A Lovely Evening
The world is a beautiful place. We must keep exploring. We must not forget our ambitions. We must travel to new places.
All, Please join me in wishing Mr. Ryan Snyder a Happy 28th Birthday! We certainly aren't getting any younger are we. I am sure as many of you read this, you laugh and say "you are still just kids". Without Ryan there is no way the trip would have ever happened. I...
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So I took a lot of pictures in Ireland. Not to many of people but mostly of the countryside. I doubt I need to tell you that it has much to offer to the human eye. It was beautiful and it portrayed so many shades of green. As many of...
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Jamie Curcio's birthday is June 11 and this year we happened to be in volunteering in Uganda right around that time. Being so far away from home on a special day must be hard, so I decided to talk with Moses (our project leader) about the predicament. Now...
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First of all, let me assure that no pigs were harmed in the making of these videos. We were volunteering in Uganda and living with the Owinos and their pigs, goats and chickens. Part of the day-to-day tasks was to collect the baby piglets and put them in the pigpen. ...
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I did a little video-log of our climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro....when I was feeling up to it. I think they do a good job of showing the struggle, the high and the lows, of our trek up Kilimanjaro. Like how, in the first video, Eric and I are...
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She doesn't need much of an introduction. Let me tell you though a little about how and where we met this amazing young artist. We were in Kolkata doing our work with the Missions of Charity and we were staying at a place called the Modern Lodge Guest House. We...
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As may or may not know, we went on a 2 day camel trek in the western deserts of India. We were about 30 miles from the border of Pakistan and just outside the town of Jaisalmer in India. I believe it was a cool 45 degrees Celsius,...
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So during our trip to China, we heard about this sacred mountain called Mt. Hua just a few hours outside the city Xi'an. This is a very sacred and steep mountain with thousands of ancient steps carved into the rock. Me, Jamie, Koye and Liesel spent a day...
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After our recharge in Greece we were anxious to get off the Euro. By now our wallets were black and blue from the beating provided by the Western European countries, both in the loss in the exchange rate and the lack of value in what the Euro bought us. So...
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Its 10 AM. You've just started a six hour hike and there are a million things on the mind. Apparently it’s time to stat facing some realities back at home. The thoughts race through the head from one to the next as you try to figure out how and what...
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Now I've had a good time or two in my life, but I have never seen a bigger celebration than I did in Pamplona. People were literally drinking, dancing, and singing in the streets. The number of people having a good time per square meter was staggering. The whole city...
Read MoreSo I wanted to post another video. This video, again, may or may not be funny to you...and that is okay. My purpose of posting this video is to give you a glimpse of what some of our daily interactions where like. Sometimes, we had a pretty...
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Ahhhhhhhhh, yes, finally.... here we are. Shacked up on a black sand beach in Santorini, Greece. Life couldn't be any better. Relaxation is the best medicine...and now we've got six days of it. I would first and foremost like to thank my Sister Monica, my brother-in-law Chad and our good...
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Now Italy is a place of rich history, rich culture and even better food. Come on, my favorite food in the entire world is Italian food! Now with all that going for it, you would think Italy would offer an incredible travel expeience, but my experience in Italy this...
Read MoreOkay I have a bunch of random videos from our trip that I am going to try and upload. Some are better than others...but I was hoping to give you glimpse of what we were doing through video. The Great Wall of China was definitely one of my...
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I am sitting here reading and writing surrounded by the most magnificent mountains, watching a hundred waterfalls cascade out of melting glaciers. Every once-in-a-while, I stop and try to count the amount of waterfalls but everytime I lose count. Occasionally I hear a fighter pilot practicing maneuvers somewhere...
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This is kinda funny. A little change of pace..... I AM A SPANIARD, yes I am: I AM ITALIAN, yes I am: I AM A CAVEMAN, yes I am: I AM EGYPTIAN, yes I am: I AM A MOUNTAIN MAN, yes I am: I AM A MUSLIM, yes I am: I AM AN AMERICAN, yes I am: I...
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“For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.” "Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us." - Socrates "Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all...
