Finally! Pictures from Prague. And this is another long weekend, so I'll have pictures from Munich and from a Perchtenlauf (crazy pre-Christmas Alpine ritual) when I get back. Meg [View Full Entry]

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Since I last wrote, I’ve been traveling every weekend and working/busy nonstop through the weeks. Thankfully, we’ve finally been paid, so there’s no money stress anymore, and I can finally afford to get a gym membership and a haircut! So that’s the main happy development that makes all the others possible. Other than that, the highlights are: Prague, fake Thanksgiving, and Salzburg. PRAGUE In my first blog, I briefly mentioned Manfred, one of the teachers in Kirchdorf who shoes me around Salzburg and Linz. Last weekend I was able to take advantage of his spectac [View Full Entry]

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Even though I really don’t have very many hours of work, I don’t have as much free time as it seems like I should. Part of that is because I’ve been pretty successful so far at meeting people and finding things to do. For example… Conversation classes in Linz I don’t go to them—I “teach” them. The Austro-American Society of Upper Austria, among various activities, organizes a few English conversation circles every season. I’m responsible for a class for Maturanten, that is, 18-year-old high school students preparing to take their f [View Full Entry]

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Now that I’ve finally gotten around to writing a blog, I have way too much to say. ((Not to mention too many pictures to post by far!)) However, I’ll try to give you a taste of everything that’s happened this month: AUSTRIA I knew that Austrian culture and attitudes would differ from those in Germany even though the language is ostensibly the same (not really though…more on österreichisch vs. deutsch to come), but I didn’t really have any specific expectations in mind. That’s probably a good thing, because for the most part, I’ve been pleasantly [View Full Entry]

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As promised, pictures from Barcelona. Unfortunately, the pictures really can't do the architechture justice. Maybe try googling some of the buildings for better photos than mine. [View Full Entry]

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Our spring break was pretty exciting, although I didn’t necessarily feel rested when I got back. I did feel like I took advantage of a great opportunity to travel. I spent the break with my friend Michelle in two cities: 3 days in Paris and 4 in Barcelona. We were pretty busy in Paris just because there are so many famous tourist sites and museums there. There’s a link below to our first day’s walk around town. Anyway, in the next two days, we visited the Louvre, the gardens at Versailles, the Pere Lachaise Cementery (where Oscar Wilde, and many many [View Full Entry]

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Alright, so I’ve been in Berlin for about a month now, and not surprisingly, I’ve done a lot here. Berlin is a fairly spread-out city, so it sometimes takes a little while to get places, but there are so many museums, exhibits, parks, churches, castles, and other interesting sites to visit that I could spend a semester here even without classes and not see everything I want to see. Still, I’ve managed a fair amount in the past few weeks. I’ve been to the theater twice, the opera once, around 10 museums, a special “Green Week” fair, a Stasi interrogation p [View Full Entry]

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So, this is my last blog about South America before I move on to Berlin next semester. The time Carley and I spent in Patagonia was among my favorite memories from this trip. We spent the first two nights in Punta Arenas (the southernmost city in Chile) in a hostel only about two blocks from the Magellan Strait. While we were there, we had a chance to sight-see around the historic center, visit the most famous pub in the region (Club de la Unión, frequented by locals and arctic explorers), and we visited the Penguin Colony at Seno Otway. It should [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, This will be my second to last blog about South America (for this trip at least). As usual, I got busy with exams and papers, so I’m writing it about a week and half after we actually got back from Brazil, but better late than never, right? So Brazil is one of the most amazing places I’ve visited—not just on this trip, but ever. I only have one complaint: they don’t speak Spanish. Were it not for that minor detail, I would probably want to move there...at least for a few years. But maybe I can still do it [View Full Entry]

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This is by far the most exciting thing that I’ve experienced in Chile (and one of the most exciting things in my life): Today I got the chance to interview Roberto Garretón, a lawyer and leading human rights activist and Chile (he worked with the Vicaría de la Solidaridad and was the Latin American American Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights, among innumerable accomplishments). I was really nervous because it’s the first time I had ever interviewed anyone about research that I am interested in and I was going to do it in Spanish. But he put me at [View Full Entry]

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