TimandSarah

Athens: We disembarked at the port, and in attempting to find our way to the Acropolis, met two new friends, Carla and Steven. Carla and Steven are from California and on that day, they too were on their way to the Acropolis. We were accosted by a number of cab drivers who were excellent salesmen. One finally convinced the four of us to split a cab rather than seek out the train. We got in the cab and found ourselves being whisked very quickly through the streets of Athens. Steven then pulled out a pouch of small vials. As I bounced around in the back seat he put a small drop of oil on the tip of my index finger and told me that this formula had replaced his former love of Starbucks. He told me ... read more

I've never written a blog before. Here it goes. Have you ever stepped up to a vending machine and you had to select what you wanted by selecting a combination of letters and numbers? And no matter what letter or number combination you plugged in, you still got this skunky chocolate bar that you didn't want. Well, that's kind of how some of my month in Europe has gone. Still, the good outweighs the not so hot. And generally, the lessons to be learned were valuable. Let me tell you about my favorite lesson. I HAD GALL BLADDER ATTACK and was taken to Assisi hospital by my family. I think it was a Sunday night. Then began the comedy of errors. The emergency door was locked. This was not a good sign. We finally caught a ... read more

A thought... In Primo Levi's, 'The Periodic Table', he recounts several of his own life stories as metaphors for the elements. This is particularly fitting given Levi's professional life as a chemist. The stories are separated and titled after elements; they are not chronological, and they are not grouped in any particular way. One story entitled, 'Iron', describes Levi's relationship with his friend Sandro. Of Sandro, Levi writes, “He dragged me along on exhausting treks through the fresh snow, far from any sign of human life, following routes that he seemed to intuit like a savage. In the summer, from shelter to shelter, inebriating ourselves with the sun, the effort, and the wind, and scraping the skin of our fingertips on rocks never before touched by human hands: but not on the famous peaks, nor in ... read more

When we began our trip I made a distinct effort to see as many museums as possible. I wanted to learn everything about everything that I wouldn't have been able to learn about at home. Truthfully, anybody could probably learn much about anything from the comfort of their PC, but one might not come into contact with certain information if not given direction by an external source. I feel the same way about post-secondary education. By the age of 18, you should be able to adopt the Will Hunting philosophy and learn whatever you so choose with a $6 library card. However, we all visit our local library far too seldom, and for those of us that do choose to pay for post-secondary education, we are not so much paying for the knowledge as we are ... read more

A mosquito lived in our room in Marseille. He was a sneaky little thing, landing and biting when you least expected it. We didn't discover his presence until the second morning, after we realized we had little itchy bumps on our bodies... the work of a mosquito. Last night, we heard him, we swatted at him, but he got away every time. I woke up around 6am this morning to hear him buzzing around my head. I went completely under the sheets, leaving a little room for fresh air, hoping he wouldn't find me. Tim slapped himself in the face. “So I guess you're awake too,” I said. “Yup. You heard him?” “Yup.” The light goes on. But the mosquito knows what's up, and stays away. He knows he is being hunted. The light goes back ... read more