mid-trip: Guatemala

Guatemala (Nov 11 - Nov 25, 2007)

So I’ve been in Guatemala for 2 weeks now and here are a few things I’ve noticed:
1 – Guatemalans have a lot of pride in their country
2 – The Latin culture is MUCH more affectionate and personal than any other that I’ve encountered thus far
3 – Drivers are crazy everywhere (this is just a confirmation of what I already knew)
4 – My sinuses/allergies have been brutal since coming here

Work is work…there’s not a whole lot to say there outside of the fact that I’m coordinating my first audit. This is my 5th audit now and I’ve been working in this position for a little over 6 months, so I’m considered one of the more “experienced ones” these days. I wouldn’t necessarily consider my job really difficult, but it does take a lot of organization, admin and people skills…especially when you’re communicating with upper management all over the world and have to deal with the different languages, cultures/personalities and interpretations. All members of each audit team are responsible for their own work and no one really “reports” to anyone else, but at the end of the day – this audit, the results and how we deal with the local management, all fall under my responsibility. It’s nice, but also a little stressful at times.
That being said – our local office here has been really great and helpful with our stay in Guatemala so far.

The country is one of the least safe ones in Central America, and especially since it’s been 3 females (with only 1 speaking broken Spanish), our local office has been even more concerned with our safety. We have our own private driver that takes us to and from work every day and there’s only 1 real taxi company that’s reliable and you have to call them in advance. We’re not really allowed to venture off too much on our own and definitely not outisde “Zona 10”…where our hotel is along with several wonderful restaurants and some bars. It hasn’t been too bad on my end cause I’ve been able to focus more on keeping healthy and working out…well – at least until I got sick last week and had to focus on getting rest. I do feel bad for Holly more than anyone else cause she’s definitely an explorer (much more so than me) and hates being restricted like we have been.

So back to my observations:
Our first weekend since coming to Guatemala, we decided to go to Costa Rica for the weekend. It’s a beautiful country with so much to offer, we unfortunately couldn’t do everything we wanted as we were restricted on time and means of transportation. When we mentioned to our local office that we were going to Costa Rica, they were like “Why do you need to go to Costa Rica?? We have everything you need here!” They were even more disappointed when we returned and they found out we went to a coffee plantation in Costa Rica! It’s always nice to see pride in one’s country, but I really feel that there has to be respect for other countries as well.

Costa Rica pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30682&l=96f5c&id=500066404

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31155&l=d4a80&id=500066404

The culture…of course it’s well-known that Latins are more affectionate than most, but I guess I never really experienced it until now. Just recently being in Japan, there’s an incredibly drastic difference between cultures, work and social. Asian culture is my typically stringent and formal with very little touching…bowing instead of shaking hands, etc, while the Latin culture might take offense if you don’t do the whole cheek-kissing thing. They’re much more personal here and really want to get to know you personally even if you’re doing business with them. For example, 2 men from our local management wanted to take Christina, Holly and myself to Antigua for dinner one night last week. Antigua is approx. 1 hour away from Guatemala City, but we couldn’t really say no, so we left work early that day and they drove us to Antigua. It’s a really beautiful city, especially at night. We drove around for a bit and stopped here and there to take pictures and then we went to a local hot spot called Fridas for a drink before dinner. It’s not unusual to have dinners with local affiliates or even drinks here and there, so we were fine with this. What surprised me is when our conversation turned to religion. In the States, that’s a BIG no-no…you rarely talk about religion at work, unless you already know your colleagues on a personal basis. It caught me offguard when one of the guys straight up asked us all what our respective religions. Not that I mind talking about it, but I just usually don’t.
Also, apparently it’s interesting to everyone in the office that there are 3 single girls in the office.

I have yet to encounter a taxi driver who doesn’t drive crazy. Our personal driver, Eric, is no different. He’s gotten much better, but at first this guy was NUTS. Traffic in the city is horrible in the evenings (but where is it NOT bad), so the first day he drove us home, I was clinging to the seat belt for my life. We mentioned this to our Exec. Assistant the next day and ever since then, he’s driven much better. He’s a character though – used to live in Cali and Vegas, but got deported several years ago when Bush came into office. His English is really good and he talks ridiculously fast! The funniest part is to watch him when girls walk by – he honks and goes “hey baby”…and he LOVES his music. Some days it’s salsa and some days it’s American Pop, but he cranks his music and dances to it in the car…always entertaining.

And last but not least…as much as I love the outdoors, all the plants and the higher altitude here have caused me to basically be somewhat sickly since I’ve been out here L. I’m definitely looking forward to getting home and seeing my family for Christmas. I spent my Thanksgiving this year at work, but my coworkers and I made the best of it and even had a little arts and crafts time to make thanksgiving hats (I was the Indian, Christina was the turkey and Holly was the Pilgrim). Our local office took us out to a great lunch and we left a little early to enjoy a nice Thanksgiving dinner of fajitas.

This weekend we spent visiting Antigua during the day and just wandering about for the morning and then drove to the Pacaya Volcano for a good workout/afternoon hike.

See the links below for my pictures:

Antigua
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31636&l=f5b7d&id=500066404


Pacaya Volcano
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31653&l=1a363&id=500066404

RIP

So I stayed in tonight to catch up on some phone calls and get some rest since I've been pretty sickly lately...little did I know what one 5 min phone call would have in store for me.

RIP Kapali -
I can't even describe the numbness in my body. It feels like these "phone calls" have been happening all too frequently in my life lately and there's nothing I can do about it. It's hard enough to hear that someone you're close to (or was once very close to) could pass away...especially so young and so sudden. I was supposed to see you when I came home over Christmas to celebrate my bday like last year.

I know everyone has their own beliefs when things like this happen, but I hold on tightly to one thing my mom told me many years ago:
these people are taken away so they don't suffer later in life. God is sparing them from a greater pain down the line....and not to be cliche, but I know things happen for a reason.

Religion is another topic I don't dwell too much into with many people, but it's times like this when I really cling on to my Faith....it's the only way to justify something like this happening to someone so young and undeserving.
Unfortunately this isn't the first time that someone I was once close to passed away...another friend, Brian, passed away about 3 1/2 years ago - also unexpected and undeserving.

I know I'm still in great shock over this and I wish I was there just to be with Kapali's other friends and family for support. I can't even imagine how hard this is and will be for his family, but my thoughts and prayers are with them.

I met Kapali when I was a young and naive 15 year old and he taught me a lot. A lot about myself and things that I want/don't want...he probably affected my attitude on relationships more than I would have liked, but it is what it is and I've never regretted anything. It's helped shape who I am today. Over the years, we had our ups and downs, but we always ended up ok and as friends. Kapali had his quirks for sure, but he was truly a good guy who meant well. He was a great friend to more people than he'll ever realize...Kapali - you will be missed.

Schedule for 2008

Guess I should probably post this! For those who haven't already seen my schedule, here it is:

Jan 7 - Feb 4: Malaysia (Truly Asia...)

Feb 25 - March 24: Ireland (I'll be here during St. Patty's day!)

April 14 - May 12: Denmark (Hanging out in the Nordics)

June 2 - June 30: Spain (Who DOESN'T want to go to Spain??)

July 28 - Aug. 25: Argentina (no explanation needed here! we're going to Patagonia!)

Sept 15 - Oct. 20: Germany (Oktoberfest anyone???)

Nov 10 - Dec 15: UK (Jolly 'ol England)


I'm seriously encouraging anyone who wants to visit - PLEASE COME!!! Sometimes I get a little homesick and I definitely miss my friends when I travel, so I'd love the company.

For those of you who want to come visit me in Chicago - the dates are here so book now!! My schedule fills up fast ;-).

Politics

I'm not really one to discuss my point-of-view on politics very much, but a friend of mine posted this link on Facebook and I thought it was pretty good. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the candidates, their views, etc. then you may want to check out this site:

http://glassbooth.org/

I'll be the first to admit I'm not always up-to-date, so hopefully this'll help! By the way...make sure you vote so we don't have a repeat of our past election :-)

Trying to catch up

OK, I admit…I’ve gotten pretty lazy lately and haven’t been updating this thing like I should. I think the last entry I wrote was about my Oktoberfest experience. A good bit has happened since then. To continue with my weekends – after Munich we decided to stay in Switzerland for the weekend and upon recommendations from a local, we spent our weekend traveling to both Interlaken and Montreux via train.

