Zoo was fun. Had an argument, per usual, and the Dallas Zoo isn't half as good as the Ft. Worth one. But it was still fun. A few pictures are up on facebook and myspace.

Leave in a couple hours to head over to Casey's to spend the night drinking with some of his friends, then tomorrow we set off with at least one of his sisters and some of her friends to go tubing down the river down in New Braunfels until Sunday. Then I leave Monday for a week in Rockport down on the coast, then get back on Chrissy and Erika's birthday; Casey leaves for church camp the next day for a week. Craziness!

Anyways, going to go eat dinner. My sunburn from the property is peeling and hurts like hell. :( Lame!

It's 2am.

I have to get up for work at 5:30am.

And I can't sleep. Partly because I can NEVER sleep when I have to be at work early. Partly because I'm extremely stressed about my first day back. Partly because Casey founds out while I'm at work whether he's fired or not.

Thomas also told me today he might not have enough money for Greece, and I understand, because I don't want him going into college without enough money. Which means I may talk to my Dad and see how much trouble it would be to get Casey a pass, and maybe he and I will take a trip together. That would really make or break it, haha.

Gah, I need to sleep but I'm wide awake! At least I work at a coffee shop.

I'm going to Ireland. Case closed.

Hardly slept last night. Got up at 6:30 to finish packing. Bad traffic on the way to the doctor, but he saw me right away, then went straight to the airport for my 10:25 flight. Dad gave me $100, then went on to give me a lecture about how I'm getting fat, in so many words. Basically, he wanted to know if I was finding time to exercise, then told me I should because college kids can gain a lot of weight and exercise makes you feel good and all that jazz.

Slept through most of the flight, scrunched into a tiny corner because of obnoxious big men. Heather met me at the airport with cannolis and after going on a nice little bus ride, we managed to lug my bigass bags back to Emerson. It was weird to go back into my room. My plants were as DEAD as could possibly be; it was so sad.

Instead of unpacking OR doing homework, went with Heather and Kristen to victoria's secret where I bought a huge water bottle that I really like. It was nice to be out and walking around; beautiful in the sunny spots. Went by work to say I'm back and get my schedule. Sat with Diana in the max while she ate dinner, then came back to my room and spent about an HOUR unpacking. It took forever!! Took a thirty minute nap and now have been puttering around online for an hour instead of doing homework :x and I have a TOOOOOOOOON.

Okay, now I'm going to . . . do homework. I had planned on pulling an all nighter, but instead I think I'm just going to talk to my professors, explain that I didn't have my books so I couldn't do any of it at home, and just ask if it's okay that I get it in as soon as I can. Since none of them were considerate enough to e-mail me back, hopefully they'll flex with me on this.

Anyways, I should stop blogging and get started! but gosh I don't wanna.

Tonight me and my two roommates (Kristen and Caroline) had our wine and cheese night. We camped out on the floor with a bottle of white wine, two kinds of cheese, garlic butter, and crackers, and talked about a wide array of topics --strikes, Christianity and Buddhism, regionalism, etc. It was lovely; I'm glad I get along with my roommates, though I think a good deal of that is simply the magic of the castle and the fact that we only sleep in the same room maybe three or four nights a week.

Ate like crazy today, and I feel awful about it, except I also know I won't be eating much tomorrow since we leave at 6am. Yuck! Jessye and I went to All Under One Roof and bought more Dutch Christmas presents to take home.

Classes were a bore. Ran around crazy all day doing laundry, showering, getting my papers finished and printed and turned in. We had the Castle picture today at noon, which was a sucky thing to shove on us the day we leave for travel break, and also tonight had Castle T.shirt voting, complete with free popsicles. Kristen's design, that i helped brainstorm for, won, and I'm very glad. It's uber cute and she also worked VERY hard on it.

