Vilnius and castles

inside the president's palace
inside one of the church's we visited

kaylin from Mt. Vernon, Peter from Wheaton, Zach from Mt. Zernon, and myself outside the castle.
the castle
inside a church
denny and I outside of the president's palace
old woman on the street.
Today was pretty sweet. After another breakfast of cheese, meat, and bread, and a devotion lead by Dr. LaFrance (talked about integrity and mentioned various examples in the Bible), we headed off the President's Palace (he doesn't work there, but lives there). We had a guided tour and learned about some of the ways the current president has impacted Lithuania's foreign policy. After that we took a brief tour through two cathedrals then went to Trakai castle, which was pretty sweet. After lunch (chicken and rice) we had a 3+hr drive to Klaipeda, where we currently are. it is almost 10pm but it literally looks like it could be 7pm out (it isn't really dark at all). Unfortunately the weather has been pretty cold and raining the last few days but it makes sense because we just found out that Lithuania means "rain".

We are going to be here in Klaipeda for the next few days and I am in a quad rooming with a guy from Mt. Vernon Nazarene in Ohio, another guy from Biola, and a guy from Eastern Mennonite University in Virgina. All pretty cool dudes.

Since this is a university campus, they do have a bball court and a weight room, and although they are closed tonight, looking forward to being active the next few days. alright, i'm off, got to go read some economics, oh so exciting. later.

Long days and long nights

a ketchup bottle. The language here is totally different than anything I've heard before
some of the cells where the KGB held prisoners (up till the 1980's i believe)
some blacks swams out on a lake right outside where we had dinner. can't say I had ever seen black swans before tonight.
ceiling of the overhang of a cathedral.

My first blog post in Europe. How cool is this. My 10 week trip began on Wednesday, May 21st. I left LAX around noon, got into Detroit, flew the whole night to London, spent 7 hours in the airport, and arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania around 10pm on the 22nd. Lots and lots of traveling and hardly any sleep. Luckily I had aisle seats on the 3 flights but still, no sleep. One thing I can say is that London is way too expensive (1 pound is about 2 dollars). For lunch I went to burger king and got a meal and it was a little over 12 bucks for a super small burger, a large fry and a soda (no free refills). if london is in your future travel plans, bring lots of extra cash.

There is 42 of us in this group and it is a pretty good representation of schools and states across the country. There is about 10 of us from California which is awesome. I am finally not the odd man out. And while I am still the tallest, there is about 5-6 other guys ranging from 6ft to six four, so that is cool (although one girl is 5ft so she evens us out). we will have different roommates everywhere we stay, but right now I am with John Crowell, pretty cool dude who is from phoenix, but goes to Biola in Southern California.

Our schedule has been pretty full since we got here. Today we had breakfast at 7:30am, had devotions and orientation after until 10am, we toured a museum that was an old KGB office/prison/execution chamber/etc, from there we had lunch (had pizza!), after that we went to the U.S. embassy here in Vilnius (really enjoyed this part. even though I almost feel asleep a couple of times, the lady was super interesting. she is a foreign service officer and definitely got me thinking out that line of work). after that we had class for 2 hours on comparative economic systems and our first test in that class is wednesday (told ya it wasn't all fun and games). from there we had dinner at a restaurant that reminded me of a hunting lodge. we got back to the hotel around 9:30pm and some of us decided to walk around town and I just got back from that (its about 10:30pm).

Tomorrow we visit the President's Palace, take a tour of Trakai castle, and take a bus to Klaipeda where will we stay at a Christian college there until thursday. Sunday is chruch, monday is a lot of classes and a corporate visit to Jazaki Wiring, tuesday is classes and a visit to a Free Economic Zone, Wed = classes, thursday we depart for Riga, Latvia to catch our 14+hr overnight train to Moscow.

Not sure on the availability of internet access, but will update this as much as possible.

So far, this has been awesome. Cool country, my group is pretty sweet, and the food has been good. Besides not much sleep, no complaints.

i'm in pennsylvania . . . aka i'm cold

so. now that my crazy awesome adventures is latin america have come to an end, I am currently back at messiah college freezing my behind off. I am studying statistics this january, and will be taking 15 credits when the spring semester starts in february. since being back at school, i've been keeping busy by studying, class, working out, reading, hanging with friends, and readjusting to life at college. been running and playing basketball with the tennis team a decent amount, and lifting weights alot on my own. we have a new tennis coach this year and he is working us pretty good during our once a week practice with him at some indoor tennis courts off campus. i'm actually have practice in about an hour.

