Hello!

In South Korea, that means "nice to see you." That's why South Korea wins my award for OVERALL BEST OF THE TWO KOREAS. (It also wins the award for BRIGHTEST KOREA AS SEEN FROM OUTER SPACE.)

This week, about 15 to 20 South Korean journalists came to The Daily Collegian -- and instead of trying to blow us up with nuclear missiles, like their northern counterparts, they were trying to learn about freedom of the press. And where better to go to learn about freedom of the press than a college newspaper in the middle of Pennsylvania?

So rather than travel anywhere this week, I sat back and let a group of people travel to me. And now:

THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT SOUTH KOREAN JOURNALISTS THIS WEEK

Note: All observations are merely observations about this particular group of South Korean journalists and are not meant to reflect on South Korean journalists as a whole.

• South Korean journalists like to take photos. Of everything. As soon as we started talking, cameras came out.



• South Korean journalists do not respect personal space. They were getting all up in our business, reading over our shoulders and the like.
• South Korean journalists like Starbucks. A few of them brought a whole bunch of Starbucks coffees into our meeting and distributed them to each other, which is cool, but they interrupted our meeting and didn't give any coffee to us. And in America, whenever you bring someone coffee, you should make sure you have enough for everyone.



• South Korean journalists do not have to work. They can apparently take really long breaks where they go on tours of college newspapers in America and don't do anything.
• South Korean journalists treat us like professionals and ask why we do not get paid, a question we ask ourselves every day.

Photos by Alaina

If there's one thing I've learned from living in Centre County for three years, it's that you just can't get enough Bellefonte.

If it's not the duck pond, it's the train station. And if it's not the train station, it's the old timey shops. And if it's not the old timey shops, it's the Dairy Queen.

Actually, it's probably just the Dairy Queen. Cookie dough and M&M blizzards are delicious.

So for this week's travel, I ventured back to Bellefonte.

For a ride on a train!

An old-timey train!

The general idea of this trip was to take an olde-fashioned train ride to Pleasant Gap and admire the fall foliage. Because the best way to admire foliage is by rail. Rail that could easily have said foliage fall onto it and cause a train to come off its track and run into a duck pond.

When we boarded the train it was almost completely full, so we were forced to sit in the staff car. The staff car was actually nicer than the regular train cars, so that was cool.

Our guide, whose voice came over some loudspeakers, said that he owned "half of this train." He and whoever owns the other half of the train make a living by moving people who want to say that they've ridden a train once in their life a very, very short distance and then reversing the train and bringing them back.

The train took us past some people's backyards and some old factories. It was quite the historic journey. But really, I was more interested by what was inside the train:

Pepsi and Pete: The Pepsi-Cola cops.

"You're under arrest... for being refreshing and delicious!"

"Guilty as charged, officer!"

YACKITY SHMACKITY DOO*

Don't you feel a whole lot safer on the train? Not when this guy who looks like Viktor Yushchenko is a passenger. How do I know someone won't try to poison me?

Who calls it refuse? Honestly. My grandma doesn't even call it refuse.

Speaking of which, some of the old train guys were offering Twizzlers to the kids. But when they offered them, they said, "Want a piece of licorice?" That's like me offering someone a Kleenex and saying, "Want a hand tissue?" Seriously.

When we got to Pleasant Gap, something terrifying happened: A HOBO ATTEMPTED TO BOARD THE TRAIN!

Yes, this dude was dressed up as a hobo. He elicited much laughter from the people on the train. The guide said that we would let him on but would turn him over to the police when we got back. Personally, I felt that the whole bit was an insult to real hobos everywhere. I'm going to personally write a strongly-worded letter on behalf of the united hobos of the world.

When we got back to Bellefonte, we learned that someone was selling books about the Bellefonte train. A selling point:

Really? "Signed" by the "author"? "Wow!" I'm so "excited" to buy this book!

On the way back home, we ran into some Imperial forces:

So, in conclusion, Bellefonte is pretty much the dorkiest place in the world.

Oh, what a fun week I just had in Boston. Since I didn't have time to do a new travel this week and because I have a bunch of photos and things I didn't tell you about, please enjoy some more fun from the blog's first trip outside of Pennsylvania.

