November 6, 2012

Exploring Porto, Portugal

 
What's is there to do in Portugal?
Why would you want to go there?
What do they even eat?
 
Well guys, it's time to answer all your questions about our random trip to Portugal.
When planning our free travel, Meagan, Carver and I just wanted a cheap place to go and relax. So, we got on Ryanair and selected the cheapest flight available, destination Porto, Portugal.
 
On the plane, the first thing we noticed is that we appeared to be the only people with light skin and light hair. This trend continued throughout our entire trip.

 
Our first impressions of Porto were, "woah, this place looks deserted", "where did we go?", and "are we the only people in this entire city?"
The owner of our hostel informed us that we had arrived on The Day of the Dead, so almost everything was closed. We headed to the one and only cafe open close to our hostel and quickly fell in love with Portuguese food.

 
I ordered what was called "pizza" on the menu, and it turned out to be an amazing breakfast pizza with shrimp, peppers and covered in salsa, also with an egg on the side and a hot dog for unknown reasons. Meagan and Carver chose a "hamburger" and received a meat patty topped with ham and bacon, smothered in cheese and salsa with an egg on top. It was delicious!
The rest of our trip was spent wandering the streets of Porto, making new friends, and eating ourselves silly.
 
 
Carver made the most friends
 
 
 
Beautiful church down the street from our hostel
 
 
Scenes of Porto
 
Architecture!

 
 
I learned to juggle the devil sticks from a busker.
 
We got lost too many times to count, and ate too many calories to count, but it was all worth it. Oh Porto, we'll miss you.
 
And the McDonald's had chandeliers!
 
  
 
 
 
Tori Sheets
 
 

 


The British Library


As an English major, I was pretty excited about going to one of the world's largest and most historical libraries. So, on a nice sunny day we set out for the British Library.
Sadly, taking pictures of the most interesting documents in the library wasn't allowed.
Some of the documents we were able to view included:
The Magna Carta
Two Gutenberg Bibles
The only surviving manuscript copy of Beowulf
Leonardo da Vinci's notebook
Original copies of Beatles lyrics
and many first edition copies of some of my favorite authors
I was able to take one very blurred photo of myself looking at a first edition copy of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Thankfully we were able to take the illegal picture and escape the British Library unnoticed.

 


Tori Sheets

October 28, 2012

HUE 2012- Ice Breaking Trip


Our HUE 2012 created International Program history this fall
by taking the first student trip to Iceland in University history.


It was an amazing 10 journey that took us around the coast of Iceland,








through endless waterfalls and rivers,











on horseback through gorgeously remote valleys,









to quiet cabins hidden in the snowy mountains, 











floating around hot springs and blue lagoons,













sailing into icy blue glacial lagoons,










and up close & person with the capital city, Reykjavic. 








The over all consensus from the trip?

Tilkomumikill!

Which, in case you were wondering, is Icelandic for "awesome."