April 23-24 We arrived in Verona at around 8am and tried to find internet to contact a man by the name of Christian, with whom we had booked our hostel. After wandering the streets for a while I finally found some internet signal that I could mooch off of to contact him. He instructed us on how to navigate the bus lines to make it to the outskirts of Verona so that he could meet us and pick us up and take us to his bed and breakfast. After finding a local that could speak english and help us make [View Full Entry]

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So we stepped off or the ship for the last time with all of our stuff (and there was a lot of it) --> ther ewas so much luggage that the bottom of the charter was full. We had to put luggage in the seats with us on the bus ride away from the ship towards centraal station in Amsterdam. We arrived at Centraal Station around noon on the 19th. We then wandered about for the rest of the day. Because I hadn't slept very well the last night on the ship, I was exhausted. We went to a couple [View Full Entry]

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I highly urge you all to please visit my friend Megan's blog to read about the Sufi ritual that we participated in... we later came to find out that they have been outlawed in Turkey since 1925.. haha.. what a great story.. scary as hell looking back though .. to know how much trouble we could have been in (mom and dad..haha sorry..but this is how we learn at times)....... PLEASE READ THIS BLOG --->>> http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/blog-263580.html [View Full Entry]

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Upon my arrival in Istanbul I had no idea what to expect.. I looked out my port-hole expecting to see all of Istanbul and instead it was just the wall of a red building...but not to worry that was just the port center. I had a free day the first day that I arrived. I slept in, ate lunch on the ship then wandered about. I found a local market where they had all sorts of goods. Here there was a nice fish market with a wide variety of local catches. The presentation of the fish was absolutely incredible. They [View Full Entry]

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Post.. - still to come.but this is mainly to let you know that the pictures have been fixed on this page.. [View Full Entry]

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Here I am... sitting in a ship... heading once again to another port. Currently we are just off of the western coast of the African Continent. We are just passing by Morocco. Bits of it can be seen out the window (in case you were wondering). As we had a wonderful time in Cape Town, South Africa, I couldn't help but feel as though we were in a bit of an up-scaled bubble. It was such a beautiful atmosphere and welcoming environment in the port (Victoria/Alfred) that were at. There was a shopping mall that offered up the likes of [View Full Entry]

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It's been long since I have been able to update this. Much has happened. We arrived in Thailand and for the first 3 days I spent them in Bangkok which was about an hour from our port. We were at a shipping-container port. It was quite vacant. Many of my academic field programs were held in Bangkok or at Chulalongkorn University. It was quite an experience. I visited a television production company and learned of how they operated their company within Thailand. I learned more about the educational system in Thailand, more specifically their higher educational system. Chulalongkor [View Full Entry]

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January 31, 2007 Today we headed out to Nathan Road in Hong Kong and visited all of the shopping areas. This day didn’t bring too many exciting stories for you all to read but I will say that I bought a pretty sweet Chinese mask! I will show a picture soon! After a long day of walking the streets and visiting many shops we headed back to the hotel for a 6-8pm recharge. It seems to have become our daily routine to rise early, spend the whole day out and then recharging and heading out once more. After the recharge and [View Full Entry]

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Sunday December 30, 2007 Today we woke up bright and early (6:30am) and headed down to the buffet breakfast. We hurried that meal (I had very fresh watermelon and about 4 hardboiled eggs and a few cups of coffee). We quickly made our way to the shuttle bus outside of our lobby. From there we took a 20-minute bus ride and then caught another 20-minute ride on a second bus. We then arrived at Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong. There we saw the handprints of many famous Chinese actors. These included Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat! Very cool [View Full Entry]

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Friday December 28, 2007 I joined my first flight in Roanoke, VA on a small United Express flight to Chicago. I knew it was going to be an interesting flight when I found my window seat next to a larger man. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have much room, but rather that as soon as the gentleman sat next to me he began lemans breathing techniques and went on to sweat profusely. I looked over and said “hey man, how ya doin?” he said “I’m doin alright.” A few minutes later I would find him asking me if we were [View Full Entry]

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