here is a link to photos from Christmas and the trip Alex, nick and I took up to Yosemite. we had a blast hiking around and actually spending time together (which doesn't happen much these days).
http://messiah.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035754&l=aae3d&id=55303386

every other year messiah college hosts business students from the Netherlands for a month and requests that messiah students host them in their room/apartment, so we have a dutch student living with us currently. and for part of the time in america, they visit different cities/parks/etc. and they had a trip to philly last saturday, which me and my roommate, denny, went on with the dutch students. so that is what the pictures are of that i posted. denny also studied in china so we took it upon ourselves to visit chinatown within philly and eat some good chinese food. denny is amazing at chinese so i made sure to have him order.

alright. will try and post every once and awhile for those who are reading this. life isn't quite as exciting as it was last semester but enjoying myself none the less.

last day of argentina

ahhhh. only a few more hours left in buenos aires. amber, jud, and geoffrey left this morning to go on to their own adventures (brazil, bariloche (southern argentina), and somewhere else, respectively), so we had some sad goodbyes last night and this morning. just finished packing, my suitcase is huge, and just killing time to when we meet up at 6:30pm to go to the airport. i believe our flight leaves around 9ish, arriving in houston texas at 6:15am, and getting home in atascadero much much later that night (houston to denver to LA to home).

would love to describe what this semester has meant to me, but its hard. i have made some amazing friendships and experienced and seen more in the last 3.5 months than the majority of people see in their lifetimes. its sad to have this time in my life end, but i feel blessed to have had the opportunity to have traveled, lived, and studied in latin america.

this past week has been eventful. had a spanish final on wednesday and turned in 5 essays (all in spanish) to my politics class. pretty sure i got an A in both classes so excited about that. last few nights have been spent just spending time with my friends from this program. its been great. but i'm tired, because this morning i got home at 4, saturday morning at 6, friday morning at 6, and thursday morning relatively late also. not much sleep, but well worth it. so many good memories.

well, this should be it for my blog. for those of you who stuck with me through this trip, hope my posts have been informative and you enjoyed the pictures. i'll probably start blogging again when i go to europe this summer, so i'll make sure your in the know when the time comes.

for friends and family in california, see you tomorrow. for my east coast peeps, i'll be in PA on the 7th (or 8th, can't remember), but classes start jan.9th so i'll for sure see you then.

chau.

photos

so i forgot to mention in my last blog but me, camilo, and jessica went to this place called tierra santo (holy land). it is a theme park on the outskirts of buenos aires that is biblically themed. really really weird. we took a ton of weird crazy photos (as you will see), it almost felt wrong, but it was just too weird.

me and jesus.
i obviously fit really well

it kept getting wierder. they had ghandi's house, martin luther's house, and mother teresa's also.


giant jesus. with giant buggers.

the holy land

we couldn't help ourselves

pics from uruguay

one more week. crazy.

well, it's sunday afternoon and i've got one week left in latin america. definitely going to miss it. looking back on every country, i think mexico was my favorite. everything about it was awesome. the food, the people, the music, salsa, the small town feel of guanajuato, it was all great. i loved peru but lima was pretty ugly. argentina has been fun but it doesn't feel at all like latin america. everyone else is white like me just they speak better spanish. but the steak and empanadas here are amazing.

last night my house mom cooked up some carne asade de la parillla. meat from the grill. i think it was the reddest meat i've ever eaten but it was so good. i had so many pieces. but i usually don't feel that bad eating a ton at dinner because breakfast consists of two pieces of toast and some fruit, and lunch i'm on my own so it usually consists of a $2 sandwhich in the university cafeteria. breakfast is at 9am, lunch at 1pm, and dinner around 9pm.

plans for this week. only three days left of school (mon, tues, wed) but they are going to be busy. we have a written/oral final in spanish and my politics class i have to write 6 essays (finished one, it was about U.S. intervention in the mexican revolution from 1910-1917) and my other ones involve such topics as the history of the formation of states (countries) in latin america, 4 interpretationes of classic populismo and how it relates to neopopulism (must have fazed out during this part of class, don't remember any of it, but you've got to the love the internet, comes in handy for times like these), and the effects of terrorism on the governments of latin america. yeah!!!! but once wednesday is over, i have no plans until my flight leaves sunday night. i think the rest of my group plans on being drunk those four days and not sleeping, but i plan on just not sleeping. should be fun. i'll be nice and ready for the 10ish hour flight from buenos aires to texas.

in case any of you are wondering, here are the classes i will be taking this spring at messiah:
applied statistics for management, decision making tools for management, business law, an honors class called personal narrative, pluralist world (sounds like a girly touchy feely class to me, but i have to take it to graduate, so let the sharing of emotions begin), music through piano (basic general education music credit, it was this or music through recorder) and judaism (which i'm really looking forward to, find out some information about the jewish history on my mother's side).

one more week. will try and steal some more photos from my friends to share with all y'all.

this is during our 3hr boat trip from uruguay to argentina. if you hadn't noticed, it spells "hi"


http://messiah.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034213&l=03029&id=55303386
another photo album with photos from all three countries