Tag: travel

  • beignets at Cafe Dumond

    Despite having been to New Orleans at least twice before, neither Debi or I had ever had a beignet.  So, we made a special trip to Cafe Dumond before driving back to Tampa to pick up some beignets.  Toren and Debi loved them: Me?  I thought they were okay, but a little too sugary for…

  • the Audobon Zoo

    We took Toren to the zoo while we were there.  It’s a nice zoo; very large.  But Toren didn’t seem extremely interested, though it could have been lack of sleep. He did get his picture taken with the Buddha: To entertain Toren on the ride up we put Star Wars – The Clone Wars on…

  • dinner and a movie

    While we did spend a fair amount of time at the conference, we also found time to sneak out with Toren to see some of New Orleans.  We caught a movie at the aquarium… Well, Debi and I did.  Toren was so exhausted from not taking a nap that he fell asleep about 5 minutes…

  • beach in Sandestin

    In early April Debi and I had a conference in New Orleans where we presenting a poster with one of my students.  Since both of us were going, we decided it would be easiest to rent a car and drive to take Toren with us.  To break up the drive, which is about 11 hours,…

  • Oklahoma City Memorial

    In March I traveled with a group of students to Oklahoma to volunteer during spring break.  On the last day the volunteer trips typically include an excursion.  While we were volunteering with the Cherokee Nation, which is closer to Tulsa, we decided to use our excursion day to travel to Oklahoma City to see the…

  • UAE Trip – Day 11

    I probably don’t need to include this day in the trip report, but I’m going to use it to reflect a little bit, so I’ll include it. As noted in my last post, my flight from Dubai left at 1:30 am on the 14th, arriving in Frankfurt around 5:30am.  I had a 7 hour layover…

  • UAE Trip – Day 10

    We had just one CIEE related activity this day – a farewell brunch at 2:00 pm.  With the entire morning to kill, K. and I decided to go for a walk.  We first headed southwest to Safa Park, which is one of the bigger parks in Dubai.  It’s quite beautiful, but it’s not free.  It…

  • UAE Trip – Day 9

    We were back at AUS this day for another lecture.  This time it was Dr. O. Ishaq Tijani on gender and culture in the gulf from a literary perspective.  Also present was Basima Muhammad Yunus, an Emirati writer.  They talked about female oppression and how women authors in the Gulf use their stories to challenge that…

  • UAE Trip – Day 8

    We had a full day guided tour by Dr. Samia Rab to Ras Al Khaima, one of the less affluent Emirates, and to Sharjah.  I shot another photo as we headed to AUS to pick up Dr. Rab that does a pretty good job of illustrating what it feels like to drive through Dubai: The…

  • UAE Trip – Day 7

    This day started with another trip out to the American University of Sharjah.  While I typically sat in the back of the van, I requested to sit in the front this day so I could get a clearer picture of the traffic (bad drivers, but not as bad as I thought) and so I could…