Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Big update. Budapest, Switzerland, Germany, Czek thingy

So I've been neglecting my blog-related duties, but never fear my adoring fans!  I have returned to give you an unbiast view of the world!

I last checked in a while back in Budapest, so I'll start from there.

Budapest

So the forrint is an annoying currency, but you can get food for pretty cheap.  Pest is under so much construction that it often gets in the way.  It is, as mentioned be Derek, the more modern and boring of the the paired cities.  Consequently we spent most of our time in Buda.  Derek pretty much covered it.

We climbed a big hill that gave us a great view, then we went to the old castle.  It had a cool gondola to get to the top of the hill on which the castle was constructed.  As it cost money, we walked.

Near the castle was a group of vendors, one of which sold these cool funnel cake things which tasted delicious.  There was also some cool postcard machine a couple was using.  It takes pictures of you and puts you on the postcard you want. We stood behind them and made funny faces, then ran as their pictures appeared in screen.  Has Derek mentioned how much we've matured on this trip?

Nothing else worth mentioning in Budpest.  It is a pretty dull place overall.  Nothing much to see or do.  Next on the list: München!

München

We arrived in one of our most anticipated countries, Germany!  I love Germany!  They may have a bloody past that gave Germans a bad name, but we have found people here to be very friendly.  This place is so far removed from the Nazi controlled Germany that once threatened the world.

Our Hostel was really nice, until the construction Derek mentioned knocked out wifi.  For those who are not aware, there are basically two things we look at when selecting a hostel: price and free wifi.  We will sacrifice cleanliness, comfort, location, and most everythig else for a cheap hostel with wifi.  If a hostel does not have wifi, it is not even considered.

Thus we were very angry at the people who ran our hostel.  Apparently they didn't realize knocking down the wall that contained all of the hostels Ethernet cables would knock out the wifi.  They also made no attempts to fix it.  The hostel employees soon discovered my annoyance.

Anyways Germany is a really cool place.  Meeting Morgan was amazing!  Who would have thought we'd see him here!  He was one of the few people we had conversed with at length in Versailles, and here we were meeting him again in München!  We weren't even supposed to be in Germany that day, but we happened to bump into him while in the middle of a completely random city!

Anyways we explored with Morgan and had a great time.  The Olympic center was pretty cool too.  There were tons of ducks, which Derek and I competed in chasing away.  Morgan filmed with his camera and got a great clip of me slipping, landing on my ass, and sliding several yards down a steep grassy slope.  My jeans were suddenly in desperate need of a wash.  I had landed in a lot of duck shit.

Derek and I spent some time in the Olympic pool.  We went off the high-dive, which was awesome!  It looks so much higher when you're actually up there, and it was pretty sobering to realize there was another platform twice as high. I taught Derek to dive.  I attribute his quick mastery of the skill to my flawless teaching skills.

At one point Derek dropped our locker key, which meant I had to dive to the bottom of a 25 foot pool to lock for it.

One last thing about Germany; delicious food!  Try currywurst if you ever come here!  They have lots of sausages and beefs that are worth trying.  Ok NEXT!

Switzerland!

We were staying on the west coast of Lake Geneva with an old doctor of mine.  Dr. Francois Cachat and his family could not have been more welcoming.  His wife, Elizabeth, treated us to a fantastic tour of the area.

Switzerland is probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  Standing at the shore of Lake Geneva, you are greeted with a fantastic view of snow-capped mountains looming above, theirs bases shrouded in fog.  It is truly a view like no other I have ever seen.

One day we boarded a train to a mountain resort with Elizabeth.  There was fairly deep snow in the shaded areas, but not yet enough for skiers.  

Derek and I built snowmen on a mountain in the Alps, sort of.  Derek wanted a really tall snow-insect thing.  He threw together mounds of snow that appeared roughly spherical and stacked them 5 or 6 high.  Both his attempts proved as unstable as they were unrefined, and collapsed.

My approach to snowmen is more practical.  I put together 3 carfully crafted parts then spent a long time rounding off the edges and creating an excellent snowman.  