The Pittsburgh International Airport

This is the shuttle that takes you from the metal detectors to the concourses. The airport has a special place in my heart because when I was a kid, my family used the airport as our mall. (This was back before Sept. 11, when they let anyone get over to the concourse area without boarding passes.) My sister and I used to have a fun time playing on the moving walkways, and we memorized the recorded shuttle speech so that we could say it along:

"This shuttle is departing for concourses A, B, C and D. Please hold on."

When I tried to recite the shuttle speech, however, I found myself running into that situation when you think you know the words to a song except obviously you don't because the song goes in one direction and you go in another.

It was awkward.

Washington, D.C.

So my flight got canceled and I was re-routed through Washington, D.C., which is in the opposite direction from Boston. Luckily, this gave me the chance to see two D.C. landmarks: the capitol and the Washington monument. In case you're wondering which is which in the photos above, here are some literary references for you:

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK:

"when I lie in bed at night, I have a terrible desire to feel my [CAPITOL BUILDING] and to listen to the quiet rhythmic beat of my heart"

THE MALE, FROM INFANCY TO OLD AGE:
"A patient I treated recently first noted a small, hardened plaque underneath the skin of his [WASHINGTON MONUMENT] in 1973."

The Hotel

The Park hotel was a hotel of contradictions. Whereas the Days Inn had a mini fridge and one bathroom per room, this hotel had no mini fridges but two bathrooms per room. The hotel was obviously centered around professional business conferences but there was no wireless Internet access in the rooms. Still, it was pretty nice overall.

Across the way -- totally legal seafood. Totally legal, totally legit. I swear.

The Christian Science Monitor

I don't have any photos because I'm dumb.

At the Christian Science Monitor, there is a fountain. But this isn't an ordinary fountain.

Computer-generated words are projected from the ceiling onto this fountain.

The words appear to swirl around in the middle of the fountain, until they spill over the edges and onto the floor.

Once on the floor, they swim over to one of several screens hanging on a wall -- and once there, merge together to form inspirational quotes from famous people.

Seeing as how Christian Scientists have a thing against using drugs, it makes sense that they'd have to get their kicks from somewhere.

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe was sweet. They had an escalator and a cafeteria, plus a table full of free crap like books and CDs that people send to them to try to get reviews. The people there were all really nice too. We got to sit in on the morning meeting where the top editors find out what the staffs are working on, and it was fun to see them all interacting and making fun of Jupiter for being such a hilarious planet.

This is the first front page the Boston Globe ever produced. Sometimes I wish we could go back to this. (If you saw the front page of Wednesday's Collegian, you might think we already have.)

The Interns

These guys were awesome. They knew their stuff (obviously, since five of them ranked above me in the competition). I would love to work with any of them in the future.

The Institute for Contemporary Art

Kristin Lenz took us here before our interviews to inspire us. There was an awesome exhibit on modern design there, and a sweet computer lab that overlooked the harbor. Too bad none of us could enjoy it because we were all so nervous.

One of the newer T stops in Boston, we went here on the way to the ICA. Recently they built a line known as the "silver line," but because they were too lazy to lay down an actual T track, it's just a bus that drives around. It's quite cute.

This was on a courthouse that we passed to and from the ICA. I found the quote more than a bit creepy.

Boston Common

Every city has its park; this is Boston's. Every city has some weirdo in period costume; this is Boston's.

One day I was walking through the common with my iPod headphones in, my signal that I do not want to talk to anyone, when some guy flagged me down. I went over to him and popped out one of the earbuds.

"Free stress test!" he offered, pointing to a table.

I gave him a sideways look. "I know how stressed I am, man," I said, walking away.

"At least take this," he said, handing me the following flier:

...which had boxes that said, YES, I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY!

That's right. Scientologists tried to recruit me in Boston.

Harvard

I'm not gonna lie. Harvard was awesome. Just check out these photos:

DUNKIN' DONUTS, MAN. Even Harvard geniuses eat them!

This awesome plaque was in one of their libraries:

However, I was put off by the fact that you needed a Harvard ID to get into the library. Just because I can't afford your outrageous tuition and I'm not academically gifted doesn't mean I shouldn't get to open your priceless books to random pages and lick them.

The statue of one lie that's more of a poor choice of language.

Hi everyone. I'm at the Logan International Airport.

