Perfect Trip: SoCal Day 6 Venice Beach

Venice Beach

 

Venice Beach is an electric place in people’s imaginations around the world. You truly will find glass-eating and snake-taming performers along the boardwalk. As you enter into total strangers’ personal space to get a better picture, do not be surprised when you peer over to find a two-headed reptile, and that is on a typical day. Every inch of the boardwalk is muddled with entertaining people and creatures and even fun-to-observe shops. However, this is my least enticing pull factor to Venice Beach. 

 

After you walk a small ways down the boardwalk and have had your fill of spectacles, do not forget to venture out to the beach. Like most California beaches, it is strikingly long and wide. The first time I spent a day out on this beach, I had brought my mom. Within five minutes, not even long enough to spread our towels, a homeless man approached us to see if we had any unlawful substances with us. Needless to say, you will inevitably meet interesting characters on this beach. 

 

If you are beached out or would rather stay sand-free, drive to my favorite part of the city: Abbot Kinney. This stretch of street is the heart of real Venice, a chic and vibrant community of artists, culinary experts, and free spirits. Take in each shop for its uniqueness. As I have said before, I do not like to shop, but I do want to wander; this is a perfect place. The people and food trucks are enough to draw any visitor’s inquisitive eye or pallet. There are plenty of beautiful restaurants to choose from, but save room for dessert! 

  My favorite spot in this hidden treasure trove is Jin Patisserie. I had never eaten a macaroon until a year ago when I wandered into this patisserie for something to drink. Luckily, my best friend visiting from NYC persuaded me to take a moment and enjoy a pot of tea and rest (apparently New Yorker of us). Once we were seated in the quaint courtyard, the perfect amount of California sunshine was warming our skin, and we were handed a macaroon menu. We got eight because the menu was so tempting, with curious flavors such as rose, tea, lavender, and butterscotch. We started on opposite sides and ate half of each macaroon; all resulted in a squeal of applause or bafflement.  The latter came from an aforementioned rose-flavored treat. This may sound odd, but the small pink-tented desert tasted like a rose SMELLS. It was the strangest and most pleasant thing I have ever experienced while eating a desert, and I have had more than my fair share.  I have a notorious sweet tooth.  

 End the day by exploring the city’s namesake, the canals that give travelers reminiscent dreams of the true Venice, Italy (my favorite place in the world, thus far). If you saw the movie Valentine’s Day and were taken by the sweet homes and romantic canals, this is their home, and they welcome your attention.

 

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Perfect Trip: SoCal Day 5 Malibu

Day 5 Malibu 

The rest of the days will be spent south of Santa Monica, except for today’s unpredictable exploration in Malibu. Leaving your fancy belongings and shopping mentality behind when visiting the ever-famous celeb-favoring beach town of Malibu may seem unnatural, but natural is exactly what it is.  

 After applying adequate sunblock and double-checking your camera batteries, pull on a swimsuit and top it off with active shorts, a tank top, and hiking/tennis shoes. Start the day off with a BIG breakfast to last until late afternoon, and pack a few snacks to eat once at your first location. Head north, up arguably the most beautiful highway in the states, highway 1.  Let yourself fall into a slow pace to soak in all the beautiful beaches and cliff scenery around you.  Drive until you come to 27200 Winding Way, Malibu, CA 90265; you will see a small parking lot on the right side of the road.  This modest entry is the gateway to my favorite hiking place in Southern California; it beats Runyon based on the lack of traffic and distance from LA in my book. This whimsical place is Escondido Falls, or "Malibu waterfall hike," as everyone likes to call it. 

