When I found out that my first layover on the way to Bali was in Dubai I was really excited because I have heard so many good things about it. Then I realized that my flight was landing at 12:40AM. Usually not an auspicious time to find open stores.

Well, I have been thoroughly surprised by the Dubai Airport. Apparently, everything is open all the time. As the women at the duty free store told me, “We never close.” Crazy!

Arriving at the Dubai airport is the equivalent of flying into a high end shopping mall. There are Clinique counters, Armani and Hermes boutiques, and cigar shops.

I contemplated going through customs just to say that I made it out of the airport in the UAE, but that seemed to hard. So here I am. Hanging out at Starbucks waiting for my flight.

After this I fly to Kuala Lampur where I have an hour layover and then on to Denpasar, the capital of Bali. My flight left Istanbul at 19:25 on Saturday and I arrive at 18:30 in Indonesia on Sunday. Wow, a whole day lost flying! I think it will be worth it though.

When I found out that my first layover on the way to Bali was in Dubai I was really excited because I have heard so many good things about it. Then I realized that my flight was landing at 12:40AM. Usually not an auspicious time to find open stores.

Well, I have been thoroughly surprised by the Dubai Airport. Apparently, everything is open all the time. As the women at the duty free store told me, “We never close.” Crazy!

Arriving at the Dubai airport is the equivalent of flying into a high end shopping mall. There are Clinique counters, Armani and Hermes boutiques, and cigar shops.

I contemplated going through customs just to say that I made it out of the airport in the UAE, but that seemed to hard. So here I am. Hanging out at Starbucks waiting for my flight.

After this I fly to Kuala Lampur where I have an hour layover and then on to Denpasar, the capital of Bali. My flight left Istanbul at 19:25 on Saturday and I arrive at 18:30 in Indonesia on Sunday. Wow, a whole day lost flying! I think it will be worth it though.

Things have definitely been a little rough these last couple of weeks. Many members of our household came down with some sort of bronchial infection that hit us hard. I spent almost a week in bed just sleeping and coughing. Luckily I was able to fight it off without having to go to the doctor and get on antibiotics. That is one of the great things with working for CouchSurfing. There aren’t many companies that encourage you to take as much time off as you need to feel better. Then again, there aren’t many companies that you live where you work where you play… you get the idea.

I was just beginning to feel better from the bronchial infection when a handy man, who was repairing a heater in our house, stole my iPhone along with another house member’s from our bedrooms. It was very frustrating because we confronted the man and when he didn’t admit to the act we called the police who were unable to do anything without any evidence. All we know is that he is the only outside person who was in our house the two hours that the iPhones went missing. Mostly, I am just tired of all my possessions getting stolen by unsavory outsiders, but, as my father told me, it is an important lesson. I guess you could say that I am experiencing a bit of culture shock coming from Alaska where I was able to leave my front door unlocked any time of the day to Berkeley, which has the highest rate of petty theft in all of the Bay Area.

To top it all off. I became violently ill last night after thinking that I was finally better. But this is a stomach thing that is completely unrelated to my bronchitis. I am lucky to have such a sweet boyfriend who loves me and does all my bidding. He drove all the way across town today to get me gourmet chicken noodle soup, saltine crackers and Popsicles. I am just so tired of being stuck in bed!

Instead of feeling sorry for myself, and to distract me from the mundane, I have decided to focus on all the positive things that are happening around me. It has been very exciting moving to Berkeley to volunteer full time with CouchSurfing. I am proud of myself to realize that I wasn’t happy in Alaska and having the courage to leave my family and friends and venture into the unknown.

I’m sure some of you are curious exactly what we do here at the CouchSurfing house. I’m sure that I have mentioned that I live with anywhere from 12 to 20 roommates at one time who are all full time team members of CouchSurfing. A group of our techies left last week to start a collective in Costa Rica so our house is finally at a reasonable level of human bodies.

The house itself is pretty amazing. It is a Julia Morgan and was built at the turn of the 20th century. It has a colorful history, including being a nunnery for many years (the priests still live next door). The only downside is the location. We are in the heart of UC Berkeley’s frat row. The noise in our neighborhood is astounding, especially late at night. We are looking for houses in the city to have a better location.

At the moment, our house is pretty homogeneous. The majority of us are from the US, but we are working on diversifying our household. A lovely woman named Erin just arrived from Canada as an admin specialist and we are expecting a woman from Brazil to arrive in the near future to be our Events Coordinator.

