Fun Facts!

Posted on October 11, 2011 by bzavala

Yes, it is that time for a few random facts about life in Senegal. These are just little tidbits about everyday life, or just fun occurrences that have happened to either myself or someone around me, enjoy! Warning: Some of these may be either disturbing to some, or just a little gross, I apologize in advance, but really, life is messy everywhere! Also, this has a lot about food, you can tell what I think about most here!

-Rice is eaten at just about every meal, or else some large quantity of carby substance. For example, for dinner last night my plate had a small portion of beef stew with onions, a large portion of rice, a side of fries and a large chunk of a baguette. Today for lunch I had a whole plate of rice with some beef and onions on top. See where I’m going with this? RICE!

-Juice here is much more satisfying here then it is in the U.S. There is nothing like getting a cold gazelle (these little carbonated drinks that come in apple, orange, grapefruit (!) and cocktail flavors) from a mini mart for about 75 cents and drinking it while sitting in the shade of a tree.

– You can get fabric, and a full traditional outfit made by a tailor for less then $20 (if you are a good bargainer!). Even if you can’t bargain very well, you can still get it for very cheap, which is amazing! I almost wish I had discovered this sooner so I can get more custom made clothes!

– Goats are killed here for every major occasion. I had the pleasure of watching this happen in my village homestay. The men used a knife for the actual killing, and then hung it up on a tree to skin and disembowel. Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay for dinner that night, but it was a new experience seeing food prepared from start to finish!

-Taxis here are very cheap. I could get a taxi from school to anywhere in Dakar for less then $7. You can bargain the price down of just about anything here, so chances are you are good that you can get a taxi for about $2, and then it is even cheaper if you are going with several people, as the price is set for the trip, not the number of people.

– Ballet is not the same here as the typical western style, prima ballerina. Some of us watched a ballet of the “pygmies,” which I still am confused as to who or what they were. The story line was about a small village enjoying life as they have always enjoyed it, until a white invader came in, cut down all the trees in exchange for small trinkets. At the end of the 45-minute ballet, the whole tribe dies from a slow grief that their quiet life has been shattered. That was a very strong message in ballet form.

-Everything small comes in bags. In the US, people use containers to store juice, or food or whatever you can think of. Here, they use bags. You can go to the mini mart and get a small bag of cooking oil (although here, a small bag is not sufficient as they use oil in everything) yogurt, juice… you get the idea. Before this trip I never thought that it was possible to have all these things in bags, but now my mind has been changed!

– What happens to trash here? Well, unfortunately, it ends up everywhere. There is no well organized trash collection system, so it ends up getting dumped in the streets, on the floor, really anywhere. At first I was shocked at how casually people would just throw stuff on the ground, but now I am used to it. I guess if there is no trash man coming every week, there is no reason to bundle it up for him! Despite this, I have continued to retain my western habits and keep a bag for trash in my room.

– When traveling in a taxi downtown, you can buy just about anything from the comfort of the car. People wander in the street carrying everything from large clocks to monopoly to toothbrushes (which is odd as I have yet to see a Senegalese use a toothbrush)!

-Life here moves at a much slower pace, which can be both fun and frustrating. For example, I could spend all evening watching my family cook dinner (a several hour affair at the least). On the other hand, we have been here for over a month and we still have no running water in SIT. Once I go back to western life, I do not know how I will adjust to a faster paced life!

– Teranga. This is the national phrase that means to share. Here, it does not just mean that you must share with others, it indicates the Senegalese nature to share and enjoy their lives together.This is both on the small and large scale. On the small scale, if you buy a snack, no matter how small, you always offer it to those around you. Generally, they will refuse, but the mere act of wanting to share symbolizes Teranga and the desire to have others benefit from your good fortune. On the larger scale, the Muslim celebrations here are not just for muslims, christians are invited over to celebrate as well, despite the religious differences. The same goes for Christian ceremonies. My brother told me that his family (who is Muslim) celebrates Christmas every year! They put up a fake christmas tree, share gifts, and kill a goat! What a great holiday!

– A final word about food. One of my new favorite dishes is this dish called Laar. It is some kind of millet, that is heated up so it is almost porridge like in consistancy, and then lait caille is poured over it. There are several different variations, but that is the kind that is served at my house. It can either be eaten in very large quantities as a meal, or in smaller quanitites for dessert. Either way, I eat that until I can eat no more! Delicious!

