New Haven

Today was a beautiful day!! It was very sunny out and although windy still very warm. Which is nice, but weird.
Ada and I had decided that today we were going to venture into the city to see some museums. Her mom ended-up with a half day so she decided to come with us. :-) Both of them are a blast to chat with and hang-out with (I think I've said that before).


When we first got there they showed me the Yale bookstore, which is apparently also a good size Barnes and Noble.



I thought it was funny how many glasses are sold at the Yale "crap" store. Wow! New Haven is really Yale!
We hit a little Yale cafe for lunch. It was yummy and cheap too. :-) Us three girls had a very nice chat about being short while we were there, among other things.


The first museum we hit was the Yale University Art Gallery. They had all sorts of cool things, from Van Gogh paintings to marble statues to an "I-Book" as modern art(Ha). Very cool museum though!!


The second place we headed to was the Yale arcituture building to check out some of the new designs that they were comming up with.


We found this one fasinating. It's the "Shop Lift: Rethinking Retail, Shopping Center". Those bars over the structure are residential units and we couldn't figure out what the white fluffy stuff on the roof was representing. We even tried to read the description. "The resulting architechural typology is analogous, in formal and operational terms, to the term 'plex', which means 'to plait (interlace), or to interweave,' thus forming a plexus: a complex body, collection, or set of things; a web, a network, or any intertwined or interwoven mass." Isn't there an easier way to say that??



On the way back home we saw the sun setting on Yale which we thought was cool and I got another picture of Old Campus Yale.
When we came home, we spent the rest of the night cooking and chatting. Good times. Sorry James, I did have to tell some funny stories about you and me. :-)

Good night! It's off to NYC tomorrow!

New Haven and Old Saybrook

After a damp walk in the rain to the bus stop and a short bus ride, I ended up here in front of the city green. It was pretty even with the winter yuckyness. Ada stayed at home. She just wanted to hang out at home. That's cool with me. I understand.


After I walked a little while, I saw Old Campus, Yale. It was pretty neat. I hope to check out more of it tomorrow.


Right across the street from the campus was this wonderful place where I stopped for lunch. It was super yummy! I had a tuna melt and frys for only $6! :-)


Then I walked to Union Station to catch a train to Old Saybrook (it's funny I've been calling it Old Seabrook), to meet my friend Kris. It was really great to see him. I'm sorry I didn't take too many pictures of us wondering around it was really foggy and kinda rainy when I was there. Not too exciting. We went to dinner at a pizza place and then went for a walk. It was nice. It was really good to see him. He drove me back to Ada's place at about 8pm. That was an adventure in itself. The roads here were built for carriage and horses so you can't find anything in a car.

It's off to bed now. I miss you all and hope you're have a wonderful time where ever you may be reading this from. :-)

Plane ride and CT

My good friend Kari and I met at LAX about 8 hours before either one of our planes took off. She was leaving for Anchorage and I was of course leaving for CT. It was good to see her. She was still in shock that she was back from New Zealand. She plans to go back there soon. We played cards for hours and talked a lot. At about 2pm she was craving Mexican food, so that what we had. She says there's not any good Mexican food or hot dogs in Oz or NZ. Very interesting. My plane took off at 9:45pm PST. I miss everyone already. It was a good flight, even though I sat next to a mother, her daughter and two cats in carry-on bags. "Have to keep the family together." Okay, if you say so. Delta Song has some cool in flight trivia game though that you can play against other passengers. :-)


I got to Hartford at 6am EST and the weather was beautiful and there was snow on the ground!! I was pretty happy to be off the plane.


After I had retrieved my backpack from the luggage claim I went to go look for my shuttle. Well, apparently the shuttle that I made reservations with doesn't service Bradley Airport. Self high-five for that one. I had apparently thought I was coming into another airport in CT when I had made the reservations. I got to where I was going after canceling with Primetime Shuttle and getting with this lovely airport shuttle.


I finally made it to Ada's house! Ada and her mom are a blast and wonderful to talk to! After eating breakfast I went back to bed till about 3pm. Sleep is good. Since I woke-up we've just been chatting. They're my type of people! :-) We've even come up with a pretty good ghost story for the house the no one lives in at the end of the street. Hehe...


It's dinner time and the Daily Show is on! I'll write again soon!

Headed to the airport!!

See ya! I'm headed out. I will write again as soon as possible! Thanks again for all the support from everyone!!

All Smiles!!

24 hours left in So. Cal.

I won't be seeing this view for a while. This is the view from my parent's house. If you're ever in the neighborhood, you should stop by and see it. It's amazing!

I hope everyone's Christmas went well. Christmas went really well for me. I didn't get to see all of my family, but it was good to see the family that I did. They say they are sad to see me go, but are very proud of me for having the courage and will power to do so. I'm still almost positive that I'll come back with debt. Good times will be had with that money at least! :-)

I'm almost packed! I've been sorting all my stuff into different piles all day. It's crazy! My mom came up with this great idea to ship stuff to me while I'm in Europe that way I don't have to carry it to Europe, but I'll have it for when I go to Cairns, Australia. Yay!! My mom is so smart!

