The Chronicles - the photo evidence

Posts of 2007

2008-01-31T09:26:00.000-05:00

August

OK I give up. This posts will be slower and slower. There are only about 3 more posts to do but I don't know when I'll find the time.

NEW Flam! Flam! Flam!, posted Monday January, 21

NEW Norweigan Capitals for 300 Alex, posted Monday, January 21

NEW The Long Route to Oslo, posted Monday, January 21

Best Place Ever Been, posted Wednesday, October 31

Narvik, Norway and beyond, posted Sunday, October 7

You asked for it: More Sweden! posted Wednesday, October 3

Kuopio: Last stop in Finland, posted Monday, September 17

Helsinki, my love, posted Monday, September 10

Off to Europe, first stop Stockholm, posted Wednesday, September 5

July

July was kind of OK, posted Tuesday, September 4

June

Then it was June, posted Saturday, July 28

May

All of May Wrapped Up, posted Sunday, July 8

April

The Home Stretch, posted Sunday, June 17

Last exam take 1, posted Saturday, June 9

The kind of trouble that was April, posted Monday, May 28

March

The Last Lecture, posted Sunday, May 27

March stuff that is mildly entertaining, posted Saturday, March 29

T he kids go bananas, Day 4: the return - March 3-4,2007, posted Wednesday, April 25

Day 3: Still staying out of trouble, part 1 - March 2, 2007, Monday, April 16

Day 3: Later in the day, we find some trouble, part 2 - March 2, posted Monday, April 16

We made it another day in NYC - March 1, 2007, posted Thursday, March 29 UPDATED

February

So then we did some stuff - February 28, 2007, posted Tuesday, March 27

The kids leave for New York City - February 26, 2007, posted Tuesday, March 27

Most of February is likewise a blur.

January

Apparently I didn't do anything...or I didn't take my camera with me

NOTE: For 2006 follow me... huzzah.

Flamsbana

2008-01-21T18:14:00.000-05:00

Sunday, August 19

Early Sunday morning, we hopped on a train to Myrdal.

From Myrdal, we caught the Flamsbana to Flam, from Flam we took a boat through the world's largest fjord to Bergen. Or we could have stayed on that original train a little while longer and gotten to Bergen.

On the train to Myrdal

It was a nice ride.

Getting closer to Myrdal.

On the actual Flamsbana.

Adorable little houses.

Look at me!! I'm a tourist!!

Here we go....

Then we stopped and hopped off the train at this waterfall.

It was a nice waterfall.

Postcard anyone?

On the train they told us this legend about a woman who seduces you with her song...

It was pretty hilarious.

back on the bana.

We're starting to head down towards Flam.

A great ad for my camera.

It's just so Norway!

The trains were probably luxurious a long time ago.

People live in these parts.

Rivers

This is a real town...

Then we got to Flam!!

We thought this was our ship... it wasn't.

Masses of tourists.

Tourist traps.

Eventually our boat got there and we hopped on.

Damn!

Fjords are fricking great.

And off we go...

While beautiful, this looks slightly dirty to me.

I couldn't get enough of the Fjord... it was nothing like the Fjord in Quebec last summer.

Fjords do miracles for hair.

see?

WOW!

Does this look like a butt to anyone else?

Shortly thereafter, we went inside.

In the ferry...

This woman's daughter mistook me for her mother. Not all Jews look alike!! damnit.

A hotel made entirely of wood.

Then around 8:oo pm, we made it to rainy BERGEN!

This scene is kind of famous.

Oslo Sure?

2008-01-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

Friday, August 17

We got to Oslo at 6:04 am or something, got to the hostel to find out we had to wait until 1:00 pm to check in and they were really rude about it. At least they let us drop off our stuff... On minimal sleep and 2 days of travel, we wandered the streets of Oslo.

Oslo bus lines.

We didn't take any photos. At 1:00 pm we returned to the hostel to find chaos, everyone had to check in at 1:00 pm. Genius, folks. Then we ate dinner and showered and stuff and headed back out to town.

Downtown Oslo.

Fancy bike rentals.

By the water.

The old fort.

It was starting to get dark...and we were on the lake and it was pretty. Then we noticed that there was some sort of lakefront festival going on.

It was a bit of a struggle to sneak in, even though it was free.

Turns out it was an Indian festival... or south-east Asian festival, I don't really know. It was neat though...I felt more at home there for some reason.

Awesome!

Theatre nearby.

We walked down the main strip on the way home.

Oslo was small it seems, but complicated.

Back at the hostel we met our roommates, two Americans from Minnesota, who were going to do a semester outside Stockholm. First time outside of the USA.

Saturday, August 18
Post-breakfast, we headed out to the rich suburbs of Oslo to check out some museums. First stop: Vikingship Museum

Ship 1.

Back in the 60s a farmer found 4 burial ships in his yard. Rich vikings would be buried out at sea with belongings (think like Egyptians) and so they took them out and preserved the ships, as the bodies had long ago decomposed.

Ship 2

It had a trailer or this was on the top.

And this escape ship... umm.

Ship 3

The Vikings made it pretty far across the world.

Something else found on the ships...

This is the oldest chariot known to man... it goes only straight.

Neat? Btw, check out how busy this place is!

Sleigh

Check out the detail.

Here are some crazy personal belongings found on board:

Boots that are 500 years old.

For the horse, not the madam.

Gold.

So many people.

How they got the ships to the university (and subsequently the church where they are now).

After finishing up there, we headed over to something similar to Pioneer Village, but more Norweigan and about 143% cooler.

Rich Norweigan house.

There was something eerie about this.

The doll...

The other building in the court for the museum thing.

Inside of it...

This was an exhibit about waste and garbage.

Recycle fabric

Messages to...

Useful information.

Then historical folkart.

Naughty...

Into the village:

Traditional Drunks?

Traditional Wife beating?

It was kind of neat though.. no?

Open a bank account and get a toy!

Best exhibit ever? There was a table in a room.

Scariest mannequin ever.

Old Gas Station.

Then we headed to the traditional part of the village.

That dude walking in there, came out with a lady and busted out in song. It was hilarious.

We never did figure this out.

Tiny, tiny house.

More old houses.

That smoke has to be good for the baby. There was a freaky old (Norwegian) lady in that house cooking or something,

Where the trolls roam.

The only reason I include this photo is when I showed these photos to my family in Germany after the trip, my cousin Kerstin's boyfriend Logan had this to say, "Fleisch!!" (MEAT!!!) and made me stop. That killed me.

haha

Church. Those people dance on an hourly basis, we were not lucky enough to catch them. There was also an old man photographing that lady. We saw him all over town. Creep.

Inside the church.

What this is should be obvious, but I got nothing, anyone?

Look at the detailing on the wood!

The school house.

In the closet, the teacher got a bed. Damn, don't be a teacher.

This was cute.

That brings us to the end of the tour of the village, so we headed

HAHAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA.

Then we headed back to main town and ended up at a pedestrian sunday kind of thing.

There was terrible music and small children dancing.

And chinese food, Ina's favourite.

After lunch, we headed around the royal palace.

On the way back to the hostel after getting entirely lost...

"single"

Dinner! Ridiculously disgustingly large dinner.

It's really a nice area.

The side of the palace.

Check out the guard's hat with the ponytail sticking out.

It's fancy, fancy.

Downtown Oslo, Karl Johan Gata (remember Karl Johan from Sweden??)

Hostelling does wonders for the outfits.

The theatre?

The Trek to Oslo

2008-01-21T11:38:00.000-05:00

Thursday, August 16

After the great escape from the island of Vestagoy, we hopped on the Hurtigruten again and rode it all night to Mo i Rana... We didn't book any cabins so we woke up pretty early because the staff was vacuuming the lounge.

Here are some photos after breakfast on the Hurtigruten

When we first woke up, it looked like this:

Moments later:

Then back to:

They looked like toy boats, but there were real people on them... tiny people.

More "real" people.

Upon arrival in Mo i Rana, there were some local children dressed in traditional garb playing music to entertain us. What lovely parents they must have.

We had to wait a while to catch the bus to some other place.

Nature and junk.

Then we got the train...and ran into those American guys again.

On the train..

After a brief stop in Trondheim - the city we had to skip due to the mishap in Kiruna, we got on the night train to Oslo...capital of Norway.

WOW fancy night trains. No wonder they're so expensive. Naturally we didn't check in and there was a whole karfaful and they let us on anyway.

Stamsund!!!

2007-10-31T23:17:00.000-04:00

Monday, August 13
The Hurtigruten arrived in Stamsund around 9:30 PM. We began the 2 km walk to the hostel thinking we'd missed it along the way...but not, it was just really far. I've never been so happy to see something.

This is the first thing I took a pic of in Stamsund, some old guy cleaning up a fish he'd caught.

By the way, this is without a flash and around 10:30-11:00 PM. It was actually a bit brighter outside.

The side of the hostel... that's real fish drying on a rack. Right after that we ran into Roar, the hostel owner with the toughest name ever and he motioned for us to go up the hill made of rocks, so we did.

Thanks Roar!

This is around midnight.

"The land of the midnight sun" except that it happens in June, so it just didn't get dark.

Us looking kind of scary.

We got beds in the girl's dorm. Apparently Roar looks at you when you get there and decides which room to put you in.

Tuesday, August 14

The view out our window. The hostel is literally on the water.

The other window.

See?

We walked down to the peer and saw where the Hurtigruten come in. Watching them come in is a local past time.

Town.

The water and stuff... it was just amazing.

I looked over the way and saw this:

"Why?"

Ina took this and smelled up her bag with it.

Rorbuer are fishing huts by the water, our hostel used to be one of those.
We got some groceries and headed back to the hostel...where we had to pay $2 for 4 minutes of hot water.

The hostel again. We have like 100 pics of this place... you'll feel like you've been there.

We ran into this German guy, Patricio, who insisted on speaking in German only to Ina (Americans are dumb or something, right?) who invited himself along to our hike. For real? OK well I guess if you know where you're going. He took us down all these wrong roads.

Falsche Weg... and eventually he gave up and told us to meet up with him around 4:00 to go for coffee at the bar. Ina and I wandered around.

For the record I understood 80% of what the guy was saying and stopped listening because he was an idiot.

We stopped to mark our territory.

We did all right.

Ate lunch by a church.

The church.

Views.

I love you Norway.

Secrets?

Exploring!

Awesome.

I love crabs! I love how this looks like it's on pubes and so just massive crabs.

Down in the water.

The road going back... and currently my wallpaper.

This is what we saw from the hill the night before.

How much do you want to make this ridiculous trek?

Lots more nature.

Marshes.

After getting as far as we could, we decided to head back.

Then we spotted these. The elusive cloudberry! It grows near water in northern climates. I bought some jam back in jukkasjaervi, and have since tasted it, not as fantastic as I'd hoped.

another...

As do mushrooms.

We headed back to the hostel...

and passed by a designated pedophile zone.

Cute little houses...

Contrary to popular belief, Norweigans are small... and cuter littler houses.

We hung around reading and such waiting for the German and the two French guys, Laurent and Luic before heading to get some coffee..

Nearby the bar/cafe.

Also nearby, ahem, this means that...?

Ina documented our trip very well...but didn't get pics of us.

That's the bar. While having coffee, it was like my brain. Two people were speaking German and the other two were speaking French and I couldn't follow anyone.

Back to the hostel.. that's the small marina.

When we got back to the hostel to make dinner, we saw this on the table:
SICK! You can see how some tried to make a getaway.

During dinner, we ended up talking to Luic and Laurent again and they ended up inviting us up to the lighthouse, the tiniest one of all time.

To have some drinks and stuff.

We drank "eau de vie" (something super alcoholic) and finished off our Finnish vodka straight of the bottle!

Then we realised that we had to climb back down...so it took us something like 30 mins to get back to the hostel instead of the 15 mins it took the boys. They also didn't make a pit stop in the bushes on the hill. This is well after midnight.

We stayed up late talking.

Wednesday, August 15

Good morning sunshine.

Out the window.

Part of the guestbook, a nice German poem.

Ina and I decided that we'd catch the bus to Leknes, another town on Vestagoy, but we'd missed the first bus so....

Then we climbed that hill again.

We really loved that hill.

Can you blame us though? I mean... look at it!

Over the hostel.

Mandatory mushroom shot.

Then we headed down the other side of the hill, towards the water and not the hostel.

Down to the water... and climb onto a rock island.

Ina kicking back. She had to call her mom because it was such a great moment.

On the rock:

I never want to leave here EVER. But I'm back in Canada, so I guess I did.

Look how happy we are!

This is about the time we realised that...

The tide came in...and the water is fucking cold. And that my legs have never seen daylight before this very moment. Consequently later that night, they helped land a plane.

Shit.

After trying to sneak by all the friends we'd made at the hostel, we managed to run into all of them sitting together, where we had to explain that our pants were soaking wet because we had to wade through water.

We changed our pants and headed to catch the bus to Leknes (Likeness).

On the bus ride.

More bus.

We got lunch:

Wiping the cap off with those pita bread things seemed really familiar to me for some reason.

Leknes was real boring, so we hopped onto the first bus back.

Then the chronciling of the hostel began, we walked around some more to try and capture EVERYTHING about it.

The Kitchen

Out the back kitchen door.

