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france
Bangkok and Vienna
Hi everyone,
Im writing from Vienna, Austria at my hostel.
Its good but I cant check in until 2pm. I think its about 11am now. So Im just going to check out the sights until then. I have a family friend, a Scottish chef who is living and working in Vienna. He speaks English and German. Hes more like my parents' age. So Although I put in 50 cent in euro i have to keep this short.
Bangkok was all right. Probablz not mz cup of tea because of the heat and in zour face nature of the people. some were lovelz others were cheats. we were driven around for 45 minutes in a taxi when it should have taken us 5 minutes and we were pressed for time to get back to the hotel and back to the airport. Plus zou donät reallz get anz personal space in thailand. and the tours were a dud most of the time as a scam to sell sapphires or silk at the end which of course we refused to buz, i mean, we alreadz paid for the tours.
please excuse the spelling mistakes im on a german kezboard that makes the letters a bit different and i reallz cant be bothered changing mz touch tzping for that.
so please note that y is z.
Vienna public transport is great it onlz took me 30 minutes bz bus for the journez from the aiport. which onlz cost 6 euro which is about 12 dollars. not too bad considering zoure up for about 30 to get from the airport back home.
again sorrz jarrod about zour house warming. i will send zou a post card to zour new address and visit zou when i get back, if im invited that is lol.
hope everzones doing ok back home.
just thought id write to saz that i was not caught up in the protest riots in Bangkok i know thez made it look prettz scarz back home. I was in the countrz on a dud tour that wasnt a tour. but im glad i wasnt there when all the roads were meant to have been blocked off and someone had been shot. the next daz there were still some road blocks so our tour buses had to go the back entrance to the hotel to avoid all of that.
zeah so im just hanging out waiting to call the friend of the familz and sitting in the internet part of the hostel.
its quiet at the moment i think i missed breakfast because i took so long.
well. i got to go im running short on internet time.
ciao everzone
from sarah
This is What A Police State Looks Like
This is a breakdown of what happened in Seattle when the Police attacked the crowd with chemical weapons without provocation or reason. They use video footage from the Police cameras themselves to demonstrate the point that the Police indeed incite riots and ATTACK crowds for no reason.
This is What A Police State Looks Like
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This is What A Police State Looks Like
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Who are you taking?
Game 1 of the World Series is tonight. The St. Louis Cardinals at the Detroit Tigers. What is your prediction for the series? I've got the Tigers in 5 games. Then let the riots begin...fires, broken windows, mace, rubber bullets, pepper spray and cars flipped over.
Drop Off!
Barely settled in Jaipur, I'm off again on another adventure. Time for another "drop off" and this time I'm going to Delhi, then to Varanasi. Not terribly excited about Delhi as I have some bad associations with the city itself—but the lectures and activities look fabulous!
The "drop offs" are a unique part of SIT's program which I resented at first. Since then, I have realized how useful they are at building self-reliance and confidence and for giving us the skills we will need later to go around on our own. It is too easy to go around hermetically sealed, so to speak, sidestepping much of the hassle—but also much of the "real" India. A "drop off" is just what it sounds like: we're divided into small groups, given an assignment and dropped off to complete it on our own with minimal instruction. The first one was a scavenger hunt on one of the main roads in Jaipur. Newly arrived, this was terrifying. Now though, I go there almost every day for shopping, to get coffee, or to run errands. In fact—I can't wait for the weather to cool down so I can walk around and do some more exploring on my own. The newest challenge was to "get to Delhi by Sunday at 6pm." I was feeling poorly (a touch of food poisoning had me spending quality time worshiping at the throne of the porcelain god) and so missed the lecture—but the task seemed fairly straight forward. Since there is only one train leaving on the day in question, and it leaves at 5am, my group opted for the bus. One of the guys in my group and I went to pick up our bus tickets. The hardest part was crossing the street—I nearly got creamed by a pair of busses passing in opposite directions on each side of me. They were so close that I had to turn sideways and I held my breath and sucked in my tummy as they flew by. Getting the tickets was a breeze! Rather than the long queue and hassle with language issues which I was expecting, we had our tickets in minutes and were back at the Center in half an hour. Yay! Now I just need to get myself to the bus stop by 8:20AM on Sunday and everything will be groovy.
