TravelStream™ news feed for member laura99 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/laura99 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:03:35 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257773221/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257773221/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257773221/tpod.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:03:35 -0500 Return to the States

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The Plains, Virginia, United States

For Halloween this year I wanted to do something outdoorsy, something fun and seasonal that didn't necessarily involve the traditional candy-induced sugar coma. So I turned to google, perpetual friend of those who aren't yet in the know but would like to be, and discovered a place that I thought would be perfect. Corn Maze in the PlainsWe got there later than we'd intended, so the jugglers and buskers there for Halloween had pretty much packed up by the time we arrived. But we got to try the pumpkin slingshot, which is exactly what it sounds like: take a mini pumpkin, put it in the sling, and see how far you can get it to fly. My record was about 150 meters. Not bad!The main attraction, though, was the maze itself. Five acres of winding paths made by corn stalks, with clues along the way. I kept waiting for the Harry-Potter-esque monsters to come out and duel, but I think they were on strike. We made it through the maze in about 45 minutes, and the maze monitor whose job it is to fetch the people who are hopelessly lost, was impressed. She said the average was an hour to an hour and a half. Following the maze we went around the barnyard and saw the various goats and chickens, and I picked out a medium-sized pumpkin as a test subject for my culinary experiments. Then we discovered the market, where we all went nuts on apple and pumpkin butter, kettle corn, organic raw honey, pumpkin pie, and fudge. We forcibly pried ourselves away from the displays before buying everything in sight, and we spent most of the hour drive back to DC munching on fudge and kettle corn. So much for not having a sugar coma, but at least it was induced by something besides candy bars. In the evening, we dressed up and went to the party at a local art center. We listened to the music, looked at some very skull-heavy art, and chatted until it was time to go home. All in all, a very pleasant Hallowe'en.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257770472/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257770472/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1257770472/tpod.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:25:14 -0500 Return to the States

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Fairfax, Virginia, United States

I made a fantastic discovery yesterday. A full-fledged Asian supermarket, tucked away in Northern Virginia. The produce section had persimmons, actual proper persimmons that looked edible, as opposed to the faded and mushy ones that you usually find in mainstream supermarkets, if they're present at all. There was baby bok choi for 99 cents a pound, and big jars of kimchee for a little over $3. People stared at me when I went for the kimchee. I guess it's not something that white people usually eat. Then I found the seafood section, and discovered that baby octopus was $3/pound. Dinner! As I enthusiastically scooped tentacles off their bed of ice, one of the few other caucasion patrons of the place approached me."What do you <i>do with those?"I told him that they were good sauteed or stir-fried in a very hot pan with some oil and seasoning. Leave them in just until they turn opaque, then serve."Really? That easy?"I assured him that it was, and left him muttering about serving baby octopus over linguini with red sauce. It's nice to make culinary converts.As I passed through the store, salespeople offered me samples of everything from stir-fry to sticky buns to candy. They called out, "try it, try it" in English, Japanese, and Korean for their mostly Asian and Asian-American clientele. I saw about four other white people in the whole place. Funnily enough, that felt quite normal for me, and I felt very at home. At this point, it's more unusual for me to be surrounded by English-speakers who look like me than by people speaking other languages with dissimilar features. I've been away from home for so long that my home country at times feels foreign. Finding places like the Asian market brings the rest of the world to me and makes me feel more at ease.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255537761/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255537761/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255537761/tpod.html Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:49:56 -0400 Return to the States

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Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States

Today, thousands of people marched through DC, past the White House and on to the National Mall, to rally in front of the Capitol Building and demand equal rights. Who in America these days doesn't have equal rights? Gay, lesbian, and trans people, that's who.This event was not about "gay pride." That happens in June, and is a celebration as well as an expression of visibility. This was a rally with a purpose: equal protection under the law. For years, pretty much forever in the history of this country,&nbsp;GLBTQ people have been denied the same rights as heterosexual people. Namely, the right to serve in the military, and the right to marry. Whatever your personal feelings on the subject of homosexuality, one thing to me is very clear. Legal discrimination against any group of people is not okay. The event itself was fantastic. I marched with several fellow Smith alums and members of the local Unitarian Universalist church. Everyone was very positive, and everyone knew that this was a big event that would (hopefully) make a difference in some tangible way. There was a remarkable number of religious groups there, refuting the idea that all religions condemn gays, and there were also huge numbers of&nbsp;people carrying signs saying "I'm straight but I don't hate," proving that&nbsp;plenty of heterosexuals suppport the idea of equal rights.How big was the march? Very. I don't know the exact numbers, but I do know that the march started on time, and it took my section almost two hours to actually start moving dur to the number of people in front of us. I also&nbsp;saw from our vantage point (near the back but not the end of&nbsp; the line by any means)&nbsp;that the line of people stretched around three city blocks before the White House. Tens of thousands of people, were there,&nbsp;at least. If official counts topped 100,000, I would not be surprised.&nbsp;&nbsp;I'm sure that my primarily heterosexual readership is wondering, "why should I care?" For why you should care about "don't ask, don't tell," read this article in the Washington Post. For why you should care about gay marriage, check out this video on you tube. For an easy-to-read&nbsp;flowchart of the gay marriage debate, click here.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1255635067/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1255635067/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1255635067/tpod.html Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:32:49 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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Moscow, Central Russia, Russian Federation

I saw Amanda Palmer in concert tonight at Afisha Picnic in Moscow. It was awesome. The festival itself is a big outdoor event, with lots of artists and food and games in addition to the mainstage highlights. I got there at 5ish and wandered around, drank a cup of expensive hot chocolate and watched some Hare Krishna dancers onstage. My camera battery went flat, which is unfortunate, but on the other hand it meant that I could focus on the festival events themselves without trying to capture them on film. Sometimes it's important to experience things without the lens.I got to the main stage half an hour before Amanda was scheduled to perform. I caught the tail end of a set by "these new puritans," who I think are British. Some people were getting into their performance, and it was easy to tell the expats from the locals by who was dancing and seemed to know the words. I technically fall into the expat category. But in terms of behavior at that point I definitely looked more Russian, because I didn’t actually have a clue who the people in the band were. After soundcheck Amanda Palmer took the stage, and the crowd literally went wild. I was glad to have gotten there early, as all the personal space bubbles around the crowdspeople vanished quite quickly once her performance began. Interestingly, a lot of Russians knew the words to a lot of her songs. It’s surprising that an independent and fairly offbeat artist has such a strong international following. But she sang all her highlights, and plenty of people mouthed the words or sang along. “Astronaut,” “Leeds United,” “Coin-Operated Boy,” and “Girl Anachronism” were all big crowd pleasers, but then she also did a cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” which seemed a bit strange but went down well.&nbsp; She shared some stage time with Jason Webley, whom I wasn’t familiar with before but whose work I’ll have to check out . They finished with a drinking song, and instructed anyone who wasn’t drunk to spin in a circle 12 times or until they felt drunk. It’s a measure of how much they’d won over the audience that the audience actually complied. Post-concert, fans crowded around the backstage area chanting “we want Amanda” until she came out and signed autographs.&nbsp; I joined the crowd, and I think she was surprised to hear a fairly Bostonian accent so far from home. I gave her my card and told her to call if she needed anything while in Russia. She said she might. Very cool. Back at my hotel-apartment for the night, I’m still on an overall concert high. There was such good energy from the performers and the crowd, and the experience was easily the most fun I’ve had in months. &nbsp;Sometimes I think music really makes the world go round.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255536552/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255536552/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/6/1255536552/tpod.html Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:29:00 -0400 Return to the States

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Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Last time I was in tthe US, a friend introduced me to aerial dance, and from the first lesson I was hooked. There's nothing quite like hanging upside down from a trapeze to give you a sense of giddiness. Now that I've returned to the States I'm diving back in to the aerial world, and what better introduction than attending the first-ever Baltimore Aerial Festival? I originally thought I would know two of the performers, but discovered over the course of the evening that I actually knew about half of them. One, it turns out, was a fellow summer camp tutor with me in Italy. Talk about the world being small.The show itself was good, but very oddly set up. It took place in an alleyway behind a rec center, and three&nbsp;differentt rigs were set up around the L-shaped street. An interesting concept, but it resulted in the audience having to shuffle back and forth through the entire evening. Not&nbsp;the most comfortable way to watch a show. But the performances themselves were excellent. Silks, trapeze, lyra...all the apparatus (apparati?) that we use to fly.&nbsp;Highlights included an operatic silks performance in which the performer sang while suspending herself midair, a lyra performance to "diamonds are a girl's best friend" that featured the performer hanging upside-down&nbsp;by her sparkly red platform shoes, and a high-energy trapeze piece by the costumed&nbsp;"flying hate monkey" to the music "ding dong the witch is dead." In addition to the usual apparati, there were also a few specially created areial sculptures made specifically for the festival, one of which looked like a giant seesaw, and one of which&nbsp;reminded me of the zero-gravity simulators&nbsp;that you see at the space center as a kid. Overall, a good festival, and a good re-introduction to the aerial world for me. Soon I'll be in the air again. Who knows? I may even be performing someday soon at a festival near you.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1247047321/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1247047321/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1247047321/tpod.html Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:18:52 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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Beijing, China

After my last post on the Great Firewall of China, I found that I was completely unable to post anything to my blog. So my stories of visits to the Lama temple and my adventures in trying to get vegetarian food from hole-in-the-wall hutong vendors needs to take a backseat while I blog about more important things.I generally don't bother myself much about the government or politics of any country where I stay for short periods of time, but I do pay attention when the government does things that affect my personal activities. I can't blog during my time off or chat with my friends on Facebook? Clearly something is wrong.Just a few days ago, on Sunday, one of the biggest explosions of ethnic violence in recent years erupted in China. Stories diverge about who started what and when, but the body count is 156 people from a fight between Muslim Uighur minorities and ethnic majority Han Chinese. China in general likes to control information, particularly about things that might make it look bad. This probably explains why google didn't work at all the other day, why Facebook and Twitter are both shut down, and any website hosted at blogger.com results in a blank page. Oddly, today I was able to access information from the BBC news website, which is generally blocked in China under normal circumstances, as well as from NYtimes.com. Possibly this is because the Chinese government allowed foreign journalists into a specially engineerd press conference to let the world know the official version of the violent events, and they want to see firsthand the results. Control of information following the riots:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07beijing.html?fta=yThe BBC:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8135203.stmMy attempt to access the Uighur Congress website predictably came up with an error message:http://www.uyghurcongress.org/En/home.aspI like China. But I really prefer freedom of information and freedom of speech.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1246848661/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1246848661/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1246848661/tpod.html Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:32:21 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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Beijing, China

I write this entry from Beijing, surprised to be able to write it on this website and unsure if I'll actually be able to post it once it's written. I tried to log in to travelpod.com yesterday and was diverted to a site in Chinese. I couldn't read it, but it had a definite air of warning, of "you shall&nbsp; not pass." I remembered then that blogs in general are blocked in China, as are any sites that might have objectionable content. These objectionable sites could be for porn and other subjects traditionally considered degenerate, but are more likely to be sites that criticize the Chinese government in any way, shape, or form. Porn is no direct threat to control of the People's Republic. Freedom of speech most definitely is. After I tried to log in yesterday, I decided to try a google search. In my built-in toolbar search field, I typed "great firewall of china," the phrase by which China's internet controls are popularly known. Unsurprisingly, my search resulted in a blank white page with a "File not found" error message. I wondered if I would have any better luck with a search from the google homepage, so typed google.com into the address bar. With this address, I ended up at the personal website of an obscure author of romance novels.&nbsp; Clearly, even the ability to search for information is considered dangerous. This morning, I discovered the holes in the system. I can't access the front page of travelpod, but I can use the "history" function to visit old entries and then log in from there. Setting google.com as my homepage and then hitting the "home" button on my browser lets me in to the search giant's site. Now that I have access to google I'm tempted to search again for the "great firewall"&nbsp; and see what the search turns up.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1245186183/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1245186183/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1245186183/tpod.html Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:01:40 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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St. Petersburg, North-West Russia, Russian Federation

This evening, around 9pm, my housemate suggested that we go outside to play badminton. By the time we actually left the house, it was past 10:30. Why not? We're in the period of the "white nights," when days are long and nights almost nonexistent. It was still the light of early evening when we made our way to the park, and we played badminton for almost an hour, during which time it became only barely perceptibly darker.&nbsp; When we got bored with badminton we turned to dance. I taught her some modern and bellydance moves, and she taught me some lifts from her contact improvisation classes.&nbsp; It was the most fun I've had in quite a while, and so simple! Just the joy of being outside with a friend and acting like the world in some small way is ours. We got catcalled by some teenaged boys with their beer, but I think they were just jealous that they couldn't lift each other up in the air like we were doing. We did handstands in the grass until well past midnight, and the hilarity lasted until I found a large triangle of broken glass next to my bare foot. At that point, we went back to the apartment and resumed our work. But we vowed to come to the park again another night, for as long as the light evenings last.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1242273600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1242273600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1242273600/tpod.html Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:57:51 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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Ulan Bator, Mongolia

