some pictures of the grounds at Wiston Lodge

Yesterday, the weather was spectacular. 60 degrees and sunny. I went around the grounds and took some pictures. I'll put a few of the best on here; you can see the rest on facebook. Above is a picture of a large parachute which you can build fires under. the parachute billows and inflates when the fire heats up the air. I've been finding my time here to be almost a summer vacation type thing. It's allowing me to seriously recharge my batteries, and I'll be plenty well rested by the time I start traveling in earnest again.

The Lodge is surrounded by 50 acres of lush forest. Here's a nice example, with a bridge over a creek.

Behind the lodge is Tinto Hill, which would probably be a mountain in central Texas. It's a nice trip for the afternoon, if the weather is nice.

A cool lock.

Songs of the Summer

I've got some tunes that'll stand out from this summer, and here they are. They all happen to be from Charlie. He and his friends run a music blog, relentlessly easy.

first, My Favorite, a mixtape by Blalock. 20 minutes of awesome.
Down in the Valley by the Head and the Heart. Great song, that album has other gems too.
You Yes You by  by tUnE-yArDs. Proving that even bands with dumb capitalization can make awesome music. This live version is definitely worth a watch.
WHALE by Yellow Ostrich.

And, special bonus from summer 2010: It was a good day by Ice Cube. Gotta balance out all that indie with something, and this song= good times.

Catchphrases and Texans

The more observationally astute of my readers might have noticed that the title of this blog is "Witty Catchphrase," in reference to my love of catchphrases. Por ejemplo, here are the big ones from 2010: Don't fight it, Man's gotta eat, Fire up the grill, Cute face, Go big or go home, Give the people what they want.

It's been a dark few months for new catchphrases. In Barcelona, we had "that dog'll hunt," as in, "that'll work." It was best served with a big ol' Texas accent. Unfortunately, after then, I've been severely lacking in catchphrases. I've had two relatively weak catchphrases: "&*!#@$ nettles," in reference to stinging nettles, which were the bane of my existence for two weeks on the farm, and "Europe, man," which was used a lot when traveling with Flo and Caroline (the Austrians). "Europe, man" was always quite funny, but it died after a week. However, all is not lost.

Before I came to Europe, I was expecting to be greeted by a bunch of America haters, and especially a bunch of Texas haters. Imagine my surprise when I met person after person who loved Texans! I don't think I have had a single person be rude to me because I'm from Texas (perhaps because I haven't traveled to France?). Even though I haven't been finding many new catchphrases, I've been spreading the good news of "yeee-up," "ain't," and "ma'am." I don't really consider myself to have much of an accent, but I'm enjoying dropping a bit of a drawl every now and then.

Reflections on my four kinds of travel

The travel that I've done since June roughly falls into four categories: backpacking, study abroad, activities-based, and volunteering. I'll elaborate a little on each. Who knows, maybe this will help somebody down the road.

Backpacking: this is your standard hostel-to-hostel trip. It's a good way to stay in places on the cheap, you meet a lot of young people, and you can see a lot in a relatively short trip. Charlie and I did Madrid, Switzerland, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Brussels in hostels, and we had a great time. However, we met mostly fellow travelers, which included some very cool people and great times, but it got a little tiring after a while, and it didn't feel like anything near experiencing another culture, just seeing the main sights.

Study Abroad: we spent four weeks in Barcelona. The city was great, but I didn't quite get as much out of it as I did when I did 6 weeks of study in Argentina, which I largely attribute to the program (IES), which didn't really do anything to help us meet local students. With only 4 weeks, our time was quite limited. I would say that study abroad is a really great way to make friends, get to know a place, and learn a language, but on this trip, it wasn't quite perfect.

Activities-based. For me, this was playing in ultimate frisbee tournaments. This was incredibly fun. It was an easy way to meet locals, who gave me a place to stay or helped show me around their city. My friend Travis Martin (aka T-Money) basically played in ultimate tournaments through Europe for his summer vacation (with some good old fashioned tourism thrown in). These tournaments usually included camping and food, so they ended up being a good deal money-wise versus staying in a hostel, especially when you throw in meeting locals who can give you a place to stay. Apparently some tournaments let you volunteer a few hours of work for a free entry fee. I'll definitely look to see what other tournaments I can play this fall, and I think I'll come back to Europe one day for another summer of ultimate.

Volunteering: Currently on my second stint of volunteering through HelpX. This is a great way to see cool places, learn interesting skills, and stretch the money while traveling. You put in 4-7 hours of work and receive room and board. Most places looking for volunteers are farms and hostels/hotels, but there's all sorts of things. I've seen a pinball machine salesman looking for someone to assist him as he drives around Spain, a man in Egypt looking for a tutor for his son, and a buddhist cafe looking for baristas.

My education and work so far in my life hasn't really included busing tables or cleaning toilets or chopping wood, so it's good to get a little background in these sorts of really basic things. HelpX, I think, could be really useful to people looking to take some time off. It'd be easy and cheap to spend 3 months in a hostel in Costa Rica or a dairy farm in Germany, if you have the time and want to get away.

In the future, I'd like to try my hand at CouchSurfing, and hopefully geology will continue to give me opportunities to travel as part of my job.