I've Been Everywhere, Man

Step one for getting ready to leave the country: empty out your suitcases, and start washing your clothes. Yep, that's where I'm at right now!

So I thought before I left I would write a little blog about the (international) traveling I've done so far in my life, so I guess I'll start in chronological order...

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (part uno)- My family and I went down to visit my abuelita (grandma) who was living there at the time. I ended up celebrating my 9th birthday there with a pinata at some nice hot springs. I even got sung a very long Mexican version of a birthday song!

Lyon, France- When I was 10 I participated in a French-Back-to-Back program, which meant I got to spend 3 weeks in France with a host family with a kid my own age, and most importantly without my own! Most years they also sent back the peer to spend 3 weeks with your own family, but for some reason my year they were unable to. The year I participated in they happened to send me to Lyon, and I personally believe I was the luckiest out of all the kids in my program. Not only was I the only one who happened to live in a house, but it was a vineyard! They made beaujolais wine, and it was absolutely amazing to live there! Not only that, but my family took me down to Cannes one weekend... for the famous film festival! I guess they owned a house down there, so it wasn't too hard to get there. It was an a life-changing program, and I am extremely thankful of my parents for allowing me to have that opportunity.

London/Bath/Oxford, England- Yes, I've already been to England! When I was 13 my mom had a conference at Christ Church at Oxford University and the whole family made a trip out of it! We started off in London and did much of the tourist-y things which you would expect, we even made a little trip to Stonehenge! Highlight: walking through Buckingham Palace! We then took a little trip to Bath (where the water is definitely over-rated) and finally went to Oxford for a day. It was a lot of fun to take the Alice in Wonderland tour and also stand in a location where they filmed a scene from the first Harry Potter movie. I deff can't wait to explore it some more!

Ontario, Canada- For our family Spring Break when I was 13, we all went to Canada to go see Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, I don't remember much of this trip, other than the falls, since I was very sick and spent most of the time in bed or in front of a toilet. The only activity I can really recall was going to a butterfly zoo.

Cancun, Mexico- For Joc's senior year Spring Break (my freshman year), she and her friend decided they wanted to go to Cancun! So the 2 families went together to a very nice resort, and was able to relax and enjoy ourselves. My entertainment was watching Dracula and for history I was able to go to the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza with my dad.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (part dos)- This time for my Sweet Sixteen we went back down to San Miguel. My grandma had a friend who was getting married, so my sister, dad, and myself went down and joined her. It was only a couple of days before my birthday, so we stayed down to celebrate. My birthday consisted of: hot springs (again), salsa dancing, a serenade with flan at a restaurante, and oh, the worse sunburn I have ever gotten in my entire life! Joc and my dad stayed for 1 week although I stayed down with my abuelita for an extra week to prepare myself for IB Spanish HL, fun times!

Quito, Ecuador- This past January the whole family went down to Quito to visit Jocelyn who had been there since July. We did a lot of touristy things including going to the Equator, visiting the Guayasamin museum, and even going to the edge of a volcano! We also got to go into the little town Joc has been staying in and just seeing where she lives everyday. The food was great, and if you ever make your way down there, don't miss out the restaurant "Crepes and Waffles"- AMAZING food there! Because it's basically crepes, ice cream, and of course, waffles!

I've been quite fortunate in my life to go and do as much as I have been so far! I've been lucky to travel so much at such a young age, which has definitely instilled my love for traveling, especially to other countries.

4 days til Europe- Keep Followin'!

Angst

So, tomorrow is my birthday and I'm turning 20. Which means today is my last day of being a teenager, so it's also my last day I can blame anything on my 'teenage angst.' So I'm going to take the opportunity today to be as angsty as I can.

I hate my parents, they like tooooootally don't understand me!!!

I hate school, when am I ever going to need to know about Communism, and politics and such...?

My dog hates me.

In fact everybody hates me, nobody gets me but my journal.

Some reason Becky always gets the boys I want.

And yesterday, Sandra came to school with the same hair as me!!! Copycat.

My parents won't buy me a Mustang, ugh, instead I have to drive around this stupid Civic.

I'm not allowed to go to the Miley Cyrus concert because it's on a school night.

Edward Cullen is only a fictional character... I'll never get the chance to date him...

Ok, I think I got that out of my system, hopefully I've grown out of it now. Starting tomorrow I'll have to say "Blame It On My Youth" (yeah- I'm not too young to make a Frank Sinatra reference) instead of the angst. Although, I'm not sure if I'm quite ready yet to turn in my angsty music by all those angsty artists. It's way too fun to listen to.

Also, if you feel like getting all nostalgic and angsty, check out the book Teen Angst: A Celebration of Really Bad Poetry. It's a collection of angsty poems people wrote in their teenage years thinking it was amazing, but now looking back upon it, it was just a pile of you-know-what. But it does provide great entertainment!

Well until next time, Keep Followin'.

6 days until I leave the country.

Summer Reading

So today at work I finished the book The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld by Tom Folsom. After seeing Folsom interviewed on The Daily Show about the book, I decided to check it out, although I don't often chose to read non-fiction.

