stones AND a henge...

we embarked on a somewhat warm, sunny day to salisbury, just slightly northwest (more west than north) - a town on the avon and home to a fairly large cathedral which is very pretty. upon arrival, we were directed to the expensive bus company to which we would catch our expensive ride out to stonehenge. i was bitter about the expenses to say the least, but to be totally honest, i was happy to be out of the city. i quickly moved on from my financial woes to the general lamentations on industrialisation and the lack of really really green fields in london. so there we were, on a bus, driving by lots of very nice really really green fields when all of a sudden we could see, appearing on the horizon, a seemingly random configuration of stones. the bus dropped us off and we headed down to buy tickets when we realised it had turned into a miserably cold day. especially unfortunate seeing as eike decided to brave the day without a raincoat. nonetheless, there we were, audio guides in hand (to ears) and undoubtedly walking in the vicinity of very ancient rocks. i say vicinity because you aren't allowed to go near them. they're roped off because of some people (among them some dirty hippies) who chose to adorn the stones with symbols and words... whatever.
so there we stood in the cold, obeying the audio guide's instructions to stop or move on and me personally feeling a little miserable. we were at the second to last audio point when the sun came out. and it was awesome. it was warm. and suddenly everything looked beautiful. and i had much more patience to imagine sun-god worshippers frolicking in the (now) really really green grass. so we stayed an extra round and took pictures in the sun. what came of this? 80 pictures on my camera alone. snap! and of course general theories on the activities of 3000bce...

we went back to salisbury to walk around and spent some time there and looked at the cathedral before going back home.

the day ended quite perfectly with a viewing of 'the science of sleep', in which i re-fell in love with gael garcia bernal and vowed to succumb to all of the creative impulses i have (regardless of how impossible and stupid they may seem).
and on that note, i'm going to go glue all my furniture on one wall of my room so it looks like i have a skylight instead of an ordinary window.

slang flashcards

i may have gotten slang flashcards for my birthday... i'll let you be the judge of whether or not that's true from today's post.

what's up, players? it's a hella dope day in londontown. the sun is shining and i got some mad cheddar in the form of a gift certificate so i'm going shopping for some bling - need to work on my steelo. i'm going to avoid the po-po because i know they'll hate on me when they see the grip of goods i bought. but if they stop me, i'm going to cold diss the fuzz because they don't need to front. i'll tell them to roll back to their cribs in their janky hoopty.

gotta bounce lil dawgs.

roma!
february 9 - 11

i arrived late friday night after a long delayed flight but feeling quite good about being back in continental europe. after having been "prego'd" about 30 times already, i spent the bus ride into town deciding what it meant. it was already dark when i arrived so i didn't pick up on much going by except for the signs that i didn't really understand and the cabinieri. they made me happy. i think perhaps the resemblance to the policeman arthur from postman pat?

