April 9, 2009~~
HELLOOO! I doubt anyone will actually read this, but it has been QUITE a while since my last post... mostly because I am just finishing out my last year at Indiana University. Just 4 weeks left and I will be a college graduate. What will I do with my degrees in French, Chinese, Arabic, and Linguistics?? Well I am going to move to Taipei, Taiwan to teach English. The goal is to stay here for several years both to gain teaching experience and to get a lot better at Mandarin... I don't know when I am moving there yet, hopefully within 2 months or so. I don't have an actual job yet but I have been accepted by Reach to Teach which is basically an agency that will find me a job in Taipei. My friend Cala who was there with me last Spring will also go there so we will probably be roomies.
More later :o)
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Friday, August 15, 2008
My last DAYS in Egypt! (July 16-24)
Last week in Egypt wasn't very eventful... mostly because I had to finish up all my work and get ready for tests and projects and blah blah blah. One of the only things I did was take a day trip to Ein el Sukhna which is just a nice beach on the Red Sea in Egypt with the people I teach English for... that class is another story. I finished up class and I now know how teachers feel... very few of the students did all of their homework and it was all pretty bad, and I even caught some cheaters and had to turn them in. But everything turned out alright... I'm not sure exactly what my grades are yet but I think I did ok. And HOPEFULLY severy of these classes will transfer back and facilitate the completion of 4 majors in 4 years. Ummm I can't think much of what else went on in the last few days in Egypt.. it just wasnt that much. Oh! I did actually go visit the pyramids and the SPHINX because I never made it there before because I was TOOOOO busy. Pictures on facebook!! soon hopefully...
Aswan, Luxor, Abu Simbel and LOTS of old Egyptian stuff
So this trip took place July 10 to July 15 and most of it was in the form of a Nile River cruise aboard the Oberio Philae which was probably one of the nicest places I have ever stayed in. There were 3 floors and then the roof and a a pool. One of my favorite things about the boat though was that once when a bunch of us were standing on the top floor about 30 small canoes SWARMED our boat and they each had about 2 people in it and they were just throwing things they were selling at the boat. All kinds of things, from robes to papyrus to model pyramids, and some they threw in peoples rooms haha. And of course most of us didn't want to buy anything so another problem was getting all the stuff back to the little boats 3 levels down when there is wind haha... needless to say many things just ended up in the water. Also one girl on my boat bought something and I guess someone accidently threw it back, so she paid and didn't get anything... oops!
Ok to start from the start of the trip...
After class was over on the 10th we all ran back to our dorms to pack to be ready for the bus that was comping to pick us up to take us to the train station. Of course the train was about an hour late... but we ended up leaving by about 9 pm and the next morning we arrived at about 7 am to Luxor, Egypt (Wikipedia and Wikitravel).
In Luxor we visited the west bank which included The Valley of the Kings (Wikitravel and Wikipedia ) and Hatshepsut's Temple and then the east bank which included Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple. I took LOTS of pictures but you'll have to check those out on facebook or ask me in person because of computer problems I can't but them up on here...
After Luxor we sailed to Edfu to see the Horus temple and to Kom Ombo to see the Temple of Kom Ombo.
After Kom Ombo we sailed to Aswan to see the Philae temple and then the Aswan High Dam
and it was about 115 degrees out... so I didn't see it for very long haha.
And then after all that we took a 2 am bus to Abu Simbel which is less than 10 miles from Sudan!
And then after alllllll of this was over we took a plane from Luxor to Cairo via Aswan and got back pretty late, but not late enough that we didn't have class the next day :(
The whole trip was really fun. I got to see almost all of the most important ancient Egyptian monuments and temples. Some of them though were actually moved to new locations... I'm not exactly sure how they moved giant temples the size of skyscarpers though.... because when they created the Aswan dam in the 60s it flooded a large area to create a man made lake... which in turn would flood many of the ancient temples, so they just moved them to new areas.
And that was my final trip within Egypt... any questions?
Ok to start from the start of the trip...
After class was over on the 10th we all ran back to our dorms to pack to be ready for the bus that was comping to pick us up to take us to the train station. Of course the train was about an hour late... but we ended up leaving by about 9 pm and the next morning we arrived at about 7 am to Luxor, Egypt (Wikipedia and Wikitravel).
In Luxor we visited the west bank which included The Valley of the Kings (Wikitravel and Wikipedia ) and Hatshepsut's Temple and then the east bank which included Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple. I took LOTS of pictures but you'll have to check those out on facebook or ask me in person because of computer problems I can't but them up on here...