Where families stay.

The front of the hostel.

The pier (?) with the tiniest light house of all time.

What it used to look like.

Back inside... in the living room thing.. it's the room between the kitchen and the hall where the bathroom/showers are.

Then we sat down to write in the guest book. I mean, I did.

Contribution, complete with diagram.

The kitchen.

What greets you upon arrival. "Ask for Roar or dial 6"

Real hostel!

By this time it was almost time to go. The French guys had caught the earlier ferry going the other way, and we had to catch ours later that evening.

We were sad to leave the hostel without saying good-bye to Roar... but then..

he happened to walk by! He's not even looking at the camera! But look how excited me and Ina are!! It's so lame.

Ina took over my camera for the walk down to the port.

My thoughts were likely "Ina, let's go, this bag is fucking heavy." However, I realise now that it was worth it, so thank you.

We wanted to take everything with us it seems.

Theatre.

Tiny house.

Sleazy hotel.

Art Gallery.

bye, bye Stamsund. We'll remember you forever.

Me, German girl, German guy (patricio?)

Stamsuuuund. From aboard the luxurious Hurtigruten. It was raining and cold. We hung outside for a while.

But then we decided that I was getting too sick to stay awake. We pulled out our sleeping bags and like hobos slept on some benches, since we were too cheap to get cabins.

A few hours late to Narvik

2007-10-07T10:23:00.000-04:00

Sunday, August 12

We arrive in Narvik at about 5:00 pm, about 4 hours late due to that huge mishap. The hostel, which is also a hotel is really nice, but we were pretty bummed out... until we started walking around.

Turns out Narvik isn't half bad. It's half the size of Kiruna and there's a lot more to do/see

Like walk down to the harbour and hang out.

There's a lot of just scenery coming up, sorry.

The water was sooo still. Great news for me as this is where we were talking the ferry to Svolvær.

Tracks.

The old post office.

Oh yeah, in the winter, you can ski.

HAHAH in case you weren't sure what kind of store it was.

Norweigans don't hold their babies, which are all named Bjorn, by the way.

ART

We climbed this hill on the other edge of town and interrupted some people clearly trying to have a romantic moment.

It was pretty romantic.

Then we started walking back down to the water. See the ski pistes?

Her shirt says "Elbkind" which means Child of the Elbe, a river in Germany. Confused the Germans when she spoke to me in her perfect English.

Local house... did you notice yet how there isn't anyone on the streets anywhere?

Monday, August 13
After breakfast and junk, we headed to harbourfront again.

We went there to get our Hurtigruten bookings rebooked, since apparently their headquarters are in Narvik!

So we walked into the office, but their booking is mostly internet and phone, so everyone was surprised to see us wander in off the street...but they rebooked everything, including the ferry we'd missed the night before, for free! That square building in the back is headquarters.

Oh good, the water is still!

There was a mall with a grocery store, so we went to check it out, as we had some time to kill.

SLED PARKING!!! hahaha Norway! (there was a bike parking sign a few metres down, this was for real!)

Man, this is amazing! By the way, we had to climb those stairs when we got there, as the bus station is at the bottom of the mall.

3:00 pm rolled around and we hopped on the "fast boat" to Svolvær, which is already on the Lofoten Islands.

here's a map

Look how fast we're going!

Oh yeah Norway. The boat was full of random people. There was a group of Italian guys, clearly ill prepared for some rugged camping. One guy saw that Ina was reading the new Harry Potter, I actually heard him sing "Haaarrrryyy Poooottttteeerrr" in this thick Italian accent. Hilarious. A while into the ride, I fell asleep and woke up to him talking to her about it. He was really into it.

This is the most beautiful 3 hours of my life.

It was also pretty windy. (Remember I only have my pics from this part, until Ina mails them from Portugal, I guess)

AHH!!!

The water is so incredibly still!

Umm... we're still in the arctic circle?

Svolvær!! Transfer point.

We killed about an hour here.

Then our Hurtigruten arrived. (just say Hurtigruten, hahaha Norweigan!) They're supposed to be these really fancy cruise ships that go along the Norweigan coast. Ours was kind of old.

MS Lyngen. You check in and they give you a swipe card that you need in order to leave the ferry.

Top deck. The lawn chairs had blankets on them and stuff. It was cool.

One more hour til Stamsund! On the map, it's really close to Leknes.

That's a freakin' postcard.

Wow.

Sunsets!

Hahahaha....ewwww.

This is as we arrived to the port in Stamsund...what turned out to be the best part of the trip, as we'd hoped.

Then we ended up back in Sweden

2007-10-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

OK Rewind a little.. still in Finland.

Thursday, August 9
In the morning we were still in Finland, in Kuopio

See? that's the train station.

I forgot some vital photos. We hopped on the train without making reservations and found that we were on the oldest train of all time. Seriously. There were hat racks. The train was so old in fact, that they hadn't invented stow-away trays. Don't believe me?

In the seat pocket in front of you, you pull out the tray!

And it clips into your seat! We're going to die.

These are from Ina's camera. There's a lot of them. She's in the bathroom. I was kind of confused, then realised she was trying to capture this:

The toilet dumping water and whatever else directly onto the tracks... I haven't seen this since Italy ca. 2003.

So we took the train to Kemi, the last place the train goes. Then caught a bus to Tornio.

The border. At the bus station, we realised we'd have to wait an hour for the bus to cross the border, so we flippin' walked. See??

Last photo of Finland! That's us walking across the border. We subsequently had to run across the highway because there was no pedestrian crossing. Geez guys.

Here is a pic of my journal. See the map and the border and the ikea? it's for real.

We got to the bus station and bought our tickets, hung out for a while, Ina ran and got some groceries, while I looked around the station.

Well then, a Sex Card? Sweden, wow.

After that train ride, I was pretty concerned about our welfare on a bus in Sweden, luckily.

We rode with the Busgods.

It was a double decker bus and we hopped up on top and hung out. It was an all right ride, kind of rough. Ina and I began to examine her purchases. She'd picked up some soup.

That contained Karl Johan as an ingredient. HAHAHAH. We were in tears we were laughing so hard. The soup was sick.

When we got to Lulea, see map. It was pouring rain, so we got a cab to the hostel to find that the owner thought we were coming a lot earlier than we planned, and luckily we got a hold of him before he got totally trashed for the evening. He wasn't very nice, our room wasn't bad though:

The ladies score a double room, again!

With a lovely ficus painted on the wall.

At dinner we ended up talking to a bunch of people, 2 Swiss-Germans, 2 Brits, 1 Norwegian whale hunter and one thing led to another, and all of us went for $12 pints at the local Irish bar (in the middle of nowhere Sweden!). After one drink, we tried to find another bar.

Sunset, around 10:00 pm.

and a hedgehog wandering the streets. Oh Sweden.

Friday, August 10, 2007: To the Arctic Circle!

In all probability there isn't an actual sign that says "now crossing the arctic circle," and if there were, the train conductor did not announce it and I was probably sleeping. There I said it.

First pic inside the freaking arctic circle!!! We hopped off the train with a load of people in full out hiking gear, who were also appropriately dressed. Let me tell you, it was COLD! Oh yeah, we're in Kiruna, Sweden.

We went to the hostel, got in a bit of a fight with the owner, but it was fine and got settled in our "double room" which had 3 beds. huh?

my bed.

Ina and her beds.

Here is the yellowhouse hostel we stayed at:

Our room was the to the right of the path that goes straight ahead.

Reception/sauna/breakfast.

We began to wander around. Mines.

This church looks like a Sami tent. The sami are the natives of Scandinavia, they too got the short end of the stick. Why does everyone stick it to the natives??

It was pretty cool though. We got there about 4 minutes after they closed. Scheiße.

Yeah Sweden... and the Sami flag on the end there.

Kiruna is a small iron ore mining community. It's really poor and deserted.

Everyone also has really tiny balconies.

Oh yeah, Swedish:

The room had a TV with cable. We even caught what can only be described as Swedish Idol, but it's really anyone's guess.

Extravagant dinner?

Saturday, August 11: ICE HOTEL!

Early, early in the morning, we were the only two people who got on the bus to Jukkajärvi, about 20 minutes outside Kiruna to visit the first ever Ice Hotel.

Apparently we got there a little late...

Think about how cold it was though, that they could have this huge chunk of ice out without it melting.

However, they did have a huge meat locker.

They gave us these poncho things which didn't do much for those of us over 5'4" Damn you Ina.

Ice Elk look a lot like ice moose.

See what I mean? SO cold.

There was an exhibit about Linneas, the guy who came up with the double naming system we use, like homo sapien. Who's the nerd now?

Accidentally stumbled into Superman's living room. It's pimp, check out the fur on the couch.

hahaha. Ina shrunk.

So then we saw this curtain in the giant ice wall behind this pillar and of course, being the adventurous types, we crossed the giant ice wall.

whoooa! Ice bar! sweetness.

That's the name of the town with the first ice bar/hotel, see? Check out the pyramid of ice shot glasses. You can in fact order one and they pack it so it can get anywhere in the world in 29 hours. What would you do with it though?

Them Swedes and their vodka.

It was incredibly cool.

As you can tell by the number of photos.

Then we wandered back to the other side..

It was really pretty.

drop of frozen water.

SO cold!

snow, snow, snow.

Eventually we went back outside and it seemed slightly warmer, I guess being in a freezer will do that to you.

There was this tent with a fire, we tried to warm up.

around the hotel grounds.

Where the hotel usually stands. The ice comes from the river there.

Ice shot glass. Fancy!

The deep freeze we paid a lot of money to get into.

At this point it was just before noon and we had to wait until 3:00 PM to take the bus back to Kiruna, so umm we had to seriously kill time. Not to mention it was flipping cold out... so, we spent a lot of time at the gift shop and in the hotel lobby.

lobby action

more lobby action.

and more.

There are cabins all year round.

We decided to find out what Jukkasjaervi has to offer.

Freaky bus stop.

Old village thing.

Houses that sunk into the ground.

Fences.

They also had a reindeer farm but you know, we're cheap.

these look a lot like the Swedish version of Western girls, except that they're stuck in the arctic circle.

more houses stuck in the ground.

Dog parking.

Riverside views.

There is a rather cool photo that's missing because Ina burned the CDs for me late at night and so well she forgot to include one folder. Perhaps it'll arrive in the next few months?

Eventually, our friend the bus driver came by again and took us back to town.

Back in Kiruna. You'd think because I know exactly what that means, I wouldn't find it funny, yet I do.

We tried to go hiking, but ended up wandering these old mine roads.

It was nice though. We kept seeing signs for WC and only later realised it was for some competition/event.

It was sad and depressing in the same way going back home was in Garden State. I am such an emo little kid.

Just some nature and junk.

Ina conquering something.

Kiruna in the distance.

Mushroom girl strikes again.

and again.

After this, we started walking back to the hostel, and I feel something in my foot, I look down:

Look at those ROCKS!

And again.

My room. (It was kind of hard to explain that to my German family)

We actually ran into one of the Brits from Lulea there, he was hanging around for a few days to meet up with his girlfriend to go hiking. The hostel was this huge man convention, it was hilarious. Just swarms of men. Lots of people start their hikes from Kiruna.

Sunday, August 12: Holy crap!!!

Most of you know the basic story here, we were supposed to catch a bus at 10:44 to Narvik, Norway. We were at the bus stop waiting in the cold for almost an hour before we got a ride from our bus driver friend to the train station because that's where the bus was leaving from. Turns out, we missed that bus (which was running instead of a train) and we were stuck in Kiruna for a few more hours. Frick. After the panic and more panic and more panic. We figured out that we'd just have to skip Trondheim from our trip...and spend a full day on a train, not a huge deal. The problem is that we had to make sure that there was space on the ferries and everything and we'd have to pay extra and things are expensive in Norway. Understand the freak out?

Anyway, so we eventually walk back up to the bus station to catch the 2:45 PM bus to Narvik. Having been on these buses before, I'd seen that they had a thing that said visa, so assumed they take visa. They did not. We did not have enough Swedish crowns, so the bus driver said I had 5 minutes. I ran to the ATM up the hill in the city centre, first machine didn't work, second one did. I ran back down to the station to find that the bus waited for us and ran on board to find that I had dropped the scarf I'd bought in Stockholm, oh well.. and my wallet with all my credit card and useful ID. Frick! Actually, what I yelled in a hugely north american accent was "SHIT!" so I ran back and luckily found it right near the top of the hill. Of course. At this point, we were sure that we'd be thrown off the bus by the driver or the passengers, but nope! Thanks Swedish bus drivers! I was freaking out by this point and it was a bumpy ride, so I popped some gravol and missed the first bit of the beautiful journey.

Ina took pics, but alas, they're in the misisng part.. I eventually awoke from my stupor.

This is on the bus on the way to Norway.

Bumpiest ride EVER.

Pretty, huh?

We also stopped to pick up people standing on the side of the road! Ridics.

HAHAH.

See ya later Sweden! Next up: Narvik and the Lofoten.

Puijio Kuopio

2007-09-17T19:08:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, August 7 - continued.

After checking out a few museums and stuff, Ina and I hopped on some train to Kuopio (still in Finland). Here's a map since we're starting to head pretty north.

