Ash Clouds in Europe

As I'm sure you've seen in the media, an ash cloud has been wrecking havoc on European air travel for the past few months.  I remember when Brian sent me the first email about it - my dad and I had just flown to the States from England earlier in the week when I got an email from Brian saying that airspace over Europe was being shut down.  Here was the specific article.  At first, I thought the email was a joke - I mean, who has ever heard of entire airspace being shut down?! 

My dad and I were so fortunate to get out when we did.  It wouldn't have been a huge deal for me, but it would have been bad for him because he wouldn't have been able to get back to work.  Flights were messed up for weeks, and people were stranded all over Europe.  Even today, the ash cloud is still messing with us!  Brian and I were both impacted on our separate flights back to England from the States.

I dropped Brian off for his return flight from Orlando, and he called me back a few minutes later asking me to pick him back up because he was delayed for 5 hours because of the ash cloud.  Once he was on the plane (about 30 minutes past midnight), he still was delayed because the pilots had to take a different route which added almost 2 hours to his flight.  Luckily though, he made it back safely (although he was pretty tired when the adventure was finally done)!

I flew back a little more than a week later from New York City, and sure enough, I was stuck at the airport for a while too.  I was supposed to take off at 10:30 p.m., but when I went to check-in, I noticed all of the international flights were delayed, sure enough due to the ash cloud.  As I was sitting at my gate waiting for more information, I pulled up a news story online that said London Heathrow (where I was flying into) was shut down.  Luckily it did open a few hours later, and we were finally able to take off around 1:30 a.m.  Everyone was a little freaked out and wanted to make sure everything was going to be safe.  The flight attendants were really good about reassuring everyone.

Sadly, it seems that our days of dealing with volcanic ash clouds may not be over.  An article on MSNBC today says that another volcano in Iceland, a much larger one than the one that has already been causing problems, is expected to erupt soon...  *sigh*  We'll keep you posted!

Grad School in Pittsburgh Followed by Fun in NYC

You may be wondering why my blog posts have been less frequent this last month.  Well, it's all thanks to a little thing called graduate school at Penn State, or more specifically, 3 courses with an insane amount of coursework!  I am still really glad I am doing it, but the work was definitely very intense this term, and it all culminated with a residency in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago.

The residency allowed us to take what we have learned so far and work with an actual company in Pittsburgh.  I spent 5 days in the city, where I met my online group I have been working with for 8 months for the first time.  I was dreading the whole thing a bit because we kept getting scary emails telling us how hard we were going to have to work and how little sleep we were going to get.  Those parts turned out to be true, but you know what?  I actually had a lot of fun there!  It was cool to be using what I am learning, and I really did like my team.  We got along really well and tried to make the week fun and take some breaks to enjoy the city.  Here we are at dinner our final night:

I'll do one more residency next August right before I graduate.  It seems far away right now, but in reality I know it isn't.

After Pittsburgh, I jetted over to New York City for the weekend to spend time with our friends Jamie and David who live there.  Jamie and I ended up eating our way through the city that weekend - we ate Cuban, Thai, Korean, Greek, Italian, and Mexican food, plus other fun snacks.  =)  It was so nice to relax that weekend, especially after the week I had just had in Pittsburgh.  Here we are at the International Food Festival in NYC:

From NYC, I made my way back to London, after being delayed until the middle of the night because the stupid ash cloud was acting up again and had shut down Heathrow.  More on that saga to come on our blog!  For now, I'm going to take this week off to relax before Term 4 starts next Monday.  =)

Conquering the Klein Matterhorn in Switzerland

So to continue from our post last month, as part of my dad's trip over here, we ventured over to Switzerland to train through the Swiss Alps and go up the Klein Matterhorn.  Now before you think we are crazy, we didn't actually climb Klein Matterhorn - there are these great little cable cars that take you all the way to almost 13,000 feet, which is reportedly the highest ski area in Europe.  Here we are at the top (the actual Matterhorn is behind us):

  

I was terrified to go up, but Brian and my dad convinced me and I'm so glad they did.  It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to - the snow was so pure and white, and it was really neat seeing all of the skiers flying down the mountain.  You can enjoy the photo of me in the cable car on the first dip though; there's also a photo of Brian and my dad enjoying the heck out of it.  =)

Train that took us up to the Matterhorn cable cars

Matterhorn

 

Cool shot Brian got on the train ride...

Brian in Zermatt

On the way down after a great adventure...