I AM looking forward to Varanasi, however, as it is an AWESOME city with many cool features including the ghats, architecture, and fabulous silks!
I had a long and frustrating day today—but maybe I'm finally maturing. There was a lot of stress about getting papers in and having computer issues, but I managed to hang on to my good mood most of the day. I did have a little flurry of tears over missing my singing lesson again (Wednesday I was ill, as I've said.) It wasn't truly my fault. I guess traffic was really bad today. The heat seems to make people irritable and there have been riots all over the city. I have a great driver and wouldn't even have known if we hadn't been warned to be careful. (So don't worry—I'm perfectly safe!) Yesterday it was students near the center—the day before it was over some encroachments (shops that had been built illegally) which were being torn down. It seems that there are some issues with Hindu-Muslim relations—but that is not exactly new as similar things have cropped up ever since India's independence and the partition of India and Pakistan.
At any rate, there was miscommunication with my host mother who I had planned to go out with and who was to drop me off, and I was also late getting home. When I arrived, she had already gone and it took my driver an hour and a half to come back to pick me up because of the traffic situation. By then I had already called and made apologies to the Mrs. Bhatt, my singing teacher. I was so disappointed—I cried!! I really LOVE singing and I've been practicing a lot and after my initial issues with the teacher I really want to show her that I can sing and that I really DO want to learn!! I feel HORRIBLE for missing another lesson! Especially as I want to ask her if she would accept me formally as a long-term student, if I can arrange to come back and stay.
Trying to learn to take it in stride—but I really wanted to "prove myself" to her and I wonder if she thinks I'm a terrible student and/or not trying. The issue we had at the beginning was mostly miscommunication—I would be lost or I wouldn't know what to sing and when I tried to tell her this she interpreted it as saying "I can't sing." This upset her greatly and she told me " I am the teacher, I will be the one to decide whether or not you can sing. You definitely cannot sing if you do not try. You have lips and tongue and breath—you can do anything! If you want to sing—sing! Otherwise do not come." I know she was actually trying to encourage me, she said this in a very nice tone—but it made me feel miserable! Everytime she would stop the class and single me out (there are only two of us) my voice would just dry up. I became so nervous that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't make a sound! Luckily I hit upon the idea of asking for something specific—if she was singing a part faster than I could manage I would ask her to slow down, if I didn't understand, I would ask her to sing it for me. I've tried this in our last few classes and the improvement has been 10,000%! She seemed to take my improvement as a matter of course, and I was trying not to let this discourage me—after all, I'm not there for her to stroke my ego—I’m there to learn to sing! I need to practice every free minute of our Delhi-Varanasi trip, and try to make up for whatever ground I have lost! I just wish I wasn't so darn shy! It's almost impossible for me to sing if I think someone can hear, until I know the piece perfectly. Working on it.
The "drop offs" are a unique part of SIT's program which I resented at first. Since then, I have realized how useful they are at building self-reliance and confidence and for giving us the skills we will need later to go around on our own. It is too easy to go around hermetically sealed, so to speak, sidestepping much of the hassle—but also much of the "real" India. A "drop off" is just what it sounds like: we're divided into small groups, given an assignment and dropped off to complete it on our own with minimal instruction. The first one was a scavenger hunt on one of the main roads in Jaipur. Newly arrived, this was terrifying. Now though, I go there almost every day for shopping, to get coffee, or to run errands. In fact—I can't wait for the weather to cool down so I can walk around and do some more exploring on my own. The newest challenge was to "get to Delhi by Sunday at 6pm." I was feeling poorly (a touch of food poisoning had me spending quality time worshiping at the throne of the porcelain god) and so missed the lecture—but the task seemed fairly straight forward. Since there is only one train leaving on the day in question, and it leaves at 5am, my group opted for the bus. One of the guys in my group and I went to pick up our bus tickets. The hardest part was crossing the street—I nearly got creamed by a pair of busses passing in opposite directions on each side of me. They were so close that I had to turn sideways and I held my breath and sucked in my tummy as they flew by. Getting the tickets was a breeze! Rather than the long queue and hassle with language issues which I was expecting, we had our tickets in minutes and were back at the Center in half an hour. Yay! Now I just need to get myself to the bus stop by 8:20AM on Sunday and everything will be groovy.
