantchester.

2007-06-21T01:59:00.000-07:00

Short post for Tuesday, June 19 2007.

For class today, Dr. Diller's good friend Tim Pedley, who arranged for us to come study in this facility, came and spoke to us. He is a professor of fluid mechanics here at DAMTP. He is an extremely brilliant man who is arguably the leading expert in in biofluid mechanics in the world. He's a pretty funny guy and gave an entertaining talk about the flow of blood, particularly in giraffes and brachiosaurses. Smart guy.
After class and lunch, we headed over to Studio Cambridge to meet Layla for a group outing. Today we went to Grantchester for tea. It's a small rural area close to Cambridge. It's more on the country side near the river. The walk over was long, but very scenic. It was also fun because we brought the frisbee along to throw through the fields.Now there is something in England, I don't know where else, called Stingy Nettles. This plant sucks. It basically stings your skin when it comes in contact with the plant. So the frisbee got away a couple times.

Looking for the frisbee: Ani and someone.

Everytime we went to get it, we got stung. It's not unbearable, but it does irritate quite a bit and forms bumps. Layla, the native medicine woman, knows of this plant called duckleaf? that counteracts the pain given off by stingy neetles. It really does make it feel better.

Over a random bridge on the way there. The group + Layla Evans.

So the walk is about 45 minutes long, and we finally get to Grantchester. There is a place called the Orchard in a grove of trees where people come to have tea, scones, and ice cream. It's very hidden away, like you wouldn't expect it to be there.

The secret garden.

There are lawn chairs and table everywhere. It's actually very peaceful and relaxing out there. It feels good to sit outside. We set up a big table and had tea and scones. It was delicious.

The beautiful Layla

Diane close up.

For the scones we had this really good jam and this stuff called clotted cream. This stuff is like butter but better, and I'm not talking about Parkay. I could eat it straight.

Mrs. Diller joined us for tea as well. Everything was so delicious. I also fell asleep.
We left at around 5 pm and headed back. We lost the frisbee a lot on the way back too. This is the Ani and Michelle totem looking for the frisbee. We also had many encounters with the Nettles as well.

This was a funny sign that we encountered

Then I realized that I had no dinner. I mistakenly had told Simon that I wouldn't make it back

for dinner because I thought we were eating at Grantchester. This is because they also used the word TEA. Tea apparently means dinner, snack, or tea. This is really confusing. So when Layla said Grantchester for tea, I thought dinner. This is not my mistake, it is England's. So I went to Jack's Fish and Chips and got jumbo cod and chips. Good.

Then we met for homework. Study Study Study: Garrett and Susannah.
Then Kacie, Jennifer, and Laura came over to use the internet.

Then I passed out trying to blog.

Peace,
James

DISCLAIMER

2007-06-21T01:58:00.001-07:00

I apologize for the late posts, I'm trying to catch up. The pictures have not been labeled and assorted, but I will sort them as soon as possible.

-james

Dinner and Fireworks

2007-06-20T23:18:00.002-07:00

This post is for Monday June 18, 2007

School yet again. It feels like forever since we've been to class, I was very much looking foward to seeing everyone that didn't come on our trip with us.

First order of business: get tests back. I was pleased because I did fairly well.

Next, the challenge problem. Now I know I've talked to you about Dr. Diller's great fame and incredible resume, but here a little more.

So Dr. Diller was called in as the head authority in the McDonald's case in which a elderly woman sued for her coffee being too hot. This was a landmark case. So we were asking Dr. Diller about how he was chosen to become the authority on the case, and he replied very humbly, "Well if you look up heat transfer, my name will probably come up more than any other name." We all loved it.

He proceeded to tell us about the case and how the incident happened. The coffee was around 185 degrees Fahrenheit, and the woman suffered 3rd degree burns. She was in the hospital for over 3 months and had multiple skin grafts. It was pretty gruesome. So the woman's lawyers called in Dr. Diller to analyze the case. Basically Dr. Diller proved that coffee at that temperature will cause severe burns and possibly could be fatal in extreme cases. There was also a study done in which people where surveyed for ideal coffee temperature. The general consensus was that they preferred their coffee at temperatures much lower than 185 degrees fahrenheit. At around 145 degrees Fahrenheit, Dr. Diller showed that burns resulting in a spill would be less than a 1st degree burn if even that. The McDonald's coffee was being served way over temperature. McDonald's experts tried to discredit his findings saying that he wasn't qualified to make this sort of analysis. But the judge overruled them, saying he was more than qualified for this case. The McDonald's VP of quality on the stand simply dismissed the elderly woman's case, saying that she is smallest fraction of 1% of the people who have McDonald's coffee who manage not to burn themselves. The jury found McDonald's in the wrong and awarded the elderly lady the over $2 million dollars, McDonald's equivalent of 1 days profit off coffee sales. As well, they were required to lower the temperature at which their coffee was served.