That is all for the fun facts of Senegal, tune in next time for an installment on our trip to Kedougou, a village in the lower corner of Senegal!

Posted in Becca Zavala '12, Senegal | Comments Off on Fun Facts!

It’s complicated.

Posted on October 7, 2011 by abby

I’ve now been in France for almost three weeks, and I feel that our relationship is moving on to a new level, one that cannot yet be explained otherwise. Though I’ve lived in France before, this experience is completely different, my concept of living in Frogland begun anew. I had been dreaming about France for weeks before it finally happened, I had fitful nights of anticipation and hopes. And we certainly had our honeymoon period. That, however, is behind us. Now I vacillate between moments of frustration, desperation, anxiety, curiosity, and love.

The mounds of paperwork are just the beginning. Really, France? Are you sure things need to be this circuitous? Can’t you just tell me what you want from me directly? While I love that you are giving me the chance to get my transportation to/from work reimbursed as well as the possibility of financial aid with my lodging, it would certainly be helpful if we could just, one-on-one, sit down and take care of business. I knew going into this relationship that you had bureaucracy issues, and I’m making an effort to understand. All I’m asking is for direct, honest communication, the core to any good relationship, n’est-ce pas?

There’s also

"Toxic" marching band

the attitude. I know a lot of outsiders see you as snobby and rude, which isn’t fair and especially not true for you, the Lillois. But, come on, there’s no need to over-do it and stare at anyone speaking another language as though we were some kind of rare alien that will immediately be attracted to you, using the little English you know to say: “you girls, very sexy.” But then just when I’m fed up with you, walking away, I turn a corner and find you’ve produced a group of musicians (marching-band style) playing a wonderfully nerdy version of Britney Spear’s “Toxic,” the scene enhanced by a three-year old boy clapping delightedly.

Then there are those nights like tonight, walking home, I’m passed by groups of friends on their way to bars, or a couple kissing each on either side of an open window, and I begin to sense the cold, damp feeling of isolation and loneliness. This is only enhanced by the fact that autumn is now upon us, and the leaves falling in the gutters no longer resemble a warm patchwork quilt, but rather the soggy remains of breakfast cereal left, forgotten, to soak up the pool of milk at the bottom of the bowl. But then, just as I reach to button my coat up higher, I see the reflection of the lights from bars and late-night brasseries on the recently drenched cobblestones, and I am content with the relationship I have chosen.

That, anyways, is what I will think of tomorrow morning as I side-step the “crottes de chien” on my way to the social security office.

Posted in Abby Kaufman '11, France | Leave a comment

Narrated Slide Show of an Excursion

Posted on October 6, 2011 by ghmoore

Location: Touba Mosque.

Founded by Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Muslims from all over pilgrimage here sometimes too. My language professor told us the following history. Bamba was in a French boat sailing from Europe to Africa, he looked at his watch saw that it was time to pray and began to lay out his mat. The French saw him and forbid him from praying on their Christian boat. So he said, no problem, took his mat and laid it out on the water and completed his prayers like that. Genius. sidenote: I couldn’t get over how cute these matching dad and two sons in boubous were.

Continue reading →

Posted in 2011-12, Gaelyn Moore '13, Senegal | Leave a comment

Le Kankouran

Posted on October 5, 2011 by ghmoore

WARNING: no pictures only a lot of text, because this ceremony is so sacred that pictures are forbidden. You can look online, but all the pictures are indeed protected so I can’t just copy and paste the picture here. But here is a video on youtube that shows you some of what happens around minute 1 Le Kankouran

In my last post I spoke of the Kankouran ceremony and I realized that it is too big of a subject and much to interesting for me not to tell you more about it. Briefly a Kankouran ceremony is a ceremony to chase away bad spirits from newly circumcised boys. And here is my experience with it.

When Aziz was telling us and preparing us some for what we would see, I imagined it like a Native American pow-wow traditional and sacred, but also open for tourists. There would be dancers, drummers, and a guy in a mask who occasionally interacted with the audience and tried to scare them away. This was not the case at all.

We drove through the streets in a big bus seemingly randomly searching for crowds of people. Once we found the crowds, the bus was immediately swarmed. People were pounding on the sides, shouting “toubabs” and making motions to go back. Eventually Aziz got out and explained to them we were students. Whereupon the crowd changed their yelling from “go away” to yelling “don’t you dare take pictures”. Boys mimed through the window taking a photo, then drawing a line across their throats. We got the picture.