I AM looking forward to Varanasi, however, as it is an AWESOME city with many cool features including the ghats, architecture, and fabulous silks!
I had a long and frustrating day today—but maybe I'm finally maturing. There was a lot of stress about getting papers in and having computer issues, but I managed to hang on to my good mood most of the day. I did have a little flurry of tears over missing my singing lesson again (Wednesday I was ill, as I've said.) It wasn't truly my fault. I guess traffic was really bad today. The heat seems to make people irritable and there have been riots all over the city. I have a great driver and wouldn't even have known if we hadn't been warned to be careful. (So don't worry—I'm perfectly safe!) Yesterday it was students near the center—the day before it was over some encroachments (shops that had been built illegally) which were being torn down. It seems that there are some issues with Hindu-Muslim relations—but that is not exactly new as similar things have cropped up ever since India's independence and the partition of India and Pakistan.
At any rate, there was miscommunication with my host mother who I had planned to go out with and who was to drop me off, and I was also late getting home. When I arrived, she had already gone and it took my driver an hour and a half to come back to pick me up because of the traffic situation. By then I had already called and made apologies to the Mrs. Bhatt, my singing teacher. I was so disappointed—I cried!! I really LOVE singing and I've been practicing a lot and after my initial issues with the teacher I really want to show her that I can sing and that I really DO want to learn!! I feel HORRIBLE for missing another lesson! Especially as I want to ask her if she would accept me formally as a long-term student, if I can arrange to come back and stay.
Trying to learn to take it in stride—but I really wanted to "prove myself" to her and I wonder if she thinks I'm a terrible student and/or not trying. The issue we had at the beginning was mostly miscommunication—I would be lost or I wouldn't know what to sing and when I tried to tell her this she interpreted it as saying "I can't sing." This upset her greatly and she told me " I am the teacher, I will be the one to decide whether or not you can sing. You definitely cannot sing if you do not try. You have lips and tongue and breath—you can do anything! If you want to sing—sing! Otherwise do not come." I know she was actually trying to encourage me, she said this in a very nice tone—but it made me feel miserable! Everytime she would stop the class and single me out (there are only two of us) my voice would just dry up. I became so nervous that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't make a sound! Luckily I hit upon the idea of asking for something specific—if she was singing a part faster than I could manage I would ask her to slow down, if I didn't understand, I would ask her to sing it for me. I've tried this in our last few classes and the improvement has been 10,000%! She seemed to take my improvement as a matter of course, and I was trying not to let this discourage me—after all, I'm not there for her to stroke my ego—I’m there to learn to sing! I need to practice every free minute of our Delhi-Varanasi trip, and try to make up for whatever ground I have lost! I just wish I wasn't so darn shy! It's almost impossible for me to sing if I think someone can hear, until I know the piece perfectly. Working on it.
A Long Day in Paris
We had met a German couple at the Opera, who recommended that we check out the Musee de Chatelet in the Marais district of Paris. I had never heard of it, but we decided to take their recommendation and head over on Sunday.
Marais means swamp, and apparently the area used to be a swamp, before it was drained in the seventeenth century. It then became a fashionable district for the nobility until the rise of Versailles. The brief boom that the area experienced left the neighborhood with a lot of wonderful seventeenth century buildings, one of which houses the Musee de Chatelet—a small museum that tells the history of Paris. Because the museum was smaller than the more famous galleries, it didn’t get as much tourist traffic, and even on a Sunday there was plenty of room to breath. The downside of this, however, meant that there were no signs in English, and a lot of the time I had to guess what it was we were looking at. The museum had a lot of random things in it; my favorite exhibit was a collection of old French shop signs. Apparently merchants in the olden days would advertise by hanging a big picture of whatever it was they were selling. This is all well and good when the wine merchant hangs a bottle of wine outside his shop, but there were some really bizarre ones. My favorite was a surgeon whose sign was a huge bronze hand with a tumor on it.
The museum went through different centuries in Paris. Each century had a room that was decorated as if from the time period. Apparently the French were really into porcelain and print wallpaper. There was also an involved exhibit on the French revolution and the rise of Napoleon, but I could only understand about half of it.