Between 2 lakes in Interlaken and then off to Montreux on Lake Geneva!

10/5/07 – 10/7/07

So PC and I were originally supposed to go to Ljubljana, Slovenia for the weekend, but when we mentioned this to our local PwCer, he laughed at us. We thought that staying in Switzerland for our last weekend before coming back to the States would be enough time here, but apparently we were quite wrong. This guy, Robin (PwC), has traveled a ton – and all over (US, Asia, Europe)…and basically said that there wasn’t anything in Slovenia that would beat Switzerland. And that there was sooo much to see in Switzerland! He showed us some really beautiful pictures he took of various areas around the country and I quickly emailed my fellow co-workers who had already been to Slovenia and recommended that we go. I inquired as to what they did there and it was stuff that we had planned to do in Interlaken, Switzerland anyways. So this caused a little dilemma and we ended up canceling our hotel and flight to Slovenia (not without a bit of a fee, of course) and booked train tickets to Interlaken and to Montreux. We intended to go to Interlaken Friday night so first thing Saturday morning we could go Paragliding and then Canyoning afterwards. After our activities, we were going to take a train to Montreux to spend Saturday evening and Sunday and then head back to Basel Sunday evening. It was just a little tour of a couple cities in Switzerland.
I think I’ve mentioned how much I love the trains here, but really…they’re amazing. Not so much the trains themselves, but the views from the trains. Going in and out of mountains, riding next to lakes, seeing the hillsides covered by vineyards…just beautiful! Throughout the whole weekend we were really lucky with our “train-ride” weather and had some really outstanding views of the mountains, lakes and country-side. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the rest of our weekend weather….Let’s start with Friday.

Friday & Saturday: 10/5 – 10/6/07:
We jumped on the train right after work and had a really enjoyable 2 hour train ride down to Interlaken and then arrived at our hotel with just enough daylight left to see the gorgeous view of the mountains from our hotel-room. We got up Saturday excited about our extreme outdoor activities planned for the day, but we looked outside with more disappointment then you can imagine…an unplanned foggy/cloudy/rainy day L. We kept optimistic and got ready as if our plans were to go on as scheduled and then called the Outdoor Interlaken people to find out if the weather would allow us to continue our Paragliding adventure that morning at 10:30…and the Pilot gave us the disappointing news came that it wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily Canyoning doesn’t really revolve around the cloudiness of the day, so despite it being slightly chilly, we were still set for our afternoon’s activity. PC and I took this extra time in the morning to walk around town and explore. Interlaken is definitely a tourist’s town…too cute, but all the stores were souvenir stores and unlike much of the rest of Switzerland – EVERYONE spoke English without any hesitation. Another hint that we were in a tourist town was that I saw more of “my people” (Indians) than Swiss people! It was pretty odd for me, but understandable as it was such a great little town.
So canyoning…there was a total of 9 people in our group. We realized earlier in the day that there weren’t too many “young” people walking around town and found out that all the “young” people were staying in the Basiler Hostel right next to the Outdoor Interlaken building. It was a little awkward because I was so excited to hear their stories about where they’d been and most of them didn’t know eachother but formed some sort of bond by staying in hostels…I felt left out because PC and I couldn’t join in. When they asked us where we were staying and we told them that we were staying in a nearby hotel and that we were in Switzerland for work…well – the conversation pretty much came to a halt. I felt like we were being reverse discriminated against!! Usually when I walk into a fancy schmancy store and I’m not dressed up, people tend to snub me…but this time I was snubbed because I had a job that brought me overseas and was able to stay in a hotel as opposed to a hostel. Tough to get a break!
Oh well – their loss I guess ;-). We still had an amazing time canyoning though! Basically we got all geared up in ridiculous wet-suit outfits and drove/hiked to the top of a mountain where we then proceeded to work our way back down via the river. We only did a 2 ½ hour canyoning trip, so this wasn’t the most challenging route we could have taken but it was still a lot of fun. You cross over rocks and jump into pools of water, we repelled down some steep cliffs and walked under waterfalls. The wetsuits helped keep us from freezing our tails off, but my hands and face were still pretty numb! I wish we had some video or could have taken pictures, but obviously you can’t really bring a camera to something like that. The 2 guides that helped us with our journey down the mountain were pretty good – 1 Irish guy and 1 New Zealander….The Irish guy teased me a lot towards the end because every time we were about to do a jump or something that involved us taking turns, I would always be the first one to volunteer! I guess I get a little over-eager when it comes to adventurous stuff like that…sorry Mom!
After our fun-filled afternoon of canyoning, PC and I decided to enjoy teatime at the Grand Victoria Hotel. This is the nicest hotel in Interlaken and apparently has a great teatime. So we took quick showers and despite the fact that we were all scrubbed out, we went to this gorgeous hotel. Obviously we were pretty out-of-place, but the staff still treated us well since we paid entirely too much for tea time…it’s times like this when I love my job! The snacks were AMAZING and the tea was tea – always enjoyable. I probably had about 3 cups (small ones) and PC had 4 throughout the 2 hours that we stayed there; definitely a great way to relax after our canyoning craziness. After our afternoon tea, we grabbed our luggage from our hotel next-door and booked it to the train station. Next stop – Montreux!

We arrived at the Montreux train station around 8pm and found our way to the Best Western hotel. Actually, a very nice hotel and right on the lake! Our local Swiss PwC friend, Robin, had suggested it since he had been there and it was a good thing we listened to him. The location was pretty central to places to eat and there was even a club right across the street. PC and I intended to have dinner at this restaurant (also recommended by Robin) called the Beef Bar and then hit up the club nearby. Unfortunately exhaustion hit us (more me than PC) from our days activities and we ended up at the hotel restaurant and then called it an early night.


Sunday, 10/7/07
We woke up the next morning at our leisure and were disappointed to see that it was another cloudy day. We avoided rain, but what would have been a wonderful lake/mountain view from our hotel room ended up being a mediocre view of the lake and nothing more. We decided that we would take a nice stroll to the Chateaux nearby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_of_Chillon
Our stroll lasted a good several hours as we stopped at the Beef Bar for lunch since we didn’t go for dinner the night before. The main dish was ok (PC had the perch and I had a burger), but the chocolate molten cake was to die for! I’d have to say that chocolate molten cake is probably right up there with cheesecake and gulabjaman as my favorite dessert ever!
We were pretty stuffed after lunch, so it was a good thing we had a few hours to walk it off and the walk along the lake turned out to be really nice as the weather slowly cleared up. I took a ton of pictures
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25566&l=bce54&id=500066404
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25567&l=19f90&id=500066404

and just enjoyed the walking and people watching. It was a fairly short day since we didn’t want to get back to Basel too late, but a good weekend of exploring all the same.

I think I’ve somewhat procrastinated on this entry because I feel like it wasn’t enough of an “exciting read”, but it is what it is… I find myself struggling between wanting to see stuff and make the most of these trips and wanting to relax and see what I can without getting burnt out. After all…there are so many hours in a day and we usually only get a day and a half on the weekend to see things (plus, I’m a big fan of sleep and I get it whenever I can!).

Tour of Switzerland

So I'll add the update soon, but here's where we went this past weekend.


