so i will run, until my feet don't touch the ground...

...and as the waves carry me out, keep listening

-ocean and atlantic, mayday parade

so people are really into this whole running/jogging thing. i mean really, you see it everywhere: on the streets, at the gyms, in the parks. these people run marathons and races and train, and i think it's weird, but i decided to try this whole running thing the other day. i mean if everyone's doing it there's got to be something good about it, right? so wrong.

i went to the park by my house and ran down a beautiful running path lined with trees, but i just really don't know how you people do it. i thought it was weird and uncomfortable and i'm convinced everyone knew i was a phony. after a while i started to walk instead and after that i really just didn't want to start running again. walking was so much nicer and it's awkward to just suddenly start running once you're already walking - or maybe that's just me?

there's nothing really to do while you run, i mean it's not like you can multitask. it's hard enough to remember to breathe and i was just trying not to trip over my own feet, so i ended up just getting lost in my own thoughts:

where am i going to be in 3 and a half months? i'll be leaving europe, heading back to the united states. back to my family and car and hopefully a job, back to vegas and then to hawaii, but what do i want to bring back from here? what memories are going to stick with me for years to come, what photographs are going to go on my wall? what lessons will i have learned, what questions will i have finally found answers to, what new questions will i be asking? what will my daydreams be, where will my mind wander to during class?

what about in a year? if everything goes according to plan, i'll be graduating from hawaii pacific university with a degree in journalism, and maybe a minor in writing or art. i'll have finished four years of college with (hopefully) a pretty decent gpa.

...and then what? that's where the plan kind of ends, the nice little packaged school setup is done. the beautiful 'elementary school-middle school-high school-college' plan is over, it just trails off into the 'well now you just have to find a job or travel or decide what you want to do with your life' thing, and i really don't know where to go from there. i don't want to get my masters, i think there's something better i could be doing with my time, but i just don't know exactly what.

i want to move to cabo san lucas for a while, i want to spend time in santa barbara. i want to be an airline attendant and get my writing published and have things i've created hanging on walls. i want to inspire and be inspired. i want to discover my deepest passions and my biggest dreams and i want to chase after them. i want to be content with who i am, where i am, and who i'm with. i want to know my family's history, where i came from and why i'm here. i want to look back at my life and smile, and look into my future with excitement.

essentially, i just want to be happy, i think that's what we're all really aiming for. genuine happiness is so beautiful. you can see it when it exists in someone, it's crystal clear. it's the gleam in their eye, the sparkle in their smile. it's the way little kids laugh, the way that couple looks into each others eyes, the way grandma drinks her coffee on the terrace. it's being surrounded by love, of loving, of being loved. it's such a simple, easy emotion but it's been turned into something so far out of reach, almost impossible to achieve. since when does happiness have to be searched for? it's not hard to find, it's within ourselves. i think our society has taught us to lose touch with ourselves, with our hearts. we've been taught to disconnect ourselves from our emotions. we forget that genuine happiness has to start from the inside, because only then can it come out.

any genuine emotion is beautiful. whether it's happiness, sorrow, anger, pain. allowing yourself to recognize emotions reminds you that you are human, and that is beautiful. let yourself feel.

the hills are alive with the sound of music

i just got back a few hours ago from salzburg, and i can say with complete confidence it is one of the most beautiful places i've ever been to. whenever i told anyone i was going there, they all told me it was amazing and i was going to love it, but i've heard that about so many places that it doesn't really mean anything to me anymore. i've gotten used to the natural beauty of hawaii and the beautiful city life of vegas, but salzburg was completely different. the architecture is different than that of vienna or prague or any other european city i've seen. it seems more genuine, it's as if the city was built with love and is still filled with a sense of goodness that seems to be missing from most other cities.

i went with five other girls and we were there for two nights, three days. when we first arrived we did the sound of music tour and although i hadn't seen the movie in years, i enjoyed going to see the gardens, the house, the gazebo, the church where they got married, etc. our tour guide was so sweet, dressed up and everything. when we were visiting the church in mondsee, we asked someone to take our picture and the girl was from vegas too - she graduated 2010 from durango; small world.