There was this really irate security dude who was complaining to me about how no one follows the directions, forcing everyone else to wait longer while he sorts out what they did wrong. What he fails to realize, I guess, is that it is difficult to keep track of the bazillion directions when they're being belted off to you in random order by some woman standing inside of the metal detector.

Having learned from my earlier experience at Pittsburgh where I was frisked because I had neglected to remove my belt before going through the metal detector, I thought that I was being very security-savvy by plopping my belt and all of my electronic equipment in the bins. I anxiously watched my bin being carried on the conveyor belt, and the irate security guy yelled,

"WHOSE LAPTOP IS THIS?"

I raised my hand.

"WHAT ARE THE RULES? LAPTOP GOES BY ITSELF IN ITS OWN BIN. YOU'RE NOT ONLY WASTING MY TIME BUT YOU'RE WASTING THE TIME OF EVERYONE BEHIND YOU."

All that went through my mind was: "cannot say anything, will go to jail, cannot say anything, will go to jail..." So irate security guy, if by any chance you're reading this right now, I have a three-word response that will only take a second to read: **** you, buddy.

I hadn't been on an airplane in about four years before this trip, and I really hope that it's much longer than that before my next airplane ride. If hell exists, it is an airport.

So today I went to Harvard University. Here are some facts that you may or may not know about Harvard:

1. Harvard University is ranked as #1 "Toughest to Get Into" school on the Princeton Review. However, it's only #7 on "Best College Newspaper," a list that ranks the Collegian at #10.
2. There is a statue at Harvard known as "THE STATUE OF THREE LIES."

   The statue features a man sitting in a chair and is labeled as such: "John Harvard, Founder, 1638." What are the three lies? Well, according to a tour guide I overheard, they are:
   

   
   
   • Harvard was founded in 1636, not 1638. Ouch!
   
   
   • John Harvard was not the "founder" of Harvard, only a benefactor.
   
   
   • The person the statue was modeled after was not John Harvard, but actually a random undergraduate student, because all existing likenesses of John Harvard had been destroyed.
   
   

   I take issue with this for these reasons:
   

   
   
   • The inscription, "John Harvard, Founder, 1638," really only means that this is a depiction of John Harvard sitting in a chair in the year 1638, not that Harvard was founded by this guy while he was sitting in a chair in 1638. So that knocks this down to two lies.
   
   
   • With regards to the third lie, obviously Harvard students leave no room for artistic license in their statues.
   
   
   
   So really, this should be called "The statue of one lie," and that lie is more of a poor choice in language, so maybe it should just be called, "The statue that perhaps could have been thought out better before it was placed smack dab in the middle of frickin' Harvard."
3. Harvard even smells pretentious.

But while I was at Harvard I got an awesome Harvard T-Shirt that I'm going to wear tomorrow so I can be "that guy" at Penn State. My goal is to project the message: "Yeah, I could have gone to Harvard if I wanted, but I didn't, because my GPA and SAT scores were laughable."

Coming home tomorrow!

I'm sitting here in the Imperial Ballroom at the hotel. Our groups are about to present our projects, after which I will find out that I'm not in the top five we will find out who the top five are.

Last night we went to a nightclub called "Felt" for the SND opening party. A bunch of professional designer types were spread out over three floors of this club, which included pool tables, a dance floor and really expensive drinks. Luckily I didn't resort to having to pay money for them until late in the evening.

At the nightclub, I met my design idol, Chip Kidd, who coined the term "Good is Dead." Basically I had a geekgasm right then and there. Here's is the transcript of our conversation:

HEY CHIP KIDD OMIGOD YOU WENT TO PENN STATE I WENT TO PENN STATE THAT IS SO COOL HEY I PICKED UP YOUR BOOK BECAUSE I LIKED THE COVER AND THEN I STARTED READING IT AND I REALIZED IT WAS ABOUT PENN STATE AND I WAS LIKE WOW THIS IS SO COOL AND I HAVE THE HARD COVER AND THE PAPERBACK VERSIONS AND I REALLY LIKED HOW YOU INCLUDED THE BAD REVIEWS ON THE PAPERBACK VERSION I THOUGHT THAT WAS REALLY FUNNY

Yeah.

Soooo... I didn't get a Poynter fellowship and I didn't make it into the top five. The former was a surprise to me, the latter was not.