Once we got off the bus we were immediately more accepted by the crowd. Smaller groups of us followed our Senegalese ‘guides’ into the enormous crowd of mostly younger people, lots of boys, but a surprising mix. Everyone seemed to be in the streets. Finally my ‘guide’ pointed off into the middle of an intersection where there was a much denser crowd of people and in the middle was a guy in a red/orange costume dancing around. That was basically all I ever saw of the Kankouran because it started moving in our direction from a block and a half away and the entire crowd bolted away and around the corner. My adrenaline pumping we slowly made our way back, but every time the costumed Kankouran turned our direction, everyone ran. It became sort of a game.

As I learned later, it is a game, but a very dangerous one. The Kankouran is chasing away bad spirits with a grotesque mask and a machete. Drummers surround him and boys with long sticks surround the drummers and chase away the audience with long sticks that they use to hit the crowd away from the Kankouran. So really I was running less from the masked spirit chaser than the little kids with sticks. If someone unfortunately gets within the circle of the Kankouran it becomes a challenge between you and him. From what I understand, you will not win.

The ceremony is for the boys who were circumcised that month (it only happens in September). Here all Muslim boys are circumcised and this is how the Mandinga ethnicity celebrates this passage into manhood. Boys from the ages of 3-7 are circumcised in August or early September and participate in the Kankouran every Sunday of September. In this tradition the newly circumcised boys are vulnerable to bad spirits, so the Kankouran has to chase the spirits away for them. These boys wear all white at the ceremony and try to get as close as they can to the Kankouran. Boys hitting long sticks together and surround the Kankouran are protecting the Kankouran and audience from each other.

In some Kankouran ceremonies bad spirits come out and all the women watching have to hide their faces. Here our professors talked about how the Kankouran is a man in a mask and costume doing a job. But in other cultures, the Kankouran itself is an inhuman thing called to by the spirits to do a job. The Cassamance (S Senegal) is where the real Kankouran’s live.

My family went to the last Kankouran of the year in Mbour last Sunday. I asked if my sister got to see it and she said “oh, did I get to see it”. Apparently it was at the front door when she got out of bed. “Were you scared?” “OUI! I ran back to my room and locked the door!”

If you are as interested as I am I would encourage a little web browsing!

Posted in 2011-12, Gaelyn Moore '13, Senegal | Leave a comment

Packed Pubs and Victorious Dubs

Posted on October 1, 2011 by scauley

This entry is a tool of procrastination. I am supposed to be writing a 2500-word paper to wrap up my Semester Start-Up Program, but I am sick of writing in the third person, so here I am in all of my personal pronoun-laced glory. I. ME. MY. This feels good. (I just finished reading the autobiography of Gerald of Wales, a rather unpleasant individual who writes in third person and sounds extremely pompous whilst doing so. This has tainted everything about that grammatical person in my mind.) I will likely finish writing the paper before I even publish this, but I probably won’t remove this paragraph because I will be too lazy to think of another introduction. (UPDATE: This is exactly what happened.)

Where do I even begin. I just completed this semester-long course in three weeks, so needless to say my life has been busy. This program was one of the things I was most looking forward to upon my arrival to Ireland, and not just because it let me get over here nearly a month before the start of term. This was one of the best classes I have ever taken; it taught me so much about the history, culture, and literature of Ireland that all of it is now spilling out of my brain and mouth and any other orifices it can find and onto whatever unsuspecting text box or human is near.  The title of the module, “Understanding Ireland,” is a fairly accurate description of what it entailed. Even though the School of Histories and Humanities organised it, it combined lectures from the Literature, History, and History of Art departments. Its content spanned all areas of Irish history and culture: James Joyce & Classics, The 1798 Rebellion, Book of Kells and Insular Manuscripts, Architecture and History of Trinity College, and Irish Film, among others.

Perhaps the best things about this course, however, were the field trips that accompanied these lectures. Oh, we have a History of Art lecture on Early Irish Metalwork? Better go to the National Museum of Ireland to look at them in person! We’ll be learning about The Irish Revolution? Let’s mosey over to Kilmainham Gaol and see where the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed! And I guess we might as well watch a play at the Peacock Theatre since we’re here.

