I'm in Cusco!

Hey everyone!

Just in case you were wondering, I made it to Cusco on Monday! Its at 11,000 feet, so it has taken me a few days to be able to climb stairs without wheezing uncontrollably. But, I´m better now :)

My classes have been great, and I have 2 hours of private lessons in the morning (from 8:30 to 10:15) and then a break for lunch, and then more class with a group (from 2:30 to 6:30pm).

My host mom is nice (she has 2 daughters, but they are both off to college). She cooks me 3 meals a day and she is super patient. The house is pretty nice....but it gets below freezing here at night, and the water in the showers is SO COLD!

Anyway, in case you are interested, I am including the couple emails I have quickly written to Taylor, they have a little more detail. I only have internet when I´m at school, so its hard to blog or upload pictures, but I will try soon!

Hasta luego!
Kristyn

Day 1 in Cusco:
Made it to Cusco. Flight was delayed 3 hours because of rain here, so that sucked a little. Got up super early, rushed to the airport, paid a bunch of money for my bags (you have to check everything, so with 2 bags I was overweight by 13 kilos!), only to sit there and miss all my morning activities at the school.

Once I got here I couldn't find my driver, so I just took a taxi....apparently I missed him because they seemed a little ruffled that I arrived to the school without him. Guess we missed each other and he was still standing at the airport waiting for me - whoops! Took a brief 30 question multiple choice exam (I think I got a whopping 6 right, haha), and then my host Mom came to pick me up. She is super nice (but speaks NO English), and loves to have students. She lives in a 6 bedroom house (!) and has 2 daughters (both off to college, one is going to be a Dr and one a lawyer). I think another student from the school is coming tonight, too, so there will be two of us staying there.

She fed me and had to run back to work. She's a nurse and usually stays at home or tries to arrange her schedule around the students, but today got all messed up with the delayed flight, so she had to leave me alone after about an hour. But she left me a nice lunch of spaghetti and one chicken leg and a banana. I have also been drinking coca tea like its my job....its made from the leaves of the coca plant (where cocaine comes from - weird, huh?) and is supposed to help with soroche (altitude sickness). I took my medicine, but the air here is definitely thin, and it was a major struggle to haul my suitcase to the 3rd floor of the house!

Day 2 in Cusco:
The school had a welcome dinner for all the new students - it was good. Ate at a "traditional" restaurante with a Peruvian flute band (lots of South Park jokes). Then about 6 of us went out to a bar with two of the people that work at the travel agency attached to the school. There was a live band that played classic rock and a lot of Maroon 5. It was an interesting mix of music and people. The two who work for the school are Dutch, and there were 2 English girls, one dutch student, and 3 Americans including me. It was fun - the Dutch people made me drink starfruit daquiris (pretty good). I REALLY need an alarm clock. I almost missed my flight yesterday and I barely woke up by my watch today. Might go try to find one and a hair dryer.

Anyway - my first Spanish personal lesson was good. My guy seems nice....he's pretty quiet, and not the most patient, but I think he'll help a lot. 2 weeks of 6 hours a day should get me as up to speed as I can probably handle.

Made it to Lima!

Hey guys!

Just checking in - I made it to Lima! :)

Its already been an adventure....when I tried to check into my flight they said I could not board the plane without proof that I would be returning to the USA within 90 days (I only had a one way ticket). After about 30 minutes of "discussing" this problem with the ticket agent, he suggested I just buy a refundable ticket to anywhere in the US and then cancel it when I have my real flight booked. Crazy FAA and their regulations! Thank goodness for free wireless internet and my laptop. I bought a ticket on my computer while standing at the ticket counter :)

But I got here, had NO problems with customs, found my driver, and got to the hostel. My driver even took all the lab supplies I was carrying and told me he would bring them to the University for me! So nice! Tomorrow I am meeting up with a woman from the lab here named Mayuko. We are going to go to lunch and then to get me a Peruvian cell phone. On Monday I fly to Cusco and go straight from the airport to the classroom to start my 2 weeks of Spanish classes.

It's so nice to finally be here. Anyway, hope everyone is doing well - love you guys!!

Hasta luego,
Kristyn

PS - I am one hour BEHIND Florida, and two hours AHEAD of California here.

The Emerald Isle

I had a great trip to Ireland. I have been so amazingly lucky this year and have gotten to travel to some AMAZING places for next to nothing. Ireland was no exception: I found a conference in Dublin that just so happened to be remarkably perfect and aligned really well with my field of study. So after a bit of sweet-talking, I convinced some people at UCSD to send me! This means that my round trip ticket would be free, my housing a food during the conference would be free, and the $500 conference registration would get paid for….overall a pretty sweet deal.

