University of New England: Tristian Rowe

Well hello everyone, sorry I haven't been around and up to date on this as often as I should but recently I've been really sick, busy, and haven't really been around.

The weekend before last weekend I went to Boston to see Flight of the Conchords and after that show I went with some friends to UVM (University of Vermont) to visit a friend and see the band Ratatat play at their campus the following day. I was already getting sick before I left but I still went and it just made it worse!

Last week went by pretty quickly with most of my classes coming to a closure, such as Public Speaking where I presented my group presentation.

On a side note it has been extremely nice outside lately. As I stare out the window now I can see tons of students outside BBQ-ing, playing sports, walking towards the beach, tanning, and a variety of other summer based activities.

Two nights ago I went to the All Time Low and Sparks the Rescue show at The Station in Portland, it was a lot of fun and it was great seeing the local Maine band Sparks the Rescue after they're beginning to hit it big. Also last night I went with my friends Matt, Blake, Ian and Mike to go see Fall Out Boy and Cobra Starship in Lowell Massachusetts, it was awesome.

(Now that I look back at this I see that I've been going to a lot of concerts lately, which reminds me, tonight at 9pm my rag tag band I'm in with Matt, Ian and Blake is playing a show at the Kiosk. This is something we like to do for some students just to relieve some stress and have fun on campus, we try to keep the audience entertained).

As this week dwindles down I will keep in touch, I have my last finals tomorrow and on Friday, so this weekend should be free to dedicated to seeing my friends one last time before we all part ways until the fall. Keep you posted

~Tristian

Posted by Tristian Rowe at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not too long ago I had the pleasure of traveling to Montreal and staying two nights with quite a few UNE students, from both the University campus and the Westbrook campus. We left Westbrook around 5 and got to our hotel in Montreal around midnight. Here's what our hotel looked like:

The first night when we got there we walked around, checked out a few different clubs and even met a few people from the Canadian Army that were on a break visiting Montreal from Toronto. After that we returned back to our hotel, and at this point it was close to 4am or even later.

The next day we started our day by checking out the terrace at the top of our hotel and then we went walking about town.

All the people we came across in Montreal were friendly and almost everyone could speak French or English, most could switch to the correct language just based on your appearance. We got some great info of places to go later Saturday night from some employee's working at the Puma store.

Here's a pic of myself and my roomies for the trip, Lauren and Rachel, this was like the fourth time trying to take this pic because we kept messing it up hahaha.

and here are my friends that convinced me to go on this crazy trip to Canada, and I thank them for convincing me to go along because I had a great time.

My good friend Tari who lives down the hall from me:

my other friend Anna who is Tari's roommate:

and my wonderful neighbor Matt who I mentioned is keeping a blog himself earlier this year:

So now that I introduced my friends who were the reason I went to Montreal, let me continue my story. Later on Saturday night we went to another club and walked around the outskirts of Montreal at night, we rode the metro from our hotel to the other districts. However on our way home (at this point it was pretty late) we went to hop on the Metro but it was closed! So we began walking a ways back to the Hotel, but then about thirty minutes later we realized we were walking in the complete opposite direction. At that point in time we were exhausted so we just called a cab, went back to the hotel and went to bed. We did see some interesting things while walking though, like this:

The next day in the morning before the trip back to the states Matt and I walked up the hill our hotel was on and walked through Mcgill. We were on a mission because there was a huge hill in front of us while we were walking and we wanted to reach the top of it. After walking through some paths and climbing many marble staircases to the top, we had the absolute best view of Montreal.

The trip home wasn't too bad, was pretty long and we ended up taking a scenic route through the mountains in New Hampshire:

I would call my first trip to Montreal a complete success. I had a great time, and going to places I've never been is always a exciting, I'm definitely looking forward to going back sometime in the future.

Posted by Tristian Rowe at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The final conclusion to my very interesting spring break...

After sleeping in the very "comfortable" car, we began our trek into the city. We found a nice parking spot in a garage somewhere, only $17 for the day for parking, which wasn't too bad.