Three trips in particular stuck out as particularly fun and interesting in my mind. If any of you ever find yourself in Dublin, try to make it to Croke Park. Remember when I talked about Gaelic football and hurling in my previous post? Well, this is the stadium where the professionals do it. Only they aren’t professionals. All of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) players are amateurs who play simply for the love of the game, not for a salary or free university or whatever else we bribe people with in the States. They all have day jobs. The men on that pitch are more than just athletes; they are your next-door neighbour, your child’s teacher, or the guy behind the Tesco till. And that locality brings with it a rabid fan base. Ireland, you’re doing it right.

Anyway, we received a private tour of the entire facility and learned all about the history of both the stadium and the GAA. We saw the team lounges, locker rooms, pitch, and seats so high up that they offer vertigo refunds. The tour ended with some exploration of the GAA museum, which is cool if you like looking at old things that have some athletic significance. And it just so happened that GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship was the following weekend. Relevant field trip is relevant? My flatmates and I, obviously hardcore fans by this point, donned our blue and went to our local for the match. Did I mention that Dublin was playing in it? AND THAT DUBLIN WON?

Let’s just say the city went ball-istic…

The following week, we embarked on an excursion to County Meath. We spent most of the day climbing around the ruins of Trim Caste, which was pretty cool as far as 11th century castles go. I did have a moment where my Puget Sound liberal arts education was actually relevant to real life, though! While I stood on the roof and surveyed the surrounding lands, I noticed some familiar looking stone things not far off. Then I remembered. This is the town of Trim. THIS IS WHERE WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON GREW UP. And those familiar stone things were the buildings where Hamilton studied as a boy! He read Latin and Greek while strolling along that riverbank! I AM WALKING ALONG THAT SAME RIVERBANK! OH MY GOD. I wrote my final paper for my Honors 212 class exclusively on Hamilton, and now know way more than I should about this one dead Irish guy. Everything came flooding back to me as I stood atop the castle, and I even impressed (terrified?) the tour guide with my knowledge of Hamilton’s life and theories. O how I love that Natural Scientific core requirement!

We also went to the Hill of Tara, which is basically a huge archaeological complex of grassy mounds and trenches that was once used as the seat for the High Kings of Ireland. It is a good place to frolic.

Perhaps my favourite thing we did, however, was The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. Yes, you read that correctly. A pub crawl. Filled. WITH. LITERATURE! And did I mention that it was organised and attended by my Literature lecturers? I remain convinced that this is the best assignment I will ever receive. We were herded around to a number of pubs frequented by the Irish literary greats, listened to some prose while sipping on pints of Guinness, and ended the night at the infamous Davy Byrnes. (Any other Joyce nerds freaking out about this?) Let it be known that I emerged victorious from the trivia contest and received this shirt:

Although this post makes it seem like I never saw the inside of a classroom during the Semester Start-Up Program, I assure you all that there was actual learning and reading and writing happening throughout those few weeks.  Now that I my real classes are well underway (more on them later), I can safely say that I am absolutely in love with Trinity as an academic institution.  Who knew that the “study” part of “study abroad” could be this awesome?

Posted in Shelby Cauley '12, Dublin | Tagged | Leave a comment

Finally, some music!

Posted on September 23, 2011 by bzavala

I want to share an amazing musical experience (one of very few so far) that I participated in on friday. At school (aka the SIT building where we take classes. Please note that we are on the fifth floor of a building being built as we study, oh Senegal!) we had a group of musicians come and speak to us about traditional Senegalese instruments, as well as perform.

These musicians are some of the top in Senegal, and many if not all of them have traveled to the US on tours and such.  The man on the left is playing the Kora, an instrument very similar to the harp in that you need to change the levers to change keys. He is a professor of the Kora, and also performs with rap and other musical groups. The woman sitting behind him is the dancer. Dancing is integral to traditional Senegalese music, even the musicians dance as they play! Next to her is one of the Djembe performers. Next is the added drum player for effect (I believe he is also playing a Djembe, but I’m not positive). Finally there is the main Djembe performer, who gives world tours and is considered a grand master of the Djembe. These performers played each of their instruments individually, and then did a jam session together, it was so wonderful to hear traditional music, especially by such talented performers. There was one more performer who played the Tamma (Talking Drum), but he is not in the first picture because he was late (Not uncommon, time is not at the fore-front of anyone’s mind here), but here is a close up of how you play the instrument.

It’s very loud, and when he does a solo, it almost looks like he is a male bird, trying to engage the females in his loud song and dance. While they were performing, the dancer in would be in front doing a traditional dance of sorts. Really, I hope that this is NOT the dance we will be learning, because it is a little bit challenging.The way she moved her body was very fast, almost like she was jumping around doing a very intense workout. This experience really highlighted for me how much dance and music are interrelated here, and there is no way to separate the two. We did try some moves ourselves during this session, it was a great way to relieve some excess energy!