After the museum we stopped into a patisserie for thick slices of quiche and a French dessert (pain au chocolat for me and a fruit tart for Katie, delicious) and then we walked around the district for a bit, which housed the Jewish quarter of Paris. There are no Jews in London, which has been a little strange for me. I’m not exactly a practicing Jew (I didn’t even Bat Mitzvah), but London has made me feel very Jewish because I’m the only one around. I can’t say I felt more at home in the Jewish quarter of Paris, but it was refreshing to see challah in shop windows. I had missed hamintashin (spelling?) season in London, and we tried to find some in the Jewish boulangeries that lined the streets, but we couldn’t find any.
Katie wanted to see a production of La Cantatrice Chauve that was playing, so we hopped the metro to get to the theater to buy tickets for that night. When we got to the theater, however, it was closed, so that was too bad. We spent the rest of the time walking around the area where the theater had been, which took us into French Chinatown. Katie had heard that they have Coco Cola Black in France, a new version of Coke that is coffee flavored. We decided to try and find it to taste, but everywhere we went didn’t have it. We kept seeing signs for it, but every restaurant, tabac, and convenience store that we tried didn’t stock it. After a while we followed the large boulevards out of Chinatown and ended up at the Place de la Republique. Apparently there were riots there while we were staying in Paris, but I didn’t hear about that until after we had left.
We decided to consult the guidebook, and realized that the Musee D’orsay wouldn’t be opened on Monday. We rushed to the metro to try and get there, but we arrived just as it was closing.
It was too bad to miss the museum, but the metro ride had taken us to the oh so artsy left bank (the most elegant neighborhood in Paris, according to the guidebook). We walked around some more, and ended up by the Sorbonne, which had armed guards stationed on every corner. Probably because of the riots and civil unrest that we didn’t see, but I can’t be sure. We went up to the Pantheon, which is a large church on the top of the hill in the Latin Quarter. They were having a daffodil festival there in honor of Marie Curie. There was a parade and people on stilts and unicycles, all carrying daffodils. The Pantheon itself was covered in Daffodils, and there were even snowmen with daffodil faces. We each bought a daffodil, which they were selling to benefit Cancer research.
We decided to go out for a fancy French meal that night, and settled on a Brasserie that our guidebook recommended called Le Petit Prince. It wasn’t wildly expensive, and the food was amazing, although I can’t be sure exactly what I ordered because the menu was in French. We both went for things that we’d never tried before. Katie had a Camembert crème brulee, which was amazing, and I tasted rabbit for the first time. I actually really liked it; I just had to think of it as a mystery meat called lapin rather than an innocent bunny. Katie had veal for an entrée as well, so the meal was not very PETA friendly, though very very tasty.
Because we couldn’t go see a show that night we decided to do the Eifel Tower instead. The tower looked gorgeous, lit up in the night (it’s actually quite ugly when you see it in the day time) but going up it made me uncomfortable. I don’t mind crowds, and I’m not afraid of heights. I think it was just my tourism anxiety kicking in. I didn’t hear French spoken once around the tower. The view from the top really was excellent though, and they don’t call Paris the city of lights for nothing. I kept thinking how amazing it must have been to see that thing when it was first built. It’s still amazing in 2006, but in 1889 it would have seemed like a miracle that anything could be so tall.
That night we were exhausted from all the walking around and heavy eating. We were planning to get dessert after the tower (we had been too full at the restaurant, and it’s a shame to miss a day of dessert in Paris) but in the end we just went back and went to sleep. We missed so many things that day—the play, the Museum, but we had seen so much of Paris that it was worth it. I’m glad we got to see so much by foot because it gave me a feel for how the city was laid out. That night I conked out as soon as my head touched the pillow, it had been a long day.
Marais means swamp, and apparently the area used to be a swamp, before it was drained in the seventeenth century. It then became a fashionable district for the nobility until the rise of Versailles. The brief boom that the area experienced left the neighborhood with a lot of wonderful seventeenth century buildings, one of which houses the Musee de Chatelet—a small museum that tells the history of Paris. Because the museum was smaller than the more famous galleries, it didn’t get as much tourist traffic, and even on a Sunday there was plenty of room to breath. The downside of this, however, meant that there were no signs in English, and a lot of the time I had to guess what it was we were looking at. The museum had a lot of random things in it; my favorite exhibit was a collection of old French shop signs. Apparently merchants in the olden days would advertise by hanging a big picture of whatever it was they were selling. This is all well and good when the wine merchant hangs a bottle of wine outside his shop, but there were some really bizarre ones. My favorite was a surgeon whose sign was a huge bronze hand with a tumor on it.