Derek's job was made harder when an enthusiastic dog appeared and began destroying any sizeable snowballs he created. A process emerged of throwing snowballs to distract the dog, them quickly building before the dog returned from his fruitless search.

At length the dog became distracted by a ski lift.  It was the sort that pulls you along while your ski's were still sliding on the snow.  It was basically a frisbee with a cable running from the center to a cable above.  The dog had a firm grip on the frisbee, and nothing could coerce him to let go.

We explored the beautiful mountaintop and hiked down in the afternoon.  The guy at the base told us it would take an hour to hike down.  We followed the train tracks instead of the road, which cut our treck in half.  It still took almost 2 hours.  The guy at the base needs to go back to 2nd grade and relearn his time-telling skills.

On Halloween we carved pumpkin's with Francois' daughter Isabelle.  We made a choir of singing ghosts and a wolf pack.  They came out really well.  

I also helped Isabelle with Isabelle's math project by using pascal's triangle.  I was really impressed by what she had accomplished on her own.  At 13 years old, she was doing math Amrican schools would be unlikely to introduce a student to for another 2 or 3 years.

Elizabeth took us to a town that can truly be called "Cowtown".  (For those of you don't know, Derek regularly refers to my hometown as cowtown.). I believe it was called Gryuere.  There was a cool factory that produced the self-titled regional cheese.  We visited the castle in the area and saw fields of cows below.  All the cows there were equipped with cowbells, resulting in a veritable chorus as you stand near the fields.

Gryuere also had a cool restaurant where everything was modeled acted bones.  The cieling was formed from vertebrae and rib-bones, the tables stood in bone legs, and the swivel chairs were skeletal as well.

We also took a trip down to the Nestle factory and enjoyed some delicious Swiss chocolate.  

We left Switzerland relaxed, rejuvinated, and with a hint of regret. We had a lot of fun, but it was time to move on.  Switzerland was the most beautiful place I've ever been, and I look forward to returning someday.

Praha

Praha, A.K.A. Prague for any anglicized readers, is a pretty laid back place.  I was expecting another Budapest, with not much of interest to see.  I was pleasently surprised.

We did have to deal with a new currency, but a good exchange rate meant we were staying in a decent Hostel for $6 a night.  We began exploring Praha and found it to be a rather enjoyable place.  It feels old, but with an enthusiastic atmosphere.  We climbed a tower on the Charles Bridge, which is like 700 years old.  It gave us a great view of the river.

Derek and I also climbed the hill to the castle area.  I say castle area because saying castle is a bit misleading.  We couldn't find an actual castle, so we figure the series of buildings are collectivley called the castle.  

There is a big fancy gate at the entranc with a funny story behind it.  Apperantly the Spanish architect building it didn't get paid enough, so he got angry.  He wrote the date of the gate's completion in Latin, as was costum, but he mispelled the word "year".  Sounds like a dumb prank right?  Actually it was brilliant.  He dropped one n from anno, the Latin for year, and inscribed ano on the gate.  The king was oblivious to the fact that ano in Spanish means ass, and was pleased with the results.

Anyways there is a cool gothic church in the center of the castle area.  There is also a balcony from which you get a fantastic view of Praha.

We went out in the evening and I had sex on the beach.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  Isn't the Czek Republic a land-locked country?  Why, yes it is.  Sex on the beach actually is a fruity alcoholic drink.  Haha tricked you!  Well some of you hopefully...

Anyways if you want a truly Czek drink (and to puke your guts out) try hot wine.  It is truly repulsive.  They serve a hot, cheap, and fairly rancid wine with little packs of sugar.  Adding the sugar makes it drop from barely tolerable to down right vile.  I barely had a sip of mine before announcing it was delicious and offering it Derek at half-price.  Then I had sex on the beach.  Much better.

The next day we went out for authentic Czek food.  Derek ordered duck and I ordered ribs.  Our meals were about $7 each.  We were quite surprised when Derek's plate arrived with what resembled half of a duck that had been dipped in a deep fat friar.  For the amount of ribs stacked in my plate, I think they must have given me most of the animal.  The food was delicous, and in a quantity that far surpassed what we had expected for $7.