Anyway, it was great that all these papers paid to have us flown out here so we could participate in this program. It has also been great to meet all these designers from all of these fantastic papers from across the country and see what great people most of them are.

Peace.

So last night we got to meet and hang out with some actual professional Society for News Design people. They were very professional but also seemed pretty cool and that they probably like to party.

I'm here at the hotel, which has become my new James Building, in the ballroom. We've been sitting through some student lecture sessions that have been pretty cool. The first one was about how photographers and designers need to communicate more. The second was about typeography, where we learned about fonts and font design. It was a thrill a minute. Now we're hearing two young hip guys talk about online stuff. They seem pretty cool and that they probably like to party. Currently they're verbally destroying the new Post-Gazette NOW web site.

GOOD DAY TO YOU!

I just finished my interview with editors from The Boston Globe, The Virginian-Pilot, The Dallas Morning News, The Hartford Courant and The New York Times. After it was over, I emerged from the room with tears streaming down my face, then hit the floor, assuming the fetal position while rocking back and forth.

Let me tell you about last night. We ate at some crappy restaurant near the Boston Common that claims to be the place "where everyone really knows your name," but, in fact, is not. Our waitress was crazy spacy and had to keep coming back to ask us more questions about what we had ordered. I ate some French Onion soup that was terrible and a fish sandwich that was also terrible. It is a small miracle that I do not have a tapeworm inside of me right now.

Goals for the rest of Boston trip:

• Try a bowl of clam chowder.


• Get a "Harvard" shirt, so I can be one of those obnoxious people wearing a "Harvard" shirt.


• Meet the Cartalk guys.

So I just finished up a long two days of designing. Our teams both collaborated on projects but we each individually had big pages that we worked on. If you want to look at mine, go to my Web site, DESIGNER TRAVIS.

Right now I'm in the lobby of the hotel, sitting on a couch and listening to people in business attire being drunk. I was talking on my cell phone a few minutes ago and one of these people came over to me and yelled "SELL!" I wanted to say, "sir, I'm pretty sure the market is closed at this current point in time," but I started writing this blog instead. It takes the pain away.

I guess my point with this post is, the only difference between drunk people at Penn State and drunk people at a fancy hotel in Boston is that, at Penn State, we keep it casual.

I'm in the lobby of the Park hotel. It's Tuesday morning.

There is a haunted piano in the lobby. I know this because it is playing itself. It is actually a pretty decent pianist. All they need is a floating head in a ball and some stretching paintings and they've got the haunted mansion. (Actually this explains the hitchhiking ghost who followed me out of the hotel yesterday.)

More to follow!

One thing I can tell you about the other people in this competition: They know their stuff. They are very smart. Everyone here is very good. Too good, in fact. Methinks some sabotage is going to have to occur.

Enough about that though. More about Boston.

The T here is very cute. When I went to board the green line yesterday, I actually had to step up onto the train from the ground, as opposed to a normal subway. As Kristin, our coordinator, said, it's a bit Mr. Rogers.

This morning I went on a trek to find a drug store, because I stupidly thought I wouldn't be delayed for four hours and would have time to buy things here instead of taking them with me on the plane. Unfortunately for me, it was raining so hard it was like God thought we forgot about rain so he wanted to give us an extra reminder. All I was wearing was my Freezepop T-Shirt and some non-rain-approved shoes that are now soaked. The rest of the day I wore dress shoes. It was awesome.

Oh, just thought I'd throw this in there -- our team names? Team A and Team 1. Guess who came up with that suggestion.

Most of my day today was spent at The Boston Globe, which I have been told has a pretty good reputation out there in the world. We got the grand tour, which included a newsroom that is about 50 times larger than the one at the Collegian. Also their designers go home at 7 p.m. Even the front page designer.

Yeah... I usually bounce from the Collegian around 1 a.m.

I'd tell you about what we're designing, but it's a secret. (Not really, I just don't want to get into it.) Needless to say, those of you who are fans of this graphic will probably like it!

That's pretty much all I have to say right now. I'm going to stay up for about another half hour, make some pretty graphics, then go to sleep. Laters.

Hello everyone from the Boston Park Plaza hotel, where "The Suite Life with Zack and Cody" takes place! My room has two bathrooms. Two! But no Internet. I guess that's the tradeoff.