View Larger Map

Oktoberfest in Munich 2007

9/28/07 – 9/30/07

Munich. The beauty of the city pleasantly surprised me, but that’s not really the TRUE reason why we went there this particular weekend. An event that’s an experience of a lifetime – Oktoberfest, was calling our names. Us being PC (Christina), myself, our co-workers from the France audit (5 people), and our co-workers from the Netherlands audit (2 people). Overall, a rather large group, but there wasn’t as much craziness as you would expect. I can sum up my day (yes, just one day) at Oktoberfest quite easily: Beer, Pretzels (among other food) and lots and lots of people! But that’s what Oktoberfest is all about. Not being a huge fan of ridiculously large crowds (and people entering my personal space), I only lasted from 10am – 7pm on Saturday and opted not to go back on Sunday despite our late flight out. I’m glad I went…it’s definitely something to see. The huge tents lined along both sides of the “street” and in the middle, just crowds of people walking along, drinking and eating to their hearts content. There were tents (tents being massively large beer tents that were sponsored by various German Breweries) that held up to 10,000 people and smaller ones that only held around 1,000 people. Inside these tents are rows and rows of picnic benches and tables as well as souvenir stands and waitresses (only women) carrying from 6 – 20 huge liters of beer to tables. Food pretty much consisted of pretzels (the largest I’ve ever seen!), chicken and bratwurst. I can’t complain though – I tried all of them and it was yummm!!! But then again, I rarely complain about food these days….maybe just that I eat too much of it.
So we arrived at the Beer Tent (Hofbrau) at 10am sharp and already came in contact with a HUGE crowd of people waiting outside to go in. You could reserve a table inside the beer tent, but even 9 months in advance people find it pretty difficult…you basically have to know someone to get a reservation or even get into a tent. It’s so ridiculous (and personally not worth it to me, but that’s my opinion). After 3 hours of waiting and getting to the “front” of the line, we realized that they weren’t planning to let any more people inside. So we gave up and just decided to enjoy the beer garden right outside! The only problem is that unless you have a table at the beer garden, it’s pretty difficult to find a waitress to serve you. That’s when our luck changed. My co-worker Holly and I got separated from the rest of the group and 2 random guys tapped me on my shoulder from behind. Typically it’s Holly who meets and talks to random people, but I played my part today. We briefly talked (they initially thought I was Latin/Hispanic) and then they offered to let Holly and I join them at their table for beers. By the way, these guys were mostly from Italy – apparently it was Italian weekend at Oktoberfest as I met NO Germans that day and lots of Italians. I grabbed Holly and we talked to these guys while they ordered us beers. We found my other co-workers and the group was back together! The random Italian guys were nice enough to order beers for all my co-workers too (we all paid for our own beers…we just sat at their table so we had access to a waitress). I wasn’t too interested in talking to these guys for very long, despite the fact that we ended up staying out in the beer garden for a good 5 hours, so I floated around (as I usually do in large crowds) and talked to random people and my co-workers. There’s only so much beer I can drink and only so much I can deal with drunk people – I was NOT drunk by the way…not wanting to take the chance to get separated from my group of have anything crazy happen – I enjoyed watching the craziness but didn’t partake in any myself. Around the time I was getting hungry/wanting to leave, one of my co-workers, Kevin, apparently found a way inside the tent. A waitress (an older one at that) happened to take a liking to him and offered to let him sit at one of her tables. He of course said yes but that he had to grab the rest of us. So we all ended up inside this tent – 1,000 people in total all dancing/singing on tables or drinking. We ordered some food and chowed down…around 7pm, I was just plain tired of the scene and was ready to head back to the hotel. PC and my other co-worker, Amanda, were ready for the same, so we left and cabbed it back to the hotel. And THAT was the end of my Oktoberfest experience. Most likely not as crazy as you would expect, but that kinda chaos is just not my thing. I definitely don’t regret going, but won’t be heading back there any time soon.
On Sunday, we had most of the day to kill before going to the airport, so PC and I decided to take a guided walking tour of Munich. I really enjoyed this!! It helped that our guide, a communications student herself, spoke wonderful English and did a fantastic job explaining the buildings that we saw. This is when I realized what a cute and clean city Munich is! We also wanted to check out the “Sleeping Beauty” castle a few hours outside of Munich, but no time for that one. We’ll have to go back at some point.
So that was Munich in a nutshell…beer, pretzels and people. Boy I need to hit the gym!Our waitress carried all those litres at once!
PC and I with our first beers...one size fits all!
Our Tent for the day
The craziness inside the Hofbrau Tent
In Munich
Me and a girl wearing the "typical Dirndl"
Me and PC

The whole group (minus "Team Netherlands")
And you thought everything was bigger in Texas?

Future cheerleaders

In light of college football season, I thought it was the perfect time to put this up from Christmas 2006. My nieces are the cutest EVER!!! ~ WAR EAGLE!!!

J'adore la Cote d'Azur!

so a brief recap of what's been going on since Japan...feels like just yesterday that I left, but it's been about 3 weeks!

The weekend that I got back from Japan, one of my closest friends (Neha) came to visit Chicago from Dallas. Unfortunately, between moving and jet-lag, I didn't get to spend much time with her...the weekend flew by despite having an extra day off for Labor Day and back to work I went. Usually I would consider my job somewhat vacation-like (if you will) but because we had only around 2 weeks at home - things got a little hectic. I closed on my first place/condo on 9/7 (the Friday after getting back), so my mom came to help me move and get settled...ya know, doing what mom's are best at doing. Since my mom was staying with me and keeping me pretty busy for a week and a half, I was pretty much MIA in chi-town for most of the time I was "home". My dad also came down for my closing and to help me set-up the new place, so there was no time for anything but moving. I have to say - in the 1 week after moving into my condo, we fixed it up pretty nicely! My parents are awesome for painting and helping me shop, organize, unpack, etc. so that helped tremendously. After non-stop moving for 9 days, my mom peaced out and I had a few days to relax before heading to Switzerland for my next audit.

I was still busy with work - trainings, volunteer events, team-building activities (all this on top of actual work!)...so no rest for me!

(my favorite rooms in the condo)

Wednesday, 9/19, came all too quickly and it was time to head to the FRENCH RIVIERA!

Thankfully my co-worker, Christina (aka - PC), had the same idea that I did...we were both in need of some R&R after the crazy couple weeks we'd had in chicago. We flew into Nice, France on Thurs. morning and took a local "coastal" bus along the water to get to Cannes. I was curious as to why the bus ticket was only 1.30 euro and then realized when I saw the bus! It was a local one, took 1 1/2 hours compared to the highway bus which took about 40 min, and made about 15 stops along the way. On top of that, the bus was so packed with people that PC and I had to hold our suitcases (1 ridiculously large one and a carry on + our laptop bags) and stand for about 30 minutes of the ride. Our stop was the last one and we headed to the Hilton to drop off our large bags...I should probably back up to what our weekend situation was going to look like.

So we took Thurs off for vacation and were "out of pocket" for 2 days based on our travel policies at work. I would consider myself pretty low maintenance when it comes to most things, so PC and I decided that we were going to "rough it" at the Hotel Ibis for those 2 "out of pocket" nights. We had 1 night paid for by the company so we changed hotels on Saturday to stay at the Hilton (great location + points/benefits). I think it worked out pretty well because luggage check is a wonderful thing! Also, thankfully the Ibis was about a 10 minute walk from the Hilton which was on the Boulevard de la Croisette, the main area of Cannes. We loved it! Shopping everywhere (even though most of it was too rich for my blood) and the beach was RIGHT there! We also were surprisingly close to the building where the Cannes Film Festival takes place and took a few pictures there even though it wasn't really that impressive.

Thursday 9/20/07-

We got off at our bus stop at the Boulevard de la Croissette and had to walk about 300 meters to get to the Hilton to drop off our luggage. My family probably remembers walking through the streets of Paris with a BIT too much luggage and plowing through crowds of people while hot and sweaty from the walking/carrying/lifting, etc. Well - it wasn't THAT bad, but it definitely wasn't the most pleasant experience. We dropped off our big luggage and took the small ones to our home away from home for the next couple of days. By the time we freshened up from our overnight flight and unpacked a few things, it was dinner time! Another thing about PC and I...we're very similar in some ways - namely, we love to eat good food!! And there was lots of it :-).

We wandered around for a bit walking up and down the Blvd and ended up finding a cute little restaurant facing the water. The wait staff was extremely friendly and I really enjoyed our dinner! We walked around some more and took a peak inside the Carlton Hotel (Intercontinental)...this is the hotel where supposedly all the celebs stay when they come to Cannes. It was pretty massive and really old school looking. Honestly, not really my style. It looked a little stuffy. BUT ANYWAYS, we went inside to ask the concierge about getting to St. Tropez for a day and it turns out that there isn't much to do for a "day trip" which was a boat ride there - eat lunch - come back. We nixed that idea and walked off our huge meals as we checked out the nearby night scene.