After Luxor we sailed to Edfu to see the Horus temple and to Kom Ombo to see the Temple of Kom Ombo.
After Kom Ombo we sailed to Aswan to see the Philae temple and then the Aswan High Dam
and it was about 115 degrees out... so I didn't see it for very long haha.
And then after all that we took a 2 am bus to Abu Simbel which is less than 10 miles from Sudan!
And then after alllllll of this was over we took a plane from Luxor to Cairo via Aswan and got back pretty late, but not late enough that we didn't have class the next day :(
The whole trip was really fun. I got to see almost all of the most important ancient Egyptian monuments and temples. Some of them though were actually moved to new locations... I'm not exactly sure how they moved giant temples the size of skyscarpers though.... because when they created the Aswan dam in the 60s it flooded a large area to create a man made lake... which in turn would flood many of the ancient temples, so they just moved them to new areas.
And that was my final trip within Egypt... any questions?
Last posts?!?!?!?!?
Hmm.... today is August 14 and I haven't written in this for a while.... lots to cover... my last trip in Egypt to Aswan, Luxor, and Abu Simbel, my last weeks in Egypt, my desert adventure to LEBANON, SYRIA, JORDAN, and ISRAEL (and a little more in Egypt)... all up until now in Madrid, Spain awaiting for August 20 to arrive so I am finally come back home after my year abroad... Instead of making one big long post, I'm gonna break it up into smaller ones... So enjoy because now that I am coming home, this blog may be finished (at least for a while) because I have to finish my studies! Maybe I'll talk more about that later...
Saturday, July 26, 2008
NEW plans
I havent updated from my last time in Egypt... ill get around to that some other time
but for now I am in BEIRUT, Lebanon... so far there are no problems here... we were going to only stay here for 2 nights and then head to Aleppo, Syria and then to Damascus. But since there is a concert on Sunday for MIKA which we all love, we decided to stay in Lebanon and travel outside of Beirut to other cities. We met a really nice taxi driver and he is actually going to be our personal driver for the next few days and take us to some other places in Lebanon and ill put those here later.
So we are here in BEIRUT until July 28 and then we will take a taxi to Damascus, Syria. As of now we will stay there for 2 or 3 nights. After that we will head by bus to Amman, Jordan and then to Petra and Aqaba for a few nights. On August 2 (in shaa allah) we will take a Taxi to Jerusalem and start our Israeli adventures... and then on August 8 we will travel back to Cairo on a realllly long bus ride. and then on August 10 ill fly to Spain for 10 days then home!
ok gotta go!
bye
but for now I am in BEIRUT, Lebanon... so far there are no problems here... we were going to only stay here for 2 nights and then head to Aleppo, Syria and then to Damascus. But since there is a concert on Sunday for MIKA which we all love, we decided to stay in Lebanon and travel outside of Beirut to other cities. We met a really nice taxi driver and he is actually going to be our personal driver for the next few days and take us to some other places in Lebanon and ill put those here later.
So we are here in BEIRUT until July 28 and then we will take a taxi to Damascus, Syria. As of now we will stay there for 2 or 3 nights. After that we will head by bus to Amman, Jordan and then to Petra and Aqaba for a few nights. On August 2 (in shaa allah) we will take a Taxi to Jerusalem and start our Israeli adventures... and then on August 8 we will travel back to Cairo on a realllly long bus ride. and then on August 10 ill fly to Spain for 10 days then home!
ok gotta go!
bye
Sunday, June 15, 2008
First week of EGYPT!
June 20, 2008
So I have been in Egypt a little over a two weeks now and I LOVE IT here. Its a breath of fresh air getting away from Asia for a while haha. The airplane rides here went smoothly. Taipei to Hong Kong was good, the only problem is they didn't transfer my bags automatically at Hong Kong. I hung out in Hong Kong for about 4 or 5 hours... but I forgot that HK (and Dubai) us the UK style plug, and I packed my adapter so I couldn't watch any of my movies I had downloaded for the trip. So I tried to nap/read until my plane came. My flight to Dubai went well, the food on Emirates air was amaaaaazzzzing and the service was really good too. And I arrived to Dubai about 430 AM and hung out in the airport and waited in line for a long time to use one of the free computers because some people wouldnt get off them. My flight to Cairo went smoothly too and I arrived about noon.