So we didn't stay long in Praha.  We don't have long until our travel days run out, so we're trying hard to use them up quickly.  Next stop, Berlin!

Berlin

Mountains, an Ancient City, a Wall, and Expenses

Hey all! We're back in Germany right now. To start off, the title refers to the four places we've been in the past week: Switzerland, Prague, Berlin, and Copenhagen, respectively. 

In Switzerland, we stayed near the shore of Lake Geneva, with one of David's old doctors, François, his wife (Elizabeth) and daughter (Isabelle). (I'm only going to use first names as a courtesy to our hosts' privacy.) Although François was on call for much of our stay, we always had a fantastic meal in the evenings and they were all very generous to let us stay with them for a few days!

Elizabeth took us on short trips every day. The first day, we saw the shoreline of Lake Geneva, which was absolutely beautiful. We were staying right near the Alps - you could see the French Alps across the lake and the Swiss Alps behind us. The scenery was great! I'll try to append pics to this post when I have access to a computer. 

Isabelle was kind enough to let us stay in her room, and there was a balcony off of it with a view directly to the mountains. They couldn't have been more than a mile or two away, because they loomed up over us. For those of you who know me, you know I'm obsessed with mountains, so I enjoyed just sitting out there at night and gazing up at the stars. The world is a beautiful place. 

One day, we went up into the mountains by way of a cog railroad. There was snow on the peak - one of the first times I've ever walked around in 6" of snow in October! We made snowmen...mine was more of a crudely constructed, 6-segmented snow insect, though. After I finished, it promptly fell over. :P. There was a dog running around on the peak as well that enjoyed "fetching" snowballs...but the downside was that she would also attack any snowball you were trying to roll. XD it was difficult to get anything done. We did miss the train down and decided to walk instead. We had some awesome views of the Swiss Alps!

We had a good old American barbecue one night, which was fantastic and reminded me of the states! I'm happy that all of David's contacts in Europe that we've stayed with have been excellent cooks, since it feels good to sit down to a home-cooked meal once in a while. 

The evening of 30/10, we carved pumpkins with Isabelle to celebrate Halloween, even though people don't usually recognize it in Switzerland. Again, it made Europe seem a little more like home :)

Of course, no trip to Suisse would be complete without a sampling of local chocolate! We went to a factory in the area and bought a number of bars to try. We had milk (much better than in America), honey (aerated with small bubbles but not great), with nuts (very nutty, obviously), and dessert chocolate (a soft type of chocolate...delicious!) There were a few others but I don't remember their names. 

Switzerland was expensive - 8 franks for half a sandwich! (A frank is roughly a dollar.) So it was a good thing we had someplace to stay. 

We said our goodbyes to our hosts and started towards Prague. It wasn't horribly far from Berlin and I had always wanted to see it. Like Budapest, Prague had not been on our original itinerary. 

As always, our trip had a snafu - apparently, it was some sort of vacation week in Germany and all the seats on one of our trains were booked. Instead of standing, we decided to buy food from the dining car and take a seat there. Surprisingly, a lot of other travelers ended up sitting on the floor. 

We got to Prague in the evening and went straight to our hostel - no problems finding it, luckily. I'll not bore you with the details, since it was an unremarkable hostel. 

I met the love of my life in Prague! It was amazing. Unfortunately, I let her slip through my fingers...let me explain. According to Czech lore, you will meet the love of your life on a certain bridge in Prague. I walked across it, but I didn't know which one she was. Oh well. :(

What I enjoyed most about Prague was the architecture and cuisine. We took a walk around a castle, which was cool and provided a great view of the city. Hot wine seemed to be the Czech version of hot chocolate, so I tried some of that and very much enjoyed it. (Great for cold days.)

One day for lunch I ordered the roast duck. It cost the equivalent of $10 so I wasn't expecting much. But when my plate came out of the kitchen, it had half the freaking bird on it XD. It was accompanied by bread and potato dumplings, and all of it was delicious. 

