I'm Still a Student!

It's 6AM Eastern Standard time. For someone who has trouble with morning, I'm up REALLY early. I need to get a little less excited about this trip so I can get a full night's sleep every once in a while.

I took some time last night to work on my trip because I hadn't in a while. I visited Maurene at Baker Travel and she gave me some homework, then I met up with an experienced world traveler (Dave) and he gave me some great ideas - then I realized that some of the great advice he gave me was the same advice that Marisa emailed she sent me back on May 12.

Both Dave and Marisa suggested I go visit Hostel International:
http://www.hihostels.com/
I haven't booked anything there yet, but it's a great site.

Both Dave and Marisa suggested I get a student card. I thought I was too old and too "graduated", but I'm not. To get the international student exchange identification (ISE) card from:
http://www.isecard.com/myisecard/index.html
To get one of these cards, you need to prove that you are a student or WERE A STUDENT DURING THE PRIOR ACADEMIC YEAR! That's me. The card costs $25 USD and I need to provide them with a copy of my student ID, which is a piece o cake since I'm still using it for my post-doc lab access. With this card can get up to 50% discounts on travel, lodging, food and even passes to some cool site seeing locations throughout the world. Most importantly, I can now get the Youth fairs on Eurail/Britrail. I'm considering a Britrail Flexipass and a Greece-Italy Eurail Pass. According to the ISE website, I can get some extra discounts some stuff if I purchase passes before June 30 - need to look into that more. I should be getting my ISE card in about 10 days or so.

According the ISE site, the student card also gives me a 25% discount on Turkish Air, which is awesome because Maurene and I were trying to figure out the best way for me to get from Bodrum Turkey to London in time for my flight to Sydney on August 10 - and we found a flight that cost $463 on Turkish Air. If I can get 25% off with my ISE card, that's a significant chunk of change. That ticket is on hold until June 3.

Interesting facts for anyone who's not a student: You can also get an ISE pass if you are a youth under the age of 26 OR a faculty/teacher member of an educational institution and under the age of 65.

I'm so glad I know so many smart people. I'm happy now and a little less worried about money.

On a side note, I DID graduate on May 18, 2008 in the 152nd Commencement Ceremony at Tufts. I was one of 13 doctoral students (10 men, 3.5 women - one woman was pregnant and 2 weeks away from her due date hence the extra 0.5) to graduate from the school of Engineering and the only female (of 3 students) from the department of Mechanical Engineering.

Here are a few pictures from that day:

Degree Presentation from people in Funny Costumes

The Brother and the Hood

Proud Parents and the Grad

Aunt, Uncle and the Grad