I did manage to get some more recordings of Finnish. You'll need to turn up the speakers for this. This is a really rude thing to do, I know, and the lady was catching on, but honestly, it's for cultural reasons and I had NO IDEA what she was talking about. Notice my reflection in the window, what am I wearing??

Off the train and into a cab to go up the hill to the Maja Puijio hostel, which was on top of a hill and had a tower at the top. We checked in and began to wander around.

It started to get dark.

Apparently, the hostel is actually a ski lodge with a Slalom (Norwegian slalåm, literally, sloping track) ski jump. Neat.

There was absolutely no one around, reception/tower closed just after we got there, so Ina and I decided we'd do what those girls were doing the night before in Helsinki.

These are the "best of" 600 or something.

This one is my favourite.

My turn!

Hey! I suck at this!

Ina liked how my hair looked like it was glowing, so we tried to do that with her hair.

Little success.

Honestly, I wanted to stay there forever. It was so beautiful. We must have taken hundreds of photos that evening.

The Tower.

Lakes in the beyond.

More to come. Remember last year's thing with mushrooms?

That's the hostel. Neat, huh?

Like pretty much every hostel in Scandinavia, there's a sauna.

our room. That pile on the floor there, that's my backpack.

If you're confused here, it's because the shower encompasses the sink. You can watch yourself shower in the mirror. Oh Finns.

Wednesday, August 8: Ina's Birthday

After a nice breakfast at the hotel, we headed up to the tower, which was free, since we were guests of the hostel.

It kind of looks like Canada. I hate to say it, but it does. Not to say that it wasn't nice.

Apparently, we were scared we'd fall off the tower.

There was a group of Russian tourist kids on a class trip or something. It's nice to know that tourism lameness knows no boundaries.

We hung out at the top for a while, snapping lots of pictures.

Ina opened the present from her folks at the top. When I woke up at 7:00 am, I quickly took my present for Ina out of my bag and put it under my pillow, with the intention of giving it to her moments later. Instead, at the end of the day we were sitting and talking on my bed and I did what appeared to be, me pulling a present out of my ass. She enjoyed the presentation. How's that for a pun?

She got a cool ipod case for her nano, which she didn't bring with her, a butterfly pin that was huge and 50 euros. I'm lucky if my folks remember it's my birthday.

I was watching the slalom ski jump for a while and then noticed that it was running and that...

There were people jumping! Holy crap!

After having our fill of the tower, we walked the 2 km to town. It was a nice walk:

"Hey Ina, turn around!"

wait, one more.

The whole time we were walking down, there was this old guy running up and down the somewhat steep hill. It was really creepy, to be honest. Every time he passed by, he greeted us in another language. We confuse people.

It was really nice though.

Everyone has one of these handy things by their doors.

When we got to town, we decided we'd figure out where the lake cruises leave from and opted to take one at 3:00 pm, which left us with a few hours to kill. I opted to go to the museum of Natural History in Kuopio, Ina reluctantly agreed.

We ended up having a blast. The curator was incredibly excited to have non-Finns there. He was practically shaking when he handed us the translations of the exhibits.

Heheh. I'm six.

The reason I wanted to go so bad, they have one of four recreations of a mammoth in the world.

And a bunch of other creepy stuffed animals.

Hahahahah.

You come down from that tree right now young man!

hahaha. oh yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, the mammoth

it was pretty cool.

We entered nintendo world.

From there, we headed to lunch, a nice restaurant by the water, thanks Steffi und Bernd for giving Ina money!

We literally ran to catch the boat cruise.

For some reason, I decided this was a good idea.

That's where our hostel was.

From there, we walked through the market and did some shopping.

And saw this. bahahaha.

We headed back to the hostel, oof. It was so far away, mostly because we had some groceries with us. Then back up the tower to try and catch the sunset.

Kuopio, you rule.

We had some drinks in the cafeteria before heading back down to our room to get our real drink on:

Wood grained cans of apple and pear cider.

Graffiti outside by the ski lift stuff. Notice how that's the cleanest graffiti of all time?

hahahhaha. getting a little tipsy?

Good night!

Thursday, August 9: Laters Finland, it was fun
Packed up our things and began the journey back to Sweden.

This was funny at the time?

When I initially saw this, I took it as "caution, you might spontaneously break dance"

The last train station in Finland! It's Kemi. Nice station though.

Hahaha. This is Tornio, Finland, on the border with Sweden.

Next...we head back to Sweden.

Architecture in Helsinki

2007-09-10T15:39:00.000-04:00

The morning of Sunday, August 5 we arrived in Helsinki

hey it's Helsinki!

and promptly made a mess of our fantastic double room.

Then we got some lunch, wraps and umm...? This was our first lesson in "what the hell is Finnish?"

We took the bus back to the harbour area...

The market.

That's the ferry we took

We went to explore the brown church...looked very Russian

see?

I find this funny, you may not. To quote Fried, "look how long that word is!"

At the church. Look how amazing the building is.

From the brown church (aka Russian Orthodox Church) you could see the competing white church. They're rivals like the greasers and the socials...or I made that up.

From there we climbed back down to get to the white church.

hahahah...what is the little penguin selling? or is the ice cream selling penguin?

We went over to it in order to see the indoor market:

Back towards the white church

I met these two lovely people. I'm not sure if I was doing this just to embarrass Ina or because I thought it was necessary.

No worries, I won't be touching that.

Because we're losers, we took these photos. Ina is a much better photographer than me it seems.

Seriously, the buildings of Helsinki are amazing.

I guess that's why Architecture in Helsinki is playing there.

Since it was Sunday, the churches were all closed, so we headed to the design museum.

Scandinavia is all about design, check out the building.

random building.

After the design museum - no pics allowed! We got some groceries and made some dinner.

The lettuce came with soil...

Ina cooking up something.

We're prostars! check out what we made.

At first I wondered why I took this picture and then I realised, can you tell on which side the German is sleeping?

Monday, August 6

More examples of hilarity in Finnish. We were staying in the dorms of this school actually.

Monday morning? Let's go to the beach.

It was about 10 minutes from the hostel and really nice. Ina inadvertently bought a postcard of the beach, actually.

Art is sad.

Rock Church! The concept? There's a huge boulder in the middle of the city, they blew out the middle and made a church on the inside with puddles of stinky stagnant water on top of it.

Inside. It was photographic dream.

Finnish bible inside the podium.

From there we headed to the museum of contemporary art, but it was Monday and it was closed. Frig.

While there though, I managed to get this...

you can see Ina walking around. you'll have to turn up your speakers.

We think he was important.

Kiasma: The museum of Contemporary Art

The national museum

The national museum

Ugly Betty: Finland

We wandered down to Finlandia Hall, the only ugly building in Helsinki, home to the orchestra, but it's reknowned.

That's the amusement park.

There were boats near it too.

What are you advertising?

Lenin made big plans here.

We had some coffee had this fantastically nice cafe in the park in the middle of Helsinki.

We took the time to learn some things about the park.

City Hall was amazing.

I am in love with Helsinki.

This woman's art was in the design museum, this is a piece about the world.

The White church, I can't remember the name right now

The saint of agriculture?

hahahhaa

With an SLR this would have been amazing.

Then we went to check out the train station, Helsinki does not disappoint.

From there we went shopping for a bit and here's some stuff we saw along the way.

hahahha, watch out for that!

good pic Ina!

After dinner, we headed back to the beach.

That's two girls that I intentionally shot to look like one fat girl because they had a digital SLR and were just taking pictures of each other splashing around, with a towel, just hanging out, etc. and it was really annoying since they were ruining our pictures. We found out that this was the place to be after dark.

We asked at the hostel about drinking in public, officially, no, but everyone does it anyway.

so nice!

another pic by Ina.

After getting mildly intoxicated and it being sufficiently dark for us, we headed back to the hostel and slept until morning.

Tuesday, August 7
First order of business, the old cable factory, which now houses a photography museum. The main exhibit was being put together, so it was free. Sweetness.

Students make great art. Do you understand the impact of this piece?

Photos from the photography museum. I took a lot and really, these are some of the neater ones.

hahah rotting cabbage is art. I love you Helsinki.

Kaapeli, the old cable factory. It also has a restaurant inside, which we cut through in order to get to the sea!

Who do I honestly think I am?

After the museum, we headed back to Hostel Academica to get our bags.

Some people are made of pure genius. Ina waded through that and got our stuff.

We took our stuff to the train station and checked it and headed off to Kiasma, the contemporary art museum

The museum was an amazing building, which distracted from the mediocre exhibits.

I liked this, "I used to be a poster child" I'm not sure if Ina understood the expression. It's hard to explain such a concept.

see the building was nice.. that's the national museum reflected in a random door.

there was a store within, but it was closed which made us sad, they had some neat things. This is their website: http://www.com-pa-ny.com/

Ina got some pics to show you the architecture in Helsinki.

This was really cool:

It's a time out kit. You set it up anywhere and have a break.

Pretty much after that we caught the train to Kuopio and began our journey to the north.

Europe Begins

2007-09-05T12:30:00.000-04:00

Here is an explanation:
On July 30, I flew out to Stuttgart, Germany to meet up with my friend Ina. I met Ina back in 2001 after she had stayed with my family for 6 weeks to learn English (they screened us well) after I'd spent 3 months living in Lausanne, Switzerland on exchange with Sarah. In 2003, I went back to Europe and Ina and I spent 3 weeks traveling mostly through Italy, we also visited Sarah and her family. In 2005, somehow I managed to find myself in Germany yet again, this time for only 10 days and Ina and I headed up to Copenhagen and Hamburg, after which Ina dubbed us Chaos Tours for being ridiculous.

Back to the present, July 31, around noon, I got off the plane in Stuttgart and spoke to Ina through the sound-proof glass while I waited for my bag. Then we took the train to Ulm, her home town, as well as Einstein's.

This is what I was greeted with when I got to 'my' room:

Their Nagalene bottles, a travel journal, a copy of Emil und die drei Zwillinge (Emil and the three twins, one from a series from which I'd read one for a lit class!) that was found in her grandma's attic and travel sized Prinzenrollen - the best cookies ever.

My room/computer room.

SpongeBob SpongeHead.

August 1, 2007
We hop onto a train heading west to Augsburg in Bavaria to catch the train to Berlin.

That's us in Augsburg. Ina goes to school here.

Turns out the train Ina picked actually goes through Ulm...

Here's us passing back through Ulm.

Berlin! We had three hours in Berlin til the night train, so we wandered around.

I dig.

The fancy schmanze train station. Bye, bye reasonable prices.

Having never been on a night train before, I didn't know what to expect.

It was hell scary. We got the top two bunks, top of three! That's Ina and that's a net to catch us so we don't plummet to our death. We had to carry our bags up there since there was no room up top.

August 2: Stockholm!!!

So fashionable.

We walked to the hostel and dropped our stuff off, freshened up and met our 3 lesbian roommates and then headed out to Gamla Stan, the old city.

This is our walk over there.

The mediocre Royal Palace.

The Royal Church

The Royal Guards and the Royal Adjustment.

The Royal Court Yard Thinger.

Random street.

People sitting in front of the Nobel Peace Prize Center. They're just sitting there for no reason.

The other side of the Royal Church. Amazing. This woman must walk around just for photos such as this one. Ina took this.

Art.

Artier.

Making friends.

City scapes.

Art. Art. Art.

Ina takes some amazing pics.

Taking pictures.

Friday, August 3
In the morning, we woke up to find that our seemingly all girls dorm had a dude and one of the three girls had brought home a chick! Oh my Stockholm! The plan was to walk to the Vasamuseet which was a good walk away and walk along the water in order to get a better feel for the city.

The city is ridiculously clean, just ridiculously clean and empty. This is the water.

What was this? We took so many pics of it.

Radhus - Cityhall.

Main shopping street.

The islands of Stockholm were really cute.

Bicycles are sad.

That's the Vasamuseet, it looks like a ship on purpose as the Vasa was a ship.

We stumbled onto a photography exhibit of some relatives.

This is what we were up against.

Downtown is to the left and the Vasamuseet is on that Island there.

After a brief movie in Swedish about how and where and when they found the ship. They found it near the museum and it had toppled over due it being a bit too top heavy on its first run back in 1623. It took them nearly 30 years to restore it and they injected it with a polymer/plastic in order to slow down the decay process.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Vasa:

What they think it looked like.

You could climb up the floors to get better views of the ship. Each floor had information about Sweden in general or ships or the Vasa. It was pretty cool. When we walked in we thought we'd be in there for maybe an hour, instead it was a good 3.

The top dot is where the museum is, the bottom is where they found it.

Creepiest thing EVER. They naturally found skeletons on and near the Vasa and for some reason decided it'd be cool to decide what they looked like in a ridiculous lifelike fashion. Meet Gustav

Creepiest one of them all. There were about 20 of these heads.

There was a reconstruction of the hull, however there were so many people you couldn't get a picture. And I have no shame.

More ship highlights.

It was crap weather so we couldn't go to Skansen some park thing with old houses...instead, we went to the Moderna Museet which was all right but we couldn't take pictures. They had a lot of Andy Warhol stuff. After that, it got serious, we

Went shopping.

Ina ended up buying all of that.

We picked up groceries. I really wanted to steal one of those, it's a basket with wheels and a handle. Ina was so embarrassed that she insisted we go to the back room of the grocery store to take this photo.

