2012

New year, new background. Whadd'ya think? The get-computer-file-to-do-what-I-want-credit all goes to my big bro and sis-in-law who are both clever and attractive. Thank you both so much.

Since I ended last year with a list of 2011's highlights I'm posting some for 2012 as well. This was by-and-large the year I moved to Galway. Living in Ireland for 5 months was amazing and uncomparable (comparableless? incomparable? What is the word I'm looking for?) I learned a ton, made great friends, and soaked up so many wonderful memories, while soaking up an overabundance of rain water as well. The rest of the year back here in the states has been full of life and loveliness as well. Here are my 12 highlights of 2012 all haphazardly and in no particular order:

1-- Moving to Galway, everything from the plane-turned-train ride leaving BWI in January, to exploring and getting to know my darling city, to my wonderful visitors, to stepping back into Maryland humidity again in May was intense and bright with travel-details. I will always love the little city of Galway.

2-- 74 St Branden's Ave and the girls I lived with were better than I could have hoped for. Turns out moving overseas to live in a house with complete strangers you've only ever emailed a couple of times can be a perfectly fine idea, no ax-murders for me.

3-- My piccolo trip to Paris, as my first really solo trip it was unbeatable. I was thrilled to met up with Rei and her hubby on their trip from Japan. Not only did I get to see a precious friend, Paris made me feel brave.

4-- Rome, mio first amore. Possibly the only city I love more than Galway. I threw another coin into the Trevi fountain so I'll be sure to return. Then we visited friend's friends in Florence and Turin drinking in even  more great memories and the world's most delicious nutella-and-espresso drink.

5-- Dancing, One of the highlight of being home in Maryland is Mobtown Ballroom. Taking Lindy Hop lessons and going to see the incredible dancers at ILHC were high points of my summer. Now I can even do a successful swing-out without tripping over my own feet . . . most of the time.

6-- Jobs, This year I was also a productive member of society working at Starbucks, Program-Directoring at camp, interning at Manna Inc, and starting my job with Habitat for Humanity Montgomery County. Now I'm even sort-of-kinda-maybe figuring out what I want to do long-er-ish-term for work.

7-- Babies, since I was back in the States I flew out to WI for my old-college-roomie's baby's baptism. Then when I was suppose to fly home Super-Storm-Sandy hit, delaying my flight. Meaning I was able to help take the world's cutest Carpenter, Walrus, and Oyster trick-or-treating. "This!"

8-- Books/Films/Plays. This year I read and saw plenty of awesome books and films. The Fault in Our Stars is most definitely one of my new favorite books. And while I can't quite say I liked it, I'm not sure I would ever see a more emotionally intense movie than As If I Am Not Even There. Plus Cabin in the Woods, Avengers, and Cloud Atlas were kick-butt-good. And I got to see brilliant plays down in DC.

9--Русски - Fall 2012 I took Russian 101 with my lil' bro which was really fun. Did you know the Russian word for brother is brat? That is also fun. (although my little brother is totally not a brat)

10--Grown-up-ish-stuff, I have also spent a good deal of time this year getting rid of stuff I don't need, learning to cook/ feed myself and clean and budget better, and to stay sane as a semi-responsible adult.

11--T.V. Another good amount of my time was spent watching every episode of Downton Abbey, Friends, The West Wing, and How I Met Your Mother.

12-- The Boss in concert in Philly, was another bug highlight of 2012. Bruce Springsteen played for more than four hours straight and was amazing - blew my mind. The concert was incredibly fun. I hope to be just a fractious of that energetic and impressive when I'm in my 60s.

Over the course of this past year I've checked off bucket list items I didn't even have on my imaginary list: spending the night in an Italian train station, getting John Green's signature, taking a freezing-cold-April-dip in the Mediterranean, impressing an Irish lad with my tolerance for whiskey, puking off the side of a boat, finding the world's coolest tree, and watching a movie marathon at an embassy. 2012 has given me plenty of great stories. For this new year, I don't think I'm going to try any new year's resolutions, I'm just hoping to be more brave, adventurous, compassionate, and strong in 2013.

big brother's b-day

Happy Birthday to the bestest big brother ever!

He's got brilliant taste in women as well :)

It's my big bro's birthday and since he is super amazing so here are a few reasons why my brother is so cool. Since he's turning 27 (so old!) I've made a list of seven things, they're are in no order besides what I typed them up in:
--> Comic Nights! Wednesdays we have yummy food and new comic books released that week.  It's one to the things I miss about home, because it is so fun.
--> Shakespeare Plays! My senior year in high school we went to see Love Labor's Lost at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC. Since season subscriptions for young-people-who-don't-have-gray-hair are significantly cheaper we get to see lots and lots of plays (and we've even recruited more playgoers now ^_^) Recently  we even managed to skip the whole finish-eating-delicious-food-and-run-through-dc-to-the-theater-minutes-before-the-curtain-raises-thing. Although there was a certain charm to that as well.
--> Star Wars! I could practically recite all of the original (a.k.a. good) Star Wars films since they were to my brothers what LOTR was to me (a.k.a. a slight obsession when young). A foundation of lightsabers, spaceships, and the force is a good nerdy thing to have.
--> Ren Fest! Continuing the nerdy theme, my big brother (as well as most of his marvelous friends) not only go the Renaissance Festival, but also dress in impressive outfits. He owns not one, but two kilts now -cause he's just that cool. (Or perhaps the kilt salesman is just that persuasive)
--> Ireland! Continuing that kilt note, he is so fantastic that he not only invited me, but he also convinced our parents to allow me to fly out to Ireland and meet up with him to travel when I was only 15 and he was 19. It was very very grand. We saw a ton, had lots of fun, and only had one candy-bars-and-pop-from-a-train-station-vending-machine-dinner. Biking around Galway was one of my favorite days (Galway clearly made a great impression on me.)
--> Japan! A few years after Ireland, our little brother Aj joined us as well on a trip to Japan. At the airport and such they would ask if we were meeting our parents there or something, "Nope it's just the three of us" And the three of us had a super great time. Even with the uncanny ability of every landmark to be wrapped in scaffolding before we arrived, we found amazing things like a mountain with monkeys with our "Let's check out the interesting shapes on the map we can't read" strategy of exploring.

