My trip to Kansas was pretty fantastic. I got to spend a whole weekend with Valerie and together, we ran amok all over Lawrence. When we weren’t freezing our tails off in the bitter cold temps, we watched the KU/TTU game, went dancing at a couple bars, and partied with all of our CIU buddies. We had so much fun -- all our silly jokes came alive ( Read more... )

I'm off to party in Lawrence, Kansas for the weekend! The high for Saturday is forecasted to be 20 degrees and the low is 4 degrees Fahrenheit. I'll have a layover in Colorado, so it'll just be a snow-filled weekend. Wish for clear skies and unfrozen runways for me!

After having gone through an extremely long day at school, I've come to the conclusion that dull classes were created so people can improve their signatures.

Mine looks pretty damn good these days.

I have arrived safely in Tokyo! My flight was amazing. Although I wasn't able to upgrade to business class (the people at the counter said it would have been $3,000 for a new ticket), I still ended up with a sweet deal because the flight wasn't full by any means and I had three seats all to myself! I reclined all three seats and laid out with my ( Read more... )

So, here I sit at my desk working through lunch. I just realized what I was doing and stopped so I could take a little break, grab something to eat, and calm my nerves. Dang, it sure didn’t take very long for me to fall right back into my old way of life ( Read more... )

::laughs:: While I was away I almost forgot about the miserable Oregon rain. Good thing it’s one of the things I can count on for sure during my stay here, haha ( Read more... )

After a full day of traveling in taxis, trains, shuttles, airplanes, and cars, my experience abroad has now come to a close.

Thank you to all those who came to see me at the airport today. It meant so much to see friendly, familiar faces at the gate. A million thanks from the bottom of my heart.

My current rant is on the strength of the U.S. Dollar. When I arrived in Europe in September, the exchange rate was 1.12 U.S. Dollar to 1 Euro which was already ridiculous since it was 0.86 U.S. Dollar to 1 Euro about a year ago. I just checked for the most updated exchange rate and the markets closed at 1.21 U.S. Dollar to 1 Euro yesterday. ( Read more... )

Friday, November 28th, 2003 Ben, Amanda, Riley, and I must have been exhausted from the bus ride because none of us got up before noon. When we finally did, we got dressed and went to lunch in the restaurant on the first floor of our hostel. Afterwards, we met up with Kara, Paul, Mary Beth, and Ashley and headed to the train station. We took the ( Read more... )

Thursday, November 27th, 2003: Thanksgiving Day After spending a fantastic (read: close to miserable) night on the cold steel benches of Marco Polo airport in Venice, Jacob and I awoke to unexpected news: our flight to Palermo had been cancelled a month prior to our departure. Writing about the details of the whole occurrence will only reignite my ( Read more... )