Posted in Becca Zavala '12, Senegal | Comments Off on Finally, some music!

I’ve Been to Paradise. It’s called la plage.

Posted on September 22, 2011 by ghmoore

Here in the heat of it all there is a savior in the name of the beach. For a Montana inland native, the big waves at first were quite terrifying. I’m talkin’ like 3 foot swells. HUGE right? I have been to the ocean before but not for quite some time, and the one next to Puget Sound barely counts because it looks like a lake. This picture is taken at the closest point to the United States. I swam out as far as I could but I couldn’t quite make it all the way home.


Of course I have to look at the positives because right next to the beach, actually  everywhere, is this. But this is why the above picture is huge and this one is small. In fact I think it is good that I am an optimist. Because I could complain about everything: the constant barrage of unwanted attention (by vendors and strangers), the relentless heat, the fact that we don’t eat dinner until after 10pm. But c’est habituelle.

We just started our dance and djembe (drumming) classes this week. I am so excited. Dancing makes me happy and drumming puts me in another world. We are incredibly lucky to be taught by some of the most talented traditional Senegalese artists. This is our dance instructor. She just throws us into a couple lines and we go for it, floundering and looking like fools the entire time. Of course I try to follow her lead, but each movement is so practiced, energetic, and graceful that it is practically impossible. I still don’t know whether I sweat more dancing here, or erging with the crew team at UPS.

I chose to do ‘advanced’ djembe as my next round of classes. It was a hard choice between a traditional stringed instrument (kora), advanced dance, or the talking drum (tama). But I think I made the right choice because I have a tape recorder to record the djembe rhythms and it is something I can do in the U.S. And it makes my heart sing. Also, it would be very challenging for me to get over how ridiculous I look while dancing.

Let’s see, other important things that have happened…

For all you history buffs, we visited L’Ile de Gorée for an afternoon. This was basically the last stop for Western African slaves on their way to the new world. Seeing the tiny living corners with no windows and tiny little rooms in the cement walls for those who misbehaved really brought to life the whole situation for me. And to think that the Ile de Gorée itslef is one of the most beautiful islands I have seen and yet the slaves probably never saw the ocean or the beach until they stepped through ‘le porte de non retour” directly onto the boat that took them away from everything they had ever known. You can see in the picture below the slave house and the door of no return. It is the red building close to the shoreline with yellow pillars.

We were also lucky enough to view part of a Kankourang ceremony in Mbour. In the Mandinka tradition boys who are 3-7 years old get circumcised and the month after they do they are vulnerable to bad spirits. So all the boys participate in the ceremony. The Kankourang is a masked man who wears a big shaggy costume made of bark. He carries a machete and goes absolutely crazy. But that is of course my white person view of the situation. The Kankourang is actually scaring away the bad spirits from the vulnerable, recently circumcised boys. When I say we viewed the ceremony I mean I saw the Kankourang from very far away. This ceremony and my experience there is actually going to get its very own blog post so stay tuned!

In the worlds of Rudyard Kipling

“And that’s the end of that”

Posted in 2011-12, Gaelyn Moore '13, Senegal | Leave a comment

Saalamalekum a Dakar!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by bzavala

I have made it safely to Dakar, and although I have only been here for a little over a week, I feel so much more comfortable then I did before. The first 24 hours were pretty shocking, and I don’t think any of us were quite prepared for it. We left the plane, breeze through customs, get our bags from the only working carousel in the place and immediately are hassled by people taking our bags and asking us to take taxis. We saw our program director (Souleye), but he was very vague about where we were to go to find our bus, and we almost were dragged away by men telling us “come with us, we have taxi”, but finally we met Bouna (the assistant director) and he got us safely on the bus. That was our “Bienvenue à Dakar!” Here is a photo from the bus at 6 am of the airport at Dakar. Even at that hour, it was crowded!