When we left the grocery store, it was the third time that we came out here:

Even though we'd gone in somewhere a few blocks away. Damn you Stockholm!

In the evening we were pooped, so we stayed at the hostel.

Saturday, August 4, 2007
First thing in the morning we headed over to the hipster side of town, Södermalm and like the rest of Stockholm, it was vacant. We went up the Katarina Tower, Ina was happy about that.

It gave quite the view.

Some more of Stockholm's Escher qualities.

Stockholm isn't that bad..

OK OK It's a pretty nice city, just there's no people.

We walked around for a while near the tower and found some neat graffiti.

We got some lunch at a cafeteria and it was relatively cheap about $12 or so. It was a nice relief.

We knew in advance that it was Pride Week in Stockholm, but we didn't know anything about the parade and we managed to stumble upon it.

Amazing. It was pretty hilarious and excessive. Great.

In the late afternoon we headed over to the port to catch our FREE ferry ride to Helsinki.

We even got a 4 person room that we had to share with a girl from China living in France and a very scary Russian woman.

The room was nice though.

Ina's headache medicine. Ina, what does Ass taste like?

After dropping our bags, we ran out to say good-bye to Stockholm.

Later 'holmes.

The name of our ship. It was a crazy, crazy ship. There was a movie theatre, a casino, loads of restaurants and a few stores.

Forbidden photo of the deck.

We hung out outside for a while.

Taking insane amounts of pics. It kind of looks like Canada, huh?

This was funny for some reason

We got some delicious dinner... oof it was gross.

And found out what we were getting ourselves into with Finnish. Then it's Swedish, then English.

Cool Kids.

The aim was to catch the sunset, but alas to no avail. It just wouldn't go down...so we went inside and walked around the stores. We met our good friend the duty-free liquor store.

Delicious Nordic Berry Vodka.

By then it was already dark out and we were being creepy, drinking straight vodka in the dark.

Half way there. It was about 15 hours by ferry and we got to Helsinki, Finland at about 11:00 AM.

Quick July

2007-09-04T13:48:00.000-04:00

Here's a brief entry about July as I had it finished and it vanished. Of course.

July 7, 2007

Old roommie Jenna picked me up to head out to the U S and A, wait wasn't I there last week?

Rock on dude, rock on.

in the garage

Longest border crossing ever... over an hour.. why is our line always slowest moving?

Jenna is a syrup connoisseur

Hahahahah.

The ride home... wait, what's that coming up behind us?

hahahah

very nice.

July 14, 2007: Bachelorette

At the end of July, my good friend Lily, from grade 10 (wow!) got married... this is from her bachelorette

hey Lils!

Haha.. they skanked her up.

That's it. Hahah.

They gave us lays. Yeah.

Hahahah. This the last photo I was able to take.

Fast forward.. July 28

hhaha. This won't be funny if I explain it.

July 29: Lily gets hitched!

Early Sunday morning, I headed over to a friend's house to get my hair done. here's me all cleaned up:

After experiencing Lily's enormous family, the bridal party headed downtown for intense photography. We were also greeted by some random group of people making youtube videos. Two guys, one dressed as a chicken and the other as a bunny, doing inappropriate things.

Aww cute couple.

These people know how to party! There was a bottle of Crown Royal, Vodka and something else on every table...everyone was dancing. Great wedding!

A bit dark, but here's me, Lily and new husband!

July 30 - bye bye, off to Europe.

June! June! June!

2007-07-28T10:14:00.000-04:00

Let's begin June, shall we?

OK let's end May first, oops.
Thursday, May 30: Post Secret.

Frank Warren of PostSecret showed up in Toronto at OCAD to give a talk about the website and secrets in general. I got there an hour and a half before Karen did with one of her friends she randomly met on the subway...however ex-roomie Amy showed up an hour after me with people, so I only sat on the pavement doing my Spanish homework for an hour.

The show was really interesting. He showed a lot of postcards which cannot be published and talked about what he's learned about secrets as well as different experiences people have shared with him regarding letting go or keeping secrets. It was difficult to talk about that in Spanish class the following Monday.

Previously never seen postcard.

Frank Warren.

Saturday, June 2: Luminato
The disappointment of the summer. This was a week long arts festival going on all over downtown TO.

Camera didn't come out until stop 2, the distillery district.

Karen.

Art.

T-shirt by an artist, now property of Karen.

Look how busy the distillery was!

They had mega-scrabble, I did not partake.

More art!

The evening was supposed to hold a concert, however due to dining, we got there late and didn't feel like paying cover and such, so we opted for wandering around.

Karen hit up the sketchiest bathroom in Chinatown..

What?! This is a restaurant.

Let's skip ahead to Sunday, June 10, shall we?
Met up with Jen, newly returned from a month in Europa, at the bus station to head down to London. Oh yeah.

We ended up walking to the hotel since we are all too familiar with public transport in London. Sweet room, huh?

It was a two bedroom suite... wait...

Phone on the can! Amazing! Disgusting! What?!

After kind of hanging out for a bit, Jen and I caved and hit up sushi... yum!

Post-dinner we decided to walk another 2 feet to Barney's

London, this is the last time I'll see you, I'm sure.

Cheers to convocation! Oh yeah, we went to London for graduation! Undergrad is over.... *sniff* *sniff*

Aww Jen and me

We had a bit to drink when Nelson finally showed up... and shortly thereafter one of his high school friends randomly walked by and joined us, sort of. He wasn't really there.

Always attracting young men, Nelson nabbed this feller. (how much do you hate/love me now Nelson??). He's kind of dreamy like Max Steele.

The guy kept telling us about his recent breakup with his 10 year girlfriend, etc. and how she was flirting with other guys right in front of him. He kept pointing to different girls though. Also demonstrated on Nelson what the guys were doing to her... Nelson also convinced the guy that we were engaged (ok, didn't take much, dude was drunk) and that he'd let me do whatever I want as long as I came back. We were peeing ourselves laughing...on the inside. Oh Nelson.

One reason that I liked London was that...

Whenever you go out, you randomly run into friends you never see! Ann!

Then they grope you!

You also see their friends again... you may remember that tall guy from Ann kicking his ass at Irish Car Bomb drinking.

Nelson has the best cellphone wall paper of all time.

We had to break up the night pretty early, convocation required us being with gown and cap at 8:45, oof.

Monday, June 11: Convocation

All prettied up.

My dad is now one of those dads. He came down from the stands to photograph me sitting down.
Hey that's half of Fried's face.

And getting up..There's about 20 of these.

The Academic Procession nearly had me on the floor. Dude, I think I'm in the wrong room, this is the wizard convention.

Look, I graduated!

Me and Ann post ceremony.

Ran into ex-roomie Amy on the way out.

Here are the papers kids, four years and this is what I got for my student loan debt:

Thanks extra credit!

Thursday, June 14: I went to Montreal and didn't take a single photograph, what?

Friday, June 15: Return to Toronto
Met up with Karen at the train station for dinner and then with Jen and Andy to go see the Hidden Cameras. Best show of the summer, hands down. After the show (Andy took pics, clearly still on her camera) we began to wander around and I found some guy's notebook...see this. We tried to call, but there was no answer. Then Jen and Andy got some sushi.

See? I wasn't lying.

We got drinks at the taste of little Italy and hung out. I caught the last bus home that night. Oof the suburbs suck.

Saturday: I slept.

Saturday, June 23
Francofete - also disappointing, but less hype

These drummers were cool though.

We met up with some of Jen's friends for dinner at harbourfront. Just as I had to leave a really good French band came on.. but I left. Met up with Andy and Karen and one of Karen's friends then went to the most ridiculous art show of all time.

First, sketchiest area ever...well it was little Portugal or whatever it's called. Then the instructions involved us going through a back alley and down some stairs. We came in to find that the artist was showing videos of her little sister reading things about her while she stood beside her. These videos were hosted on YouTube and were being projected onto her kitchen wall. I don't remember her name. but she's from the trampoline hall...new research: lauren bride. Watch these incoherent videos. Anyway, there were a few guys there taking it all in. We were trying not to laugh our heads off. Then we walked into the other room, presumably her bedroom, where she had fake math equations up and various love letters. Then we went to the bathroom, where we, along with two strange men, listened to voicemail messages left to the artist answering the question "what is your place in the world?" It was pretty hysterical. We left and got some ice cream before heading home.

Skip ahead some more...
Friday, June 29
Had a ridiculous drunken night with friends, here is some evidence

Carolyn and I

When I do this, I've been drinking.

Awww.

Saturday, June 30
Got home at 4:00 am and woke up at 7:30 am... that's not even enough time to disinfect my contacts. By 9:30, the whole family was on our way to Detroit Rock City to see the Henry Ford.

It took over an hour to cross the border, which was mega-annoying, but we still made it in time for the 2:00 bus leaving for the factory.

I'll give you a bit of a recap of the tour. We hop on a city bus type thing, where this really epic music starts playing with a video and it's supposed to coincide with things we're driving by. We felt like we were heading to Jurassic Park.

There was about 10 of us on the bus and the guy at the first station still felt it was necessary to use a loudspeaker. Anyway, we watched one movie about the history of the Henry Ford (Factory) and all that crap. It was pretty annoying because it was on three different screens. My dad slept. Second station, another movie, this time with 8 screens in a circle. Fuck, you're kidding me. Anyway, this one was really like Jurassic Park, it was about the manufacturing process and the chairs swiveled and stuff. They even had lights, smoke and water to emphasize the movie. SO ridiculous.

Next we were loaded into an elevator where they showed us the different parts of the factory from the top of the glass enclosure.

The roof is covered with this moss stuff.

OHHH. What?

The factory's only solar panels, strategically placed.

Those smoke stack things are where the cars are dried, I think.

Fantastic.

After this we were herded to station 4, the factory floor. We saw where they make the F150, but it was a Saturday so the factory was closed and we still weren't allowed to take pics. There were stations with inane videos explaining really simple concepts. Somewhat insulting.

The end of the tour. Thankfully.

Having some time to kill before dinner, we headed to a local mall that resembled an Escher picture.

Omer tried on sunglasses at Holt Renfrew.

We're artistes. That's my mom and Omer. They were laughing so hard, it took about 10 minutes to snap this.

We got lost on the way over to my grandmother's cousin's house (a.k.a. Aunt Lola) so we had to stop at some sketch gas station. Scary.

Dinner was nice and full of food. Omer and I went to sleep at Lola's sister, Helda's place.

Sunday, July 1: Brunch
After a pre-brunch breakfast at Helda's, we went to Lola's daughter, Vera's house for brunch with a whole whack of family. Their house is the most amazing thing.

That's my mom on their deck.

My mom and Lola (she's looked like that since I met her in 1991)

That's Mitchu (spelling?), Lola and Helda's older brother and my dad (do I make more sense now?)

That's me and Helda, who apparently looks just like my grandmother, the one I'm named after.

My brother then took off with my camera..

You can see their house back there. So nice.

Artsy ohms.

A bit later on, Omer and I ventured around their house. They had monogrammed paper towels in the guest bathroom. It was a gorgeous house.

Lounging.

Greatest livingroom.

After this, we headed home and got home around 8:00. By this time Omer had a full cold, so no going to see Final Fantasy perform, sadly. That's all for June folks.

May is Tour Month!

2007-07-08T19:09:00.000-04:00

Here's the recap: I came home Thursday, April 26 and on April 27-May 27 we had guests staying with us with a 3 day break. First up, a couple, the husband was a good army buddy of my dad's. I missed their first weekend in town as I was sleeping/recovering from four years at UWO.

If you're wondering why it takes me so long to post and yet I send you about 39 emails per day, it's because my computer at work will likely explode if I try to blog. It doesn't run flash.

Monday, April 30: Downtown Toronto

It was my job to entertain the guests during the day, while my folks worked. I didn't really take my camera out as not to alienate my parents' friends that I hadn't seen since I was about 8.

First stop: CN Tower

Pretty much an obligatory shot.

I (heart) Toronto

They got a kick out of the giant moose. That's me and Batia.

Then we wandered around downtown, where I tired them the fuck out.

Here's us passing OCAD after dining at some vegetarian Vietnamese place in Kensington Market.

Tuesday, May 1
Actually, no photographs or recollection of what happened.

Wednesday, May 2: Pioneer Village
Let me begin by saying I hate the Pioneer Village. I've been there at least 10 times and it never was fun. OK well maybe after I realised that it was in Billy Madison.

This is the only photograph of Pioneer Village: The Mill.

The lobby.

Thursday, May 4: Bata!
This was actually really cool. I'd been meaning to go there for a while.

Binding shoes.

umm... hahaha?

Elton John's kicks.

Famous shoe prints.

Napoleon's socks.

Me with some backdrop.

The day after this, the guests and my parents took off for a week in Vegas. Then I slept for a week and began Spanish.

Upon their return, on May 11, my brother came in for a bachelor party. We went to Niagara Falls.

being a creeper.

birds!

Behind the falls! In all my years/visits to the falls, this was the first time I went behind. There was too much water and it really wasn't that exciting.

We could see Toronto's city scape from that park...

This one, at Niagara on the Lake. I know Niagara like the back of my hand.

More of the park.

Back to Niagara on the Lake

The friends left on the 14th, as did my brother. Double trips to the airport. hurrah.

