Good Vibes and SoJu The Kitten

It's been nearly 6 months since I returned to Charleston from my backpacking adventure through Europe. A trip of a life-time that came to a halt and the reality of the real world stuck its face at me once again.  Some may say, well it's time to grow up, others may say where are you headed next, and others just won't care.  I have been asked by some what I took away from the trip.  My best answer would be, where ever I went, I always found love.  It didn't matter where you were from, what religion you practiced, your sex, or race, but what I found was common people just like me living out their journey through love and passion.

Live Good Vibes is just that!!  Lets live the lives we have always imagined through love and passion.  As many Australians say we "Live to Work" not "Work to Live".  Over the course of the next 6 months we are going to be featuring an array of common people just like you and I living out their passions through love.  From artists, surfers, electricians, musicians, small business owners and others,  we are going to dive deep and find out what it means to follow your passions, the obstacles that we will be presented with and the actions taken to overcome them, showing the world that WE can do it because we love it.  Through our company we are hoping to start a movement to inspire generation after generation with a message of love, so lets live it!!  We have always heard the expression "Do what you love, and the money will come".  Yes, we do have bills, yes, we do have obligations, but through love the unimaginable is possible. So lets start believing.

SoJu the kitten has been added to the Good Vibes team.  Let me introduce you to her.  She is a stray 3 week old black kitten that was given to me from a friend who found her and her siblings abandoned.  Good Vibes nation will watch SoJu as she grows into a mature cat each week.

Why did you name it SoJu?  Soju is a Korean alcoholic beverage that is made from rice.  While I was in Yeosu, many Koreans and friends would gather together and drink Soju for celebratory purposes 

Back

So it's been about a month in a half since I've returned from the european backpacking adventure that took me from Athens, Greece to Madrid, Spain.  It has been great catching up with friends and family through all the Holidays.  Thank god I got to celebrate them all Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Something I haven't done since High School.  Now that I am back in South Carolina I have decided to stick around for a little while and enjoy Charleston.  It should be an exciting year and I am looking forward to spending time with old friends and exploring all the things Charleston has to offer.

Eiffle Tower

From Edinburgh to Coventry to London to Paris.  It's been crazy to say the least.  Where to start? Well I met up with a friend of mine from Colorado that is working for a Football club in England called Coventry FC.  Coventry is a small city just on the outside of Birmingham.  Big Mike showed me a great time in Coventry and I even got to see a football match when Coventry City took on South Hampton.  South Hampton is on the top of the Championship division and scores a lot of goals.  Coventry ended up losing 4-2, but the atmosphere of the game was absolutely awesome. 

From Coventry it was off to Paris, France to hang out with some friends that I had studied abroad with in London in 2007.  I decided hey I'll just take the night bus there.  Crazy idea!  Imagine this, 10 hours of sitting in a greyhound style bus completely packed with people.  In my mind I was thinking why in the world was I taking the night bus to France instead of spending the extra cash and taking the train.  Whatever, I was already on the bus and I've just go to enjoy this experience.  A few hours into the bus ride, a drunk man who had smuggled whiskey onto the train was super drunk and becoming obnoxious to many of the passengers on the bus.  Long story short, a fight almost broke out 3 feet from me and I was absolutely terrified.  Thank god nothing happened I made it to Paris at 8:11am.

Here we are Paris! I was meeting up with a girl that I was couchsurfing with later in the day so I grabbed a coffee at a mom and pop coffee shop, whipped out the ukulele and rocked away.  From there made I went to the beautiful Eiffel tower.  Paris is amazing the stereotype of the people being jerks isn't true at all from what I've seen.  Just a few more days here and then it's off to Barcelona.



 

Scottish Kilt and Rental Car

After enjoying an awesome time in London for a few weeks I decided to head up to Edinburgh, Scotland and learn a little bit about my Scottish heritage and do some re-enacting of William Wallace of Braveheart.  I took a 10 hour bus ride to Edinburgh where I stayed for a few days and explored the capital of Scotland.  I didn't realize how rich the Scottish history was until I was there.  Had no idea that J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books there and had no idea that Alexander Graham Bell was from Scotland.  I guess I should have payed better attention in school.

After Edinburgh I wanted to explore the Highlands of Scotland.  I was debating on wether or not to just do a typical 3 day tour of the Highlands, take a day trip, or just rent a car and drive around on the wrong side of the road and explore the Highlands the way they are suppose to be explored.  I went with the last option to rent a car and drive manically through the scottish roads.  I posted a flier up in the hostel in Edinburgh to see if anyone was interested in tagging along to make the journey nothing short of epic!!  A New Zealander decided to tag along and split the cost of the adventure.  We picked up our rental car from "EuropCar" from the Alamo Car Rental Representative "Donald".  Donald was the man and hooked us up with a sweet ride for a good deal.  After pulling out of the rental car lot the fears of driving on the left side of the road finally set in, but after a few turns we were all good and ready to hit the road.  We drove 5 hours up to a town call "Inverness" located by Lochness which is home to the Lochness Monster Nessie.  We tried to catch her, but unfortunately we came up unsuccessful.

