barcelona

alrighty, i just want to note that the man that i fell into was wearing actual swim trunks. so there was no my cheek to his cheek action going on....... :) but i will tell you what, most men do wear speedos or something to that effect, so i think i got lucky falling into one with more coverage :)

we are in barcelona. after not hearing my alarm clock go off for a couple straight minutes at 4:20am due to my awesome ear plugs, sarah woke me up at 4:52am and we were out the door by 5:15 to make our 6am train. our train ride was 12 and a half hours yesterday total. and sarah and i probably slept at least 6 of them on the train. there is something about the trains here but we both pass out the minute we sit down :) we met a really nice american lady on our last stint of the ride so that was fun. and we talked to another guy who was 1/2 french, 1/2 spanish and he gave us some good places to go in spain. and he was straight up beautiful so that added to the fun :)

we´re basically just chilling today. we want to get ourselves aclimated with the city so that when marci gets here tomorrow we´ll be ready to roll. and i think we´ll probably go to the beach at some point.... there´s nothing like getting a burn on top of a burn..... it wouldn´t really be a problem if i didn´t have to have carry 80 extremely heavy bags on my shoulders.....oh well. its my own fault :)

big news folks - as sarah and i were walking around last night trying to find some place to eat (it was her decision b-c she rejected my first recommendation, so little miss picky got to decide) ;) we ran across the first STARBUCKS that we´ve seen since we´ve been here. whoop whoop!!!!! venti iced cinnamon dolce latte here i come!!!! we´re totally going today before we take the metro to the beach :) and if they have a different flavor or special drink that they don´t offer in america i will try it, but my staple drink is really calling my name :) we had a free breakfast at our hostel this morning and i had a cappucino and i´m still shaking from it as i type..... i think that i have broken my caffeine addiction a bit while i´ve been here b-c i have gone a couple days sometimes without anything and i haven´t gotten headaches, and then when i do have it (like this morning) i am out of control jittery. its wonderful!!!!

so last night at dinner we ended up going to a little place off a side street and i tried gazpacho soup which i really enjoyed. and then i ordered some kind of chicken. i was excited and it basically turned out to be really really thin filets of friend chicken and fries! hahahah. so that was scrumptious and then i had rice and milk for dessert. yummtastic!! sarah enjoyed some white wine..... and the waiter brought us a shot of apple vodka ón the house´which tasted really good :)

i´m sorry to report that i don´t have any stories today to top the falling into a man´s butt story..... :( i´m sure that once marci arrives the true adventure will begin :) i am really looking forward to our time in spain (if i´m honest it was not on the top of my list at first) but now i´m totally stoked about it!!

thats all for now..... :)

snapfish login and uber embarassing story...

i do apologize that it has been a couple of days. and i a, typing on a french keyboard so the letters are weird: i might lose my ^patience and stop correcting myself so sorry in advance: lots to say so i will get right to it :) sarah wasnt feeling well for a few days but since i am mama bear and packed daquil and nyquil (which she made fun of me for packing) she is doing much better today: we are in nice france today: we were here yesterday and will be taking the train to barcelona tomorrow and then meeting marci there on the 31st!!! yay!!! nice has been super chill, just a time to rest and get ready for a fast paced week in spain :) we laid out for 4 hours yesterday so i am nice and pink/tan and we will be headed back out to the pebble beach later today for more fun in the sun :) to recap a couple funny things - on our train ride from florence to nice we got off at the wrong genova stop (because there xere 2 and we didnt know that) so we booked it to a taxi once we realized our mistake and made our connecting train just in time!! whoooo! then i felt like i should share my new most embarassing moment... yesterday as we were leaving the beach we were wqlking up the stairs, and i tripped... and straight up fell into a mans BUTT!!!! and this wqs not a graceful fall... this was a full on full body fall. had his booty not been there i probably would have jacked out my front teeth :) so i apologized while laughing profusely! good thing i was sunburnt so that you couldnt see how red my face got :)

a couple other high points - we watched the old school movie for richer for poorer in german on tv the other night :) it was funny because i basicqlly translated it to sarah since i had seen it before until sarahs nyquil kicked in :) also, we went to a bookstore to try and find a cheap read for the painfully long trainrides and i found PRIDE AND PREJUDICE for 3.60 euro. not a bad deal for one of my favorites :) so that has been nice to have on the trains and on the beach.