The museum went through different centuries in Paris. Each century had a room that was decorated as if from the time period. Apparently the French were really into porcelain and print wallpaper. There was also an involved exhibit on the French revolution and the rise of Napoleon, but I could only understand about half of it.
After the museum we stopped into a patisserie for thick slices of quiche and a French dessert (pain au chocolat for me and a fruit tart for Katie, delicious) and then we walked around the district for a bit, which housed the Jewish quarter of Paris. There are no Jews in London, which has been a little strange for me. I’m not exactly a practicing Jew (I didn’t even Bat Mitzvah), but London has made me feel very Jewish because I’m the only one around. I can’t say I felt more at home in the Jewish quarter of Paris, but it was refreshing to see challah in shop windows. I had missed hamintashin (spelling?) season in London, and we tried to find some in the Jewish boulangeries that lined the streets, but we couldn’t find any.
Katie wanted to see a production of La Cantatrice Chauve that was playing, so we hopped the metro to get to the theater to buy tickets for that night. When we got to the theater, however, it was closed, so that was too bad. We spent the rest of the time walking around the area where the theater had been, which took us into French Chinatown. Katie had heard that they have Coco Cola Black in France, a new version of Coke that is coffee flavored. We decided to try and find it to taste, but everywhere we went didn’t have it. We kept seeing signs for it, but every restaurant, tabac, and convenience store that we tried didn’t stock it. After a while we followed the large boulevards out of Chinatown and ended up at the Place de la Republique. Apparently there were riots there while we were staying in Paris, but I didn’t hear about that until after we had left.
We decided to consult the guidebook, and realized that the Musee D’orsay wouldn’t be opened on Monday. We rushed to the metro to try and get there, but we arrived just as it was closing.
It was too bad to miss the museum, but the metro ride had taken us to the oh so artsy left bank (the most elegant neighborhood in Paris, according to the guidebook). We walked around some more, and ended up by the Sorbonne, which had armed guards stationed on every corner. Probably because of the riots and civil unrest that we didn’t see, but I can’t be sure. We went up to the Pantheon, which is a large church on the top of the hill in the Latin Quarter. They were having a daffodil festival there in honor of Marie Curie. There was a parade and people on stilts and unicycles, all carrying daffodils. The Pantheon itself was covered in Daffodils, and there were even snowmen with daffodil faces. We each bought a daffodil, which they were selling to benefit Cancer research. We decided to go out for a fancy French meal that night, and settled on a Brasserie that our guidebook recommended called Le Petit Prince. It wasn’t wildly expensive, and the food was amazing, although I can’t be sure exactly what I ordered because the menu was in French. We both went for things that we’d never tried before. Katie had a Camembert crème brulee, which was amazing, and I tasted rabbit for the first time. I actually really liked it; I just had to think of it as a mystery meat called lapin rather than an innocent bunny. Katie had veal for an entrée as well, so the meal was not very PETA friendly, though very very tasty.
Because we couldn’t go see a show that night we decided to do the Eifel Tower instead. The tower looked gorgeous, lit up in the night (it’s actually quite ugly when you see it in the day time) but going up it made me uncomfortable. I don’t mind crowds, and I’m not afraid of heights. I think it was just my tourism anxiety kicking in. I didn’t hear French spoken once around the tower. The view from the top really was excellent though, and they don’t call Paris the city of lights for nothing. I kept thinking how amazing it must have been to see that thing when it was first built. It’s still amazing in 2006, but in 1889 it would have seemed like a miracle that anything could be so tall.
That night we were exhausted from all the walking around and heavy eating. We were planning to get dessert after the tower (we had been too full at the restaurant, and it’s a shame to miss a day of dessert in Paris) but in the end we just went back and went to sleep. We missed so many things that day—the play, the Museum, but we had seen so much of Paris that it was worth it. I’m glad we got to see so much by foot because it gave me a feel for how the city was laid out. That night I conked out as soon as my head touched the pillow, it had been a long day.
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