a quick notice, i am typing on a german keyboard, and the z and the y are switched, which is taking me a great deal of mental anguish, and i cannot find the apostrophe for the life of me, so be warned. Courtney and i left from Florence monday night, and the train ride was ten hours long, and we had reserved seats that reclined. unfortunatelz, italians do not really pay attention to stuff like that, so our seats were already occupied. so we, along with two other ACA girls who are now probably in Budapest, found an empty cabin and [View Full Entry]

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...becaue it' really hot! I finally made it to Argentina. Some unforseen circumstances put off the trip for a year, but I'm here, and I'm spending Christmas sweating my brains out. And having a blast. I won't be going anywhere for Christmas (no money) but my friend Juan has invited me to stay with him and his family for Christmas, and my other friend Daniel invited me to his aunt and uncle's house in Buenos Aires for New Year's. Just finished my laundry today. That's the cool thing about the ACA program, is that you actually get to live the experience, [View Full Entry]

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also as a way to update where i have or have not been, I spent a week this past summer working in TJ (Tijuana as the rest of the world knows it) building a house for a family. It was crazy, because we were only about 30 minutes from the border of California, and only about 45 minutes from my house on the other side of that border, and yet all the houses in this area were made with garage doors, scrap wood, whatever they could come up with. And here we were actually building a frame for the house, and [View Full Entry]

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Just in order to get one more country colored red on my map, i've also been to Canada. [View Full Entry]

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I could potentially hold some sort of record for the most online journals. But this one is specifically for my journeys outside of my comfort zone. Because of this, I will be adding stuff related to Mexico, Italy, Romania, etc. in order to catch up. I wish I would have known about a site like this before I had done all of that. But, oh well... [View Full Entry]

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wow, if I wrote everything that has happened to me since i got here, i could have a book. fortunately, I have a journal. I hope this letter finds everyone in good health, and in bright spirits. I'm still having a blast. we started classes at the beginning of last week, so I've had plenty to keep me busy. this week, we just started our elective courses. I'm taking choir, private voice lessons, religion (not because I need it, but because I thought it would be nice to learn everything I've learned in the states in Italian), Mediterrenan cooking, and art [View Full Entry]

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next stop, Berlin, where the people are not quite as nice or as helpful as they were in Vienna. but first it was a matter of getting to the airport. it had been cheaper to book a flight for 6:45 in the morning, but we had not realized that the Tube does not run from about 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. (at least in San Diego the trolly runs every half-hour), so we had to leave the night before and sleep in the airport. it was SO COLD!!!! we camped out outside of the check-in desk, under this HUGE window, and [View Full Entry]

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London was REALLY cool. our hostel was within walking distance to Buckingham palace, and i got to see the changing of the guard. the night before we left, at St. Martins in the Field, i got to hear a baroque concert (which is my favorite musical period) all played in the church sanctuary by candellight. it was absolutely gorgeous. Christmas was on Sabbath, and I couldn't find an SDA church to attend, and i kind of freaked that i would offend somebody if i went to the nearby Anglican church because i don't know their customes, or whatever. so i [View Full Entry]

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let me first start out by saying: i want to hear NOTHING MORE about how wonderful the weather is in San Diego or anywhere else. fortunately, now i'm in London where i can walk around without a coat on and only be mildly uncomfortable. Prague was COLD. for some reason it felt colder than Vienna, even though it actually snowed in Vienna. i don't get it either. Courtney and i started Friday from Vienna to Prague, and the train ride that we thought was only going to be an hour ended up being closer to three. no big deal, except that [View Full Entry]

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Come state tutti? i'm EXHAUSTED! so much has happened in the past few weeks. of course we have class every day, which is in and of itself exausting. there's not too much work, but i'm having the worst time remembering vocabulary. grammar is usually pretty easy with a little review, but vocab is the pits. we've had one test so far, which i did fairly well on, except that i couldn't remember the name of anything. i've been placed in the intermediate class, which i think i mentioned earlier, and our teacher Milena is a real kick in the pants. she's [View Full Entry]

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