So the other day, March 1st, was a Saturday. And I was lying in my bed for no particular reason other then I didn’t have anything to do, nor do I ever it seems, and I was checking my websites. Every day I end up having to check my bank balance, to make sure I don’t go bellow $0. So on this particular day instead of the usual listing of Jamba Juice, Jamba Juice, Caribou Coffee, Jimmy Johns, Jamba Juice, Caribou, balance around $19, there were some black numbers listed above the usual mass of 5 dollar reds. And these positive figures included (1) my bi-weekly pay check (2) my tax back money !! which I was surprised to see quite an amount (3) my first of the month rent check from my lovely mother, and (4) – still sitting there, the saved money my dad gave me for Christmas – national treasure style (meaning me and my brother had to run around the house following clues to find money.. yeah, it was awesome. yeah my younger brother is almost 18.. yeah it was hard to solve the clues..) – my share, of the treasure, to do with as I so choose, but preferably in an exciting or beneficial way (disappointment if I wasted it on t-shirts and drinks).
SO! That said, looking at this I was overcome by how rich I was, and also by how bored and lazy and monotonous I and my life have become, and so, I did some online shopping. I made just one purchase, and it was reasonably large and slightly impulsive. I bought a round trip ticket to Austria! To visit Tara and Shanon in Vienna in April. Immediately after buying it I panicked a bit, what if they don’t want me there, or maybe this was a fickle way to spend my money (I ought to have bought 2 new pairs of jeans and some boots ? bah!), using my tax money to go to Europe ?? flying to Austria for less than a week, am I crazy?
No. I am not crazy, I am getting really excited! It’s important to remind myself that I only live once and if I have the money I should spend it. And especially if I cannot save, to spend my money on something that is meaningful and will be amazing. It’s so hard to just do something, this is a perfect time for me to go because I might never have seen Shanon again if I don’t take the opportunity of my friend Tara studying abroad there – Shanon was an exchange student in my high school I hung out with all senior year. Plus, with me back in the contry I know my mom has really missed my blogs, so I had to do something about that! harhar. I’m kind of nervous because I don’t speak any German. And having gone through Asia and Egypt and Eastern Europe everyone speaks English, but I have the feeling that Austria and Germany (I have a layover in Germany !) will be a lot like Spain, they will be like- learn our language or we can’t help you! But I guess we will see, I’ll have to buy a phrase book!
So! I thought I would give my travel blog the heads up, there will be a new exciting entry for you when I get back to school mid April! And maybe one before that because I’m going home to MN for spring break, and then also to Utah with my madre for a few days. We’ll be in Zion National Park ! Which I have been really eager to go to since seeing the pictures of my friends from Croatia hiking around there! It looks seriously seriously cool. So I bet I’ll post a few pictures of our mother daughter trip there.
have a great day! I’m in finials now with two huge papers due Wednesday, so, obviously stalling. :D
love,
emily lee
Monday, March 10, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
becoming concerned at the alarming rate my apartment appears to be consuming ice cream
well well well, I never wrote a Spain entry, or a culminating I love the world entry, which I did and do, but I am afraid I just ran out of time! So maybe I'll still get to it, especially now that there is so much procrastinating to be done with school started.
Today began just about the earliest way possible, me getting out of bed at 5:25 AM, AM! and journeying through the rain, rain! in January, how depressing, to a 6 AM Bikram Yoga class, which was really very hard, because it was so early. whew. and then my toenail fell off! disgusting. After I trudged home in the rain, still before anything had opened, slept 5 hours after my original wake up time, then came to work and here I sit.
The other day my roommate Sarah Frye, my friend from semester at sea Andy H, and I went to go visit my friend from high school Joke at her place of business, the Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park. It was really wonderful because it was like all the chapters of my life in one Sunday night dinner! And we took wonderful pictures to commemorate the situation. :)
Have an excelent day!
Today began just about the earliest way possible, me getting out of bed at 5:25 AM, AM! and journeying through the rain, rain! in January, how depressing, to a 6 AM Bikram Yoga class, which was really very hard, because it was so early. whew. and then my toenail fell off! disgusting. After I trudged home in the rain, still before anything had opened, slept 5 hours after my original wake up time, then came to work and here I sit.
The other day my roommate Sarah Frye, my friend from semester at sea Andy H, and I went to go visit my friend from high school Joke at her place of business, the Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park. It was really wonderful because it was like all the chapters of my life in one Sunday night dinner! And we took wonderful pictures to commemorate the situation. :)
Have an excelent day!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Adios Spain!
So here are some more pictures! This first one is of me on the very last day of my voyage in Spain! I am with the whole world! Oh how wonderful.
And here are just a few other funny pictures I thought I would share with you, dear reader, as I have not slept due to school work and therefore not typed anything or been online much at all. Here we are picking oranges off trees in the street, very gross tasting, which is why no one else was picking them.
Here we are waiting on a bench for Luis, in front of a Christopher Columbus monument. Here I am dancing with all my bags in the middle of a museum.
Here I am with my boat and Spanish friends!
Here we are eating a plate of bait, which came out as a tappa. Mostly Luis ate them but I had one and there is a picture of me freaking out but I do not look good in it, even worse that this one if you can believe it! But it was funny and this picture here is pretty funny. Last here is a picture of my wall that I was talking about in the post Spain entry that I wrote.
Okay well I’m thinking I’m probably about out of minutes again, so I will be back December 8th! Miss miss miss you! Ambassadors ball tonight! Very exciting!! <3
And here are just a few other funny pictures I thought I would share with you, dear reader, as I have not slept due to school work and therefore not typed anything or been online much at all. Here we are picking oranges off trees in the street, very gross tasting, which is why no one else was picking them.
Here we are waiting on a bench for Luis, in front of a Christopher Columbus monument. Here I am dancing with all my bags in the middle of a museum.
Here I am with my boat and Spanish friends!
Here we are eating a plate of bait, which came out as a tappa. Mostly Luis ate them but I had one and there is a picture of me freaking out but I do not look good in it, even worse that this one if you can believe it! But it was funny and this picture here is pretty funny. Last here is a picture of my wall that I was talking about in the post Spain entry that I wrote.
Okay well I’m thinking I’m probably about out of minutes again, so I will be back December 8th! Miss miss miss you! Ambassadors ball tonight! Very exciting!! <3
Thursday, November 29, 2007
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
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
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 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!
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!
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