Nate's Travels

Westminster Abbey , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . While I have yet to post on my adventures of last week, you can check out about 200 of the new photos by clicking on the one to the left! =Nate

Le Tour Eiffel at Night , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . Click on the picture to see the rest of the pictures from Paris and Vianden! =Nate

Helloooooo Everyone! This is going to be an extremely long post, so bear with me! Two weekends ago (the last weekend in January), after our Bruges trip, Taylor and I decided to remain back in Differdange for the weekend. It ended up being a good time; I had to get some shopping done for my new Embassy job ☺, then we went and saw “Casino Royale” in English at the big movie theater in Lux City. The movie theater is the high point of western (read American) civilization in that there is a billiards club, a few bars, and a Subway attached. Taylor and I hit up Subway for food… it was a nice “slice of home.” The movie was good, but the theater experience was a little weird… They don’t open the theater until 20 minutes before your movie. Then, if you want snacks, you go through a self-serve line to get your own popcorn/drinks/candy, pay for them and exit the concessions corral. After that, you wait helplessly in front of the door until a team of 5 people comes and unlocks the theater about 10...

Hey ya'll, Sorry I haven't posted much... This has been a really really reallllllllyyyy busy week. I started my internship in Lux City, had 2 papers due, over 200 pages of reading.. ugh. Anyway, the plan for this weekend is Paris! I'm pretty excited to say the least... the Louvre, Palis de Versailles... good times. I'll provide a much bigger update when I get back, I promise! xnatex

The Canal in Bruge , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . So this weekend we headed to Bruges, Belgium... What an amazing little town! Full of tourism (and tourists acting like tourists), the town had plenty to do and to see. We arrived by train on Friday night (only about a 3 hour ride from Luxembourg City) and started to hike around to try to find our hostel. We ended up staying in a place called Snuffel Backpacker hostel... it's an awesome place with tons of people there. The common room was a bar... a bit smoky, but a neat place to socialize. Taylor and I ended up talking to people from France and Holland (in French, incidentally... well, slightly drunken French...). They were studying to be train conductors, and had the weekend off for holiday. Anyway--that night, we took a night walk of Bruges, an incredibly beautiful city when the weather is nice and the lights are on... Awesome! We stopped before we went back to get some fries (did you know they were invented here?!) wi...

The Valley in Lux City , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . Hey ya'll, here's the first of the pictures! I'm constantly working on uploading them, and doubt i'll have the chance to upload more tonight... then we're heading to Bruges, Belgium tomorrow... I'll get to it though, I promise! The rest of the photos are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanbrunk/ xnatex

Bonjour! Sooooo, we've been extremely busy, and I haven't much time to check e-mail, etc, but when I can, I am trying! Linda... I'll email you the thing asap, I dont have the zipcode here on me right now... Anyway, we've done some more cool things on our orientation trips... we've had the opportunity to go to the Moselle region of Luxembourg (on the border between France, literally separated by the Moselle river. The moselle region is known for it's amazing wine production (mostly white wines... apparently the soil isn't sandy enough for red grapes). We first visited La Musee du Vin to see exactly how wine was made historically by smaller winemakers. We tasted a wine at the finish of the tour, it was pretty tasteless for wine, but meh.. whatevs. Next we headed to the Domaine Vinsmoselle winery. It's a coop winery for the growers around, they jointly purchased the equipment to create some of Luxembourg's best wine and champaigne equivalent (did you kn...

Ah! Finally, Le Internet! Moyen! Well, we arrived safely (much more so than on Air China Flights) on wednesday morning in Brussels, Belgium. After getting all of our things, we headed for the bus where MUDEC staff greeted us. After a three-hour long bus ride, we finally made it to Differdange (lovingly known here as "The Diff"). We hooked up with our host family's son, Johnny (not to be confused with their dog Johnny), who packed our luggage in a tiny van and took it ahead of us to our house. We walked to the house, literally a 2 minute walk from the chateau (yay for rolling out of bed!)! We checked out our rooms--they're really nice! We each have our own room on the 3rd (2nd here) story of Claire's (host mom's) house, then share a newly renovated bathroom--it's really nice! We came back to MUDEC on Thursday to begin our orientation: first a lecture from Dr. Stiller (the dean), then introductory sessions about living with a host family, and student activi...

