My partner’s grandmother was turning 90 in early May, and since the airport was frozen and prevented us from visiting for Christmas, we decided to combine a trip to Georgia to surprise Grandma on her birthday with a visit to Luke’s uncle Jay and aunt Michelle in New Jersey, and a few days in New York City. So we flew into Jersey and hung out with Luke’s very expressive aunt and uncle — they are Broadway stars who are playing the leads in Wicked!
I have tried to keep skiing as my budget allowed, but the groups I skied with have always been predominantly men. That’s all fine and good, but on a ski trip a few years ago I got really sick of being constantly underestimated and left out of the route planning while skiing with a group of men.
A few shrimpy gals and I circumnavigated the Olympic Peninsula and in our first few days of the trip, we stayed in Joyce at the lovely Camp Epona. On that trip, we were sheltering in the barn because it had started to rain after dinner. While I was unpacking my bike in the barn, I noticed that there was a small pottery kiln in one of the barn stalls. I have been a ceramic sculptor and potter since I was in high school and it’s something that I miss a whole lot.
As this blog would suggest, I am not much of a hiker. I am much more interested in cycling around beautiful places than walking to or through them. However, a friend of mine wanted to attempt the Na Pali Coast/Kalalau trail and assembled an amazing group of 12 to make the journey to Kauai. She organized all of us to get permits around 6 months in advance, since overnight use of the trail is extremely limited.
After a few days in Manila, we took a short flight to Busuanga — the northernmost island in the Palawan island chain.
If one were to drive straight from the front door of our hotel to Tagaytay, the trip would have taken about 2 hours. But this is Manila, and this is our family.
My sister found really cheap tickets to Manila in late summer 2019 and we decided that she, her boyfriend, and I would take a trip together over the week of Thanksgiving. My sister had been to visit for a week about three years ago, and the last time I had visited was when I was 16.
In certain moments during the events I was able to forget the racist, capitalist, and imperial notion of national borders and focus on the nature of people and sport. There is such beauty in the different ways that shared human values or needs show up across the world.
I had made a weird resolution to myself when I was 27 or 28 that I would go to South Korea by the time I turned 30, and here was my opportunity. I knew that I loved Korean food, thought a lot of Korean people were really pretty, and was just starting to get interested in Korean skincare. However, I was not prepared to fall in love with the country and culture in the way that I did.
The winter high holidays can be pretty tough for people who are estranged from, or in conflict with, their biological or adopted families. I had been talking to a friend of mine who was also estranged from her family about spending Christmas week together, and when she told me we should drive across Oregon and camp at a remote hot spring on the East side of the Steens Mountains I said yes immediately. I was so excited to get away from the drippy and grey Seattle winter, and the fraught relationship I had with the high holidays, that running away to the middle of the desert with no reception and a car full of booze felt like just the ticket.
I moved to Seattle the summer of 2015 to start an internship at a landscape architecture firm and start my graduate career at the University of Washington. I was lucky in that I had two friends in the program, and several friends in town, that I could lean into when I felt out of place. I was also lucky that so many of my classmates are wonderful people that have gone on to do incredible things across the world.
I spent a few days in Rome visiting my lovely friend Kate, who is now in her final year of the M.Arch program at Notre Dame. Because Notre Dame has a focus in classical architecture, their students are required to spend the first semester of their thesis year in Rome. Kate was an incredible tour guide because not only had she been in Rome and around Italy for the last few months, but she also has a degree in art history and understands the art and architecture of the city at a much deeper level than I can fathom.
When I was in Svalbard, my roommate and a few outdoor guides told me that if I wanted to see the Northern Lights I should visit the Lofoten Islands, and after doing a quick search on the archipelago in northern Norway, I was sold! The blog 68 North was really helpful in helping me sort out the general geography and terrain of the island, and if I had more time I think I would have been much more invested in finding more of his hikes and hidden spots! It was hands-down the most beautiful place I’ve ever been and I can’t wait to go back in the summer time when the cold might not be so completely biting and there would be more time for hiking — the 7 hours of quasi-daylight was limiting.
