Studying in Guanajuato

To be honest I've just been flat out avoiding writing anything for the last few weeks. I've been going to internet cafe's daily and just really haven't felt like writing anything. It's not that I haven't been having a blast studying spanish (I have) its more that it doesn't really lend itself to an interesting retelling. Instead of detailing my daily studies lets talk about Mexican life in Guanajuato.

Guanajuato is a lovely little colonial city in the heart of Mexico. At one stage it was producing 30 % of the worlds silver and that wealth is a key factor in how Guanajuato appears presently. Thanks to the past wealth of the city there are a number of lovely old ex-hacienda's on the city's outskirts. There is also 3 beautiful old theatres and a large number of churches.

The city centre lies in the bottom of a valley and as a result of this confinement much of the city is walking room only with only 3 major roads which wind their way through it. This turns out to be the best part of the city lifestyle though as the walking areas lend themselves much more to a European style ambiance than you would get in many other Mexican cities.

The classes I'm taking have been fantastic and my understanding of Spanish has increased incredibly unfortunately my vocabulary needs to catch up a bit with my understanding of the language. Funnily enough I understand more spanish grammar than English now. I'm also taking cooking classes every day which is both enjoyable and a good chance to practice some spanish. I've gathered up some good recipes than I look forward to messing up when I return.

Currently I've set my return date for the 23rd of February and I don't see that changing. Before then I hope to spend a nice relaxing week in Guadalajara and then do some travel through the southern colonial region and beach regions around Acapulco and Puerto Escondido.

Mexico finally

Well I'm back finally and it feels great to be travelling through Mexico again. The flight here was terrible. I decided to get the cheapest flight possible: Delta with 2 stopovers totalling 12 hours for a nominally 7 hour flight. Of course one of the stopovers being Salt Lake City meant that weather interruptions were always going to be on the cards. I didn't anticipate that it would set me back 12 hours in total though. The life lesson is that you always get exactly what you paid for. Thankfully in this one case I apparently paid for a free business class upgrade and a cheque for 200 usd. Yes, the customer is always right.

Finally I'm here, marginally less indebted to Mr Visa, and with the party spirit(s) in my stomach I'm ready to sample the best that Mexico has to offer. After a couple days catching up on sleep and just generally hanging out with Angel we went to our second party for the cutting of the Rosca de Reyes. Without going into too much detail a rosca is a sweet bread in round donut like form (but magnified). The Rosca de Reyes is a rosca with mini figurines of baby jesus baked in. The tradition being that if you get a baby jesus in the piece you cut you are obliged to throw a party on the 2nd of February. I found 3 reyes (jesuses) over the weekend. After one of the parties we went out to a club. At the club we ordered a bottle of Bacardi in order to garner ourselves a table. It turns out that Bacardi does in fact come in 3 litre varieties. Viva la Mexico indeed.

My cultural exchange continues in Zacatecas where I've reunited with Martijn from the Netherlands. Good times are bound to ensue.

Whistler, Vancouver and Debating en masse.

Apologies for not posting sooner. Whistler was hit with a huge storm the night before I arrived which both dumped 50cm of fresh snow and also cut the only fiber-optic cable going to town, hence no internet for most of my stay.

I had a very enjoyable stay in Whistler. The fresh snow meant that my first few days of snowboarding were well cushioned days. My many mistakes weren't as painful as they could've been and I was immediately disheartened. I think I progressed quickly up to the point which I felt comfortable going down the intermediate slopes. The latter days were thus more enjoyable untill my final day when the icier conditions caused me a bit more pain due to over-confidence conspiring with the snow to cause me to make some painful mistakes.

The village itself is nice (if a tad expensive for a humble backpacker) but thankfully the hostel was so far from and so inconveniently serviced by busses that I didn't spend too much time there. Of course the inconvenience worked against me every night that I wanted to go to the pub in town.

After a week of lakeside-cabin living (inconvenient location doesn't mean it wasn't picturesque) I headed back down to Vancouver to meet up with the rest of the debating society for a very UQDS Xmas. Good times were had by all involved and we bonded (no leather involved). I won't go into too much detail but maybe some stats will fill in the gaps.

1. ~900 dollars (between 17 people)
2. ~100 beers
3. ~40 potatoes ( I peeled the last 20 with a knife so that number is fairly accurate)
4. 2 glazed roasted hams
5. 1 Roast Turkey
6. 7 people in a 2 bedroom apartment

Good times were had, turkey was consumed and belts were loosened. What more could you want for Xmas?

The tournament itself had its highs and lows. Individually the best part of the tournament for me was the satisfaction that I not only improved consistently througout the tournament but that I didn't feel we could have performed too much better than we had. The contingent as a whole did better than any UQ contingent in history. We had 2 teams, UQ A - The flagship and UQ B - Gangsta B'ts, reach the final 32 teams (called the "break"). Both teams then progressed into the quarter-final stages. UQ B was unlucky to dip out at this stage. UQ A surpassed all hopes when they progressed through to the grand final.

