Holiday Goodness

What do we all want for Christmas? Well, besides the usual wishes for Darth Vader cardboard cutouts the obvious answer is meaningful social change! Kiva, my personal favorite microfinance institution now has gift cards! Here's a link to Kiva's official info on the card and how to purchase it. If you are lacking holiday gift inspiration (or have an abundance of inspiration) then I recommend that you make someone special a social minded venture capitalist. If you have any questions about Kiva or microfinance please don't hesitate to shoot me an email...or follow that link and search around, but either way, alleviating poverty is the new black, it goes with everything.

Photoshop on the W/B

My only tie to doing any concrete creative work lately has been taking pictures with my DSLR and photoshopping them beyond recognition. There's a lot of adjusting colors and whatnot. And lately I've been drawn toward slapping a word on top of the photo in a bold font with a bright color so it pops off the page. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but I think it might just be a reflection of LOL Cats in a pool of mountain life. Let's hope not.

The Great White North

So I've decided to keep up with this blog again. It's been a good long time since Prague and my European travels and it seems like an eternity since school ended and I was doing academic work on a regular basis. Living in Pemberton is also much more interesting than floundering in Tacoma waiting for something to happen.

Whistler Blackcomb has received a ridiculous amount of snow this year so far and it's looking to be a truly epic season. I know that I tend to use the word "epic" a lot, but consider this. November was the snowiest month on record, not just for Novembers past, but for any month in the last 30 years. The ski area opened about two weeks early. So I do believe that "epic" is in no way an exaggeration.

It's currently raining however, and I'm scheduled to work at 1:00 this afternoon, so I'll be taking the morning off and enjoying a delicious Canadiano...or two. And just for your information a Canadiano is a latte flavored with maple syrup, it's simply really good.

Campin in Rome

We got this sweet deal on housing at a campground just outside of Rome, very nice, very cheap, have no idea how this place runs because it is so nice and so cheap, seriously. Saw all the sights in Rome that I can think of, it was great, except you have to pay to get into the Forum, then they dont give you a map, and the tour guides themselves are walking on the site and ruining it, worst archeological sight ever, dammit Rome.

Tomorrow we leave for Florence, then after two days to Venice. We found out about a train for 12 Euro each, sweet deal considering the euro is making its way up to the friggen pound.

Also, the spell check on this computer is in Italian, so if I made a mistake its not my fault.

Post semester trip

Currently in Paris in front of the Hotel De Ville using their wireless internet.  We will be travelling to Italy and Greece next.  

Paris is amazing and internet access is fleeting.  I will update this blog, and travel period of my trip, as often as possible.  

If anyone wants me to buy them things from anywhere I'm going please deposit 10,000 in my account and ill get you anything up to a value of 1,000.  

Love Max

Vienna

This past weekend AIFS took us to Vienna for a weekend trip.  As with all the trips thus far it was far too short, but we got to see a whole lot of places.  I only have classes Monday and Tuesday but the program obviously has to accommodate everyone's class schedule, so it is a bit obnoxious to have to wait for the weekend to come when I have the entire week off after Tuesday.   Anyway, Vienna by far exceeded all of my possible expectations.  I thought it would be a rather boring city.  Very much the other way round.  The city was extremely clean and had some of the most amazing architecture I have ever seen.  I was a bit disappointed however with the drab colors of the buildings which are all some shade of stone.  I really like that Prague and Munich have brightly colored buildings.  

Vienna is home to possibly my favorite cathedral, St. Stephen's.  It has a huge tower (448.5 ft tall) that makes you very dizzy to even look at.  And additionally the cathedral is very clean, they are in the process of finishing up the cleaning job.  We also saw all the great sites of the town:  New town hall, The Habsburg winter palace, The Habsburg summer palace, the national museum, and all the concert halls and city squares and whatnot.  

My favorite part of town however is the open air market.  We got let out of our three hour walking tour (which was very cool but we became very hungry) and headed to the market.  It was crazy.  The market consists of a section of very good and very cheap restaurants with cuisine from all over the world.  We had the best Indian food I have ever eaten as well as a huge tub of hummus from this Mediterranean restaurant.  The market then turns into a huge food market with delicious looking fresh fruits and veggies and cheeses and meats and everything tasty.  Then it turns into a bunch of booths selling exactly the same crappy products.  But then it turns into a really interesting flea market where people sell everything from old clothes to old nazi coins and everything you can imagine.  Very interesting.  

On our last day there we went to the Habsburg summer palace, which is much like Versailles, but just a bit less classy.  These people were probably the envy of all rich people everywhere back then...except for the French.  

The Vienna trip kind of made me want to study abroad in Venice and I recommend to everyone that you visit the city.  It is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited.  It has museums, palaces, good food, great architecture, you can go ice skating in front of the neo-Gothic town hall (which is lit up with colored lights) until midnight 8 months out of the year.  And on top of all that, it is a fairly inexpensive city.  Definitely more expensive that Prague, but still pretty good.   

Classes at Charles University

We finally started the academic year here in Prague. Our first day was on February 18th, which is about three weeks later than UPS.  It looks as though classes will be obnoxiously easy.  On the first day one of our teachers literally said "if you are going to fall asleep, please sit more on the chair so you don't break the desk."  Our desks are a bit rickety, so this is good advise, but it seems a bit unusual for a teacher to warn us about the dangers of falling asleep instead of encouraging us to stay awake.  Some classes look good though, the teachers are very interesting and it seems that most of them will provide interesting insight into Czech culture and history.  The best part of classes though is my schedule, I only have class on monday and tuesday.  So this leaves plenty of time for doing whatever else I want to do.  I really like the idea that I went from going to class five days a week and having two off to having class two days a week and having five off, sweet.