Endelig en ny oppdatering. USA, Fiji og Australia på notime.

Creel

31th of July

Travelled to Creel by autobus. Played billiards at Best Western in the evening.

1th of August

Went to the Indians in the caves, the waterfalls and lake whatever. Bumpy car ride on the roof. Gave bread and money to small Indian kids. Went horse riding in the evening.

2^nd of August

Started on a long journey, went to the huge canyon. Took the train to Los Mochis, slept at a hotel that was very nice.

3^rd of August

Travelled by bus for the whole day. Got stopped a lot of times. Checking the same bags on and on again.

I think Creel was a place that’s very different to others placed we’ve visited. I talked to one of the workers at the hostel, and he told me what he taught about Creel. He meant that Creel was divided into to two. One part was the part that lived by tourism, the other part was the Indians that lived as they had been living for centuries. He also said that Creel didn’t have any culture at all, which I disagree on. I think watching the Indians in the caves and riding into their village was a great cultural experience. I found it very strong to watch all these small girls going around and selling bracelets to us. They were very young, and shy. They all looked very scared of us, even though they tried to sell us things. We gave some of the small kids in the Indian village some bread and some money. I think they got happy, but they still didn’t dare to look us in the eyes or say thanks. Afterwards they went to their mothers with the bread and money, and then it looked like as the mother was satisfied with their work.

San Diego / Santa Ana

4^th of August

Arrived in Tijuhana, did the border crossing. Spent some time in San Diego, which was nice. Ate at McDonalds. Everything was clean. Fantastic to speak English. Very polite people. Almost artificial, but still they were very interested in us. Travelled to a fantastic hotel in Santa Ana. Nice night of sleep.

5^th of August

Went to the Newport beach. Chillin’ and hanging out. Lovely, just like in the movies. People blading, playing volleyball, tanning and a lot of nice chicks and huge hunks. Funny cab drivers, discussing politics with them. Very radical cab driver.

Los Angeles

6^th of August

Took the taxi to Hollywood. Big problems finding the correct hotel.

7^th of August

I went to see where all the celebrities live in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. I taught it was thirty bucks straight out of the window. It was very boring. I can’t understand why people have any interest in watching their estates. We also looked in some shops in Bel Air. They are just so filthy rich, it’s disgusting. In one shop an average customer spent incredible one hundred bucks. Some of the houses were amazing, but I don’t understand why they want to live in Beverly Hills. Having a lot of tourists driving by each day to watch their houses can’t be that fun. Later on I went downtown to watch the city. Amazing skyscrapers and a lot of shops. Noticed that nobody was living there.

The finance district was extreme. It’s so high class building, and armed guards everywhere. The metro worked very well, but there was very little people taking it. Sat up at night and talked to a midget actor, and a songwriter that let me listen to his record. It actually was very nice, so I bought it. It was a funny experience. We talked till early in the morning. He played some guitar for us, and we talked about his life and how he was planning on becoming a star. He had actually spent 150 grand on the record that I bought from him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to become famous. I helped him burning some records, so he promised me free backstage passes for the rest of my life.

8^th of August

I’ve noticed that there is a lot of signs that tells you what you can’t do, and how much the police will fine you if you break the rules. It actually seems like it’s working, because everything is so clean and tidy. During my days here I’ve been astonished of that everybody is waiting for green light to pass the crosswalks. Even though it’s a big traffic jam, and it’s totally safe to walk over the streets, they’re still waiting. I just thought that they didn’t want to take any risk or something, but Jamal told me that it’s because you’ll get a fine on 350 bucks if you walk when it’s red light. That’s extreme. I guess I’m lucky that hasn’t been fined already.

We spent the whole day at Venice and Santa Monica beach. It was fun to play volleyball, and we also talked to this seven years old girl that sold us some chocolate. She was working for her parents and was extremely mature to be only seven years old. When walking from Venice Beach to Santa Monica Beach in the evening we walked past some homeless people that were spending the night at the beach. One fellow was taking a shower in one of the public showers on the beach. I was freezing while walking on the beach, and there he stood in ice cold water. I guess he had a cold night in front of him. Seeing this kind of cruelty after watching all the celebrities houses from a limousine made me think about what kind of sick differences there are in LA. The world sure isn’t any fair place, but still I can’t stop feeling awkward when meeting poor people while travelling.

