Because my parents made me...

...I'm finally posting pictures from Yosemite.

The guide book said this is one of the most photogenic points in the park.



I'm bonding with the Sequoias.



Raven!



Sunset!



My awesome rental bike.



Biking through the meadow.



My Bro.



Across the valley from Half Dome.

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Japan!

Finally the video is complete!

You can see Justin's version of events here. You probably shouldn't listen to him though.

It's like being Justin Timberlake and Brittany Spears!

I first arrived in Japan, and headed to Kyoto with Justin as my guide. We started out our first full day with sightseeing at the Nijo castle. Everything was going along normally. We viewed the castle among throngs of school children and then headed out to see the surrounding gardens. Then we were approached by a group of school children asking 'Shall we take a photo with you?' Which, we did, and then they asked for our signatures.

Then we went on to see the Golden Pavilion. Again it was crowded with school children. Everything was going along normally, when two girls approached me with some kind of assignment they had to ask some one some questions in english and get a signature. So I answered their questions, and then the rest of their classmates realized that some native english speakers had been found and came over to get our signatures as well. We were signing papers left and right! Since the Japanese don't have signatures, apparently having one is really cool. Eventually we were able to get away from the group, after taking the obligatory group photo. Our sightseeing continued on to the Silver Pavilion. They Silver Pavilion was less crowded, so we had a little breathing room. We wandered around the gardens, and down a path to a little shrine. It was a dead end, so we turned to make our way to the main path but our way was blocked by a group of school children holding a camera. 'Shall we take a photo with you?' 'Sure!'. This was the last with our brush with Japanese fame, but we got a photo of our own this time!

Second Job

I mean come on, just 40 hours a week of work is totally easy and lame. Why not take a second job?! Yeah, I'd basically whore myself out to any clinical psyc lab if I thought it would increase my chances of getting into grad school next year. So I'll be adding another 10 hours to my work week doing some stuff for the Child and Family Policy Lab at Duke. I feel a little dirty that I'll be going over to Duke campus, but I think I can handle it. I may just be a little less social for the next few weeks.

Palm Trees and Blizzards

So I survived my first grad school interview. After spending an entire day traveling I was picked up from the Phoenix airport by my grad student host and driven directly to a party being held for all the interviewees. The party was a barbeque set up at one of the grad students apartment complexes. When we arrived, my host pointed me towards the food, and either she didn't know what was going either, or I misunderstood, but I promptly walked over to the party taking place next to ours and introduced myself to some random person, while also taking some of their food. They then explained to my that they were a separate party, and were very nice about the whole thing. They also had good spinach dip.

I think the rest of my time in AZ went pretty well. I'm anxiously awaiting the decision of the admissions committee, which could come at any time. The campus has a 'palm walk' lined with over a hundred palm trees. I think I could live in a place like that.

Tuesday morning I packed up my things and got on a plane to go home. I just had to change planes in Cleveland, with a two hour layover. So, when we landed in Cleveland, the snow had begun to fall, but it didn't seem to affect our landing and my flight to Raleigh was still listed as on time. Unconcerned, I proceeded to use most of my remaining cell phone battery on calling my parents to entertain me through the layover period. As I chatted away, the snow got worse, and while my flight still said on time, we still weren't boarding. Eventually the flight said it would be delayed 15 minutes. Then it just said delayed. As the hours started to wear on, I started to get more worried. I knew nothing about Cleveland, and had nowhere to stay if necessary. Would I have to sleep in the airport?! I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't getting out of Ohio any time soon, and got myself a seat on a plane leaving the next day at 7pm.

While in line to make the flight reservation change I met a woman named Cassie, about the same age as me and also trying to get to Raleigh. Me and Cassie became disaster friends. Since we were both poor we decided to get a hotel room together. We made a reservation at the Ramada and waited for the airport shuttle. The first time around the shuttle filled up before we got a seat. After waiting in the cold for about an hour another Ramada van showed up but it wasn't our Ramada, it was another Ramada. We estabished this with the van driver and stood outside for another 15minutes while this van just sat there. Then the van driver waived us over. We thought he'd taken pity on us and was going to take us to our Ramada, but no. When we ended up at the wrong hotel we had the guy take us back to the airport. During this time the correct shuttle came and went, so we were stuck waiting for about another hour. Of course when we got to the hotel they only had single rooms left and we could only get a cot if we paid extra. Awkward...

I did make it back 24 hours later than scheduled. At that point I was just happy to be home. And that $7 beer at the airport was totally worth it.

My Blog Voice

So now that I'm back in the States, I'm not sure what to do with this blog space of mine. The spokesman of Possum Hollar says I need to find my 'blog voice' I'm not sure if my blog voice will come out as a squeak or a roar. Or maybe a Kramer impression.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Also I have an interview at Arizona State. Score!