best year ever.

one year ago today, i was spending my first day in tanzania.

life has been such an adventure since then. in the span of one year, i've gotten to safari and volunteer in africa, scuba dive in fiji, pet kangaroos and bbq on the beaches of australia, snowboard in germany, and visit some of my favorite people in the netherlands. i've been in craters and oceans and lived on a private island. i've met people from countries i didn't know existed and seen some amazing things. i've gotten to work at an aquarium where i feed 7 ft. sharks and 350 pound turtles.

i am so blessed. i've also learned that there is no point in sitting back and watching life unfold without you. dream big, extravagant, silly, wild dreams. and then do everything you can to chase them.

it is very strange to be heading back to UQ, but i'm actually excited. this will be the first time since september 2004 that i've returned to the same school after a summer vacation. this is epic, folks! i'm changing majors and my best friends are gone though, so despite being in the same location, i know it will be like starting over again. as cool as it is to be friends with people around the world, i'm learning that it can also be very difficult. time differences, expensive phone calls, and expensive plane tickets might make having world-wide friends more fun in theory than real life. it's definitely emotionally taxing to be in a perpetual state of missing people who live thousands of miles away. if only i could win the lottery, life would be perfect.

1 week and 1 day until i'm headed back down under on a one way ticket. unsure of when i'll be back stateside. i'm in the process of trying to figure out study abroad--yes, i can study abroad from abroad! i'm thinking india or south africa. my mom is thinking... canada? i'll probably end up someplace in europe within the next year or two, which wouldn't be too bad either :)

i'm still trying to plan out my first few days in OZ. currently i'm scheduled to fly into sydney and spend thursday-sunday there. the big draw is that the gay/lesbian mardi gras parade happens to be on saturday! hundreds of thousands of people from around the world fly in to witness what's been ranked as one of the top 10 parades in the world to see. however, i might be interested in flying into brissy a couple days before classes, getting settled back in and hitting up the beach for a few days. we'll see!

time to start packing... always an adventure. this time i will NOT spend $400+ in shipping and i will NOT spend $400+ in excess baggage fees! sheesh. i should've just bought a friend a ticket last time and had them check my bags!

and when i'm not with you, i know that it's true that i'd rather be anywhere but here without you... --safetysuit

leap and the net shall appear. --zen saying

...and maybe when a person doesn't buy the lies anymore, when a human stops long enough to realize the stuff people say to get us to part with our money often isn't true, we can finally see the sunrise, smell the wetness in a Gulf breeze, stand in awe at a downpour no less magnificent than a twenty-thousand-foot waterfall, ten square miles wide, wonder at the physics of a duck paddling itself across the surface of a pond, enjoy the reflection of the sun on the face of the moon, and know, this is what i was made to do. this is who i was made to be, that life is being given to me as a gift, that light is a metaphor, and God is doing these things to dazzle us. --donald miller, through painted deserts

...set out with big dreams running through her mind... she was jumping right into the deep end on a leap of sweet, blind faith. it's about hoping, it's about dreaming, it's about never not believing. it's about taking a walk out on the wire and never looking down. it's about living instead of dying. it's about spreading your wings and flying. it's all about trying. --little big town

amsterdam: anything goes.

after spending three days in rob, timmy and oskar's hometowns, we packed up and headed out to amsterdam for the weekend. duncan and harry, two guys who were on my fiji trip, flew over from the UK to join us... for less than 24 hours! we all stayed in an amazing hotel located across the street from central station. we had the most perfect location, as everything was nearby. dunky and harry stayed in a big suite, while the bromance and i crammed into one room... with one bed! i believe the concierge thought i was a bit... loose. in a span of about 30 minutes, i checked into the hotel with "mr. sundberg" (timmy), ran through the lobby to give harry and dunky a hug and kiss, and walked out holding hands with rob. the concierge even winked at me as we departed for the evening! haha. oops. with less than 24 hours to site see, we had a VERY crammed night/day!

-sex museum. single-handedly the most disturbing museum i've ever seen! 8 ft. tall penis chairs, pictures of porn printed from the internet and taped to walls, animated statues that flash you and give each other oral sex, "fetish" rooms... oh man. we had been walking through the streets when i saw a giant sign that said, "sex museum."

me: does that sign really say 'sex museum?' let's take a picture!

dunky: let's go in!

and then the boys all walked in, leaving me on the street. definitely entertaining, although i'm pretty sure i blushed the entire time we were there.

-following the sex museum, we hit up a couple bars... where i had to remind the boys that my drinking capabilities weren't quite up to par with theirs. as much as i appreciate them buying me rounds, i definitely can't drink 2 pints at every bar!

-dinner in the red light district... at a south american restaurant with a porn shop on one side and a sex toy shop on the other. very random.

-exploration of the red light district. i was under the impression that all the girls would be beautiful!... so not the case. luckily, the boys just looked and nothing more :) if you look too long though, the girls start trying to seduce you into their room. seeing oskar's face after a prostitute grabbed her (DD) boobs and rubbed them on the window was pretty priceless.

-more bars.

-me convincing (some) of the boys that a 40 euro "live sex show" was entirely unnecessary. the guy at the door told me that they even have "big wangs for the ladies," but that just wasn't quite enticing enough to get me through those black curtains.

-more bars. drunky dunky even got into a dance off with another guy... and a random guy bought me beer!

-coffeeshop. earlier in the night, dunky had asked the other boys if we should skip the coffeeshops. not knowing the lingo, i said, "nooo, if we see a starbucks, can we make a stop??" the boys nearly peed in their pants. apparently "coffeeshop" is code for "place where you can legally buy marijuana." silly me. duly noted. of course, we had to make a stop... but only one person actually made a purchase. such good boys.

-a long trek to some other part of town and more bars.

