Anderson Bluegrass Festival

Friday, Saturday and Sunday was the Anderson Bluegrass and Country Music Festival, about an hour south of Fairbanks. I went with two friends to camp next to two other of our friends and lots of their friends. We had just about as much fun at our own camp site with our own music as with the performing bands but the local bands were really good. Had no idea there was so much musical talent in the backwooks of AK. We camped by a river, which was nice to look at and a friendly place for all the dogs to run. Seems every camp had at least 3 dogs. Weather wasn't bad, just a little cool (about 55 F) and some sprinkles. I think I'm going to make this an annual event in my summer plans, so come up next year for the last weekend in July and we'll have a great time!

Gate to the silver pagoda, Cambodia

kids

Reclining Buddha Park in Laos

Favorite food (Amok) at our favorite restaurant in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

On the Mekong

Incense-maker along the Mekong in Vietnam

More from Angkor

Temple #2 at Angkor, Cambodia

The Mommy Guest House, Siem Reap, Cambodia

we stayed up-stairs, on a thin foam mattress. Here we learned that sheets are considered a luxury commodity reserved for the air-conditioned rooms.

In one of the temples at Angkor

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Asia

From May 26 till June 21 cousin Stacia and I filled up our passports with stamps from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. We were there to see what we could, experience a new place and make once-in-a-lifetime memories -- and that we did. Since we both just finished master's programs (and accrued sizable debt), we traveled the budget route: public transportation, guest houses and street vendor food.

Here's some pictures from along the way:

Cordova

Mom treated me to a new adventure in honor of me finishing school! We took the ferry to the fishing town of Cordova and snooped around for a couple days. It's a quaint little place of a couple thousand people with a lot of pride in its post-card beauty and its ability to survive the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. The spill practically wiped out its livlihood for two seasons, and ecologically its still struggling with the aftermath.

Really nice people, incredibly beautiful. Stay at the Northern Lights Inn!

million dollar bridge to nowhere

After all the graduation hubbub, mom and I took a mini vacation to Cordova, Alaska. It's little fishing town in prince william sound, off the road system. At one time (and maybe still) they were planning to build a road to Cordova from somewhere else, but it hasn't happened yet and many hope it never does. Still, the story goes, $17 million of gov't funds has been invested to repair a bridge along an old mining road outside Cordova, thinking this might be important if a real road ever does go in. But for now, the bridge sits at the very end of the road, literally a bridge to nowhere. The drive to get there was nice, with some glaciers along the way. But nothing all that interesting on the other side of the bridge as it is now. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Dollar_Bridge

the bridge, then the end of the road

I graduated!

On a Saturday morning (May 6), we went through a couple-hour ceremony to get "hooded" and to hear about the responsibility in having a master's degree. The next afternoon, we waited through several hours to get our diploma covers and to hear our names read out loud in the stadium. There were thousands of people, lots of excitement and pictures, and it was a fun time. My mom got to see it all, too, and I was very proud to have her there. The happiest thing for me (and probably for a lot of the other folks who were at the ceremonies as well) was that it was all finished, for good. What a great feeling.

There was some bittersweetness, though, as we all stood out in the rain after the ceremony was over, waiting for our family members to find us in the crowds. Most of us would never see each other again, and never again in the same circumstances that we had known one another for the past two years. The 10 or so people who had spent 16 hours a week in the classroom together would never meet in a classroom again, would never complain about assignments or the impossibility of juggling work, internship, classes and a personal life. We had been through a lot, had grown to know one another well in this very specific place. And now, suddenly, right there in the rainy parking lot, we were off to different things. It was wierd and happy and sad all at the same time.

shoes

Today I wore closed-toe shoes and socks for the first time in probably 2 months. My feet didn't like it one bit (but they wouldn't have liked coming off lazy mountain in chacos either). I think my feet have gotten bigger; maybe they'll shrink after being shoe-trained again.

March in review

Although school and internship and work were the big focus of the winter months, I had a spring break that deserves some blog attention. My dear friend Beth, from Chicago, came up for a few days: We had fresh snow, clear skies and clear roads that made for the perfect trip to Homer, on the Kenai Peninsula. We stayed at Land's End Inn on the spit (a fine place, complete with a hot tub on the rocky beach), right down the beach from where hundreds of eagles come to eat every day. It was spectacular, and I really wished I had a stronger zoom.