In class, we did the same analysis he did, and got the same answer. It was really interesting.
After lunch, we saw some Churchill students out playing cricket, so we decided to go out an throw the frisbee. Fun.

Today for dinner, Garrett, Michael, and I are to have dinner with Dr. Diller over at Clare Hall. We had time to kill after class, so Garrett, Kacie, and I went to a local park to throw the frisbee around some. Fun.

Dinner was fantastic, and I was happy because I got more than enough food. Over dinner we talked to Dr. and Mrs. Diller about pretty much everything. They are really very kind and easy going people. We also asked Dr. Diller about some of the other cases that he's been called in to act as a expert witness for. It was just amazing to hear some of the things that he's been called in for over time. He still recieves calls all the time regarding burn victims. He's also submitted reports on burn analysis to various journals. It's incredible the amount he's already accomplished. I don't really understand how he finds time for it all between this, the cases, writing books, research, running a department, and playing squash. Apparently Dr. Diller is an avid squash player. I've never played so maybe I'll start picking it up and challenge him to a game.

We left around 9ish and headed back home. Then, I met Clair, Natalie, Kacie, and Rebecca and we tried to go bowling. Except there was an hour and a half wait. On a Monday night. Are you serious. Apparently the only thing to do in Cherry Hinton is go bowling. Lame.

Instead we headed to the city centre and walked around for a while. It was fun to watch the college students get dressed up in tuxes and dresses and walk around to go to their end of the year proms. The atmosphere was really great. There were lights everywhere, people sitting and laughing, other stuff. Near the river, Clare and King's College set up sort of like a fair for the students. There were bumper cars, moon bounces, food stands, other stuff. Many of the students had hired punts that took them by candlelight to their proms. Nice. We overheard today that there would be fireworks at night, so we found a spot on a bridge over the river (Cam) and waited. It got really packed on this bridge. The fireworks were amazing. They played like Harry Potter, Gladiator, and I think Queen in the background. Nice.

Then we went home. I don't remembered what happened after that but I passed out sometime around 2-ish.

-James

Zee Germans, 10 Year Old Kids, and Words of Wisdom from Brian and Michael.

2007-06-20T23:18:00.001-07:00

This post covers the events from the night of June 16th through June 17th.

So when we left off, we were arriving at the platform at the train station. Now the way the trip was planned was the first three nights in the hostel, then for the last night, nothing. It was far cheaper to fly out of Forli back to London Stansted then from Rome to Stansted. But that meant that we would have to make our way somehow to Forli from Rome over night via the night train, the bus, and our feet. Here we go.

I’ll give you a run down first, then we’ll go into some detail. First we caught a train to from the Termini station to Tiburtina station. From there, we caught our night train to Bologna. From Bologna we took a train to the Forli train station. From there, we went to the airport. Caught our flight then flew London Stansted. From London, we caught a train back to Cambridge. And the rest is history.

So catching the train to Tiburtina was problem. We waited a little bit for the night train to bologna to arrive. When it did, we power walked like crazy to get to our cabin because we kept thinking we were going to get left. The train aisles of the train were so cramped. I could barely fit through the halls, two definitely would not fit. Now I ordered a couchette ticket. A little more expensive than a seat, but much more desirable. So when I go to my room, it took me forever to open the door. When I did, it was pitch black inside. Then I saw the old guy sleeping on one of the bottom bunks. We accidentally woke him up. So he sits up and just looks at me. While I’m still trying to get my bearings, he starts talking to me in Italian and kept pointing. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me, but he kept going. This went on for quite a while. Eventually he just stood up and turned on the light. Oh. Mi Scusi. We moved our stuff to the top bunks and sat there kinda disoriented. There’s a lot going on, and it is so humid and hot. I’m covered in sweat. Then he turned off the light and we sat there in the dark. Interesting. This is pretty terrible. But thankfully, there was a mistake, and we moved rooms and it ended up being Me, Jennifer, Laura, and Kacie in one couchette room. Much nicer. SO the way the room is set up is there are two sets of beds on each side of the “room” stacked on top of one another.