=

regardless, i met camilla and we went to get pizza (clearly). we stayed near the termini station, which is very central. we were able to walk pretty much everywhere, which was maybe a little silly since it didn't stop raining on saturday. but we got a lot in. and despite the rain, i liked rome. camilla also decided that when people speak italian, they aren't being serious so walking around and listening was always entertaining.
we started off toward the colosseum and the forum, pretty good starting places, i reckon. the forum was, of course, pretty amazing. and the brilliance of it all is that it is literally in the middle of the city. you walk down a big street (via nazionale) and suddenly there's a restored site right next to you. i think compared to turkey, and i admit my memory might be failing me here, the basic level of intactness in rome was much more impressive. i don't really know too much about excavation and restoration but it looked pretty rad from where i was standing.
i liked walking around the forum a lot. but to be honest, the colosseum was a little overwhelming for me. i couldn't quite get past the 'woah it seriously IS that massive' feeling enough to start looking beyond its massiveness. there were also two men dressed up as gladiators standing around outside, which was just silly. my initial reaction to the area (colosseum, forum, arch of constantine etc) was basically, "ok. the romans are just showing off with the arches and the columns and all this artsy stuff now..." and i somehow managed to avoid taking a picture of the monument to vittorio emanuele II, which you can pretty much see from everywhere in the city. it's pretty monstrous and all marble and just like a power trip gone seriously wrong.
we also went to the pantheon but all the pictures i took look kinda stupid. and the rest of saturday we spent walking around trying to figure out if we were up to going out. we did end up going out to trastavere to grab dinner. it was pretty nice. a full meal and a bottle of wine. pretty standard, i'd say.
sunday was beautiful. we woke up to sunshine and a much warmer day. i decided i wanted to go to the vatican city, and on our way there, we realised that's where everyone else was going too. it was a mad house. there were so many people and so many cameras and we were honestly a little confused. i stopped to ask a man what the deal was. he had a big camera with reuters stickers on it so i thought he'd be helpful but he rudely replied, "what do you think? why don't people read their guide books?" and i said, "for the pope, you'd think there'd be a bigger crowd, no? this is more like an unorganised party" and walked away. jerk.
so yes. the pope, or papa, makes an appearance at noon every sunday. he delivers a quick mass and then addresses his people in several different languages. he was standing by a window with a red banner hanging (second from the right) and clearly you can't see him because i gave up all photo opportunities by taking video instead and my zoom sucks anyway.
but actually, i really liked the vatican city. despite it's theme park feel (it was the crazy people), i thought it was absolutely gorgeous. walking away from it, it just seemed kinda surreal. it's so clean and white and pretty... you do sort of feel like you're not allowed to touch anything.
i think that's something in general that i liked about rome. it's a walkable city but you have something to look at pretty much everywhere you go. if you're a nerd, like me, you get excited about things like this:

and for everyone else... statues and fountains, grand buildings and ghettos of small alleys and buildings that are falling apart. i personally liked the intensity. check out the examples of intensity strewn about the city at very random places... aren't you just thinking, "harp man, why do you look so sad? what grief befalls your soul?" or whatever... and what about these ladies? well actually, i don't know what i'm thinking when i look at them. i just really liked it when i saw it. it's on a bridge going away from the vatican city and crossing the tiber back to the centrico. but honestly, how can you get more intense than this? standing on that monument to vittorio emanuele II looking south east over the forum and toward the colosseum. i mean...rad. i got a little bit dorky with my 600 page blue guide to rome... but where else was i gonna find out the names of the different popes and emperors/kings over the last several thousand years?
the rest of sunday was tiring. we spent a lot of it sitting and eating or drinking and hanging out before going back to the airport. camilla and i were tired and grumpy from about 7pm on so i will save you the bitter comments we made for the remainder of the night.

prego.

notes

i've added pictures to the lao entries (thanks alexis) so those are done now. it's reading week here and i've just gotten back from rome. it was wonderful. entries to come :)

bangkok day 1: arrival

the bus ride was surpisingly pleasant. i slept pretty well and for several hours. it wasn't as cold and we were given blankets anyway. we arrived early in the morning and took a cab home... then my mom told us to shower. nice.
the rest of bangkok was rather a blur. alexis was in town until christmas evening when she took off on a surprise romantic getaway with a finn ... what does he do again?

so highlights in pictures:
christmas eve was ridiculous. my uncle put on a show on the street outside of his spa. are those men? yes, yes they are. unfortunately, i don't have pictures of the 12 year old girls gyrating on each other... it was a spectacle. alexis, chris and i arrived to a very warm welcome and on instruction, we were not a minute left alone. we had full glasses of beers all night and we were made to get up and dance because that's what happens when you're having fun! and actually, you also scream a lot when you're having fun, apparently... god that was strange.
luckily, my parents showed up AFTER the gyrating girls left the stage and just in time for a pretty fabulous drag show (as you can well see). the girls who work at my uncle's spa were clearly having a pretty good time... i think he must be some kinda tyrant boss because they were drunkity drunk drunk... particular favourite was this woman who, when alexis, chris, mom and i were taking a picture decided to sprint toward us and still have time to look natural... sort of.