We didn't spend as much time as I would've liked in Prague, but hopefully I'll be back someday. At this point we have to keep to a schedule since our Eurail passes will run out on the 19th. Basically, wherever we are on 19/11 will be our last stop before we return to England since trains are too expensive without it. 

Up next was Berlin! We had already determined that we love German meats, so we were delighted when we found a Currywurst stand right outside our hostel. 

Short guide to German food

Currywurst: sausage sliced into pieces with curry and powder on top
Pomme-frites: French fries, which seem to be traditionally dipped in mayonnaise
Curry-buletten: same as currywurst but with hamburger
Brezel: Large doughy pretzel
Döner kebap: Called a kebob in many places and found in every single city we've visited, this dish apparently originated in Germany. It's very distinctive! It involves a huge round chunk of meat, often 2 feet high and a foot in diameter, being turned on a spit around a heat source. When someone orders, the cool shaves bits of cooked meat off the outside with a long knife or a special electric razor. The shredded meat is served in a pita with vegetables and a sauce. 

Sightseeing in Berlin pertained mostly to the wars (Cold War and WWII). We saw the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was basically a maze of square pillars of varying heights arranged in a grid. I don't know what the symbolism was, but I'm sure it was there. The Topography of Terror detailed the many horrors of the Holocaust, albeit in a rather dry manner. Checkpoint Charlie, an old US Army checkpoint, was interesting but rather touristy. 

But my favorite part of Berlin was seeing the old wall. They preserved a section after it fell in 1989, and it was sobering to think that people were probably trying to cross that wall up until close to the time we were born.

While we're on the subject - it seemed odd that the Germans' point of view of the war (in hindsight) was mostly the same as the American view. Maybe a little more apologetic. But mostly the same. This was odd because I expected there to be some bias to what we were taught in the US...perhaps we didn't see a difference because we were only reading placards for tourists. I don't know if that made any sense or not...but do you see what I mean?

German Parliament is topped by a giant glass egg. Very cool to look into, even more cool to look out of. We climbed the spiral stairs around the egg and got a view of the city. Look on my Facebook profile for pics [eventually]!

We went straight from Berlin to Copenhagen since Hamburg, our next stop, was very expensive that week -possibly because of the aforementioned vacation? The train ride was looking to be uneventful until the train boarded a ferry. Yeah, you read that right. /The train drove onto the train tracks on a ferry./ I was floored. I didn't know that was even possible! Legally we couldn't stay on the train so we went up to the top deck and enjoyed the cold air and refreshing wind. I can't get over how cool it was that OUR TRAIN WAS ON A BOAT! (Cue matching music video by The Lonely Island.)

The section on Copenhagen is going to be comparatively short. I don't want to be overly harsh, but it just wasn't an interesting place. 

Our hostel was very far away. We had to take a metro to the airport, then take a free bus to another terminal, then walk 20 minutes to get there. It was really just someone's house with beds for rent...not very clean or secure, but hey, it was cheap. The only cheap place we could find, actually. Anyplace else would've cost us twice what we paid there. 

To my great displeasure, the obese man on the bunk above mine was inclined to snore. Loudly. All night long. Sleeping was fun that night. 

We went into the city in the morning (after paying $20 for 5 metro trips) and had a look around. I should note that although the metros were expensive, they did have free wifi. We walked around the border of a huge fort surrounded by walls in the shape of a star and a similarly star-shaped moat. It was still an active military base, so we saw soldiers walking around as well. The tops of the walls gave us great views of the port.  

The one famous monument in Copenhagen is a statue of The Little Mermain, in honor of Hans Christian Andersan. Guess what? As a small placard told us, it's in China right now! Doesn't do me any good there, now does it? :(

There are a number of canals in the middle of the city, so we walked around those for a while until we saw a very tall tower connected to a church. It was open to the public [for a fee] so we climbed it! The stairs went right past the tower bells and some gears that probably assisted the ringing of said bells. 