 While the beginning of this trail is the pristine example of a nature hike, it quickly becomes an adventurous and thrilling hike full of obstacles and moments of “Is it worth it to try to make it up that rock?” Growing up in the country, I would put myself on most people's more adventurous and risk-taking side. This hike allows those with a more daring side to scale a cliff face, clinging to boulders, and reach for vines to pull themselves out of a natural pool. There is a “road most followed” that most people can manage if they would rather not risk it. As for its nik-name sake, the joy at the end of your efforts is a gorgeous waterfall.  Through my travels, I have seen incredible waterfalls in Bavaria, Canada, and Yosemite. Still, there is something special about seeing a hidden fall, at least three stories high, up close and personal. Not only is the primary fall draped with greenery and breathtaking, but there are two other falls you can visit on this trail. I would spend the entire morning and most of the afternoon here. There are endless adventures to be found for every type of traveler, from watching others climb and cling along the waterfall edge to wading in the fall’s pool or sticking to the lower trails and taking in all the fauna. As you can image this is paradise for larger dogs with a need for adventure, my aussie/blue healer mix loved scaling the rocks. 

Izzi expressing her dislike for being excluded from the picture. 

 

When your stomach starts to demand that you leave this Utopia, head back south along Highway 1. Late lunch, luninner, super, whatever you want to call this eating timetable could not be spent at a more perfect location than Paradise Cove Beach Café. This is the only restaurant in Malibu on the water, but the best part is the sweet little cove and private beach for your enjoyment. Eat great seafood, watch for whales and dolphins jumping out of the water, and head to the beach when you are full and feeling lazy. Instead of visiting a shopping center, you have seen a hundred times duplicated worldwide, soak in the sun and experience the actual Malibu. 

If you are not a natural person and would like to stay indoors, I cannot give a museum higher marks than the Getty Villa, located close to Malibu. The vast array of Greek, Roman, and seasonal exhibits is fantastic, and the building itself is a replica of a Roman Villa. This gives you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk through a structure that resembles a true Roman Villa, down to the lavish tile floors, gold-leafed details, and open courtyards filled with statues and fountains. But, the similarities do not stop there; even the Mediterranean Climate and view of the Pacific Ocean from a high vantage point give you an idea of what it would have been like to live in a Villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea during the height of the Roman Empire. 

 

If you want great entertainment in this area, check out the website and see if there will be any outdoor performances at The Villa. The Villa includes a reproduction of an outside amphitheater frequently filled with musicians, plays, and other performances open to the public.

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Conversational Classroom with Partial-Note Handout

New Take on Class Notes


One of the difficulties felt by all teachers, I am sure, is the feeling of “if I did it, you can do it.”  Even though I am only a few years removed from my students I have this feeling over and over. The most prevalent topic related to this perspective is note-taking.  Geography is a discipline dependent on a vast amount of knowledge in a variety of forms, thus insisting on a detailed orientation to class notes.  This was only intensified for me, being fascinated by every word from my professors and writing down almost every syllable. In addition, I was only two courses away from a double major in History. Naturally, history class is not intensive. With these two disciplines dominating my college experience, I have no impression of class time without coming away with plus 10 pages of notes. 




This experience has possibly (probably) left me in a predisposed position that is not favored by my students. I am not sure when the switch happened, possibly even when I was in college, but a transition has been made that inclines students to expect their professors to give them the powerpoint slides (essentially all the notes). This was an absolute “no” for the first four weeks of my first-semester of teaching. This was based on both my high standards of students’ abilities to take notes, but the fact I was only completing that day’s lecture (power point) at the earliest a few hours before class would not have fit that model. However, after we had a four-day weekend that entailed me boarded up in my attic apartment, only coming down to heat up a can of soup and throw Izzi a stick during those two minutes, I could “get ahead.”  Once, I had a steady lead on my PowerPoint presentations. I had just enough “extra time” to copy the power points over and remove the “important words” and “details.” This was a compromise, and it worked, ok.  Of course, the slides were too extensive, as a result of my desire to teach it ALL. Nevertheless, the students were very grateful, and I understand the benefit of having the majority of the notes so you can actually listen to the professor and not focus on writing every word. I held onto my “but I did it” mentality, however, under my breath.