Being the house manager for so many people has proven challenging and super fun. I love how easily everybody in our house gets along. It definitely makes my life easier. I couldn’t do it without our kitchen manager, Jackie, who is irreplaceable. She is in charge of all the cooking and shopping. Did I mention that we have a house cook? Yeah, that would be Jackie. I eat better now than I ever have since moving away from home. She makes lunch and dinner five days a week and has weekends off. It’s an amazing feeling to sit down to family style dinner every night with 18 people. Our tables are always crowded and very chaotic.

I’m sure you are all wondering what I do as house manager here. Well, I supervise Jackie, which she makes very easy to do. I am responsible for three separate budgets, the house budget, the kitchen budget and excursions. So far my team and I are doing an excellent job with keeping expenses down and coming in under budget each month. CouchSurfing is a nonprofit that is completely supported through member donations so it is important to remember that we are here to serve our members and not spend frivolously. Mom, that’s right, I can keep a budget when it’s other people’s money!

Other than overseeing the kitchen I also keep a finger to the pulse of how team members are feeling and relating to living in such a unique situation. It’s great, I get to hang out and talk to my friends all day and it is all part of my job! I also make sure that the house keeps clean (yes mom!) and run weekly house meeting in which we discuss house issues, upcoming events and guests. I also have weekly meetings with my supervisor who was TTT, but now it’s Jim with the new organization structure that was put into effect. It’s kind of weird that my boyfriend is now my boss, but going better than I expected.

Of course, my job can be a lot of fun too. I get to organize events within our house. Yesterday we had an open house for all of the CS community to come and enjoy. We got some BBQ grills going and I made my famous pico de gallo. It was great opening our house to all the members that we are here to provide for. (Yes, Dad, I secured my laptop). We also have big parties on weekends. Our last big party was a sock puppet party. If you would like to see the invitation visit SockPuppetParty.com That’s my roommate, Andrew, singing in the bathroom and Cameron just happened to record a bit of it. This house is so funny!

We also have events just for our house which is great for bonding. The night that we decorated our sock puppets we had a Cuban theme. Jackie made amazing Cuban food and Jelena and I made a big batch of Mojitos. Right before Christmas Jelena was feeling homesick for Switzerland so she organized an entire evening of Samichlaus where we made breadmen and had a gift exchange.

I have also been trying to get out of the house more and experience the area surrounding us. Walked and I decided to go on a date and spend a Tuesday in San Francisco (another great reason to work for CouchSurfing). Our plan was to spend the day riding the historical cable cars all over the place and get off in every neighborhood. Unfortunately the cable car we jumped on made it half a block before every cable car in the city broke simultaneously. Apparently a cable came off the line and they were down for the day. Luckily it was a beautiful day out so we decided to do walking tour instead. It was great, we just wandered aimlessly and ended up hitting some pretty cool spots. China Town is a must see for any visitors. There are tons of shops with live animals that they will butcher right in front of you. We saw a lot of tubs full of live frogs and turtles. The produce is sitting out on the curb all nice and fresh. I decided early on that we should eat something in every neighborhood so we grabbed some dim sum from a tiny shop. Next thing I knew we were in Little Italy where we stopped at a nice cafe, Pinnochio, to soak up the sun and sip mimosas. It almost felt like we were in Italy as we sat outside watching passersby. We kept the drinking theme of our day going by walking down to Jack Kerouac’s bar where Walker announced that he was craving an awful sounding shot called a statutory grape. The bar tender had never heard of it so we had to google the ingredients: 2 ounces Southern Comfort, 1 ounce sour mix, 1 ounce grenadine and something else that I can’t remember. It wasn’t long after this that we hopped on the BART and met up with one of my favorite people here, Camtastic. We were on a mission to find cheap socks for the sock puppet party, but the line was so long at the discount store we lost interest and decided to find a bar instead. Fate was with us and we found the best dive bar ever! The drinks were ridiculously cheap and the bar tender, a complete asshole. But we loved it.

So I would say that my time down in the Bay Area has had its hits and misses. I am still glad I am here, but I need a break from the city life for a couple months. I have Costa Rica in my sights for April, which is keeping me sane for the moment. I’ll go down there to rest up for all the craziness that is going to be happening this summer. Jim’s family is having a huge reunion in New Mexico and this is my first year to attend Burning Man at the end of August. I can’t wait!

Well, I finally made it back to Alaska for Christmas! I made the mistake of flying US Airways. In a time of economic crisis they want to make people hate them more by charging for bags! It’s $15 for the first, $25 for the second and $100 for the 3rd-9th. I don’t know how many people need to check nine bags, Madonna perhaps? but US Airways is going to capitalize on it! Can you imagine spending almost $1000 just to check your bags on an airline?