We passed a Lebanese restaurant also on the Blvd which had some pretty sweet music playing and looked fairly crowded with people our age, so we agreed to hit that up on Friday. We ended up at an Irish pub near the Ibis to grab a beer and see what the local band was playing. They ended up being a cover band of both French and English music and even broke out with Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. Overall it was an interesting scene...a large mix of people from the 50s down to their young 20s. I tried a new blond beer - Kronenbourg (pretty good!) and then we headed home since we were both pretty exhausted. Oh yea, one more thing. I was amazed at the noise control there! Apparently it's a pretty big thing because you couldn't hear the music being played AT ALL from the outside...only once they let you in. I thought it was a good idea and obviously beneficial for the neighbors and locals. Maybe that's just me getting old.

Friday 9/21/07-

wow....i hadn't slept that much in who knows HOW long! I think between the exhaustion and jet lag, I ended up sleeping until 1pm on Friday. Luckily we had no plans for the weekend and just wanted to relax on the beach and enjoy the gorgeous weather. We got in our beach gear and found a cute little place to grab some food (yummy crepes for me!!) on the way. I loved the pace we were going....soooo chill. It may seem minor to most people but lately my life has been "go go go", so this was just the thing I needed. I enjoyed my nutella + sugar crepes (yes, i had 2!) and topped it off with a nice cup of tea...geez, i think i'm turning into my mom ;-).

After we took our time at brunch, we strolled over to the beach where i completely forgot is TOPLESS. Yes, that's right...duh, the south of France. There were enough tourists and other "non-french" people wearing their tops that it wasn't TOO bad, but every direction I turned there was a topless girl. Don't get too excited guys! Most of the people sun bathing w/o tops were old, wrinkly and saggy women who had obviously spent way too much time in the sun and looked about 20 years older than they probably were. Not really something you want to look at. But the beach was beautiful and I watched the sailboats and jet skiers or listened to my I-Pod and napped, soaking up the sun. I'd had a pretty bad experience getting sunburned in Greece a few months back, so I was careful to layer on my sunblock and we only stayed on the beach for about 3 hours. I truly felt like I was on vacation!

After getting restless, we decided to walk over the the Cannes film festival area (nothing exciting there unfortunately) and then explore the smaller streets and do some window shopping, hit up an internet cafe, etc. Somehow the day passed all too quickly and it was already 7:30...time to get ready for another dinner - Lebanese tonight! The Lebanese restaurant ended up being almost empty (something must've been going on the night before), but our cute waiter who also spoke wonderful English served us some mouth-watering food that we devoured pretty quickly! We also enjoyed a nice bottle of wine with it...I'm starting to appreciate red wines a little more these days as I've found some good ones that aren't too heavy :-).

During our meal, the restaurant had a DJ/Singer come in - maybe his Friday-night gig, and he sung a mixture of French, English and Italian songs. He was really good and kept us entertained for a while! The Lebanese food was followed by some more walking to find a bar/club/lounge to go dancing. We ended up at a bar called Via Notte (also by our hotel). The people watching was fantastic as we sat outside for a while, but we realized that this wasn't the place to be when we ventured inside to check out the music. I could hardly move or breath for that matter as it was tooooo crowded!! I had to leave within 2 minutes of stepping inside since I was getting too claustrophobic. So that was Friday night...

Saturday, 9/22/07 -

Another day of sleeping in, but not as bad as Friday. We got up and checked out of the Ibis...stopped at the Cool Heure (our breakfast spot) for some more crepes and tea and then headed to the Hilton to try for an early check-in there. We were lucky and got the room, checked out the amazing view from the hotel - overlooking the beach and Mediterranean, and then packed up a few things as we were going to Nice for the day! Since we nixed St. Tropez and neither one of us gambled (Monaco was a little further for us), we decided to check out Nice.

We walked to the nearby train station (btw - I LOVE public transportation!) and bought roundtrip tickets to Nice for less than 9 euro a piece. what a deal considering the train took about 20-30 minutes! We just walked around the city at our leisure and enjoyed some more people watching. PC wanted to have lunch on the beach, but we settled for ice cream instead since it was tooo hot that day! Pistachio and chocolate ice cream....a great combination :-) We hung out at the beach restaurant for a while then continued our walk around town. We hiked up some massive stairs to get to a "panoramic view" of the city and found a cute little park where people were playing soccer (aka - football) and kids were playing. Not that I'm a huge fan of kids, but as long as they aren't crying or screaming they can be kinda cute. Especially with their little accents. PC and I ended up taking naps on some benches to cool down in the shade and then proceeded to head back down and out of town. It probably seems like we didn't do much, but that's because we didn't :-). Taking strolls along the beach and enjoying the scenery, people-watching, and fabulous food was just what the dr. ordered. We got back to Cannes around 8pm and prepped to go out tonight, but this time we were celebrating PC's big 26!!

She wanted seafood so the hotel concierge recommended a restaurant within walking distance, Chez Astoux He wasn't kidding about the seafood! Most of the seating was outdoors and we could see the huge platters of seafood - oysters, crab legs, clams, etc. Not only did we see people eating off these platters, but we ended up being seated right in front of the guys who were cleaning the shellfish fresh! Kinda gross, but I didn't eat it so it was fine. We also had this really weird old couple seated extremely close to us and kept staring at both of us. It was the strangest thing and we couldn't figure out why they kept staring, but not wanting to be rude - I stared right back. Luckily they finished their dinner pretty soon after we arrived, so we didn't have to deal with them for too long. I got some great salmon and calamari and PC ordered Sole, which was amazing! After a bottle of wine, we were ready to go out! First, we both felt like "fish-breath" wasn't really working for us so we headed back to the hotel for some quick freshening up. On the way back to our hotel, some random french guy stopped us and started talking to me like he knew us...maybe he saw some other indian chic - I don't think there were too many of us in Cannes that weekend. Anyways, he wanted to "rendezvous" somewhere and suggested the Hotel Majestic. Yea right - I wasn't born yesterday buddy, so we just told him that we had to run and would probably see him later. That was the last we saw of random French guy....so after our quick stop at the hotel, PC wanted to go to this Club/Casino called Jimmy'z, so we headed there for some drinks and dancing. For some reason the place was closed that night and there wasn't really any other place nearby to go dancing. Disappointed, we walked around and grabbed a drink at Caffe Roma before heading back to the hotel.

Sunday, 9/23/07 -

We planned to do some shopping today, but after walking to our breakfast place and finding out that it was closed, we quickly realized that just about ALL the shops were closed in Cannes on Sunday. What were we to do? We grabbed some breakfast at the Hilton and decided to spend one last day on the beach :-). Our flight wasn't until the evening, so we had a good couple of hours of sun to enjoy before catching the bus (the 14 euro Highway Bus, this time) back to the Nice airport.

Sunday, bloody Sunday...after arriving at the airport TOO early, we hauled our luggage around the airport looking for some place to grab a late lunch/early dinner. this was alittle bit of a process, but we ended up with some ridiculously expensive and not-so-good sandwiches. After eating, we went to check-in our bags and come to find out that we had excess baggage weight. what?! turns out that from the US --> Zurich or Europe, you have an allowance of 46 kilos total (which we were both under), but since we were flying from Nice, France to Zurich, Switz - the allowance rules were different. We were only allowed 20 kilos total. Shocked and slightly upset, we had to fork over some cash for them to allow us to check-in our bags/board the plane. At 8 euros/extra kilo...it wasn't cheap. Oh well, it was a good weekend overall and well worth the extra bit of money that we spent. As great as my job is, I do have to pay for SOME things.

So now here I am in Basel, Switzerland. About a 1 1/2 hour train ride from the Zurich airport and a 10 minute train ride from Liestal (where my office is). So far so good, but we've only been here a couple days. Basel is a really cute little town with shopping and lots of good restaurants (dangerous for me!)...It's a good thing I'll be here a month to explore :-).

