Countdown to Costa Rica

I am getting SO excited for my trip! I am less than 2 months away from something I have never done before, and it is scary...but it feels like that awesome feeling of anticipation when something great is going to happen. Since I've been in school, the fundraising has been on the backburner (although my amazing mother has been helping me still!). However, I am a member of Community Bible Church and they have given me a scholarship for my mission trip! I am so grateful that I have gotten this funding and I will continue to work on campus to gain money for my trip (and for groceries! haha). Anyway- life has been good and getting better everyday! That's about it....

-Marci

Getting There!

So basically these past couple of weeks have been great! The holidays with family have been great and I am so excited to be back at school. For the holidays, me and my mom teamed up to make chocolate flan cakes (they're delicious) to raise money for my trip to Costa Rica. It's been really great and I've gotten so much support! I am so thankful for it. Thinking about all the things I will be doing get me so hopeful to make a difference in these children and young adults lives and it's all going to be in a matter of months! I send my thanks to those who have already helped and those who keep me in their thoughts. 

Hope you have a great holiday season:)
-Marci

As I said before, I'll be going on a trip with the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC) . I have to raise $1149 to support the project site in Costa Rica, housing, food, and transportation. I will be staying with a Costa Rican family during my time there and I am very excited! Next semester I will be taking Spanish 2002, which is the second part of intermediate Spanish at my university (Georgia Tech)..so it'll be great exercising my skills there! According to FIMRC's website, I could be participating in so many different activities such an dental hygiene education with children (I hope I can do this!) to shadowing a physician in the examination room or even a construction project to the clinic itself. I won't know what I'm doing until closer to the date..but I will  definitely post about it once I do! 


Anyway, if you would like to donate to help fund my trip it would be greatly appreciated! If you would like to, I can send you an address that you can send a check to (again, it is $1149), but please e-mail me for the address!. Any donation would be so helpful and I would be so thankful! Your money would go to funding a clinic focused on children's healthcare where it may be spotty and unreliable and supporting the homestay family so they can host volunteers in their home.

My e-mail is mmoreno3@gatech.edu.


Thanks for reading! Updates soon, promise.

It's Been TOO Long!

Oh well hey there,

So as you may have assumed...I've returned from England and have been working my little butt off at Georgia Tech for the rest of the summer (at CEISMC...the Center for Education Integrating Science, Math and Technology) and it was a great experience and I got to know some really awesome people! Now I'm just taking classes at Tech and the semester is about halfway over. It's been really different adjusting to life back in the United States because I feel like I've been so busy all the time! I've been getting really involved on campus and trying to balance that with working two jobs and school has been different from being able to escape every other weekend. Fortunately, my travelling/community service bug has been heard and I've been accepted to go on a trip with the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children! This coming spring break I will be going to Costa Rica to work in one of FIMRC's clinics. I am very excited to able to go, this past semester I have taken a history of medicine course and it has been the most fascinating thing I have learned about in college so far. However, it also has shined a light on how sparse modern medical care can be and how modern medicine isn't really something we've had for very long. It makes you feel grateful to have all these vaccinations and antibiotics that cure us of diseases that would take out thousands of people. Anyway, I'm going to try and keep up with this blog since I feel like the rest of this year is going to be quite the adventure!

Slovenia & Croatia

Things have gotten a bit hectic with exams and packing for the States...woo! It's almost all over, because today is my traditional alcoholic beverages exam and me and Andrea and going to study by shopping...and discussing the beer brewing and wine making processes, of course! (And perhaps tasting some traditional alcoholic beverages as well, we'll see.) 


Anyway, to continue on about my lovely Topdeck trip! After we left Venice we headed over to Postojna, Slovenia to see the largest cave system in the country. We took a tram-like transport into the heart of the caves and took a 2km walking tour to hear about the stories and natural phenomenon inside. It was crazy! Then we continued on our long excursion to Pag, Croatia. By the time we had gotten there, we missed the latest ferry and had to wait about an hour to get to our hotel; however, this was definitely not a problem since we had the chance to soak up the beautiful Mediterranean and sample some 'Chipsy' paprika flavored chips. (DELICIOUS!). Our arrival to the hotel (yes, I said hotel, not hostel!) was met by a buffet of Croatian food, heavy on the meats and fish. Juuuuust the way I like it. Undoubtedly tired from sitting on a bus all day (I promise you, it's more exhausting than you think) me and Kate went back to our room and watched Criminal Minds until we passed out. The next couple of days were just about relaxing and catching up on that whole 'sun' thing that Britain seems to be missing out on. I got a little sunburned, but honestly, I was hoping to! We finished up our time in Croatia with a nice seafood dinner where I had the best calamari that I ever had the chance of tasting...oh man! We left Croatia so we could spend the afternoon in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. This city was definitely one of those places you don't expect much from, but then they just amaze you. As Slovenia was once part of the Hapsburg empire, you could see Austrian influence in the architecture. There were dragons on the bridges...weird faces sculpted into the streets. It's somewhere you should be longer than an afternoon, and seriously gorgeous. It was great to just sit at a cafe with friends and chat about how much we missed our mums and grandmums. Overall, I'd say it was a good couple of days.