So, now that I have a repertoire of complete PowerPoint presentations that I could edit, clean, condense, and reorganize for efficiency over the Christmas break, I was able to create a “follow along.” I took the text from the slide shows, organized it in an outline format, and again, left out the key points, essential words, and details. This was all given to them online when the semester started. I am a facilitating instructor, meaning I always ask for the information before I give it to them. To do this, it was very important to take out any words or phrases that would allow them to “guess” the correct answer to my questions by filling in the blank. The outline also has complete wholes that require an entire “note-taking” fill-in. This took several weeks to perfect, but so far, this has been a great addition to my classroom (even at the expense of my own stubbornness).

The first benefit is being able to prohibit laptops in my classroom with a clear conscience. I would have never survived my classes without being able to type my notes, so I had to justify sanctioning them. Previously, I would have been trying not to notice when a student had not looked at me in class but only at his screen. In addition, I was continually worried computers were distracting others who truly wanted to focus but were inhibited.  Taking laptops out of the equation allows my students to fully engage in the classroom conversation that takes up most of my class. This has been a huge lift to my composure in my classroom, knowing I have their full attention and can rest assured they will all participate, even if it is out of lack of a better distraction.

If there was anything I learned from my first semester teaching college courses, it was “learn to modify.” As time progressed, I learned what worked and did not work and why. Leaving the past strict note-taking, professor-endlessly lecturing classroom environment behind and embracing a partial-note-giving, conversational classroom environment has been an inspiring transformation that I plan to keep working on and sharing.

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Native American relic on the Ceremony Site

My fiance and I had always dreamed about getting married outside at his family’s farm located in historic Schulenburg, Texas. Not only does it hold a special place in his heart, but the area's attractions would have been fun for guests. If you have not traveled to Europe and gazed up with amazement of how someone hundreds of years ago could have envisioned something so heavenly when painting the inside of the gothic cathedrals scattered around Europe, you must take a trip to Schulenburg. Hidden throughout the hills are little gems, the Pained Churches. This region was settled by Check Germans, who brought their artistic skills from Europe and blessed the countryside with a little window into the craftsmanship of European artists. These churches give you a taste and enough to push any non-traveler to the realization it is worth every moment to take a trip and visit the incredible beauty that envelops all the churches of Europe. 

However, this part of Texas hasn’t had enough rain in the last year to support full green pastures. Nevertheless, my parents were given a wonderful blessing a few years ago when they purchased 90 acres ten miles outside of Graham. For years, my parents have debated whether to build a house, a cabin, or just a barn on the property.  My parents took this as an opportunity to finally make a move, build something, and make my desire to have an outdoor wedding at a place special to our hearts a reality. You know you are a daddy’s girl from Texas when your father says, “We’ll fix this, and I’ll just build you a barn.”

 

I was unsure at first since there was nothing there, not even a telephone pole. This may seem a little crazy to most, but to the Fullerton family this is normal, we are do it ourselves type of people. We are in the process of building a 60-foot by 78-foot barn, from the ground up, for the reception. We have now successfully cleared a path through the forest and installed the telephone poles and electricity. Every weekend, my fiancé and I are free. We are there working away, either clearing out trees, moving stones off the ceremony site, fighting the fire while burning the brush piles, or digging ditches. This past weekend, my family was out at the land doing a number of these. While digging the ditch for the water line, my Dad and George hit a large stone a few inches under the surface. When we brought it up, we were all screaming at once, “That’s an Indian grinding stone!”

 

The whole left when we pulled the corner out

 For me, this was a great geography moment! We all had a lot of joy knowing that the exact place we had chosen to build our barn and future cabin was on the exact spot the people who had lived here centuries before us had chosen. The property backs up against the Brazos River and has a long history of Indian settlement. 

