ANGELA B. PAN

When visiting a new country, I always try to learn as much as I can about the food, people and language. It’s the best way to totally immerse yourself into your new surroundings. In Iceland, it was a little difficult to learn the language. First off, everyone speaks english. Really good english too! So being able to listen to the Icelandic language was really limited to just locals in a restaurant or people talking quietly amongst themselves. But I did manage to learn a few words. “Foss” means waterfall. So if you notice all the waterfalls in Iceland end with the term “Foss”. This image was taken at Skógafoss which is in a small town called Skógar. You add foss to the end of it, you have the Skógafoss! Pretty cool huh? Another important word to know is “Kaka” which means cake! Who doesn’t love cake right? So if you wanted to say chocolate cake, you would say “súkkulaðikaka”.

Now that we’re talking about food, the food was great. Expensive but the overall delicious. I don’t think we had one bad meal. I ate a lot of smoked salmon, at least once a day. There aren’t very many vegetable dishes. It’s all very meat/seafood oriented and to our surprise, a lot of pizza. I’m not sure if that was just a tourist thing but almost every restaurant we went to had a lot of pizza options. We noted one day that the pepperoni pizza was cheaper than the vegetarian pizza.

The people are very nice as well. Super helpful when you have a million and one questions about travel. Even when they knew you were a tourist, they didn’t look at you funny or treat you differently which was much appreciated. However, I did notice that a lot of them weren’t originally from Iceland. Many were from different parts of Europe that just fell in love with the country. I can totally see why minus all the cold temperatures.

Last week I met up with a few friends to shoot the sunset. I was so glad they were down for anything because it started to pour! Like every inch of my body was wet from the rain. And of course, I didn’t bring an umbrella or any kind of protective gear. But it was still a blast! We spent half the time taking shelter in the Lincoln Memorial and with a quick break in the rain, I was able to capture this crazy sky.

There are so many great things about Tokyo. The ease of navigating the city, the amazing food, the night life; they all are fantastic. But my favorite part was definietly the people. The people of Tokyo are the nicest, friendliest, most respectful people I’ve ever met. From all the greetings, endless smiles and countless bows, there is a level of immediate respect given to EVERYONE in the country. And with the millions and millions of people living here, you can definietly see this in how clean and orderly the city is. I loved it.

This is definietly the first of many images I took while in Japan. I thought this was a cool intro to the city. Don’t worry, much more to come in the following days 🙂

Don’t you feel so small? Like the world is so big and theres so much going around you but you’re just this teeny tiny person trying to make it in the world. That’s what I feel like when I look at this image. And to add some additional perspective, see if you can find the couple amongst the trees.

Last full day on the lake and I’ve been trying my hardest to stand up on the wake board. Somehow I always get up a little and always loose my grip.

Update: I got up!! I just had to change my grip and it was so much easier. Before I had one hand up and one hand down. Now I hold the bar with both hands going in the same direction and I was able to ride.

The lines for Notre Dame are crazy long. It basically came down to choosing between going on top or going inside. I chose to go up top because I thought it would allow for cool perspectives. It’s funny how all these people look so small.