oh, i also feel like i should mention that this european sun is totally bleaching out my hair and i am getting more and more blonde everyday it seems :( i wish that the sun would make it more red!!! :)

ok - i will give out all my account info for snapfish to view what pics i have been able to upload thus far and then i will let you know when i have put up more. go to snapfish.com. then my login is: jjackson@seekrefuge.net and my password is: jodi1. so far i think there are only pics of the flight over and then some of paris....nothing too exciting :) and once again i apologize if there are lots of repeats because i hadnt deleted many..... :)

the next time i write will most likely be from barcelona!!! :)

blister on my foot.... :(

we are in florence right now. at an internet place where......... guess what....... we were able to UPLOAD PHOTOS!!! thats right ladies and gentleman!! :) i uploaded them to snapfish.com. hopefully they will be fully uploaded by the time that my internet time is over. there is over 200 pics..... so i'm not sure how it works exactly for you all to view my pics. if i run out of time to properly "share" them in this blog i will definitely do it next time. or dinah can put up a post explaining to peeps how it works since she is the captain of pics! :)

alrighty, i have a decent amount of time to write today because sarah and i each got our own hour of internet. whoop whoop. so i can try to recap the last couple of days. so i think i left off after our bike ride to the vineyard in tuscany. welp, that turned out to be about the WORST night of our lives because of the lameos that we had to share a room with. this was our first experience in a 8 person mixed dorm and it was awful. everyone else had just graduated from highschool or their first year of college so they were UBER pumped (and dedicated) to drinking as much as they possibly could. so since sarah and i tuckered ourselves out no the bike ride we went to bed semi-early (10:30ish) and i don't think i actually got to sleep until after 2am. it was ridiculous. there was a drunk guy acting stupid and then once they did all come in to go to sleep this one rather large guy snored like no one i have ever heard before. it was OUT OF CONTROL!!! i tried listening to my ipod.... ear plugs.... nyquil..... nothing worked :( so needless to say we were pretty irritated and pooped when we woke up. but then everything went smoothly once we left. we got to florence via the bus, found our hostel, dropped our bags off, and then headed out to see as much as we could. and i got a nice blister on the side of my foot from my sandals. so that sort of sucked. so today i am forced to wear my flip flops, so we are going slower and just chillin today and probably going to a laundry mat to wash some clothes. i did my first load of "handwashing" the other day.... and i don't think i got all the soap out. hahaha! so i wouldn't mind getting a fresh start...

i know i am sort of skipping around, so sorry about that. but to get back to the rooming situation... sarah and i were a little nervous b/c we were in another mixed dorm. but it was great last night! when we got there we interupted a couple making out on their bunk, but they were the friendliest people ever. liam and bridget, and they were from melbourne australia. our other roomates were deigo and elise from argentina. and diego was paler than me with semi-red hair and freckles :) we went out with liam and bridget to walk to the piazza de michaelangelo on the other side of the city to watch the sun set over florence. ummmm, breathtaking is all i have to say about that. my pictures do not do it justice b/c my camera SUCKS once the sun starts to go down.... oh well. but yeah, it was a great night and we learned tons of australian slang, had a couple bacardi breezers from the 99 cent store (whoop whoop for being ghetto even in florence!!) ;) and laughed a ton. also, i think we saw our first gypsies because they were giving sarah and i the creeps. and then asked me to take a pic of them but we just got a weird feeling from them. sarah was ready to bust out some karate on their butts if need be and i was ready to reach for my mase at any moment. but nothing happened so that was good.....