 

This was quite the find, and of course, this discovery ensued in an hour or two of “archeology” instead of ditch digging. We have a long way to go, and it is starting to get a little anxious around our dinner table when we start to talk about the progress. We are down to the wire, but at least we have poured a great dance floor, so if nothing else, we will be able to dance!

www.sparrowcreekranch.com (edited to add the website link in 2024)

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Perfect Trip: SoCal Day 4 Santa Monica

Santa Monica

Three days inside LA is enough for me, but we aren’t going far.  Time to explore the coast! Santa Monica is LA’s window onto the Pacific, so we will start there. The Georgian is the sweetest hotel I have ever seen. I would love to stay there because of its great central location on Ocean Blvd, facing the beautiful Santa Monica Pier and beach. You cannot miss it; the walls are turquoise with a black and gold striped band around the top of the building; regardless of if you are staying here or somewhere else in Santa Monica (my family is a big believer of Priceline.com), you must start your day with lunch on The Georgian’s patio. The view is fantastic and the food is lovely. The sandwiches are large, fresh, and a must for all my friends who come to visit me.  

There is three-hour free parking on the streets directly behind Ocean Blvd. After lunch, simply work your way three streets behind you and walk down the famous 3^rd Street Promenade (my Master's thesis topic). The attraction is not the shops but the diverse menagerie of street performers you will see break dancing in groups of five or so, musicians of all kinds, belly dancers, mimes, acrobats, and so much more. This is a great experience and a memory you will talk about often. Especially if you get pulled into an act ending with a young man flying over you while you stand paralyzed until you hear his feet hit the ground and exhale as everyone starts to applaud loudly. 

Now, you are walking back toward the beach with less full bellies. Once you cross Ocean Blvd., walk along the ledge overlooking the ocean and take a few incredible pictures (there will be plenty of other onlookers you can ask to snag one of you and your travel buddies). Head to the iconic Pier, the historical end of Route 66, and let yourself have some fun. Play at least one of the games to participate in a tradition long experienced by Santa Monica visitors. Top the Pier experience off with a Ferris wheel ride for a unique and incredible view of the city and the beach. 

Now, ask one of the pier employees for the best place to rent a bike! This beach is luckily complimented with a wide bike path, which is one of my favorites. You will have an incredible time seeing all the other locals and visitors riding along, enjoying the sun and the views. If you are daring, you can choose from all types of “peddling” transpiration other than the traditional two-wheel bike, so go for it and get something flashy!  If you are a beachgoer, wear a bathing suit underneath your clothes to take a detour and play in the sand for a break. Or return your bike and then walk out to the beach for the rest of the day. 

If biking or sunbathing doesn't suit your fancy today, drive south down Ocean Ave. until you run into a unique shopping area. You will know when you are there as the streets will be lined with boutiques and stores of all kinds. This is also a great walking area for the explorer. 

There are several famous restaurants along Ocean Blvd. Once you have rinsed off the sand or just the sunblock, shimmy into something nice and have your choice of top-notch restaurants run by world-famous chefs.

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World Regional Geography: Overcoming Difficulties in Teaching this Class

New perspective: Second Semester as a Geography Professor  

One of the underlying themes that jumped out at me while I was reading my student evaluations from my first-semester of teaching was animosity toward the nature of the course itself. Those projected feelings were explicitly targeted at the circumference of the course, which for World Regional Geography is the entire world. As an instructor, handed a text book covering the physical, historical, political, environmental, social, economic, and cultural geography of the world’s dominate regions and expected to cover it within one semester is boggling, making it easy to sympathize with students. I, too, felt the walls closing in on me when I realized the pressure of teaching THE WORLD. 

Starting last semester (my first teaching this course), I had a sympathetic approach that gave an air of apologies for the enormity of information I would give my students and, consequently, testing them over. However, this did not create reciprocal sympathy from my students towards my endeavor of providing them with the best representation of a region to my abilities in only three days. Like I said previously, it instead created animosity towards the course, “covering way too much,” “requiring way too many notes,” and resulting in comments such as, “the whole world shouldn’t be covered, maybe half the regions.” I teach 9 of the 10-12 regions in your typical geography textbook (everyone is different). 