Our first stop in the city was the National Garden which included not only U.S. native plants, but plants and trees from around the world!

They had a variety of species, ranging from the rain forest to the desert.

From there we were just a few steps away from the Capitol building so we checked the place out and took some pictures, specially the Civil War Ulysses S. Grant memorial on the outside of the Capitol building by the pool out front.

From the Capitol building we walked down "The Mall" which is the long stretch of grass in between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. (For those that don't know, Washington D.C. is architecturally well designed, with all the streets and monuments aligning with each other in some way).

Along the way walking across the mall we stopped in at the Smithsonian Museum of Middle East and Asian Art, where we walked into the courtyard after checking out the art.

Then we walked to the Washington Monument, the World War II memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial, each was quite a sight. The best part was that it was the middle of March so there weren't that many tourists in the city compared to summer time so we had free reign to most exhibits and memorials without any lines or pushing.

Then of course finally we made our way to the White House (security was pretty strict and there was a pretty big perimeter set up).

From there we went to two more Smithsonian Museums, the one of U.S. History and the Natural History museum, both were pretty sizable and we had to quicken our pace just to get through the second one before we had to leave the city. (Also to note the Smithsonian Museums in D.C. are free of charge to the public so it's nice to be able to go in without paying some extravagant fee).

After leaving the museums we headed back to the car to begin our trek back to New England. After taking turns driving and dropping my friend back off in Massachusetts we made it back to Gray, Maine at about 7am Friday morning.

I can easily say that my trip to the capitol was a total success and that I am glad that my friends and I came up with such a great idea and it was executed without much hassle or misfortune.

More blogs to come soon, specially with my pics from my recent trip to Montreal with UNE.

Posted by Tristian Rowe at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks after Spring Break I went to Boston to see a Bloc Party show in Boston at the House of Blues (Bloc Party is a band from the U.K. and their one of my faves). It was a great show, a smaller band Longwave opened for them and they were fantastic as well, was definitely worth the trip.

I managed to snap a few pics from up close but it was cool to see everyone dancing and how packed the place was from the balcony:

Also I managed to find some youtube videos of the show if anyone wants to see the recordings, the songs are pretty sweet and their upbeat mostly and great to listen to:

Overall I can really say that it was awesome to be there and that people should check out this band if they're curious. I am going to a few more concerts this month so I will keep you all filled in in how they go.

Posted by Tristian Rowe at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(The continuation of my Spring Break Episode)

Well after leaving Massachusetts and Rhode Island we began driving through Connecticut, it was here that we swerved off an exit to Mystic Aquarium (we saw the sign so we just had to check it out). We got there as they were closing and it was a tad bit expensive to get in, so we just posed outside.

We also checked out the Nature bird reserve in the area (kind of like the Audubon society). We didn't spend too much time there for a few minutes later we went walking through the woods of Connecticut haha.

From here we entered the long section of our journey, where I drove at least 6 hours without stopping. We went through NYC and New Jersey,stopping in NJ to snag some food to eat to re-energize ourselves.

As we approached our destination we needed to find a place to sleep. Earlier that day we decided to conserve our very limited amount of money we wouldn't get a motel room, so we ended up sleeping in the car. Finding a place to sleep though proved a task because we tried finding a rest stop but we ended up at a pay to park parking lot by an airport outside of D.C.!

After a few maneuvers and getting on another highway, we found a welcome to Maryland rest area where we decided to call it a night (it was about midnight at this time). Parking our car, we checked out the area, grabbed something to drink from the vending machines, and went back to the car to sleep.

Unfortunately when we got back in the car my friends Isaac and Ben knocked over two 1 galleon jugs of water/juice spilling it over the back seat floor (making it even worst sleeping conditions). By the time we got all situated my friend Johnny decided to just sleep outside, kind of by the side of the highway, which was fine with us, more room in the car.

We woke up very uncomfortably at 7 and went to go find Johnny. Here's a pic of him when we woke him up.

After getting ourselves prepped, changed, and finished brushing our teeth, we packed up and started our drive, now only minutes from Washington D.C....

Posted by Tristian Rowe at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)