Thursday, May 19
My mom's best friend from her hometown (aka they were born and raised in the same tiny, tiny town) came to visit for 10 days. She's pretty much like an aunt to me.

Friday, May 20 - I think we just bummed around

Saturday, May 21
My mom, her and I went up to Kleinburg to go to the McMichael Gallery

Totem Pole! That's the only photo I managed to sneak.

Her and my mom love flowers.

We had tea and cake here. We wandered around the rest of the town for a while before heading home.

I saw this on the way to the car. Delicious!

That night I went to go see Holy Fuck! and !!! (pronounced chk, chk, chk) which was kind of a disappointment. It was more headphones music than anything. I also realised I took the subway downtown alone, good work Hana!

Sunday, May 20: Niagara Falls Encore!

We stopped off at the Welland Canal.

There are about 500 of these photos. This is as the ship came in.

As it was leaving. That's a huge height difference! I was not impressed, I've been to lots of canals and they're getting old.

Niagara on the Lake!

We met for lunch with some of my parents' friends there. I'm pretty sure their friends are bananas.

Then we went to the flower clock, not pictured.

My mom's friend really dug this tree, but this man wouldn't move.

Close up.

The falls-ish.

The good stuff.

You aren't dreaming, that is the horseshoe falls, the maid of the mist and a rainbow. Oh yeah. (I'm sorry, it was a really dull month).

Then we went to the casino, where my parents and their friend gambled and I stood by. My dad scored $500 and then we went to dinner.

It was Victoria Day, so there were fireworks, which were mediocre, but the falls were nice:

Monday, May 21: Oakville
For some reason we went there... I couldn't tell you. Anyway, it's nice.

HAHAHAH

Then we stumbled upon this:

We had no idea what was going on. Here are some guesses:
1. Laundry commercial/testers
2. Each elderly person is accompanied by their nurse

In fact, it was this:

A bunch of old people lawn bowling on the Village Green

Pretty tree.

Later on in the week, my mom's friend and I hit up the ROM for the Peru exhibit, which was really interesting, actually. Then we went to the Distillery, which is pretty much a ghost town ALL the time. It's a super nice area though.

It also allows me to pretend that I can photograph, which I can't.

Why isn't this place crowded?

May 25-26

At the end of her visit, I went to visit Keren and go hiking in the escarpment. I don't have any more of these photos since Keren hasn't given them to me yet.

The Home Stretch

2007-06-17T12:18:00.000-04:00

Right so then during April, we started to move out and my roommates left me alone for a while too.

April 22 my folks came down and took all my stuff except for my bed and my desk and I almost had to beg to keep those.

No more living room furniture, but at least I have sweet, sweet Law&Order. The credenza (sp?) ended up getting trashed but it was such a great piece of furniture: two shelves, one for records and the other for DVDs, perfect harmony.

We gave our deep freezer away to a nice couple. It was hiding this insane amount of bags. (How much was I slacking on the studying by this point, huh?)

These are my notes for my last exam. L'ancien francais, it was really unpleasant and annoying, as you can tell since I took a photograph of the studying process.

I pretended to be our christmas tree:

I couldn't find a picture of it after we'd put that lovely sweater on it.

Oh christmas tree!

Amy was a ninja.

Who are these people? Really, I don't know who they are. Anyone? Freezer party?

April 25: Last night in London
This was a huge relief, six exams later. Oof.

Ended up going for Beer+wings with Albert and Adam and two of Albert's friends. There aren't many photos because I was laughing my drunken ass off. This one is already late into the night after I switched seats.

Al's two friends pretended to be together and Adam fessed up to some interesting things.

Then back at Al's place, his friend was poking his other friend with a broomstick. Righto.

Here are some bonus London shots from my SLR...mostly out my window.

web!

The big snow storm

J's car

Richmond (the main street in London)

Big Night Out

2007-06-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

Warning: this entry features a guest photographer.

Saturday, April 21

Most of my friends were done official exams by that morning and I had a two day break between, also realizing that on my last final, I only needed to get a 70 in the course to graduate with honours, so guess who said "fuck it" to a final!?

Anyway, so a bunch of us decided to go out to celebrate. We met up at Jen's for pre-drinks and then headed to Molly Bloom's and sat outside.

My plan was to get tipsy and not get drunk, as is generally my plan which never works out.

Adam kept wanting a pic of himself for some girl, which was pretty hilarious.

So being slightly sober than him, we decided to take advantage of this.

And then the mystery guest photographer showed up!

Nelson!!!!! (and Coleman)

Eventually Adam decided he was buying us all shots of something... I think he said liquid cocaine, at which point I handed over the camera to sober Nelson.

Hey Nelson!

I'm (most of Jen is blocked too) behind Adam's elbow. It was a sick shot. Veronica, Albert, Jen, (me) Adam.

My favourite Jen and Hana picture. That's my face about 2 minutes after the shot. Ooof!

3/4 Frenchie gang. Adam was hilarious, kept jumping into every pic.

Most of the people we were with.

Playing with fire.

Actually playing with fire. We were all secretly rooting for something to go wrong.

Adam, me and Albert... umm hanging out?

For some reason Albert was smoking and he looked really sophisticated... at the time. I wanted to get a pic of him looking so smart.

but then Adam showed up.

again. hahaha.

HAHAA.

Finally.

Look I have a beer. haha. wow.

clearly been drinking.

Adam is hilarious.

After a while, we went back to Colman's place. Him and his roommate have Dance, Dance Revolution. I played it and looked sooo stupid that everyone wanted me to keep playing.

I'm ridiculous.

Clearly, Nelson had the camera.

Mandatory crotch shot. Thanks for covering all the bases Nelson.

Hahahaha.

There's another half to this video but I don't know of a site to load it up on. Ideas?

Fantastic shot.

Nelson was nice enough to give both me and Adam a ride home and Adam lives on the other side of town. We thought it was hilarious how the whole time in the back he kept yelling, "je vous en prie" (a formal way of saying 'thank you' in French and it was on our exam) and "je t'aime Ana."

April was Ridiculous.

2007-05-28T22:14:00.000-04:00

April was a pretty busy month for me, so busy that it started March 31..

Saturday, March 31/Sunday, April 1
Ann's birthday! woo.
It started with a completely non-vegetarian bbq, as in the salad wasn't even vegetarian. Then we went to this English pub for drinks. Having just recovered from Last Lecture, I wasn't too keen on drinking, but ah well.

This is Ann kicking two boy's asses at an Irish Car bomb. Yeah Ann. Another reason I love Ann.

After that we went to Downtown Kathy Brown's where I wasn't too into it. It's a retro bar full of people who don't release it's music of the past. I left with the first ride I could get and came home to get a text from Nelson asking me where I was! Dude, we gotta plan better.

Monday, April 2: Passover
Rachel and I were stranded in London for Passover, ok well I went home for the second night, and decided that we should do something. We'd been contemplating this since we met pretty much and it finally was time. After class, we met up and went to the only store we knew that would have some kosher food, it had little to offer us.

We went back to my place to get some extra supplies and then to Fried's place to get cooking.

Step one, put everything on the counter.

Matzah balls!

Fried being ultra cool while chopping potatoes.

Then I threw out the surprise:

Max Steel was joining us for dinner. Him and Rachel got along famously.

Rachel was in love with Max Steel.

You can see why.

Pre-ovened potatoes.

Secret Passover brownies.

Eventually I finished making the 'zo balls.

"Oh my God it's Passover!!!! YES!"

The bottom says: "The Matzohs with the taste"

ahahah. Jews.

Artsy Matzo ball soup.

The dinner settings.

Dreamy.

Fried's friend was without Passover dinner, so we fed him via broadband.

Yummy soup! As I said on facebook, I look super Jewish here.

Main course...oh yeah and Rachel touching herself.

Dessert. Yes.

Saturday, April 7
Wanting to have a break from life and school, Karen and Rachel and I decided that it was time for a night out. There was still snow on the ground and exams ahead, but hey, we needed a drink.

Karen came over to my place, where we got ready and headed over to Fried's. We drank there, I drank more than the others since they kept pouring more and more various things into my innocent orange juice. Yum. So I was much less than sober.

We ended up going to 29 Park.

We met up/ran into Umber there.

Then we went to dance.

How drunk are we?

What we failed to realise was that the guy to girl ratio at 29 is about 5:1, so we started to get swarmed.

Number 1.

Rach's first. We'd had enough of them shortly thereafter and steathily got out.

HAHA best. pic. ever.

ahah Rach.

Number 2. This guy wouldn't leave us alone... eventually we got rid of him, only to have him return with friends. It was hilarious for Rach and Karen, because they wouldn't come bail me out. I guess I just looked trashed and slutty.

so loved.

Trashed and sweaty.

Jam out. The whole time Karen was ruining people's photos.

Probably the only group of normal people there.

Karen feels bad about this one... I don't know why she would.

Thursday, April 12

Last dinner with roommates Amy and Jenna...we've been living together since 2004. It's an end of a short, short era.

The Last Lecture

2007-05-27T18:13:00.000-04:00

I've been working on this post for 3 weeks. The last month has been rather busy and so I haven't had any time to post anything.

Thursday, March 31

This is an evening we are still talking about over a month later. There were so many ridiculous aspects to it that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's begin by explaining last lecture. It's a classy evening where you are supposed to meet your graduating class and hear an inspirational speech. This year the speech was given by the CEO of Habitat for Humanity. After this part of the evening, everyone goes to Joe Kool's to continue the quiet evening of classy mingling. This description does not resemble in any way what actually took place.

The particular date was also the date of the French Club's elections and Wine and Cheese, so Jen had some obligations, no problem, we could do both. 7:00-8:00 wine and cheese, and 8:00-9:00 Last Lecture. I met up with Natalie at 6:50.. only 5 minutes late thanks to roomie Jenna for driving me, only to find that NK had left her ticket to last lecture at home. We arrived to the wine and cheese at about 7:20, to meet up with Jen, Albert, Adam (French class buds hah) & co. Thanks to Jen's roommate Carmen for getting us in as her guests..

Wine & Cheese was held at The Wave...the campus "dance club"/restaurant. Really, no one goes there after first year's floor dinner OR the random Metric concert of last year.

Albert and Jen, Albert is modelling Jen's lovely clutch.

Albert, you're so classy.

After a few glasses of wine... we decided it was time to jet.

Running late as per always, we didn't make it to last lecture until after 8:30 and walked into the Great Hall just as the closing speaker finished his speech. Way to go team! We got our wristbands and our complementary drink, found a table and some people we knew.

L-R. Adam, Al, Danielle, Natalie (NK) - the latter two being two fellow linguists.

HAHA Adam.

Karen! Look at her all classed up. She said the speech was nice and that we made a scene when we all walked in.

Rick McGhee begins to play and it's a nice atmosphere while we get progressively drunker.

French linguists.. sorta. Jen, Georgie, me, NK.

There was a whole series of these pics... Karen, Ashley and some of their ex-floor mates doing something.

Carmen, Albert, his purse, Yuen, Jen (Jen & her roommates).

While Last Lecture is breaking up, we start heading to the buses to take us downtown. We manage to lose everyone during this 10 metre walk, but somehow we all end up at the back of the same bus with some new friends.

Me, Jen and Adam (who tagged along even though he isn't graduating this year.. haha).

Danielle, Al, Natalie.. Check, we're all here and plastered.

Go Team fake-french club members (yellow wristbands)! and Last Lecturers(purple)!

We arrive at Joe Kool's no problem and get the upstairs seating area to ourselves pretty much. First order of business: more beer! (Drink count: 4 glasses wine, 1 beer).

Jen and her friend/acquaintance Preston. I wouldn't have remembered that if it weren't for him writing this for facebook purposes. Haha.

How trashed are we?? Actually, I think it's around now that we're figuring out that we're all going to do the French 243 online midterm together that weekend. We get drunk and talk exams.

It only gets worse from here.

HAHA

I love Adam's sneak attack thumbs-up.

Santé!

This is Will. He's an acquaintance of Preston's from first year. None of us really knew him and he just came along with us, the more the merrier, right? Oof. You'll hear more about him later.

Yeah we're so great! French! woo! Really, that's what we were saying. We're such nerds.

NK, Jen, Preston, Yuen, Carmen.

It was around here that I noticed that Will had taken a liking to me, but I wasn't interested so I wasn't worried, I figured that'd be obvious... Check me out sucking out Nat's soul.

I was also trashed. Why does it look like I'm giving Al a piggyback ride?

At some point, I went to get drinks for me and Adam and came back like this:

Some dude accidentally elbowed me. Thanks to Jen for snapping this.

Then Will did this:

Which everyone and I thought was hilarious at the time but later realised that he was pretty much claiming me or something.

Shortly thereafter, Adam fell off his chair, knocking over my beer and breaking the glass and falling on the floor. He went downstairs to go the bathroom and fell down the whole flight of stairs and subsequently got kicked out of the bar. What to do now? Jen's roommates jetted and the rest of us began wandering Richmond Row... only to end up at Ceeps, which was dead, but we stayed anyway. The whole walk, Will kept trying to put his arms around me and NK. ergh.

so not impressed...

Yeaaaah! Sorry, I just think we look hilarious when drunk.