9^th of August

Today we went to Universal Studios. It wasn’t as fun as I had expected. In the evening we held our presentations of three interviews we had made with Hollywood people. It went okay, even though I hadn’t done much preparation. In the evening we ate all together at an expensive Italian restaurant. It tasted very well, and it was cozy. Me and OC then went to Rush Hour 3 at midnight. It was entertaining, but a very thin story, typical for Hollywood. In the night I watched a couple of movies at the hostel with this girl I met. She was originally from Belarus, but was living in Hollywood for some months. She was very cute, and it was nice to meet here. She talked a lot about Belarus, and I was surprised because it seemed very similar to Norway. It seemed like as if they had advanced a lot from the time as Soviet.

10^th of August

I went to the beach with Juliane and Krisitina for the whole day. I fell asleep for a couple of hours, so now my tan has finally gotten good. We were supposed to play some tennis at the end of the day, but we didn’t have time since we had to reach the plane to Fiji.

During my days here I’ve talked to a lot of people about the city, and there’re some quotes that I think is very suitable for the city.

“LA is not about what you do, it’s about who you are, and who you know”

“The people that drive around in fancy cars wants to make people believe that they’re filthy rich, those that are filthy rich take the metro.”

“This is LA man, this is the shit, NY is nothing, the money is here.”

What seems typical for the people living in Hollywood is that everybody is actors, artists or successful finance people. They are all trying to make the American dream come true. All the people we interviewed had a dream, and had figured out a way to reach their target.

11^th of August

11^th of August is a day that never existed for me. We skipped it, since we were crossing the date line while flying to Fiji.

Fiji

12-16^th of August

We arrived Fiji early in the morning. From the first second we met smiling people, and people that wanted to help us. When first seeing the hostel we were going to live on for the next four nights I got very amazed. The location was incredible. It was ten meter from the beach. There were a lot of hammocks on the beach, and I really felt that this was a place where I could spend the rest of my life. I’ve never seen a more idyllic place in my life. I spent the first day at the hostel, playing volleyball, bathing and gaining energy. The Fijians turned out to be a very happy people with a joy of life that I really envy them. They didn’t have any material values like we do in the west. One guy I went out fishing told me that he couldn’t be happier. He had a family that he loved, he was healthy and had his primary needs covered. They look at life in a totally different way then what is common in Norway. While we’re struggling most of our life’s to get a lot of money we often happened to forget what really matters. The Fijians truly demonstrated that happiness isn’t about money.

Their way of living is very relaxed, and they never experience any stress. To me it was quite annoying, since everything took so much time. In the start I thought that they just weren’t service minded at all, but I learned that it’s all about the “Fiji time”. Asking reception clerk about activating my key card could for example take five minutes, since she always had to do some other thing in slow motion first. Ordering a Pizza in the restaurant took two hours, seriously.

Many people we met in Fiji had never been outside of their Island. They’re living in a misconception about what the world is like. Fiji sure isn’t like the rest of the world so it must be very strange to not know about anything else. A girl I talked to had one big dream, and that was to travel outside of Fiji. I felt a little bit awkward since I had just told her that we’re travelling around the world for five months, without really having to struggle to get the money.

It seems like as if the island has an impact on everybody that’s visiting it. Everybody adapts the Fiji time way of living. In Mexico City and Los Angeles everybody was short of time. People were running around with a fully booked schedule, in Fiji they always have enough time. As the Spaniard say “manana manana” which means tomorrow tomorrow. Like as if they’re saying don’t worry, we’ll sort it out later. Everything is going to be alright.

When we interviewed some people we found out that Fiji had recently been through a radical alteration. The last democratic government was seemingly corrupt and they did a very bad job. Therefore the military put aside the government and took the power. There are many different opinions on that solution, but at least some things have been sorted out. The crime rate is much lower, but on the other side there’s less tourism since many people are skeptical about going to a country where there just have been a military revolution. Some of them didn’t like to talk about it. It looks like it kind of has separated the people in to two different political sides.

I didn’t meet any Fijians that didn’t speak English, which is quite amazing. I found out that it’s because they have English in school, and that they can’t continue their studies if they fail in English. Even though tourism still is a big industry in Fiji, they’re not that clinging as people working with tourist in Mexico or USA.

