Deux Miserables

I'm quite excited to announce my newest business venture! My roommate Brien, his girlfriend Katie, and I have rolled out our own line of hand crafted, stitched, bound, and printed notebooks. Check out the website, facebook page, and spread the word!

Also, if you know anyone who works at any shops in Charleston who might want to carry them, let me know.

helvetica?

I came across this image in another blog. I thought it would be fun to try it out with one of my Europe pictures. Just kinda fun. I like my photo tho. I was on the train zipping through Brussels and snapped a shot for kicks. The line is kinda made up on the fly.

getting back to it

By getting back to it, I don't mean getting back to the blog, though that may be a by-product of getting back to it. The 'it' that I'm getting back to is creating things: building, drawing, designing, photographing, etc. I'm sure future blog posts will include the product of the 'it.'

To start off, here are some photos from last year:

I just got back photos from europe so expect some of those soon.

In other news, I have a job interview friday! I'm terribly excited!

Updates

Sorry for my lack of updates. I am still alive. Somewhere after emailing parents and journaling, the blog gets forgotten. I'll start after leaving Groningen.
My next stop was Fribourg, Switzerland to visit Kristen. Fribourg is a cool little city that feels to be about the same size as Charleston. It is very easy to wander around, especially when you get to the hills. I really did like the feel of fribourg. It felt like the quintessential Swiss small city.
We made a trip to Milan, Italy on the 9th. I can easily say it was my least favorite place I've been in Europe. It was dirty and hot and I was stressed out the whole time. It also seemed like the only worthwhile things there were the over-done Duomo and the Last Supper. I was supposed to spend the night in Milan but I could not wait to leave so I hopped on a train and headed back to switzerland, eventually making my way to my next stop in Gimmelwald.
Gimmelwald is a little, even tiny town in the Berner Oberland region of the alps. First you take a train to Interlaken, the main city of the region. Then hop on a small local train to the small town of Lauterbrunnen. Take a bus to Schtechleburg and finally take a cable car up to the cliff side village of Gimmelwald. I stayed at the Mountain Hostel. This little haven in the alps let me quickly forget the stresses of Milan along with anything else. I got settled in my room and enjoyed the view over the valley and the snow capped peaks from my window. Over the next four days, I loved life by hiking, swimming in a glacial pond, reading, making new friends, and running into Dan and Heather! It's always fun to run into friends from home in random places across the world.

Nap time... To be continued.

Groningen, Netherlands

Yesterday I left london at about 4:00pm and somehow managed to get to Groningen at 12:00. That's what was supposed to happen but I'm not quite sure how it did. My first leg of the trip, which also happened to be the part I actually understood was from London to Brussels. That was easy. However, after that, it was just a big guessing game.. educated guesses, mind you. After a few train changes and a lot of question asking, I some how made it to Groningen in one piece and on time.

Groningen is fantastic! If you know me at least a little bit, which I would asume you do if you're reading this (if not, introduce yourself!), you know that I love bikes. You probably always see me on my bike cruising around Charleston. Well in that regard, Groningen is like heaven. everyone bikes everywhere. It is simply fantastic. According to Michelle, my resident urban planning enthusiast, most Dutch towns were designed to be 5km wide, the amount to be comfortably rid en on a bicycle. Hear that? Towns designed around bicycles!

Anyway, the weather is nice, the food is good, bikes are everywhere, I give Groningen my initial seal of approval. More soon to come.

Nottingham

I arrived safely in Nottingham and was kindly greeted by Clifton's friend Jackie. She showed me a little around the town but I was a bit anxious to drop off my stuff and relax. We hopped on a bus for the 10 minute trip to the university where I was staying and guess what: I had my first ever double decker bus ride! It was quite fun! you could see so much up there! haha anyway. Then I took a nap in the afternoon, got up for dinner, watched movie with friends, read, and went to sleep. I suppose I was tired because I slept for a good 11 hours, which is a lot for me.

Friday was lazy and lovely, I slept in, got up and wandered around the campus, ate lunch with friends, wandered more, laid in the grass and read, wandered, and ate dinner with friends. Friday evening I went to Christian Union, which is the main Christian organization on campus. It was huge! There were probably about 200 people there, which supposedly is small because it's exam time. Afterward a few of us went to one of the campus bars.. that's right: a bar. on campus. with Christians. Haha. It wasn't a terribly loud, raucous bar with loud music like a normal one in that you would picture. Instead, it was just a great place to hang out with friends on a Friday night.

For today (Saturday) I had decided I was going to go into town to explore. So naturally when I woke up it was 49 degrees and raining.. England just as I always imagined it. After putzing around in Clifton's room for a long while, I finally decided to go into town anyway. It just so happened that when I got off the bus, it stopped raining! The town was quite delightful to walk around. There were lot's off people, little winding streets, shops, and interesting buildings. Many of the streets are blocked off to cars so it's very easy to walk around. I found a cool bookshop at the top of a hill and sat and had some coffee and read in one of the upper floors at a seat with a window viewing down a brick-paved lane. It was a great way to spend my afternoon.