The Airport of Dakar at 5:30 am

We stayed at the hotel “Good Rade”, from which the name “Île de Gorée” is derived (I believe “Rade” was the last name of the Portuguese man who settled it), which is a very nice, air conditioned hotel on the outskirts of Dakar, between the airport and the city center. On our first day, three of us went on a walk around the hotel, this here is the view from an overpass of the VDN, which is the major highway connecting the airport to the rest of the city. The yellow bus in the lower corner is called a “car rapide”, and is a cheap way to travel around (although none of us have tried it yet, we are all dying to jump on!). An aspect of the culture that I was perhaps not expecting was how much our French will not help us out. Although most people here speak French, everyone speaks Wolof, and many do not speak French. Therefore it’s very important for us to learn Wolof. However, its very nice that we can speak French (at least conversational, I can hold my own) because they assume we are European, as apparently most Americans don’t even bother to speak French). The people here is so friendly, I don’t think I have ever felt so welcomed into a culture. They willingly come up to you, even if they don’t want to sell you something, sometimes they just want to give you a high five or chat. Last friday we went out into Downtown Dakar, on our own (in groups of three) and had to navigate different areas of Dakar. Our groups chosen area was a traditional African Market. It was very crowded, smelly, dirty and sweaty, but what an experience! There were a lot of stalls along the street, but there was a huge covered market, that used every possible available space to sell goods. There were vegetable stands, fish, chickens (cooked, uncooked, alive, you name it), spices, beans, peanuts, dried flowers for juices, and anything you can imagine! The strangest part was seeing all the cut open fish heads, with blood everywhere and flies on everything. I would post a picture from this area, but we were not allowed to photograph, and I don’t think I could’ve gotten to my camera even if I had wanted to! For now this is all I have from my first week, next up I will explain more about our classes with SIT, as well as what my homestay is like! À bientôt!

A shot of the street portion of the market

Posted in Becca Zavala '12, Senegal | Comments Off on Saalamalekum a Dakar!

CHCH > AUCK

Posted on September 14, 2011 by cj

Hey! Remember these three? They went on a little road trip.

So the great thing about going abroad is doing things like 6 day weekends. We did a car relocation deal, meaning rental car companies need cars relocated to other cities, so it’s literally 0.05$ a day. Once again, the whole trip is a blur, but I’ll break it down. And, once again, a lot of these pictures were taken by Connor (thanks bro), although a few are mine.
Thursday: On the road by 3:30. The car turned out to be a manual, so that was exciting. We made it to Picton by 8pm, grabbed some food somewhere, went to an Irish bar (OMG FROZEN BAILEYS) and went to sleep.
Friday: Woke up to go get in line for the inter islander ferry…

It was a pretty fun experience. The parking area is basically like a parking garage, and then everyone heads to the upper decks, which are just like mini airport terminals and then there’s plenty of places to stand outside. The ferry took about 3 hours. Here’s a picture Connor took from the deck…

while I was lazy and eating cherries inside…

We arrived in Wellington at around 2pm, found our YHA right in the middle of town, got some food, went to the Te Papa museum…

After the museum we drove around a bit to find a parking spot and kill some time and then hit the town around 7 for the Rugby World Cup opening ceremonies and the first All Blacks game (!!!!). As you may know the World Cup was supposed to be based in Christchurch, which I now realized would have been soo sick, but it’s in Auckland now, due to the earthquakes. But Wellington has an amazing night life, so we did a lil’ pub crawl to watch the opening ceremonies (beautiful!) and the game, and we even got some drumn’bass in at some random bar. It was a great Friday night, people were everywhere, and everyone was pummpeeedddd. Which just makes me more excited for the rest of the tournament. You should watch the All Black’s haka (Tonga goes first here), it’s a necessity…
All Blacks
Saturday: We peaced out of Wellington around 10am, and spent most of the day in the Lake Taupo area. We stopped at a place near the Tongariro Crossing to inquire about doing that hike the next day. The Tongariro Crossing is known as the most popular day tramp in New Zealand, as it is fairly challenging and has beautiful views. It is also the site of Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings, if that means anything to you. The lady said the weather was supposed to be really crappy, which we knew, but that a group had gone up that day and she said to check back to see what we needed to rent for tomorrow. At the end of the day, we heard that they didn’t think we needed crampons and axes, but they did take walking poles. Of course, we thought we didn’t need walking poles and that we would try to get as far as possible with the weather, even though all tours were cancelled because of wind and snow/rain. See where this is going yet?
We spent a lot of Saturday driving around the area, which is really pretty…

We went to a really cool waterfall…



And here’s the lake at sunset…


That night we camped in a perfect little hobo spot in Tongariro’s national park, and woke up to a marble-like cloudy sky. September 11th! My birthday! But there was no time to fret about turning 20, as we had a serious hike before us. Long story short, we made it to the summit around 11am I think. The hike up was pretty challenging, lots of stairs, and it was rainy and windy.