My labmate (and friend) Diana also came to the conference, which was awesome. It was great to have a travel companion and someone to go out at night with (and to sit through incredibly boring scientific talks with). We arrived to Dublin after a trans-continental and trans-Atlantic flight with an 8 hour layover at JFK in between. We did make the most of our layover though, and took a cab into the city since Diana had never been to NYC so we had bagels, saw Times Square, walked up 5th ave (focusing our time at Tiffany's), strolled through Central Park, and then had a Gray’s Papaya dog (and grabbed to-go cupcakes at Crumbs) before heading back to the airport :)

We didn’t get much sleep on either flight, so after our transcontinental red-eye flight (not to mention the fact that I stayed up ALL night the night before out flight packing and getting ready to leave the country for 6 months) so I was pretty exhausted when we arrived. But we got our bags and found the bus that would take us to the Hostel. It was super easy and after a direct bus trip 20 minutes into the city, we arrived at our stop. The hostel was supposed to be very close to Trinity College (where the conference was) so we got off in front of the College and started wandering around to find the hostel. After a few minutes of wandering in circles, we finally found our place. It was about 11:30 am, and we couldn’t check into the room until 2pm, so we dumped our luggage in their storage room and went out in search of something to occupy our time.

We (of course) headed straight to a bar and ordered the first of many rounds of Guinness. We relaxed in the bar (it was the lobby bar of a moderately swanky looking hotel) on a couple of couches, and used the free wireless intenet until the room was ready. Upon checking in, we were informed that we were on the 3rd level. In Euro-speak, that means the 4th floor…they call the 1st floor the ground floor, so you have to add a flight of stairs to everything. As expected, there was no lift, so we had to haul my giant bag up entirely too many stairs (Thanks Diana! I would have died without your help!). Oddly, once we got to the correct floor, the sign to our room still pointed up…

We climbed another flight, only to discover a long, winding hallway that led us in a giant U, to a flight of stairs that went down….so after hauling the bags UP the stairs, we got to haul them back DOWN to our room. By that point the lack of sleep was kicking in, and we thought it was the funniest thing in the world. We made it to the room and after a couple showers, pretty much collapsed from exhaustion. We napped for a couple hours, then forced ourselves to get up and go get some food. It was cool and drizzling, but we wandered to a street lined with restaurants and finally settled on a tapas bar called Havana. The food was great, and once we were full of sangria, paella, and lentil stew, we made our way back to the hostel and went back to bed for the night.

 We were amazed that it was still light out, and the sun didn’t set until after 10:15pm! But we got to bed and got our rest for the next day (Monday, the first day of the conference). The rest of the week was an awesome blur of Guinness, science, and fun people. We met a ton of interesting characters, saw a bunch of great live music, sat through some horrendously boring science (and some fun science, too), presented our posters, and saw a lot of sights.

On Saturday, Taylor arrived and we whisked him out of the city and headed to Galway on the advice of fellow travelers. We picked him up at the airport, grabbed a rental car, and started driving! Diana came with us, and we stayed at a lovely B&B just 5 minutes walk from the main square. Driving on the wrong side of the road with a manual car was an adventure, but we made it safe and sound...But to be honest, driving through roundabouts was pretty terrifying, and I don't think I have EVER sweat while driving so much, haha!

 We spent 2 nights in Galway, which was kind of like a quaint, Irish version of Vegas. People apparently go there to have their bachelor/ette parties (which are called "hen" and "stag" parties), so there was always a group of people dressed ridiculously in each bar (a whole group of Cyndi Laupers, a crew of matadors, 10 ballerinas adorned with fluffy, pink tutu's, etc. ). It was a fun town, and we spent most of our time in the city eating, drinking and watching World Cup, or relaxing in the B&B's hot tub!

While in Galway, we took a drive out to go visit a castle. One of our lab mate's is named Ellen O'Dea, and she informed us before we left that there was a castle in the Irish countryside named the O'Dea Castle. Inspired, we went to find it! It was a little under 2 ours away from where we were, so we grabbed some road snacks and headed out to the countryside. It was a cool drive, and on the way we found the ruins of an old church and stopped to check them out. We pulled down a long, one lane driveway flanked on both side by stone walls. We parked and wandered the ruins, and noticed that there were a few people handing around in the adjacent cemetery...

By the time we got back to our car there was actually an entire funeral procession coming down the driveway. We attempted to quietly sneak the tiny car down the driveway, but since it was only a one lane driveway, we made it within 50 meters of the end when we got blocked in by 6 cars coming in and had to BACK UP (in reverse....with mourners all around us....with ME driving on the wrong side of the car!) the whole way back to the parking area and just sit and wait until they were all inside the cemetery with the casket and everything. It was really odd.

But eventually we were on our way and found the O'Dea Castle. It was cool, and had been restored and was now a little archeological/educational center. We took the mini-self guided tour, watched a video on the history, and wandered the grounds. It started raining when we were walking through the surrounding fields, so we ran back to the car, and headed on for the day.

We eventually made our way to the Cliffs of Moher - they were so beautiful! Amazing HUGE cliffs that tower over the deep blue water of the Atlantic on the west side of Ireland. There was even a castle tower that overlooked the cliffs.

We dropped Diana off at the train station (she made her way to Paris to meet up with her boyfriend) and drove south into the countryside. Last night we stayed in an amazing castle that had been turned into a quant guesthouse complete with a resident Irish wolfhound. Today we woke up to gorgeous sunny weather (a rare treat) and drove along the south western coast.

We are staying in a hotel on the ocean on a peninsula that juts west into the Atlantic. Tomorrow we head to Cork for 2 nights, then I will show Taylor around Dublin for 3 nights! Ireland is an amazing country and we are having a great trip!