This is a pretty short entry to transition our time from wonderful Paris to Italy. Bobby and I caught a flight from Charles de Gaulle to Fiumicino on Vueling Airlines, a Spain based regional no frills airline. It's like Southwest in the States. We got our tickets on a promotion that ended up costing us only $60 per person (including taxes). This was also better than a couple of other low-cost airline options because we could check in up to 45 lbs for each bag, compared with others' rules of 30-35 lbs (any kg over cost big Euros). The downfall was that it took nearly an hour for us to get our luggage from baggage claim. We caught a shuttle to our bed and breakfast (in hindsight, we should have taken a taxi as it was ... read more

The next morning, we walked around for a bakery to buy some croissants and observed that at 8:00 am, the streets were empty. We later realized that this was considered early, especially for a weekend. After a light breakfast of croissants and fruit we went to visit Notre Dame. Unfortunately, no Quazimoto or gypsies, but we did get some great pictures of the many gargoyles perched upon the higher parts of the church. There was a quaint garden next to Notre Dame along the Siene and spent some time there admiring the views. We initially intended to visit La Concergerie (where Marie Antoinette was held prior to her execution) and wanted to see the famous stained glass windows in the Sainte-Chapelle, but felt that the cost was not quite worth a possibly poor stained glass light ... read more

The excitement of taking a long and what we believe to be a well deserved break from the real world has finally caught up with us. Sitting on the plane, we’re perusing through a guidebook trying to figure out where we want to go and what we want to see in Paris. A little delayed, yes. Most would agree that it’s unusual for Bobby and me to be unprepared prior to such a monumental trip, unfortunately, work and life didn’t seem to bend in our favor to allow us to do much planning. Our flights were booked, lodging in the first two cities reserved and really, that’s about it. Our general itinerary is as follows: Paris: 3 nts - (fly to Italy) Rome: 4 nts (train to Florence) Florence: 4 nts (train to Venice) Venice: 2 ... read more

As the semester is coming to a close, this will be my final entry before I go galavanting around Japan with Bobby. Final exams are here - stressing just a little, but I thankfully lived past my Japanese oral exams. Instead of studying what feels like a few hundred vocabulary words, I decided to write an entry. Don't worry, I'll get to it sooner or later... Last week I discovered that my group member Max and I got second place in the simulated Japanese stock game I mentioned earlier in the semester... Over four months we had a 16% return on our portfolio... kind of sad - I had it at 26% but was lolo and messed up. But first place were the Germans of course with an amazing 34% return... actually, the two of them ... read more

Hi, so, at the request of Mr. Jonathan Ching and Mr. Robert Fuke... you lucky people get another blog. I know I've been lacking big time on this communication thing, but I guess I've been busier than I've realized. Well, the cherry blossoms are disappearing. The weather we've been having lately has been so odd that I wake up every morning and I have to go outside to see what the weather is like. It rains one day, then it's sunny the next, then rainy again, and so forth. It's still been pretty cold! It's already two weeks to May and the temperature's been hovering around 45-55 degrees! If we're lucky, during the day it will hit 60-64. But enough about the weather. Let's see, what have I been up to? Well, last weekend I was ... read more