waa

well baH! I posted some of the same pictures. I'm excited to come home!

trying to get some pictures out!

i have blurbs about these but i'm just doing anything i can to get some pictuers out and it's being really difficult! here are some monsters on the side of the street, me talking to a water fountain... me coughing with a sick snake.... SPAIN! it was glorious. :D

trying to post spain pictures is hard!

This is just not working! Ill try again later.

Here are some real live Americans, performing in Spain! How wonderful. Here is Jackie and I dancing with a Carmen statue – Jess, Luis, and Jackie watching… a pile of cheerful Spanish boys and a cool light post!

Here I am hanging out with my mom (that statue means faith), us at the Alli Hambra in Granada, and the Sierra Nevada mountains! Seen from the same wall we were sitting on watching the sun set, how beautiful!





As was Spain! I will show you more later. : D


I wrote this last night though ---

So I’m sitting here on my messy floor with my laptop on my skinny bed in my little cabin and I just got back from 5 days in Spain and 91 days of being in the world. I got on the ship at 8:34 tonight with 26 minutes to spare before I would officially be in really big trouble, and at on ship time I went to post port reflections, which I always do, but this time I got up and talked, which surprisingly I have never done. And now I’m sitting here and I’m thinking about it all and I’m looking at my wall. And I am overwhelmed by how wonderful everything and everywhere has been. And how much I saw and how many cities I was able to get to and how many millions of experiences I have had and by all that I have learned – which has been so much.

I mean it all starts with the first day I walked into this room and I was like I have a blue bedspread! And there is a mini refrigerator in here! And my bathroom is much bigger and there is much more space then I thought that there would be! And I cannot call to tell my my mom about it! How bizarre! How many times in your life do you experience something completely new and huge like moving into a new place and you cannot talk to a single person that you know even one bit about it!

And then multiply that by every situation for the past 91 days! I made my ship friends, but I cannot be like hey shipfriends! So those pyramids were awesome! Well I mean you can but I cannot even say how many times something huge would happen and then we would continue on with the rest of our day and 4 hours later someone would be like, whoa, remember when… ! I can only think of scary examples right now. But remember when you got lost at the Summer Palace?! And you could talk about it and process it and I mean extraordinary thing after extraordinary thing has happened to me so that it has been hard to soak it all in. And I will probably be doing so for the rest of my life :D so I have that to look forward to.

[here I have a picture but like I said, have trouble getting it, but it is a picture of my room – so don’t read the next paragraph until I post that picture or it will be boring]

And I just wanted to say that I was hit with a wave of it when I sat down to upload my Spain pictures and my computer loaded with a camel (dromedary) background, and just to my right is a poster of the Giza Pyramid light show (which as you readers know I really really enjoyed), and then just above that is Hawaii stuff, with a Pearl Harbor focus, and my school calendar I stole from the door of the advisors office (ehehe ;0 don’t tell them), the little kimono they gave us in Japan, my Thailand Palace post card collection, elephant magnet to remind me of how I road them! The invitation to my sea social, a whole host of Japanese stuff including my rail pass that got me from place to place. Pictures of the Great wall, my flight stub to Xi’an taking me to the Terracotta Warriors, the view of Hong Kong and my stub that got me up to the top of the mountain seeing it in real life. Post cards that remind me of the people and streets and water markets of Vietnam above the SAS painting, also India, where I stood inside and in front of the Taj Mahal, rode along the river Ganges and went to the Buddhist place Sarnath. There are yellow rings I wore when we won the sea Olympics! The save the date card for my friend Jess’s wedding and an Alaskan candy bar wrapper from my roommate Brett. On the right of my wall I have a picture of king Tut’s mask, my favorite new flag – the Turkish, the evil eye magnet, my soccer ticket, a stub from the club we went to in Croatia, a little print I bought in Dubrovnik, an Espana bookmark, and last, but certainly not least, pictures of my friends from home. How completely wonderful!