i realize this is getting super long. i don't think that all my pics are going to be uploaded in time...... but maybe you will be able to view some if you go to snapfish.com. if you need my email address or something to view my albums it is jjackson@seekrefuge.net. ok, the only pics that i had time to upload were from the plane ride and paris. i haven't really gone through to delete many yet and pic the good ones versus the bad ones. so sorry that you have to see them all..... and don't judge for any super lame pics :) sarah and i are basically out of photo options other than the standard "us holding our camera out to snap a pic of us with something pretty in the background" :) i tried to add in a few pics of other places that we've been other than paris, and then i will upload more later for sure..... sorry, this is all sort of new to me. i'm sure i will get better at it with time :)

a couple comments on previous posts: dad, we will be hitting up the beach in spain, naples, and greece so we'll have more down time then hopefully :), linds: you know i'm using your journal!!!! adge: we also played the other game that you and meg and i played with naming 3 guys.... ;) jess: i didn't have any of that soup b/c the place we ate in tuscany only had pizza and pasta :(

i hope everyone is well.... tomorrow we are off to nice, france. i'm not sure what we are doing there. but we have an 8 hour train ride to figure that out :( we might buy a book today to read on the train.... depending on how much it costs. alrighty, i'm gonna end this novel now :) byeeee for now...

my freckley skin + 4 hours in the sun = intense tan lines!!

yesterday we spent the whole afternoon at the beach in venice and it was perfect. it was one of those days where there is a constant breeze so you dont feel hot at all. which i realized ahead of time was dangerous. so about halfway through i put some sunscreen on my face. but the damage was already done and as i type my entire body is radiating heat :) one funny thing is the beach we went to was an optional topless beach. that was a new experience for me.... no worries folks, i stayed fully clothed! i didnt want to push myself too far out of my comfort zone.... and i actually enjoy swimsuit lines to see how much progress i have made :) so the bikini stayed on!!! and a beautiful italian man talked to me as we dove around in the mediteranean sea so of course that was fun :)

then later on sarah and i went out to eat and walked around venice in our little black dressed because its nice to feel girly every now and then :) we have been taking turns making decisions on what to do, so when it was my turn to pick which boat we should get on i chose one that i thought would swing back by our stop which was lido...... um, not so much. 2 HOURS later we were still on the freaking boat, probably getting laughed at by the workers. but whatev, we finally made it home (at midnight) and i just laughed it off as yet another botard-ic mistake that i made :) at least sarah and i had fun playing a nice long game of the question game :)

today we are in florence. and jess, i opened your card and i will do my best to have that soup. and i will work even harder to complete your 2nd task ;) we were in tuscany today and we rented bikes and biked from our hostel to a winery in the hills of tuscany. absolutely beautiful and absolutely UPHILL!!!! bravo to all those who compete in the tour de france is all i gots to say! sheesh! but it was a good workout. and we tried some red wines. none of which i really cared for, but it was more about the experience anyways. then we came back and were gonna swim in the pool for a while but they required you to wear a pool cap. umm, no thanks! so we just went to dinner and i had a fanistically HUGE pizza with spicy salami and sausage. i am trying to eat things that i wouldnt normally get at home, and those toppings are definitely some that i would never get. but it was excellent. and i had a 1/4 liter of a sparking white wine. that was good, but not as sweet as i would like. but no worries, i drank the bottle clean and now i am feeling nice and relaxed and tired :) we are staying in a mixed dorm of like 8 people and i think they are all KIDS!! they are pretty annoying and all about drinking and smoking pot in amsterdam.... awesome. thank the lord that i bought ear plugs a couple days ago because they make all the difference in the world!!!

i have been trying to think of things that i keep forgetting to putin this. so i have observed a few trends all over the parts of europe that we have seen so far. 1. mullets!!! tons and tons of mullets. kids mullets, man mullets, lady mullets. you name it!! 2. smoking. everyone seems to smoke. i considered taking up the bad habit just to fit in. if only the cool thing was to smoke flavored cigarellos then i probably would ;) 3. tattoos 4. piercings gallore!!!! they are locals and tourists after my own heart!!! and i have seen a few peeps with dreads. rock on!!!

