sleepless after seattle

well, i have arrived home. i flew home via seattle and visited sarah (college roommate) and kelly (college friend) for a few days. it was a grand time seeing the city and exploring the capitol hill neighborhood where they live, and of course drinking lots and lots of starbucks. beauchemin works at the starbucks world headquarters and kelly works at the original starbucks, and they both get discounts, so it was starbucks at all times of the day!

i don't think that my time there did anything to ween me off japan time and to get me back in the groove because i have been exhausted ever since i got home. the kind of exhaustion that makes you sleep for 16 hours. several nights in a row. so my trip is officially over, but check back, because there are still pictures to post, and there may even be updates, because who knows where in the world i'm going to end up!

first some pictures!

The taj mahal early in the morning.

me, kiki, and the christmas decorations in ginza

me and mom on an elephant at the amber fort.

Bamboo forest at kodaji temple in kyoto

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

that's right, here in japan, there are christmas decorations everywhere, the trees are all illuminated, i ran into a life size animated santa made out of balloons, and there was even snow on the mountains behind alexas house in the mornings!! and the carrolls! they LOVE christmas carrolls here. they are played in malls, in coffee shops, massage parlors, even just walking down the street. it's a secular, comercialized christmas, but it's enough to make me relly excited about getting back to the states and headed to san diego for some walsh festivities.

i spent the last few days on shikoku with my childhood friend alexa. she is doing the j.e.t. program there. this means that she is an assistant language teacher for two junior highs and a whole handfull of elementary schools in the area. i went along with her to class on monday, which meant that we sang, danced, and played games with 150 elementary school children in english. yes, we really did sing and dance, although i'm afraid it wasn't a very inspiring performance on my part. alexa's great at it though, and she can really get the energy levels up in those little ones. question and answer period was my fav as we got to respond to such inquiries as "what do you like?" and "do you like president lincoln" and the best one "why is janet jackson so fat?". there were a few that could not be translated and these caused quite a round of laughter and disaproving looks from the teachers.

then it was off to school lunch at the junior high!! this procedure is completely unlike lunchtime in american schools, but it is more efficient and less distracting than actually getting a break from class. after lunch we taught the equivalent of american 7th graders. there wasn't any singing and dancing, but there was carrolls and christmas bingo, as well as more great questions (what is mrs. clauses first name?).

i definately respect alexas job a lot. there doesn't seem to be much discipline in the classrooms, and she really has to work hard to motivate the students to participate. alexa also showed me some of the hot spots in kawanoe (rotating sushi!!) and we even met up with the two other assistant english teachers in her prefecture one night. she seems to be doing great, especially considering that there is not a lot of english spoken around where she is. her japanese is coming along really nicely after only 4 months there!

after my all-too-brief visit there, i also spent a day in hiroshima and two in kyoto (the anagram lovers tokyo). japan is really easy to get around because of the bullet train. it kinda feels like youre flying, or on a roller coaster. more on these side trips later, there's a lot of tokyo to see, and i don't have much time!

turning japanese

hello! i have safely arrived in japan. i know i was in a normal airplane, but it's hard to believe that a place like this exists on the same planet as india (you really can't compare the two places. one is not better than the other, they are just very very opposite in many ways). it's an incredible city. i can't even tell when i'm on the ground, when i'm in the air, or when i'm over water. everything is very orderly and clean and confusing beyond my anticipation. i'm staying with my college roommate kiki who has been living and working here since august. i'm having a great time exploring the city and seeing what her life is like. we have been shopping in shinjuku, exploring the nightlife in roppongi, acting posh along omotesando (the 5th avenue of tokyo), eating yakiniku (that's actually korean) and udon at noodle shops (that's very japanese) and we even managed to end our night last night at the tsukiji fish market right as the first tuna of the day was sliced up. i am now going to head down to southern japan to visit alexa doing her j.e.t. thing for a few days and i can't wait!!

india!

my how my time has flown in india!! i cannot believe that it is time to head to japan, but i'm very very excited. i hardly had a chance to update over the last few weeks, so i would like to compile a list of my favorite moments from india. they are not in any particular order.

-- day 1, the car ride to Dharamsala: our first experience of this country was when we were packed into a car and shuttled off to the northern state of himachal pradesh. of the 12 hours total that we were in the car, there were about 30 solid minutes when we didn't think we were about to collide head-on with a vehicle screaming down the road the other way and be incinerated in an ensuing explosion. now i know you're probably all sick of my "terrible driving" stories, but this was by far the worst i have ever experienced. our grievances with the car were as follows:
1. it would regularly stall, and would have to be jump started. once this involved a rolling jump going backwards around a hairpin turn on a steep mountain road.
2. it didn't have any rearview mirrors. at the start of the trip there was one on the drivers side, but that broke off halfway through the day when we hit something or someone. we're not sure what happened.
3. there were no seatbelts in the back. fortunately i was shotgun, which did have a belt. the downside to this is that it's harder to ignore the horror unfolding in front of you when you have a clear view of the windshield.
4. the horn didn't work. this is a big one. communication between drivers becomes especially important when there are no apparent "rules of the road."
5. to add insult to injury, the tapedeck was broken, and we listened to a less-than-mediocre single followed by the b-side of the same tape over and over again. for 12 hours.

