18 02, 2013

Travel Missteps: Lost in Italy

By |February 18th, 2013|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

This is the view I should never have seen, but because I got lost I had a chance to see it. When you are on a strict timeline, getting lost can be a disaster. In late December of 2005 I was on a bus tour of Italy with my family. We were adamant that we were not "Bus Tour" people. We were use to doing things on our own. But we didn't speak any Italian so we decided to utilize a bus tour "but only for the transportation logistics".  So we set out to plan down our moves in each "stop" of the tour,

12 02, 2013

Upcoming Travel Plans: Mayan Encounter 2013

By |February 12th, 2013|Categories: Itinerary, Travel, Travel Planning, Upcoming Travel|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

    For my next adventure I will explore Mayan ruins and enjoy fabulous snorkeling in Central America. My basic itinerary will be: After a full day of travel I will arrive in Guatemala late at night. I will spend 2 days in Antigua, Guatemala to explore the city. I plan on visiting many ruined churches, see a Coffee Plantation, see how Jade is made, and make my own Chocolate! Then my tour with Gadventures will start and we'll move onto Flores, Guatemala to explore the quaint and small island city on foot and by boat. The next day we'll move onto

4 02, 2013

Travel Missteps: Not Lost on Translation

By |February 4th, 2013|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

I am in the center of the photo next to Chris and in the front left we have my host sister. In the summer of 2004 I participated in a student exchange through the Sister Cities program to Chino, Japan. I was the first person in 13 years of this exchange to speak some Japanese. This was great for me as I could talk to my host family and strangers and absorb more of the culture. For example, on our first day in Tokyo we went to a "one yen/one coin" store where everything was just 1 yen. We