Egypt and Cairo info:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Egypt
http://wikitravel.org/en/Cairo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo
I got my luggage, luckily it all came no problem, and headed out to go through customs. It took me a while to figure out where to get the visa... but once I got that I went out and found my driver and he took me to my dorm. My roommate wasn't here... and there weren't very many people here actually so I just kinda unpacked my stuff and went outside to walk around the area for a bit and find food. I tried to stay up as late as I could because I heard that is good for the first night when dealing with jet lag... and then I made it to about 10 pm and went to bed. The next day I slept in pretty late then unpacked and went out some more to walk around and find food. And then later on my roommate showed up and I went out with him and another guy to have dinner and "drink" shisha and have tea at a market.
The dorms are ok, I am in a 3 person room with only 2 people, so we have a bit more space. Everything in it is really old, and we have some REALLY loud arabs in the room next door who like to blast their music LOUDLY between 11 pm and 4 am. I don't know whats gonna happen with that. The dorms and the school have a lot of security. At all the entrances there are metal detectors and guards who usually check through all of your bags before you can get in.
Class started Sunday, but they didn't feel the need to let us know they changed the times of our classes until EVERYONE was there, so we basically had a couple of hours to hang around and then our classes started. Here is my schedule
Sunday:
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330
Monday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Media Arabic 105-205
Quran Class 215-330
Tuesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330
Wednesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Quran Class 215-330
Thursday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Media Arabic 1130-100
Basicaly Monday's suck and the rest of the week isn't too bad. All my teachers are amazing (some a little heavy on the homework though) except my Media Arabic teacher that kinda sucks. The first week of class went well, there was a little shuffling of classes, but for the most part it went smoothly. The school here is really unorganized (thats Egypt as a whole I guess), the classrooms are a problem, and no one ever knows anything, but I'm used to that after China I guess.
The first full weekend in Egypt we took a trip to Alexandria. Here is some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria
http://wikitravel.org/en/Alexandria
We took a bus to Alexandria from Cairo... took about 3 or 4 hours, luckily it had A/C. I didn't notice this until later but they had security guards on our buses, and from what other people said they usually put security guards or even police with AK-47s on buses if there are foreigners. We spent 2 nights there in a REALLY nice hotel. The school must have some kind of deal with the hotel because the posted rates are $280 a night and our whole trip total was $150. We visited some things you can see on the link to wikitravel. We went to the Citadel, the Library, the Roman Catacombs, Pompey's Pillar, and Montazza palace. Alexandra was a bit more conservative that Cairo I think. I saw a lot more mostly or completely covered women (not even slits or holes for their eyes). It also seemed to me a bit more poor and run down that Cairo, but with a lot of beaches. We went back on Saturday and then I had class on Sunday.
This week of class went by well, I had my first test and lots and lots of homework. This weekend we are going to Sharm el Sheikh for 3 nights. Here is info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharm_el-Sheikh
http://wikitravel.org/en/Sharm_el-Sheikh
I'll put later what I am going to do there.
So thats my stay so far in Egypt! Leave a comment!
So I have been in Egypt a little over a two weeks now and I LOVE IT here. Its a breath of fresh air getting away from Asia for a while haha. The airplane rides here went smoothly. Taipei to Hong Kong was good, the only problem is they didn't transfer my bags automatically at Hong Kong. I hung out in Hong Kong for about 4 or 5 hours... but I forgot that HK (and Dubai) us the UK style plug, and I packed my adapter so I couldn't watch any of my movies I had downloaded for the trip. So I tried to nap/read until my plane came. My flight to Dubai went well, the food on Emirates air was amaaaaazzzzing and the service was really good too. And I arrived to Dubai about 430 AM and hung out in the airport and waited in line for a long time to use one of the free computers because some people wouldnt get off them. My flight to Cairo went smoothly too and I arrived about noon.
Egypt and Cairo info:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Egypt
http://wikitravel.org/en/Cairo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo
I got my luggage, luckily it all came no problem, and headed out to go through customs. It took me a while to figure out where to get the visa... but once I got that I went out and found my driver and he took me to my dorm. My roommate wasn't here... and there weren't very many people here actually so I just kinda unpacked my stuff and went outside to walk around the area for a bit and find food. I tried to stay up as late as I could because I heard that is good for the first night when dealing with jet lag... and then I made it to about 10 pm and went to bed. The next day I slept in pretty late then unpacked and went out some more to walk around and find food. And then later on my roommate showed up and I went out with him and another guy to have dinner and "drink" shisha and have tea at a market.