I did a lot of fun things during my days in Fiji. I went skydiving and on a one day trip to a small island called Malamala. On the island we went snorkeling and we played volleyball against some Fijians. They turned out to be in a good mood and were funny. I had a great time, and everybody was so happy.

Melbourne

16-20^th of August

When we first arrived Melbourne in Australia my first impression was that it was very westerly. It could well have been a big city in UK. Our hostel was very nice and clean, probably the best hostel we’ve been to. Actually everything is very nice and clean in Australia, even the water tastes okay. Melbourne turned out to be a city where I would fancy studying for a couple of years. I don’t really know why, but I have a feeling that the student life here is very good. I would love to live here since it’s a very sophisticated city, not very different to home, but sill with many differences. It’s winter here now, but still the weather isn’t at all comparable to a Norwegian winter. So the climate, the open people and Melbourne being a pretty big city makes me want to stay here for a long time. I think most Australians are very friendly, and it’s easy to talk to them. We did a couple of cool things as well in Melbourne. We visited the museum of Melbourne, which doesn’t really sound that interesting, but it sure was. We watched a documentary about dinosaurs at an IMAX cinema and watched many different exhibitions about humans and animals. It was informative and fun. We paid approximately half price on the museum since we were students. You get discounts everywhere in Melbourne if you’re a student, which is backing up my theory of Melbourne being a popular student town. The only negative thing about Melbourne is that it’s pretty expensive. Some things are at the same price level as in Norway.

I think the Australians are very proud of their own country and they do everything to keep it the way it is. For example they’re very strict on quarantine rules. You can’t bring anything from overseas without checking with the quarantine people at the airport. Elisabeth for example had a necklace with a shell from Fiji on her when we arrived in Melbourne. The quarantine officers were skeptical, but they allowed it. Bringing a banana for instances would have been impossible since they screen your entire luggage for fruit or anything else that might have bacteria on them. I’ve also seen some posters with hotlines you can call and tips

Honestly I don’t think there is so much to say about Melbourne. Both Mexico and Fiji was very different to what I’m used to so I got more strong impressions there. I also used pretty much time on the hostel, cooking food and just chilling.

Etter Melbourne har jeg vært i Cairns og tatt dykkerlappen. Svømte med turtles and sharks. Sjukt gøy. Nå har jeg dykkersertifikatet for resten av livet, og har fått meg en ny hobby. Dyr sådan. :-) Nå er jeg i Airlie Beach og skal bruke dagen til å chille på stranda. I natt er det nattbuss igjen. Oppdateringer kommer så fort som mulig.

Bilder fra Zacatecas

det finner du her


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10214&l=8a5dd&id=532806889

Chihuahua

30^th of July

After a good night sleep at the bus I was looking forward to explore a new city. Chihuahua turned out to be very different to what I had got in mind. It seems like the average wage level here is lower than in for instance Zacatecas. All the missing persons posters that’s hanging on every lamp post is frightening. Human traffic seems like a big problem here, which is really horrifying. Me and OC was walking downtown when this old man started to talk to us. He was quite good at English, and very interested in what we were doing in Chihuahua. I still haven’t seen any other white skinned people in this town, so we sure attracted a lot of attention. Anyways, this old man that we were talking to showed us a lot of tricks with his handkerchief. He was making all sort of animals, humans and food out of it. I must admit that I suspected him to co-operate with somebody else to steal our wallets. He tried to get all our attention, while some of his friends walked behind our backs. I had my hand on the wallet, so I guess that’s why they didn’t dare to try to take it. Let’s just hope he was a friendly man that wanted to show his well trained handkerchief tricks.

In the evening we watched a movie about Francisco “Pancho” Villa. I found the movie very interesting, and informative regarding to Mexican history. We had visited Francisco Villa’s house earlier today, and I recognized some of the locations in the movie. It was also cool to see the car that he was shot in. I can understand that he is a real hero for the Mexicans, since he wanted to free the people from the Spaniards. Although, his methods are of course questionable, and I sure understand that the Americans hate him. He is an important part of Mexican history and culture, and is like a Ernesto Che Guevarra is for the Cubans.

