These are heady days for us! We both retired on December 2006, and after a couple months of struggling with access to Social Security, Medicare, and the state retirement health fund, we are almost ready to get on the plane for nine weeks in New Zealand. [View Full Entry]

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what started out as a wonderful night of pictures, food, and dancing quickly turned ugly. [View Full Entry]

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Hello - I've been in Seattle for about 15 hours having survived the long haul from Fiji and the Southern Pacific generally. Fiji was beautiful and the locals and tourists I met were great but the heat and the sand flies and the cane toads and the giant spider in my bathroom were something of a distraction. There was a huge amount of rain as well but it is a fabulous place and ideal if you just want to relax on a tropical beach and indulge yourself. The big flight from Nadi to Los Angeles was tolerable and I actually slept [View Full Entry]

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I was both sad and excited to leave Vancouver and head out solo onto the open road to Seattle. I rather enjoyed the changing scenery from Vancouver, across the border, into the United States. I have definitely done my fair share of road trips in Australia and I noticed a significant difference - there is always something to look at. America is a very full place and even in rural areas there is notable hustle and bustle through small towns. I most liked those typical big red farm barns, dotted across the landscape, as featured in many horror films and sci-fis. [View Full Entry]

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Just a quick blog, to update you all about Seattle. Saturday, we took a 4 hour bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle, unfortunately the plan of catching the train that Cam and I did a few years back fell through as the train only runs in the night. The bus didn’t have anything on the train, so if anyone is thinking of getting the train during daylight hours you must get it from Seattle to Vancouver as it’s the only one that runs through daylight hours. We visited the Boeing factory yesterday, and it boasts the biggest building in the world. [View Full Entry]

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Our trip has now progressed and we’ve now made our way from Canada back into the USA again. Right now I’m writing this blog in Manhattan, New York. We left Vancouver on the 13th Jan and traveled by bus to Seattle, Washington. The trip by bus was about 4.5hrs and there wasn’t much scenery, except that it had been snowing all week and there was snow from Whistler all the way to Seattle. We’d planned to travel by train, however they only ran at night, so we settled for the bus. We only had a brief 2 nights stay in Seattle [View Full Entry]

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On the 3rd of January I decided to make my run over the border into the USA for the purposes of retrieving the working Visa that I had been accepted for following posting everything home to Mum to forward, indeed, applying for your VISA's is best done from home. To retrieve you need to exit stage left and return, a good opportunity (or not) to get a taste of the states, a country previously unvisited before, coincidentally Seattle where Joe my brother had visited 6 months earlier on work, head office of Starbucks, as it happens Microsoft, Adobe, Boeing to name [View Full Entry]

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As it stands now, I will not be leaving for Rome on Tuesday as was planned. We were supposed to fly into Rome for a 3 day excursion before heading off to Siena for 3 weeks (and then to Florence for the rest of the semester). The San Fransisco consulate still hasn't finished processing my student visa. My dad half jokingly suggested we just drive there and get it to sidestep it being sent to the program headquarters in Connecticut before being mailed to me. Too bad that probably wont work...I've always wanted to go to San Fran. Plus it would [View Full Entry]

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its thursday, the last day before christmas (*holiday*) break. its a gamble, but no homework has been completed and no studying has been done in hopes that there will be no school the next day! As several large trees surround Hula Girls current abode, there is alot of arguing about the safest place to sleep. Hula girls' only contribution was why dont we all just sleep in different rooms so that when the trees fall only one person dies instead of 5 . no one laughed. the night was a blur of candles and wind with clouds zooming at god knows [View Full Entry]

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