can't stop listening to...

on a completely different note, being abroad has in no way squelched my drake obsession....
LOVE THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-bkVcoSGI

san marco piazza

ciao!
so, i've been in italy about 4 days now, and I love it! venice is such a relaxed city, it's been nice to just relax, stroll along the waterfronts and eat mounds and mounds of bread, prosciutto and cheese. last thursday night was a little stressful as i had the wrong date written down for our departure. i thought we were leaving on friday WHOOPS! i got to the airport at 8 and our flight lefts at 940. i packed in about 15 minutes and was sweating and shaking like a nervous wreck. luckily, i made it :) and now im in beautiful venice! i only missed a couple items packing wise, and luckily i have fabby fab fab friends who went and cleaned up my mess of an apartment after me.

so far, we've had one photo class and one art history class. our first photo class, we were dropped off at the central market and told "go". it's so refreshing to be able to just be creative. that afternoon we critiqued each others work and learned some photo shop skills. last night we watched casino royale because we remembered part of it takes place in venice...although we forgot it was like the last 10 mins. hahahaha

our art history classes are REALLY cool. they're a blend of a political/architectural and social history. our first lesson was in san marco piazza, which is the most famous square in venice. it's the one that's in those de beer commercials with the pigeons.... anyway. its beautiful, and we learned about how buildings can speak about a city's ideals and what it thinks about itself. the church of st. mark is incredible! in all my cathedral viewing, i've never seen anything as ornamented. our teacher is soooo nice, she's the type of teacher that you can tell is passionate & knowledgeable, so i think its gonna be a really great class.

i'll upload pictures when i finally get photoshop on my computer, but for now, my comp can't read RAW files :(

muah!
danielle

Venice!

Hello everyone!

Danielle here, ready for another adventure. Big shocker, this time it is not a developing country! Woohoo constant electricity and running water! I'm going to Venice, Italy for a month. I'll be studying art history and taking photography classes! Hurray! I can't wait!
Ciao!

our first adventures on our own

It's been a week now since our global corps program ended in Hubli. 3 of us-- me, Dana and Abby have been travelling around southern india in the meantime. Our first stop was Kerala, the most south western state, and also the most developed. Kerala was SO beautiful. It's very, very humid and rainy there, so everything is just the most vibrant green color. We went to a mountain town called Munnar, which was nestled in the tea plantations up in the mountains. It was so beautiful up there, the air was so crisp and at night we actually needed sweatshirts! it was so nice not to be continually sweating. The tea up there was also SUPER delcious. We went to a national park to see endangered mountain goats and do a little hiking. The scenery was just so beautiful. The hills and mountains went on for miles and miles. W e also went on a houseboat through the backwaters, which was amazing. It too, was extremely beautiful and very relaxing. We just sat on the deck watching ricepaddies and houses go by.

Now we're in metropolitan Hydrabad, which is in the state of Andra Pradesh. Today we went to an enormous Buddah statue in the middle of a lake, we also went to a beautiful temple made out of all white marble on the top of a hill overlooking the lake and

party pictures

dana, abby and me

me and renuka

roomies and the girls who tied our saris!

Bengaluru

Hello friends, I know it’s been sometime since my last post. So, let me fill you in. The Global Corps portion of our program ended (thank goodness….let me tell you it’s been a long, long road, especially because we were in hubli for two and a half weeks straight, there was no weekend travel like our internship/service learning portion of the trip). Our project presentation went really well and I was so proud of my group for pulling it all together. It was a crazy last two days, I don’t think any of us slept more than 5 hours trying to work on our final presentation and packet.

Two nights ago we had our huge goodbye party. It was so fun! All the Indian students and American students came. It was at a nice hotel in town by the pool, complete with DJ and Indian buffet. All the girls got dressed up in saris. Saris are serious business, let me tell you. All the Indian girls came over and helped us get our saris on. I have to tell you, I felt like a princess in it. It was a little difficult to walk, so clearly a man invented it, so it would be hard for women to get away. They played all of our favorite American and Bollywood songs and we GOT DOWN.

The next day we got on a plane to Bangalore. We’re here for one more night and then tomorrow about half the students are leaving for America. But of course I’m not. I’m traveling for about 3 weeks after with two girls, Dana and Abby. We are going to have an AMAZING time. Here’s the itinerary:
From Bangalore we’re taking a 15 hour bus (woof) to Kerala (a southern state), where we’ll be stopping in Thiravandum, to see temples and things. Then we’ll get picked up by our driver who’s going to take us to a backwater bamboo boat, that we’ll float on for about 24 hrs. Then driver comes back and sweeps us off to a mountain village, where we’ll stay at tea houses and endangered goat farm. (random right?) Then we go to Cochin for a last day of sightseeing. THEN we take a flight to Hyderabad to eat some birayani and see lots of Mughal ruins. Then we take an obscenely long bus to Mumbai, to stay with our friend Renuka. THEN we’ll go to Varanasi, the holiest city on the Ganges river. THEN we’ll take a train to Jaipur. THEN we’ll go to Delhi for a few days. Fly to Bangalore, fly to Frankfurt, Germany. We extended our layover in Frankfurt for 5 days, so that we’ll have time to explore beautiful Chermany and be around white people. We’re training it up to Kolne, and apparently our train ride will be beautiful! It follows the river and goes through all the mountains with all sorts of castles. All this, and then finally we fly back to Boston. Then I’m in Boston for 48 hours and then I fly home! To beautiful California!!!! J
I’m gonna be exhausted.

TWIST!

This song is all the rage here in India...
It's from some Bollywood movie called Love Aaj Kal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgmeL_xuB0I