Once we neared the top we understood why you would need crampons and axes. We had to climb on all fours up a few slopes and brace ourselves whenever a huge gust of wind would threaten to knock us over the edge (there were long icey slopes on either side of us). Although it was nice to be at the summit, the weather was shit, so we couldn’t see anything, and so we started down right away, espeically since the weather was getting worse.

Tongariro Vid
Again, long story short, we end up at a mysterious hut and realize we’d gone an hour out of our way. All of which had been downhill. As the wind picked up and the rain increased we realized we were going to have to climb BACK UP THE FREEZING COLD WINDY MOUNTAIN ICY SIDE WITH SNOW AND HAIL AND PAINFUL AND DIFFICULT HIKING RAINY LOST NOOOO OMG. Those words didn’t make sense, but that was pretty much what was going on inside my head. The next hour was filled with the hardest hiking ever, and several times I was choking back tears because of
a) how cold I was
b) how tired I was and how much further we had to go
c) we were slightly lost
d) how freaking hard the hike was
e) I was 20

Once we re-reached the summit we had to find the trail, of course at this point the top of the crossing was a complete white out and we couldn’t see anything. Sam some how found some of the magical adrenaline strength where people lift cars and shit and RAN up a slope and spotted some tracks for us to follow. CooooooOOOOoool. Tracks. There had been trail markers every 10 meters and now we’re going to follow tracks? We walked for about 3-5 minutes without finding a pole, each of us thinking our own thoughts. Images of death and losing fingers and helicopters and newspaper headlines (“THREE AMERICANS FREEZE TO DEATH BECAUSE THEY’RE IDIOTS”) were flashing through our heads, and although we found a trail marker, the hike was really hard and cold and windy and miserable and treacherous for the next hour or so. I didn’t think I was going to laugh for the next 2 days, but once we got out of the blizzard we looked at each other and actually laughed. Then we went to the best Indian restaurant in the entire world, had a birthday beer, and fell asleep. I don’t know if I can say that we almost died, but we could have died. Yayyy 20. I’m alive!
Side note: I’m really relieved I wasn’t in the U.S. for the lovely 10th anniversary. Sounds like it was filled with tons of news coverage and specials. Oh 9/11…you’re quite the day for a birthday.
Monday: Mount Maunganui…




Driving…
Driving vid
Dropped Sam off Monday afternoon. We stayed at the Jucy Hotel. Jucy is this hilarious car rental place where we’ve rented from each time (and apparently they have a hotel too). They always give us nice aquamarien cars that are pretty crappy, but the add to the experience. Jucy also has this great thing going where they use sex appeal to sell rental cars. Mostly everyone who rents from Jucy is 20 something and pretty broke. And all the people who work there are pretty attractive and probably don’t know too much about cars…

Auckland was rainy, busy, and excited for the games…

(again, stolen from Connor's facebook)

Tuesday: Connor left at around 8am, I got on a bus around 11am, was totally that American eating McDonalds in the airport (Kiwi Burger: pattie+cheese+egg+beetroot ohhh yess), and made it home around 2pm.
A memorable trip to say the least.

Posted in Caitlin Jost '13, New Zealand | Comments Off on CHCH > AUCK

So This Is Dyoublong?

Posted on September 13, 2011 by scauley

At the time of writing I have been in Dublin for about three weeks, getting fully oriented by Arcadia University’s College of Global Studies, moving into my flat, and starting my Semester Start-Up module. Life is insane, and again I apologise for the slight delay in my recounts. Actually, no I don’t. If I wanted to give you minute-by-minute updates of my year abroad, I’d use Twitter. Though I suppose you could just pretend that you’re receiving my tweets with a dial-up connection. O, sweet nostalgia! Back in my day when we wanted to look at cats we had to wait fifteen minutes for the image to load. Harrumph.

On a similar note, I had the worst travelling experience of my life on my way to Dublin. No, I didn’t get scurvy. Or die of dysentery. If Zebediah had thought twice about trying to ford the Liffey with the 893 pounds of buffalo he shot, we would have made it just fine. But I digress. Usually I consider myself somewhat adept at getting form one place to the other. I look both ways, wax my ears around Sirens, and keep the bags of wind secured. Yet for some reason the gods were against me this time.