So I'm in this competition for five pretty cool internships at newspapers across the country, and last night we kicked it off with a reception at the Christian Science Monitor.

The lobby at the Monitor was really cool. There was a fountain with words projected onto it, and the words swirled around until they spilled out onto the floor and then floated up onto the wall to form famous inspirational quotes.

There was also this room called the Mapparium which consisted of a big glass globe that you walk into. There's this light show presentation that plays that lights up different sections of the world, and then famous inspirational quotes play.

And then we went up to this room where we watched movies about how the Christian Science Monitor's goal is to be inspirational.

All in all, if there was one word I would choose to describe it, it would be... inspirational. Also delicious. Because there was food.

So now I'm off to the Boston Globe to go design things. More later!

Hi everyone. In a rare twist, I'll be live blogging all week about my trip to Boston -- which has turned into an unexpected trip to Washington, D.C.!

Turns out my flight to Boston got canceled. (They forgot to attach the engine to the plane or something.) Luckily, my flight got rebooked - now I'm heading to Boston via Washington, D.C. Any of you who have ever looked at a map of the United States know this probably isn't the most direct route to go, but our pilot is apparently implementing the "slingshot effect" around the Washington monument which will, in fact, bend the space time continuum and cause us to arrive in Boston yesterday.

I've already spotted a local celebrity: Mark Harris. He went to my high school and ran for the house of representatives last year. He was on his Blackberry the whole time, saying things like "get the political guys together" and "put me on speaker phone" and "supposedly we were too moderate for him" and so on. I hope one day I get a Blackberry, or a phone with a working "4" button. (That's why I haven't called home, mom - it's that damn area code.)

Okay, the plane's here. Time for me to bounce!

DESTINATION: Insect Fair
TRAVELING COMPANION: Jesus
PHOTOS BY: Alaina*

*Note: Photos will not be posted tonight because of technical difficulties. Photos will be posted another night. Your patience is appreciated, as is your taste in clothing. (I really liked that shirt you wore the other day!)

Generally these blogs have been location-based, but today I'm switching gears into an event-based blog.

You know how Star Trek nerds have Star Trek conventions? Well, what if you were a Star Trek nerd... but for bugs?

Well Penn State comes to the rescue with THE GREAT INSECT FAIR. I covered this thing last year and was so impressed that I had to go again. This event is a great opportunity for children to gather and learn that yes, just like detainees at secret prisons, it is okay to torture bugs!

Here are the various methods of insect torture I witnessed at this event:

A bunch of kids were gathered around a table. On the table was a small collection of Long John Silvers-style cocktail sauce cups with paint in them. Also on the table was a container full of live maggots. I watched as children used tweezers to dip live maggots into paint. They plopped the maggots down on little squares of pastel-colored paper and watched them wriggle around, leaving trails of paint behind them.

It was kind of like spin art at the county fair. Except at the county fair, there are more maggots.

Next, we moved on to something scandalous: an insect peep show. Six or so wooden boxes stood waist height with eye holes cut into them. Each box had a tantalizing question about insects above it, and the answer could only be discovered by bending down to the box and taking a peek inside. Each box contained a photo of a fully nude insect -- and let me say, I've seen some shocking images of full-on insect nakedness in my time, and these were definitely up there.

This shameless exploitation of the insect body should not and will not be tolerated.

If you read my story at that link above, you already know all about the cockroach races. You already know about the injuries, the screaming children, the pressure, the steroids, the mafia-run gambling ring that's formed around this event. It's like cockfighting for cockroaches.

Some of the people at the insect fair have enslaved bees and are forcing them to make honey. This honey is then sold to fairgoers with the bees' masters keeping all the profits. This clearly violates the thirteenth amendment, which states:

Section 1:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

A bunch of people were displaying their dead insect collections at the fair. Now consider the following: Suppose an insect found you and put a giant pin through your dead body and put you in a glass box. How would you feel about that? Not too great, I'd wager.

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $0 (We considered making a donation, but then considered saving the money for Dairy Queen Blizzards instead.)
Miles traveled: 0

Lessons learned:

Playing a game of mini golf themed around pesticide warning labels makes them not so scary. In fact, now I just ignore them entirely. Goodbye salad dressing, hello DEET!