Tag Archives: travel

Opinion & Review, Sports, Volume '22, Issue 1, World News

A tourist’s view of Qatari culture

January 9, 2023 cvcadmin

By Colin Hallibuton

Recently I got the opportunity to visit Qatar for the World Cup. I was excited to see the games of course, but also to discover Qatar. Like many others, before the World Cup I had barely, if ever, heard of it. But when I got there and looked around, it was a little different to what I expected.

Qatar is an interesting nation culturally, because it has no culture. It feels middle-eastern, borrowing many traditions and ideas from its neighbours, like foods, architecture, sports, but nothing of its own. Only 8% of the 2.3 million people are Qatari, the rest being migrant workers or immigrants bringing their own cultures. The oil money has allowed it to build a shiny, but thin, veneer of cool skyscrapers and stadiums, but lurking close behind are the rows of empty apartment buildings, deserted hotels, and Lebanese restaurants. Qatar has spent the past 12 years rebranding itself and building everything around this tournament, which brought in over 1 million new visitors. The cost of focusing so heavily on what everybody thinks of you is that they forgot to focus on what they actually are. Even the national museum, while it has an impressive exterior, it only has a couple of exhibits about the nomads that used to live on that land, and where they came from.

These images are some of my favorites that capture the essence of Doha.

One of many stray cats hangs around the new cruise ship port, built for these floating hotels used to accommodate the influx of world cup visitors

A shop owner walks through his falconry store, popular in the middle-east and the national sport of Qatar. The store is noticeably empty of customers, and full of stock.

Souq Waqif is the main market in Doha, built to emulate the traditional trading markets of the area. There are some higher end restaurants and craftspeople, although it mostly has lines of fake jewelry stores and cheap sports jerseys for tourists.

A lone camel rider passed our desert tour, riding into the sunset.

The view from the Qatar national museum, built by French architect Jean Nouvel to resemble a ‘desert rose’.

The view going into Ahmad bin Ali stadium before the USA v Wales game.

Arts and Sciences, Volume 11: Sp '21, World News

Welcome to Space!

June 8, 2021 cvcadmin

Sawyer Thorpe 6/3/2021

By 2027 a space hotel will be opened for citizens from around the world. For a 3 and a half night stay at this hotel in orbit of our home, it will run you at $5 million USD. With accommodations for every customer, there will be portable habitats of land from around the world. With their most recent $1,000,000 USD donation goal reached, they announced that they would be able to construct the hotel that will be 200 meters in diameter with pools, trees, and portable habitats in it.

“Our planned orbit and elevation for Voyager Station is 97 deg and 500-500 km. This is a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will reduce thermal stress and allow the most continuous solar power generation. There, orbit degradation and space debris risk will be nominal.” Announced OAC’s official twitter account.

Orbital Assembly Corporation’s Twitter account continuously gives updates about their progress on the orbital hotel that spread from comedic posts to construction and even features for their part-time show that runs on Youtube and other platforms.

With the possibility of space debris shutting down the entire project, the space station has plotted a course to bring minimum danger to its passengers while bringing the best experience possible for a hefty price of $5 million USD a stay.

With help coming in from the United States’ NASA program to a private company called SpaceX, prices for space travel have considerably lowered in terms of the broad look of things.

With comments about the articles coming to light, many are beginning to suspect that all of this planning and construction is simply talk while they find a way to take the money for themselves. With it being in the realm of possibilities, investors must use their own sense of judgement in the project.

Volume 6, Issue 1

Swimming with the Friendliest Animals in the World

March 22, 2017 cvceditor

The Galapagos Islands

Ms. Jam Giubardo

CVU Galapagos trip, students got to observe hundreds of new animals, including this friendly little Galapagos Barn Owl. Photo taken by CVU student, William Braun.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador — Imagine you are snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Your tight mask sticks to your face as you clench onto the salty rubber tube and breath in. You dunk your head down into the glass clear water and immediately see a whole new world of unique creatures. Millions of colors flashing from a thousand different fish. The coral reefs are swaying with intense serenity and the starfish are bathing in the sun. You turn your head and see a giant sea turtle gliding through the blue sea and a white tipped reef shark swims past your leg. You aren’t afraid because they aren’t afraid. The animals don’t even seem to notice you.

The Galapagos Islands are very special. Most people know them for the discovery of the theory of evolution, developed by Charles Darwin. And yes, research done there has fueled thousands of scientific research projects and discoveries, but from a non-scientist perspective, the islands allow for the most unique experiences and drive curiosity.

In February, 2017, Champlain Valley Union High School took a group of 18 students and 2 teachers to the Galapagos Islands. While they were there they got the opportunity to observe thousands of species unique to the climate and to the islands. During a survey at the end of their trip, the students were asked to state something that amazed them the most about the islands. William Braun, a CVU Junior, responded saying, “Being in a place like the Galapagos, where the wildlife and land is almost completely untouched really redefined what it meant to be one with nature. It was amazing to get so close to the animals and still watch them behave naturally as if you weren’t even there.” This not only illustrates the beauty and experiences people have there, but also shows how 17-year-olds, with little to no knowledge about animals and ecology, notice the magic there too.

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The Lectern, Volume 3, Issue 2

Evolutional Irony: On Humans, Big Brains, and Wanderlust

April 10, 2015 cvcadmin

Mr. Adrian Walther

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.” –Robert Louis Stevenson

In a chair, a human being sits, flying through the air 35,000 feet above the ground, the shadow of the mechanical bird he temporarily inhabits skimming across the choppy waters of the Atlantic like a water borne wraith. He is surrounded by dozens of other members of his species, none of them known to him, all of them in various states of boredom, excitement or repose. For as much time as humans have sought the gift of flight, no one, particularly, seemed to be very impressed.

When this homo sapien can’t see through the skein of clouds outside his window, he reads about the very current catastrophic global failures in terms of biodiversity and the permanent disappearance of countless species in Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction. All factors highlighted by this female human through years of research and interviews add up to one grotesque conclusion: their species (both the author’s and the reader’s) is causing, or at least massively accelerating, the sixth mass extinction in the half billion years of this beautiful planet’s existence. The numbers of species, the man read, that have disappeared or are close to blinking out due directly to human interference with the natural status quo are staggering. What have humans done to warrant such a dubious distinction? Primarily things like burning fossil fuels egregiously, developing land, and bringing species of plants and animals across oceans and other geographical barriers they never otherwise would have crossed, importing and exporting organisms both purposefully and inadvertently, leading to invasive plant and animal takeovers of entire continents.