PC is trying to keep me on track and has me on a workout schedule for twice a day 3 days a week...we'll see how long I can keep this up. I'll post another update soon, more with my thoughts and observations rather than a re-cap, but thought I'd let you know what's been going on with my random life.

We're heading to Munich this weekend for Oktoberfest!!! Should definitely be an interesting experience (and a beer-filled one at that).

Check out all my pictures from France:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.ahj6rsds&x=0&y=-3npt3z

Kyoto (8/17/07 – 8/19/07) and Osaka (8/19 – 8/26/07):



Friday – 8/17/07
Having spent 2 weekends in Tokyo (one of which was spent at Mt. Fuji), my co-worker, Holly, and I decided to venture to Kyoto for the weekend on our way to our “new” work cities (mine being Osaka and hers being Katsuyama). We took the Shinkansen (Japan’s Bullet Train) to get there and it was pretty sweet. The ride is extremely smooth, you have LOTS of leg room and it’s a really user-friendly (booking tickets, etc.). It was definitely much easier than flying all over the place. Plus, since I had to work in Osaka for a week and a half, I was able to get work to pay for my Japan Rail Pass, which allowed me to use any JR rail (both the Shinkansen and local trains) for free. The Rail Pass is somewhat expensive, but actually cheaper than buying tickets individually.
So the ride took about 2 ½ hours – almost the entire time was spent sleeping (big surprise right?). I arrived in Kyoto around 9pm Friday night which didn’t really leave us much time to do anything outside of grabbing some dinner. We walked around our hotel to check out what was nearby and ended up at some restaurant called Mary Island or something. It was actually REALLY good! We went to bed early that night knowing that we had lots to do the next day and we wanted an early start.

Saturday – 8/18/07
Kyoto is the old capital of Japan (and literally translated so) as well as being one of the few cities that was actually untouched by WWII. It definitely was a tourist city, but had a mix of city-life as well as maintained the cultural aspects (temples, shrines, castles).
So we woke up around 9ish (ok, so not much of an early start) and it took us a while to find a place to eat breakfast. Tired of eating hotel breakfast, we ventured out to see what was close or on the way to our first stop, Nijo Castle. We crossed the street and smelled something soooo good. It smelled like bread, but we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from! After searching for about 10-15 minutes in every direction, we finally gave up and went back to our hotel to grab breakfast. Once we finished with all that, we finally got on our way to see the castle. We decided we needed to get some walking in since we didn’t do enough in Tokyo. Little did we realize HOW HOT it was going to be!! We had to take multiple water and ice cream breaks on the way there and back. The heat also made it a bit difficult to enjoy our sight-seeing spots, but we did our best and took lots of pictures (probably not as many as I could have though!). The castle itself wasn’t THAT impressive, but the gardens were beautiful! Here’s the link to my Kyoto pictures:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vd2ejfo.1igx11qw&x=0&h=1&y=-z7hpbo

So we decided that we needed a break from the heat and walked back to the hotel to get a little AC and rest before heading to our next destination – Kiyomizu-dera Temple (one of the finalists of the Seven Wonders of the World). On our way back to the hotel, we got a little distracted….shopping! I haven’t really done much shopping on this trip 1- because it’s pretty expensive in Japan, 2- the girls here are tooo tiny and the clothes don’t fit me, 3 – I didn’t allow for much room in my suitcase to bring back a whole lot.
But the shopping arcade (as they call them here) was shaded and looked like a good place to find postcards and other nick-nacks. We definitely got distracted and ended up staying here for at least a good 1 ½ hours before grabbing some pizza buffet for lunch (not my idea, but it really hit the spot!). So after lunch we finally made it back to the hotel where we took a short nap before heading back out into the heat. This probably wasn’t the best idea because we ran out of time and were only able to see 1 other “tourist” spot. The Kiyomizu-dera Temple. We also wanted to go see the Sanjusangen-do Temple, but everything closed by 5pm, so we were outta luck. The Temple we saw was really nice though!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu-dera

It had a gorgeous view of the mountains and was really peaceful despite all the tourists. After hanging out there for a while, we headed back down this long winding hilly street (full of souvenir shops I might add). We walked back to the hotel since we had some time now before going to our “cultural show” recommended by the hotel. Turns out we walked a little over 10 miles that day! We got back, napped again and got ready for the show. It was supposed to be a 45-min view of various Japanese cultural activities such as a Tea Ceremony, Geisha dance, flower arrangement, some musical piece, a comedy skit and a puppet show. It sounds good right? Unfortunately Holly and I were pretty disappointed. They did the Tea Ceremony off in a corner where most people couldn’t even see. The flower arrangement was such a joke, I could have done better…literally all she did was take her flowers, cut the stem and put them in the vase. It didn’t seem like much thought was put into the arrangement and it didn’t even look that nice! The music was good and the Geisha dance was good, and I liked the comedy performance, but the puppet show was something else! I was so confused despite the fact that they provided us with a synopsis of the plot. It was so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh. Anyways – the show definitely wasn’t worth the cost, but I’m still glad we went. Maybe we had high expectations, I don’t know. So after the show, we wandered around trying to find some place to eat. I think we just got in a bad mood after that so nothing seemed appealing. After about 30 minutes of walking around and being indecisive, we finally settled on some random restaurant just to get some food in our stomachs. After a discouraging night, we headed back to the hotel so we could get up early on Sunday to head out to Nara before departing from Kyoto.

Sunday – 8/19/07
We actually got up early today (I think it was around 6am), so we could check out of the hotel and catch a train to Nara to go see the Great Buddha and Holly wanted to feed some deer. I’ll get to that in a minute. Nara was over an hour train ride from Kyoto, but housed the Great Buddha so it was a must-see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōdai-ji

You can’t tell from the picture, but this statue took hundreds of tons of bronze, mercury and vegetable wax to create. The head is not the original due to fires and earthquakes. The original was created in 752, but the most current head dates back to 1692. I was surprised to see deer EVERYWHERE! I thought that they would just be restricted to a park or some area, but they were literally everwhere….on the sidewalks, hanging around all the temples, etc. You could buy some deer food to feed them but I refrained due to a bad experience feeding monkeys in India when I was little. Good thing I did too because Holly didn’t know what she was getting herself in to! She tried to feed one and 4 more came up to her. Then they got really anxious so a couple of the deer nudged her with their horns and started getting a little aggressive. I don’t think it was as fun as she expected, but we got some good pictures and now she has another story to tell J. We were pretty short on time today, so this was a rushed trip but still a good one. We had also stopped to see the 5- story pagoda (picture), which was pretty amazing too. Nara was definitely a good stop for us to make during our weekend in Kyoto. We got back to Kyoto and Holly still wanted to see one more thing…the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji). It was about a 45-min bus ride from the Kyoto Station, so we took our chances with only having about 30 min there (in order to get back to the hotel to get our luggage and get back to the station to catch our trains). We ended up having plenty of time there because the Pavilion is really the only thing there. So we got our pictures and headed back with enough time to grab some Starbucks before leaving Kyoto. Speaking of Starbucks, they are ALL OVER Japan (at least in the big cities). On every corner, just like in the states. The sizes are a little smaller, but the prices are fairly comparable to those back home. They have a few variations, such as Green Tea flavors, but in general it’s the same. I think I saw more Starbucks than McDonalds!
So I arrive in Osaka around 6pm Sunday night and grab a quick dinner in our hotel so I can unpack and settle in for the following week.

