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Rome
Summer break means it’s time to travel again. Mom has a number of places she wants to visit. This year it happened that Europe had a few destinations we could cross off her bucket list. We started with 48 hours in Rome. We flew into Rome, landing at about nine in the morning local time. To our bodies though it was midnight. Despite very little sleep on the airplane, we were determined to beat jetlag by treating the day as its own day and not constantly thinking about what time it was back home. We took the train into town and then transferred to the metro to get to the…
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Rarotonga – The Cook Islands
I found my travel journal from my 6 weeks in the Cook Islands. We staying on Rarotonga and Mangaia islands. I transcribed all my rambling into one long post. If you want to read it you can do so here. This is meant to be a shorter read. Getting There We began our adventure around 4 in the morning because we needed to leave Vancouver Island. We caught the first ferry to Vancouver and went to the airport. There are no direct flights to Rarotonga from Vancouver, so our first stage was getting to Los Angeles. At LAX we had some plane troubles and were delayed by just over an…
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The Cook Islands tl;dr (Pt. 3)
Cook Islands Part 1 HereCook Islands Part 2 Here May 28th Today was a travel day. We were leaving one Cook Island for another. Because the domestic flights were so small, we had to divide ourselves into two groups and take two different planes to Mangaia. The first group was leaving the hotel at about 7:30 in the morning. We heard them but opted not to get up and say goodbye as we would see them again in a few hours. Our group left later. When we got up we took all our bags into one central room. We learn that we were keeping one room at the hotel so…
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The Cook Islands tl;dr (Pt. 2)
Part 1 is about arriving in the Cook Islands. May 8th We started class later than usual today because we had a guest lecturer coming. I guess the lecture was coming to talk to us about the preservation of the Maori language. We learned about the steps that were being taken to preserve the language through the creation of dictionaries and through oral records taken from elders. In the afternoon we started our lectures with Gerald McCormick. These are our science lectures. It was nice because he started with the basics and today’s lecture was on plate tectonics and the formation of the islands in the South Pacific. We got…
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The Cook Islands tl;dr (Pt 1)
In 2007 I took part in a six-week field school in the Cook Islands. Recently I found the journal I kept while abroad. I have put the entire journal here. I will break it down into relevant posts as I edit through this. April 29th to April 30th transition days. These two days were transit days. Alex, Hanako, and I woke up at 4:30 am. I dressed for the day before going to wake up Alex and Hanako. We got up and did a last-minute baggage check before we hit the road. The drive to Nanaimo was quiet. We dropped Hanako off at Alex’s house, where her car was. It…
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Zoo Sauvage – Quebec
We went to the zoo on a school day. Class ended early that day. We had to be on the bus at 11:30. We received a paper bag lunch. Sandwiches, a juice box, macaroni salad, and a cookie. We ate on the bus. It was a two-hour drive to the zoo. I read more of my book. When we arrived at Zoo Sauvage we started by watching a film, telling us about the animals. Then suddenly there are snakes on the screen and everyone feels something brush the back of their legs from under the seat. Everyone screamed. It was very funny. The best part was when the snake was…
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Rafting – Quebec
The Explore program created two groups again. And again I am glad I was not with the morning rafters. I heard them up and leaving at just before 7 am. I had a quick laugh and went right back to sleep. We did not have to leave until just after noon. I spent the morning lounging around reading. Then I packed a warm change of clothes for after rafting. The bus ride was just over an hour… joy oh joy. But it was fine, I chatted with the girls in franglish. We dressed in wet-suits when we arrived. But they ran out of dry suits and some of us (me) had…
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Cape Trinity, Quebec
One weekend the Explore Program took us on an hour and a half bus ride to Cape Trinity. Cape Trinity is a 3.5km hike up the side of a mountain. At the time it felt straight up. It was really tiring and took about an hour and a half to walk up. The purpose of the hike was to see a statue that was placed at the top of the mountain. The story goes a man had once fallen through the ice of the fjord. He promised God that is he survived that would build a statue of the Virgin Mary at the top of the mountain. The man survived…