The dorms are ok, I am in a 3 person room with only 2 people, so we have a bit more space. Everything in it is really old, and we have some REALLY loud arabs in the room next door who like to blast their music LOUDLY between 11 pm and 4 am. I don't know whats gonna happen with that. The dorms and the school have a lot of security. At all the entrances there are metal detectors and guards who usually check through all of your bags before you can get in.
Class started Sunday, but they didn't feel the need to let us know they changed the times of our classes until EVERYONE was there, so we basically had a couple of hours to hang around and then our classes started. Here is my schedule
Sunday:
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330
Monday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Media Arabic 105-205
Quran Class 215-330
Tuesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Spoken Egyptian Arabic 215-330
Wednesday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Egyptian Arabic 1130-100
Quran Class 215-330
Thursday:
Standard Arabic 900-1100
Media Arabic 1130-100
Basicaly Monday's suck and the rest of the week isn't too bad. All my teachers are amazing (some a little heavy on the homework though) except my Media Arabic teacher that kinda sucks. The first week of class went well, there was a little shuffling of classes, but for the most part it went smoothly. The school here is really unorganized (thats Egypt as a whole I guess), the classrooms are a problem, and no one ever knows anything, but I'm used to that after China I guess.
The first full weekend in Egypt we took a trip to Alexandria. Here is some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria
http://wikitravel.org/en/Alexandria
We took a bus to Alexandria from Cairo... took about 3 or 4 hours, luckily it had A/C. I didn't notice this until later but they had security guards on our buses, and from what other people said they usually put security guards or even police with AK-47s on buses if there are foreigners. We spent 2 nights there in a REALLY nice hotel. The school must have some kind of deal with the hotel because the posted rates are $280 a night and our whole trip total was $150. We visited some things you can see on the link to wikitravel. We went to the Citadel, the Library, the Roman Catacombs, Pompey's Pillar, and Montazza palace. Alexandra was a bit more conservative that Cairo I think. I saw a lot more mostly or completely covered women (not even slits or holes for their eyes). It also seemed to me a bit more poor and run down that Cairo, but with a lot of beaches. We went back on Saturday and then I had class on Sunday.
This week of class went by well, I had my first test and lots and lots of homework. This weekend we are going to Sharm el Sheikh for 3 nights. Here is info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharm_el-Sheikh
http://wikitravel.org/en/Sharm_el-Sheikh
I'll put later what I am going to do there.
So thats my stay so far in Egypt! Leave a comment!
Last days in Taiwan...
June 5, 2008 (its really June 14 but i forgot to write in this before i left taiwan)
Our last trip we took together in Taiwan was fun. I was gonna write about it right after it was over but I kept putting it off and now its like 3 weeks after... oops. But it was a really great 2 night trip. The first day we went to Ling Jiu Mountain which is a Buddhist monastery and we had a tour and met the founding monk who lived in a cave on that mountain by himself for 2 years fasting and meditating. After that 2 years was over he founded the monastery there. It was really nice and they had their free vegetarian lunch for all of us which was also very good. After that we went to the beach... but since it kept pouring rain and thundering and lightning I didn't go in the water. After spending some time there we headed to our hostel that was pretty far away which I was excited for since it had its own hot springs. But since we spent too much time at the beach we arrived at 1030 and they closed them at 11 :( so we only got to spend a few minutes in it. So instead of just going to sleep me, Phil, Zoe, and her boyfriend played mah johng all night (for money of course) and I won the most, 70 Taiwan dollars! (thats only about $2.10 US dollars haha) but it was fun.
