off i go

hmmm...so it's like 2 in the morning and i'm leaving from estes in a couple hours. my flight leaves early from DIA and there is quite a lot of snow outside as it has been snowing all afternoon and night (wow, what a day to leave when tomorrow is going to be deep freshy fresh deep blower pow on the ski hills) so i think it best to leave early in case the canyon is nasty. i'm all packed and ready to go, but can't sleep out of excitement, though my mom is snoozing on the couch next to the computer. i just came in from a quick romp in the snow in the neighborhood, though i wish the bro had been around for this tradition. besides my awesome friends and family, snow is something I am definitely going to miss. So, WOW, the next time I post, I'll be in asia--pretty crazy and unreal I think. It still isn't very tangible to me. All this work up and dreaming of it for years and here it is, one snowy liftoff away.

so what have I been up to since the last post: fun travels and sad goodbyes. I had the amazing opportunity of visiting Japan for 2 weeks; 1 with work and 1 for play. The people, especially the people at the lab like Iwanosan, Tsuniko, and Naoyasan were so amazing and kind. They would take Tom and I out to the fanciest places to eat and never let us pay. They'd go out of their way to drive us places or help us out with any travel arrangements. Needless to say I ate some very interesting things in japan, though I did steer clear of the raw horse and raw whale (endangered species aren't my thing). On my week of play, I was able to explore Tokyo and the old imperial city of Kyoto. Then I went up to the Nagano prefecture and enjoyed the onsens (hot baths), mountain trails, and snow monkeys. And of course the highlight was a winter ascent of Mt. Fuji.

My most recent amazing work related trip was to Cambridge, UK. Cambridge is a cool little uni town especially with the people in the lab take you out for pints and football viewing. But the best thing was I found an incredibly cheap ticket to casablanca, morocco for a 3 day weekend. Explored Marrakech, then took a tour with an awesome group (a crazy german, 2 sweet brazillians, and 2 hillarious Sri Lankans) through the high atlas mountains (full of snow of course =), the draa valley full of its kasbahs (fortified mud cities), and down to the might sahara. We stayed at a nomadic desert camp in the dunes, ate some tasty moroccan fare and danced the night away with some people from a nearby village. The next day we took a cool, and surprisingly comfortable, camel ride through Erg Lihoudi, a dune field in the sahara. My plane was supposed to leave at 7:30am the next day in casablanca which meant I would have had to catch the 9pm train out of Marrakech. However, I decided I wanted to stay and hang out with my new friends, shop the souks, cook some food, drink some beverages, and of course partake in some hookah. This meant I had to catch the 1am public bus. When I got the station I had no idea what I was looking for (everyone spoke only arabic or a little french). Some how I figured out the correct bus, though it was very late, and made it to casablanca. Got in late, ran to the airport, through the airport, out again to the next terminal, through that terminal, passport control, only to find my flight was supposedly closed. Ran out to the tarmac anyways, and low and behold, made it just as they were closing up the door. pheww! I felt sorry for the people on the flights back to the states b/c I hadn't showered in 3 days, had had my luggage lost leaving london so I had no new clothes, was growing a nasty beard, had nose bleeds from the sahara sand...haha surprised they let me back into the states, though in chicago they did make me show two forms of ID.

after that is was a whirlwind of goodbyes to all my amazing friends in Boise, goodbye parties at the house of sin, packing, and driving back to good ole EP.