Around The World Travel Blog of Megan and Michael

Tahoe

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:00:32 -0800

Dave and Dawn flew up from LA on Thursday and the four of us took off Friday morning for Tahoe. Dawn found a great place for us to stay just a few steps from the gondola at Heavenly. The weather has been beautiful everyday, and even though I'm not snowboarding, I took the gondola up on Saturday to enjoy the view and get a little sun. Dave and Michael actually got a little TOO much sun on Friday and Saturday, and everyone felt a little tired, so they decided to take the day off from skiing. We packed some sandwiches and headed out in the car to find a nice place by the lake to do a little walking or hiking. We found our way to Emerald Bay, where we hiked down from the parking lot to the lake to enjoy lunch and a short nap on the dock. After that, we completed the loop all the way around the lake. The weather and the views were beautiful--we were all happy that we got to explore the area a little more and we definitely want to come back again soon.

We finished the day with dinner at Fire and Ice, which we decided should be renamed due to the not-so-pleasant-smelling side-effects the food seemed to have on all our gastrointestinal systems.

The other 3 are out getting in one last day of skiing, then we're headed back to the East Bay later today. It's been a great long weekend!

Happy Holidays!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 10:28:50 -0800

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! Megan and I hope that everyone is able to be with their loved ones this holiday season.

Family, Friends and Familiar Places

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:43:15 -0800

After visiting the McAra clan in Michigan and Rob and Aly in D.C, Michael and I are now at the Brandt House in western Massachusetts, where we got married two years ago. It's great to be back here, it always feels like home, just nicer. It's still pretty much the same here, with some nice little improvements like new furniture in the sun room, luxurious carpeting on the stairs and more great artwork throughout. They've also gotten rid of the tennis court out back and are converting it into a zen garden space with a gazebo-type structure.

We drove over to Amherst yesterday to walk around campus and get a burrito at Bueno y Sano. We stopped by the International Programs Office and luckily JoAnn was there so we got to talk to her a bit. JoAnn was super helpful and inspriring to both of us back when we were planning our study abroad trips to Siena, London, Freiburg and Heidelberg. Unfortunately, the university has cut just about all of the IPO's money, which means they now have to charge students more.

We're off to the cape this afternoon--Dave and Dawn are getting married on Sunday! Can't wait to see everyone, should be lots of fun!

A Mexican Wedding

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:02:23 -0800

Well, it's been almost two months since we've written anything here. I guess the best remedy for that is to sit down and write. Luckily we have something interesting (and travel related) to write about:

This coming Tuesday we'll be flying to Cancun, Mexico for Scott and Charlotte's wedding! Megan and I are very excited for them. Neither of us have ever been to Mexico so we're looking forward to taking advantage of the sight-seeing opportunities. I want to do a bit of research regarding the area of Cancun and its history and the things other travelers recommend doing. I'll probably visit some of the websites we used when planning our round-the-world trip: BootsnAll, Lonely Planet and Rough Guides.

I've been harboring a not-so-secret desire to get a new digital camera since the small preview screen in ours stopped working. The one I like best for performance, style and price is the Canon S2 IS. It's the same one our friend Aly uses. I explained to Megan that being able to take decent photos at Scott and Charlotte's wedding was the perfect reason to go buy a new one. I thought I had a good chance of convincing her until she reminded me of why our current camera first stopped working. When we were on the beach in Ghana I put the camera into my pocket which happened to be full of sand. That little mistake meant we wouldn't have a working camera until we reach South Africa and cost us $200 in repairs. Considering Charlotte and Scott are getting married on an island the chances of something sand-related happening to a new camera are probably pretty good.

I won't make any promises that we'll post updates while we're in Mexcio but I will do my best to post something when we get back. Good luck to Charlotte and Scott with the last minute preparations. See you soon!

Spring Cleaning

Mon, 08 May 2006 00:25:06 -0800

Megan and I spent time this weekend cleaning up our site. We updated our homepage with photos from our recent travels, took down the links to the wedding information and consolidated the navigation.

We've each been struggling with trying to figure out how to keep posting to our travelogue now that we're back and into our daily routines. It's much harder to think of interesting things to write about now that we're not taking 29 hour train rides across India, teaching in remote Akha villages or fooling everyone that I am a kung fu master and Megan dyed her hair red.

After some discussion we came to the conclusion that we'll probably never consider ourselves "settled" and actually think of our lives as a perpetual journey. Plus, with the amount of visitors we have coming to stay with us this month and Charlotte and Scott's wedding in Mexico next month we should have plenty to write about.