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Pop Quiz: It's approximately 264 miles from Jerusalem to Cairo. If we left Jerusalem at 6:30 AM, what time did we arrive in Cairo? Answer - 12:30 AM (the next day) or 18 hours later. Last time we took a bus 264 miles I'm pretty sure it didn't take us 18 hours. You...
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So in light of my, sometimes, crude humor I thought it would be funny to make a post of some of the toilets I have used on this trip. To date I have seen some pretty interesting lavatories, many of which I never thought I would use. I...
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Alsalam alaykum! I have found it to be a little challenging to travel between the countries here. I think it is partially the result of us not allowing as much time to properly travel this region...we tried to pack 10 lbs of stuff here in a 5 lbs...
Read MoreYou may not think this short video is funny but I think it is hilarious. Koye is in the background still trying to get people to come to the concert at Sea and Sun Ministries. Enjoy. Neno is in the thumbnail.
They are not unhappy! They are just giving their undivided attention! As many of you know, we dedicated three weeks of our lives to volunteering to at a rural primary school in Uganda. As many of you also know, it didn’t take long for us to fall in love with the...
Read MoreWe rafted the Nile with Eric Reitze and Ryan Miller. It was awesome! (the video above is not of us - we couldn't afford to buy the video but we did the same thing) ...
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Hello Everyone. I hope this post finds you all grand and well back home. We continue to be well also. Today was spent doing some on-line housekeeping (pay bills, write emails, work on blog, etc) as we are now down to our last hours in Uganda. We have been here...
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Our trek up Kilimanjaro began with the chips stacked against us. Somehow we managed to lose 3 bags in transit on 2 different flights into Kilimanjaro within 36 hours. We were fortunate to regain our two travel backpacks before the trek. We were grateful that Eric Reitze...
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"By dignity, I mean the high place attained only when the heart and mind are lifted, equally at once, by the creative union of perception and grace" - James Thurber “When all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am...
Read MoreThe video above is a video of Koye at Sea and Sun Ministries in the Philippines. This is a good example of one of the many things that impressed us so much about Koye on this trip. He never held anything back, he jumped into everything 100%. The local youth of...
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I guess India is 'unputdownable', at least that was what I was told by so many things in Kolkata. Now I don't think that is even a real English word but the good people of Kolkata do and, I guess, that's all that matters. It is funny, everything...
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Hey Everyone, A lot of people have been asking about the camel trek and how our time in Jaisalmer was. The best way to paint a picture of what it was like is through photos, right? Below are a few from our journey through and around the desert. ENJOY, Jamie
If there was an American Gladiator show about traveling, New Delhi would be the gauntlet. Delhi was the first place where Jamie and I made some travel mistakes...trusted the wrong people and paid for it. It ended up being a minor slip and we escaped it with minimal...
Read MoreA video from one of our morning walks in Kolkata. This shows us walking through a small part of the Kolkata Slums to Prem Don. Prem Don is where we did our morning volunteer session.
So it turns out that Kolkata had quite the effect on both of us. Are you surprised? It had such in effect in fact that we both wrote a post trying to describe it. I wrote this a few weeks back and since I wrote it I didn't want to...
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Jamie here - So if you ever need to mail something from India here are the steps you will need to take or at least these are the steps we took. Bare with me here, these steps get progressivly more entertaining. Enjoy and don't forget to take notes. Step 1 - Get...
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NAMASTE, Ryan checking in. Kolkata is the type of place that kicks you in the balls and slaps you in the face upon arrival, then gives you a big bear hug and tells you it was for your good and you walk away grateful. We are starting to notice a...
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Hello Everyone ...... James here. How are you? I finally have some photos to share with you. My only excuse for not writing in so long is that it continues to take awhile to upload photos and now that we are in India the process is even slower. I know I know, not...
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Hello friends! Hope everyone is well! Koye here and I thought I would share some of the different foods that we had the pleasure / experience of eating. We made it a point to dive into the local eateries, while still being mindful of what we ate. The theory of,...
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Ryan here - I don't know where to even start, when was my last post (more about that later)? We have spent the last 20 something days in Malaysia and Thailand. As far as Malaysia is concerned, we pretty much just flew into Kuala Lumpur stayed for about 24...