This is a topic among geographers at national and global conferences every year. “How do we approach World Regional Geography?” This is the course that introduces and pulls in “new recruits” to our discipline around the world. For most students pursuing an education in other fields, World Regional Geography is the key to giving them a window into the world and how it relates to their lives. These responsibilities traditionally handed to World Regional Geography professors are understandably substantial.   As a geography professor, the real difficulty is deciding what needs to be covered and what, resisting your own personal interests and desire to teach it ALL, can be overlooked.

However, back to the issue of animosity towards the responsibility we put on non-geography majors to absorb the immense amount of knowledge presented during a World Regional Geography course. To combat reading the same comments at the end of this semester, I took a new attitude into the first day of class: “if that does not spark your interest, then this is not the course for you.”

Yes, I spent the second half of the first day with my students going through the tell-tell signs they should look for other classes that match their interests in substitute for mine.  This may seem harsh, but by the early vital signs, I think both of my classes will be incredible learning experiences for every student. So what exactly did I say?

While there are other things I will detail in later articles, these were the three “kickers,” or most important reasons to either stay and “have one of the most influential and grand classes of your college career, or find another class to suit your “check out, and copy the board” approach of going to class, because that is not what I am offering.”

Firstly, I did not hide the large amount of work necessary to succeed in World Regional Geography. There were no blinders to hide the average 30-40 pages of notes (which I will explain in a later article) required to study for each exam, not to mention the complexity of those notes (covering several themes of geography). Instead, I pointed out the name of the course and made it clear I would do my best to give them an eye-opening experience in each of the world regions but to do that, there would be a world of information to give them and subsequently to study. This was presented as a responsibility for every student, not as a consequence of the class. 

My expectations are very high and include embracing the knowledge they willingly signed up to absorb. This was the first step in moving away from apologizing for the enormity of the class and giving the students the choice to commit themselves to be participant learners out of interest, even in the face of a huge task. This is a worldly class for knowledge-seeking students, not those only seeking a GE credit (general education). Now that this was made clear, I do not expect any more “maybe only cover half the world” comments, because it was a distinctive choice to take on the world, not half.

Secondly, I was honest about my perspective. Geography is a dynamic discipline; each geographer has a different specialty and most importantly a facet of geography that stirs their heart. Mine is cultural and historical geography. So, instead of apologizing for a historical-geographic viewpoint leading the classroom, I explained my background and why I believe that view best explains the territories grouped together we call “world regions” today. Then I simply said, “if the examples I just provided do not give you an “aw ha” moment and/or the thought of hearing about how the physical and cultural geography influenced the history of a region/country, while at the same time learning how history influenced the cultural geography we see today, then this is not the class for you.”


We all have different interests and backgrounds. College, therefore, should not be a place to check off your core classes but to apply the knowledge you gain from the diverse mix you pick to those interests and specialties. This makes students more marketable and well-rounded and prepares them for a lifetime of new information, continually enhancing or questioning their perceived knowledge. There are so many “electives” to choose from on a college campus and all have their own unique way of improving a student’s overall education, however every “elective” is not for every student. Now, I do not dread comments regarding “too much history.” That is my training and perspective; plenty of courses and even World Regional Geography classes from a different perspective are available. The four students who did not come back the next day will be much more engaged in other classes, and I am glad they are seeking the type of course that interests them most. 

The third “kicker” I divulged was the most intriguing to most students, I presume, from their reactions. Teaching for me is centered on facilitating, a part of my training at CSULB that I will discuss in a later article. Specifically, this means, “I do not want to talk for an hour and a half and spoon-feed you information to store in your brains and then spit out on a test.” Instead, my goal is to “get the information from you. I want to facilitate conversation and discussions that ultimately lead the entire class to the main point.” For this type of classroom environment to happen and be as much encouraged by students as I am, students have to make a commitment to participate. Not only a commitment to me but also to each other. To my delight, that is exactly what I witnessed. 