Finally I understand why there is so many that has written 20^th of November on walls all over Mexico, and there’s actually a street here in Chihuahua called 20^th of November (in Spanish).

Hospital in Mexico (..ooouch)

27^th of July

Today, I probably had the worst experience of my life. We went quadbiking, which started of quite fun, but when we came up in the mountains OC lost control of his car, and drove of the road. He fell on solid rock, and hurt both his head and back very much. I was the first person on the scene, and the next thirty minutes were terrible. OC was hurting real bad in his back, and after a couple of minutes he feinted. We tried to keep him warm with our clothes, and I was trying to talk to him for a long while. Then his heart beats stopped, he didn’t breath and his eyes went totally white. I taught that we were losing him. It was some horrible seconds, but then he started breathing a bit again. He also had a lot of cramps and were hyperventilating. Holding a friend in his hand and thinking he is dying was unbelievable. I hope none of you will ever have to experience that. When the Ambulance arrived after approximately 30 minutes and my work was done it was just too much for me. I started weeping for a while. For the next couple of hours I didn’t know how he was doing. Kaia went to talk to the doctor. When she came back with the message that OC was all right, and had been extremely lucky it was a big relief. I guess that those seconds will be the best on this trip.

From two o’clock I’ve been staying at the hospital with OC, since he’s staying here for 24 hours. He is under observation, so there are people coming in every hour and waking us up. Since OC is gotten a lot of Valium, he has been sleeping most of the time while I’ve been watching some movies on the laptop. This is a day I will remember for the rest of my life, and I most definitely could have been without it. After all, I guess this is the perfect time to get religious, OC really had a guardian angel today.

In the night at the hospital we were disturbed by nurses all the time. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was twenty different nurses that dropped by, and none of them could talk any English. We understood what they wanted to do. They used body language, and we listened carefully to their Spanish. I’ve do understand more of what they are saying now, than what I did in the beginning. Probably because I’ve picked up some word and phrases.

Zacatecas vs. Mexico City

Mexico City was totally chaos. It was much polluted, traffic was crazy, crime rate was sky high, everybody was trying to sell you thing, and it was survival of the fittest. In Zacatecas everything is much more relaxed, and it seems like people are enjoying their lives. Even though everything goes slow, I still feel more comfortable staying here for a couple of night, instead in huge Mexico City. Everything is also a bit cheaper, and I feel that the locals don’t try to fool the tourist as in Mexico City.

Update, now in english

Since I'm already writing a diary, I'm not going to blog in Norwegian as well. So heres an update on how I've been doing for the last couple of days. Copy paste from my personal diary.

24^th of July

We had been taking the bus for the whole night, and when we arrived at Zacatecas many of us fell asleep in the movie room, but some of us went sightseeing for the whole day. We went to the mines and the cable cars over the city. In the mines we had a funny guide that talked real good English, he was joking all the time. It wasn’t very informative about the mines, but still we had a good time. Then, the whole group ate together at one of the local restaurants. It wasn’t very good. In the evening I sat up at the sunroof talking with a bunch of people. It was the best experience in this travel. They told me all kinds of crazy things. They were very interested in what we were doing, and wanted to know a lot about Norway. It was fun to tell them, and they obviously didn’t know anything about Norwegian culture. Phillip was the one I talked the most with. He is 43 years old, and originally comes from a little place outside of London. His life story was quite amazing. He started hanging out with some bad people, and his life went to hell as he said him selves. He started doing drugs, robbing people and actually also doing armed robbery in banks. Then his mom died fifteen years ago. He got very spiritual and started believing that there is a God that is watching after him. He always feels safe, and he said that knowing that somebody is watching after him is the best drug in the world. For the last 8 years he has been travelling around the world, meeting new people and working a little bit every now and then. He doesn’t owe anything except his cloths. He loves to go scuba diving, and thought that we were very spoiled when we were going scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. He rated that as the best place to scuba dive, except some of the caves he had been diving in. So I’m really looking forward to it. When I told them that we’re going up in the north, they told me many of their experiences while travelling. One of them had taken a train in the Grande Cobber Canyon, or whatever it was called. They had taken the first class train, where they did have lots of armed guard, which they didn’t have on the second class train. Therefore the second class train used to be pretty popular to rob. When these guys that I talked to drove past the second class train they saw bunch of bullet holes all over the place. The standard had become much better in the last years, so I guess we won’t the bullet holes and so on. By the way he also told me about a ferry trip he had been taking a while back. It was a small ferry with 400 passengers, and it only was four toilets, so they flooded after a couple of hours, and the trip actually lasted for sixteen. The ferry was also leaking, so there were about fifty members of the crew that was filling up cans with water, and throwing it out in the sea again. And the worst of all was that it wasn’t seats for everybody, so many people had to sit on the ground for sixteen hours.