DC Revisited

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:50:00 -0800

Megan and I flew into Washington, DC National Airport at 8am this morning. We're here to attend and celebrate the wedding of our good friends Rob and Aly. Megan's currently at the Bridal luncheon and I'm at our favorite cafe Tryst sipping a blended Mocha and taking advantage of their free wireless internet access.

It feels great to be back and Megan and I have planned visits to some of our favorite places: Rosemary's Thyme, Cactus Cantina and maybe visit the first neighborhood that was home for us - Cleveland Park. We'll be sure to upload some photos from the wedding.

Birthwarming

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 13:03:18 -0800

I can't believe it'll be 6 weeks since we've moved in to our new place in Oakland. Time is seriously flying by. I'm sure it has a lot to do with how busy we've been during the week and over the past few weekends. Two weeks ago we had our official Housewarming Party (nicknamed a "Birthwarming Party" because we were celebrating Alexa and Megan's birthdays - both in February - and our housewarming). It was a lot of fun and provided us with the impetus to (almost) finish decorating the place.

This past weekend we officially celebrated Megan's birthday and David and Sanna came down from Harbin to spend the weekend with us. On Saturday Megan and I went into San Francisco and had lunch at Cafe Gratitude, a vegan and raw food restaurant. It was one of the best vegetarian meals I think we've ever had. And the place had a great vibe to it with friendly staff.

Alexa's really busy with studying and teaching at Berkeley and Megan's working 3 jobs: developing curriculum for a charter school in Brooklyn, tutoring students through an after-school program, and was just hired today to start working 20 hours a week at Trader Joe's! I've been doing lots of web design and development work for green businesses since getting out here.

I promise we'll get photos of our new place online soon (while it's still able to be considered "new"). We hope all our friends and family are well.

Nesting

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:20:00 -0800

On Tuesday we signed a one year lease for a 3 bedroom apartment in Oakland, just over the border from Berkeley. It's in a quiet neighborhood but still very close to the university and good places to go out. It's a split-level and we get the 2nd and 3rd floor with a spiral staircase connecting them. The top floor is one big room that we're going to use as part living room, part office and part guestroom. It has a nice backyard and I'm hoping to start a small vegetable/herb garden in the Spring.

We spent most of today making trips to Target, Ikea and Trader Joe's to get all the things you need when you get a new apartment. We're excited to finally have the chance to use some of the wedding gifts we'd received almost a year and a half ago. Megan's busy finding places throughout the apartment where our stuff will live. Sanna and David will be here tomorrow to see the place and bring us some things they were holding on to for us. We'll get some photos posted soon so you all can see the place too.

The Hunt

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:03:18 -0800

We spent the last few days looking for apartments in the Berkeley/Oakland area. There are quite a few on the market and Craig's List has been our main means of sorting through them. We also used Google Maps to see how close each candidate is to downtown, UC Berkeley and good restaurants and cafes. We found one place in particular that stood out among the rest (see photo). We weren't able to go inside and take a good look around because the stairs were falling apart and there was a "No Trespassing" sign posted on the boarded up window. Plus it didn't look like anybody was home anyway. Well, if we don't get this one we'll have to just keep on looking.

3,587 Miles Later

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 16:32:53 -0800

I arrived in Berkeley yesterday afternoon after spending the night at Dave and Dawn's just outside Los Angeles. It was a nice, albeit short visit with them and I set out Friday morning around 10AM to complete the last leg. The drive out of Los Angeles up route 5 was much different than I thought it would be. I had no idea that LA was bordered by such large mountains to the north. They wound up and around for a good 20 miles and then emptied out into vast flat plains filled with industrial farms. In many ways the drive yesterday was the hardest stretch of the trip because I was surrounded the whole time by other cars and trucks. We were cruising at a good clip (a bit above the 70MPH speed limit) and were pretty tightly packed together. In New Mexico, Arizona or Texas it seemed an easier drive since I only had to share the road with a few other vehicles and could zone out a bit. I did have a chance to see and appreciate what a beautiful state California is. I'm excited to be out here and look forward to being able to do a lot of outdoor activities (biking, hiking, camping, snowboarding, etc.). So, thanks to Google Maps I pulled into Berkeley around 4:30PM PST. Sanna and David were already in San Francisco waiting for us to arrive at a bed and breakfast they frequently stay at. I called up Alexa and we headed into the city to join them at the B&B. We went out to dinner at Herbivore and then I set out to pick up Megan. Her flight out of Atlanta was delayed and she didn't end up arriving in SF until 10PM. I met her at the airport and we took the BART to the B&B. Now that we're all in one place Megan, Alexa and I will begin the apartment hunt and I'm starting a search for shared office space. We're hoping to find a place to live in the East Bay - Berkeley or Oakland. It feels good to have arrived in the place that will be our home for the foreseeable future. We'll do our best to keep the travelogue updated but please forgive us if we're sporadic with our entries.