That being said the drive through the Highland is absolutely amazing.  That is really all I can say.  So you should go do them :)

Catch the web-series on Monday night @ 7:30pm EST hope everyone is doing great!

Half way home

I'm about a month away from the end of my backpacking adventure through Europe that has been the most amazing adventure I have ever done in my life.  With each day presents new challenges and new obstacles.  Finding fun in the uncertainty of each day is the most thrilling of all.  I think that is what life should be all about, well at least for me anyway.  I guess as I continue this vagabonding experience, a person who wanders from place to place with no job, I've realized that where ever you go and whatever experience you put yourself into, in the end everything works out.  I can't tell you the number of times I've been in what seemed like the most crazy situation like a missing a train or taking the wrong bus, but in the end I made it to where I needed to be and everything seemed just fine.  Taking a look back on it all, it's really mind blowing to see how far I've come on this adventure that started in Greece in late August until now.  With all the different experiences weeks seem like months. 

Though I know this experience will soon come to an end one of biggest things I have taken from it is that everything works out in the end and even the highest of mountains aren't so big after all.  If we just give it everything we've got, live each day as if it were our last, and put a smile on our face our lives become simple and fun.

With that being said, the Oxjam Music Festival was a blast! My good friend Heath Little who I played soccer with back in South Carolina has been working on his masters degree in London and offered to let me stay as his flat during my time here.  It's been awesome hanging out with him and his friends.  

Edinburgh, Scotland is next up on my travels around Europe.  My heritage is Scottish and Irish, so the goal is to find as much information as I can about the history of my family and to soak in the culture of the Scotts.  From Scotland I will make my way over to Ireland and enjoy everything Dublin has to offer. 

Please continue to follow the trip on twitter @LiveGoodVibes
and
www.LiveGoodVibes.com

Oxjam Music Festival

Only a few days away until I play in London, England at the Oxjam Music Festival where we will be raising money to fight poverty around the world.  The nerves have kicked in and the anxiety begins to rise. I have friends I have met along my travels throughout Europe who will be attending the festival, so it will be great to see all of them once again.  I go on at 9:25 and will be playing a 30 minute set.  Very stoked about this!

After I was in Berlin, Germany for just over a week I took off to Amsterdam, Holland.  Where I caught up some friends that I had met at Oktoberfest and Berlin, Germany.  While I was in Amsterdam I wanted to make sure I went to some of the museums that I missed when came to Amsterdam in 2007 while studying abroad in London.  I went to the Van Gogh Museum to learn about his art and his life in Holland.  His story is very interesting and if you ever make it to Amsterdam I would highly recommend going to see this museum.  His artwork was full of color and full of life.  Van Gogh's said "I don't invent the whole painting, instead it is already made in nature, though I still have to extract it".


From there I made my way over to the Anne Frank museum.  Though I never did read her book, I met a Australian lady whose father was Dutch and had been to the museum several times.  We briefly spoke and I kindly asked if she would help give me some insight onto what I was looking at while going through Anne Franks hideout and that she did.  It's really amazing that a 14 year old girl could right so deep at that age.  It's inspired me to read her diary.

Next week I will be attending an Arsenal Soccer match when they take on the Bolton Wanderers next tuesday night and then I am playing in a showcase open mic on Friday.  Wish me luck.  Hope everyone back home is doing GREAT!!

keep vibin'
WWW.LiveGoodVibes.com 

Week in Berlin

Where to start.  I feel like its been so long since I've last blogged.  I'm currently hanging out in Berlin, Germany and I can honestly say its been one of my favorite cities thus far on the trip.  I arrived on the 6th of October just after a fun filled adventure in Munich for Oktoberfest.  Once I arrived the first thing on my mind was "sleep" and then go do all the cool touristy things during the week.  Once I got to Berlin, I unloaded all of my stuff did some laundry and slept.  It was the greatest sleep of my life I can assure you of that.  From there I met some other people in my hostel and had a few drinks at a bar on the bottom floor of our place.

On the next day I decided to get cultured and took a free walking tour around the city to learn a little bit about Berlin.  The tour was great and now I want to do a whole revision on the Prussian empire again.  I never would have said that 4 years ago while in college.  Later in the day I went and busked in the streets promoting my album and preparing for the Oxjam Music Festival coming shortly.

Later in the week I met up with the cousins from North Carolina Keith and Cory Sherman who are cycling across Europe with their tents, a few pots and pans and their beards.  We all met each other in Munich and decided that we would all go to Berlin to celebrate Keith's 25th birthday before he had to fly back and start work again at Trader Joes.  We had a blast to say the least.


I played a small gig in Berlin and all the people I had met from Munich and Berlin all decided to come out.  We had a great crowd and it was a lot of fun.  We'll only 8 more days until my show in London.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Until then catch everybody Monday for the latest Web-Series.