I'm meeting up with my old friend Kari tomorrow at the airport! I'm excited about that for sure. She's headed back to Anchortown from New Zealand. It's really too bad that her and I weren't down there at the same time. Oh well. It will be very nice to see her though.

At 11am tomorrow I leave the house where my mom and my step dad Carl live. I'm not looking forward to saying "goodbye". Saying "goodbye" to my dad and my brother was hard and I don't want to do it again. I know I'll be seeing Carl, Diane (my step sister) and my mom again relatively soon... but still I've never been this far away and done this long of a trip by myself. I am so nervous! I just have to take a deep breath and tell myself it'll be alright. Thank you to all the people who are so supportive in my life!

2 more days

Now all I have to do is survive Christmas and do some final packing. :-)
Last night it finally hit me that I'm leaving. Not only was my stomach and my back hurting me and keeping me awake, but I couldn't stop thinking about all the things I have left to do, all the things I'll do while I'm traveling and wondering what kind of reaction my host families and friends are going to say when I show up in Austria after 5 years of being gone.

Yesterday I organized my transportation from my house to LAX and the transportation from Hartford to my friend Ada's house. It's expensive! It makes me wonder if I'm really budgeting enough for all of my travels.

6 days

This is Brisbane?! Oh my goodness... it's huge!!

I still have no idea where I will be living in Brisbane, but the university's housing department has told me that I should know by the end of the month. I hope so, because I need to start sending stuff there. I had no idea that I wanted to take so much stuff with me. *shrug* Oh well, I guess that happens. :-) The plan is to take the minimum though and buy everything I need over there. I don't know when I'm going to find the time to buy the things I need though, because I arrive at 11pm the night before orientation starts. Silly, huh?
I've been in contact with my department at Griffith University. It sounds like my classes are going to be very interesting and my first month will be very hot! They say that February is generally the hottest month of the summer (I need to get accustomed to reading temperatures in Celsius). Looks like I'm buying a lot of sunscreen! Dang hole in the Ozone! I need to get into the habit of putting sunscreen on in the morning. That's going to be a change from putting five layers of clothes on each day. Hehe...

10 more days

The closer and closer it gets to being time to go, the less and less I feel like I'm ready. I am still very very excited about going and I think everything will work out, but I sometimes worry about what might go on at home while I'm gone. I really miss Alaska and I know that I will really miss Cali too along with all the people in both places.
People in Oz are going to think I'm crazy, just like the Alaskans did when I came to go to school there. Most people there still remember me as "crazy" Kate from Cali.

Another thing that is going through my mind too is how many people miss me, will miss me and how many have already forgotten about me. I know it's not something I should worry about, but I sure do wonder about it.

14 more days

Wow, only two weeks till I start my adventure!! I got my Euro-rail tickets on Saturday. I have 10 days in 2 months of train travel I can do. I'm excited; I got the pass for Austria, Italy and Greece. I'm really excited about Greece. It's somewhere I've never been before. I know it's getting kind of close to places where things aren't too let's say, friendly, but I really want to see Athens and some of the islands and I think as long as I stay in touristy places I'll be fine.

I now have a place to stay on the east coast as well. I'm spending the 28th through the morning of the 31st in CT at Ada's place and the 31st through the 4th of January in NJ with my great step aunt and uncle. Hehe.. That just sounds funny. I love it though. I haven't seen them since the Carrera family reunion when I was 14 or 15 years old.

I am sooo... excited!!!

3 weeks tomorrow

Wow, it hasn't even hit me yet that I only have three weeks left before I start my adventure. Last week I felt like I was on schedule and that I'd be ready by the 27th, but now I don't feel that way at all. It's just crazy!
I still have to buy train tickets, decide what I'm taking with me, send in my UAF post office box key to close my box, change my address with the bank, and visit a bunch of people.
My schedule is filling up fast. I am glad I'm not working. Tomorrow I'm hanging out with my grandmother. We're going to go see the IMAX version of The Polar Express and then her and I are going to the Disneyland Employee's Only Christmas Party. I'm excited! Then on Friday I'm playing taxi for my mom and her friend then going to a math department party. On the 18th I have Christmas at my grandmother's place. On the 20th my family and I are going to the Performing Arts Center to see the musical "The Boyfriend". It's a good musical; as some of you might remember, I saw it twice. :-) I still have to see my cousins and of course there's always Christmas with my dad's family. Justin (the guy I'm dating) also wants to take me up to the San Jose area to meet his family. That would be fun, but I have no idea where I'm going to fit that in. That's like a whole weekend trip. Just crazy.
I hope that I leave here filling like I did everything I wanted to do.