alrighty, my time is up. i will surely write again soon seeing as i hate going even 1 day without writing :)

venice and a time of mourning for my loss....

today has gone superbly!!!! and before i really get into things, i just want to thank people for their posts. i am sooo glad that they are making you laugh, because sometimes they make me want to cry ;) but for real i am enjoying reading them and dont think that since i dont respond directly that i am not reading and loving every one of them!!!

ok, so this morning sarah and i got up super early (5:15am) to get ready and take the bus to the train station for a 7:46 train to venice. and i promise that we are actually in the right city this time. booyah dad!!! ;) and i wanted to make sure that we had more than enough time to make it to the train on time. and we were good to go! the ride was 7 hours which was pretty stinking long. but, in honor of the previous scary visit to the moulin rouge, and the several comments on it, i listened to the soundtrack on my ipod and literally lip sank (if thats the way you say it...) the entire soundtrack! i probabaly looked like a goober, but i'm over it. :) so once we got off the train we were able to find the boat station (not bus station) to get to lido, which is i guess a part of venice, where our cheap hotel is. its fun to say that we are staying in a hotel instead of a hostel for once :) and the rest of the evening has been spent eating dinner (pasta) and gelato (YUM) and wasting time emailing (FABULOUS!!!). tomorrow we are gonna do all the touristy stuff, hopefully go to the beach (which is 4 min from our hotel) if its warm enough, and then go out for some yummy pizza or something else uber cheap - such as a baguette with peanut butter which has become a staple for sarah and i.

i am trying to think of other things that have happened since i have a few more minutes. one thing is that NONE of the computers have any way for me to upload pics, so i dont know if that will ever work out..... sorry :(

sarah and i have been laughing a lot because she asked extremely unanswerable qustions such as: i wonder how they built the city of venice? and my answer is: ummm..... i have no idea! and it just goes round and round like that :) needless to say i shake my head and laugh a lot and we are having a competition to see who can make the other pee their pants first. because as most of you know, if you get me going and i start laughing uncontrolably there is a pretty good chance i will pee my pants (sorry if thats TMI for some peeps....) and sarah almost won last night because we were eating dinner outside of our hostel and she almost walked into a glass door. and if she wouldnt have caught herself bad things would of happened.... ;)

a couple more random things - linds, yes i have been eating a ridiculous amount of baguettes!!!! thats our main course for every meal it seems. so diney-dine, this would not be a good place to be on the south beach diet ;)

i have some sad news to tell....... i had to take out my nose piercing. i am basically in a 3 year pierd of mourning where i will wear nothing but black.... :( before i left for europe i felt like it didnt look right and that i was maybe developing a keloid (a gross looking scar) on both my nose and my ear. so i decided it wasnt worth the risk of getting an uber nasty scar so i took it out last night. there is a definite scar but i think it will get smaller and lighter with time..... but i was very disappointed. i hope all those other piercing par-tay girls wont be hating on me ;)

ok, its sarahs turn to email and i think that i am getting bit by mosquitos so i am gonna head out. love you all and will write more later. if you cant tell i HAVE to email and blog :)

real quick

hello again. 2 blogs in 1 day - impressive huh ;)

we are back at the same internet cafe and the day has totally turned around!!! i am feeling much more optimistic and sarah is getting there :) today has been verz chill and relaxing and it has been wonderful to not feel rushed, or pressured to run from place to place. we have been taking the bus all over the place and we havenàt been buying bus tickets...... at first we thought that they didnt charge on sundays bc the little depot things werent taking coins or bills. so we just got on the bus and no one asked us to show a ticket. so we have been doing it ever since. i guess i will just say a big old oops if we have been stealing rides all day long.... ;) but we had some awesome cafe (straight up espresso) at a nice cafe (which is why i am shaking a little as i type) and plotted out our next 10 days before we meet marci in barcelona. we are changing things up a bit and heading to venice, italy tomorrow!!! we are gonna stay for 2 nights, then head to florence for 2 or 3 nights, and then hit up nice and marsaille, france for a few days before going to spain. and we booked our train to venice for tomorrow and booked our hostel so we should be all set!!! i think that if i learned anyzthing from yesterdaz it was that we need to take more time to think through things and raelly plan, even if we are only planning 1 day ahead........ so i am feeling less like i want to gouge my eyes out and more like i am ready to LOVE italy!!! i will write more from venice :)
ps. linds, i opened your card that you said to open if i needed a good laugh and it TOTALLY made my day!!!!!!!! it was a music card that played 'friends are friends forever' from michael w. smith himself!!!!! it rocked :) i already opened it again today for a good laugh :) byee for now. its sarahs turn to email

things took a turn for the worse.........

(the kezboard is different AGAIN so as zou read replace most z with y and vise versa and zou should be able to figure out what iàm trzing to saz) ok, so yesterday was a pretty awful day :( we decided to go to vienna austria instead of switzerland, BUT we missed our freaking train. so that totally sucked, but considering it was our first attempt at taking the eurorail i tried to not let myself get too down about it. (ps. the z is in the place of the y on this keyboard so i will probablz have lots more tzpos zet again.... hopefullz zou can decipher). so we decided to instead take the train to lucern, swityerland. so we had to wait like 4 hours in the train station for the next available one. and the train ride wasnt too bad or anzthing, just kind of boring. but sarah and i busted out fun games like tic tac toe, hangman, MASH, etc. good times reverting to our middle school dazs :) but we were nervous b-c we didnt have a hostel booked......... so when we got off the train we found a zoung couple who spoke english. thez were from norwaz and sweeden. super nice people and great with maps. so we tagged along with them to trz to find a hostel. we got in at 10:30 mind zou.... so we walked allllllll over the place. and everzthing was booked up. we finallz made our waz to a camping place to see if we could rent a tent b-c our new friends alreadz had tents on their bags. but thez didnàt have anz available to rent. awesome. so thez got to camp and we had to go back up the hill and we paid what we think was an ungodlz amount of monez to staz at a hotel. but whatev... when its 11:30 and you are homeless zou do what zou gotta do and charge it!!!!! :) so then as sarah and i are trzing to calm down in our room we realiyed that we werent even in luzern, we were in LAUSCENNE!!!! i mean, what the flip!!!??? i guess that peoples accents are so strong, mixed with how absolutelz retarded we are made us not realiye that we were totallz not where we thought we were. so that just about put us over the edge and i wanted to come home last night. iàm tired of not feeling like i know what iàm doing EVER!!!!! thats getting a little old. iàm trzing to remain positive that it wonàt alwazs feel like this, but who knows........ we decided to staz another night in this citz, but we are stazing at a cheaper hostel...... and hopefullz after spending a daz chilling out bz the beautiful lake and enjozing the amaying scenarz here we will feel a little bit better. sorrz that this blog is a bit of a downer, but hez, thats life......... not alwazs cheerz........ its sarahs turn to email so i have to go........ bye alllllllllll

i have 12 minutes

ok, so i have 12 min of internet left on a girls card who was done using it whoop whoop! and i m on anther jacked up keyboard so i apologize in aa=dvance. today we did so much. the louvre, arch de triumphe, champse elysee, effiel tower, and a couple fn eateries :) a couple funny stories - we were sitting in front of the eiffel tower waiting for the sun to go down to take pics and we were drinking some wine (a guy had to help us open it with my botle opener onmy swiss army knife b/c we are botards and couldn;t figure it out) and i was drinking my part out of a empty water bottle b/c we didn;t have cups. classy i know :) but i didn;t realy like it b/c it wasn;tmy new fav which is sparkling white wine :) a couple guys came up andwere talking to us and one of them was seriously 5 ft 3 in tall and he spoke barely any english but he was about to bust out he song "i just called, to say, that i love you!" and he sounded like a straight up chipmunk! it took all i had to not crack up in front of him :)

also tonight we went to molin rouge just to take a picture of it (not actualy go in the endless options o strip club) and i felt so shady that i carried my mase in my hand with the safety offready to giv it to anyonewho stepped inmy bubble. holla for the mase!!!! :)

so yeah, day #2 has been good. long, andpacked with walking more miles than can count. butall that walking allows us to eat chocolate crepes for dinner every night at 10 :)

tomorrow we are going to switzerland. yay!! i'm really excited. hopefuly the train system is the same b/c we finally mastered it in paris

i havent had acces to post pics yet but hopefully soon.... alrighty, its 12:16am here so i'm gonna go figure out how to get to te eurorail station tomorow morning and then call it a night. thanks for posting comments b/c it is such a treat forme to read them!!!!

we landed!!!

this is probably gonna have to be quick, and filled with lots of typos b/c the keyboard is totally different here :) but i just wanted to say that we made it to paris - an hour or 2 late b/c our flight was delayed for technical reasons - and somehow managed to find our way on the trains.... and a super nice lady gave us a metro ticket b/c we were obviously lost. so that was greatly appreciated and already breaks the myth about all french peeps being rude and hating on americans. i will say that i am totally exhausted!!! we are at our hostel right now just waiting to check in and all li want to do is shower and take a nap :)

so far so good. i think that once i,m not running on just a couple hours of sleep i,ll be doing better. but it just feels bizarre to be here........for 3 months nonetheless.......

let the race begin....

alrighty, here we go!!! i had hoped to have time to write more before i left.... try to put my thoughts over the past week or so into words. but considering the fact that i am still not really done packing i don't think i'll have the time this morning...... its been a good last week or so, filled with quality time with friends and family and lots of emotions. i guess i didn't expect myself to cry as much as i have b/c i'm not really a crier. but after my roomie and i watched a documentary on nursing homes and i straight up sobbed through most of it i realized there was no hope for me to have a dry departure ;)

i'm really excited to be starting this journey today. i'm just ready for it to be here already! i'm sick of having absolutely no idea what i'm about to get myself into :) i feel safe b/c i have my mase and swiss army knife safely tucked away in my luggage (that i'm checking, no worries) so that i can whip it out if needed....... and sarah is a black belt in karate and her dad has made her watch multiple survival dvd's. so if something happens and we're dropped off in the middle of no where we're set b/c she has a couple compasses, a fire starter, and a hugely scary knife :) it'll be a good time for sure!

welp, i'm gonna go finish packing.... and get myself prepped for the trip of a lifetime!!!! i just want to thank everyone so much for their well wishes. i'm sorry if i haven't gotten to call everyone back..... and keep checking on the blog b/c i'm giddy at the thought of sitting in my first internet cafe to write up a new post :)

love you all!!!!! :)

RIP dear nokia...

just an FYI - i'm getting rid of my cell phone on july 17th. so i will only be reachable via email while i'm in europe, and i'll have calling cards so that i can make calls back home. and postcards of course :) once i get home i will have a phone to use for the couple of months that i'll be back. i won't know the number till i get back. but once i do i'll let everyone know so the texting can start back up again ;) my nokia phone has lasted me what seems like decades since it does look like its straight out of the early 90's.... but it will soon be no more..... :( please join me for a moment of silence in its honor................

tens of weeks down..... one to go....