It gets worse. US Airways doesn’t even serve water for free anymore! They offer Coca-Cola products, juice and some alcoholic beverages that are going to cost you. $2 just for a can of soda! On our flight from Phoenix to Anchorage the flight attendants were anxious to let us know that they did not have any food on board so if we wanted anything to eat during the six hour flight we had better buy it at the airport.

 

 

All this was only mildly annoying until I got on my Phoenix to Anchorage flight, which was a red eye, and realized that my seat, 8A, was in the row in front of the emergency exit row. Imagine my distress when I realized that I couldn’t put my seat back! Six hours of flying during the middle of the night and I could not find a comfortable way to sleep. The poor older gentleman next to me looked like a contortionist as he changed from one uncomfortable position to another. 

Luckily I made it to Anchorage in one piece. There is quite a bit of snow on the ground which is good to see. In past years it has been too warm and actually rained on Christmas! It feels good to be back at my parents house. When I walked in the door I was greeted by the smell on my mom’s homemade pumpkin spice bread, delicious! I’m also excited to see my two favorite wiener dogs. Sophie is pregnant with puppies and is supposed to give birth a couple days before I leave. I hope that I am here when it happens!

I don’t have too many plans for while I’m home. Hopefully there will be a lot of skiing. Once Jim and Chris get here we are going to rally the troops and head north to try to get a glimpse of the Northern Lights. Whatever happens, I’m sure it will be an adventure.

Matt\’s Budapest Slalom

Once again I only have a few moments to write a quick blog.

Right now we are in Bratislava, but about to take off to Budapest for a couple days.  I’m not sure what to think about Bratislava. We stopped in for the night because we had to drive through it on the way to Budapest anyway and how many people really come visit Slovakia?

It’s an interesting city with a cross between old world buildings and a castle and outside of downtown are miles of concrete apartment high rises, which we can only imagine are remnants from the communist era. The city has been easier to walk around mostly because it is paved with flat bricks, not all cobble stone. My legs are so sore from the cobble stone in Prague!

It’s obvious why the majority of people over here are naturally very slim. They walk everywhere and there are tons of hills. Who needs a gym when you walk in from the suburbs everyday?

The weather has not been ideal. Cold and rainy, but it’s supposed to get better. In reality we only had a few hours to explore Bratislava which isn’t enough to appreciate what it has to offer. I’m sure that the country side is beautiful with more castles and whatnot.

I made a hello from Bratislava video, but these computers suck and I haven’t been able to upload it yet. Hopefully our next hostel will have decent computers. I’m amazed at how slow the internet has been so far!

So the first step to my travel extravaganza has been to move back in with my parents. Don’t worry, it’s only for two weeks and it’s going to be great. I am going to save a ton of money by not having to pay rent or food until Germany and I get to spend quality time with my family before I take off galavanting around the world.

The first word that comes to mind is relief. Ahhh, the weight is off my shoulders to pack up all my crap and move it out of my house in Anchorage. Once again I get to count my blessings at what amazing friends I have. Matt and Marcus helped me move all my heavy furniture into our friend’s trailer and Matt drove it all the way to The Valley with me and helped me unload it all at my parents’ house. I’ve lost count of how many heavy mattresses we have wrangled together. As usual, I couldn’t have done it without Matt!

 I am a little sad to be moving out because the house is great and I really enjoyed living at Westchester. It’s the perfect location close to downtown, but such a safe area. I’m embarrassed to admit that the only time we locked our doors in the five months that we lived there was when Peter woke up to find our street saturated by cops looking for an escaped felon. And then we never locked them again after that.

So now that I am out in The Valley for the next couple weeks I get to focus on saving money, packing for Germany and figuring out what I am taking to the lower 48 with me. My skis are the only things I am sure that I am bringing. Some clothes too. But I think that’s all I need. What a relief not to have to worry about hauling furniture around the country!

I am seriously evaluating my financial situation and it looks grim, to say the least. I am so lucky that I will get the dividend this year, which is going to be around $3000! Woo hoo! Proud to be an Alaskan! On top of that I’ve saved $1,000 to take to Germany, which will probably be gone in the blink of an eye! Although I did hear a rumor that the dollar is strengthening against the Euro. I hope it keeps it up!

And now it is bedtime since I have the pleasure of waking up at 4:30am to get to work in Anchorage on time. We’ll see how long this chipper attitude lasts!