And now . . . I feel like I'm forgetting something in packing. I have my backpack and my fugly turqouise bag, but neither is very heavy. Mental checklist: two pairs of jeans, black slacks, cheer shorts to sleep in, three tanks, two long-sleeved undershirts, a 3/4-length shirt, an overshirt and two short overshirts, a t. shirt, a short-sleeved jacket, a thick sweatshirt, a coat, two scarves, mittens, two winter hats, two pairs of shoes, five pairs of socks, five pairs of underwear, three bras, soap, shampoo, conditioner, loofa, razor, make up, deoderant, toothpaste and brush, comb, hair stuff, bandaids, neosporin, aleve, midol, two reading books, travel journal, writing journal, finance journal, laptop and cord, both cameras, chargers, and cords, iPod and cord, calendar, trains and hostel reservations, wallet, change-sock, converters, rice cakes, two chocolate bars, bag of chocolate covered raisins, purse.

I'll be gone eleven or twelve days (depending what train I take back). In each place, it's an average of 20-30 DEGREES. I'm no doubt going to freeze, but I can and probably will buy more hats and mittens along the way, and possible a black pea coat! I suppose the reason my luggage is so much lighter is because I left out a lot. I'm not taking heels this time, nor a skirt (will I regret that?), and only half the clothes. I'm leaving behind most of my jewelry and make up since I wound up not really changing jewelry at all previously, and I rarely put on anything more than foundation, concealer, and mascara anyways. I have smaller containers for my toiletries and I'm not taking as many food items. I need to buy a water bottle, but I have to buy it once I'm through airport secrurity anyways.

So . . . I think I may have everything after all. At least I've got the important things; anything else I can buy along the way.

I'm excited about this trip. My Italy trip last weekend was really the one I was stressed about. Budapest is going to be a blast and so many kids are going there that I won't be lonely; if anything, I may be ready for some alone time. Croatia is going to be soooo cool --old city, and then I may take a day trip out on Friday to either a castle or some ancient caves and a neanderthal museum (we'll see how much time I need for the city). I hadn't realized Slovenia is kinda infamous as a fairy-tale country. And I'm ecstatic to be getting out of Western Europe. Not that I've had my fill of Western Europe forever, but I'm ready to begin exploring some other parts of the world, you know? Eastern Europe is going to be a blast and a nice change of pace. I think my biggest frustration with this semester is that you rarely spend more than two or three days in a city, and for ease and safety, they're usually major cities --Paris, Rome, Milan, Vienna, etc. But the major cities are rarely applicable representations of the country. They're usually dirty and industrialized and more globalized. I'm excited for Eastern Europe, which will be less conformed; and hence why I'm tempted to do the day trip from Croatia. I almost wish I wasn't doing three cities, but only one.

Well anyways, I can ramble on about my hopes and wishes and planning desires. Maybe when I have more time I'll make a list of things I want to explore more, a grand master list I can tack on my wall at home and check off as I move through life. but for now it's midnight and the staff are going to be banging on our doors in five and a half hours. Eesh. So I'm going to go throw some last-minute things in my bag and try to get a couple hours of sleep.

I'm bored with myself. not with my life. I mean, look at my life, I'm not allowed to be bored with it. In the past two and a half months, I've visited the Netherlands, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Monaco --multiple cities in each country. In the next three weeks, I'll also have added Czech, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia. And the Stuttgart Christmas Market. Oh, and learning to ski in the Swiss Alps.

( continue, but cut because I'm BORING )

Since it is certainly no longer summer.

I was really bad eating wise today. I snacked a lot, and had a slice of some kind of lemon poudn cake at breakfast. It was small, but still unnecessary! I went running for an hour this morning and then walking for over an hour tonight. I've been doing my push ups, which is good, and am going to add random crunches to the routine.

Still, though, i don't count today as a successful diet nor exercise day. And unfortunately, weigh in tomorrow will probably show at BEST no change. of course, the downside of having a scale in kilos is that you have to lose over two pounds before your weight changes.

