Dear Gram & Auntie Carol,

This post is dedicated to you. Thanks for keeping after me to keep in touch and share my travels. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed sharing my crazy adventures 3 years ago, and how fun it was to look through the photos and stories in this journal after returning and feeling like it was so far away.

This Summer Cam was gracious enough to travel to a country he'd already visited, instead of one still on his bucket list, because he could tell I really wanted to go back and visit friends in Thailand.

Our first stop was Bangkok, where we took a couple of days to get on our feet and adjust to the 12 hour time difference on familiar territory. We explored a couple of places I'd never been and a couple Cam hadn't seen, and we went back to a few old favorite haunts.

After a couple of days in Bkk we caught an Air France flight to Phnom Penh. They have cheep flights from Paris to Cambodia, with a stop in Bangkok to pick up and drop off a few folks, primarily because as a former occupied French territory, French travelers have access to French amenities and French speakers in Cambodia which makes traveling there more comfortable. We stayed with my friends and former Peace Corps Thailand volunteers, Bob and Carol. Carol now works for Peace Corps Cambodia as their Program Training Officer. We spent the night and caught a van out to Siem Reip the next day, and then came back to Phnom Penh after about 3 days and traveled around the capitol a bit more before heading back to Thailand.

Here are photos from Bangkok and Phnom Penh. More photos to follow as I get them uploaded.

Phnom Penh


Bangkok

So I got a Mac Book back in May. Grandmother, Grandfather and My awesome uncle John all pitched in to buy it for me.
Recently (3 days before we planned to move) the hard drive of that Mac just died. Went totally kaput! No boot up, no nothing, dead. It was about 3 months out of the store and kaput. Yes, apparently this can happen to a Mac. I didn't think it could either, and so I hadn't backed anything up...
Fortunately it was still under warranty, so they were able to give me a new hard drive free of charge, which is now installed and up and running, and fortunately Cam's dad had just purchased Mac hard drive recovery software because his Mac had done the same thing, so we were able to save most of the data that was new.

So today I am beginning the process of putting my mac back in order.

The moral of the story kiddies is always, always back up your hard drive, even if you have a superior piece of equipment like a shiny new Mac book. All hard drives fail. Rule of nature. None are immune. Back it up!

Cam and I made a trip out to Chicago earlier this summer to hunt for an apartment, and now we're packed up and heading out there with the last of our stuff crammed in the car. The apartment is really nice. It's perfect for what we need. It's close to UC, all the bus and train lines and is in a really cool part of Hyde Park with fun diners and pancake places and Mexican and Jamaican restaurants and a limited Farmer's Market every Thursday (during the summer). It has pretty hardwood floors, big windows, great lighting, a reasonably sized kitchen (small counters, but big pantry), and hopefully it won't be freezing in the winter. We also have a door that used to lead to a fire escape that now goes nowhere -- it makes for a great window.









So this is where I'll be living!

I am finished with Peace Corps...
I am finished with world traveling for a while...
And I have just finished putting the photos from Japan back in chronological order. (and uploading a selection of them)

Due to the computer fiasco(s) I encountered on my trip, I was not always able to remove photos from my camera and relocate them to my external hard drive before starting a new day. This lead to deleting unnecessary photos in the middle of the day to make room for new ones, a process which with my camera, puts the new photos taken into the name of the ones that have just been deleted, shuffling my photos into chaos...

And not every computer I got on was a PC... so my usual method of using the camera wizard to name my photos didn't work... resulting in inconsistent naming.

Anyway.. I renamed and organized 784 photos and movies this week, and that's just Japan. I'll start on Korea later, and the journaling of all 3 after I've reorganized and uploaded the images. For now it's break time.



PS. I don't feel like making links today. You can browse the photos at Photobucket

I am a little burnt out on traveling and journaling about my traveling... today is actually a catch up on the pages in my journal set aside for Korea day. But I'm having fun hanging out with my friend Paige. She shared a video with me that sort of sums up the life of an English teacher in Asia... or at least their life outside the classroom (or in the case of Thai English teachers, when they get to Bkk) that I wanted to share:



My first night here with my friend, we went out for Korean food and then met up with a group of her friends who were going out to try out a new wine bar down town. We spent the evening on the roof terrace of the wine bar drinking champaign that was 50% off for the opening, and eating chips with salsa... Now maybe that sounds all very hum drum to you, but I haven't had chips and salsa for a very long time. :)

I was going to finish of posting about Japan today so that I'd go into Korea on Monday with all of Japan already recorded, but the computer I'm working with clearly has a virus on it. So rather than expose my camera as well as my already exposed external hard drive, I'm not going to download the rest of my photos until I find a way to clean my external hard drive. Oh how I do miss the anti-virus soft ware on the Peace Corps computers... It'd sort this problem right out... Oh well, that's the curse of public computers.

I visited Allison 2 times this trip. She had to leave in the middle for the annual Jr. High field trip.
These are some photos from my first visit:



I arrived, we went to her Tuesday night adult English class. The next day we had the local specialty, Udon noodles and I went to the beach. We had dinner with Alsn's friend Sam at one of their favorite local restaurants. The next day Alsn made another authentic Japanese meal for me, and the following day I headed to Tokyo.

It was raining in the morning. I wasn't going to go out. I was going to stay in and catch up on my journal and post cards. But then two atractive French men talked me into going to temples with them. It continued to rain.

Today was the day I had to check out of my hostel, because there wasn't space available after that date when I made my initial booking. NOTE: if going to Kyoto during Cherry blossom season, book early, and stay at the Gojo guest house annex. Nice place!
The internet turned up one place that wasn't compleatly full, so I switched. It wasn't full for a reason... It's far from everything, and it's a little shady.. for Japan that is. Compared to some of the places I stayed in Thailand the Orange inn was a 4 star spot! I checked in for 2 more nights, and earned an extra couple of days.
The guest house was on the bus rout to Kinkakuji, or the Golden Pavilion, so I decided to head up that way. Much better spot than the silver pavilion! You actually got to see what you paid for. And for poor people like me they even had a ramen vending machine. Mmmm hot lunch for 2$...


After that I went across town to see if I could find the Philosopher's path. I found people, temples, and cherry blossoms, but I'm not sure if any of them was on said path. Oh well, it was pretty.

Having encountered some difficulties with the just wander plan of sight seeing, I decided to plan this day. I said "I want to see Fushimi-inari and the thousands of tori gates, so that is what I shall do! How do I do that...?" Take the train to the Inari station, get off and walk. Sounded easy enough, but first I had to get to the train station.( more...Collapse )
Photos: