And also just posted…pics from the trip to NYC that Alex and I took.
You can view the Fotki widget here if you wanna look at the pics in sequential order….
If accessing from Facebook or you wish to go directly to the website where the pics are stored, follow this link:
http://public.fotki.com/RodneyCornelius/geographies-countries/americas/north-america/united_states/new-york/
This year Alex and I went to visit friends in Delft for Queens Day. The actual day was a Thursday, but we arrived on Tuesday it was fantastic to meet Mario, Pelle, and Brian again 😀 (whom we met in Stockholm when they were here to visit in November 2008).
So below are some pictures from the journey…thanks to a Fotki widget you can see them as a slide show!
(if viewing in Facebook you might not be able to see LJ-embedded links, so the link to the pics is here:
http://public.fotki.com/RodneyCornelius/geographies-countries/europe/netherlands/2009/queens-day-2009/
I will also pick a few to add to my pics directly in Facebook, for those who hate leaving the Facebook system for any reason 😀
More details about the trip another time! 😀
Cities Visited: Cairo, Aswan, Luxor, others
Time Period: March 1996
Pictures: None
Cairo, Egypt
This is only my second trip outside of the country and this is my first trip to the African continent. I certainly hope that this is not my last trip to Africa! I am going to CIMUN conference which stands for the Cairo International Model United Nations. I was selected to go to the conference with Rachael Wilcox, David Sacchetti, and Edward Bush. We were all very excited to be going to the conference.
After 12 hours of flight, we arrived in Cairo, where someone from the CIMUN conference was waiting for us. We stayed at a really neat hotel, although I have long since forgotten the name of the hotel. But I remember that I had a really awesome room. I wasn't even tired. In fact, I was very very excited. I called my parents to let them know that I was okay, and then I headed out towards the bars with the group. We had a really good time.
The conference itself was nothing spectacular, but I met a lot of cool people, including John, who would later become my adventure partner. During the conference, we went to museums and saw ancient mummies and other Egyptian artifacts. We also had an awesome night out at a dessert resort. Although I must say that the highlight of my experience was a trip to the pyramids and the Sphinx, along with a camel ride. Despite what people tell you, camels are mean mean mean! They spit at people and if they get the chance, they'll kick you. Camels have an odd sense of humor.
Aswan, Luxor, Memphis and more, Egypt
At the end of the conference, I had learned so much about this aspect of African culture that I made a decision to take the opportunity to learn some more about Egypt. A couple of inconvenient situations created an opportunity for more exploration, so John and I decided that we would join a cruise up the Nile, along the way stopping in the ports of Luxor, Memphis, Aswan, the Valley of the Kings, amongst other places. Sailing up the Nile was a beautiful experience, and visiting all of the different states of Egypt and seeing the Egyptian and Greco-Egyptian temples and architecture was a real learning experience. Those Egyptians were certain ahead of their time in many many ways.
UK & the layover
At the end of my Egyptian adventure, I learned about the harsh realities of buying consolidated tickets. Mainly, that you really aren't allow to make any changes. After some pleading (they didn't want to strand a 19 year old in Egypt), they booked me a flight on the condition that I got to Amsterdam myself, and it was only available for one date. What to do? Luckily, John offered to share his dorm room with me at his university in the UK, as I had 3 days until my flight. John was an awesome person for allowing me to stay at his dorm, and his dorm mates were really cool. Another good thing, I discovered "Chicken and Corn" pizza, which I suspect i'll always associated with fond memories of this trip. One of the highlights from my trip was that on the way from Egypt to England, President Mubark was in transit, so they closed the airspace at the airport. To pass the time, a random stranger began playing Egyptian music and dancing. And then he made John dance! I was laughing so hard until he then made me dance. It was funny and embarrassing at the same time, but it was a cool experience nonetheless. This was also the first time that I flew on British Airways, and I have fallen in love with them ever since.
Post-Conference
Anyway, I safely made it back to the United States, and was in deep shit with my advisor at school for taking longer than I needed. I was talked to and counseled, but in my hearts of heart, I felt that I made the right decision. After all, I don't know if i'll ever travel again. Besides, I have a feeling that i'll be working so much with MUN in the future and in leadership capacities that i'll make up for it. In addition to a pissed off advisor, one of my teachers dropped me from her class, but I got around that my submitting my freshman legal paper from Drew University (it was published in the school's law journal…it was on affirmative action and post-secondary education).
But in closing, it was a wonderful experience and i'll have many wonderful memories!
Cities Visited: Paris, Nantes, Brittany
Time Period: Wednesday, June 30 – Thursday, July 22, 1993
Pictures: None
Overview and Paris, Part 1
This trip is very exciting for me for it is my first time out of the country. I have learned so much about France from Mr. Zawaki, my French teacher in high school, that it will be interesting to see how it is compared to everything that I think it is going to be. I would not even be going if it weren’t for many night working extra shifts at the movie theatre, money from my family, and a generous grant from Mr. Benjamin Walker, who coordinates international programs at my high school, Snowden International School at Copely. I am not going on this trip on my own. I heard about a company that sponsors trips to other countries called the Experience in International Living (or World Learning, Inc.). The adventure that I selected was living with a host family in Nantes, France, and then spending a 1 ½ weeks biking in Brittany. I will be traveling with a group of people that I have never met before, but I was excited at the opportunity that this presented me.
Prior to getting on the plane, we met together as a group for the first time. We played a game that helped us get to know each other better. It was a lot of fun. Our group leader, Nicole Talley, was a very nice person. She was originally from North Carolina, but had spent a lot of time in France. I was very nervous, as I had never been on a plane before. But I managed just fine. So we leave on the plane and about 7 hours later, we arrive in Paris. What I quickly learned is that I did not have a very good understanding of French. Getting along in Paris proved to be very difficult upon arrival. And I had my first real experience with jet lag, which was particularly difficult. Our first few days in Paris was getting used to the French culture and ways of doing things, from eating habits to social habits. During this stay in Paris, we took the Metro a lot, went to the Louvre, walked down the Champs-Elysees, visited the grave site of Jim Morrision, and Nicole showed us many of the cultural areas of Paris. We left Paris on the 3rd day to head for Nantes, which is located on the Atlantic Coast. We took the TGV, which was a very fast train. I had been on Amtrak trains before and compared to the TGV, Amtrak trains ran using an engine room full of hampsters!
Nantes
About 3 hours later, we arrived in Nantes and met with our host families. It was then that I met my host family. The family consisted of a husband, wife and 2 sons. Although I cannot remember their names, I can remember the name of the youngest one, his name was Clement. Both sons were very spoiled. The father was an executive and was faily well-to-do, as he built the house that they chose to live in. The mother was also very nice, but I think that our language barrier served to a problem as she was not good in English. Her older son was very good in English. And at times he would be very helpful and at other times, he was not very helpful. It depended on his mood and his patience with me. I can also understand that it was very strange for him to have someone in his house who he did not know very well. And he had a life to live at the same time.
Nantes was a very nice city. The group that we were with got to meet and greet the mayor of Nantes. He was a very entertaining person and made us feel at home in the city. During my time there, I visited the Chateau des Duc de Bretagne, which was absolutely beautiful. The chateau was surrounded by a moat. I also visited the Cathedrale Saint Pierre et Saint Paul, which was also a beautiful piece of architecture. Finally, we saw the Jardin des Plantes (Plant Gardens) and the Ile Feydeau (Feydeau Island). The gardens were really pretty and amongst the best I had seen. Feydeau Islands wasn’t really an island since it had been filled after World War II, but it was a good place to learn about the slave trade and its place in French history. Also during this time, I made a lot of friends and learned a lot about myself. It was interesting to note that many people thought that I was somewhat of an oddity in the sense that I was so tall. Many of the host families invited me to dinner and their friends out to with other host families. By the end of the trip, they nicknamed me Michael Jordan because I was so tall. I even played basketball on or twice to induldge them. I could not dunk the ball and that disappointed them somewhat, but they were all a pleasure to meet. Also equally important to include in my travelogue was the weekend trip to La Rochelle, which is a quaint old town set around a port. It was very similar in nature to Cape Cod. We had breakfast on the beach and lunch at a wonderful restaurant named La Galathee.
Half way through the trip, Nicole got hurt and had to be replaced by Eleanor Lyden. I was not too fond of her, but she had good intentions. She was definitely up for the trip and for someone her age (I am only 17), she has a lot of energy. Although any time we stopped, it was because she was tired.
Bretagne
From Nantes, we boarded a train to head to the region of France named Brittany so that we do some biking for about 10 days. This portion of the trip was perhaps the most athletic I have been in all of my life. We biked an average of 70-100 miles per day. We stayed in youth hostels wherever we went and that was a lot of fun. It was at a youth hostel that I learned the most difficult drinking game of my life from a bunch of Irish kids. What we did was put a table in the middle of the room. A person had to start on top of the table and crawl on the underside of the table and get back to the top side. The only problem was that a person was not allowed to touch the floor during the whole time. If you touched the floor, then you had to drink 2 beers. That was a very fun experience and we met some great people in the process.
While we were in Brittany, we visited the towns of Finistere, Concarneau, Vannes, Carnac, Lorient, Rennes, Saint Malo (see the old walled city…lots of good restaurants), Dinan and Paimpol. Honestly, after a while, most of them had similar things to offer, as they were resort places for tourists with a lot more money than I had a tourist. But each place of fun and we made it a fun experience. We were having so much fun in fact that the company that sponsored the exchange programs with host families used us in their promotional video! Some of the best parts of biking around was biking on the highway, and also when my shoe laces got caught in my bike and I skidded up a field of wheat for about a yard (I still have the scar to prove it). And sneaking around with Doug and Bobby getting drunk of hard french cider was a great experience as well.
Paris, Part 2
We ended our trek around Brittany back in the city where it all began, Paris. Although we could have visited a lot of sites, most of us were very tired and slept a lot except for the last night, where we went to a club named La Scala. It was a very good club with a very good crowd. It was so much fun that I got a business card from them and will keep it in my memory for a long time to come.
At the end of the trip, I became friends with some many people. A lot of the people in my group, like Erika Fishman, Tenielle Fordyce, Claudia, Douglas Vaskas, Bobby Yen, Piper Fogg, Hilary Mead, Julia Cathcart. and others in the group. When I returned home, life was so different. It was hard to argue that things in my life would ever be the same. Not only had a gone to a foreign country without parents or anyone I knew, but I had been bitten by the travel bug. There was so much that I experienced and so many stories that I can never tell them all in one sitting.