I'm on the final train journey of my first Asian trip, the last leg from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing. The train is fairly comfy,and I’m sitting on my top bunk with my computer, munching on a not-quite-ripe Asian pear.It’s interesting to start to feel like I’m in Asia. Officially I’ve been on the continent for about two weeks now, ever since I passed the Ural mountains on the train. But being in the Eastern part of Russia and being in a place that feels like Asia are two very different things. Throughout Russia, the food has been based on potatoes and cabbage, the writing has been Cyrillic, and the people have had features that were mostly Slavic. In Irkutsk we saw a few people with more "Asian" features, but many of them had emigrated from China, for work or study. Crossing into Mongolia, oddly enough, was not like crossing into a different world. The Slavic features all but disappeared, but the Cyrillic alphabet remained on the street signs, and many people spoke Russian as their second language and German or English as their third. The first real moment of culture shock came in Ulaan Baatar, when we went to visit the Gandan Monastery. Walking through the pagoda-shaped gates and into the temple with the robed monks chanting, I realized that for the first time in my life I was in a country whose main religion was not Christianity or Islam, but Buddhism. &nbsp;About 60 percent of Mongolia’s population is Buddhist, with Christian and Muslim minorities, and traditional shamanism in the countryside is still going strong. At the monastery, I felt as though I’d stepped into a film about Tibet. &nbsp;Mongolian Buddhism is very similar to Tibetan Buddhism, and the monks all use the Tibetan language to pray and chant. Rows of large prayer wheels spin gently, and symbolically colored scarves are tied to nearby trees. In one building is an enormous statue of the Goddess of Compassion, consecrated by the Dalai Lama himself just a few years ago when it was finally complete. (It was built to replicate an original statue that was melted down to make bullets for Moscow in&nbsp; the years of the USSR). Mongolia stands at the crossroads of Russia and China, so naturally incorporates elements of both cultures. &nbsp;This may be why the place feels familiar, after spending so much time in Russia. Mongolia is just a variation on the theme. It makes me wonder how China will be.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1244693400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1244693400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/laura99/5/1244693400/tpod.html Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:11:11 -0400 Trans-Mongolian Journeys

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Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, China

Border crossings happen in desolate places. The area before the Mongolia-China border is almost totally devoid of people, though we saw several herds of horses and cows and occasional herds of sheep. Beyond the periodic&nbsp;ger tents, though, we saw almost no signs of human life. Flat, arid land dominated the horizon.&nbsp; Sometimes the land would rise slightly in imitation of a hill, but fall again before achieving more than a few metres beyond the base. Short, scrubby grasses poked out of the rocky soil, enough for herds to subsist, but not much more. This is the edge of the Gobi desert. The middle of nowhere is very close to here. The entire population of Mongolia is only about three million people.&nbsp; Three million total, in the whole country. To put that in perspective,&nbsp;in Morocco three million people live in Casablanca alone. Mongolia is enormous in terms of land area, but the country’s&nbsp; entire population could fit into a large city. A lot of the population actually does. Ulaan Baator’s population is a little over one million. Which means that outside the capital all you see is countryside, stretching out for miles in all directions, the only signs of life the occasional camel or yak.At the Mongolian border, the train stopped at the town of DzamynUde (Zamiin Uud) and waited for the requisite officials to come through. &nbsp;They collected our passports, exit cards, and customs forms, and then they wandered off, had a drink and a smoke and a game of darts, and stamped our passports. All told we left Mongolia about an hour after we were originally scheduled to do so. Which meant, of course, &nbsp;that we were delayed getting in to China.On the Chinese side of the border, after about twenty minutes of stop and go through no-man’s-land, the Chinese border guards appeared with a vengeance. Crisp green uniforms, flashlights in hand, they searched odd corners of the train for smuggled contraband. Passport control came by and collected our documents. When the man collected mine he looked at me in surprise and said, “America,” as though Americans were unusual and exotic guests. (Though come to&nbsp; think of it Ihaven’t met any other Americans since coming to the region, so I suppose we are rather unusual over here).&nbsp; A while later a woman in a surgical mask and gloves came through to hand out thermometers and health forms inquiring if we’d had any contact with pigs in the last two weeks.I was fighting off a cold, and the potential swine-flu implications of being American suddenly jumped into mind. Particularly when the woman exclaimed with widened eyes over my thermometer results. But they didn’t kick me off the train or take me into quarantine, so I can only assume they decided I was safe. While &nbsp;we were engaged in the long process of documents and health forms, the train made its way slowly into the“bogie-changing area.” Chinese track widths are different from Russian and Mongolian track widths, which means that in order to continue our train needed to change its wheels (“bogies”). They moved&nbsp;our&nbsp; train from the station into a special shed and detached each&nbsp; carriage from the next, then&nbsp; they individually lifted the carriages, pulled out the wheels, and slid new ones in underneath. The whole &nbsp;process takes at least an hour,though past midnight I stopped keeping track. &nbsp;We &nbsp;left the bogie-changing area with a clatter and a thud close to 1am, and we’re now sitting on the tracks without moving. We still haven’t turned in two of the forms we were supposed to fill out, and there’s no way of knowing if they’ll be collected, or when. It’s past midnight now, and some people are sleeping, while others look out the windows to see what, if anything, might happen next. I’m tempted to go to sleep soon also, but I don’t relish the idea of a rude awakening by border guards, which is what will happen if they decide they want the extra forms from us after all. But I think I shall. Ignoring the close, dusty air and the sound of train whistles, I will sleep for as long as I can. Tomorrow afternoon at last, I will be in Beijing.
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