Preston bought a pitcher and..

Preston bought us a pitcher and..

We played flip cup.

The teams were 4 to 3 and team Adam-Jen-Hana still won!

NK taking one for the team by distracting Will. Thanks NK.

Awww... you know I'm drunk when I start kissing/hugging. Oy.

HAHA. Nat's so great.

A Moment of sobriety?

Out of nowhere, Adam yells, "let's go play pool." So we did.

Jen and Albert vs Hana and Adam. Longest, toughest game ever, since we were all waaay too trashed to do anything.

Everyone kept trying to join our game. At this point, Will had his arms all over me between my turn to shoot and I didn't really notice that it was that bad until he went to get me a drink and Albert said that he was all over me and I said I didn't know what to do.

Where did my neck/face go?!

Albert then said he needed to talk to me and we went to go dance with Jen. Things were fun again.. until Adam got us another pitcher and I kept drinking. Everyone went to the bathroom and Will sat down next to me and asked me to look at him, I said "huh?" and he kissed me... Then I knew it was trouble. Shortly thereafter Adam got kicked out again, so we opted to get some food. Will tried to grab my hand again and I was freaking out, so Albert took my hand and walked away. Thanks Al!!

We went to some schwarma place and began talking to some guy in line.

my camera is pretty nifty, eh?

Will continued to be an ultimate creeper, so I sat as far away as I could.

This is what drunk people look like when they're eating? Adam was being hilariously drunk, I was enjoying it.

We ended up walking Jen home and then walked to Albert's to get a cab. Will "tricked" me (aka I was too drunk to do otherwise) into giving him my number, stupid me. Eventually we lost Preston and Will and it was Adam, Albert, NK and me at Al's waiting to call a cab. We hung out for a while playing with the super cute guinea pigs. The next day I was super, super, super hung over, to the point that I didn't make it to 9:30 class I'd been waiting for all year: course evals for l'ancien francais. Damn it.

Saturday, Will actually called me! Being half quick on my feet I told him that I wasn't home and he was creepy and asked for my cell, which an actual roommate wouldn't have anyway. He called back later and I said that I didn't know where I was or when I'd be home. It was quite hilarious, I even told him that Amy was speaking. Genius kiddo.

That's the end of that.

March Things

2007-04-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

After making a rather quick recovery from the trip to New York and the amount of work that awaited me when I returned (uhh 2 mid-terms? I think by averaging the two I ended up doing pretty well.. oops.)

Friday, March 9 - Sip and Dip
Jen and two of her roommates threw a party which included food and booze. I wasn't really up for much drinking but I went anyway. Let me explain, I've had classes with Jen since second year but didn't talk to her til this year when we had 3/5 classes with each other and this was the first time we'd hung out on non-school related terms.

Also, I didn't know anyone except Jen at this party until Andy, Albert and Adam showed up. That's a lot of 'A' names.

Jen and I. Jen was pretty trashed and it was great.

Dina and her roommate (I've had classes with them), Jen, Andy and I.

Andy and I.. Andy was also trashed. Why do I look so unhappy? I swear I was happy.

Not as happy as the two chinchillas getting it on.

I've since hung out with that guy a few times and don't really like him but this is pretty funny.

Saturday, March 17
I headed to Kitchener-Waterloo to visit Keren and hang out/drink for St. Patty's Day. I really wanted to drink.

Rania goes to Waterloo, so we made some arrangements and got some coffee, then went back to Keren's place. Where we walked into the wrong apartment. Rania ended up coming out with us only to realise she had no ID, so she had to go home. Oh yeah, you might remember Rania from a few adventures last summer...and one more. She was stuck in some town near Mont Joli, about 20 minutes away from Rimouski.

We waited in line for 1.5 hours in -10C. It was amazing.

Ahh..we're in. Kristen and Keren. This is before some random boys came and sat with us. One was Swiss and goes to school in Lausanne, where I was on exchange back in the day. We didn't end up getting drunk at all.

Sometime later that week.
Jenna came into my room and told me that she needed to talk to me. She had to give me something and it would be a great responsibility and she wanted to know if I could commit to such a demand.

She was going to move in with Aaron and so she couldn't very well take Max Steel with her and she wanted to know if I would be willing to give him a new home. Max Steel is pretty much our mascot.

I accepted the ~~responsibility~~ honour of having Max Steel come to live with me.

I had some American cash left over so I made him as trashy as possible.

Then some other day in March, Amy was filming her project and there were magnet letters everywhere...which led us to do this:

Jenna was trying to pay me back for the heart attack I gave her in the summer. When we moved to our new place, I wrote this in the fog in the mirror and forgot about it. Later on in the summer, I get an email from Jenna. She was in the shower and the lights started flickering, so she freaked out and jumped out, only to have the lights turn back on and "I know what you did last summer" written in the fog on the mirror. I am great.

Anyway, it got out of control.

Which led to this:

Then this:

That's it for random crap I did in March...it's all downhill from there.

The Grande Finale

2007-04-25T14:38:00.000-04:00

Saturday, March 4

We began our day with a hearty breakfast (read: bagel) outside the American Museum of Natural History, I think that's the right title, we kept calling it other things.

Gnaaaarrr...I (heart) Ann. She's so awesome, don't you agree? Karen is awesome for capturing Ann's awesome moment.

Ann went in search of Ginette and I was really tired so hobo mode went into high gear:

Ashley looks like a celebrity or something.

We figured that Ann would wait for Ginette and the rest of us would go wander around and we'd meet up at the planetarium.

Water buffalo in their natural habitat. Water buffalo was a question raised between me and my brother earlier in the week and it is also the name of my mp3 player.

Penguins anyone?

For the life of me, I cannot remember what this is.

Meanwhile, Ginette and Ann do the same thing...

At this point we meet up with Ann and Ginette and go to watch the planetarium show narrated by Robert Redford...we were not impressed.

Learn children, learn. Why haven't I been arrested yet??

Gazelle? I'm not sure why, I know a lot of obscure animals but the identification of regular ones escapes me.

Once we got to the dinozore (yes, yes I say it funny) section, the signs/labels were far more entertaining than the exhibits themselves. Well not really, but...

"Where are these from? I'm scared"

haha.

Raaaawr.

This about the time that infamous Dinosaur incident took place:

I saw this guy back in Matapedia on that road trip from Rimouski. One of his smaller cousins might have been the first to walk on land.

Old man Mr. Turtle.

woo. Canada.

Ginette and Ann.

Mmm..city scape. I get that soon. soon...but nothing like that.

You can kind of see the rest of the kids sitting on the other side of that...behind the umm..whatever those spiked up things are.

Artsy. Deep. Tear.

Umm.. I think at this point we went shopping downtown.

Victoria's Secret.

No one of us found anything particularly exciting.
Ginette's friends Sarah and Clark (I remember their names!) met up with us at Victoria's Secret and left with Ginette.

Then we began walking towards umm.. TAO because Ann and Ashley wanted to check it out. On the way down, Karen and I got super exhausted and opted to stop at the Trump Towers for some coffee while they kept walking.

We climbed up to the Starbucks and found out that the restroom (hahah "restroom") was in the basement.. so we had to go all the way back down.

In the meantime, Ashley and Ann are off trying to find FAO Schwarz.

And pretending that they went in.

Back to Team Ridiculous Little Children: On the way up, we began speaking with the doorman, trying to convince him to let us go up and walk around. No dice.

Instead, he let me pose as a door person.

We began to wander around the rest of the lobby when team A showed up.

You're all class Mr. Trump.

Karen and I go to the Starbucks while Ann and Ashley go to the washroom.

We get some drinks and convince, using our ahem, charm to score some pretty cheap cookies. Cookie fieeend?

Ann and Ashley return and go to get drinks and we hear giggling from both sides of the counter...and they come back about 15 minutes later:

They return with this thing, which at the time was a sealed box of chai latte bars! Way to show us up Team A.

After that rest, we headed to Little Italy (take 2) for dinner.. our last evening in NYC.

Us on some street somewhere.. Eeeeeyy!

dinner! it was amazing food. It was just sooo nice to have some real food.

oh yeah wine. This is where I got pretty drunk (1 glass red wine=drunky drunky) and I may have gone to the men's washroom and made a whole spectacle of myself in front of the restaurant staff.

That may not look like much but it was about $200. Apparently I live like a drug dealer. I looked like a 12-year-old after their first glass of wine ever.

After a ridiculous dinner... Karen and Ashley bought shoes from some small store still open and then we were off to dessert.

NYC Cheesecake. Ann knew all the typical things to do in NYC. Look how weird and lanky my hand looks. eww.

How creepy am I? That's Karen and Ann eating cake. I needed some air. I love you red wine but you do some weird things.

After that...

Ann and Karen bought a cigar from this man, whose wife is from TO. He seriously had a torch.

Then we did this for a while.

This seemed clever at the time.

We went to the Bowery Poetry bar after that... some place we'd passed by on the bus. We were pleasantly surprised with the fact there's no cover. It was about midnight or a bit past at this point...and the poetry was just beginning. We don't have any photos because we were floored the whole time. We got a pitcher and began to drink...
first up.. a really spacy guy singing about love.
second...a very poetic woman reciting well written poetry about her poo.
third.. poetry about star wars in comparison to the american government, which was dedicated to us canadians
intermission while the next person set up.. the MC wanted to dance, tried to get me to go up and dance.. and the end result of that was her coming up to me, humping me and beginning the chant "humping hana, humping hana." Thankfully, none of my friends came to my rescue or got a pic of this! C'mon guys!
fourth...leprachan lady rapping about her shamrock.
I don't really remember anything past that..

We caught a cab back to the hostel and got in around 3:30... I got to bed sometime after 4:00, only to wake up at 5:00 to catch our train at 7:00. Ooof.

Ugggh Amtrak.

So long New York.

Day Three, take 2

2007-04-16T22:26:00.000-04:00

Still Friday, March 2

Upon arrival at the Met, we began discussions, however while discussing our plans, Karen and I couldn't stay focused because..

The beautiful French man nearby.

Once inside, we did split up team A and team ridiculous children.

Karen on a Greek balcony, what no photos? crap.

The main hall of the Met.

Some Greek stuff.

Random Indian thing.

High five! It's funny because we got yelled at for flash photography and not for touching the thing.

Monet I think. Waterlilies, yes? I saw some of this in Munich. (yes, yes I'm a big snot).

I should know, I'm an art lover. (second Kinks reference)

This was quite the scene for our tired, tired minds.

Here is some of Team A's findings:

I'll be honest, I have no idea about the sequence of the following photos, so enjoy. They're a mix of mine and Karen's photos from our little escapades: Team ridiculous children.

Now famous thanks to facebook. Hana Parting Paint.

Interpret this.

Looking back on these and being rather tired...that was some wacked out art.

After we got as much as we could of the met in two hours, we headed back to the hostel... for all of half an hour to rest/get ready to go out/meet up with one of Ann's friends (Ginette) from camp from waaay back in the day.

We met them outside the American Museum of Natural History, then we went to Wallstreet for dinner at a Mexican restaurant which was awesome.

Dinner! L-R: Karen, Ashley, Me, Clark, Sarah, Ginette, Ann.

Me and Clark doing C for Canada.. except he got it backwards. Those kids and their lack of drinking skillz.

They even gave us a show.. Sarah and Clark dancing.

Ginette and Ann "no neck" H getting a good look. This photo still makes me laugh uncontrollably.

Lack of sleep made us act ridiculous. Maybe just me.

Ann is awesome, yes? yes.

Attempted cleavage shot by Ann.

Mermitute!!! Ginette is standing their in confusion. Ann created this term... essentially to denote slutty mermaids.

We were walking towards the bowl (i.e. Bull) with big balls near Wall Street and saw this police officer. Karen wanted to get fake arrested, but the officer insisted that he just couldn't do it...so we settled for:

High five!

Oh America.

Clark on the bull.

Clark helping Ann up.

This was sooo hilarious. Empty streets and a bunch of strangers trying to ride a bull.

I love Ann, honestly, how could you not?

hahaha. oh sigh.

All right so after that we split from Sarah and Clark since they were not yet 21, so going to the bar was out of the question for them. We headed to Time's Square area to meet up with yet another camp compadre of Ann and Ginette's : Tim. We headed to a jazz bar somewhere.

We got to the jazz bar and by the time we got there, the show was over, so we crossed the street and went to Garage, another jazz bar. We were promptly thoroughly ID'd. Purple driver's licence? oookay buddy.

Ergh, NYC= $14 martini, Finnish Strawberry... L-R: Tim, Ginette, Me, Karen, Ashley and Ann.

One martini later.

After the band finished up, we were pretty much done for the night.. We piled up into a cab and got home around 1:30 AM, maybe 2:00.. where we, naturally, woke up our new roommates. Oops. We were exhausted though...We could barely keep our heads up in the cab.

And so ends our third day in NYC!

Third Day in the Big Apple

2007-04-16T22:19:00.000-04:00

Friday, March 2

Things started off at the shady hostel we were staying in.

It was a fairly gross hostel.

We got on the subway and headed over to the UN building. We met some guy named Rohaid from google India on the way! Pretty neat, huh? Because I'm a big jerk, I forgot about him shortly after we started the tour.