The lowest point was when UQ A didn't win the final. Individually though my dissapointment of the tournament was the growing realization that germinated in the first 3 days. I realised that adjudication is fairly random. Any given adjudicator, good or bad, sees a debate in an entirely subjective manner. The best thing I think I can do is treat debating as fun and valuable as of itself without needing any particular reinforcement of my excellence (who can deny it anyway ;) .

Sorry for the long post. Haven't had enough free time to "internet" beyond just checking emails and doing banking. Hope everyone had a very merry xmas and a very memorable new years.

On the road again

Well I'm travelling again. It's been almost a year since my last updates and really I can't condense the insanity of those months. I've been a busy beaver at school, work and play. I was always fairly sure that I would travel again for my last summer and the question was always what shape that trip would take. In the end it was my return to debating that shaped it more than anything else as the opportunity to compete at the University Debating championships was too attractive and outshone my previous desire to spend 3 months lost in South America.

So my current travel plans are basically to spend 5 days in LA (already completed), 1 week skiing in Whistler (en route). Xmas with the UQ debating society and then the competition begins on the 27th of December and finishes on the 4th of January. At that stage I'll go down to Guadalajara (again!) and hang out with Angel to learn spanish for a month or so. Then I'll do a couple of small trips in Mexico and possibly visit Cuba/Jamaica before heading home.

That's the plan and it's in a bit more detail here () . I'll try keep that up to date with my super exciting plans.

Now a quick run down on my time in Los Angeles. I spent my first day just trying extremely hard to stay awake long enough that I kicked jet lag on the first day. For the inexperienced out there the trick when doing the Pacific crossing is to charge through the first day and reset your internal clock that first night by going to sleep at 9 or 10pm. I of course stayed up till midnight drinking. The next day I took spur of the moment decision to go to Magic Mountain Rollercoaster Park. It turned out to be a fantastic choice. There were barely any queues at all and I ended up spending the entire day going on my favourite rides. The only moment of stupidity was when a group of us decided to go on the rapids ride. Of course no one made the logical connection that going on a "water attraction" in "winter" (or what passes for it in Southern California) probably wan't the brightest idea we'd ever had. Thankfully tequila is an excellent way to ward off the common cold.

Day 3 (timezones??) was my token trip to Disneyland. Unfortunately having been only a year ago I think I've finally my childhood love of the place. I had a pretty good time in the end but I realized that I only really enjoy about 5 of the rides there. I paid an extra 30 bucks to get into the new California Adventure park however there are only really about 3 rides there that look worthwhile and 1 of them was shut down for the season.

Day 4 I spent shopping on the "Melrose Strip". I probably couldn't afford half of what I purchased but shopping is something I do rarely and in short enthusiastic spurts so I generally ride the wave when It hits me. I purchased some great shoes (having come with the intention of doing that anyway) and some nice dressy shirts. All in all I probably got ripped off but I had the satisfaction of not paying the marked price on anything thanks to my sensation bargaining tactic of: "Durrhhh I am the poor travellar", suckers!

Day 5. Writeoff. When you wake up at 2pm drunk you realize that perhaps you've overdone it the night before. Thankfully I still had enough time to buy the last few things I wanted and did a good walking tour up to Runyon Canyon park which offers a beautiful view of downtown LA.

I'm not sure that I'll be able to post pictures of my trip as I go. Internet Kiosk technology has apparently gone backwards since I last used it and even thinking of hooking up a camera to the computer is unthinkable. Terrorists!

If I get a chance I'll post my best pics (to be fair I'm not really taking very many anyways). Likewise with the updates to the site blog.

Merry Xmas one and all.

Well obviously I didn't even begin to see Eastern Europe in that time but I did manage to fit in Budapest, Vienna and Krakow. I've lost to the energy to give much more detail other than to say that all three were amazing and well worth any visit to Europe. Budapest was a mix of east and west with some great buildings and very relaxing spas. Vienna was imperial with its wide boulevards and imposing marble buildings. Krakow was possibly the prettiest city I have seen in Europe and because it is a fiarly small city it is very easy to simply wander about and take it all in, Auschwitz is understandably depressing though.

I celebrated my Birthday in style in Krakow and managed to drink enough that even the exchange rate didn't save me from overspending. I was quite thankful to come to bonny scotland and be kept from overdrinking by the horrendous exchange rate. After a couple of days drying out in Edinburgh I headed up to through the highlands and to the Isle of Skye which is a must see for anyone visiting Scotland. After a couple of nights there and at Fort William, in the shadow of the UK's biggest mountain Ben Nevis, I headed back to Edinburgh to finish up the unvisited Edinburgh castle and now I am spending Xmas in Glasgow with Jenna's family.

Merry Xmas

Who knew winter was so cold?