-sleep!

-brunch.

-canal boat tour. we floated past the anne frank house and many other famous locations. unfortunately we were all pretty sleepy, so we lost interest pretty fast.

-heineken museum. SO cool! very hands-on, with lots to see and do. the free beers throughout the tour were an added bonus. the tour left us all with an intense desire to drink heineken and buy accessories stamped with the red star and green logo. very savvy marketing.

-after the heineken museum, we said goodbye to dunky and harry. they left for their flight and the bromance and i went out to one last dinner together. after dinner, timmy and oskar left for home and rob and i spent one more night in amsterdam. very chill though... no more sex museums!

saying goodbye to the boys was incredibly difficult. i must've looked like quite a mess at the airport, as FIVE different people stopped to ask me if i was okay! it will be so strange at union college without them. however, hopefully i'll be back visiting holland soon or they'll be headed stateside for a computer science internship! oskar already booked a ticket back to oz to visit for a month in july/august. now i just have to win the lottery so i can get rob and timmy tickets to come as well!!

bier alstublieft!

finally, a post about my trip to the netherlands!

highlights:

-meeting the bromance's families and seeing their hometowns. each of the three families prepared a big, typical dutch meal for me and the boys and warmly welcomed me into their homes. oskar and timmy's dads went well out of their ways to accommodate all of us during my stay. rob's parents kindly let me stay at their house... although i think they found it a bit strange having an american girl sleeping over who couldn't communicate with them at all!

-trying to ride a bike. everyone in the netherlands rides bikes EVERYwhere, anytime, any weather. i tried just about every bike the boys' owned between the three of their families... all too large. we finally gave up and i rode on the back of rob's bike. a personal cycling chauffeur? nice.

-kinderdijk. basically, a huge open field with lots of windmills. very pretty.

-learning some dutch words. because of the weather, i shivered my way through holland, constantly singing "ohh brrr brrr brrr. oooohhh brrrr." finally rob looked at me and said, "why do you keep saying 'waiter?'" apparently "ober" means "waiter" in dutch. naturally, the boys had to teach me how to say, "waiter, beer please!" i can now say beer, waiter, the numbers 1-10, the days of the week, please, thank you and a few words that are inappropriate to mention ;)

-delft. we went to the city of delft, which also happens to be where the boys go to university. it had gorgeous, colorful, quaint looking buildings. the campus itself is fairly unattractive until you go inside. because it's a technology school, everything is extremely modern and high tech. very cool. school number six, perhaps? just kidding!

-warm, gooey, carmely stroopwafels. they're basically thin waffle sandwiches with carmel in the middle. and yes, we ate them for breakfast. and yes, they also eat bread with butter and sprinkles for breakfast. dutch men must have remarkable metabolisms.

sausagefest

a very belated entry about germany.

my trip to europe was incredible.

i met the boys in amsterdam and we then flew on to germany together. we arrived in munich and proceeded to take a subway, a bus, and a few trains to wangen. at one point, we thought we were supposed to get off the train. rob made it off. then the doors closed. then we realized we hadn't wanted to get off there anyway. thomas picked us up at our final destination and we somehow managed to fit 4 large boys, me and all our bags into a car the size of a go-kart.

thomas' parents made us incredible meals when we were with them. his dad is an english teacher, so he speaks impeccable english. his mom speaks basically no english, but luckily we had some great translators :)

we spent one night in wangen and then were off to snowboard! it involved a VERY early morning wake up our first day and a lot of standing around. the rental shop had lost our confirmation and size details, so they were starting from scratch. the dude helping us was clearly still intoxicated from the evening before and gave me a board that was too long, boots that were too big, and one binding that was also too large! (yup, just one. the other one was fine.) the boys spent the first couple hours on their butts but by the end of the second day, they were legitimately snowboarding!... even if we did stay on the bunnyhill the whole time. if i do say so myself, thomas and i were pretty good teachers :)

we snowboarded two days. the night in between was spent partaking in apres ski... drinking outside, under the stars, with live music. we stayed in a really nice hotel suite... big bathroom, 2 bedrooms, kitchen, living room with pull out couch and free breakfast! lunches were spent out on the mountain... the first day we had sausages and beer. the second day, we took the gondola up to the very top of the mountain and ate apple pie for lunch.

after our second day of snowboarding, we drove back to wangen, where thomas' parents live. we dropped off their car and then proceeded to take 3 more trains to get to stuttgart, where thomas is currently interning. we arrived at our final train station very late... and then had to walk 30 minutes with all our luggage... in the dark and snow. it was a long night. when we arrived at thomas' apartment, we realized he had forgotten to bring bed linens from home. we had 5 people, 4 twin sized beds, 2 blankets and 1 pillow. timmy and oskar slept in their (still damp) snowboarding clothes, wrapped up in towels and window curtains. i lucked out... because i shared a bed with rob, i got a nice warm boy AND the blanket! thomas got his own bed, pillow and blanket :)

the next day, thomas got up early to go to work. the bromance and i discovered that thomas had no food in his apartment. for breakfast we had potato chips and chocolate bars (are you sensing a common theme? vacationing with boys=gaining 3 kilos in a week) breakfast of champions, really.

we walked/snowball fought our way through the streets of stuttgart and then took a bus downtown. it was gorgeous... but unfortunately, it was also monday. which meant all "touristy" type places... porsche museum, planetarium, etc... were closed. instead we did a *fREEZING* walking tour of the city, with an afternoon stop in a nearby mall to warm up. we had a lovely dinner the last night with thomas and were up early for our trip back to amsterdam!

had we driven from amsterdam to stuttgart, it would have taken us 7 hours. i had suggested we fly, thinking it would save us time. nope. with all the public transport, missed connections and delayed flights, it took us 14 hours to get back!