general silliness was in order for the rest of the trip, i'd say. alexis and i manage to revert back to 11-year old selves when we're around each other, as evidenced by the pieces of art here.

this one's called, 'two girls stand amazed in face of skytrain'. this other one's just totally ridiculous...

lao day 6 - 7
part I: alms and the sunrise

we woke up at an outrageous time to watch the monks collect alms. if you're wondering if i got any sort of spiritual enlightenment out of it, i can honestly say no. i guess i was a little jaded on monks and i kinda walked away from it with the feeling that i was just kinda impressed that they woke up so early all the time. i was so uninspired that i have no pictures to show you...

but since we were up, we decided to walk up the big hill to a monastery to catch the sunrise. that was by far one of the best memories i have of lao and i have about 50 pictures to show for it. i can't choose favourites. i really had a pretty amazing time just sitting quietly and looking out over luang prabang. i dunno... the mountains, the trees, the mekong, the mist... *sigh*

part II: pak ou caves and a hmong new year party

it was our last day in luang prabang and we still wanted to drive out to see the pak ou caves. obviously obsessed with caves and our overall determination to see as much as possible led us to drive kinda far away to see what ended up being kinda silly. i'm not trying to take away anything from the people who actually went on pilgrimages to this place. in fact, if the place were more famous for that, it'd have been a much more positive experience. however, it's lauded for its beauty. and i can't speak too much for that. to explain: from far away, the lower cave is pretty amazing looking. it is a hole in a cliff to which a white stairway has been added to get up into it and around it to the upper cave. when you near it, however, it's just not what you expected. the lower cave is filled with a LOT of buddha statues. i believe they were gifts from those who made the pilgrimage. i was a little weirded out by this whole thing. i guess i couldn't see it all in context. i s'pose what i did like was that people still do go there and there was a lady who almost seemed in a trance-like state praying at one of the several shrines... there was also a staircase in the cave that was very lord of the rings... y'know... if that story had taken place in lao... during the daytime.
after leaving pak ou, our driver stopped at a hmong new year celebration. the hmong are a minority group i had previously associated with southern china but apparently live all over s.e. asia. the new year party consisted almost entirely of children standing in lines facing each other throwing tennis balls. we (myself, alexis and tai) watched for what felt like 3 hours and then joined in. these were our teammates/opponents (because i'm still not really sure what the actual point of the game was...)

part III: luang prabang - vientiane

oh what a terrible night/day this was... we thought we were being smart by showing up at the bus station early to choose our seats. we thought we'd take the back seat for the three of us so we could try and sleep. here's what happened: the window wouldn't close and it was freezing so alexis couldn't sleep and had to move. then i tried to cover it with bags/clothes but it kept opening so i woke up every 20 minutes to close it. needless to say, we didn't sleep. we also thought we were being smart by choosing an overnight bus where we could arrive in the morning and hang out before catching the train to bangkok. well, apparently the driver was driving at the speed of light and instead of arriving at 6am, we arrived at 4am. this left us to walk around the darkened streets of vientiane knocking on hostel doors hoping someone would have a room. no luck. we ended up hanging out with a bunch of australians at a bakery. awesome. moving on, instead of finding a hostel to sleep in for a few hours when theh city woke up, we decided we were just going to walk around and make use of our day. we also found out that train tickets were fully booked and that we would have to take another bus to get to bangkok. by this time, i discovered that the previous bus ride had given me a cold. we ended up meeting said australians and going out in vientiane before our bus left at 5pm, of which all happenings have completely escaped my memory.

new address

i have one.

some haikus...

my new little house
all dressed up in sparkling snow
email for address

snow falls in london
the city blanketed white
my tree is pretty