we saw a lot of guys wearing lederhosen, and i loved it. most places have traditional clothes, but it seems as if they're only worn on special occasions or for the tourists. we saw plenty of gentlemen, young and old, walking around the city in the traditional pants and it was golden.

we also took a tour of the salt mines that gave salzburg its name. on the way up there we made plenty of stops and got to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the snow filled mountains. our tour guides were incredible: andy and walter. the trip wouldn't have been the same without them - they let us stop and throw snowballs at each other in the mountains and put up with us for the entire day. they even wore lederhosen, so what more could you ask for? ;]

we saw the hotel where knight and day was filmed, walked on the mozart bridge, saw mozart's birthplace and one of his flats, and to be honest, i think i've had enough mozart for the rest of this semester. he's a great guy, but there's a lot more to austria than just mozart. although the mozart kuglen are some of the best chocolates i've ever tasted in my life..

the most beautiful part of the city was hands down the hohensalzburg fortress, which i wasn't expecting at all. it's in the middle of the city and was founded in 1077. from the outside it looks rather plain, no extravagant architecture or design, but with it being a fortress and all, it makes sense. i've walked through far too many castles, palaces, forts and museums to be able to remember one from the other, but i can't see myself confusing this one with anywhere else. it was enormous, very well designed and it contained so much history in it. we saw the torture rooms, the salt room, the archbishop's residence, etc., but the most amazing part of this entire trip was going to the observation deck. you can see the entire city - the snow covered mountains, the green fields, the pointed roofs, the bridges, the trees - everything. it was so serene, so unreal, it felt as if i was standing in a postcard. it didn't suddenly turn into desert and there wasn't an ocean to cut anything off.  you were able to see the life of the city, the life of nature, extending far into the distance.

all the famous places we went to and all the well known landmarks we saw were of course beautiful, but that's not what made salzburg so great. it's small - about 150,000 people - and has this sense of calmness that i haven't experienced in a city in a long time, if ever. it's different than the laid back island lifestyle of hawaii and doesn't even come close to comparing to vegas. people don't seem to be rushing to get anywhere. the weather was absolutely beautiful the last two days we were there and people had time to sit in the square and enjoy coffee. they had time to play a few games of chess, to walk around and let the sun dance on their skin. they had the time to ride their bikes by the river, to read a book, write in their journals. there wasn't the sound of cars honking and police sirens going off, there was no faint sound of people arguing, and that silence is something i haven't heard in a while.

it was an amazing trip with a group of amazing people - i wouldn't have wanted it any other way. walking through the city allowed me to reflect on things that i'm usually too busy for. not just self reflection, but i was able to really reflect on and connect with the history that thrives everywhere in europe. it has never been so clear to me that people walked on those streets hundreds of years ago, that they took protection in that fort, they danced on those fields and made it up those mountains.

i have no doubt i'll be returning to salzburg, hopefully in the very near future.

"the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
-marcel proust

prague, politics, and st. patrick

it's strange that on the other side of the world, my friends are taking midterms and celebrating spring break. i already finished one of my courses (public relations) and our easter break isn't for another month. and thankfully, none of my classes have midterms. i'm not sure if they even exist here?

st. patrick's day was yesterday; always a fabulous time, but it's not nearly as celebrated in europe as it is in the united states. there were a lot of students who had never celebrated it before, but i guess that americans will use any excuse to celebrate, whether it's from our culture or someone else's. ;]

last weekend i went to prague. i took a bus and the 5 hour drive went by pretty fast, probably because i slept most of the way, but i finally watched over the hedge and it was absolutely adorable. i stayed with my grandma in prague and it was really good to see her again. i went out with the other students one of the nights and then we did a city tour the next day. it was nice to see prague through "new" eyes - i've grown used to the  astronomical clock, the charles bridge, the castle, etc, and being there with people who had never seen it before made me appreciate the beauty of the city again.

i am definitely beginning to wish i paid more attention in history class, though. the european education system is so much better than ours. it's been said that the united states is self centered, and while i can't speak for everyone, i'm beginning to realize how true that is. as far as general knowledge of the world, i think we only tend to know about the united states and what's in the headlines. people here tend to know not only about their own country, but about other places too. i've never been into politics, but the people in one of my media classes know far more about politics in the united states than i do. well, honestly, i bet almost everyone, regardless of where they live, knows more about politics than i do.

