Africa via Oxford? Another Eve update

When I left you last I was on my whirlwind Eurotrip, somewhere between Italy and France. The week in Milan was very ‘divertimento.’ It’s a nice city, but one that needs some tweaking, such as air conditioning (NOT optional when the temp. averages 32°C in summer), maps of bus and tram routes (it’s always a bit of an adventure when using public transport in Italy… who knows where you’ll end up!), and functioning ATMs (when one stops working, apparently the entire system shuts down… another example of practical Italian thinking).

Other than that, there are some things that the Italians have just right. #1 on that list is clearly FASHION and SHOPPING (gentlemen, you may skip the next few sentences). Now, all the big designers are in Milan but at the same prices as NYC, so going to Armani/Prada/D&G/Gucci is a waste of time. However, there are tons of nice boutiques that are very reasonably priced by European standards. And yes, I did do some serious damage in the shoe department ;)
Another thing that the Milanese have right is ‘aperitivo’—evening cocktail period where for the price of one drink you have an open buffet with tons of salads, pastas, breads etc It’s a fabulous way for financially constrained students to basically get a free meal (and by financially constrained, I mean broke from shoe shopping).

So in addition to the shopping, eating, drinking, and sightseeing, France and I left scorching Milan for one day and took the train down to the coast. The train ride was an adventure in itself and I think the whole day can truly best be captured through pictures.









Anyway, after Milan, I spent a long weekend in Paris before heading back to NYC for a whole 4 days. A logical stop-over on my way to the UK, don’t you think? Actually I went back home for my sis’ high school graduation (congrats again Anne-France!), which I combined with a week of packing and partying. I had a great send-off party at Luna Park, a very nice outdoor bar in Union Sq park, and later at Cain (yes, I still heart Cain, despite the door bitch).



Anyway I moved to Oxford last weekend. My neighbourhood is pretty, um, interesting… Lots of students, plus soap-dodging hippies who drive old Saabs and walk around bare-foot, East Asian immigrant families who own taxi companies and ten thousand small grocery stores apiece etc. It’s the quirky multi-cultural part of Oxford, which is a nice way of saying that I don’t walk around alone after dark. But it’s all good, I survived Langa ;)

Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away last week, which was obviously very sad and hard to deal with since I’m so far from my family. However I’m quite busy with discovering Oxford and meeting new people that I haven’t been too depressed. Plus I started my internship at Africa Now last week and it’s going really well… The office is small and quite laid-back. We listen to music and the director makes coffee and tea for everyone (you better believe I love this role reversal). Some of the work I’m doing is the classic boring stuff like writing press releases and processing donations (donate online now!), but other things are quite cool like compiling case studies and being interviewed by MTV News.

What?!! Yeah, I’m being interviewed by MTV news because of the work Africa Now is doing for the Make Poverty History campaign (makepovertyhistory.org). For some reason, I’m the only one available and the director thinks that I’ll be great since I’m young (aka MTV audience age) and supposedly articulate and knowledgeable the issues. However, I am clearly FREAKING OUT. The interview is tomorrow afternoon in London!! AHHHH!!
Ok, must chill… *breathe*… Anyway I’ll obviously let you all know when it’s airing, but I think it’s only on MTV Europe.

Well, after my first TV appearance, I’m flying to Amsterdam for the weekend to meet up with some friends which is probably exactly what I need right now, if you know what I mean. Anyway I’m off for now… More info about Oxford, my housemates etc on the next update.

Eternal sunshine, literally

I know it's been a while since my last update, mostly because I've seen most of you since my return from South Africa... plus I doubt any of you want to read on about my day to day life up at school (fascinating as it is). Generally it was a great semester; 'studying abroad' at Amherst College (high school actually), living with boys (3 of 'em!), having a crazy 21-bday partay in NYC (caviar and pink gorillas?), organizing a huge tsunami relief fundraiser, partying hard, and working harder.



Anyway the semester is over and done with (finally) and I've now been on summer vacation for a little over 2 weeks... which doens't seem like much time, but feels like a lot considering what I've been up to. After a week of partying (and sleeping... oh sleeping is good) in NYC, I took off with my friend Rob from Princeton and Mark, one of his friends from GWU, to Reykjavik. I can see you all scratching your heads in bewilderment... indeed, why would someone want to go to Iceland? Well hopefully this little update will convince you.

So the hypothesis that I formulated during my stay is: Icelandic people are crazy. And it was confirmed over and over again... Reykjavik is one of the craziest party cities that I have ever been to--this coming from someone like me. We met a bunch of Icelandic students who were more than happy to show us around to the good bars, buy us ridiculously overpriced drinks and practice their (very good) English. The nightlife starts around 1am--that's just the pregaming. The real partying doesn't get going until around 3am, which of course makes sense since the sun is shining. A lot of places stay open until 7am on Friday and Saturdays because it's the traditional 'runtur', which is basically a city-wide bar crawl. Plus we happened to have landed in Reykjavik during graduation weekend, so the partying was all the more crazy.







In addition to lots of drunken stumbling and making jokes about Vikings (the best Icelandic beer is actually called Viking), we did a bit of the touristy stuff... saw the geysers (2 of only 5 in the whole world), some waterfalls, some volcanos, the mid-atlantic ridge that is slowly pushing Europe and America away from each other. I also went on a 4 hour horse trek around lava fields... Basically your usual tourist sights ;) We also walked around Reykjavik and visited the giant phallic Church and the Icelandic Historical Museum, which had fun activities for kids like dressing up as a Viking (which I did) and reconstructing heathen graves (which I did not).







Plus we saw lots of the sights and other cool stuff during our evening stumbles around town, a nice aspect of the eternal summer sun. One not so nice aspect is that it tends to make sleeping in a hostel with no black-out shades rather tricky. I think Icelandic people just deal with it by getting smashed every night, a tradition which we tried to adhere to as well.

A few last notes about Iceland and Reykjavik:
-it is the most expensive country I have ever visited--$20 for a cocktail in a normal bar (aka NOT a super upscale/trendy place)!! To put things in even sharper perspective: some of the taxis are Porsche Cayennes.
-the mullet is back (or maybe it never left)...and this applies to both men and women.
-a red light is only red if there is an old lady in the middle of the road... and it is never red at night.
-12 degrees celsius is hot weather! Break out the shorts and tee-shirts, and get yourself some ice cream!
-Icelandic rock music is very angry, which I suppose is understandable when you only have 3 hours of sunlight in winter... in addition, Icelandic people are notably sexually active (not to say promiscuous), which is understandable for exactly the same reason.

Well I'll stop boring you all about my little Icelandic journey... besides I've been in Italy since Monday so all of this is ancient history ;) I'm taking Eurorail to Paris this afternoon for a long weekend with friends and family and then back to NYC for 4 days before taking off to the UK for the summer!!