--the monkey temple. i hate monkeys. this was already clear to me when we decided to walk up to the temple at the top of the hill in shimla. i started getting nervous when people lining the walk started advertising for monkey sticks, a cure for the "monkey problems" that lay ahead. these are long wooden sticks used to scare off any would-be thieves, presumably by hitting the ground and not the monkeys themselves. but we figured the monkeys must be pretty scared of these sticks by now, so we got a couple. at the gate to the temple there was a statue of a fierce looking guard, so we were posing for a picture in next to the gate looking fierce ourselves with our monkey sticks. suddenly, from behind, a huge monkey jumped on my moms back, grabbed my dads glasses, and then climbed over me and started running away. it happened in an instant, and it took us a second to figure out what had happened. fortunately a man nearby had seem what happened, and was already chasing down the monkey. like jack mccoy, the man struck a deal with the criminal: monkey food for the tourists glasses. i'm think that might have been the monkeys plan all along.

--the taj mahal. it is one of india's great love stories. built by a man wrought with grief over the death of his wife. it's beautiful, it's covered in marble and intricate stone inlay work, it took 22 years to complete, and it's worth the trip halfway around the world to see it.

--the last meal in delhi before heading out was at "rodeo" which is delhis best attempt at new mexican food. not only does it have masala encheladas and fajitas, but the waiters are dressed up as cowboys, and there is nothing but western decor on the walls. the soundtrack is strictly country music until the live act comes on at 9. it is a man and a woman team singing along to pre-mixed songs on a casio keyboard, but the music selection remains entirely american hits. it's great. it's just like being at home, except that we were the only true wild wild westerners in the place. it's great to see that a hip young indian crowd (the place was packed on a wednesday night) likes to sit around on saddled bar stools and drinks margaritas. i always thought that that was something that was restricted to my time zone and one hour to the east.

-the amber fort. jaipur is in rajasthan. this is where the rajputs once reigned supreme. the palace here is enormous and beautiful. from the brightly painted public audience courtyard to the jewel and glass encrusted ceiling of the winter palace, this place is opulent. when the heat of the desert summer started getting the man down, he would have the cisterns on the roof of his breezy summer palace filled with water from the river. the water was then scented. when it flowed in waterfall style out of pipes over the doors and windows the breeze flowing through was cool and it smelled nice! the harem was very tastefully done with 12 equal chambers with tall walls so that no one could see which door the raj was entering. every surface of the entire palace seemed to be painted or carved in a beautiful combination of hindu, muslum, and distictly mugal styles. to make it just that much better, we got an elephant ride up to the fort on elephants which (they assured us) were in good health and well cared for.

those are just some of the highlights that i can think of right now. traveling in india can be a bizzare experience, and it is imossible not to feel the entire range of human emotions, but for the most part we really enjoyed the places we went and the people we talked to, and our trip was definately a success!

happy thanksgiving!

happy thanksgiving to all of my fellow americans. this year, i would say that the thing i was most thankful for was logging on to my g-mail and seeing so many thanksgiving greetings as well as just normal blog postings from people all the way around the world that haven't forgotten me!! it was really great, and it made my week. to settle a recent dispute, you will all be interested to know that the walshs are traveling in style, and yes, we currently are at a very flashy resort in agra. i just came up from dinner at the poolside bbq, and as i sit on a nice computer in the business center, i can hear music thumping from the dance club down the hall. i'm not joking at all. and to think, only a week ago we were staying at the loseling guesthouse, a modest (but very very clean) place run by the buddhist monks of the loseling monestary. our nightly bill there for the two rooms and breakfast was under $10. so really, eleanor and michael were both right.

we are all doing well and saw the taj mahal today. it was amazing, so beautiful. the sheer size of the place and the amount of marble involved was pretty stagaring. a surprising addition to our sightseeing was the agra fort, which was also very impressive and so elaborately decorated. it's hard to imagine the luxury of life at that place.

i hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend, and i am sure that there is much to be thankful for in your lives.

cattle, cattle everywhere, but not a steak to eat

india is getting better and better every single day. i think that me and my parents are adjusting well, and each time we step out onto the bustling streets (there really are cows just wandering around, pooping, eating trash, completely unobstructed, all over the place), there is slightly more bounce in our steps. for those of you that do not know my parent well, they are very very intrepid. mcleod ganj is a great little town that appears to have no real purpose than accomodating the incomprehensible number of spiritual tourists that come this way. fortunately for us, this means there is plenty of entertainment! there is a 9:00 am beginners power yoga course, following an international breakfast of pancakes and lattes. after the strenuous class, there is plenty of time to rest up, relax, wander around before indian cooking class at 2. the end of cooking class (and my favorite part, the tasting) is just barely early enough to make a second dinner seem reasonable. the evenings usually involve a power outtage. fortunately we have learned that a power failure is a fabulous excuse to either a) get in bed and read with a headlamp, b) go to a generator powered cinema show, or c) relieve the only liscenced baskin robbins distributor in town of their precious merchandise before it all melts.

off to the cinema, talk to you later!