Things I still have to get used to in England:

1. cars driving on the wrong side of the road

2. people greeting you with "alright then?" I'm not quite sure what a common response is.

really that's about it. Other than that, I'm leaving monday for London and then on to Amsterdam.

Cheers,

Ryan

Planes, trains, and the underground

I'm currently sitting in starbucks in a train station in London waiting to go to Nottingham. The flight yesterday was fine. The airports were a breaze. I sat next to a German or Swiss man on the plane. We only exchanged a few words because we didn't know eachothers languages. He was reading some book about Jesus in German, which was a little comforting to know he trusts the same god as me in his own language.
I feel like I haven't seen much of London other than the underground (subway). I didn't fare too well in sleeping last night. I thought that because I got up at 2:30am I would be able to sleep but that didn't hold true. I went to sleep at about 10:30 London time but because my body thought it was 5:30, it woke me up in an hour thinking I was taking a nap. I didn't end up falling asleep till after 4:00 and woke up feeling wide awake at 7:30. I'm sure that will get better when my body adjusts and I feel more comfortable being here.
London is really pretty from what I've walked. That said, I'm looking forward to getting on to the rest of Europe.

new thoughts

So I realize that I haven't posted anything in over two months. But such is the life of my blog. It's not that I haven't thought about it. It's more that whenever I found the time to think about it, everything I attempted to put down just didn't make the cut.

That said, I'm now going to make the transition in my blog to a travel blog, as I'm going to Europe!

Here is my current plan:

May 26th: London
27-31: Nottingham, England
June 1-5: Groningen, Netherlands
6-9: Fribourg, Switzerland
10: Milan, Italy
11-13: (somewhere, maybe back to switzerland)
14-16: Paris
17-18: Venice
19-21: Cinque Terre
22-30: (somewhere, probably around france)

If you have any suggestions as to where I should go in those places or elsewhere, let me know.

Also, I'm looking for places to stay in those parenthesized times if you know anyone in Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands that has a couch or a floor that I could sleep on.

on escapes

For me, spring break has been about escaping. However, one can only escape from his/her life so much. Things follow you wherever you go. The stress of paying for school, the stress of getting good grades, the stress of finding a job, the stress of relationships; all of these things are elements in my life from which I seek to escape.

I've tried to escape through reading. A good story is a great way to fill your mind with things other than responsibilities. I've been re-reading Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and allowing him to whisk me away to the French Riviera. However, I can only stay there for so long before reality comes in a phone call and wakes me from my dream.

I've tried to escape through movies. For those two hours, your mind is consumed by the characters and their actions, whether comedic or dramatic. However lately, movies have failed to enrapture me in their stories like they used to. I haven't had a problem stopping a movie half-way finished or even simply falling asleep. What happened to my immediate departure I formerly achieved from movies. That said, if the movie is just right, I can still find my escape.

I've tried to escape through relationships. The last week has been consumed by time spent with friends. The conversation is always great. While these interactions are enjoyable, I always end up coming back to realities amidst the enjoyment. A word, a question, a look, a thought, and it's all downhill from there.

I want these things to be resolved. I want my grades to be cemented but my education to continue. I want my career to be solidified. I want to be financially stable. I want my relationships to be smooth sailing. This however, is contrary to the realities I must return to every day.

On fate

When one reads the title of a piece that involves fate, his or her first thoughts might assume the article is going to be about the age-old argument of fate v. free will. Well, my friends, I’m sorry to disappoint (or please) but this is not an argument for or against either stance, rather it is a note of my most recently developed idea on the subject. And to put speculation to rest, if one were to ask which side I identify with, I would say that our lives are made up of countless instances of both fate and free will. I say it’s both. I’m a moderate. Others would say I’m non-committal. To each his own.

Now that we have that cleared up, lets move on to our topic of conversation for the day. Fate. This is where my idea comes in. ‘Do I believe in fate?’ one might ask one’s self. In response to one’s self in the natural course of one’s conversation, ‘Yes and no.’ Fate, as per our noble friend Webster, is ‘an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end.’ While the ‘adverse’ is not necessarily true, I feel this is a commonly held view of fate. However, I feel that fate inadequately describes what arranges our conditions. Rather than an inevitable fate, which leaves no room for thought and purpose, our lives are influenced by divine circumstantiation.

Divine circumstantiation – n. a placement in particular circumstances by a divine being. (R.J. Parks, 2010)

To resolve any ambiguity in the appearance of my coining of the phrase ‘divine circumstantiation’ and to summarize my stance on the initial argument brought into question, God puts one in a particular circumstances and gives one the ability to determine what course of action one should take.

People in Haiti are dying in the streets and I'm wining about my room being a little chilly. I feel pointless.