First order of business, open the window. This helped with the heat a little bit. Now time to get settled. The beds were semi-comfortable. We were given these paper thin slippers. They pretty much are the worst things ever. I kept them. Nice. The open window did cause a problem however. So the night trains go through tunnels. Now I’m not sure the exact physics of it, but when the train goes through the tunnel, there is some sort of a pressure imbalance. It hurts the ears, badly. It was fun to watch the expressions on the girl’s faces though.

Even though everything was less desirable, it was hot, it was late, it was loud and bumpy, I was having an absolutely amazing time. It was so fun. Miserable times = great experiences.

On the train I didn’t get much sleep but I didn’t care. So we arrived in Bologna at some time around 4:00 am and we all stagger off the train. Now we sit and wait until 5:00 am-ish to catch our next train from Bologna to Forli. Fortunately we were able to get on early and relax.

Here come the Germans. So a couple of Germans get on the train, all wearing tight pink shirts and short blue jeans shorts and straw hats. No harm thus far. But then, more Germans get on, and they are pretty rowdy. Now becoming irritating. Before we leave the station, they thought it would be a brilliant idea to bust out into song. It was so loud and awful. One would start, and they all would chime in. None of us could get any sleep, and there was nothing we could do because there were like 12 of them. We were all getting really pissed. The general trend was that they would sing at every stop our train made, which was quite often. One of their favorite songs involved mass chanting of “homosexual.” I couldn’t tell if they were drunk, gay, or both. Finally this Italian guy finally couldn’t handle it anymore, got up, and chewed them all out in Italian. It was hilarious. They all shut up pretty quickly. But after he went to sit back down, they’d all start singing away again. Thankfully we were only on the train for around 50 minutes. They sang the whole time. Thus far I’ve probably slept a total of 30 minutes, probably less.

Now Michael says some really funny things. As soon as we get off the train, he looks over at me and says, “Man I hope to God that the train derails and none of the Germans survive.” Wow, harsh but hilarious.

By the time we get to Forli, it’s around 5:45 am. Our next destination is the Forli airport. But how do we get there? So we walked around for a bit looking for a way there. There’s no one around to ask and everything is in Italian, so it’s pretty difficult. We really don’t know what to do. We eventually find this bus schedule that we think will take us to the airport, but the only problem is, the next bus comes at 7:45, two hours from now. Decision time. We looked at the map and estimated how far the airport really was. It looked like its less than 2 kilometers away, so we voted and decided to walk it. We took a picture of the map for reference. 2 kilometers? We’ll be there in like 20 minutes. Wrong.

So we’re walking and following all the signs for what seemed like 2 kilometers. It’s 6 in the morning and everyone who drives by is like, “What the heck is that group of 12 Americans doing?” We all felt kinda out of place. After about 20 minutes, we decided to ask this cyclist sitting down for confirmation in our interpretation of the direction. We were going the right way he said. Good, reassurance. But then he was like only 4 more kilometers. WHAT. ARE YOU SERIOUS. Rebecca and I looked at each other and kinda laughed. Don’t tell anyone right away we thought, just keep walking and maybe no one will notice. Wrong.

Around the 3rd kilometer, our luggage started really hurting. But eventually we made it there an hour later and covered in sweat. We cleaned up in the bathrooms and took naps until it was time to check in. We eventually boarded our plane around 10:15.

So now for the flight. Seating in Ryan Air is not pre-arranged. It’s first come first serve, like Southwest. I’m sitting, waiting to leave until this group of like 40 boys and girls about 10 years of age get on the plane. Holy crap. They were everywhere. The kid next to me wouldn’t sit still. He was too busy shouting to his friend Tony or popping bags that he would find. He kept banging on his chair and getting up to run around. One of his favorite things to do was to make up words to the tune of Mr. Sandman. God, grant me serenity now. I bit my tongue and just dealt with it. But 2 hours of it is more than enough. After we got off the plane, I was talking to Bryan and Michael.

Bryan: “It would almost be worth it to sacrifice my own life if could just take a couple of those kids with me.”

Michael: “I just wanted to wait outside the door and slap each kid one by one as they came out.”

Haha.

This time, customs was no problem. I got in relatively easily. After we got our luggage, we had some lunch at the cafeteria, then caught our train back to Cambridge at around 2:20 pm. Almost there. The final challenge was riding our bikes back home to Cherry Hinton. I’m running on no sleep from the night train, German train, and miscreant children flight. But it felt good to pedal instead of walk.

Pretty much everyone went straight home, took a shower, and took long naps. I had some dinner, called my dad on Father’s day, did some homework, and then went to bed. It’s been a long day, but so fun.