Follow me guys! (Reference to the Jim Gaffigan bit we saw our second night in NYC)... notice our security clearance tags or something. Awesome expressions all around guys.

A slightly smaller version of the buildings. We were in the shorter/flat building.

It's a really nice building with insane amounts of tour groups. INSANE. They also spoke pretty much ever language there is, including Danish.

The front courtyard... look you can see it rain.

Security chamber. Look familiar?

Interpretation, what?

We were sitting where they used to have visitors sit, but visitors/media aren't allowed in anymore.

There's these dials:

And you pick which language you want. There are six languages at the UN, English, French, Russian, Chinese (I can't remember if it's Cantonese or Mandarin), Spanish and Arabic.

It's like her blue steel pose.

It's a pretty huge room.

Look at us! We can pretend to be special. Ann, Karen, Ashley, me...looking like I just sneaked into their photo.

Mandates of the United Nations

I think this is the financial chambers.

Pretty.

After that, we headed over to a hall that was about war.

Of course I was looking out the window.

What? There was water.

This stuff is from Hiroshima.

Make music, not war.

A gift?

Then we went to the big chambers where all the countries sit. Each month or three months they pick a new letter at random, and the countries sit in alphabetical order starting with that letter. I guess if you don't like your alphabetically neighbouring country - tough luck.

We felt so important...except that all those delegates you see are in the not-related-to-the-UN UN Private High School.

Look at us being important...and me never-smiles

Outside the UN. No more war.

When we got outside, it had stopped raining and it was sunny. yay!

The UN from the outside.

After we were done with the UN, we headed over to check out Grand Central Station.

Leave it to me...

How hilarious is this? Oops. I meant to take a photo of the constallations on the ceiling.

Oooh. Artsy.

Karen and Ashley. It's big, but I expected that main part to be bigger...and where are those benches that people always sleep on in the movies? Different area?

Shaky hans strikes again.

After wandering around and being ridiculous tourists, we headed downstairs to grab some lunch... er at like 3:00 PM. We ate and regrouped. We figured that we wouldn't split up as originally planned: Ann + Ashley off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art ; Karen + me to MoMa, M-o-m-a, Moma. Instead we'd all go to the Met to keep things simple in case Ann had to rush off to meet up with her friends.

The Muppets Take Manhattan

2007-03-29T16:13:00.000-04:00

Thursday, March 1

Second day in NYC...we wake up to meet our Brazilian supermodel roommates in full swing. Whatever that means.

We head back to our favourite breakfast place - where the guy thought we were British (but, why?). We hop on the subway and hope to not get lost at all...and make our way down to Battery Park again.

Walking through another part of the park..

I felt very threatened.

Waiting in line to purchase tickets to visit Lady Liberty.

After lots and lots of security and belt removals...and waiting in lines.

Finally, we get on the boat.

The ferry got going... I wanted to throw up a little.

Here are copious amounts of photographs chronicling our journey across the Hudson RIVER (not bay..)

I can almost touch her. I kind of want to.

May I just say that I love Ann.

This is why I love Ann.. most unnattractive photo in this series.

There she is.

HAHAHHA. Hilarious. I love the people taking a photo of themselves.

Ashley and Karen being one of the crowd.

Oh yeah, who's being artsy. New Jersey and Manhattan.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've landed on Liberty Island

There was a bit of a crunch for time... but we still opted to take the tour. They'd asked us if we'd been there before, I said "yes, when I was five." I actually have a rather vivid memory of the whole thing. Anyway, the tourguide responded, "oh yeah, I remember you." Hilarious, thank you.

Getting into the Statue of Liberty requires additional security measures, so we had to go shove our stuff in a locker and remove our belts again. We are now certified strippers.

And play with stuff in the gift shop, of course.

The original flame.

The museum and all the stuff that led up to her construction.

I snapped this photo right after this happened...

Ann, you are hilarious.

She has nice feet.

Huge even. Karen caught in a scandalous pose.

Then we saw her and we just couldn't help ourselves.

It appears that I'm getting shoved out and Karen is getting sucked in.

At this point we'd given up on the tour and just ran through the museum.

Looking up Lady Liberty's dress.

And again, with better lighting.

Then, we went ouside and walked around her feet.

Karen doing her only pose.

Brooklyn Bridge?

We're such an awesome bunch.

Aww yah. I just don't know what to comment anymore.

Manhattan.

We're just so awesome, it hurts. Love the camera around my neck.

After that we ran down to catch the ferry to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island has the Immigration Museum, which I'd heard good things about.

Maybe we were tired, maybe we're hard to impress, but we didn't find it interesting in the least.

This is to show immigration trends.

Photo op.

Linguistics Tree!!! It has examples of words we've adapted from other languages into English.

They could have used a dictionary...it's mensch. Oy. I was thoroughly disappointed with lack of accuracy.

Another photo op. Baby missed her SLR.

"Pretend like you're pledging to America."

Then we got hungry and decided to scrap the rest of the museum in hopes of getting some food. The food line was huuuge. So we went to the snack stand right next to it. The guy seemed to want to close up early and offered us 2-for-1 bananas, and a giantic cookie for really cheap. Awesome.

There's a reason I got macro on my camera.

After that we went shopping for a while...and split up into two teams, Ann and Ashley versus Karen and Hana.

Ann and Ashley went into a cathedral.

Karen and I wandered around aimlessly with little intention of really buying anything. We met up around 8:00ish probably to grab some dinner at TJ Baxter.

Ashley at the Rockfellar Center.

But then we went up the Empire State Building...

It's quite an expensive thing to see, but it was nice.

It was really pretty though... pretty enough that..

Karen and Ann.. they

had some special feelings come over each other.

Awww.... yeah!

Eventually I got it.

It was super, super cold up there. And windy.

Group! Apparently "smile" means nothing to me and also, I am the devil... oh yeah and check out Karen's scarf pubes!

Apparently I was jealous of Karen and Ann.

So Karen tried to make me feel better. Argh open eyes, Hana! C'mooon.

We made our way downstairs after seeing ourselves as twelve year old boys, it was kind of frightening. When we got the bottom it was pouring rain, so we ran half a block to Starbuck's and sat there hoping the rain would let up. It did not, but after many tries, Ann snagged us a cab back to ISC. Good night folks.

First Day of Few in the Big Apple

2007-03-27T22:00:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, February 28

After getting all we could of free Internet...we head off to see the big apple. First stop? Breakfast at a Columbia Bakery. Yum Cream cheese and sleep aid medication advertisement coffee sleeve.

Second stop? Central Park.. at the end of the block of the hostel.

It's quite a nice place.

Ashley, Karen, me, Ann

Then we started walking...

Sucker is getting a ticket.

We saw the Central Park Zoo.. and Alpacas!

How depressing is this photo?

When we hit the "Times Square Shuffle" zone, we decided to get on a bus.

We saw this while on the bus. "No Honking, $350 Penalty"

We wanted to get to Time's Square, but missed the stop.

Madison Square Gardens.

Needle and button.

Reuters! Apparently only I knew what that was.

Finally...

Time's Square

We decided we'd get tickets to a Broadway show. We couldn't really find any cheap ones...but then went to the nearest theatre. After getting our tickets to Beauty and the Beast, we went wandering through the city. I wanted to get a sweater or something because it was freezing cold...well windy and I of course was not wearing a coat.

I got a sweater at the Gap and we went to Toys'R'Us

Best

Store

Ever.

Ha.

Follow me guys.

When we came out, we wanted to get pretzels/hotdogs from one stand but alas, this happened:

We grabbed some pizza on the run and headed to B&B

Unfortunately the part of the Cheesegrater was played by Ron Smith.

It was possibly the most hilarious thing that's ever happened to me. It was low budget and full of cheering children. Lumier's accent went from dirty Quebecois to Mexican, it was amazing.

Post B&B and aching guts from laughing so hard...we headed over to Ground Zero.

Where the towers once stood.

Photo chronicle.

Afterwards, we headed down to Battery Park...which I for some reason or another, remembered. I hadn't been to New York since grade 12.

There she is.. Lady Liberty in all her glory.

Pier and stuff.

Aww. You know you want it Karen.

Then we stumbled upon this:

Sadly, these were the most inappropriate things we could think of.

It was nearing 7:00 PM and we decided that we wanted to go for dinner in Little Italy... instead we somehow ended up in Chinatown at a Vietnamese/Thai place recommended by our book.

You see that stuff on the plate? It's chimp.. Chicken+shrimp.

It was amazing.

The amazing food did not stop us from making asses of ourselves. Nothing ever does. Actually, Karen is demonstrating chicken and Ann is demonstrating shrimp, which results in chimp, what they had for dinner.

After dinner we decided we'd check out the comedy club thing we'd bought two two-for-one tickets for. It promised us laughter and entertianment and a first rate comedian.
Apparently there was a two drink minimum we were not aware of.. d'oh! Though the tickets only cost us $5 a piece and then $10 in drinks, so not too bad for our first scamming.

We did get a real comedian though:

Jim Gaffigan from "My Boys" who did a 20 minute bit about the greatness of bacon...

Also, we sat next to the most beautiful man that ever was..and his wife. They were Norweigan. We got back to the hostel around 11:00 PM to meet our very Brazilian roommates. And so concludes Day 1 in NYC.

The Rail Less Travelled.

2007-03-27T21:12:00.000-04:00

Reading week 2007 - NEW YORK CITY

I randomly suggested to Karen and Ann that they should go to NYC for reading week instead of somewhere warm. Apparently this meant I was going along. Super. We assembled a crew:
Ann - I had a class with her in first semester of first year, we lived half a floor apart.
Ashley - Ann's roommate from first year. I didn't really know her before, but she's quite cool.
Karen - I met her in first year, she eavesdropped on a coversation I was having in the elevator and we subsequently went to a concert together. She lived on the same floor as Ann and Ashley.
Hana - Me... I'm always here.

Monday, February 26

Ann and Karen came to sleep over at my place the night before we left. We went and got a dairy queen pizza.

That's right, we're going to consume that whole thing right now.

Let's get a better picture of that cake:

Happy 25th Ann, Karen and Hana... that was the hardest thing we've ever had to say to a person. In case you were wondering, it was quite tasty. Skor.

Tuesday, February 27

The plan: leave the house at 6:40 am, arrive at the GO Train station by 6:50 am and catch the 7:00 am train to Union Station.

What actually happened: left the house at 6:53 am, arrived at the train station at 6:57. I ran inside to get tickets while Ann and Karen tried to stall the train. The train departs at 7:01.

We arrived at Union Station at 7:38 and found Ashley waiting for us. We checked in with Via and proceeded to wait in line to catch the train. We board with no problems and find out we're on a super-nice Amtrak. They're soo much nicer than Via trains.

Some more photos from the 13 hour train ride. That's right, 13 hours. ARgh stupid lack of passports.

you can recline your seats. You can even turn them around to face each other.

Karen began her journal:

Around 12:30 PM we crossed the border.

Niagara River!

Buffalo.

We stopped at the border for a while, people got off and photographed. I photographed them.

Ann and Ashley napped. Karen and I were bored so..this is what happened:

We ate hershey's kisses and tossed them at Ann.

How much does it look like they're spooning?

At some point we hopped off the train.

Later on in the evening, around 6:00 or 7:00...

We made friends with Bob the conductor.

He let us play with his hat.

We got into Penn Station around 11:45 - late. The train got pretty bad, the bathrooms were super gross and it was ridiculously hot. However, we did hear some old woman ask her friend, "did you squeeze that?"

When we got to Penn Station, we proceded to take the subway, which happened to have a fire on the tracks, so we went to another track to catch the right train, only to see that our train was on the original track. Argh... cab it is.

Upon arrival to the International Student Center (not centre) we found out that they messed up our room and such and that Ash and Ann had to sleep in a smelly co-ed room. The girl's room/floor was four flights up. Argh.

Posts Listed

2007-03-11T20:10:00.000-04:00

For my summer in SLR - here.