I have a lot to do – including learning physics in the next week, taking finials learning the histories of Turkey, Croatia, Spain, and the entire European Union; mastering fiscal policy, and reading Nietzsche. Oh all that and I have to lose a hundred pounds to fit into a dress for the ambassadors ball and I have to figure out how to style my hair not to look like a little boy. ehehehe ! oh I love the world and that is wonderful, my Spain reflections to come! Hopefully later rather than sooner because that will mean I am doing some work!

Also I am having issues because I sprained or bruised the bone, or possibly broke something in my right ring finger because it is swollen and red and painful because I got a very much too small ring honestly stuck on it for about 30 hours and I couldn’t get it off and my finger was swelling and I got a blood blister (internal bleeding!!!) and eventually for at least 2 – 3 minutes last night had Luis (who we stayed with in Spain) tug and twist it off as hard as he could until it popped off at any cost. Whew! ouch I’m dumb. And I am so tired and ready to go to sleep. Spain was glorious :) I loved it, wonderful country to end the whole trip on. Oh I just love everything!

Last post for awhile, I swear

Oh jeeze well I am just bad this time around at properly posting things. I missed these 4 pictures! And here is the caption that accompanied them. I’ll add a bonus picture for you, because I know how much you miss me.

Here is a picture from the balcony of the apartment we stayed at during the first snowfall! Oh beautiful. And here is a very steep and pretty walkway we climbed up to get to high town Zagreb, and here we are up there! Horrible picture of me, I show my chubbiness and have an oddly placed snowflake in front of my face, but it has Drazen in it and he was wonderful for putting us up and showing us all things Croatian. Last, here is the soccer game that we watched projected onto their wall and it was a big deal…









The bonus picture is us girls with Danni and Daniel. Also a random girl that liked Drazen, so now you can see all my new friends! In this picture behind a wall of smoke. This giant ash tray has been how our travels have been unfortunately.

We’re bunking for the night in Gibraltar. I took some pictures of the rock of Gibraltar, it was quite cool. someone else left the ship for health reasons today and our ship is refueling. Our thanksgiving dinner was very filling, I am stuffed, with stuffing! Which was excellent, and the turkey was pretty good, and I had some salad and my typical rolls, but the mashed potatoes were sweet potatoes and I don’t really like pumpkin pie, though I suppose maybe those are good things.

Now, seriously, Spain tomorrow! I’ll talk to you soon! <3 ! <3 !

So I bought more minutes !

Bought more minutes to fix my mistakes here are my missing pictures. Not very exciting ones I’m afraid but without my flash drive, these are the 3 I had transferred to the public folder. Oh well.






I also have done it to wish my blog a Happy Thanksgiving! I am a happy person, very much thankful to be who I am and to be traveling the world. Imagine if I wasn’t? Good god what a brat I would be! Well I miss my family and friends a lot, I am very thankful for my friends. Coming into this semester I didn’t realize how hard it was to come across really great wonderful people, let alone have such good and honest people call me their friend. I guess I got lucky and didn’t know that I have been taking it for granted all these years. There are good and interesting people here and I like my friends on the ship, I am very thankful for them, they have made great traveling buddies and I know and look forward to that we will keep in touch, but they are not my perfect fit. I can be myself but not in the same way that I can with my friends and family from home. :) So I am thankful that you all will love me even if I come back a little different and maybe a little chubbier (haha). Also there are good and kind people and beautiful places all over the world, I can tell you with a first hand perspective and I am thankful for that. I wish I could be home with my family today, but I am more thankful that they made me go away because this has been awesome.

I am thankful for a million billion other things but I think that’s enough for now. Tonight I am getting dressed up, if I fit in any of my clothes, haha, though rumor has it there is a lifeboat drill, which is just kind of cruel, though I suppose we should be thankful for our safety here on the ol’ ship. I’m going to eat dinner with my 5 other friends, hopefully they have Turkey! And pie! Even though I don’t like pie. Just fits I suppose. I cleaned my whole room today! So… fyi. Last night we had to do an emergency stop off the east coast of Spain because an old husband of a professor fell down the stairs and was really injured, I watched from the deck as a little ship tried to tie up to our big ship and they loaded people on, it was really crazy to watch. It was scary but nice to know that they can do that if they need to.