The stairs on the spire switched to the outside, and we slowly wound upwards. The spire itself was gold and was quite a sight from below, but we were more concerned with the view of the city that it provided. (Have you noticed that we like climbing to the high points of every city?) Strangely the stairs never stopped - they just got narrower and narrower until you couldn't squeeze yourself around again. We saw the sunset from the tower, which was beautiful!

That was about it for sightseeing in Copenhagen. The snorer left at 5:45 the following morning and turned the lights on while packing; I walked over and turned them back off while ranting at him. (Since he didn't speak English this was probably ineffective, but I think he got the point.) Despite wanting to have some traditional Danish food, it looked like we would have to drop around 200 dkk ($40) for food at a restaurant. Sigh...Denmark is expensive. 

Hamburg had reduced in price at this point so we booked a couple of nights there. The train didn't actually go on the ferry this time; instead, we had to disembark, board the ferry, then get on another train on the other side. The ferry was still cool though. 

I'll talk about Hamburg in another post since this one is too long already. I've received a comment that my updates focused too much on what I did and not enough about what I felt, and I've been trying to fix that. What do you think? Let me know in a comment!

< Derek >

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

It's A Small World

Hey all! Sorry for the gap between updates. We've been through a bunch of countries between then and now!

The last post was from Budapest, Hungary. We spent a night there - it was surprisingly cheap! The exchange rate was about 200 forints = 1 USD - you could get a hot dog for just 175 forints in some places. Our private room was the equivalent of 12 euros each a night (our average hostel is 18€ for a dorm bed). 

When we arrived, we took a little bit too long getting off the train and had to hop off while it was moving. We had no plans for the city so we wandered around for a bit until we found a McDonalds. Now, usually I wouldn't spend money on fast food - but they offered free wifi and we couldn't resist. 

After stumbling around the language barrier, we booked the aforementioned hostel and set off towards it. We checked in and took it easy for the rest of the night because of our restless train ride. Our dinner was bought at a local market which was very hard to find - for some reason, various cities we've visited have appeared not to have any supermarkets. 

The next morning, we left our packs at the train station and went out to explore. Budapest is the result of two individual cities (Buda and Pest) being merged. The two sections are separated by a wide river. Pest, where we were staying, is a very modern region. It has tall grey buildings and city blocks. Buda is the old town - it's historical, with rambling streets and interesting monuments. 

We crossed the bridge into Buda and explored a park on a hill. The foliage was surprisingly beautiful...since we're from New England, I didn't expect to be particularly impressed by any of the fall colors we saw in our travels. 

We walked around for a while, saw the old palace and the Hungarian Parliament, then started walking back to the train station. It was one of the few rainy days of our trip, so we wanted to get inside. 

For dinner, we shared a pizza and had a kebab sandwich each for a total of $10. Ridiculously cheap. Then we hopped onto a sleeper train bound for Munich!

We didn't spend all that much time exploring Budapest because frankly there wasn't that much to see. It's an interesting place and very cheap - worth a night and a day on a Eurotrip like ours. I did think that the price differences were surprising...shows how much better the US economy is than that of some other countries, even in it's weakened state.

We decided to pay €20 for a bed in a sleeper car this time, since we wanted to arrive in Munich - or München, in German - well rested. The compartment was very cramped. Three beds were stacked on top of each other on both sides, with a narrow aisle in between. We had the two top bunks, and we climbed up and went to sleep. 

We weren't going through Croatia this time, so we figured we would be safe from passport checks. What we didn't figure into the equation was the possibility of inconsiderate neighbors. Somewhere around 2 in the morning, a couple came into our compartment with their two toddlers. The toddlers immediately began bawling, which woke us up. Now, even on a good day I'm known for my low tolerance of crying children. So the fact that they were keeping me up only worsened it. 

The children cried every two hours or so. I turned my music on every time this happened so that it blocked out most of it. (This had the additional bonus of alerting the parents to the fact that their kids were constantly waking me up.) I didn't end up giving the parents a piece of my mind, but it was a close thing. 