the weather's starting to get a little bit warmer, but it's been raining for the past two days. i'm not complaining though, listening to the rain hit the window is absolutely beautiful. i'm going to salzburg early tomorrow morning with some friends, hopefully it doesn't rain there. and yes, i am being a complete american tourist and doing the sound of music tour :]

"i never travel without my diary. one should always have something sensational to read in the train."
-oscar wilde

nothing's bigger than love

i hear a lot of people say they're traveling to "discover what they're looking for", "learn what they want in life", "find themselves", whatever. it was hard for me to hide my skepticism when i heard this, because for a long time i thought that there was no need to relocate yourself halfway around the world to discover what you like and don't like. i figured hey, if you don't like olives in the usa, you're probably not going to like olives in asia.  just because you're in europe doesn't mean you're going to appreciate modern art if you couldn't stand it in brazil, and spending time in jerusalem isn't going to just suddenly make you religious.

i still believe we are essentially the same individual regardless of where we are. our core, our wants and needs aren't going to just magically transform overnight. i'm still not convinced that planting oneself in a different environment is going to cause you to discover the meaning of life, but i finally better understand the 'learning about oneself' part of traveling. i still don't like olives, but i've been learning things about myself that i probably wouldn't have learned this semester had i stayed in hawaii.

for example, today i learned that i am absolutely fascinated by the subway system.

okay, i know. there's a lot of things that i find fascinating, like fishtail braids, well done collages, and the way our voices travel through one phone to another. i also know this isn't a groundbreaking discovery and i would've been just fine going through the rest of my life without this knowledge. in fact, there's millions of people who have never and will never travel on a subway and it's not going to affect them at all, even a little bit.

but it's not the subway itself that i find fascinating. i don't really care how or why it works. as long as it gets me from where i am to where i need to be, we're good. if it gets me there on time, we're even better.

it's the people on the subway fascinate me. the way that everyone comes together from different parts of the city, the way that they're all trying to get somewhere...the way the majority forgets we're all human, the way so many people tend to leave their hearts outside the station.

there was a man who came onto the subway with his accordion keyboard and started to play. the second he started playing, everyone looked up and exchanged those glances, those 'what's-he-doing' looks of disapproval. i was about to do the same, but then i looked at him and changed my mind. he wasn't a great accordion keyboard player, not that i would be able to tell if he was, but he was happy. he enjoyed the music. after a few minutes people got used to it, and it was alright. everyone went back to sitting in silence, staring at their shoes, avoiding eye contact, staring out the window into the dark tunnel.

after a few stops, a man - i would call him a gentleman, but he was far from it - stood up and yelled at the accordion playing man. i've only had a few german courses and we didn't learn the colourful words he was shouting, but it was something along the lines of stop.

the poor man, bless his heart, put down his accordion and stopped playing, and it absolutely broke my heart. i know he was playing to make some extra change, not just because he wanted to make everyone's day better; i'm not that naive. but there was absolutely no reason for this man to speak down to him. what could he possibly be doing in the subway that's so important, and what makes him so mighty that he can tell others what they can and can't do?

i think that taking the subway can be extremely boring. it's silent, eye contact is awkward, it seems that people just pick a spot to stare at and try to permanently engrave it into their memory. what does a little music hurt? who's it hurting?

of course, there's more to it than an accordion playing man. when people exit the train, it's amazing how focused everyone is on their destination, it's as if they forgot all the manners they have outside of the subway. all of a sudden, it's not important to be polite. "excuse me" is a foreign language and i swear some people are convinced it's the end of the world if someone gets on the escalator before them. it's a little sad.

slow down, we're all human. wouldn't it be beautiful if we could remember that all the time, not just when it was convenient for us? and please, let that man play his accordion keyboard.

you better slow down, don't dance so fast.

time is short, the music won't last.

when you run so fast to get somewhere,

you miss half the fun of getting there.

when you worry and hurry through your day,

it's like an unopened gift thrown away.

life isn't a race, do take it slower,

hear the music, before your song is over.

-david l. weatherford