--> Europe! After my semester aboard in Rome, he flew out and met up with me in Paris. We had an epic trip stopping in France, Spain, Austria and Italy. Our adventures included lots of jazz clubs, yummy food, great sites, a Euro Cup celebration, and of course a good deal of scaffolding.   

Happy Birthday! I look forward to many more adventures this year! ^_^

Paris for a Day

Last week I took a quick little WONDERFUL trip to Paris. The main reason was to see Rei, since Paris is about half-a-world-closer than Hiroshima.  And how much of an excuse does one really need to go to a city as great as Paris?

I played the oh-so-fun game of find the best plane tickets, and ended up with flights out of Dublin into Paris on Aer Lingus. It was not much more expensive and was much more convenient than Ryan Air.

CityLink's bus route map

My flight out of Dublin was at 18:10 (I switched my phone to military time so I would stop confusing myself, cause 18 does not in fact mean 8pm - very important). I took the CityLink bus literally across the country from Galway to Dublin-- such a cute tiny little country they have here. Only took about 3 hours from coast to coast and there was some very-Irish-looking-country-side to see.

Once I got to the Dublin Airport I went through their very-speedy-and-not-overly-serious-security. At my gate I got to watch the breaking news on the TV about a Mr. Goodwin who had just been stripped of his knighthood - scandalous!

It's a short flight, we got up in the air and had a great view of all the lights in Dublin at night, then the dark of the Irish Sea, then the night lights of London, then dark of the English Channel then pretty soon you could see the glow of the City of Lights. I stayed at The Oops Hostel again. When Jamie and I were in Paris after our semester in Rome we stayed at a couple different places, some of which were significantly sketchy, but Oops was really nice. The rooms are really nice, plus they have free internet and breakfast!

Rei and Masami 

Wednesday morning I took the green-ish-blue-ish-Metro-Line-6 and met up with Rei and her husband. It was really super-dupery-duper-wonderful to see Rei and to met her husband again. We got lunch at the Deux  Magots which is for 1920s Paris, what the Eagle and Child was for the Inklings -- Hemingway, Sartre, Picasso, and pretty much all of their crazy and talented friends were regular costumers. We enjoyed some amazing food and chatted about our regulars from work and such. Rei got to switch between English with me, Japanese to translate for her hubby, and French with the bow-tie-clad-fancy-French-waiters.

We then headed off to find Notre Dome, stopping into St. Germain's on the way. Walking along the Seine was incredibly cold with nearly-non-stop-freezing-wind, it was beautiful though and feeling your fingers and toes is overrated. Galway has generally been sweat-shirt-cold during the day, so the real winter cold of Paris where it snowed the night before was quite chilly. We looked though some shops and enjoyed Paris and catching up-- along with some Crepes ^_^

My dear Aubry got me a super awesome travel book, one of the sections entertained me with its fitting title:

This book already knows my adventures so well

Before I left I jotted down my confirmation numbers and metro routes and all, I wrote a little list of 

4 out of 8 ain't bad right? Just means it's a real adventure

things to do while in Paris. As I wrote said list I thought, "Well there's no reason I would deviate form this itinerary." Haha my brain is so cute sometimes.

It's all good though, cause the important things went really smoothly and the rest is the adventure of traveling. I had a book to finish and one to start on my Kindle, but then my darling Kinny decided to freeze up on me-- so that postponed a couple of the things I'd jotted down, not a big deal at all. I did: stay at Oops, eat crepes, make my wish, and see Rei so I got half of my list :)

The other things on my list were to go to the top of Notre Dome. However the entrance for the tower had this sign saying it was temporarily closed "Due to the climate". Then I walked over the bridge and found the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, however it was also temporarily closed that week because the owner had just passed away at age 98 after having run his bookstore since 1948.

Awesome bookstore which hosted just as many famous authors as Deux
Magots as well as passing writers who worked and stayed as well.
"Be not inhospitable to strangers
Lest they be angels in disguise"

Although I still haven't gone up the towers yet, we ended up getting to Notre Dome right before Mass began, which was really neat to see -- can't beat the smell of incense while you explore a cathedral. Unplanned details can be the best part of adventures.

After I parted ways with Rei and headed back to my hostel, I decided it was too early to go to sleep, but too late to wander the city by myself. So I went one of the multiple "Cinemas" on the Blvd Goblins near Oops. Though it was funny to watch an American movie with French subtitles, the theater was really nice and the tickets were cheaper than back home, which was nice.

In the morning I managed to get my train ticket to Charles De Gaulle airport despite the fact I don't speak French beyond "Merci", "Paris", and "oui" and the fact that French people say "CharlesDeGaulleAeroport" really really fast and not at all like we would pronounce it. I was pretty proud of my smile-and-apologize-and-speak-english-while-they-speak-french-communication skills. The rest of the traveling went well and was topped off with Irish pot pie and Japanese cookies on the bus ride back across country home to Galway.