Someone came around and handed out packaged croissants and orange juice. I guess paying more has its benefits. 

We arrived in Mümchen around 7 in the morning. The hostel was close to the train station, so we walked there and checked in. We took advantage of the free wifi for an hour or so - and then some builders came in and knocked down a wall to start construction on a new elevator. That was the last we saw of the wifi. :|

The breakfast was 4€ extra but all-you-can-eat and very good. Seeing as this was our cheapest hostel yet (for 10 euro a night) I wasn't surprised we had to pay. 

Our room wouldn't be ready until 2 so we set out to explore the city. The metro system was a bit confusing at first - they crammed the many train lines, along with the tram and bus lines, onto one map. We finally figured it out, though. Turns out there are two types of train: the S-Bahn (goes out to the suburbs) and the U-Bahn (stays within the city). Or maybe vice-versa. Idk. But at any given U- or S-Bahn station, as many as 9 or 10 types of train could come through, all leading different places. Luckily they had electronic boards denoting which trains arrive when and go where. 

We went to Marienplatz, the main square of München. The bells were tolling 11 - but it was an odd tuneless melody they were playing. Apparently that bell tower is famous. 

A guy came up to us when we walked into the tourism office and said, "Hey! I didn't expect to find you guys here." I recognized his face immediately but couldn't place it until he introduced himself as Morgan. We had met him on a bus back in Buc (near Versailes) and had chatted for a bit. At that time, we hadn't even gotten his name and had never expected to see him again. Well, we were wrong! Guess it really is a small world.

After laughing a bit about how infinitesimally small the chances of such a coincidental second meeting were, we decided to see some of the sights together. 

Climbing up a nearby tower gave us some cool views of the city. München was leveled during the war, so most of it is fairly new. We walked around for a while and encountered some German primary schoolgirls twice - they were doing a project and needed foreigners or something. The first time they wanted a picture with us, and the second time they wanted us to trade something we had for something they had (like geocaching without the work). I traded a New York pen for a beautifully painted egg.

We got brezels at a nearby shop. Brezels are German baked pretzels that are bready, delicious, and large. Then we took a U-Bahn to the site of the 1980-something Summer Olympic Games. It was cool to see all of the stadiums and such - the pool had actually been converted for use by the public. 

After chasing geese around the lake - which had a car floating in it as an advertisement - we climbed a nearby hill and got another great view of the city. All in all, it was a fantastic day! (Except for the fact that I lost the egg. Morgan had been protecting it in his glasses case and I forgot to get it back. Oh well.)

The next day, we decided to go swimming. Remember that Olympic pool? Yeah, we spent most of the afternoon in it. David taught me how to dive, since strangely, I had never really learned how. And we got to jump off of the high dive! The one we went off was probably 20 feet in the air - and the highest platform was twice that. American pools would never have allowed unsupervised use of the high dive like that, so we enjoyed the freedom. It's a longer way down than it looks!

The next day, our last in München, was somewhat pointless. The city hadn't been worth 3 days, and we ended up wandering around for a bit before returning to the shop we had visited the other day. German meats are very good - they have currywurst and bratwurst and thick slices of some kind of a ham loaf and burger-things...it was delicious! We spent a lot of time in the Apple Store that day just to kill time until our night train. :P

When we went back to the hostel to collect our things, I realized I had left my charging cables in the room when we checked out. After some frantic searching, we decided the cleaning staff probably took them, so I left a request to take a look around with the reception. (It's been a week and I've had no response. Ugh.) David also left his Florence hat. 

The first train seemed uneventful. It left at 23:40 and was only 2 hours long, which meant that if we got a stickler of a conductor he could make us use two travel days. (Don't ask; we've been using an obscure loophole on our Eurails and this didn't quite fit.) Luckily nobody checked at all. But most of the way in, the train stopped for about a half hour. We looked out and saw nothing but snow, which was surprising. Eventually, I found a conductor (the nearest one was 7 cars away) and found out that another train was blocking our way and we were going to be very late. We had a connection to catch, though, and if we didn't make it, we'd be stranded in Austria at 2 in the morning. 

