Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

A little background may be in order for blog readers…

As part of building the case for the accreditation for the University of Tampa, those developing the most recent application materials included an international component (it was before I arrived, so I wasn’t involved). From what I’ve been told, the basic idea is that we will strongly emphasize international perspectives and international experiences for our students. From a practical standpoint that means we have an office dedicated to international study (International Programs Office). And we have money set aside just for faculty to travel around the world to increase their knowledge of and familiarity with countries other than the U.S. Our university works with a company called CIEE, which runs what are called International Faculty Development Seminars. These seminars or tours are only for college faculty. They take place around the world and have themes. Within the country, each seminar has a tour guide who takes them to the various sites, but the company also arranges for highly knowledgeable individuals within countries – often college professors – to present to the seminar participants on various topics.

While I was made aware of these seminars when I first arrived at the University of Tampa, I was busy with my research, the application process is somewhat competitive, and I hadn’t seen a seminar that aligned with my interests. When the call for applications came out in Fall 2011, I visited CIEE’s website and looked through the seminars. It wasn’t until I saw the very last one – a seminar to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that I thought to myself, “Now there is a seminar I’d do.” I ran it past Debi. She said it would be okay if I went. So I applied. While there were some hiccups in the application process (due to mismatching university and CIEE deadlines), I was selected to participate by CIEE and funded by my university. So, just a few days after returning to Tampa from a 9 day trip to Utah, I boarded the first of three flights to get me to Dubai.  That should cover the background for the trip and why I was in the UAE.

Since it is pretty close to half way around the world, I was scheduled to be traveling about 24 hours. I started my trip in the afternoon on the 4^th, flying to Newark. The only thing of note on the flight was that there was a rather picturesque moon outside my window, and since I had my good camera with me I took a picture. Of course it didn’t turn out very well, but that was about the extent of my excitement on the first day of my trip.

beautiful late afternoon moon from 35,000 feet

We got up somewhat early on our second full day in Jacksonville and headed to the pool, but it was short-lived as Toren was still tired and needed a nap.  He and Debi napped all morning while I read the news.  We then went for lunch where Toren showed off his new spell-casting abilities:

Toren has seen the first 6 Harry Potter movies and now, whenever he has something resembling a wand in his hands, he runs around casting spells.

After lunch we headed to the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville where we met up with my buddy.  Before we went in I took some pictures of Toren I’ll post over the next few days, but here’s a sample of Toren cuteness:

How cute is he?

We spent most of the afternoon there and Toren seemed to really enjoy it.  Debi was kind enough to watch him most of the time so I could talk “shop” with my buddy.  Here is Toren “digging” for dinosaur bones at the Museum:

We then went out for dinner before heading back to Tampa.  With good weather and no traffic, we made the trip in record time – 3 hours and 15 minutes.  And Toren slept the whole way.

One more thing I didn’t mention that is worth noting.  On our way up on Friday, all three of us were “plugged in.”  I was listening to a podcast on my phone with headphones while simultaneously running my GPS for directions.  Toren took Debi’s phone and watched a couple of movies.  And while he did that, Debi worked on her computer.  I remember being “plugged in” when I was a kid meant listening to my portable CD player in the car.  Now, Toren, at just under 26 months, is able to choose which videos he wants to watch on Debi’s phone.  How long until we do away with external microprocessors and simply start embedding them?

With Debi taking classes most of the summer and me trying to get some research done, we decided to not take any big vacations and instead do a couple of weekend getaways.  We had previously used Priceline.com to book nice hotels in Miami for cheap, so we figured we’d try the same website with different locations.  We had hoped to go Naples, since we haven’t been there, but we couldn’t get a hotel down there for a reasonable price.  I eventually switched my search to Orlando and we went to Orlando for the weekend in mid-July.  We got a 4-star hotel, the Orlando Renaissance, right across from Sea World for about $70/night.  It was a nice hotel and the location was perfect as we have season passes to Sea World and Busch Gardens.  Apparently we didn’t take many photos (I’ll post one in a few days) of that trip.

