Lost in Translation

Subtitle of Photo: There is calm. For the time being, nothing forecasts one should throw oneself head first into a hole.

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I flew into Buenos Aires at night, hoping to meet my good friend Tiffany “Anon” Gross and her friend Randi at the hostel in Palermo where they had been since that morning. Feeling pretty confident with many years of studying Spanish under my belt, I swaggered out to the taxi stand where I promptly forgot how to say 15, as in $15. I ended up paying $20 to get into the city, which I found out later was a fair price after all, despite my inability to bargain.

We raced into the city at mach speed and my confidence continued to tailspin as I tried to communicate with the driver. I could pick up a few words here and there and responded based on those words. But I was getting the feeling that all my answers were a bit non-sequiturish. (more…)

Reality Check

Bon: You realize that we are debating the merits of Avril Levine and Jarrod Leto, right?

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We have been having technical difficulties for the last few days.  In a valiant effort to retrieve our lost quotes page, we (our host) managed to destroy our whole site.  Fortunately, we`re back (mostly).

And the quotes page has been found safe and sound.  (And Lauren has begun breathing again).

Check back late tomorrow and we should be fully functioning and have a new blog up.

The next morning, Beth left to fly to NYC to do an interview at NYU for a law school scholarship, and my mother and I set out to find a pair of tennis shoes for her, and I needed a few items myself.

After grabbing lunch and wandering around the Colosseum, we walked back to the enormous department store to browse the merchandise. We started sifting through some 1 Euro t-shirts when one of the store employees came over and started hovering over us. A bit uncomfortable with this overly-cozy arrangement, we moved on. As soon as we did, the woman pounced onto the shirts and began refolding them, since we clearly had not done a thorough enough job. (more…)

Beth: The next morning we headed to Terminal Station. Lauren was going to take the train to the airport to pick her mom up. As soon as we arrived at the station, we realized that the train to the airport didn’t run all that frequently, and the next train was leaving soon. Lauren left her large pack with me and ran for the train.

Lauren: I ran to the train and jumped through the doors just as it was pulling out. Once again, I made it in but my bag didn’t, and I had to wrestle to pull myself and my bag all the way into the train. I tugged and wiggled with all my might, and finally got it free, staggering ungracefully into the arms of one of the uniformed train attendants who had been watching my performance. (more…)

Our short week in Egypt prepared us for what could have been a horrible culture shock as we landed in Rome. In the last two weeks, we had been in 5 different countries (Uganda, Kenya, Qatar, Egypt and now Italy), going from a small island without electricity in East Africa to four-star hotels in the Middle East to now what would be our biggest expense thus far on the trip: a Best-Western Hotel in Rome.

We had looked into staying in hostels in Rome, but with the declining value of the dollar and between paying for two beds in a hostel, we decided it was worth the extra money to get a hotel and clean up. And my colleagues at Fenton had given us traveler’s checks to spend on a nice hotel in Shanghai (oh well), so we logged on to Hotwire.com and agreed to a “mystery 3-star hotel in the city center, just a few stops away from Terminal Station.” (more…)

European History With Wine

Lauren: There were a lot of alliances and um, what’s the opposite of alliances, you know, everyone was fighting.

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We got up at 4:15 to catch our 5am train leaving Luxor for Aswan, a three-hour ride south. We arrived at the bus station a few minutes early and waited for the train. 5:30 rolled around and no train came. We cuddled into balls by our bags since the sun wasn’t up and we were freezing. I broke out my book and ate cheese and bread while Beth took a nap until 7, when she awoke worried that the train had somehow come and gone and I had been too involved in my book to notice.

At 7:30, a train pulled in and we ran down the track asking if it was the right one. Somehow, no one spoke English (this hadn’t previously been an issue), but people were nodding a blank “yes” when we asked if this was the train to Aswan. We were skeptical, but jumped on hoping that this was our train. Just then, someone motioned “No” for us, and gestured that another train was coming. Thirty minutes later our train finally arrived. We got on a crashed for 3 hours and arrived in Aswan around 11am. (more…)

Beth and I set out for our “luxury” overnight train ride down south to Luxor via public transportation. We had read that there were cars reserved for women in the subways so that they could avoid unholy contact with men, and this sounded great to us. We waited at the front of the train with all the other women as the train rolled up, and then the games began. (more…)