Also I’m turning into my mom, I know this doesn’t fit with my thankful for good people soliloquy up there, but crazy people have just decided to become my friend these days. Like 4 of them in the past two days, hello, do you have any dvd’s I can borrow, because I have already watched all of the movies in the library and… etc. and then talking at me for 8 minutes. And that just keeps happening to me, a guy from my Egypt trip plopped down for lunch with me and my friends today.

Annnyywaayy tis the season! It definitely doesn’t seem like thanksgiving, partly maybe because I had two classes to go to! But maybe it’s better that way so I don’t miss it. Also I got to eat lunch outside today, so, that’s no macy’s day parade, but it’s pretty amazing. Alright have a good day, a good holiday! And I miss you and will be home soon for Christmas! Spain tomorrow! I’m sure it will be fantastic, though I don’t really have anything planned yet. We’re going to wing it. <3

: )

AND i am out of internet mins again! i don't know what i am going to do, i am stealing a friends right now, i might have to buy one more little package to post my post spain stuff...

I’m having such a hard time posting this because my second new flash drive broke! Aie hi aye, haha uh? But I am not buying a new one. So this has been difficult.

Right of the ship, Jackie got pooped on by a bird when we were eating our sandwiches! Here is a picture of me in Bosnia-Herzegovina – in a bus, but I did get out and run around for a few minutes, it was nice. Here is the view from our window in Split – God bless us everyone!


Here is a rather vulgar don’t go to the bathroom here sign. Here is the café we had breakfast in, where I ordered hot chocolate and got liquid chocolate but couldn’t even taste it because I’m sick! Ah! Here I am on our hike up to the top of split, here we are at the top, there was a 360 view, and a flag! What could be better. And hear I am at a modern art exhibition inside a really old castle, it was awesome.







Here we are in Zagreb! In front of the Opera house. Here we are ready to go out, don’t I look sparkly? I bought that in Hong Kong. Here is my big butt walking up a gazebo in a park that was pretty. Here I am posing with a graffiti rock star on a church; there was a lot of graffiti all over Croatia. And here is me hanging out with a manikin friend of ours we repeatedly walked by and were repeatedly scared by, so I made friends.

more pictures for you my friend!

Here is a picture from the balcony of the apartment we stayed at during the first snowfall! Oh beautiful. And here is a very steep and pretty walkway we climbed up to get to high town Zagreb, and here we are up there! Horrible picture of me, I show my chubbiness and have an oddly placed snowflake in front of my face, but it has Drazen in it and he was wonderful for putting us up and showing us all things Croatian. Last, here is the soccer game that we watched projected onto their wall and it was a big deal…







Here is Dubrovnik where I took most my pictures, it was so cool, here is the old city, a fully standing walled in city where people still live, right on the Adriatic Sea and it’s really beautiful. So here are a bunch of nice pictures, me in a door, me waving at you, a cat I thought was cute (don’t tell anyone – I thought I should show that I have a heart here and am not looking for my oil can all the time) me eating a magnum ice cream bar, me pretending to be a cool statue, a cool statue, me sitting on the wall, THE CITY! whew! that’s cool. Here I am locked in a wall, very unhappy looking. And there I am hanging around outside a building in the walled city.








Oh! And here is the creepy place I called my mom.









Here are six more pictures of Turkey! Me in the Blue Mosque square, pretty far away though. Me and Jackie in the Haghia Sophia stairwell. And hike pictures! Look at those cliffs! And that little lake is something we had to get past. I still hope to get one of the sheer rock, but I’m not sure if I have one. So! Read my Croatia diary if you please, now that i have 0 mins left : )