December 2006

Finally, we get out of Mexico, December 29-January 1, posted Thursday, March 8

The rest of the time in Guanajuato, Dec 27-28, posted Saturday, January 27

Somehow we end up in Guanajuato, Dec 26, posted Tuesday, January, 16

We go to Mexico City, Dec 24-25, posted Thursday, January 11

November 2006

Nothing good happened in November, posted Thursday, January 11

October 2006

I think this about covers October, posted Saturday, December 9

September 2006

Most of what I did in September, posted Monday, November 20

August 2006

August 7-13 - Last week in the 'ski, posted Friday, November 10

Summer collective: Rimouski XXVI, posted Friday, November 10

Sunday, August 6 - Wandering Miramchi: XXV, posted Sunday, October 29

Saturday, August 5 - The Miramichi Strikes Back: XXIV, posted Sunday, October 29

Friday, August 4 - Last Trip!, posted Sunday, October 29

Thursday, August 3 - Rimouski XXII: Happy Hour, posted Monday, October 23 by guest blogger

July 2006

Friday, July 29-Sunday, July 30 - Rimouski XXI: Flowers, posted Monday, October 9

Wednesday, July 19-Saturday, July 22- Rimouski XX: Islands and drinks, posted Monday, September 18

Thursday, July 13-Monday, July 17 - Kids in Montreal, posted, Friday, September 15

Tuesday, July4-Saturday, July 8 - Summarize: Rimouski XVIII, posted Sunday, September 10

Monday, July 3 - Road Trip: Last Day!, posted Thursday, September 7

Sunday, July 2 -Road Trip: Day 3, Birds & NB, posted Wednesday, September 6

Saturday, July 1 - Road Trip: Day 2.3, posted Monday, August 28

Saturday, July 1 - Road Trip: Day 2.2, posted Monday, August 28

Saturday, July 1 - Road Trip: Day 2.1, posted Monday, August 28

June 2006

Friday, June 30 - Road Trip: Day 1, posted Tuesday, August 22

Thursday, June 22-Sunday, June 25 -Rimouski Part XI: St Jean B. Day, posted Sunday, August 13

Saturday, June 17-Sunday, June 18 - Rimouski Part X: Quebec City, posted Monday August 7

Friday, June 16 - Rimouski Part IX: Quebec City, posted Friday, July 28

Thursday, June 15 - Friday, June 16 - Rimouski Part VIII: Quebec City, posted Monday July 24

Thursday, June 8-Sunday, June 9 - Rimouski Part VII: Tadoussac, posted: Saturday, July 8

Friday, June 2- Wednesday, June 7 - Rimouski Part VI posted: Monday, June 26

May 2006

May 28-June 1 - Rimouski Part V posted on: Monday, June 19

Monday, May 22-Sunday, May 28 - Rimouski IV posted on: June 9, 2006

Monday, May 15-Monday May 22 - Rimouski Part III posted on: Sunday, June 4

Saturday, May 13 - Rimouski Part II posted on: Tuesday, May 30

Friday, May 12/May 13 - Rimouski Part I posted on: Saturday May 27

Wednesday May 10 - "The Battle of Waterloo" posted on: Sunday, May 21

Tuesday, May 9 - "Business Beware"

Saturday, May 7 - "concerto" posted on: Thursday, May 11

April 2006
Friday, April 28 - "A whole lotta fun" posted on: Thursday, May 04

Thursday, April 27 - "moooooving."

Saturday, April 22 - "moving on up"

Wednesday, April 19 - "coming soon"

Tuesday, April 11 - "Last night" posted on: Thursday, April 13

Final Days in Mexico

2007-03-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 29, 2006

Friday was pretty relaxed. We went for brunch with Irene and Alicia, and Irene's daughter Elaine. Keren just hung out and I had enchildas - bad, bad thing as a first meal. Since Kerker was still pretty sickly, we decided to watch a movie. What's the soonest movie in English? Chicas materiales? Ok! Apparently that's a Hillary Duff movie and was horribly painful.

That night, we took a cab to Irene's place in Interlomas, a suburb of Mexico City. We had some tea and played scrabble, had a light dinner and went to bed.

The bathroom window.

Saturday, December 30, 2006
In the morning, Irene took us to the market in downtown, which was pretty cool, it was empty, which I was pretty OK with. We purchased some souvenirs and stuff and headed over to pick up her car.

In the afternoon sometime, we finally made it to the same mall we'd gone to Friday.

This is an outdoor mall with some fancy schmancy stores that we couldn't afford, so we went to Zara, that makes 4 countries I've visited that store, I think.

It's pretty nice though..

Keren did buy this:

It's quite nice when you fix the collar.

Eventually we got some grub...Mexican sushi = deep fried, breaded cheese.

Grace and Elaine, Irene's two daughters.

Jimmy, Grace's husband and Grace. Jimmy was hilarious. He kept telling me things about Mexican Jews (which is exactly what he is).

Then they took us to a CD store.. I forget what it was called, so I could pick up some Spanish CDs for my mom and perhaps some for myself.

Fun?

Everything was just funnier in Spanish.

Saturday night we were eager to go out, so we tagged along with Elaine and her friends, who took us to a hookah bar. I'm not a big hookah fan.

Her friend Elias (?) who drove us walked into the joint like he owned the place and that we all owed him something...he also ignored us for most of the night.

What is this guy?

I'm 5'7" not that tall...but both of them we were wearing stillettos and I was wearing maybe 1" heels. No wonder Irene told Alicia that Keren came with a bodyguard.

That was friend nubmer 3... all her friends are about 30 and she's 22. Ridiculous. She also made arrangements for Keren to go home with a random man and thought Keren was being a baby for not going with the strange Mexican man.

Eventually, we were all rather bored and Elias decided to take us home, but Elaine wanted more beer, which I thought I'd partake in, but didn't end up wanting to drink any more. We were up pretty late that night, talking to Elaine in her room.

Sunday, December 31
Everyone was busy with preparations for New Year's, we decided we'd take the Tourribus around Mexico City with Elaine...it's a double decker bus deal. We had to wait a while but eventually we found it and got on one.

My favourite Keren+Hana pic.

Elaine couldn't sit near us... so let's begin our tour of Mexico City.

Nerd! Not really. We were just sitting super close.

Buses and junk.

We get it, Keren's a better photographer.

Man selling something on the side of the street.

More selling stuff on the street.

Every time we passed one of these or any cable for that matter, there was at least one set of headphones from the tour bus on it.

Selling stuff on the street.

Count-down to the millenium.

Palm trees.

Yummy.

The Angel.

Oh baby.

How crazy is Mexican traffic?

I took this photo because of Ripley's Believe it or not? but my dad pointed out that "Zona Rosa ->" means "Rosa the prostitute ->" in Hebrew. Amazing.

City Hall and the biggest flag there ever was.

Massive.

Selling stuff on the street.

The police.

These people freak me out sooo much, luckily I was safely on the second floor of a tour bus.

HAHAHA.

After the tour, we got off at the fancy schmancy store street and walked back to that really nice mall..and got some food.

We got sushi again. Keren's was really pretty, mine wasn't rolled right around.

After that, Alicia came to pick us up and we hung out at her place until Chaimie, Irene's husband came to get us.

The only photo from New Year's Eve:

Keren and her cousin Leon. There was a family dinner with everyone, which was nice...we were exhausted anyway.

Before bed, Keren asked me if I had fun on the trip and such, I told her it wasn't over and she said "we're just flying tomorrow, what could happen?" Some may call it foreshadowing.

January 1, 2007

Irene, Alicia and Elaine came with us to the airport. We had some coffee and fruit at the restaurant while we waited for it to be a reasonable time for us to go through security. We went through security just fine...even bought a postcard. Then it was getting late...so we went over to the gate and decided we'd be the last to board the plane, at which point I realised I didn't have my passport. I ran to the bathroom and there was a woman in the stall I was in, of course and she wouldn't come out. When did come out, she said there was no passport there.. at which point Keren entered the bathroom freaking out and saying they were closing the gate.. so we ran and got on the plane.. better to be a Canadian in Canada without a passport than a Canadian in Mexico without a passport.

5 hours of agony later...we land in Montreal, late, of course. And we have a flight to catch. We get off the plane and start running...we're running and running and then we get picked up by one of those golf cart carts with the yellow light who drives us to the top of the stairs of customs.. we dart off to customs where the guy is sympathetic and lets me off rather easily (I just tell him stuff about where I live and lived and school, etc.).. we run through baggage - it connects, right? and run out and see the air canada counter where the lady asks us where our bags are.. no apparently they don't connect. we had to run around to the other side and call someone to get our bags for us, in the meantime we're freaking out.. so we eventually get our bags (probably faster than if we had waited for it ourselves), it's 9:15 at this point and boarding starts at 9:25 and we don't know where anything is.. so we're running through the airport searching for an elevator with a button and find one and make it and run over to check in and everything is ok.. and we get through security and run over to the gate where boarding hasn't even started yet. Crazy, no? We made the flight and everything ended up being fine.

Here is us being happy we made it OK:

Sad that we left Mexico.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our trip to Mexico.

Still in Guanajuato

2007-01-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, December 27

We began our second day in Guanajuato with a still clogged toilet...but it was sunny and warm.

Amazing weather. 22 C and sunny.

Also, we had this genius idea:

"We're in Mexico, let's wear mini-skirts and knee-highs.. it's warm."

After taking ample photos of ourselves, we headed to town to catch the bus to the mumias (mummy museum).

This fellow crossed our path.

Photography: house, street, mountain.

The only way to downtown we got waved and honked at. One car even turned around and found us 10 minutes later at which point two about 30-year-old Mexican men pulled over, hopped out and ran over to us to ask us if we'd like to go dancing. We told them we didn't remember the name of our hotel, which we later confessed was "Hotel Guanajuato" (it definitely wasn't that one).

We found the bus without much trouble...and hopped on to almost a school bus that was standard. Biggest gear-shift ever! Also one of the scarier bus rides I've been on, however, the bus did drive past this:

Didn't quite catch that? It looks familiar, right?

"You can't eat just one"

The Mummy Museum was just one fiasco, no one spoke English but assured us that someone else did. We got frustrated and just went through the disgusting museum ourselves. These aren't Egyptian mummies, these were accidental, so the people are just mummified and naked.

When we got outside, we talked about how gross the whole thing was and how we just couldn't eat anything, until a man approached us with churros and Keren shelled out the 5 pesos and buys 6 for us. They are deep fried dough, covered in sugar, filled with strawberry cream (or cajeta, etc.) sticks. Taaasty. The area is really nice, it's on top of another mountain, so we walked around.

And took photographs of strangers.

Ker, Ker.

Me looking funny...but wait, what's that in the side mirror of that cab?

The cab driver staring at us.

Then we walked down where all the cars are going.

Me taking some photo.

I wish I'd managed to snap one of these.

Walls+miniskirt = no sweat.

How amazing is Guanajuato?

After taking ridiculous amounts of photographs, we headed back to town...there's just one bus direction that loops around the whole city...the bus ride down was much scarier and the seats were awful. We did pass the Don Quixote museum though.

Back in the city, we went back to the garden and got food...amazing, amazing, spicy ass food.

In this photo: quesadillas, guacamole, bean dip, an alley, staircase on the side of the theatre, residential area and mountain!

Pineapple juice. Ker can photograph models...of juice.

The whole time we were eating, the same guy kept pestering us to buy blankets.

The theatre...

Where this guy made fun of us...probably, we didn't really understand.

So then we sat down to watch the show... but really had no idea what was going on, so we left after 10 minutes.

Apparently this is a ficus tree...err trees.

Keren met yet another man.

Probably around 5 or so, we headed back to the hotel to rest up before dinner.

that's me resting.

Keren checking the status of her burn, I mean tan. There are about 5 of these per day, at least. It's coming along nicely though.

After a team nap, yes, there were two beds, but like losers, somehow ended up passed out next to each other, we went out to dinner at a fancy schmancy dinner.

It was on yet another mountain somewhere scary where there are winding roads with no guard-rails.

Such tourists.

After dinner we headed to a salsa bar, the only place open on a Wednesday night. It was pretty uneventful, once the salsa dancing broke out, we jetted in fear of horribly embarassing ourselves. But damn, can they dance!

Thursday, December 28
That morning, we headed off to town to catch all the last sights we missed.

Where we stopped at least once a day to hang out.

People selling stuff.

Public transit.

So then we wandered around.

Probably one of my favourite photos from the trip.

An important church, a really pretty street...mountains.

We didn't quite figure out what this building was, there was a restaurant in there but you could walk through it.

We were really far from the centre by this point...then we climbed to the top of that bridge.

Note: how amazing is this weather...it's 20-25C and sunny.

Then went up those stairs.

Then we hung around for a while... apparently there was a huge drop behind that ledge we were sitting on.

We went back to the city centre and decided to go into the theatre-Teatro.

That's me being lazy and snapping a shot.

Keren took her time:

In my defense, since my camera was broken, I was using my dad's which has a 1" screen, whereas mine and Keren's cameras each have 3", so I couldn't see my photos.

The lounge in the theatre.

Back outside..

And another one of these guys

It was about 2 or 3 at this point, so we decided we should get some juice...

in a bag! I got guava, Keren got pineapple.. We both mostly drank the guava and couldn't even finish it. If you've never had guava juice, it's almost like eating a guava, it's just pulp.

On the way back to the hotel, we picked up another snack:

Apparently back in the day these were amazing, now they are just ok. It's a chocolate sponge cake thing, with cream, covered in chocolate, it's supposed to be eaten frozen, which we didn't do and probably took away from the experience. Whenever I say that word in my head, it sounds like those ducks are saying.

We also picked up "Charlie," a man walking down the street with his 12-year-old son! How ridiculous is that? Charlie was in his mid-thirties and invited us dancing.

Then we headed to the bus station...

Guns and knives are prohibited.

Where no one speaks English. That's the bus line we were supposed to take, except the bus was broken so there was a delay. When we showed up after the delay, they cracked up and eventually communicated that there's no bus and we have about 3 minutes to go buy tickets for the other bus company and make the bus.

This bus line, not nearly as nice as the first one.

We did meet this fellow in line...his name was Christian, I think. When we got to Mexico City, he was nice enough to walk us to the taxi stand.. Mexico City bus terminal = mega dangerous, especially at midnight.

Back at Alicia's everything was fine...until I woke up in the middle of the night to find Keren gone and I vaguely heard her aunt asking her if she was still throwing up. Turns out that sandwich they gave us on the bus, ham and cheese croissant, made her quite sick. She was up all night, poor kid... I've never been so glad to be a vegetarian.