My housemate Andy and I were the two people from the US living in the international dorm this year. We tentatively made plans to host a Thanksgiving dinner in our dorm the Friday after Thanksgiving was celebrated in the US, since Sweden doesn’t get a 4-day weekend! We were blown away by the enthusiasm, support, and culinary prowess of my housemates from all over the world!
During my time in Norway I spent time with my friend Tine at her family’s farm and event center outside Tønsberg, about an hour southwest of Oslo. Apparently, Tønsberg is Norway’s oldest town! She was so incredibly hospitable, and her home was so gorgeous! PLUS her dog, Scott, is hilarious and cute as all get-out. He even has his own couch with his name on it.
I ventured to Svalbard, at 78 degrees north in mid-October in search of the Northern Lights and some arctic adventure! Sunrise: 9:49AM Sunset: 3:43PM Yeah… You read it right… Only a handful of daylight hours, and that was when I was there in mid-October. Right now in mid-November the sunrise is 11:44am and the sunset is 12:44pm!!! It made me really sleepy, not to mention the freezing temperatures and hiking all day; so I was hibernating like a polar bear when I wasn’t hiking on glaciers!
My best friend from high school told me in early September that she was going to be in Barcelona for a conference in early October. Since I was still finding my footing in Sweden (I would never find it), I told her I would find a flight and meet her!
Chi Phat was incredible, even though I came down with a fever the night before we left. I didn’t tell the professor because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go on the trip.
In a little over an hour, viewers are treated to Apsara (nymph) dance which was performed in the courts of the Angkor Empire, as well as dances from the ethnic minorities in the provinces. After the Khmer Rouge murdered many Royal Ballet dancers, the intricate and precise movements of this style and dance were recreated from carvings at Angkor Wat!
The museum serves as the headquarters for several NGOs dedicated to demining Cambodia, which still has thousands of land mines and unexploded artillery in the countryside. The explosives effect rural lives every day. Cambodia having the greatest number of amputees in the world, attributable to these devices that have lingered underground from violence related to the Khmer Rouge, and the US carpet-bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
No trip to Cambodia would be complete without a visit to the incredible Angkorian temple complex outside Siem Reap. The temples were started by Khmer King Suryavarman II in the 12th century, and are a contemporary wonder of the world and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Architect and the program’s local coordinator, Pagna, took us on an architecture tour via cyclo (one-person cycle-seat contraptions) to orient us to the City’s historic and cultural past.
I signed up to be part of the UW College of the Built Environment’s inaugural program in Phnom Penh. Six graduate students of landscape architecture flew out for spring quarter 2016 to conduct community-based outreach and design with an informal urban community called Pongro Senchey. Our first week involved a lot of orientation to the country, city, culture, language, and our host university.
We made it back to the bustling, dusty, smoggy capital of Phnom Penh. There are a lot of challenges here, Cambodia is home to the most NGOs of any country in the world. Institutionalized violence has left huge scars on the country and its physical and cultural landscapes. Conversations about history, landscape, architecture, art, and planning inevitably involve a distinction of before-and-after the cultural cleansing of the Khmer Rouge.
March 23rd I took off for Phnom Penh to spend the term with professor Ben Spencer of the University of Washington, and five other graduate students in landscape architecture (more about that later). After landing, and going through the oddly casual Cambodian visa and customs procedure, I dropped most of my baggage at the professor’s house and hit the road with two other students for Kampot on the Preaek Tuek Chhu River. It is a more rural city and province known for their pepper farming!
My partner’s parents are really lovely and I appreciate so much that they make the effort to visit with him (us) despite living so far away in Georgia. They decided to make a big road trip out of coming to see us, going through Texas to see cave dwellings and abandoned mining towns in Colorado, beautiful rocks in Utah, and dahlia farms in Oregon. When they finally got to us they had already been on the road for almost two weeks!