Getting ready to leave China and start my European adventure!

Wednesday December 12, 2007

Only 10 days left here!! I'm kinda excited to leave this craziness but I know that after a week or two away I will start to miss it a lot. Tomorrow I have to give my presentation for my research project and then next Thursday I have 2 finals and thats basically what I have left to do here. Nothing much has happened since I lasted posted, just a lot of studying like usual and a lot of travel plan making. I ventured to Qipu lu again to buy a coat which I did but of course I paid more because I am a foreigner... but it still wasn't that expensive. I figured it would be a good idea to have something warm while I am in eastern and northern Europe. I also have to decide what I can send home and what I can throw away because I have to cut my luggage down to about 30kg, or as close to it as I can...
I leave Shanghai at 1145 am on Saturday the 22nd on Aeroflot and I have a quick 3 and a half hour layover in Moscow, and then I arrive in Madrid, Spain at about 1000pm on the same day. I didn't get a chance to get a Russian transit visa... so hopefully nothing bad will happen to me while I try to transfer planes in Moscow. I tried twice to go to the consulate here to get one but for some reason they are only open 915 am to 1215pm... and even though I was waiting two hours and there was no one else in line, they wouldn't take me at 1215. I also bought my tickets home and to Taiwan. So I will come home on February 11, 2008 and will be home for a few days and then hopefully visit IU, then my flight to Taiwan leaves February 18. So thats all done.

Now all I have to do before I leave is try and get as close to finalizing my Europe plans as possible. Right now this is what my trip looks like
Madrid, Spain December 22-25
Marrakesh, Morocco December 25-30
Barcelona, Spain December 30- January 2
Madrid, Spain January 2-4
Aix-en-Provence, France January 4-10
Oslo, Norway January 10-12
Krakow, Poland January 12-15(?)
Prague, Czech Republic January 16(?)-18(?) (by train)
Bratislava, Slovakia January 20(?)-23(?) (by train)
Madrid, Spain January 23(?)-31
Paris, France January 31-February 3
Athens, Greece February 3-5(?)
Istanbul, Turkey February 6-8(?) (by train)
Sofia, Bulgaria February 8-10(?) (by train)
Madrid, Spain February 10-11
Chicago, U.S.A. February 11


Half of the trip, with the ?, are all not for sure yet cuz I haven't booked anything but that is what I think is going to happen as of now. I'll probably have a few couple more posts before I leave here...Leave a comment!

Also... I might have finished applying for my Egypt program over the summer... but I don't know for sure because they don't ever like to answer e-mails... even when they get 4 or 5 of them... but anyways that is going to be a whole nother issue trying to get there from Taiwan... but I guess I don't have to worry about that yet.

pictures!
Nanjing pics
Taiwan pics Pt 1
Taiwan pics Pt 2

Only 3 weeks left...

Starting from the top...
My hostel in Taiwan... called Taiwanmex (owned by a mexican)
Chang Kai Shek memorial
random sign that says I love Taipei
more of the memorial
the hostel cat that liked to sleep in our room
(left to right) Manila, Me and Lisa eating lunch in the Philippines (we were sitting with our legs in the water), and then me trying to do my best at making tea at a tea house
and the last one is LOVE in front of Taipei 101


November 28, 2007

Nothing much has happened since I got back from my trip, just a lot of school, homework, tests, and studying Chinese. The Taiwan program finally got all my stuff in the mail so I should find out within a week or so if I am accepted to that, then I can finally start finalizing my plans for winter break. I found two more cheap airlines that offer a lot of flights, basically ANYWHERE in Europe and then Morocco and Turkey on top of that. The only problem is that I'll have to be doing a lot of this traveling alone and I don't speak any of the languages of a lot of the places I am looking into going. My list so far of confirmed trips is Spain, Morocco, Spain again, France, and Norway... from there I'll head off to London or Dublin. They have flights to anywhere in Europe from those two places so I was looking into traveling to Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, the Czech Republic and some others, depending on the dates of Taiwan. So that is going to be fun to plan.
www.easyjet.com
www.ryanair.com
www.wizzair.com
all cheap tickets to wherever you want

Also I got in touch with some people from Egypt and it should be pretty easy to transfer my application over to the summer, so hopefully that will all work out in the end and I can still graduate on time.

I still haven't gotten my pictures up from Taipei and the Philippines because facebook isn't working, but I'll post them here as soon as it works. And I'm getting sick... yay...

Trip to Taiwan and Philippines is official!

October 23, 2007
Lisa picked up our passports today with no problem so thats all set. Then I had a nap and made some more bok choy ( its getting better every time!!) and then we discussed our trip. This is now the official trip

November 9 1230 AM Shanghai - Manila (arrive 430 AM :()
November 9 1110 AM Manila - Taipei (Arrive at 110 pm)
November 9 to 16 in Taipei and surrounding areas
November 16 at 155 PM Taipei - Manila (arrive 355pm)
November 16 to 18 in Manila
November 18 8 PM Manila - Shanghai (Arrive after 11pm)

And now that thats all worked out I can start to work more on my European/North Africa plans. After discussing with Phil and Aliyah this seems to be a good plan to start working on:
Phil and I arrive in Madrid on December 22 and most of our friends will be there already.
Then we will stay there and on the 25th or 26th we will take a bus down to the south of Spain and then catch a ferry over to Tangier, Morocco. From there we will either go to Fez, Marrakesh, or Casablanca and spend some time there. Then on the 29th or 30th of December we will head to Barcelona and stay there for 3 or 4 nights. Then we will hop on a bus from Barcelona to Madrid. Then I will leave Madrid on the 4th and fly to Marseilles with Phil and stay with him for a while there. (We are thinking about going to maybe Oslo, Norway, or Stockholm Sweden sometime in the beginning of January... but thats another story) Then sometime towards the 18th or so of January I will fly back to Madrid and stay there for a few nights before heading to Cairo. :o) It is really confusing and it involves lots and lots of planning and I have to hear back from all of my friends if they like this idea or not... but it seems to work out pretty well as of now.
I still haven't heard from Cairo though if I got accepted to not into the program. They told me middle of November though so I am not really worried, I am just getting too antsy haha... Also I have a spoken midterm tomorrow for Chinese and a written one Thursday so I think I need to study now!!!!!
Leave a comment!! I like to see if people are actually reading this or not haha