In about 36 hours I will be headed off to Florence, Italy for my 6 weeks teaching and one week traveling. Although, there will be some traveling in that 6 weeks of teaching, too! I am packed. Well, I have all the things I want to bring fitting in my one suitcase, but I fear it is too heavy. I will have to work on that. And I am packed with suggestions, too. Everyone who has gone to GIF has a list of places for me to see, things to do, places to eat, things to see. I hope I get [View Full Entry]

---

---

Getting to Yellowstone from Great Falls was far simpler than we imagined - staying in Yellowstone on the other hand was far more difficult than we imagined… For some ridiculous reason we decided that given we’d arrived in Yellowstone and had planned to camp, that’s what we had to do, regardless of the temperature. Yep, you guessed it, it was freezing - we’re not talking a little cold, we’re talking a minimum of -15 and a maximum of -5. We wore every piece of clothing we had to bed, and still felt cold all night. To make matters worse, there were [View Full Entry]

---

---

I was getting all sentimental again yesterday when I was running, listening to this song by Late Tuesday called "I Must Go" about leaving the place I'm at and going on a new road. You can buy it on Itunes for a buck and listen to it. It is the theme song for the year I decided. So much transition! Here's an update I wrote today: Since I’m going to Uzbekistan tomorrow, I figured I’d better do some research on the country. I read a bit about it on Wikipedia, and here are some interesting things I learned. Where is Uzbekistan? [View Full Entry]

---

---

Airport in a few hours - Seattle-London-Paris-St Jean Pied de Port. What to take? Most importantly - what to leave behind. My daughter-in-law, Hannah, suggested I cut my toothbrush in half to reduce weight. Voice of experience. My Pilgrim Blessing: "May you be supported by the grace of God on your journey so that you may overcome and be strengthened by the travails of your pilgrimage, and safely reach your destination of Santiago de Compostela, to return to us, enriched, enlightened and invigorated to take up your tasks again, renewed." So, it is pip pip and down the road I go. [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, after the past few months in AK absolutely soaking up the newness of a snowy frozen place in the arctic, I have returned home to debrief and pack for these upcoming trips. The day I got back I attended the wedding of a friend in my occupational therapy class at UW. It was wonderful to see my classmates again and reminece old times from school. I did get the joy of a shower of a classmate’s red wine in my eye, my hair, and all down the front of my red (luckily) dress, out on the dance floor! No harm [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m new to this whole blog thing, but we’ll see how it goes. A week ago I was treasuring my last days in Alaska with a wonderful community of people I have come to know and love in the past year. To back track a little, (I’ll try not to elaborate too much), I recently finished my Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy. During the first few months of the program in Fall 2005 we were encouraged as students to begin to think about where we would like to do our two 12 week fieldwork rotations. Knowing I wanted to travel somewhere [View Full Entry]

---

---

It has always been my dream to travel the world. My first chance came in the year 1999 and 2000, when I traveled to California, USA. Both these trips were for business and in the 30 days that I spent there, I could only manage to see Milpitas, San Jose and Los Angeles. This time, in June 2008, I plan to visit Washington DC, Raleigh in North Carolina and Nashville in Tennessee. I have 2 days in DC, 1.5 days in Raleigh and 3 days in Nashville. I want to move around and see all that is there to see in [View Full Entry]

---

---

On our way to Seattle, Lauren recognized a little town called Kalama, WA, which was half the setting for "one of the best episodes ever of" reality show Split Ends. We got this picture with Susan Summers - she's been on TV! From what I hear she's just like she seemed on the show. Then a stop in state capital Olympia. Just a quick visit but we loved the place. They had a free bus - the Dash. We went into this one store and they were hip. The whole town had an attitude, you could just see it walking past [View Full Entry]

---

---

Washington's incredibly bipolar spring weather teased us with another glimpse of the elusive sun this weekend. Thankfully we were in a perfect place to enjoy this rare scrap of warm weather-the Olympic Peninsula. My parents moved back to Sequim after years of restlessly circulating around the U.S. and now occupy the house that once belonged to my grandparents. Despite leading what I feel to be a rather nomadic existence, the Olympic Peninsula has been one place I have returned to frequently. Port Townsend in particular is a great town. Discovered by the western world during one of Captain Vancouver's exploratory journeys [View Full Entry]

---

---

Figuring Things Out At the very moment I am contemplating what Italy will be like. Sure I have seen the movies and read the books on the country, but how much can you learn from observing rather than actually doing/being. When I was figuring out which place in the wide-open world I would want to travel to, I could have picked somewhere that spoke English as a first language. This however probably would have been selling myself short. So then I looked at France, where I would be able to communicate at an elementary level comfortably. I have never been [View Full Entry]

---

---