The book follows the life of gangster Joe Gallo, his 2 brothers, and the rest of his gang. Together they turned the "Underworld" of the Mafia upside, annoying many of the big families, but also acting as a modern day Robin Hood. But you know, with guns instead of arrows.

One of the things which really struck me about Joey Gallo was how well-educated he really was. He was always getting in to philosophical discussion and debates regarding Sarte and Machiavelli's The Prince. His own writings were even incredibly insightful. As he once wrote in his journal,

"Things exist when I feel they exist, okay? Me. I am the world. The world is in me. Good, bad, ugly, beautiful- it's all there. Everything... I am alive. I feel it, therefore it exists. And if it exists, it's not good, it's not bad. It just is."

I'm really looking forward to see the casting for this future movie, and also just the movie itself. It's going to make a great story to watch!

This summer I also decided to finally read a Chuck Palahniuk novel. I've always heard amazing reviews of the famed author of Fight Club, but had never read a full novel of his. Two years ago I was at a bookstore and picked up a copy of his short stories and true-life experiences. I stopped and just stood there reading one of the stories and put it away, deciding to read another book by another author. Later on I read another one of his short stories and once again found mself incredibly disturbed. But finally I decided this summer to try again, and I really am glad that I did.

I went to the library and picked up his book Rant, which happened to be the only one of his books available that day. It's written in the style of an oral-biography, apparently much like the book Capote. It was very interesting to follow multiple people's perspective on ultimately the same story about the same person. Palahniuk gives you little bits of pieces which don't really make any sense until the very end.

I then picked up Lullaby, which Palahniuk wrote while his father's murderer was on trial. Palahniuk was asked whether or not he wanted the man to be executed, which led to him questioning his own feelings on the Death Penalty. This book deals greatly with issues of life, death, religion, and who has the right to play God, especially so now days for a modern novel. Simply said- although it was very twisted, it's definitely one I would recommend.

Anyways, with all the stuff I'll be doing leading up to leaving, I probably won't have as much time to read. So now it'll be mostly Woolf and Shakespeare. For all of you who are interested, this is what I'll be reading.

Woolf: Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, and the Waves

Shakespeare: As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Winter's Tale, and Romeo and Juliet

Keep Followin'.

An Introduction

So, as y'all must know by now, I'm going to Europe! I've started this blog as a simple way to inform everyone about my trip, much easier than writing individual emails and such. In case you don't know about my trip, I'm spending 5 weeks at Brasenose College at Oxford University studying the works of Virginia Woolfe and William Shakespeare. A week before I get to Oxford I'll be traveling around Paris and even stopping for a bit in London with 2 friends of mine who have chosen this summer to tour Europe. I'm really excited that I'm able to join them for at least the Paris leg of their trip! 

Well the name of the blog is kinda what I've decided to make of this opportunity- a chance to find my roots. As you can tell from my last name, I have a strong British ancestry. I've always found myself to be more drawn to England because of this. I even like to believe that I am a descendent of John of Gaunt, and may have some blue blood flowing through my veins! Although that theory is often thwarted by my mom.

The truth is I do have genealogy (going back as far as 20 generations) traced to Lancashire. One weekend while I'm at Oxford I've been planning on traveling up to Lancaster to visit where my heritage may be. To walk down the same path that an ancestor of mine could've walked. Kinda trips me out at times.

On St, Patty's day this past year I looked in the old genealogy book of mine just to see how Irish I really am. Turns out a lot less than I thought! But, what I did see is that I'm a lot more Scottish than I imagined. Well, during my program, I'm fortunate enough to have 2 long weekends (Thursday at noon-Sunday) to independently travel. Well, I'm going to use one of those weekends to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, to see if I can find some sort of connection there too.

It turns out one of the 2 weekends we're given matches up with the Edinburgh Military Tattoo festival, which is one of the biggest annual events of the country. It's main attraction is watching the Scottish military dance and play music. Unfortunately, those tickets, especially so for the opening weekend when I'll be there, sold out months ago. BUT, people still travel all over the world to come just for the experience and atmosphere, which is what I plan to do!

So far my preparation for going to Scotland has just been watching the movie "Trainspotting" which a copy of the script next by. It's all about learning how to understand the language! Or at least that's what I told myself...

For my second long weekend I'm pretty sure I'm going to try to go to Wales, although I have that a lot less of the traveling worked out. As far as I know, I don't have any Welsh blood, but I would love to learn otherwise!

On top of my independent travels, we'll be doing a lot of class traveling all over England. This includes going from Stratford-Upon-Avon to Bath to Warwick castle. We'll also be seeing Shakespeare plays performed at the Globe Theater and also done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. There'll be at least 1 activity going each week for me to report on!

Anyways, back to the important part of the trip, the schoolwork. Reading, another part of my roots. Not only do I want you to follow me with my travels, but I hope that you'll also be able to follow me with my readings! I'll post later which books and plays I'll be reading, and if you so wish, you can read them with me too!

So, I hope to be posting almost daily while at Oxford. The school's wifi has gotten better in the past couple of centuries. To get used to posting blogs, I'll be posting up to leaving for Europe. So I guess you'll be able to see what I've been up to so far this summer.

Keep followin'!