Traveling can be a quirky business sometimes. You can travel from sight to sight, forcing excitement and happiness on yourself by way of impressive things to look at or finding fun cultural differences between what you are experiencing and what you have always known. I'm not criticizing this; actually, I thoroughly endorse this type of traveling. When I say "forcing" I mean it in a totally good way. I love the constant excitement and memorable moments you bring upon yourself from never standing still. I think it's an incredible way to learn and gain perspective. But... sometimes, the very best moments find you, totally unprepared, unknowing what you're about to experience. Yesterday, that happened to me. And now I'm going to write an entire blog about one meal: Black Pepper Crab iBlack Pepper Crabi bBlack Pepper ... read more

Welcome back to my travelblog/page of rambling. You might be wondering... why are you here right now? Well, I have been admittedly lax in keeping everyone up to date on what's exactly it is I'm doing right now, so I figured an update was in order. I'm currently sitting with Rachel in Hong Kong International Airport, in transit to Singapore (they offer free WiFi here... why can't any American airports abstain from charging $8 for an hour of interent?). This upcoming fall semester, I'll be studying abroad again, this time in Hangzhou, China, a city very close to Shanghai. I decided that since I enjoy traveling so much, I was going to spend some time exploring Southeast Asia before my semester actually starts on Sept. 1. And since I know my sister has been dying to ... read more

And now, after some delay and much anticipation, I present the final chapter in my epic tour around Europe: Paris. That's not entirely true, as I'll still write a few more times while I'm abroad I'm sure, but they will probably all have to do with Edinburgh instead, so in that way it is the last entry regarding my traveling. Also, I want to point out that with this entry I now have posted pictures for all of my travels, except for Edinburgh, which I'm still in the process of getting pictures of. So go look at them! All you have to do is look at past entries I have, and they should be filled with pictures now. Quite a few of them have more than one page of pictures, so be sure to look and ... read more

I'm just extremely busy. Sorry for the long break in blogs, but a combination of having a packed schedule and not having internet in my flat have prevented me from writing for a while now. I've moved in to Edinburgh now and am starting to be settled, but am ridiculously busy right now with what's called Freshers' Week here. It's like a week long orientation that's packed with events to help you get accustomed to University here and meet new people from about 9am to 3am each day. I'm definitely not going to be able to catch up everything in one blog, but hopefully over the next few days I might be able to. After that I probably won't blog as often since I'll be mostly in one location, but I'll still update every once in ... read more

Ahh, once again I am stuck with a foreign keyboard that I can't switch to English, so I apologize for any spelling/grammar errors and lack of detail, I may not be very patient with it. As I mentioned in my last entry, Josh and I went to Pisa from Rome. Pisa was not my favorite - the town was very touristy, mostly uninteresting to us besides from the tower and nearby churches, and for the first time in Europe I thought the town seemed dirty. I was told that a lot of big cities were dirty, but never really had that impression anyzwhere until Pisa. The Leaning Tower was cool, along with the other Field of Miracles buildings, and it was very entertaining to watch the rows of people all taking the same picture of holding ... read more