hnamrnrdk

here’s a video from my camera… jess and i are recording eachother once we finally made it to the park. giggling our asses off.

when it hits you, there’s no turning back…

here’s a picture from our hike through the cinque terre (five italian villages set into the moutain side along the mediterranean sea). it was amazing… and i think this picture is really freakin cute.

just look at this picture and you will know…
all my love.

after being in switzerland for several days, we decided that it was time to go to prague. we left gimmelwald yesterday morning and headed down the mountain back to interlaken to take the train out. we traveled with a new friend that we made (Richie, from australia, who was headed to italy). once we made it to interlaken it turned out that we had just missed the next train to get us to prague, so we changed our minds and headed to florence. jess, richie, and i hopped on the train. richie’s stop came up and we hugged and said goodbye. (the goodbyes are the hardest part. you form bonds with people so quickly and strongly and then you have to say goodbye over and over again. but i guess it gets easier everytime.) jess and i rode the train for 5 hours until we got to milan where we were supposed to catch another train to florence. but our first train was late, causing us to miss our connecting train. so we waited for the next one.

we hopped on the next train and took two random seats in coach. as we are sitting there, eating our sandys and waiting for the train to leave, who comes walking down the isle toward us but richie! it was wild! and not only was he on that train, but we just happened to be sitting in his assigned seat! what? isnt that ridiculous?? so after having to say goodbye to him earlier, we got to hang out again for a few more hours on the train until his stop in bologna. we parted ways again and kept on going to florence. we arrived at about 9pm with nowhere to stay, no map, and only a vague recommendation for a hostel from richie. but after walking around for about an hour, and getting turned down by several hostels, we finally found one and crashed. we shared a room with this really awesome girl from australia who is on a one year travel adventure by herself around the world. she’s gonig to be in florence for another 3 weeks learning italian, and then to the UK to try to find a job. what fun!

this morning we woke up and went to see the city. we walked all around the streets, working on our italian. i can say like 3 things… its great! we saw the statue of david, which was one of the most incredible things i have ever seen. the detail is absolutely spectacular, and the obvious time and energy that went into that sculpture is unreal. also in that same museum i found this painting that i think is my new favorite. now, as you know, im not a religious person, but this painting just happens to be of jesus. i think its by rapheallino del garbo (??) and its called the ressurection of christ. in the painting, jesus has just come out of his tomb, the lib of the grave is lying of a man in agony. the people around obviously didnt beleive that jesus would rise again and are astonished. and jesus.. what a guy… is smiling and giving us the peace sign. right on, man. peace be with you… and also with you.

on another note, here’s a link so you can see my skydiving video. it was the most intense amazing thin ive ever done. it changed my life. now, i really feel like i have the power and control of my life and the desire and yearning to do anything that i want. anything that crosses my path. i can handle it now. if i can jump out of a heli from 15,000ft im pretty sure i can do anything.

back out on the town for drinks and some kiss ass italian food. all my love to you and yours.

yesterday was insanity… although we didn’t seem to do much, we were completely worn out at the end of the day. we woke up and wondered to find this place Barney’s, that nyc tom to us about in london. we found it and it was packed. but just as we walked in, we ran into our roommate, nick. so we sat down and got some coffee, smoked a joint… you know. then we discover that they aren’t serving breakfast anymore, but next door in their other branch they are. so as we are discussing this and how we don’t have a table, this guy in line next to our table says, “my friend and i have a 4 person table, would you like to join us?” hell yes we would, we’re starving! so we meet lee and… umm, young lawyer guy from california. they were cool… we ate and talked and then walked to the smart shop a couple blocks away to buy from mushrooms.

colombian mushrooms. a medium type with small hillucinations, energy, and intense body high. and i must say, that’s pretty accurate. we ate the mushies back at the hostel, wrapped in a croissant. yum yum. and walked to the zoo. now it was a bit of a walk, and by the time we got there we were starting to trip balls. we realized that the zoo was going to close in about 20 minutes and we didn’t know what the fuck to do. we walked away and opened the map and things got crazy. staring down at all those little streets that i can hardly read when im sober, my brain started to spin. i was feeling nauseous and i just needed to lie down and start tripoin, but that wasnt exactly an option. so we sat at a tram stop and waited for the 7 or 10 to take us to vondelpark. we waited and waited and the ground was moving. we waited and waited and m hands were streaking through the air. finally the 10 arrived! what an exciting moment!

on the tram a little tiny black girl was smiling at us, and chewing on some paper. what a fucking cutie. but the tram was no good for me. feeling sick and starting to trip on mushrooms and a crowded tram in amsterdam is not my scene. but we got to our stop and exited.

and with each change of scene, we fell deeper and deeper into the trip. after quite a bit of walking and video recording of ourselves (which we will soon post on youtube for all our fans out there), we made it to the park. we found a nice sunny spot on the grass by a pond to fuckin plop down. some trees around, some happy people, birds and squirrels… and Lejandro.

