School is all done! I passed my MBA classes, and soon, I will get another piece of paper. Brian wants me to get all my degrees framed (including the one from CMU), but I don’t have room to do anything with them in my office. To be fair, my office has one small wall to hang things on, and it’s already full with my A&M degree.
In just 4 days (3 if you don’t count the 2 hours left of today), Brian and I will be headed to Vancouver to start our Alaskan vacation. We’ll be in Vancouver for a few days before we board the ship (on the 19th) for Alaska. This is our first cruise ever, and while, so far, all of our communications with the cruise company (Carnival Spirit) have been excellent, I’m still not convinced that cruising is my cup of tea. I’m willing to wait until after our trip to make a decision. So far, the plans are to fly to Vancouver on the 16th, arrive about noon, and explore Vancouver until we have to board the ship about 2pm on the 19th. Then we’ll be on the ship with no plans until the 22nd when we go hiking on a glacier (Hiking on a glacier on my 31st birthday sounds like a great idea, don’t you think?). On the 23rd, we’re going for a kayaking adventure in the Yukon, and a dog mushing camp excursion. Other than that, we’re flying by the seat of our pants.
I’m quite the independent traveler. I enjoy getting dumped into a foreign city and finding my way around. We’re using public transportation in Vancouver (but we’re arriving one day before the train between the airport and downtown opens 
), but renting a car in Anchorage. With the cruise, we’re spending more money than I’ve ever spent on a vacation before (work trips don’t count) , including a whole month in Europe. Apparently, all of our food is taken care of, except alcohol and soft drinks, but still, I’ve been to Paris for cheaper. I prefer to stay in hostels, but Brian doesn’t, so that tends to raise prices somewhat, but not that much. Neither Brian nor I enjoy clubs, I don’t generally like casinos because of the smoking, but this ship is apparently smoke free, so we’ll see. I like to dance, and so do two of the friends we’re going with, so I might get to dance. I don’t like dressing up however, and well, there are two nights with “formal” dress (although, we can go to other dining options). The problem is that we’ve scheduled a “fancy” dinner in the reservations only steakhouse for my birthday. I’d rather eat my steak in jeans and a t-shirt than in a “formal” uniform thanks.
There are two days where we’re not docking, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself. I have several books loaded onto my kindle, and I plan on using the Gym, but they kind of worry me.
Brian’s taking his laptop, and I’m taking my iPhone (with international roaming enabled, but off most of the time), but other than that, we’re off the grid. I have distant family (2nd cousins) in Anchorage, AK, and we’re meeting up with them for lunch and dinner one night we’re in Anchorage. I’m looking forward to that. I know the woman’s sister, but not the actual family member. But so far, on the phone, she’s been excellent to talk to and recommending hikes outside of Denali (300 miles from Anchorage). She’s going to take one day off of work to take us tourists around.
I’ve finally got a few minutes to write up my latest international adventure in Asia. had to go to Guangdong province in China for work, and the nearest airport is Hong Kong. My client also had offices in Hong Kong and would pick me up at the hotel there to take the train into China. So it made perfect sense to fly into Hong Kong. I also took a vacation day to enjoy the sights.
I took over 24 hours getting from DC to Hong Kong – left the house at 5:30 in the morning, got there at 7pm the next evening. And I was only at the airport an hour before my flight… I wandered around the hotel a bit, it’s in a touristy part of town – Kowloon, and a *lot* of people asking me about foot massages and tailoring.
I spent the next day on Hong Kong Island, the “center” of the city. Most of my time was spent at “the peak” looking over the city, but I also looked at some market areas. Then I went to Lantau island and took the cable car to Ngong Ping – a “fake” village built near the large Buddha (tian tian buddha). I didn’t get to walk up to the buddha because I would have missed the last cable car down the mountain, but I got fairly close.
Tuesday I was supposed to meet my client, but there was a miscommunication, and I ended up going to Macau instead. I took the Ferry, and I had to go through customs and immigration again. But I liked Macau more than I liked Hong Kong. It’s older, more “European”, and less foggy. It does have more casinos than Vegas though. I didn’t go into any of them, and apparently that’s abnormal for tourists. They all go to Macau for gambling… I got to see the ruins of Sao Paulo, the Se, and the old fortress. I also walked to the A-ma temple. I caught a ride back to the ferry terminal on a bicycle rickshaw, which was fun. I didn’t see many other people doing it though. I didn’t think it was that expensive ($100 HKD or about $15), and it was worth not having to walk 5 miles in the heat.
Wednesday, I met my contact and we went into China. He picked me up at my hotel, and we took the train to the China border (Lo Wu station). We walked across the border, then a company car took us to the offices. Most of the pictures are out of the window of the car, but there are some. I didn’t get to see as much of China as I would have liked, but I have a double entry Chinese visa, so I can go back within a year without getting another visa.
I had to cross so many borders on this trip, not counting the chinese visa (which took a whole page, I now have two more pages “full” in my passport. The trip home was a nightmare though. It started innocently enough with my flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco being canceled. They rebooked me through Tokyo and Chicago. Not ideal, but it would have gotten me home 2 hours earlier than originally planned. The flight to Tokyo was uneventful, but once I got to Tokyo, I saw the Japanese response to the Swine flu. The plane we were supposed to be on had come from Chicago. As part of their operations, they took the temperature of everyone on the arriving flight. Well, two passengers had a fever, so they quarantined the plane to verify if there was flu or not. We finally took off, 4 hours later than expected, and I missed my connection in Chicago. I luckily got rebooked on the last flight from Chicago to DC – arriving at 12:30am – 6 hours later than I should have arrived I went home got a shower while Brian cooked me dinner, then got in the car and headed to Pittsburgh with me driving – I had slept on the flight to Chicago and felt pretty good. But UGH.
The pictures are up on my Flickr account:
I actually biked to work this morning, and it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Granted, the radio was warning people to watch out for cyclists because there would be a lot more, but I think I might continue cycling to work. It’s a great workout – especially up the hills, and I’m looking forward to going down the hills on the way home 
Update 1pm: found an awesome mashup at http://veloroutes.org. Here’s the elevation profile for my ride in.
Elevation graph for my commute
I know some of the women who read my blog have already had children. After talking with Brian about the possibilities and problems associated with childbirth – I’m pretty sure I don’t want to give birth – for multiple reasons. The biggest is that I’m needlephobic, and while pregnancy and childbirth *can* happen with no needles involved, Brian has said he won’t support my desire to not have a needle without my permission. i.e. he’ll let the nurse/doctor stick me with a needle without asking my permission first. I will not have an IV put in me “just-in-case”. The second is that I’m a pretty selfish person, and after several horror stories about bodily functions after birth (incontinence, bleeding, and hemorrhoids), I’m not sure that it’s worth it.
So, it basically seems like I’ve heard all of the horror stories, and none of the good ones of giving birth. I’m inviting my readers/friends/family to share with me non-horrible birth stories, or reasons why I’d want to actually give birth. I have no problem with the raising children part – we both want to be parents, and there are options other than giving birth that result in raising children, so “it’s all worth it” is not a valid reason. My mom loved me just as much as she would have loved a child who wasn’t adopted, so unless you’ve got one birth child and one adopted child, the “you’ll love them more” isn’t a valid reason for me either.
So, stories, reasons?