highs and lows

the past few weeks have definitely not been my finest time at UQ. i'm not sure whether it's due to an incorrect dose of thyroid medicine or the fact that d-day is rapidly approaching (23rd birthday... which means i will be SEVEN years older than some of the students here) or overall dissatisfaction with mean girls, drama and excessive drinking, but i am ready to just hurry up and graduate and do something more meaningful with my life. most people revel in routine and the comfortable--i'm learning everyday that i could not be more opposite.

on a high note, classes are going substantially better than last semester!! it makes me sad to know i most likely won't spend my career out scuba diving anymore, but in the present, graduation actually seems like a possibility now that chemistry is out of the picture! whoooooo! i'm taking a cool creative writing class and a wayyy less cool "fundamentals of writing" class, but i have an amazing tutor. it's a lot more daily work than last semester, but one of my finals is writing a short story. pretty sweet.

on another high note, an american exchange student, an english exchange student and i just booked tickets to spend a week in new zealand in june! thank god... it had been a while since i was plane-ticket-less/upcoming-destination-less and it was making me severely crabby. we're flying into christchurch, renting a car and hoping to get in snowboarding, hiking around milford sound and... well, we'll pretend for my mom's sake that we won't be skydiving. hot air ballooning and street luging are pretty high on the to-do list as well. you only live once, right? i'm trying to convince aaron, another american girl, to spend a long weekend scuba diving and sandboarding with me on stradbroke island during our mid-semester break at the beginning of april. all i know is that i need to get out of brisbane for a while or i'll go completely insane!

i'm still trying to plan out what i'll be doing during our "winter" break in july. hopefully a job will materialize soon (yet another low of the moment... have spent hours job searching to no avail) so i can fund an adventure of some kind that does not involve teenage girls and union college. i was searching online and found a volunteer program where you live on a sailboat in greece and track dolphin pods. i've realized that prostitution and/or drug dealing may not be beneath me if it means getting on that sailboat :) i was really hoping that i could do 2 more semesters at UQ, then a year abroad and then finish my last here, but i just found out that i have to stay here for a total of 2.5 years before i can study abroad. that's 3 semesters longer than i've been anywhere else, so it seems a bit daunting.

this week is crazy busy with lots of assignments/papers due, college idol on wednesday night, dinner with carolyn on thursday and going out for my birthday on saturday (we're pretending i'm turning 21), but hopefully that will be enough to distract me from the gutting email from the study abroad office and unemployment woes!

'i watch the stars from my windowsill. the whole world is moving and i'm standing still.' --the weepies

'she told him that she believes in living bigger than she's living now, but her world keeps spinning backwards and upside down... she said he said live like no tomorrow. every day we borrow brings us one step closer to the edge. where's your treasure, where's your hope if you get the world and lose your soul?... life's more than fame and rock and roll and thrills. all the riches of the kings end up in wills. we got information in the information age but do we know what life is outside of our convenient lexus cages?' --switchfoot

oops

i've been terrible about updating. life is pretty standard at the moment. classes have started which are keeping me INSANELY busy. writing is definitely easier that chemistry (as in, i don't feel like vomiting every time i have to go to class), but it's a lot more daily work. some of it is pretty stupid (we're learning how to use commas) and some is challenging, but so far it feels better than anything math-related. i'm also taking a really cool sociology class called "human bodies, society and culture." last week's lecture was about tattoos, piercings and body art. some of it was quite disturbing. in fact, i think it's convinced me to never get another tattoo or piercing again. (i can hear my mom cheering from here). i mean, labia piercings? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

anyway, i will post some pictures from the past couple weeks. red week (first week of classes) was spectacular. conor came up... down... over?... i don't know geography... for crommie bunker: back to the future. very entertaining.

me, meagan and izzi at crommie

hot glasses, hey?

hot mess.

some of the new (and returning) americans at dunder bar

getting ready for ladies night at dunder

i'm back.

well, i'm back in oz. i ended up skipping sydney and heading straight to brisbane, where i spent a few days with lisa, a friend from scotland. she managed to keep me awake the entire first day and even cooked me a delicious dinner!... so i think jetlag has been pretty non-existent. the 3:30-4:30 am wakeup calls have more to do with the horrendous time difference with holland than still being on MN time :)

yesterday was move-in day... SO hot, humid and rainy. ugh. i opened up my boxes to find that a brand new pair of heels (worn once!) were covered in mold. it was pretty disgusting. but my room has been kate-ified, so i'm feeling a lot better now that i'm not living out of a suitcase. my hall consists almost entirely of aussie guys!

classes started today but i have the world's best schedule. no classes on mondays or fridays and my earliest class starts at 10! yeah, pretty amazing. i've spent the day finishing unpacking, running random errands and checking items off a monster to-do list.

it's both good and strange to be back. i thought i missed the boys while i was in MN, but it turns out that is only a fraction of how much i miss them now that i'm back. there are hardly any international students living in college this semester, so it feels really different than it did last semester.

as much as i love oz, it feels like my heart is stretched pretty far across the world at the moment. my grandpa is in the hospital after a major heart surgery, where he's been now since before i left for school. he's surrounded by family... so part of my heart is there. my very best friend for the past 6 months is in holland, so part of my heart is there. and everyday i can't stop thinking about tanzania and the kids at peace house. a very large part of my heart is there. this week at college is "red week." in other words, an event has been planned every single night so we can all go out and get wasted. it's definitely fun, but it doesn't fill my heart up like singing and dancing and pretending to play netball with the phs students did. i can't stop missing it.

hopefully once classes start and i settle into a routine, i'll become more content with just letting myself be fully here now. if nothing else, i have a break in july that i can go adventuring in :)

we got older and i should have known (don't you feel alive?) that i feel colder when i walk alone (oh but you'll survive). so i may as well ditch my dismay (bombs away). circle me and the needle moves gracefully back and forth. if my heart was a compass you'd be north. risk it all 'cause i'll catch you if you fall wherever you go. if my heart was a house you'd be home. --owl city

slow down

calm down

don't worry

don't hurry

trust the process. --alexandra stoddard

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!