lejandro is our best friend. i miss him like crazy, and maybe i made the biggest mistake of my life by letting him go. but im getting ahead of myself. back the the grassy spot of sun. we found ourselves trippin fuckin balls man… tripping on the clouds and the amazing (messed up) shit you can see in them when you ingest poison. haha. we laughed and lauged and catured the best picture ever and jess and hna. a picture that incompasses the intense fun and enjoyment you have with mushrooms, and the amazing time that we are having in europe. we took videos of ourselves laughing our asses off and one of me slowly attempting to begin to roll a joint. baby steps, people. but there was always Lejandro.

i don’t remember a time when he wasn’t there, and it was almost like he was a figment of our imagination. this guy, who i thought kind of looked like bookis, but maybe he was just built kind of like bookis. tall and thin. he was lying in the grass about 10 feet from us… and he too, by some happy act of mother nature or the higher power by whatever you believe, was tripping balls on magic mushrooms. all alone in a park in amsterdam, our new friend lejandro just happened to be doing the same exact thing we were doing at the same exact time in the same exact place… in fucking amsterdam. i love him. he would just laugh and laugh at us (i can only imagine that we were pretty entertaining) and he had the most amazing smile. sort of like tyler, a smile that can light up your life… but more, i dunno, foriegn. anyways, we would catch each other just staring at our hands of a blade of grass for 5 minutes and just laugh and smile. looking over at him from time to time and connecting a level that you can only hope for in the world today is a feeling that i’d like to feel everyday. no need for words or sign language. just a look and the world melts away and its just me, and jess, and Lejandro on the same exact page in our books of life. my heart was filled in the most amazing feeling and i so badly wanted to run to him and throw my arms around him and just feel the touch of someone who knew exactly what i was thinking and feeling at that exact moment. i LIVE for that feeling. (to those of you who have made me feel this… you are my life.) i couldn’t help but smile for like 5 hours while we sat in this park.

we tried lots of things. playing spit (aka speed) a card game. rolling joints. taking pictures all kinds of stuff, and most of all lejandro’s smile. and i don’t think we were successful at any other those things.

at one point, when jess and i were coming down, we all just laid back on allowed ourselves to trip on our own on the way down. the sky was getting dark but it was still a beautiful blue and all i could see was sky with little bits of trees around the edges. i allowed myself to completely relax and listen the people in the park around me. laughing, talking, maybe singing. and it was like an magical orchestra. all the sounds of human being coming together to make beautiful music. now maybe i was tripping, but it was the most lovely thing i’ve ever heard.

then things got weird. im really not sure if i will be able to explain what happened next. it was the strangest thing i think i’ve ever seen. i just realized that i only have 4 minutes left on the internet, so i’ll tell you all about it next time.

tonight’s our last night booked in amsterdam. we plan on going to interlaken, switzerland tomorrow. wish us luck. all my love.

oh geez, y’all. this shit is fucked up. but like goodfucked up, ya know?

i’d like to start by saying that i’ve add it all up, and in the last 6 days, thats 144 hours, since i left seattle i’ve have 30 1/4 hours of sleep combined. i think thats pretty ridiculous! so anyways, here we go… i have a half an hour to write this so i better get going!

we drank all night last night… even though it wasn’t maybe the best idea we’ve ever had. we med some crazy awesome people. first we met these two guys, grant and roger. grant’s an indiginous kiwi… and roger’s an aussie. we hung out with them for a while, drank a couple beers and then went to walk the streets to try to find some weed. apparently its pretty easy. well it wasn’t and for some reason we were in some crazy part of london where nobody smokes weed. so finally we and the boys went into hyde park to find some shaddy charater to sell us brittish weed. we come accross these guys who totally ripped us off and charged us 10 pounds for a mini joint’s worth which they claimed was half of their eighth. don’t treat my like im a child, man. i’m an american girl but i know when im getting played. anyways, we negotiated a bit and then bought it. rolled it up in the park and fuckin smoked that shit, just as all the gates were being locked, closing us in for what could have been forever. then we came accross a crazy maybe-polish woman and about 40 swans, geese, and ducks. she was walking away from them so jess ran us to them in hopes of making them all fly off so i could get a good picture. only the ducks flew away and there weren’t very many of them, so it wasn’t all that cool. but the crazy lady was pissed. she was yelling and calling us bastards, so which roger replayed “piss off” and other such australian things to say. so we hopped the fence, went back to the hostel and drank in the bar in the basement.

there we met tim from nyc. brendan from iowa. andrew from chicago. hector from cabo. stefan and fabien from paris. we got all of these people’s contact information for later travels. they were all awsome, and after we got wasted with them, we went to bed… slept for THREE HOURS… and got up to go to the airport and head told AMSTERDAM, bitches.

