more to life than just existing: March 2011

best break ever

needless to say, my "summer break" was the best one ever. time in minnesota, florida, colorado, montana, and the netherlands, all in 2 months. i came back to australia a month before classes started to find a job (still unsuccessful) and get settled into the apartment. i miss summer already!

goodbye netherlands :(

our last night together was spent in amsterdam, wandering the city and going out to dinner.

we went to a restaurant where all of the waiters, waitresses, and bartenders walked around singing and serenading diners. they all studied at a local conservatory, so they were pretty impressive!

joost's mom bought me some dutch slippers to remember my time there :) joost's leg is slightly longer... and hairier... than mine.

even more holland

dinner at joost's apartment with timmy, oskar and toni

a typical breakfast for joost :) he's a big guy!... he needs a lot of nourishment.

eggs from joost's pet chickens

we tried making snickerdoodle cookies. it required a lot of translating/converting.

brunch at the euromast with joost's family

holland (part 2)

another picture from the concert

madurodam (a tourist attraction that is basically all of holland, but mini-sized)

impromptu trip to holland!

a couple days after i returned home from montana, i got an email alerting me to cheap amsterdam plane tickets! they had gone on sale for $600. obviously, that was a deal i couldn't turn down. i booked a ticket for the next week! joost and i hadn't anticipated on seeing each other until the end of june, so it was a very, VERY nice surprise.

joost, timmy (a friend who studied abroad in australia last year), and i exploring rotterdam.

dinner at timmy's house. it was so fun hanging out with friends from this year and last year!

joost and i in utrecht.

joost surprised me by taking me to a concert at wibi soerjadi's house. wibi is a famous pianist. it was beautiful. plus, wibi lives in a giant mansion adorned with disney characters.

montana

a few days before christmas, i said goodbye to matt and josh (leaving them to fend for themselves in vegas and LA), drove back to minnesota, and had a lovely christmas back in e-town. the next day, my dad, jack, jack's friend (zander), and i re-packed the beamer and roadtripped out to montana! i thought i had missed colorado, but it didn't even begin to compare to how much i missed montana. we had GREAT snow and i even made it down multiple (!) black diamonds... no thanks to steve.

riding up the lift with the boys

winter wonderland

during our attempt to drive home, we got stuck... a couple times. there were massive blizzards with low temps, lots of snow, and extremely strong wind. we ended up spending new years eve in jamestown, north dakota's local saloon. there were 5 people there (the 4 of us and the waitress). the most exciting thing we did was spend an hour debating whether we should go to the local kmart or walmart.

this is what the roads looked like when we tried to keep driving. this was after they had been plowed.

estes park

we had another busy day exploring estes park. it made me realize how much i missed colorado. i definitely should've taken better advantage of the mountains when i was living there!

denver at sunrise.

of course we had to take a tacky tourist picture. our colorado shirts read "get high in colorado." because we're classy like that.

pikes peak/garden of the gods

matt, josh and i had the opportunity to head back to colorado springs, which i hadn't revisited in quite a few years. we drove through the cc campus, i took them to the local chipotle (so many memories there), and then we rode the cog railway up pikes peak!

immediately after our train ride, we drove to garden of the gods, where we spent a lovely afternoon checking out the rocks.

colorado road trip

after a brief stop (1 day) back in minnesota, matt, josh and i packed up the beamer for a road trip to colorado.

somehow the three of us managed to have a lot of luggage.

we drove 800 miles the first day and then checked in at a motel located right next door to a federal prison.

we arrived in denver the next morning. my friend sarah wasn't quite ready to meet up with us yet, so we drove to boulder, explored, and then drove back to denver. then we picked up sarah and drove to vail in a blizzard. there was a lot of driving involved. sarah and i took matt and josh out the next day for their first day on the slopes!

matt got tired of snowboarding very quickly (mainly because he refused to listen to any of my advice).

nothing beats starbucks before a day on the mountain with your best friend!

HARRY POTTER WORLD!

the most highly-anticipated day of our florida trip was the day we went to universal. harry potter world WAS INCREDIBLE! it was a bit smaller than we thought it'd be, but we got to take pictures with the conductor of the hogwarts express, drink butterbeer, tour hogwarts, mail some postcards from the owlery, and buy candy at honeydukes. oh, and i almost puked on a dementor during the main ride. it. was. so. great.

matt and i chilling with horton (from dr. seuss' horton hears a who)

waiting in line for the Jaws ride

me and the whos

diagon alley!!

hogwarts

epcot

by the time we hit epcot, we were all a bit theme-parked out. however, we persevered and went on some amazing space rides, ate next to a giant aquarium, and saw the most extravagant, incredible fireworks show any of us had ever seen.

getting ready for the fireworks

claire's mom works for a screen printing business. naturally, we decided to make the boys tshirts for every state they visited.

magic kingdom

i believe we spent 12 magical hours at magic kingdom. it was pretty awesome. but needless to say, we were all pretty wiped by the end of it! also, as a sidenote... it turns out the "it's a small world" ride is not nearly as fun at this age as it was when i was 7. the fact that my mom rode that ride on repeat with me is a true testament of her love for me.

claire and i with our newly-acquired mouse ears