After explaining this type of atmosphere and why it was necessary for the class's success, I asked them to stand up and raise their hand if they intended to stay and commit to being a vital part of a learning community. Everyone stood up and reacted excitedly to being expected to talk back to their professor. We covered some key concepts necessary for the rest of the course and used them to show how I would conduct the class. Almost every other sentence is a question posed to the class to interpret, give examples, opinions, objections, or explain.

Most students in both classes kept their commitments, and the first two days were full of insightful hypotheses, ideas, and examples they used to make the topics personal and understandable for them and others. Therefore, I hope to put to bed the comments of “too many questions,” “expects us to know more already,” and “too high of expectations.” These students made a visible commitment to their classmates, and the initial results have been very promising. 

In all, this semester I chose to be clear about what I expected from my students and what they should be prepared to undertake in my class before they fully committed. It is now in their hands to make this class what they want it to be, instead of being subject to an impossibly large body of information, imposed by a sympathetic professor. Now, they are engaged, active learners willingly taking on the responsibilities of the class. 

I cannot wait for week two! 

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Perfect Trip: SoCal Day 3 LA and Runyon Canyon

Los Angeles & Runyon Canyon 


You are tired; give yourself a late wake-up; today is going to be ACTIVE! For lunch, stop by Toast. The area is neat for shopping or strolling, so take a walk and have a fabulous lunch. The food is great, and there is a large variety.  Everyone can find something, but the bakery will undoubtedly satisfy everyone’s sweet tooth! 

For the rest of the afternoon, you will see the great outdoors inside the LA city limits. Runyon Canyon is your next destination. Almost every weekend, I made one trip to Los Angeles, but not for the typical reasons. Izzi and I would spend up to three hours hiking Runyon Canyon. This local favorite hiking spot is only a few blocks behind Hollywood Blvd. Give yourself time to find parking! By the end of my time in California, Izzi and I could take off on our own “off the beaten path” trails and never see a sole.  

one of the beautiful hidden paths in Spring 

 This would allow us to leave behind the hikers, walkers, sunglasses, hat-wearing celebrities, and the unfortunate few tourists who decided it was okay to leave their pumps and tiny blazers on for this outdoor sightseeing opportunity. However, for the day tripper, I suggest staying on the path. I spotted Cat Deeley, Amy Smart (whipped cream bikini in Varsity Blues), Robert Downey Jr., one of the guys from Gossip Girl, and a few others on the primary paths and viewpoints, so you will have a good chance of running into a celebrity while getting a great work out. At the top viewing point, you have a direct eye-level shot of the famous Hollywood sign on the next mountain (skip that hike and try Runyon). What a fantastic photo opportunity! This is also the time to take in your surroundings. As a geographer, I love to have a viewpoint, and this one is amazing. You can see all of Los Angeles, and on a clear day, all the way to the ocean. See how many of the Hollywood hot pots you can point out… Chinese Theater? Magic Castle? Rodeo? 

not one of those clear days, but still beautiful 

great place to take a unique shot of you & the Hollywood Sign

Comme Ça is a classy French restaurant that was always outside my price range, but the bar area is open to everyone. It sits right inside the middle of the restaurant, giving you a great vantage point over the diners. Stay for dinner or grab a drink, but it’s a must on my list. I saw my mom’s and my favorite soap star, Michelle Stafford (Phyllis off Young and the Restless), here, and she is, laughably, the only star I almost ran after, but I didn’t, regretfully. Take in the sophisticated atmosphere and wonderful aromas. The area has several bars and a busy, entertaining neighborhood to wander through.  If you skipped Comme Ca for dinner, there is a restaurant down the street with a large open patio.  I cannot remember the name, but I remember how great the food was! 

I always enjoyed dancing, taking in the history, and people at Teddy’s, at the Roosevelt Hotel (perhaps you are staying there!). The DJ always played great music and the crowd is constantly changing. Sorry I can’t comment on the drinks at any of these places (I’ve never been a drinker), but if you get restless you can always walk around the historic hotel itself.

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