it was a bitch getting here. we flew to eindhoven and then took the train here. not only were we tired as hell and a bit hung over, but everything fucking sucked as soon as we landed in eindhoven. we were feeling light headed and jess was sicky-poo. then it took us about 5 separate tried at the bus ticket machine before we actually purchased the tickets… but to find out that we could have just walked on the bus and no one would check the fucking tickets! then we got to the train station and our credit cards didn’t work in the machines, but it turned out we were in the totally wrong part of the station. we finally bought our tickets and got on a fucking crowded train with nowhere to sit. we finally got settled in… jess slept… i listened to elton john.

we finally fucking got the amsterdam! we didn’t have reservations for a place to stay, but we went to some hostels to try to book a couple beds. but everywhere that we went was “booked full up.” we finally booked one through this hostel help desk kinda thing which we were told was a 20 minute walk away. no prob. LIE! it was more like 50 minutes. so anyways we got to our hostel, walked up 4 insanely steep flights of stairs, showered and took a 20 minute power nap.

we left our hostel and took the bus up to dam square and walked into the outer edges of the red light district. there were coffee (weed) shops and sex shops fucking everywhere. “smart” shops where you can buy mushrooms. and people… people everywhere! we made our way into a little coffee shop called sheeba. we bought 1.5 grams of AK-48 for 12 euro and rolled a joint. i don’t know what it was, but it was great. we got high as shit, sitting next to these three french assholes. but no worries. we left there and decided to wander the streets.

like i said we were completely stoned. and we wandered the streets of amsterdam, relatively aimlessly, from about 3pm until about 9pm. we got ourselves lost and then found again. we found the red light district and saw some prostitutes. it was actually pretty crazy. just women literally sitting behind glass doors showin you what they’re workin with. and there were actualy some surprisingly cute ones.. but i would never do that. really. we got some food at cafe remember where we had delicious fucking coffee, and dutch breakfast. bread, slices of cold cheese and ham. one fried bed. jam and butter. it was amazing! okay they are kicking us out… sorry you guys. i love you all tons! to be continued…

today, jess and i did london. i woke up at about 6am and had the worst time sleeping until about 9am when our alarm went off. the guy in the bunk above me kept moving around and dropping his blankets of me. but at any rate, i finally got out of bed around 930 with a nasty headache and went downstairs for breakfast. we had to wait until 11am to check out and check back into a different room for tonight, so i just laid in bed while jess got ready. i think i had a fever; hot flashes and sweating, then freezing cold and shivering. but after i got up and dressed a felt a bit better.

turns out we could stay in our same room/beds which saved us about £5 each. we put our packs back in the room and headed out to start our day. we decided to do one of those open top, double-decker bus tours around the city since we were tired and didn’t know anything about getting around central london. i know that i sure as hell could not have walked around london all day long… what a drag. so we hopped on the ‘original london tours’ bus a few blocks from our hostel near hyde park and headed out to see the sites. the tour took us everywhere! piccadilly circus (no, not like elephants and lions… circus is actually latin for round-about). london bridge. london tower. tower bridge. the london eye (like a giant ferris wheel where each observation car holds 25 people). buckingham palace. buckingham gardens. westminster abbey. big ben. parliament. the original hard rock cafe. etc, etc, etc. it cost us £19 each, but it was totally worth it to see all the sites in the easiest way possible.

now we’re back at the hostel, thinking about dinner. i dunno, maybe fish and chips? we will be here for one more night, hopefully meeting up with a friend of a friend for a pint later on tonight. then tomorrow we are planning on heading to amsterdam where we’ll be for an undetermined amount of time.

when i get a chance to connect to the internet from my computer where i’ve already written about it, i will post about my adventures in nyc… until then, what is it they say in england?

cheers.

im here!  i made it!  i’ll post again very soon to let you all know what im up to. 

all my love to you and yours…

(i know this is the shortest post ever but i only have 2 minutes left to use the ole interweb.)

love love love love love.

holy fucking shit man. this is it. its happening! last night jess and i FINALLY bought our tickets to europe. which makes it so much more real than it ever was… and i guess, you know what they say, there’s no turning back now! so here we go…

here’s my itinerary as of now:

august 26: leave seattle for nyc to hang out with jess and paint the town
august 29: jess and i board a plane from jfk to heathrow in london!

~we have about a month to do whatever whenever whereever we want~

october 1: take placement tests at clm (the university in granada, spain)
october 9: start classes in granada

~live life, take classes, party, and travel for 3 months~

december 20: last day of classes
december 24: leave london (820am) for jfk (1050am) [back to the states and it will only take 2 hours?)
december 24: fly from jfk to indianapolis
january 2: fly from indy to seatac… and back to “my life” @ the hotbox (thank galoshes)

so stay tuned to find out what happens in the four undecided months of mayhem that lay ahead of me… all my love to you and yours.

here i go…

OH!!! and brittbritt leaves for france on september 24… see ya there babydoll.