So anyways, there I was drinking cappuccinos on my couch in Montana one August morning when Mai signs in on web messenger and says “hey, let’s go to France!” and that seemed like a good idea to me because I had f**k all to do for the next five months or so, ‘cept maybe find a job and take a night class or something. I was at last starting to feel the often spoken of but seldom understood “comfortable numbness”, but the very though of relaxing at a time like this irked me. Looking around me I thought, that this must [View Full Entry]

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A little shy of year later I was sitting in Montana, drinking cappuccinos, fighting off a nagging cough, looking at English-teaching schools and lamenting my lack of a ‘next move’. Graduate school didn’t work out so well for me, thanks in part that positively apocalyptic global recession that our children’s history textbooks are clearly going to read as the most trying ordeal anyone has ever gone through. The same had eliminated most of the positions I’d considered occupying myself with during my upcoming obligatory white-people gap year, including my usual post [View Full Entry]

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The first 24 hours in Korea, no, the first week in Korea, were some of the most difficult in my life. You are exhausted and jet lagged; you are expected to work the very next school day, whether that is after a weekend or within hours (as we were so lucky), you haven’t eaten anything in roughly a week because either you can’t find anything tolerable, or you can’t stomach any of the available eats. Besides not sleeping well, unpacking what life you’ve managed to stuff into your luggage, and trying to figure out a new job that comes with little [View Full Entry]

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Congrats to everyone for finding this blog! My plane leaves in about 6 hours and I've just finished packing. As I type this my mother is baking me a farewell pumpkin pie, which will help me survive the next 3 days of planes and hotels before I find myself in Mombasa, Kenya (thank you mom!). Please let everyone you think would be interested know about this blog and I'll try to update it as often as I can. My time for sending out invites is a little crunched, thanks. Now for pie and bed, enjoy the snow everyone in Missoula! Tor [View Full Entry]

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Before leaving Rapid City, SD, we first ventured in the opposite direction of our destination in order to get a peek at the marvelous stone artwork in the Black Hills - Mt. Rushmore. There are a bunch of photos attached. I highly recommend checking this out. Even driving through the snowy Black was amazing by itself. The Black Hills gave me the first snow of the season as we drove thru the tiny town of Keystone and probably witnessed all 311 of its residents outside on the streets shoveling. When we finally left Rapid City around noon, the drive brought to [View Full Entry]

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Back in the U.S.A!! After another long day of driving, we finally made it to Montana. We got up early and got on the road. The conditions from Edmonton to Calgary were crappy. When it wasn't snowing, it was raining!!! We stopped right before the border and I got my blizzard from Dairy Queen!!! I had a Smarties Blizzard just for Niki :) For those that don't know, Smarties are like m&m's, only better! I have to say, it was yummy goodness!!! We make our way to the border and they were really busy. After waiting forever we pull up and [View Full Entry]

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September 28, 2009 Today we drove all day up through northern Montana to a town called Shelby. It was a beautiful drive through miles and miles of farm land. On a billboard entering one of the small towns was a quote, “from the mountains to the prairies”…so accurate! Earlier in the day we had stopped at a cigar store outside of Livingston. A man sold cigars right out of his home. He turned out to be quite a character. His family came over on the Mayflower and they had a town in Massachusetts named after them…Brewster! He told John that there [View Full Entry]

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September 27, 2009 Well we made it to Old Faithful…Here’s what happened. We all hoped and prayed all night that the road to Old Faithful would be open this morning…and it was. This meant that we could get to see her after driving one and a half hours…which we did. On the way, we kept seeing all of these interesting sights but we didn’t stop because our plan was to get to Old Faithful before the road was closed and then have a leisurely ride back, catching all the other areas. We got to Old Faithful just as she went off…what [View Full Entry]

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September 26, 2009 “Take off that Ranger hat so I can slap you across the face.” Today was somewhat disappointing….the fire in Yellowstone continues and the road to Old Faithful is closed. To see it we would have to drive around the park, the northern route, to get there. This would take three and a half hours, one way! We decided to drive north to a town called Livingston, a place Anthony Bourdain had done a show on. We were hoping to first go to Little Big Horn and hit Livingston on the way back. After driving about an hour we [View Full Entry]

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September 25, 2009 Fire! Fire! Fire! Yesterday as we crossed through Teton Pass there was a fire that almost obstructed our view of the Tetons. When we left our cabin in Driggs Idaho today, we were hoping for a better view but the fire had left a haze that continued to hide some of the mountains. We traveled through Teton National Park and saw amazing scenery, stopping for lunch at Jackson Lake…fluffernutters again! We entered Yellowstone at the South entrance…so exciting! The ranger at the gate told us that the bridge we needed to take to get to our final destination [View Full Entry]

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