8/20 – 8/24: Osaka
Unfortunately this week was extremely busy at work for me since I realized early on that I needed to be back in Tokyo earlier than expected. I was back to working public accounting hours (12 hr days) – boooo! But the affiliate in Osaka was really great and helpful, so it made things easier. Who knows – maybe I’ll come back to work in Japan after my 2 years of audit is up! Tuesday night the affiliate took us out to Korean BBQ, which was just as yummy as when I went in Tokyo. The only problem is that they have this thing in Japan where it’s “all you can drink” and you just pay by the hour for unlimited drinks. I got peer pressured by the Affiliate to have some beer since everyone else had some…it was good, but really filling! I definitely ate wayyyy too much and drank a lot too, so after 2 hours of eating and drinking, I was ready for bed!
The rest of the week was spent working late and just heading back to the hotel, so nothing exciting there. Friday night I was in need of a good time, so the Affiliate took us out for Karaoke (or Kalaoke as they say)!! We had a private room and about 20 people. Food and drinks just kept on flowing and at 9pm on the dot, we started karaoke. It was pretty serious stuff! They had really nice TV’s and this amazing karaoke machine that ranks you among other karaoke-ers in Japan as well as remembers your favorite songs etc (if you’re a member). They definitely take their karaoke seriously, but are REALLY good at it! A lot of the songs were love songs, but Team Japan out-sang Team USA hands down. We even broke out the tambourine and got the rest of the group involved in our songs. Some of Team USA’s favorites were: Sweet Home AL (my choice!), Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Meatloaf – I would do anything for love, Dixie Chicks – I’m ready to run, and Jackson 5 – ABC.
By midnight, I was exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel so I could meet up with Christina and Kathleen (2 other co-workers who were in Osaka for the weekend) early Sat. Morning.

Saturday – 8/25/07
Happy Birthday Kristen Keating!
Today I woke up at 7am anxious to get the day started. Christina, Kathleen and I grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and headed out to take the train to Himeji. We’re getting pretty good at using the local subway and train systems! We got to Himeji around 11:30 am or so to check out the Himeji Castle – one of the most famous (supposedly the “grandest” of Japan’s 12 remaining feudal castles).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himeji_castle

I wasn’t too smart and drained my camera battery the night before at Karoke without recharging for the day, so I was only able to get a few pictures in before my camera died. Christina and Kathleen took lots of pictures, so I’ll share those once I get them. This castle was way more impressive than the Nijo Castle in Kyoto, hands-down! The Nijo’s gardens were much nicer, but this castle was 6 stories tall and covered a huge land area with surrounding walls.
(pictures) We spent a good few hours here and then headed back to Osaka around 2ish, stopping in Kobe along the way for lunch. Christina wanted to get Kobe beef from the source, so we stopped at a local restaurant and had some sushi, tempura and beef (we’ve been eating LOTS over here). The beef is apparently much cheaper there as well as really fatty, which is why it’s so good. She enjoyed it and we proceeded to get back to Osaka as we were all thoroughly exhausted from the long day and dealing with the heat.
After getting back to the hotel around 6pm, I was done for the day!!
I couldn’t bring myself to leave the AC of my hotel room and as there isn’t much sight-seeing to do in Osaka, I didn’t feel too bad about resting and staying in for the night.

Sunday – 8/26/07
Back to Tokyo I go! Now on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, it’ll take about 3 hours in total but it’s a pretty relaxing ride so I don’t mind – I have my Ipod to keep me company J. I actually have some work to do too, so it would be good to get that over with. I headed back a little early so I can take my boss (who is currently in Tokyo by herself) to the Harajuku area of Tokyo since Sunday is the best/most entertaining day to go.
Japan has definitely been my favorite country so far, despite the heat and I know I’ll want to come back at some point. I thought it would be a little more difficult to be away from home for 5 weeks, but the past 4 weeks have flown by! Mostly due to craziness at work, but it’s not too bad. We’re going to try to go to a baseball game this coming week, which should be interesting since they’re so big over here. I’ll be ready to get back home on Friday to see my girl Neha and to start packing up my apt (again) for my final move for a few years hopefully. I’m also excited for my parents to come up and help me move/get settled and spoil me with some good home cooking!! Not like I haven’t been spoiled enough on this trip!
I’ll try to add one more entry before I leave to go back to the States to recap on my final week in Japan…I may work on it during my 13 hour plane ride home!
I hope everyone’s doing well!!! Please email and keep in touch!!

Our Mt. Fuji Adventure: 8/3 - 8/4/07

Our Fuji Experience/Adventure

Note: Here's a link to my co-workers' pictures for more entertainment
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=11lb44x5.3pai9dxt&Uy=-5iw65f&Ux=0

Friday – August 3, 2007:
So Friday was a crazy day…We had lots to do at work plus we were leaving early (4pm) so we could make our 5:50pm Highway Bus to Mt. Fuji – 5th station. But let me back up to the beginning…organizing this trip was a hassle from the start!

On Wednesday I went to our Hotel Concierge to find out the best way to get to Mt. Fuji. My friend Raman had mentioned that he took a bus to get there so I thought it would be easy to do the same. Understanding that August is holiday time and the peak hiking season for Japan, I knew things would get booked early and therefore wanted to take care of arrangements in advance. This concierge was not very knowledgeable (possibly new), so after she called the Highway Bus service, she told me that the times I wanted to go – either Friday evening or anytime on Saturday – were ALL booked! Obviously I was extremely disappointed. But I was also determined to go, so I asked for alternate ways to get there. She told me that I could take the train and then catch a bus to go to the 5th station and printed off directions for me to take. See below:
Taxi to the Tokyo Station (take _____ line) --> transfer at _____ (take ____ line) --> arrive at _______ to take the bus to the 5th station (but not the Kawaguchi station that we wanted).
Pretty confusing huh? There was also no time table or schedule on it and I couldn’t find anything online. Thursday I asked our PwC translator, Mia, to help me decipher this and she helped a great deal. I still didn’t know anything about the bus, so Thursday night I called the concierge and asked for more details. It was a different concierge and a much more helpful one at that. She informed me that I wouldn’t be able to take this route if I was doing the “night hike” because it would take you to a different 5th station that was not open at night. Good thing to know!! We could’ve been in for who knows what if we tried this route. So she was great and called this Highway Bus place again and made a reservation for 5 of us to take the 5:50pm bus. This would give us plenty of time to reach the 5th station of Mt Fuji and hike to the summit by sunrise (4:30am). The bus ride is about 2 ½ hours long so we would have reached Fuji by 8:30pm. Supposedly it takes about 6 hrs to climb to the top, so we would have reached by 3am at the latest. And given the right conditions…I bet you’re wondering what happened now huh? Well, it gets better (or worse)!

Apparently there was some confusion (and lack of organization/planning) on some team members’ behalf and the other 4 people that were going to Fuji with me (Shannon, Sonia, Holly and Eric) ALL had to check out of our hotel (Hotel Okura) and check into another hotel (the Intercontinental) for the weekend. They didn’t have a reservation for the weekend and by the time they checked in to the Hotel – it was booked up and couldn’t extend their reservation. I had checked on all this before we left Chicago, so I was good to go. At 4 pm they had to come back to Hotel Okura to get their things, take a cab to the Intercontinental to check-in and THEN take another cab to the bus station at Shinjuku. Of course they hit Friday rush-hour traffic and ended up missing the bus, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I came back to the hotel at 4pm to change and finished packing my things. By 4:30pm I had left to go to the Shinjuku station and reached there by 5:10pm. Luckily my cab driver spoke a little English and was actually pretty funny (or was he a little crazy?). But I reached there with enough time to buy our tickets. The ticket office wouldn’t let me just by my own ticket since the reservation was for 5, so I had to buy all 5 of our tickets (round trip). This ended up being pretty expensive, but I didn’t have a choice…luckily I had enough cash on me – the cost was 26,000 yen in total (5,200 yen per person roundtrip via Highway Bus for anyone’s future reference). The rest of the group was supposed to be there by 5:30pm and when they weren’t I got a little worried. Of course I knew they would be late and that’s why I went to the station separately…nothing was going to keep me from Fuji-san! I tried to call using my cell phone that we got for our time here and of course it didn’t work. I should have tested it before-hand, but at $1.50 per minute I didn’t want to use it except for emergencies. Everyone elses had worked previously, so why wouldn’t mine? Luckily I found a nearby pay phone and had Shannon’s #, so I called to find out where they were. Stuck in traffic of course. Well 5:45pm comes and they still aren’t there. I checked with the bus guy and they wouldn’t even wait 5 extra minutes. These guys are serious about being prompt. I checked with the ticket office and they wouldn’t let me leave the other 5 tickets for the rest of the group to pick up, so I ended up just letting the bus go without me. Thankfully I found someone to help me translate to the ticket office and was able to change the tickets for a later time (but not without a fee of course). The next bus was leaving at 7:50pm – I wasn’t happy about it, but at least everyone would have been able to go and the tickets wouldn’t have gone to waste. The other 4 arrived 5 minutes later and were actually surprised that I hadn’t left them. I thought about it but couldn’t do that to the group. So now we had time to spare and checked out the area for some food…ended up eating pizza. We made the next bus and even came across a group of American students who were studying here for 4 weeks.