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How could you not love a place where basketball is the national sport? My heaven would lie somewhere in between a wierd mixture of Camiguin Island and Colorado. This place is breathtakingly beautiful. I am starting to learn that, more than anything, the people are what...
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GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!! Ryan here.... I am enjoying Vietnam. The food is good. The people are very friendly and they smile alot. The country is so green and beautiful....AND...I am finally wearing shorts on daily basis. I am still pale and in need of sun in...
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Hello Again From Vietnam...... Jamie Here.. It is with great regret that I fill you in on some tragic news.... OK....OK.... its not that tragic (Mom, calm down). Unfortunately though, all of my photos and videos that I have taken thus far on the trip were accidentally erased from my Camera....
Read MoreUntitled from Ryan Snyder on Vimeo.
I am trying to upload a video. However, I cannot even play the video on my ever-so-slow computer in Vietnam. I am just going to throw it up here and hope it works. I also hope it is PG...just kidding...no seriously. Mom, you know it never gets...
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My name is Ryan and I love democracy.... We are out of China now and in Vietnam, where we can freely access any website we want (even though Facebook is still spotty in Vietnam), a luxury I guess I took for granted while living in the US. Don't get me...
Read MoreI wanted to drop a quick post in to start letting people know how we are operating. We are hoping that one day in the future people will look onto this page to get some tips on traveling around the world. With that being said, I wanted to quickly cover...
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We have met some amazing people in China. In Beijing we met some really interesting Chinese people. This is Xin Yang: We also met some great people climbing the Great Wall of China, particularly some American people named Kristen and Tommy. It is funny you actually meet...
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Hello from Vietnam, Signing on for a quick shout out, one that is FAR past due... If you weren't aware, the three of us were fortunate enough to meet up with a local Japanese friend while we were in Japan. We felt it was appropriate to give her a little thank you on nostenostory due to her generosity...
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I have received some questions on what the Ozzy stickers are all about? Well one of our really good friends, Ryan Scheer, started a film company called Lucky Rabbit Films. With Ryan Scheer a few of our other really good friends are working to expand the company...
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Ryan here - just wanted to log on and say hi from China. I cannot believe that I am here. China is a very different place...but I am loving it. It has the mysterious, ancient ora to it. When we first arrived, I was feeling uneasy because the...
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Hello everyone... We hope this post finds everyone well and happy back home. Just a quick update for you. We are currently in Beijing China. We saw the Forbidden City on Wednesday and hiked the great wall yesterday. Both were very cool and different. We all agree that the Great Wall was one of the...
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My name is Ryan and I approved this message. We are nearing the end of our time in Japan. I have spent a lot of time in Japan just trying to adjust to my new life. It is has been crazy to think I am going to be on...
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Since our photo link is not yet fully functional I thought I would give you a few pictures as well.... JC
Hello All, Jamie here signing on to write a few quick thoughts..... I have always loved Japan and the Japanese culture. I loved it prior to coming here three years ago, I loved it after and I love it still. I will however admit that I had forgotten a lot about what the...
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Ryan here again getting ready to leave on Sunday and super stressed out. Anyway, I wanted to share this with you.... my sister gave me this poem the other day. I thought it was pretty cool - Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there...
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So many of you may be wondering what is "No Step...No Story" and where did it come from? Well, a few months back when Koye, Jamie and I were planning this trip, I was struggling with the reasons I was going to such great lengths to try accomplish all...
Read MoreWelp.....here I am. Patiently waiting but enjoying myself. Pulling the trigger on last minute trip details. Eating good food. Riding my bike around the amazing San Fran. I must say that I already feel inspired and the trip hasn't even started. I guess it doesn't take much huh. It really...
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Special Thanks to Jim Walters as he was an integral part of the planning and execution of this trip! Jim Walters is the Senior Pastor at Bear Valley Church in Lakewood, CO. I have grown up listening to Jim preach and he has had a huge impact on my life....
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This is my first attempt at blogging so please bear with me. I set up this blog to chronicle my round-the-world trip with two of my best friends, Jamie Curcio and Koye Carlstrom. I hope you enjoy!