But our second and final trip together (I’ve got a work trip in August) ended up being in Jacksonville.  We’ve stopped in Jacksonville a couple of times to meet up with one of my Sociology buddies, but never really spent much time there.  We got a good deal on a 3 1/2 star hotel (about $50/night), so we headed up Friday night.  The trip can be done in about 3 1/2 hours, but due to rain and traffic, it took closer to 6 hours to get there.

Our first full day in Jacksonville started with a morning trip to Little Talbot Island State Park.  We didn’t know much about it, but I knew there was a hiking trail that was about 4 miles, which is a good trail length for us.  We got there a little after 9:00 and headed down the beach.  Toren wanted to get out of the backpack and play on the beach.  I left Toren and Debi at that point and trucked down the beach to see if I could find the spot where the trail into the foliage started.  Luckily the rangers had driven a buggy right up to the trail entrance or I probably would not have found it so easily (I think they did it knowing we were going to hike it as we had told them as much when we pulled in).  Finding the trailhead took me about a mile down the beach from Toren and Debi.  Debi started to get worried as I was gone for about 30 minutes, but I eventually made it back, hoisted Toren on my back, and we headed back down the beach (so, in reality, I did about 6 miles, not 4).

Here’s a shot of the beach:

the beach is really impressive and was mostly empty

We saw a cool crab on the way:

cool little crab

And Debi took a few pictures of Toren and I just before we headed into the foliage:

Toren waving at the camera

We saw this turtle just as we left the beach:

Then the mosquitoes attacked.  Debi spent the next 2 miles swatting mosquitoes off Toren and I while I booked it through the trees and tried to avoid the massive spiders.  It was actually very beautiful, but we forgot bug spray and the mosquitoes were terrible!

Once we made it back out to the road they thinned out.  We made it back to the car by about 11:00, which was good as the heat has been pretty crazy here lately (with the humidity it feels like 110 F).  The beach was just filling up as we left.

Here’s a rough idea of the hike route (I didn’t use my tracking app on my phone to conserve battery in case we needed it):

View Little Talbot Island State Park nature trail in a larger map

On the way home we stopped by a road side peanut stand to buy some “boiled peanuts”.  If you’ve never had them, you have to try them.  They’re actually quite good.  A friend of ours, who is a Florida native, talks about boiled peanuts as though they are like churros in Mexico or gelato in Italy.  The ones we bought were good and we ate the whole bag for lunch.

We headed back to the hotel and all fell asleep for a nice nap.  We woke up around 3:30 and went to the pool in the hotel.  Here’s a video of Toren at the pool (from the next day, actually):

After the pool, we got cleaned up and went out for dinner to the Olive Garden where Toren did a good impression of a dinosaur eating trees with his broccoli:

That did it for our first day in Jacksonville.

I finally found the time to post summaries of the Morgan Family’s trip to Florida in late May.  Here are the relevant links:

• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 1
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 2 – Animal Kingdom
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 3 – Magic Kingdom
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 4 – Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 5 – Sea World
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 6 – Treasure Island Beach
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 7 – Busch Gardens
• Morgans et al in Florida – Day 8 – beach, pool and photos

This was the last day of the vacation.  The rest of the family had early evening flights out of Orlando.  That meant we had time in the morning to go the pool and beach for a short time then pack up, take some family photos, and hit the road.  The pool and beach were fun, but we had a lot of packing to do so we didn’t get to play very long.  Then we all got cleaned up and headed out to the beach for some family photos.  Here are the results:

photo on the beach

And one more in the gardens of the resort:

family photo in the garden

It was a fun trip.  And there was one big perk for us – we parlayed our Busch Gardens/Sea World pass into a season pass for relatively cheap, so we can now go to Busch Gardens whenever we want.  We’ve already been three more times, so it has paid for itself.  Toren seems to like it.

Anyway, that’s the short version of the trip (been too busy to write this up until now).