Now comes the real adventure – ON Mt. Fuji:
We arrived at the Kawaguchi 5th station around 10:15pm and added a few extra layers on since it was colder than we anticipated. Typhoon Usagi had been nearby and affected the weather more than we would have liked.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-japan-typhoon,0,405263.story

- Eric getting "geared up"

At the 5th station, it was sprinkling a little, but as we proceeded with our climb, the weather got significantly worse. I just had some workout pants over shorts and a fleece over a short-sleeved shirt as well as a scarf and a toboggan. I had also bought a headlight (recommended by Raman and VERY useful). Also quick side note on that. If you plan to hike Fuji at night, you’ll definitely need a head light, but they are significantly cheaper in Japan. I bought mine in the States for 3x the price. OK, so back to the hike. There were lots of other people doing the night hike, so we definitely weren’t alone. We started our journey and it wasn’t TOO bad at first. Just some drizzle but a little windy and chilly. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the 6th station, so we thought we were doing pretty well. Getting to the 7th station was a little tougher, we actually had to use our hands to do some climbing (my gloves that I brought got soaked through so I had to buy some new ones at a station for 300 yen). I’m not exactly sure how long it took us, but all the huts along the way were closed unless you were spending the night there due to the rain. Another bummer – we had all bought walking sticks at the 5th station for 1200 yen so we could get our sticks stamped at each hut along the way. I’ve seen my friend Raman’s and really wanted one of my own. Little did we know that they wouldn’t “stamp” your stick if it was raining outside. - sign telling us "no stamps"

- our "view"

Stamping meaning they actually branded your stick with symbols marking your trek up the mountain. So we had one “stamp” from the 5th station, but couldn’t get any more for the entire night .

As you can see from the pictures, we were bundled up but still pretty miserable from the weather…stupid Typhoon! By the time we got a little past the 8th station, all 5 of us were completely useless. We could have kept going, but I was so soaked and freezing that I worried more about our health at that point. We were at 3200 meters and the summit was 3700 meters. It had taken us about 1 hour just to go 100 meters and we knew we wouldn’t make it to the top by sunrise as it was already 3:45am by now. I had felt like we were in that Discovery Channel show “Man vs. Wild”…except luckily we had found a place for some shelter. The lady at this station told us it would take about another 2 ½ hours to get to the top and at that point we caved. Since we weren’t even able to see the sunrise because of the fog and weather conditions, we figured our time was served best by trying to keep warm in the shelter. They really banked at that station because we ended up paying 6300 yen per person to stay in a room with 20-30 other people…on top of blankets basically. Just each having a blanket of our own to cover with. I had to buy new clothes because I was so soaked and all my spare clothes and everything in my back pack was completely drenched. They didn’t have much left, but I was able to get a black jumpsuit and some new socks as well as a small towel to dry off with. I didn’t sleep for the 2 ½ hours that we were there for because I couldn’t stop shivering, but finally by 6am, the shivering slightly subsided. The whole night before I didn’t stop for bathroom breaks, but by morning I couldn’t hold it any more. There was a bathroom at the hut where we stayed and I can’t even begin to tell you how absolutely disgusting it was. There were stalls, but similar to India and China – just a hole in the ground. I could have dealt with that, but the stench was something else…a smell that I hope no one ever has to encounter in their lifetime and one that almost made me throw-up. I got out of there as fast as I could, but I couldn’t get rid of the smell for sometime – no matter how many wet wipes and cleansing clothes I used.

Saturday - August 4, 2007
In the morning Shannon and I thought we could continue our journey to the top, but the wind said otherwise. It was so foggy, you couldn’t see 10 ft in front of you and then I almost got blown off the mountain and we decided against going any further. On top of that, all my clothes were still wet from the night before, so all I had to wear was my jumpsuit that I bought at the hut - definitely not enough to keep me warm. I was able to get one stamp at that hut before heading back down. , but I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I am that we didn’t make it to the top. I had such expectations of making it to the top to see the sunrise…but Mother Nature had other plans for us. I’m really amazed that we made it as far as we did with the weather conditions we had to deal with, but wish that maybe we had gone another night (or even the next day) so we could have reached the top and I would have my stamps. I already know one person who’s going to tease me about not making it, but when it came down to it, my health was obviously more important and I knew I had pushed myself as far as I could go.
As we worked our way back down the mountain, the fog was still there, but the wind helped push some of it away…and by the time we got back down to the 6th station, the weather was almost perfect. I turned around and looked back up the mountain – almost tempted to trek back up so I could get my stamps and see the top, but my body wasn’t having it. - the huts between the 6th and 7th stations...

- group pic at the 6th station

I was tired and sore all over and just wanted to take a hot bath and sleep in my hotel room. We came across a few adventurers who pushed themselves to make it to the top for the sunrise and they told us that there was nothing to see…literally. The fog was so dense that they couldn’t see the sunrise and the weather was still horrible. They were actually quite disappointed, as they couldn’t even get a “stamp” – not a real one anyways. They could only get an ink stamp. But at least they could claim that they made it to the top.

- back down at the 5th station (starting point)

- Fuji-san, I'll be back.

This entry just gives you a taste of what I went thru, but it was definitely an adventure and an experience. Maybe one day (when there’s no typhoon in the area) I’ll venture back up the mountain to reach the summit and get my stamps. For now, all I have is this story.
We caught our 12pm bus back at the 5th station and I reached my hotel by 2:30pm. By 4:30 I decided it was time for a nap, which turned out to last until 9am Sunday morning. And here I am in my hotel room, finally catching up on some rest. My co-workers are out exploring the city, but I knew that there’s always next weekend. We’re staying in Tokyo and have 4 days to explore, go out, shop, etc… One thing I’ve learned is that I need some balance in my life. I can’t do everything and need to know when to take some time out to reflect and recouperate. With all the traveling that I’ll be doing over the next year, I could get seriously burnt out if I try to do everything. For now, I’ll just enjoy the things that I get to do and write about my experiences.

Brief weekend in Beijing

Beijing (7/27 – 7/29/07)

Since the flights to Asia are so long, work gives us an extra day to fly there and get acclimated to the time change, etc. We left Chicago on Thursday to fly to Beijing for the weekend. Unfortunately we got stuck on a flight that consisted of a school group of probably 50 Chinese kids who maybe had never flown before but definitely had no respect for the other passengers or even flight attendants. These high school age kids were climbing over seats, leaving things in the aisle-way, leaning over our seats to talk to eachother rows away. Very obnoxious and didn’t allow many people to sleep on the plane. Luckily sleep was not in my agenda. I had bought the 7th Harry Potter book with the intention of reading it on the plane and I got through ~600/700 pages on our 13 hour flight. I probably took about a 30-minute nap during the whole time we were in the air. I finished the book by Friday night. It was pretty ridiculous, but you know once I start reading a good book, I won’t put it down until I’m finished. Anyways, so Team Japan (as we like to call ourselves) consists of 9 auditors, 6 girls and 3 guys. The group that went to Beijing was 5 girls and 1 guy – the newbies (Holly and Eric) of course were excited to go on every weekend excursion so they were part of our Beijing group. We arrived in Beijing and caught a taxi van to get to our hotel (Marriott Apts). By the time we arrived at the hotel and freshened up, we all just wanted some dinner and then to get some rest for our trip to the Great Wall early Saturday morning. We had the concierge arrange for a van to pick us up at 8am and drive us 2 hours to get to the Great Wall – Simatai section. So let’s start with Friday:

Friday – 7/27/07
We arrived at our hotel (the executive apts) and checked in – all the girls stayed in one apartment that consisted of 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, dining area, kitchen and even a laundry room. It was pretty sweet! I called the smallest bedroom so I could have a room to myself J. Not to be anti-social, but I know from experience that one of the girls snores pretty badly and didn’t want to get stuck in a room with her. This also allowed me to have my own bathroom…and anyone who knows me, knows that I hate sharing bathrooms ;-). Eric got his own room cause we had enough in the budget and didn’t want to stick him with 5 girls for the entire weekend – for his sanity’s sake. After we all freshened up, we asked the hotel concierge where we should eat. Basically what’s a good restaurant nearby where they speak English. We didn’t really have it in us to try to communicate to someone who didn’t speak English. He suggested the South Beauty and wrote down the information in Chinese for us to give our cab driver. Since there were so many of us, we had to take 2 separate cabs. Since I had money and Kathleen had money, we took the 2 separate cabs and Sonia and Eric came with me while the other 2 girls went with Kathleen. We arrived at the huge department store and our cab driver told us that the restaurant was “in there” (basically just pointing and said something in Chinese). We also found a group of teenage girls who spoke English and they confirmed that the restaurant was inside the 5 story department store somewhere.
This department store was ridiculously huge and so we go up escalator after escalator walk around each floor and even ask several employees of the department store where this restaurant was. No one seemed to be able to help us but 1 woman pointed to a general direction on the 2nd floor and said it was over there. We walked in that direction and Sonia walked over to it and said it was only a Manicure/Pedicure place, so we continued on. We even went down to the information desk and they didn’t seem to be much help because of communication issues. After about 45 minutes of this, we almost gave up and were about head to the nearest restaurant when Sonia asked one more employee. This woman pointed out in the same direction as the other and said it was “over there”. Sonia was determined to find this place so she actually told the woman to walk us there (sort of grabbing her arm, which I thought was pretty rude). But the woman complied and walked us to the same Mani/Pedi place but when you walk a little further, you see that the restaurant WAS there!! It was against the wall, connected to the department store but not actually IN the store. DUH! How stupid did we feel?? So we go inside and the other 3 girls were there and had already started eating…craziness! But we were able to order and I actually got this great shrimp and pineapple dish! Yummm. Finally after dinner we headed back to the Marriott for some rest before our next adventure. One thing is for sure – no matter where we go, there’s an adventure waiting for us overseas!

Saturday 7/28/07

So we get up early Saturday morning and pack up some gear for our journey. Me being the “Mom”, packed the most – food supplies, wet wipes, a towel, some reading material for the drive up there, and of course my I Pod. Kathleen and I picked up some bottles of water for everyone from a nearby grocery store too. We were all pretty awake on the drive up there so we whipped out our China and Japan tour books and did some reading as well as this Joke Book that my friend Aman had bought me before we left. Thanks for the books Aman! We opted to go to this area of the Great Wall called Simatai as it was less touristy than the Badaling area.

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/scene/beijing/simatai.htm

We also went out on our own without a tour guide. We get to the ticket office and couldn’t even figure out how to get up to the top from where we were, so we bought tickets to ride a cable car up to almost the top. It dropped us off and we still had a good 30 min. hike to reach the Wall itself. It was a pretty steep incline but we didn’t come here for nothing! Also as our luck seems to be, the weather was really cloudy and foggy so we couldn’t see much. However, it could’ve been much worse! As hot as it was, it would have been ridiculously hot if it was sunny outside! As you’ll see in the pictures, we were all drenched with sweat by the time we got to the top.

Kathleen and Holly were rockstars and were the first to reach the top. Eric and Shannon were next and Sonia had to keep stopping, so I waited with her and we took our time climbing to the top. We finally had made it and the rest of the group was catching their breath and waited for us before exploring the area. Sonia wasn’t too interested in going anywhere so she just stayed at the base level while the rest of us continued to go up stairs and see what else was around. Holly actually turned around at one point to get Sonia cause she thought Sonia might enjoy seeing what we did. She was a good motivater, but Sonia definitely hated her at the time J. The rest of the group wanted to try to hike up to a much higher level of the wall, but didn’t get too far when the area was roped off and the guard said that it was illegal to go there.

- the "illegal" part of the Wall

I think we could’ve paid him off, but that part of the wall definitely didn’t look like it had been even the slightest bit renovated or safe for that matter. So back we went. We checked out the other side and got some pictures, but you couldn’t go much further, so we then proceeded to head back down.

Again, we couldn’t figure out any other way to get back to the ground from where the cable car would pick us up so we enjoyed the relaxing trip down via cable car. We reached the bottom, welcomed by a row of street vendors trying to sell us various Great Wall paraphernalia and by our van driver who waited there for us. We all passed out on the drive home. We reached our hotel around 3 or 4pm and most of us were just exhausted from both the Great Wall and from jet lag, so we took naps, planning to wake up for dinner around 8pm. Since we were so tired, we didn’t want to venture out for food and just ordered delivery…not only was it delivery, but it was Italian food at that. I know I know, slightly disappointing, but I wasn’t feeling too adventurous with Chinese food after so many articles and news reports on the quality of Chinese food. Also I didn’t want to take the chance of getting sick before even getting to Japan. Turns out both Kathleen and I ended up sleeping until the next morning! Holly, being the ball of energy she is, didn’t want to take a nap so she ventured out to the New Market while we all slept and did some MAJOR shopping. She came back around 8pm expecting us all to be ready for dinner but of course, we weren’t. She got a ton of really great stuff from there, but I still preferred my sleep to shopping. Sonia and Shannon felt bad that Holly wanted to go out to get a drink and was going to venture out by herself again, so they went with her. Apparently they had another little adventure trying to find some restaurant/bar that was in Sonia’s Beijing book and ended up going to the nearby Outback for appetizers and drinks after searching for this other place for 30 min.

Sunday – 7/29/07

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square

Our flight to Tokyo was scheduled to leave around 2pm, so we had the morning to do some exploring. I woke up the next morning at 5am feeling extra refreshed! We all got ready and headed to the Tiananmen Square area to check it out and then to the nearby Forbidden City before coming back to the hotel to get our luggage and then getting to the airport. The amount of tourists at Tiananmen Square was crazy, but pretty funny too. Since Eric is 6’7”, he looks like he could be a famous American basketball player. Every few minutes some family or group would come up to him asking to take their picture with him. The girls and I all got a kick out of it until for some reason, someone wanted to take their picture with me. Kinda random, but sure why not. Then someone else asked Kathleen the same. All very confusing but it was really cute. Eric even had to turn down a few pictures since he kept falling behind the rest of the group. We walked through the Square and into the Forbidden City. As we were short on time, we couldn’t do a guided tour or even go thru all of the buildings, but we walked around, took some pictures and bought a few souvenirs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

By 11, we caught a couple cabs, headed to the hotel and had to split 2 people to a cab because we had so much luggage each. Kathleen and I went in one, Sonia and Shannon and then Holly and Eric. Mind you, Holly and Eric are both new (just started about a week before leaving for Japan) and have COMPLETELY opposite personalities. I could probably discuss this for days, but all I’ll say is that it can be both entertaining and frustrating at times. Kathleen and I couldn’t find the rest of the group but weren’t worried since we were all taking the same flight to Tokyo. We took our time and grabbed some lunch at this cute restaurant called “Lucky something”. They had everything from American burgers, to some sort of “Irish” food to Chinese food and even pizza. We opted for burgers and they were actually pretty good. We checked out a few shops along the way and had also been given access to the Business Lounge, so we hung out there for a while before the flight. This flight was much better than the previous one. It was cool cause we could actually watch on our TV’s as the plane took off. We also had a much better selection of movies and I FINALLY was able to watch Spiderman 3! Pretty good, but too focused on the “love” part…I’m not a big fan of Kirsten Dunst, so that didn’t impress me too much. All in all a good flight. We get to Tokyo and take the Airport Limousine (a huge shuttle bus) to our Hotel Okura and check-in around 11pm Sunday night.
- Forbidden City (Imperial Garden)
We were extremely busy this past week at work as there is much work to be done in 5 weeks. I also had to balance that with trying to plan things for our Mt. Fuji trip the following weekend as there were 5 of us going (same group as the Great Wall minus Kathleen). That’s a WHOLE OTHER story…which is about to follow.