welp, time continues to freakin FLY by!! i've been trying to be at least semi-productive and get stuff done, but lets be real - i'm a hardcore procrastinator... i'll just rationalize by saying that i do better and can focus more at the last minute....... yeah, let's just go with that ;)

i feel like i still have so much to do before i leave that i can't even think straight. let's see: i still need to pack up my apt, move out, do some last minute shopping for junk i need, put my life into a backpack, and the minor task of selling my car :( so if anyone knows of anyone interested in a 2007 mazda 3 let me know ;)

but busy or not, life will go on. i just need to keep a clear perspective on things. do the best that i can with the time that i have. i just keep trying to remind myself that its ok that i'm crazy busy right now b/c i'll have more than enough free time over my travels to chillax. even though there are moments when all i want to do is sit and stare at a blank wall, i feel extremely blessed to be filling up my time with my fantastic family and friends! how's that for some alliteration :) today i got to go out to lunch with some friends from my old work (this is a little shout out to stcins) :) and i had such a wonderful time!!! and over the course of the next few days i feel like i have one get-together after another, and i couldn't be more stoked about it! i absolutely cherish the relationships that i have with people in my life and i want to soak up as much as i can before i leave. i mean, i know that its not like i'll be gone forever, but i do fear that things won't be the same when i get back.... that people will feel disconnected from me b/c so much will happen while i'm gone that i'm not apart of, and vise versa. i'm hoping that this blog will be one way that people can stay plugged into my life. and i really want people to email me and let me know whats going on with them!! so do - please email me!!! even if i can't respond to each individual email, i still desperately want to stay afloat on whats going on in your lives. technology can be a little overbearing at times, but in this scenario hopefully it will do its job and keep people connected :)

one final thought before i call it a night....i just want to thank you ---- one thing that i did not really expect out of this new adventure is the overwhelming support that EVERYONE has given me! i mean, i thought that people might be excited for me and give me a pat on the shoulder, but not really think much of it. but everyone has been so great, and encouraging, and more supportive than i could ever have imagined!! its been really humbling actually. b/c more than one person has told me either that they are going to live vicariously thru me, or that they wish that they could have done something like this at my age, or applauded the adventurous spirit behind this trip. and that means a lot to me and i take it seriously. i recognize it as the rare opportunity that it is, and i don't want to waste it. i want to savor every moment, push myself to experience more of the world, and see God throughout it all! especially in nature. i mean, if i can see God in the random beauty of missouri that He created, just think about how incredible its gonna be seeing all the beauty that the world is about to unleash upon me... i'll definitely post pics! :) so all that to say -- the fact that other people are just as giddy as i am only adds to the pure joy of this trip. so thank you!

pre-trip thoughts

the time is quickly approaching.... i leave in 2 weeks from YESTERDAY!! i'm so stoked i can hardly stand it but at the same time, if i'm completely honest, i'm nervous. but its a good nervousness. i'm not a naturally spontaneous person. i typically enjoy order, details, check lists, etc. this trip embodies really none of that. this trip is about going with the flow, being completely flexible to go wherever we want, whenever we want, living out of a single bag, and channelling our inner hippie and be total free spirits :)
when i think about what it will be like when sarah and i land in paris i have no idea what to expect. i picture us stepping out of the airport, looking around trying to spot the eiffel tower, and saying "umm, ok, lets go in that direction" :) and for some unknown reason i look forward to that! i love that i'm embarking on this trip totally naive. a blank slate. nothing to taint it. i don't want to go with too many preconcieved notions about what it'll be like. all i know is that if tons of other people can do it, then so can i!
people have tried to throw out advice - which i heed greatly. but others come with a more pessimistic worldview and say that people are rude or mean in this country or that, and that all europeans hate americans. and first of all, if an american busts over to europe acting like they're the shizznit then yeah, i'd probably hate them too ;) but i refuse to buy into those stereotypes. sure, some people aren't the most pleasant people in the world, or they simply woke up on the wrong side of the bed. we all have our moments, no matter what country we're from. i'm just really stoked to experience life in so many different countries! to see how they do things, interact with people, go to church in gigantic catherdrals, talk to strangers and hear about their lives, etc. i want to learn from others. i want to embody and respect their culture. let's break the stereotypes one person at a time...