Bloopers

I am now nearing the end of my stay here in Europe.  Most of what I have yet to do and see here revolves around writing papers, finishing group projects and studying for exams.  My schedule is completely insane and I am pretty sure my head may explode at any moment.  However, I'm guessing that pictures of me stressing about classes and finals would not make for a very exciting blog.  Sooo, I have decided to have a little fun with this blog entry.  I'm pretty sure I may make some enemies (2 in particular), but I will do it anyway for your viewing pleasure.

As you know, I spent the second week of my travel break galavanting around the continent with my mother and auntie.  They were kind enough to tell you about some of our adventures here.  In reviewing my blog, I have discovered that there are several stories and pictures that they "forgot" to include.  I shall now devote the rest of this entry to telling you "...the rest of the story" (yes, I did just quote NPR). 

London

The truth is... we had a blast in London.  The three of us thoroughly enjoyed all of the sights, monuments and culture there was in this great city.  It seemed like everywhere we turned there were beautiful buildings and statues to see.  My mother and auntie explained one of their posts that we got to ride the London Eye.  Pictured below, it is essentially a giant (extremely stable) ferris wheel that gives its passengers the chance to experience the true beauty and scope of London.

For me, this was a no brainer... of course we were going to do it!  Well, the two of them had "decided against it" prior to my arrival.  On the first day of our trip we took a tour that offered a ride on the eye, but they chose to get tea instead!!!!  They were too scared of the height and potentially rocky cars.  Eventually I was able to force them to do it and they had a wonderful time (no rocking).

There were other crazy moments in London, like the time my faithful companions tried to get themselves arrested and "forgot" to pay their bills.  I would tell you about those stories, but I am looking forward to a happy Christmas season too much.

Dublin

The true craziness began when we arrived in Dublin.  On our first excursion they declared that they had no interest in looking at maps or planning our trip, they would rather I took care of all that.  My dear auntie even tried to make me use my "feminine charms" to convince the waiter to help us out.

At Dublin Castle their behavior escalated towards being uncontrollable.  They did not find the castle entertaining enough just to look at or walk through...

First, Aunt Jill began falling down all over the place and throwing her belongings.  My guess is that she was acting this way merely to get my attention.

Then, even my mother's usually good behavior deteriorated when she decided it was amusing to climb into the castle's guard shacks and make funny faces.

If you have doubted the factual nature of my stories thus far, the next two pictures should remove any question of their truth...

Here is my auntie playing with her food.  A milk mustache?  I think not.  This would be her showing me her GUINNESS mustache!!!

Oh, mother.  I am afraid you are setting a very bad example for your impressionable young daughter.  

Yes, they told you about the night we went and saw Irish step dancers at a pub where we could pour our own Guinness.  What they left our was the number of glasses  they poured...  

**Note: These photos were staged.  No mothers were intoxicated during the taking of these photographs. **

As I conclude this "tell all" blog entry, I begin to fear for my safe return to the States.  For this reason I must tell you that while there is some truth to most of the stories I have just related there is also a hint of fabrication.  I found these pictures far too entertaining to simply provide you with the "real story."  To be honest, I often coaxed my auntie and mother to play along and act out ridiculous scenes for my pleasure.  I hope you enjoyed my stories and will not think less of them (or me).

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, think of me when you are eating your delicious turkey and cranberry sauce.  Know that I am incredibly jealous!!!

Czech Trek!!

For my last week of the travel break I signed up for an adventure trip offered through DIS called the Czech Trek.  This trip gave us the chance to experience various outdoor adventure activities in Cesky Raj, a northern region of the Czech Republic.  

Day 1

We left Copenhagen Sunday evening by bus.  I tried very hard to sleep during the overnight ride, but being squished into a tiny seat with someone sitting next to you and luggage on your lap made this a rather difficult task.  Needless to say my body was very sore and tired the next morning... a good way to start off an adventure trip!

Day 2

It took 17 hours to get there by ferry and bus, but we finally made it to the beautiful Hruba Skala Castle!  The castle was a series of old pretty buildings on the face of an enormous cliff.  As it was close to Halloween, there were several random and spooking decorations set up (notice the dummy being hung in the courtyard below).

After we got off the bus we had the chance to settle in a bit and then we jumped right into a 3 hour session of intense team building activities and icebreakers.  I was pleasantly surprised with some very clever and original games that I will be stealing for camp staff training this summer.  It was a really good time, despite the rain pouring down on us.

Day 3

For the remainder of the adventure portion of the trip our group of about 40 was divided in 2 smaller groups.  I was in the group that wished for a more challenging course.  We began the day with a 3 hour trekking and hiking trip through the woods and along the cliffs surrounding Hruba Skala.  The panoramic views were incredible and the nature was a nice change of pace from the cities I have been living in for the past several months.

Later that day we got an introductory lesson in high ropes elements.  We took turns rappelling down a cliff, zip-lining across a canyon and coming back over a rope bridge.  I really enjoyed the rope bridge because it required a lot of focus to keep it from flipping over and myself from flipping out.  

The rappelling was also fun.  The hardest part was the first part where I had to force my body to lean backward and trust that the rope would keep me from falling 50 meters down a cliff to my death... what a rush!!

