Quick India update: In my final week there, I became deathly ill and then my iPad died. I’m back in the USA now, and I’ll post a final India recap when I have the time. Until then…

Here’s a post that I wrote for my other blog, Edu-Hacker. Enjoy!

10 Things That I Learned About the U.S. by Traveling

 

Dearest readers of Blake Travels,

As many of you know, my travel plans for the second half of 2011 recently changed. The Unschool Adventures “Eurosurf” and “New Zealand Ultraventure” trips didn’t garner enough interest to become viable. Thus, I will no longer be traveling internationally after my India trip.

But fear not, as I intend to continue blogging for the rest of 2011–but the name and theme of the blog will change from “Blake Travels” to “Blake Eats.”

Yes, that’s right. I eat. And I like taking pictures of what I eat. You may have noticed that. I’ll post every day about something awesome (or not awesome) that I ate, along with a photograph and the occasional nutrition commentary.

Thanks for following my blog!

Cheers,

Blake

 

March 13-26, 2011-

Between South America and my next big international trip—India—I spent time at Brenna’s house in Asheville and presented at the InHome Conference outside of Chicago. While there were many highlights, here are the ones that I managed to photograph!

Hanna, Jonah, and Garrett wished me goodbye after all the other South America students founds their flights home from Miami.

I crashed with my old friend Tom Fiori (from Bakersfield and UC Berkeley) and his wife in Miami. He’s a radical anarchist, and we don’t see eye-to-eye on many things politically nowadays, but it was great to hang with him nonetheless.

In Asheville, Tara Dean (another former Unschool Adventuree) and her friend found us while driving across the country. A few days later, Tara was taking off to volunteer in Africa delivering babies. Dang unschoolers!

Fast forward to March 23-26, where I presented a ton of workshops at the InHome Conference—a 1000-person, all-inclusive homeschooling conference drawing people from all over the midwest. Here I led a teen workshop entitled “Indescribable Sexiness” (edited by the conference board to “Indescribable Attraction”).

Many former Unschool Adventurees were at this conference! Featured here (from the top-left, clockwise): Aytch, Nicolette (who applied to go on a trip that was canceled), Paige, and Claire.

They helped me run my exhibitor booth, along with Erica and Luke.

You gotta watch out at these homeschooling conferences—lots of tricky Christian games and curricula out there. Here, someone apparently redesigned the (excellent and non-religious) game “Settlers of Catan” to become “Settlers of Canaan”, where your goal is to lead your tribe of Israelites to salvation or something. I was offered 20% off because I told the guy that I was going to India, which he immediately assumed was discount-deserving missionary work.

But really, the highlight of the whole conference was seeing my name on a foil balloon. What more does the human heart desire?

Okay, I don’t actually have typhoid. But I am taking an oral live typhoid vaccine (over a one week period) and it gave me terrible stomach cramps yesterday. Not even True Grit and all of its epic Westernness could cure me.
Luckily I felt better enough today to bike around Eugene and brainstorm my life at Perugino. They didn’t make the fancy cappuccino flower design so I snapped a shot from my seat.

The Willamette river was running wild.

Nick and I ran wild that night. I drank a whole two beers… Whoo!

Tomorrow: Miami, and then the UA South America trip!

“Slow” for me means two doctor appointments, a dentist appointment, a bank trip, a sending money across international borders trip, a prescription drug trip, and plenty of biking and running and cappuccinos and Sweet Life (google it). Glorious.
No pictures, sorry.

Location:W D St,Springfield,United States

(My iPad blogging tool is giving me crap. Photos are coming out tiny and I’m not able to change datestamps. While figuring this out, I’m going to post multiple day’s blogs together.)

Ahh, glorious rest! Friday I lounged around Suntop (Tilke and Nick’s house), rode Nick’s bike to Paychex to discuss payroll for Unschool Adventures, lounged around a Starbucks even more, and then returned to Suntop to help vacuum for this weekend’s anticipated lounging. Luna, one of two pugs in residence at Suntop, did not approve of my vacuuming.

That night we met with Grace, Nathen, Evan, and Grace’s son, Yarid, for dinner in Eugene.

Thus began our little informal gathering known as Not Back to Not Back to School Camp (NBTNBTSC).
On Saturday we recreated Christmas morning and shared stockings with each other. Evan was chomping at the bit to open his.

Nathen’s stocking was a shoe.

Santa delivered lots of chocolate. He’s got our numbers.

The rest of the day (and weekend) was spent in discussion of topics camp-related, and those wholly-unrelated, in Tilke’s living room.

On Sunday morning we visited Grace’s “Ecstatic Dance” workshop (no photos allowed) and then returned for more discussion and life-timeline creating.

Pages from my timeline:

Yarid scratched me back. He loves it.

Nathen and Evan, each looking a bit off.

Nick.

Thus ended: NBTNBTSC.

Today I grabbed an early lunch with my dad and then got a ride down to Vallejo, CA, where I met my craigslist rideshare going to Eugene, OR. The guy driving the blue VW was Antony, a personal trainer and non-profit owner from San Francisco. I sat in the front and we talked for a number of hours about unschooling, nutrition, international travel, and everything in between. He warned me that his recent (first) trip to New Zealand in early December–the same time that I’m planning the Unschool Adventures NZ trip–was rainy 13 out of 15 days. Uh-oh! Here we gassed up somewhere south of Redding.

Two other ride sharers were in the car, and we dropped the first one off at the Jackson Wellsprings resort in Ashland, OR. The VW wouldn’t start up again, which Antony assured us was not normal, and so we pushed it around the the muddy resort RV campground once to kickstart it, unsuccessfully, and then jumped it successfully.
At midnight I arrived at my friend’s house in Springfield (just east of Eugene) and found this note waiting for me:

It’s good to have friends in warm places.

This morning I nursed a cappuccino at the Sunflower Cafe in Sonoma and caught up on Unschool Adventures paperwork. This afternoon my sister Liza visited and challenged Ben to a game of connect four. Ben destroyed me at connect four this morning, so I cheered for Liza.

Liza also helped me trim down my first aid kit to only the bare essentials. Between that and the innovative technology of rolling my clothes, I managed to fit everything I need for the next six months into my new Patagonia MLC (maximum legal carry-on) bag. Here’s a shot of the guts:

And Liza with the demo:

Today I organized my gear, I picked up a new piece of luggage in San Francisco, and I hung with the family. Here are my darling younger siblings, Ben and Olivia.

Here I will write one blog post for every day of 2011, plus a few days in late December 2010. Hurrah!