More to come!

Semi-Charmed Life

I don't want to be your good time,

I don't want to be your fall-back crutch anymore.

I'll walk back out into a brand new day,

insane and rising in my own weird way.

I don't want to be the bad guy,

I don't want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore.

I just want to feel some sunshine,

I just want to find some place to be alone.

Lack of updates, I blame exams. Sorryyyy. The lyrics are from Santa Monica by Everclear...I'm on a nineties kick, ha!

Adios!

So here goes an attempt to sum up probably one of the most entertaining and valuable learning experiences of my life, ever. As stated before, I have been on a trip going across what I like to call ‘Eastern-Western Europe’. Leaving from Leeds, I took a National Express bus to Liverpool to catch my flight with Ryanair down to Rome (the bus cost around 5.50 pounds and the flight 26 pounds after all the taxes). How excellent is that?? Well, I arrived in Liverpool and got lost, and I do recommend getting lost in a city since you get to see so much that you wouldn’t think of seeing otherwise. I arrived at my bed and breakfast (Standridge Hotel, I believe), and I think it’s run by a couple that lives on site. It was close to John Lennon airport and came with FREE TEA! (And coffee, but I don’t drink it much) So, the day prior to my flight was spent watching BBC, drinking tea, and writing my final paper for medieval studies. The next day was really nerve wracking since I was going to go to Italy on my own, so thankfully I found the Terravision bus that took me to Termini Station in Rome (think the Victoria station in London, but everything is in Italian…scary). After getting tickets for the metro, I had this awful fear I wouldn’t figure out how to validate my ticket since some tourist websites stress validating your ticket or the tourist police would get you. HEY, SURPRISE, IT’S REALLY OBVIOUS WHERE YOU VALIDATE YOUR TICKET AND IT’S REALLY NOT LIKE THERE ARE SCARY TOURIST POLICE ON THE METRO WAITING TO TAKE YOU TO JAIL. You put your ticket through a machine, and you NEED to so you can get to the platforms of the metro, so if you’re taking it…your ticket will be validated and you don’t need to worry about it. On the buses however, all you have to do is find a little box at the front and stick your ticket in. Not hard at all. I found my hostel, Plus Camping Roma, and it was a really nice (out of the way) campsite. It’s really easy to get to with public transport -- but it just takes awhile. The campsite was definitely more than I expected, it had a computer lab, wi-fi spots, a restaurant and bar, a market, and a swimming pool! So while I was waiting for my Topdeck tour to start, I was definitely not bored. One word of wisdom though- a lot of Italians don’t speak English…so if someone tells you that, they were really lucky or a big fat liar. If anything, most of them can understand Spanish (if you speak slowly), so if you know Spanish from high school or university courses, I would definitely use it over there. I went into the grocery store to try and find contact solution…and then I was too scared to leave the campsite anymore. Later that day I met up with the new additions to the Topdeck tour and our leader, and it was way more than I expected. Our leader Lety, is pretty much the bomb. She’s from Spain and has many similar mannerisms to my mom, so it’s actually really funny sometimes. We went on a walking tour of Rome and came back to the campsite for some yummy wine and Italian food prepared on-site and rested in our super sweet bungalows that were heated and had in-suite bathrooms that were immaculate! So that’s all for Rome…so that leads to VENICE! I had never been to Venice before, so I was quite excited. The drive was longer than I would have hoped, but hey, coach travel (in my opinion) is pretty fun. We spent the majority of the day travelling to our new accommodation which was also another Plus campsite. Like the one in Rome, we got bungalows that were really home-y and luxurious (as far as campsites go). Now, the next day we took a small tour and saw St. Marco’s Basilica, the winding streets of Venice, and went on a looooovely gondola ride! After this action packed morning, we had the chance to get lunch ourselves and we ended up at a restaurant next to a fish market (yuck), and me being me, decided to be daring and get the spaghetti with fish. Surprise! Fish actuallymeans OCTOPUS TENTACLES. It tasted good until those suction cups reared their ugly head in my otherwise beautiful bowl of spaghetti. Me and my friend Kate ended up wandering around the city looking for places to buy souvenirs…and I ended up getting a pretty sweet Venetian mask and some postcards. We tried some gelato, and I’m going to go ahead and say mango and tiramisu are my all time favorite flavors. We had to go back at 16.30 to get back in time for dinner, and much like the night before..it was excellent. Topdeck chefs are kind of the bomb.com, but after dinner…we had a TOGA PARTY. It was pretty cool since it was everyone on our tour, and then another group of training tour guides joined us…a group of really attractive tour guides. Although we called it an early-ish night, it was definitely tons of fun, you know, since togas always mean a good time. The next day we left Italy for Slovenia/Croatia…so a new post will follow including both of those countries. Peace out girl scouts!

I bet you can't guess what this is!

Wooooo main canal in Venice

Close up of St. Marco's Basilica

View of the Alps from my airplane!