Belated Friday five, gacked from xochiquetzl

1. How are you planning to spend the summer?

Working till the end of August, then two weeks in Atlanta! I know I'm going to swelter but it's going to be fun. I'm going to DragonCon too, while I'm over there, which is my first experience of a real sci fi con. :)

2. What was your first summer job?

Working in a factory - various jobs there including weighing christmas puddings, working the machine that stacks tins onto cardboard trays and then shrink-wraps them, putting frozen sausages into tins before the baked beans go in... damn good money, though, since I was a student and students didn't pay income tax in those days.

3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?

Anywhere? I think I'd do what I'm planning to do, only with a side-trip to Savannah as well. As it is, I still need both kidneys. ;)

I'd like to go back to Syria at some point, but I also have plans to do the Trans-Mongolian railway (with stops in Moscow, Ulan Bator and Beijing along the way) when finances permit. I'd also like to visit Madagascar as well (love those lemurs!).

4. What was your worst vacation ever?

That'd probably be when I went to Poland, not because of the country itself but because of one of the people I was travelling with (the Polish friend of a friend) - everything was fine until we got talking and she started telling me about how Hitler really wasn't all that bad...

5. What was your best vacation ever?

Syria and Jordan about 5 years ago. What an experience! I spent a windfall on a truck trip for 3 weeks around both countries, sleeping out most nights.

Loved Syria, wonderful country and amazingly welcoming people, and would go back there quite happily. I must admit I'd expected to get hassled, because nobody in the Middle East is going to think I'm from around those parts, but I was never treated with anything but kindness and scrupulously polite interest.

Jordan was more Americanised and used to tourists, with all that entails, but I did get to visit Petra and schlepp out to where Lawrence of Arabia used to hang out, so that made that particular part of the trip worthwhile as well.