When we last left our heroine, she was in Bristol. She had the brilliant idea to just not sleep before her 6.00a flight on Tuesday morning since her coach left at 1.57a. Remind her never to think that fourteen hours of constant travel is an okay thing ever again. First, she missed her train because the staircase with a giant “13” painted on the wall actually led to Platform 15. Even though she realized this before the train actually left the station, she was still quite miffed at the fact that she had to catch two other trains and arrived in London nearly an hour later than she planned. At least it couldn’t get worse, right? Wrong. She then spent an hour on the tube, missed the bloody 1.57a coach BECAUSE IT DIDN’T SHOW UP, and eventually arrived at Gatwick to find out that she pay £12 per kilogram to check her backpack. So she just started bawling in front of a poor, sleep-deprived Aer Lingus employee at 4.00a. Needless to say her day was off to a great start.

The moral of the story, dear reader, is to always read the fine print when booking airline tickets. And the eight-foot-high platform number when boarding a train. One learns so much by studying abroad.

I made it to Dublin in one piece and was promptly oriented by the lovely Arcadia staff. That first day was rather low-key since most of my comrades were impressively jetlagged even though they all came from the East Coast. Five hours, shmive hours. Arcadia fed us lunch and then pushed us out of the nest and into the heart of the city. We functioned like a cute little flock of American ducklings tottering all about Grafton Street and the Trinity campus, our cameras firing like incessant machine guns as our squeals of excitement floated through the hustle and bustle. You can plant as many flowers and leafblow as many wet sidewalks as you want, Puge, but you can’t beat cobblestones. I’m just saying.

I did not take this picture.

Even though much of the orientation process involved sitting in a room and getting talked to, we did have some fun events to break up the monotony. One of the highlights was learning to play both hurling and Gaelic football, two of the most fun things I have ever been forced to do. I saw a county hurling match when I travelled around Ireland a few years ago and still remember how much I loved it. I had no idea why this was important or how scoring worked or even what teams were playing, but as I sat surrounded by thousands of bloodthirsty Irish people, I ended up enjoying myself nonetheless. Anyway, most of you probably have no idea what hurling is. Imagine combining the best things about hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and baseball into one sport. Or imagine the most vicious game of croquet ever played by the manliest men ever to wear short shorts. THAT IS HURLING. THAT IS WHAT THEY DO FOR FUN HERE.

Loggers, did I mention that it requires an axe-shaped stick? No? WELL IT DOES.

As awesome as hurling is, Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland. It has nothing to do with American football; it’s more of a hybrid of soccer and rugby and volleyball and war. You cannot throw the ball, but you can touch it with your hands. And you can bounce it like a basketball. But you have to take four steps before doing so. And you can’t bounce it twice in a row; you have to kick it back up to you before you can bounce it again. And in order to pass it, you have to volley it to another player. Because you can’t throw it. It’s confusing, yet beautiful. Google it. After an hour of instruction in the pouring rain we were deemed good enough to play against nine-year-olds. Below is proof that I, the least athletic human being, participated.

I grit my teeth and continued to be a tourist for the next few days. Eventually I was forced to hop on the dreaded “Hop On Hop Off” bus tour. This is where I draw the line. The one good thing to come from that afternoon was finding an amazing library when a fellow Trinity student, Andrew, and I didn’t want to pay money to go inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Marsh’s Library was built in 1701 and is the oldest public library in Ireland, which means that everything is leather-bound and musty and kept on oak shelves that are so high they require ladders. This is a dangerous place for an English major to roam freely. One of the librarians said that one can use the collection for research purposes, so I need to think of some believable projects that will grant me access to books that are older than my country and worth more than my university education. Leave suggestions in the comments.

I soon grew tired of living out of my suitcase and could not wait to settle into my flat at the end of the week. All of the Arcadia students live in Rathmines, an area of Dublin about two miles south of the city centre. It takes about twenty minutes to walk to Trinity every day, though I hope to improve this time as I evolve into a real life Dubliner and learn to walk as quickly as they do. I’ve already begun jaywalking on a regular basis, so I am well on my way. I should have enough experience points by the end of the month. Anyway, thinly veiled Pokémon references are usually my cue to begin wrapping things up (Shelby, return!), so here are some pictures of my flat. It’s probably the swankiest place I have ever lived and not as flat as I expected. We have automatic lights in the hallways and bathrooms that thrill me. Dublin, I choose you!

Posted in Shelby Cauley '12, Dublin | Tagged | Leave a comment