While sitting up and talking to these lads I learned about the backpacker life, and it absolutely seems like something for me. Many of them had a very strange way of living, and they surely were very social people.

25^th of July

Today we had this assignment, so me and the Swedish lads interviewed three Spanish speaking people we met in the town. It actually was quite funny, and we learned about their lives as well. The presentation also went ok, even though we probably could have prepared more. At the night we had this totally crazy “walk in the streets party”. We hired live musicians, bought a lot of cheap mezcel (similar to tequila, only stronger and cheaper) and we payed of the police to be allowed to drink in public. What a fantastic experience. Our group payed everything, but I guess 150 people joined the train. It was quite like 17^th of May in Norway with drunk Mexicans and South American dancing. It was really great fun, the Mexicans are real party people. The drunker they got, the more did they tried to pick up our blond good looking girls. It’s a tradition to do this in Zacatecas. It started ages ago when they had found a lot silver in the mines. The workers then hired a lot of hookers, stripped, drank tequila and danced in the streets. Strange people these Mexicans. By the way, I love the way we just paid of the police to get permission. Corrupt where?

26^th of July

Today I slept pretty long, which was very good regarding to the party yesterday. Then we went to the Corona brewery, which by the way is the worlds 2^nd largest brewery. It was like an entire city, totally crazy. We did some mathematics, and found out that they produce 168 billion liters of beer every 20^th day. So beer obviously is big business. They had 5000 workers on the brewery. We also got to see some of the commercials for Corona, and we learned how they do their branding. They don’t make commercials just for the beer, but for the whole Mexican experience you’re supposed to get when you’re drinking their beer. It was fun to see, and very relevant to our course that’s about Intercultural marketing. The souvenir shop was really cheap, since they want people to wear their trademark all over the world. I actually bought three t-shirts, since they looked neat and I love Corona as well. In the evening me and OC was watching a movie. It was nice to just chill out. I talked a bit with Phillip about movies, and we liked the same movies so we’re probably watching one of his favorites tomorrow.

Bilder fra de første dagene i Mexico city

sjekk ut
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9698&l=4c63d&id=532806889

skulle gjerne lagt ut mye mer, og skrevet mer, men har ikke tid. Hektiske dager. Gjør det asap.

Pyramider og sånn

De siste dagene har vært rimelig hektiske med masse opplevelser. En dag var vi på tur til et par pyramider. Den største var verdens tredje største. Hadde kappløp med Juliane opp til toppen, men jeg måtte kaste inn håndkleet rimelig kjapt. Her vi er nå (Mexico city) er vi litt over 2000 meter over havet, og pyramidene var enda en del høyere. Tynn luft, bratt stigning og dårlig kondis hjalp meg ikke akkurat opp, men jeg kom meg opp til slutt. Flott utsikt og imponerende byggverk var kult å se. Ellers så får vi tequilla overalt hvor vi går, og den mest ekslusive sorten er den med larver i. Som den eneste i gruppa shotta jeg med larve i og spiste dyret. I følge meksikanerne levde den enda, bare at den var skikkelig drita. Smakte ikke så verst uansett. Ellers har vi bare kost oss rundt omkring. Var en tur i partystreeten her en kveld, og vi ble, somvanlig, den store attraksjonen på byen. 10 blonde jenter med store pupper og blå øyne er tydeligvis ikke hverdagskost i mexico. I kveld tar vi nattbuss opp til noen indianere nord i Mexico. Tror det blir skikkelig kult å se hvordan de lever. Gleder meg masse. Har tatt masse kule bilder. Skikkelig mecca for en fotonørd som meg, nå gjenstår det bare å legge ut litt bilder på nett, det kommer snart (forhåpentligvis). Orker ikke å skrive mer nå. Hasta la vista.