Our train rolled into Salzburg 10 minutes late, and we saw that our train was surprisingly still there. Haste was made and we boarded without a problem. We made the compartment into a bed like we did on the way to Venice (although this time we had to share it with a Chinese guy which was weird) and had a decent sleep. After another connection in Zurich, we made it to Lausanne, Switzerland!

We're in Prague now, and I'll write another post for here and Switzerland soon, since the combined post would be too long.

Thanks for reading - please keep commenting! We love to hear from our readers.

< Derek >

Monday, November 1, 2010

Why Choose a Gap Year? [Derek]

We've been admittedly lax about updating the blog lately. I'm planning to post a combined update tomorrow (as long as David writes his section) but for now, here's a post I wrote for the Olin blog about gap years in general.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This post will tackle the basics of a gap year. Mainly: Why defer?

I never chose to take a year off. It just...grew on me. Let me explain.

I grew up used to a fast pace of life in a small town in Connecticut. In New England, you know exactly what's expected of you: you try your hardest in school, perform well in sports, join extracurriculars, take up leadership positions, and basically do everything required to get you into a good school. I've heard it's the same to varying degrees in other parts of America as well. But New England is notorious for these expectations placed on students. I certainly conformed to many of them, and so taking a year off never even crossed my mind. It's just not something that's done. People either go straight to college, join the Armed Forces, or find a job.

I was accepted to one of the Candidate's Weekends at Olin but got waitlisted after that. The bad news came in: the Class of 2014 couldn't accept any students on the waitlist. At the time, it seemed like the end of the world for me. Sure, I had other options - I could attend Harvey Mudd or WPI - but I wanted to go to Olin more than any other school.

My only remaining option was to defer. It was a terribly hard decision for me, since I could only see the negatives. (I'm not usually this pessimistic.) I'd be the only person from my town taking a year off. I would be a year behind my friends in school, and I wouldn't get to go to college until the following year. I had some idea of what I would do during that year, but what if it fell through? Would I be working 9-5 at a retail store for the whole year? There were too many questions and not enough answers.

Eventually, I decided to take a chance and choose deferral. Sometimes, the hardest - and least popular - option is the best one, as I've been finding out. I already know that I absolutely made the right choice. As I progress into my gap year, I've been seeing more of the positives and much, much less of the negatives.

Here are some benefits of taking a gap year:

- High school drains you with the stressful workload and aforementioned fast pace of life. A break between high school and college can do you wonders.

- Did you know that in England, it's more uncommon for a student to not take a gap year? Parents encourage their kids to take time off and see a bit of the world before they go to "Uni".

- Sure, your friends will be a year ahead of you in school (I've been hearing from mine about their lives at college) but so what? You'll get there eventually. And you'll be having adventures of your own.

- Depending on how you choose to spend your year, you'll likely arrive at college with significantly more real-world experience than your peers. Who else can say they've attended a party deep within the catacombs under Paris? (I have.)

- You'll be able to do things you'd never have a chance to do otherwise. Travel Europe. Hike from Georgia up to Maine on the Appalachian Trail. Learn to speak fluent Hungarian. Everyone has a dream - take a year to follow yours.

- A gap year is a chance to see the world. You can broaden your horizons immensely, which is a particularly useful trait for an engineer. One of the more practical aspects is that you'll be able to see what people have a need for in other parts of the globe.

- It's just plain fun. While this may not be useful in convincing one's parents, I've been having a blast so far.

At some point, prospective students may stumble upon this post. If you're one of them, I have some advice for you:

I recommend a gap year to anyone willing to make that leap of faith, even though the concept is not popular in America. Deferring takes a lot of planning and firm intentions (which will be covered in subsequent posts) but most of all, you have to be willing to go against the grain. The choice is yours - but I assure you that the opportunity is a worthwhile one.
Feel free to comment with any questions!

I'll end this post with a favorite quote of mine. Just something to think about.

< Derek >

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 ~ Robert Frost