Ahhhhh... travel time is here again.. In less than 12 hours, I'll have started my journey towards Differdange, Luxembourg, my new home for the next four months! I'm super excited, and way more at ease about traveling a long distance after having traveled to China. I've been watching Rick Steve's DVD's, reading information, and basically just getting mentally prepped. I say mentally since I just finished the majority of my packing about an hour ago :P I'm really stoked that so many people have access to this site; It'll be sweet to share my experiences... these are your souvineers :P Stick around, come back every week or so and I'll do my best to update regularly! I would like to note that I'm not going to have internet access at the chateau in Differdange for a few days, so if ya'll don't hear from me, assume the best. Au revoir mes amis... ALLONS-Y A EUROPE! xnatex

Alright, I decided to go the way of the net.. pictures are at http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v475/natebrunk/ Only some are up, more to come... xnatex

Keep your fingers crossed everyone. My iPod (which has about 400 photos from this trip) has failed me. I'm having deja vu of my powerbook and now it's going kerplunk. Hopefully I can recover the data the same way I was able from the computer... we'll see... but keep prayers flowin and fingers crossed! (If not, all you get to see is shanghai and tibet :P) xnatex

Hey Everyone! Hope this blog finds you as well as it does me! Tibet is/was out of this world! Thank you Uncle Jake and Aunt Karen! I can't believe how beautiful this place is... It's so unaffected by the outside world while at the same time slowly becoming modernized. It's been a nice break to not constantly be breathing in hardcore pollution though... the mountain air has been great. I've noticed a few things because of the altitude, but nothing too significant. Yesterday we went to the Potala palace... the place where the Dali Lama would live, walked around that, the Tibetan museum, and one of the big bazarrs around the big temple in the center of Lhasa. We also visited the Summer Palace for the Dali Lama and got to see the part constructed by the 14th (most current). Very serene indeed. Today we visited a monestary--it was very interesting (though Bhuddism is extremely difficult to understand...) and the temple I mentioned earlier. Both are full of extravagant statue...

Hey Ya'll, Sitting here in the hotel business center in Shanghai! This is one kickin' city. Of the three we've been to so far, this is by far the most developed in the western sense. We've been able to see the work of different governments to build "concessions" or quarters here. There is a British quarter, French Quarter, Russian Quarter, etc. The Americans were offered a part of Shanghai to build in, but they never did it in time. Eventually it became part of the British Quarter... as ze French say, "Stupid Americans" (or as the chinese say, Stupid Maiguo) :). The city has an incredible number of skyscrapers though: some of the coolest I've seen to date in the world. I took tons of pictures, so you'll get to see them all. Today we went to a think tank here in the city, and later we'll be meeting with people from the American Consulate. The meeting this morning was informative, and we were again offered a lot of differing perspectives on...

ALRIGHT! Finally a chance to update! We have been a busy little delegation on diplomacy here in China. The flight over was miserable to say the least. 13.5 hours on the plane to Shanghai and then another 2 to get to Beijing... I was pooped! We got into the hotel, which was extremely nice, at around 12am on Sunday (our time). We had a light Western dinner (they made us crustless sandwiches) and went to bed. I'll put more in the DVD about the hotel, but it was definitely a 3-4 star. Extremely nice. The next day we had our first group meeting, got to know some other people and had an introductory cultural briefing by one of the people in the tour company that scheduled everything for us over here. After that, we ate lunch at the Yueshanfang restaurant (pretty good, but not the best... the fish and chicken with their heads still on freaked us all out a bit), and went to the Imperial Summer Palace. The palace was extremely crowded, but served as a great starting point for learning about...

Shoooooot. I hurt all over. LA was a great time hangin' with Karen and Uncle Ed. We basically did a food tour of southern Cali, or so it seemed. Needless to say it ended crappily. I got food poisoning last night, yacked in Karen's car, yacked all night long (and didnt sleep) at the hotel. I still feel miserable today, but at least I can keep some food/water down. China is almost here! I'm actually sitting at the gate right now. Most of the kids I've met so far from the program are pretty cool, a few idiots, but I suppose you'll find those everywhere. Now I have to get in gear and try to make it on an airplane for 18 hours without dying. Fun! Anyway, I'll post again in Beijing! Say me a prayer for my crappy stomach/body.

Well, I've got about 4 days left beore I head to LA, 6 before I'm on a plane headed for China, halfway around the world from Columbus, Ohio. It'd be less than honest for me to say I'm not a little worried (you know, communism will do that to a person), but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the government through the eyes of their people. I'm going to do my best, like I tried to in my Latin American Studies class this year to see how their particular system works for them, not how it works for me. Hopefully this trip will be eye-opening, if nothing else, I'm getting an insider's look at the (Second) biggest superpower in the world. Ve shall see. Check back for more later (though I'm not positive I'll be able to update while I'm in China, I'll post pictures here for sure). xnatex