The next day we had to get up early and head to the water rafting place. I was really excited for it cuz I have never done anything like that before. But I was also just a little worried to. So we got there and had a little training and got some life jackets and helmets and went out to the boats. In my boat it was Phil, Alyssa, Cala, Olivia, Mr. Zhang and Dan. It was pretty slow going at first... the water was slow and we were just paddling, and the life guards in their boats kept splashing us and then pushing us back in line with the others. There were a lot of boats, maybe 50 or so. Every once in a while we would get to some rapids and it would go a lot quicker and we had to dodge rocks and things but then it would go back to slower water. And then there was one part of the river where the rapids were a bit bigger and faster... few more rocks... ect and we saw a boat stuck on a rock ahead and then another one run into them and get stuck and then we were heading towards them. And we had been doing this for a couple hours now and had hit a lot of other boats so I wasn't worried or anything... and then we hit the boat and ours decided to flip over and throw us all into the water and come on top of us. And so I was in the water and could come up because the boat was on top of us. So then I tried to go down into the water a little deep so I could get out from underneath the boats, but the water was really fast and deep and there were lots of rocks everywhere and I was flying down the river coming up barely enough to just get a breath of air and then going back under. And then finally one of the life guard boats pulled me into their boat. And then we got everyone else and flipped our boat over and got into it and then I realized I lost the helmet that was wearing and my glasses :(
So we finished up the boat trip with no more problems and then left to go to our hostel for that night. But before we got there we stopped at a glasses store and I got some contacts to last me until I could get some new glasses. So basically we were all really tired so when we got to the hostel we just crashed. The next morning we got up early and left to go see Taroko gorge which is basically a giant grand-canyon-esque kinda thing that was nice, and then headed back to Taipei stopping at some sight seeing points on the way back. And then when we got back we basically had a week left to finish our projects... which I hadn't really started. But it went surprisingly well. I wrote mine about the declining use of Taiwanese language among the people of Taiwan... if you wanna read my paper just ask and I'll send it to you :p and basically I packed up and left Taiwan on June 5. I am really happy I had a chance to go to Taiwan and improve my Chinese a lot more, I guess it didn't turn out so bad after all not getting into Egypt last semester. It will be nice to leave Taiwan I think but I'll probably start missing it after a week or two... especially the food haha.
Our last trip we took together in Taiwan was fun. I was gonna write about it right after it was over but I kept putting it off and now its like 3 weeks after... oops. But it was a really great 2 night trip. The first day we went to Ling Jiu Mountain which is a Buddhist monastery and we had a tour and met the founding monk who lived in a cave on that mountain by himself for 2 years fasting and meditating. After that 2 years was over he founded the monastery there. It was really nice and they had their free vegetarian lunch for all of us which was also very good. After that we went to the beach... but since it kept pouring rain and thundering and lightning I didn't go in the water. After spending some time there we headed to our hostel that was pretty far away which I was excited for since it had its own hot springs. But since we spent too much time at the beach we arrived at 1030 and they closed them at 11 :( so we only got to spend a few minutes in it. So instead of just going to sleep me, Phil, Zoe, and her boyfriend played mah johng all night (for money of course) and I won the most, 70 Taiwan dollars! (thats only about $2.10 US dollars haha) but it was fun.
The next day we had to get up early and head to the water rafting place. I was really excited for it cuz I have never done anything like that before. But I was also just a little worried to. So we got there and had a little training and got some life jackets and helmets and went out to the boats. In my boat it was Phil, Alyssa, Cala, Olivia, Mr. Zhang and Dan. It was pretty slow going at first... the water was slow and we were just paddling, and the life guards in their boats kept splashing us and then pushing us back in line with the others. There were a lot of boats, maybe 50 or so. Every once in a while we would get to some rapids and it would go a lot quicker and we had to dodge rocks and things but then it would go back to slower water. And then there was one part of the river where the rapids were a bit bigger and faster... few more rocks... ect and we saw a boat stuck on a rock ahead and then another one run into them and get stuck and then we were heading towards them. And we had been doing this for a couple hours now and had hit a lot of other boats so I wasn't worried or anything... and then we hit the boat and ours decided to flip over and throw us all into the water and come on top of us. And so I was in the water and could come up because the boat was on top of us. So then I tried to go down into the water a little deep so I could get out from underneath the boats, but the water was really fast and deep and there were lots of rocks everywhere and I was flying down the river coming up barely enough to just get a breath of air and then going back under. And then finally one of the life guard boats pulled me into their boat. And then we got everyone else and flipped our boat over and got into it and then I realized I lost the helmet that was wearing and my glasses :(
So we finished up the boat trip with no more problems and then left to go to our hostel for that night. But before we got there we stopped at a glasses store and I got some contacts to last me until I could get some new glasses. So basically we were all really tired so when we got to the hostel we just crashed. The next morning we got up early and left to go see Taroko gorge which is basically a giant grand-canyon-esque kinda thing that was nice, and then headed back to Taipei stopping at some sight seeing points on the way back. And then when we got back we basically had a week left to finish our projects... which I hadn't really started. But it went surprisingly well. I wrote mine about the declining use of Taiwanese language among the people of Taiwan... if you wanna read my paper just ask and I'll send it to you :p and basically I packed up and left Taiwan on June 5. I am really happy I had a chance to go to Taiwan and improve my Chinese a lot more, I guess it didn't turn out so bad after all not getting into Egypt last semester. It will be nice to leave Taiwan I think but I'll probably start missing it after a week or two... especially the food haha.
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