Big Blue

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:10:13 -0800

I've stopped at a Travel Center in Sayre, Oklahoma because they have wireless internet and I wanted a rest. My "dinner" tonight is care of Taco Bell (2 bean and chesse burritos). I think this may be the second time in my life that I've ever eaten at Taco Bell. It's cheap and you get what you pay for. Yesterday I was hoping to make it all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas. But a thunderstorm and heavy rain forced me to call it a night in Heth, AK (just past the Mississippi River). I spent the evening burning audio books for my ride today and, after finishing Stephen Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell" I'm listening to Deepak Chopra. The hours on the road fly by when I'm listening to audio books and lectures. In some ways it's a treat for me because I find it difficult to make the time to spend hours listening to audio books in normal day-to-day life. I don't know if I mentioned it previously, but I've been on Route 40 West for quite some time. It'll take me all the way to California. Having only one road to think about makes it pretty easy to stay on course. It's been interesting stopping at different points along the way to fill up with fuel and grab something to eat or drink. I feel like people look me over a bit suspiciously when I walk in. It might be that my large laptop bag looks a bit too much like some kind of man-purse or maybe my clothes make me stand out. A lot of folks around me are wearing denim and cowboy hats. I'm sure my accent (or lack thereof) singles me out too. But curious glances aside, everyone's been friendly. Well, I'm going to head back out onto the road and put a few more miles under "Big Blue". That's the name I've come up with for my Dad's F250. Now, if only I had a CB radio I could really get into this trucker thing.

California or Bust

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:53:42 -0800

So, it's been a while since we've written an update. Rather than going over all that we've been up to over the past month I'll just jump right into where we are now: Megan is in Linz, Austria with her Mom visiting Henni, Omi, Roland, Tamara and Kurt. She'll be there until the 12th and then will fly into San Francisco International Airport on the 13th. I'm in Radford, Virginia at a Super 8 Motel (with free high-speed internet access!) driving my Dad's big Ford F250 filled with all our earthly possessions. I'm driving to Berkeley, California which will be our new home for the next few years. My goal is to arrive in San Francisco on the 13th to meet Megan at the airport. This past Saturday I drove 11 hours from Boston to DC to make a 7:30PM happy hour with colleagues and friends from a previous job. I stayed in DC with my friend Meredith (and her cat Tupilo) and then stopped by Diana's to pick up Megan's bike that she'd been keeping for the past year and a half (thanks again!). Diana and I visited Rob and Aly's to pick up furniture from the apartment Megan and I had before we left DC. We crammed everything into the back of the truck and then the four of us had a nice lunch together. Then I stopped by Envision (my previous employer) to chat with Richard, the co-founder. I got online at a Panera Bread cafe to talk with Megan using Skype and finally made it on the road around 4:30PM. 5 hours later I arrived at this Super 8. I'm not sure how far I'll get tomorrow but my aim is to hit the road early and get some serious distance covered. I'll do my best to write an update in the next day or so.

The Blue Shirt lives on (with a new owner)!

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:42:41 -0800

I'm sure you all remember Moose's ongoing commentary on our travelogue about Michael's blue travel shirt and its reoccurring appearance in our photos. Once we returned we decided that there was no better way to honor the spirit of the shirt and its number one fan than to wrap it up and give it to Moose as a souvenir! Moose seemed appropriately honored by the gift (even tried it on) and I'm sure he'll find ways to ensure that the legend of the shirt lives on!! (Also, I put up some pictures from Thanksgiving here.)

Reconnecting

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:57:07 -0800

Megan and I flew into Dulles International Airport just outside DC yesterday. It was a quick flight--it's easy to forget how close Boston and DC are. We're staying with Rob and Aly who have generously given us a place to stay. It's great to see them again and comforting to be back in an area that was home for us for 3 years. I really love the DC area--people have a touch of southern friendliness and yet (almost) everyone seems to be involved in some important project or attached to some internationally-known organization or business. Tonight we're going to go visit an old haunt in the city - Alero. It's a great Mexican restaurant in Dupont Circle with free chips and salsa before the meal and delicious frozen margaritas. Our friends Shawn and Diana whom we haven't seen in a while will be joining the four of us. I'm looking forward to it!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 18:46:35 -0800

Megan and I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you're all able to be with friends and family.