I'm uber homesick right now. I think it's because I'm so unhappy with the above, and because I'm not leaving the vicinity this weekend. I'm staying at the castle and just biking around, hopefully to Nijmegen, Venlo, Arcen, Venray, maybe Germany --all if I can find them. Since I don't understand Dutch traffic signs, I'm a little anxious. At least I'll burn a lot of calories. But if my options were biking alone in Southern Netherlands or being at home with my family and friends . . .

at this moment, it would be the latter, but if I continue to think about it, I'm going to cry. I wish Nadir would get online. I talked to him for several hours last night, learned all about Ramadan. Maybe that's making me more homesick, too. It's only been two weeks. I'm anxious to see if two months from now we'll still be willing to spend that long chatting online. Hopefully by then my wireless will be fixed, though, and I'll be able to use skype. That would be nice. I HAVE to get Huber to try and fix that next week. HAVE to.

I'm not really tired, I don't think, but I kinda. I think I'll waste another couple hours on the computer, then go back to my room and maybe read, maybe watch a movie, maybe do homework. I don't know; I don't really feel like doing homework right now, and there's no rush this time.

Anyways. Home. I miss home. I've got a lot of exciting things coming up, but at this precise moment I miss my home.

is a long time to walk with a REALLY HEAVY backpack. My feet are terrible blistered, I have a freckle line, and my body hurts like no other. On the upside, I toured a bajillion churches, saw a bajillion parks, saw the Tower Bridge, and oh so much more. Check out webshots to see pictures of everything. Oh, and did I mention I see Orlando Bloom on stage tomorrow night? KINDA psyched. I'm trying to decide if I want to embarrass the shit out of myself and try to get his autograph after teh show. The classy side of me says no. The rest of my says, 'Um, hello! Duh!' We'll see.

Now I'm showered and back in the room. It's almost midnight and I need to get to bed. I'm sure I'll fall asleep as soon as I lie down, but my shower has temporarily revived me. Shit, I wish I had written earlier, because it's late enough now that I can't stay up to write. :/ Tomorrow I'll make a point of stopping somewhere to journal. I didn't even write ONCE in my offline journal. Just too much to see and do, and by the time I had time, I jsut wanted to get back and rest. I still had several hours to, though. Uh well. Tomorrow! Because I have the play, it's a sort of light day plan-wise. Buckingham Palace, Kensington Gardens, House of Parliament, and things in and around there.

But now more wasting time! Good night! I have to be up early to load up on breakfast and then change to my new hostel!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S RAINING!!! Pray pray PRAY that this doesn't interfere with my flight today.

( My bitch of a day yesterday )

Yes, i am in Rome . . . Georgia. For speech and debate nationals right now. I arrived here late Wednesday night and have been competing/doing homework/taking pictures/playing wiffle ball nonstop since my arrival. And sleeping a bit. And eating too much. Tis the story of this tournament.

Competition wise, I'm doing all right, though I definitely feel as though I'm out of my league. That's okay, though. It's my first year doing forensics, so I'm learning and I'll be better next year. And it's definitely being a lot of fun playing with the Suffolk kids.

Speaking of Suffolk kids, I can be such a tease. I thought guys here would be safe because I'm competing, and because I'm bloated, and because I'm stressed out, but alas, no! Joe's a douche who has now RANDOMLY hugged me twice. I don't really understand why at all, and it's not often that I can be confused. Ted I think has Gober-syndrome (named after dear R. Gober, whose story will probably never be told here unless I run into him again this summer), in that I think I'm one of the only girls he knows that can keep up/defeat him intellectually and verbally. So, dare I say it, he might just be developing whatever the Ted-version of a crush is. He has a girlfriend who he's dated for a long time. So hopefully not. Partically because it's not reciprocated; I just enjoy the attention and can be somewhat of a bitch in that way. But I'm enjoying the attention, the teasing, the competition, even the hug.

Berry State is BEAUTIFUL. It makes me wonder why I'm not at a Southern campus school. It tempts me to transfer to a Southern campus school. I can't put into words how beautifully the campus is. It'll have to be shown in pictures eventually. I love the warm weather, the kindness, the greenery, the fresh air, the natrure, the open sky. It truly makes me hate Boston. I don't want to go back, even for the 5-7 days I have left.

But for now, I must go frantically do homework. I'll put pictures up eventually. And I'll probably do a longer journal entry eventually when I have more time. But there is simply too much to do at this moment in time. So now off to do homework.