That night we had a group scavenger hunt around the castle.  We were divided into 6 groups and given the task of finding small clues all over the castle grounds in order to figure out a riddle that would lead us to some kind of treasure.  We were armed with terrible paper maps and tea candles to guide us around the buildings, down into the gorge and forests.  Luckily, I am really good at deciphering riddles.  So, my group found the key to unlock the tower where the treasure (bottles of wine) were hidden before anyone else.

Day 4

We began this morning with a cave and rope expedition on and in a nearby village.  We were split into smaller groups of about 10 to trek our way into caves, through mud puddles, over cliffs and down bouldering hills.  This was my favorite part of the whole trip because we really had to work together as a group to find our way and make it through so tight (literally) spaces.

The first thing we did was crawl through a giant mud puddle to find clues to our map inside a cave.  Once we found our map we had to use it to make our way around the mountain.  Our Czech guide supported us if we were in desperate need of help, but mostly he taunted us by suggesting that our chosen path lead to blood and guts.  I took away his talking privileges early on in the trip.
The final cave we wormed (we actually had to crawl on our stomachs) our way into was a cute little circled space for us to sit together and enjoy some more treasure (wine).  Our guide, Libor, "forgot" to bring a corkscrew and glasses so we had to push the cork down in and play pass the bottle... classy, I know.

We later concluded our adventure activities with a more challenging climbing and rappelling experience.  As you can see above we are standing at the base the rappelling wall.

Day 5

For the final day of our trip we spent 10 hours in Prague, the capitol city of Czech.  It was an amazingly beautiful city with a great deal of old architecture and art.  

Prague is a very touristy city with souvenir shops on every corner and people crowding everywhere, but I really enjoyed walking through the city.  The buildings and churches are very old and picturesque.  A great deal of attention has been paid in making the old and new portions of the city aesthetically pleasing and interesting to look at.

I had a really great time on the Czech Trek.  It was a wonderful end to my 3 week travel break.

Highlights from Holland

Well, I would first like to apologize for how long it has been since my last post.  I got so used to having my mother and auntie write my blog for me that I have completely neglected it for several weeks.  Anyway, I had an incredible time on my 3 week study break.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to travel around Europe and experience as much as I have.  I really loved being able to spend time with family during the second week of break.  It did make me a bit anxious to come home at Christmas time to see everyone though.  However, for this blog entry I will tell you a little bit about what I experienced at the beginning of my travels in Holland!!!

Groningen

We left Copenhagen very early the first morning to travel 11 hours by bus and ferry.  Our first destination was a city in Holland called Groningen (sounds like groaning).  Groningen is a small, but pretty college town where we spent most of our time doing academic visits to special needs schools and facilities.  It was a very nice little historic town though, and I enjoyed it's cozy atmosphere.

Holland is very much like Denmark with the fact that it is greatly influenced by water and coastlines.  Groningen and Amsterdam had lots of pretty canals and cute little footbridges.

One day our class took a trip to the Martini Tower which is the highest church tower in Groningen.  We were able to walk to the very top which had a beautiful view of the city.  The climb was a bit challenging because it was just a narrow little spiral staircase.  We were out of breath by the time we reached the top, but the view was worth it.

For some reason when we were in Groningen I was on a bit of a Disney kick.  I amused myself by singing Disney songs (rather loudly) wherever I went.  Occasionally I was able to encourage others to join in on my fun, but mostly I got funny looks.  In the picture above I was channelling Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I was so excited that the bells actually rang when I pulled the rope!

The Hague

We spent a day in The Hague, another city in Holland.  We visited a museum during the day and a play at night.  The Mauritshuis Museum was a relatively small building with paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.  The most famous painting that we were able to view was "The Girl With The Pearl Earring."  The play we say was Virginia Woolf's, The Waves.  It was a VERY odd play that I did not quite understand or enjoy.  It was a series of monologues from 6 different characters and their journey from children to adults.  The part I did find fascinating was that in between reading their parts the actors used a range of props and instruments to create the sound effects of the story.  

The picture above is me enjoying a wonderful cup of cocoa before the play.  I enjoyed this particular cup of hot chocolate a lot because I sort of made it.  When the waiter served it to me he gave me just a cup of steaming milk and a stick with a chunk of chocolate on the end of it.  I had to stir the chocolate into the milk to make my cocoa!!!  Well... I was entertained by it anyway.

Amsterdam

For our last few days in Holland we stayed in Amsterdam!  It was a very fun city to be in and I got to experience a lot of culture.  Some of our activities included a canal tour at night, a visit to the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House.  

The Van Gogh Museum was really impressive.  I am really not much of an art person.  I told my friends upon entering that I really didn't get a lot of art with the random splotches of color and unrealistic interpretations of life.  However, my appreciation for art grew slightly as a result of this trip.  I was very impressed by his works and my friends helped me to understand some of the "meaning" for various techniques.

The Anne Frank House was a bit surreal.  We were able to walk through the actual hallways and rooms where the Frank family lived and see documents that she had actually written.  I wish I could share with you the images of her bedroom and living spaces, but we were not allowed to take cameras into the house.

Well, thats all for now.  Tune in for next time when Kelly goes on a Czech Trek!!!