Stardate 020071104: Grand Canyon

Weekend trip to Grand Canyon.. 12 hours of driving one way, but all worth it! Standing on the edge of the canyon seems like being next to a painting, not really being there but seeing it as a film. We were 12 people, mostly Spanish, me and Saara, one guy from Japan and two Germans. I really enjoyed the trip but let's just say that sometimes the Spanish can be too much. Also my idea of a trip is to get everything out of it, meaning not spending my time on "nonsense"... like having luch in a parking lot for two hours :P Nevertheless, I really enjoyed my time there!!

We saw the sunset, the sunrise, went hiking a bit down the canyon.. It's truely an amazing place! To see the sunrise we woke up about 5 and drove to the park from the motel further away. We weren't staying in the park, instead about 50 miles from it.

The national park itself is really full of tourists.. you can't reeally enjoy the peace or the view of the canyon by yourself because you have to struggle to take a picture without any people in it :P The best time to go hiking is early in the morning because then there aren't so many people around, only some crazy ones.

Here are some pictures:

Finnish girls in Grand Canyon, or was it Polish...

Hiking down the canyon

Oh, and it was cold...was freezing to death :P

The sunset..

...and the sunrise

and people freezing to death :D

Josemi, Lorena, Belém, Esthel, Caroline, Martha, me and Maria

Me and Cecar, hiking down the canyon

Stardate 020071024: El Paso & Juarez

El Paso is about 70 km from Las Cruces. It's the place where the international airport is and where I arrived in the beginning of September. I hadn't been in El Paso other than one bar one weekend and in a concert other time. El Paso is in Texas and just next to the border of Mexico. The city on the other side of the border is called Juarez. When you cross the border you can really see the difference between these two countries. The traffic changes immediately to "everybody is on their own" as soon as you cross the border. To go to Mexico is very easy, you just basically drive through the border. But to come back...well it's a bit different :P Americans seem to be really paranoid about letting people cross the border. They stop every single car in the border and ask IDs or passports from everybody. Occasionally you can get into an inspection where they search the whole car. So you can imagine that the lines to cross the border to US are huuuge, you have to wait every time something like one hour to get back to El Paso...

Anyway, I really liked Juarez. Although everybody said to me that Juarez isn't real Mexico because it's in the border and that I should go further down to experience the real Mexico. It's good idea to go to Mexico with a Mexican because you never know what's going to happen. So it was good that we did go there with one :D We went there two days, had really nice dinners, went to the market and glow bowling :D First evening we had dinner in a really cool restaurant:

There were shows, dancing etc with a host, some traditional Mexican things. It was really cool!! And plus the food was excellent, some meat and tortillas



The second night we went to a sea food restaurant. I can't remember how the fish was called but it was really tasty. We also had some oysters:

We were going to vip movie theater to watch a film. The theater was really cool, because the were waiters to get your order inside the theater. So you could just lay back and relax when wiaters bring you sushi, drinks or whatever you want. The chairs were like huge arm chairs where you can lift legs up, really comfortable! Sound nice doesn't it? Well, there's a but...As soon as we got inside the electricity went down from the whole movie theater. They couldn't fix it so we couldn't see the movie.. Instead we went glow bowling which was really fun! :D

Stardate 020071006: Bike trip #2

Bike trip #2!! This time a bit longer than the previous. The same group, me, Saara and Jaime. We would have had a new member in the biking group but he was busy with school and couldn't join (or just lazy? ;)). Anyway, we went now toward the mountains, biking next to the highway, no idea how far again.. But we were estimating some 50 km maybe...it took us 5,5 hours and we didn't make so many or long breaks...

Jaime is excited about the trip!

The "official guide"..

...in trouble with the wind :P

In the middle of the highway..

After the highway we turned to a desert road, literally. It was a road going just in front of the Organ mountains, no houses, nothing, just desert. I was kind of sure that the road would lead us back to campus. Luckily I was eventually right but the road seemed to continue forever and ever and ever and ever and ever...

In the desert

The Organ mountains

Some view from the way..

Stardate 020071006: More Las Cruces

Some more stuff from Las Cruces.. Last weekend there was another football game where we went. This one was not soo crowded than the previous one but this time I watched the whole game. I also added some videos from the game for people to get an idea how it is :D

One day me and Saara went for a walk again. This time we headed to the only lake that Las Cruces has.. We were quite excited to go there since we are from Finland and of course used to have lots of water around us.. Well, the walk was quite nice but the lake was..well..I would say more like a dirty pond next to the highway. Anyway, it was quite impressive to see even that much of water here in the desert :D We could even spot some ducks, which looked like suffering.. Some kids were feeding them with chips..I guess American ducks have also different diet than Finnish ones! hehehehe :)

Opening hours for a lake?

Clean water...

American ducks eat chips...

Then something else. For the curious people who want to see how my apartment looks like, here are some pictures :D

My room

The living room..

....combined with kitchen

Stardate 020071006: White Sands

The Activity Center of NMSU arranged a White Sands Overnight trip last weekend. Me and 6 other exchange students decided to go there, sleep in a tent and enjoy the view. White Sands is a a huge area of white sand dunes, people can go there camping or just visiting. The dunes reach as far as your eyes can see... There's also some NASA missile test place around. Here's a link for more information if someone wants to check it out: http://www.nps.gov/whsa.

In total we were something like 19 people, most of the Americans.

Although the trip was quite short and we were basically just walking to the camp site and enjoying the night sky, something "historical" still happened :P Ansgar (the German guy) told us a story about his Polish friends who showed him pictures about them traveling. It seemed that the Polish guys were quite stiff in all the photos... So we decided to try also making some pictures like that :D So until now on we created the so called Polish pictures and our goal is to travel and take "Polish" pictures where ever we go :P (no offense of course to anyone from Poland, I'm sure it was only these guys who pose like this ;)) Important is also not to show any emotions in the pictures.. We found it quite hard not to laugh :D

Otherwise camping there was really great! We could see so many stars and the moonlight was extremely bright! So even though it was night, we could see everything because of the bright moonlight. Also all around White Sands we could see thunder storms :P We were a bit worried that the storms would reach the White Sands but it seemed that they were just circling the area where we were staying and it appeared like we would be in the eye of the storm.. We were eating some marsmellows and just enjoying the night! It was reeally great! The night was a bit cold but nothing compared to Norway for example! :D

Here are some photos!

Our camp

Walking back to the car in the morning