Boulder, Colorado

Ahh...the Flatirons and Chautauqua Park
It's so good to be back here.

Just another beautiful forest scene on comes across hiking out here

The city of Boulder seen from the mountains

The remains of a rockslide on the way up to the first Flatiron

Sunset as seen over the mountains from my new apartment's balcony....oh yes, I get to see that every night and it never gets old!

Hot air balloons seen from my apartment in the morning. Those guys are out there almost every morning! My favorite balloon has to be the green one with a massive white shamrock.

Another shot of the first and second Flatirons
As with mostly everything else, it is impossible to fully grasp the beauty and shear size of these rocks and peaks.

Sunflowers run all along the sides of many of the lower elevation trails in Chautauqua park.

A great view of the Front Range looking North from Chautauqua

Tempted to follow it? This is just a little teaser. I'll keep the pictures coming as I explore more and more around here. I love it out here so much. The mountains are beautiful. The town of Boulder has so much to do whether it be relaxing on campus, playing in the parks, or shopping and socializing downtown. And the icing on the cake are the people. The people here are very friendly and active. Anyway, more to come!

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston City Freedom Walk tour guide...gets you in the mood for a revolution!

Old City Hall, America's "Old Glory" and a statue of Benjamin Franklin

One of the various historic buildings and plazas along the Freedom Trail: a little red brick path that leads followers to Boston's various (and many) historical sites.

Awesome clocktower/almost skyscraper in downtown Boston

Massachusetts Capitol on Beacon Hill

Cool headstone at one of the nation's oldest graveyards.

Gotta love the various angelic and skeletal images!

The grave of Samuel Adams, one of the heroes of the American Revolution. He also was the son of the owner of a malt factory and a lover of good beer. For this reason, Jim Koch, the brewer of Samuel Adams beer, named his award winning beer after him. We took a tour of the Boston Brewing Company (Jim Koch's Samuel Adams brewery). It was AWESOME! A definite recommendation to anyone that goes to visit Boston. Also notice the dress of the guy standing by the grave...Boston tour guides dress up like 18th century figures...really cool stuff, but they must roast in those wool clothes and the 90 degree heat!

The Charles River and downton Boston from the Boston University Bridge.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world's most prestigious universities. It also has some incredible examples of extreme architecture all over campus.

MIT Hall

The main building on the MIT campus. It is a gorgeous structure with names of the greatest minds from our history inscribed all over its various wings and halls.

Another awesome building on the MIT campus

The Holocaust Remembrance Walkway...these six pillars are etched with the identification numbers from all of the prisoners of the various Nazi concentration camps. This was a very somber but powerful memorial. It was erected so that we never forget the attrocities of Nazi Germany, so that we are vigilant in order to never let such horrors happen again.

Etching from one of the pillars:

"Nothing belongs to us anymore.

They have taken away our clothes,

our shoes, even our hair.

If we speak, they will not listen to us.

And if they listen, they will not understand.

They have even taken away our names.

My number is 174547, I will carry the tattoo

on my left arm until I die."

I'm Still Alive

Hey everybody, by this point, most of you have probably stopped checking to see if I have posted anything new...and for those of you that haven't heard from me, you might be wondering if I met an untimely end in India. This is not the case, thank goodness!

After Malaysia, I did go to India. I flew into Mumbai, but for several important reasons, I was unable to stay more than a week in that incredible place known as India.

I promise that I will get an India post up here sometime soon...the little bit of the country I got to see was overwhelming to the point that even now, two months after I left India, I still haven't fully recovered from the flood of emotions and experiences I had there. I promise that when I feel ready to even try to scratch the surface of my experience there, and do so in a way that is fair to both myself and India, I will pour it out on here. I also promise that it should be very interesting to most of you... India still haunts me in so many ways and that should make for some good reading.

Anyway, after India, I had a short (18 hour) stop in London. I decided that it was about time I got back. I was running low on money and time, and I dreadfully missed my girlfriend, friends, and family. I figured that instead of trying to rush as much of Europe as I could into three weeks of always on the go travel, I would instead wait to do Europe for another 2 or 3 years. A three month trip through Europe is now being planned as another present to myself for when I graduate with my masters degree.

So I returned home. I first spent 3 weeks in Daytona Beach, Florida. These were some pretty strange times. For the first 5 days after my hurried homecoming, I woke up disoriented in the morning, not knowing where I was or whether or not I was in a dream... I don't know if anyone can relate to this...but it is terrifying. It also took some time for my body to come down off of the travel. I don't know if others have experienced this after a long time of this sort of trip, especially not having been in one place for longer than 10 days, but when combined with the fact that I was essentially moved out of my old place in Florida and I had a very large and drawn out move to Colorado coming up...I was pretty stressed and out of it down there.

So I returned to Pittsburgh. The day after my arrival, I was informed that my only first cousin on my father's side, Erin, had died after giving birth to a perfect angel of a baby. Kaytlinn, the perfect angel, is fine and being taken care of by my cousin's incredible husband and parents, my aunt and uncle. Anyway, I spent a week in Toronto and Niagara, Canada visiting family after this terrible twist of fate. If I can recommend anything at this point it would be this, if you love somebody, no matter who it is.. family.. friend.. lover...anything, then take whatever time out you can to see them or just talk to them because they (or even you) just might not be there tomorrow.

I returned once again to Pittsburgh and spent the next week hanging out with high school friends and my parents and sister. It was an awesome week!

The past two weeks I have been in Boston, Massachusetts for the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling annual summer school. My new advisor from Colorado wanted me to attend, and I'm sure glad I did. Boston was a blast and the other students were an awesome group! It was a great two weeks!

So now I get to move out to Colorado...but I'll keep this blog going for whoever is still going to check. It will still be based on travels. I'll update for my recent trips to Canada, Pittsburgh, Boston and (maybe) Daytona too. And India will definitely get in there when I feel that I'm ready to tackle that. As for future posts, I plan on doing a good deal of travel within Colorado while I'm there as well as some good, long road trips throughout the Western USA and Canada. So I should have plenty of new pictures to keep you all checking in for.

For those that actually read all of this, thank you! I hope you thouroughly enjoy this blog. I hope even more that it sparks some interest in just getting out there to see this amazing world we live on...it's a beautiful place in so many ways! Enjoy!