After Spain I headed up to Stockholm for a reunion of Vancouverites. I have never before really understood why people generally dont travel in winter but after seeing the sun set at 3:30pm and the temperature stayed just above 0deg for the entire time in Stockholm it all started to make sense. I wont go into too much detail about Stockholm largely because most of my time was spent riding out hangovers in bed or cosy cafes, here are some very general impressions though: the Swedes have been participating in some brilliant selective breeding program with beauty being the main criteria; during winter the gym is the place to be because I didnt see anyone who didnt have a perfectly toned ass; having only like 6 hours of sunlight a day really sucks. These things considered I have concluded that Sweden is in fact the fabled garden of Eden but the conspirators of this plot to hide paradise cleverly hid it from the world by making it freaking cold and adding a Sw to the name maybe it is all an elaborate test to see just how often we will keep sinning. Closing remarks: sweden is probably the place to be in Summer when people are wearing fewer clothes. After the weekend was over I went back with Martijn and Brigitte to the Netherlands where I stayed with Martijn in Rotterdam for 10 days. Again I wont go into huge detail (this keyboard is frustrating enter key doesnt work) but suffice to say that all my previous held stereotypes of the Netherlands were confirmed: there are more bikes than people, everything is flat, people dont actually where wooden shoes....all the time, Amsterdam is a den of drugs and prostitution. Well actually maybe not, people were wearing clogs all the time. Seriously though my lack of ability to ride a bike (i actually forgot!) turned out to be rather inconvenient but we powered on and while my disability amused every single Dutch person I met they were kind enough to not laugh in my face..much. The best word I think to sum up the Netherlands is "urban", I dont think there was a single time I looked out the train window and didnt see some sign of human habitation. Netherless the country itself has retained a lot of the charm and is lush and green (where it isnt covered in water). Windmills werent quite omnipresent but so much of the urbanisation was only made possible by the harnessing of windmills to pump water. The smaller towns like Leiden and Delft are charming and quintessential dutch villages but Rotterdam (ruined in WWII) is modern and bustling. Amsterdam was charming with its canals and plazas and the museums: van gogh, the ann frank house and the rejksmuseum (sorry) were great. Currently in Budapest and have another 10days to see Vienna, Krakow and Warsaw. After that it is bonny Scotland for me. I swear I would have made paragraphs if I could´ve

The rain in Spain.

It is difficult not to love Spain. No matter how hard you try the country always manages to put a smile on your face and a glass of sangria in your hand. It isn't hard to understand why, this is country of happy, beautiful and cultured people.

I started my adventure in Barcelona which has a well deserved reputation as being a fantastic party town. There is some amazing architecture by Guadi including the Sacred Family church which when (if) finished will be spectactular. I stayed in the Barri Gothic which is the old neighborhood. Its narrow streets and alleys enclosed with 5 and 6 storey apartment blocks gives it a dark atmostphere which is perfect for partying, which is what goes on there all day long. The neighborhood is full of restaurants and bars and so the party atmosphere is fantastic.

My next destination was Granada right down the bottom of Spain. It is a small city but has the amazing Alhambra fortified palace which is artefact of the area's moorish period. I think I took something like 200 pictures in the 4 hours I spent there which almost every room or part of a garden spectactular and different from anything else you see in Europe. My second day in Granada was spent wandering around the old Moorish neighborhood accross from the palace. It is filled with white stone houses with plush gardens sitting on cobblestone roads that wind up and down the hill accross from the Alhambra. The neighborhood, called the Alcaicin offers amazing views of the Alhambra and the town below as well.

Three hours on the train and I found myself in Sevilla (Seville in English) where I did the quickest whirlwind tour possible. On the day that I arrived I hurried into town and visited the HUGE gothic cathedral and climbed it's belltower which is actually an old muslim minaret. I then wandered around the gardens and palaces area of Sevilla. While impressive I didn't find as interesting as it is in the heart of the city and a few very major roads go straight through it. What was impressive was the Alcazar, a moorish palace and gardens. The palace itself wasn't quite as amazing as the one in Granada but the gardens surrounding it were just amazing. The moorish gardens use water in a very interesting way with water often flowing in a direct line all the way through the garden (effectively making a little canal) and then have pavement covering it in most places with frequent bubblers to make the water accessable.

I only stayed overnight in Sevilla because though the city did offer a few more interesting sights that might have held me for an extra day or so it wasn't interesting enough to stop me moving on to Madrid! A seven hour bus trip later and I was there, the capital, the party town. I ended up spending 5 days in Madrid, 2 more than I had planned, thanks to another battle with my stomach in which I lost horribly and ended up too dehydrated to go by the gatorade I sorely needed. On the happy side I managed to see everything I wanted to in Madrid before the debacle. The Prado museum was interesting due to the large number of Spanish and Belgian artists represented. The Palacio Real was fantastic and while not as amazing as say Versailles it was easily classier. There are a number of large parks in Madrid and I spent a lot of time just wandering around them and absorbing their spanishness (I had sore feet).

After recovering my strength it was time to head back to the best city of them all: Barcelona. While the south was different and interesting and Madrid was bustly and cultural nothing beats Barcelona for atmosphere. This is the meeting place of the world. Backpackers from all over the world are packing it's streets and adding to the atmosphere of ease and spark of vitality. The only sad part is that I won't be in town for the 19th of November to watch the party if Barcelona beats Real Madrid.

Next Stop Stockholm.