::moonlit sandyfootprints::

new blog place

2009-04-23T13:16:00.001-07:00

sooo... I MOVED BLOG PLACES...

SURFSKATEBRITT.BLOGSPOT.COM

check it out

that is the place to be!

surfing skating and music.. what more could you want?

2008-05-26T02:11:00.000-07:00

oh man!

i have to write this now so that i can capture my excitement while it is still brimming.
(MEIKE HAS THE PICTURES!!!)

cast:
meike + me + robin ( no not the extremely cool robin harney but your new guy friend robin who lives in leiden i met from couch surfing)

location:

scene 1 [friday]:

meet up with robin in dieman which is above amsterdam a bit after i missed going to work. oops. full in a very fancy suit from work and two longboards in the car we were ready to go. we drove about 2 hours up to holwerd. which is in the north of holland. then we waited for meike who was coming via public transport. yeah we did have excessive amounts of sms communication the entire day ;)

everything worked out rather nicely and we went on the ferry which took about 45 mins to get across to the island. it was cool since you could pick out all the people that were going to the exact same place.

we got there and put up our tent. uh-huh yeah the tent that karin said could fit 3 people barely did. well it could fit 3 midgets (people my size) but not the company we were in. lets just say we could keep warm because of our nicely intimate sleeping space.

we went to investigate the scene and see the usual suspects. it looked as it was coming along. we went back and made some friends at the snack bar. they were are snack bar friends. anouk and mona. they were fun chicks. we shared a giant bucket of frites then carried on. robin took a nap while meike and i went to the party tent. this evening they were playing like dance party music. a little different then what we thought but its cool. we had such a good time. we were in a video a couple times.

robin came later. we had a dance party. took a dip in the ocean then went to sleep.

scene 2:

woke up to an amazingly sunny day. took the boards out for a surf. wasn't the best thing i ever been in but i mean at least we got in the water. oh yeah did i mention that i surfed without a wetsuit in the north sea! yeah #1 bad ass right here ;) but it wasn't too bad. i mean i did get a bit cold but i could have been completely frozen. i think i wasn't surfing very well but i mean i guess i have to get used to the shorter rides.

after the session we went for a nice lounge in the sun where meike and i talked forever and i drew a silly picture. then we went to the main tent and they were having button making and t-shirt making. i also learned how to dance capoeria (ok yeah totally spelled that wrong) but it is this really cool dance from brazil.

there was a cool half-pipe that they built for the skaters. i just carry around my skateboard to look cool, not to actually go on those things :) maybe if there wasn't people watching and stuff like that.

ok it wasn't that big but i just wanted to add some pictures

i went out for a second surf session with meike. and that was fun. we started at one end of the beach and completely ended up at the other. which is what we slightly planned since that is where our campsite was. we were getting in the way of the other windesurfers but it was great.

OH MY GOSH THE MUSIC THAT NIGHT WAS SOOooOOOOOOOOoooOOOOOoo good. man it was so great. there was happy mosh pits. crowd surfing and fun dancing. a bit of zoenen ( did i spell that right?) yeah man and meike was soooOOooo cool, she went crowd surfing!! it was so great. i am so proud of her. and this really beautiful guy that we wanted to be meike's boyfriend did it as well. yeah he was taller than her :)

awesome song!!! from jaya the cat! the were such a great band. man the lead singer had huge dreads. it was great
http://www.jayathecat.com/media/Jaya%20the%20Cat-%20First%20Beer%20of%20a%20New%20Day%20-%20Nobody%27s%20Fault.mp3
go there! trust me!!

we were way too tired and passed out rather quickly in the tent

scene 3:
packing up in a quick exodus to try to catch the next boat. it was soo windy. it was like a nice big hurricane. carrying longboards were not very fun! we squeezed in a taxi van thing and tried to get to the place where the ferry takes off. but we missed it since it was too full :P

it was ok we entertained ourselves for 2 hrs while we waited for the next one. oh the "mainland" it was back to beautiful dutch weather. rainy and windy. meike couldn't fit in our car because of the boards or in the bus since it was full. so she hitchhiked back with some guys. still need to talk to her about how that went. i think it was a nice way to finish the weekend.

for a different perspective check out meike's blog which should be updated soon about the current events that just happened. http://implicitlychopsy.blogspot.com/

yeah just a quickie

2008-05-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

started this on thursday but was too lazy to make it fun and exciting. just thought i would put it up anyway..

just because you don't update your blog for 2 months doesn't mean your friends don't either.

this will be a quickie..

we played in the finals for water polo against meike's team. her team won. little punks. well i mean i am a bit bummed that we didn't win since there was some crazy things that were going on but i mean at least someone i liked won. the game was pretty cool since we were the home crowd and there was a lot of people there cheering for us. and 4 video cameras for the dutch version of ESPN.

meike and i play in the forest some times. here is some pictures from that. peter was here for like a day since he had to do some work stuff in amsterdam.

funny visual.. add these together
1 girl w brown skin + 1 9ft(3meter) surfboard + 1 skateboard + 1 tent + 1 backpack

yeah now place this walking through the streets of leiden. yeah in the middle of the netherlands. classic was all i can say. oh wait yeah and really heavy ;)

where in the world is brittany?

2008-05-03T15:06:00.001-07:00

i feel that this is an appropriate blog title considering where i have been in the last month or so. here goes the recap attempt... (can't rotate some images and too lazy to figure it out)

meike and i spent a really fun day in amsterdam. we cruised around and bounced around and went to some cool stores. we stopped at this one place where you eat outside all this cool food. it was such and awesome day and was nice and sunny, so it made it even more perfect.

its cool since it is right on a canal and the food was delicious!

later that evening we ate at an ethiopian restaurant where you need to only eat with your right hand, since the other is for wiping your bum. i had the best thing ever there and it was BANANA beer. trust me my friends it is soooOoooo good. meike and i drank way too much coffee then ran off to meet up with her brother and his band to go watch one republic. yeah that was pretty cool. i decided i would classify them as passionate rock

so at the end of march i found out that my grami who lives in connecticut (yes she is like 100% hawaiian and why she was living there was only because of the trees ;) ) got very sick. she had to be immediately hospitalized and that her chances of living were in credibly slim. so after a very crazy water polo game ( a game which we totally kicked the asses of this professional hungarian team), i hopped on a plane to new york to meet my mom. the amazing meike met me in amsterdam for a coffee in the snow ( yeah snow in march!) before i left. due to my 2 hour flight delay i missed the transportation to get me from new york airport to the hospital my grandmother was in. so some how i had to catch a cab to grand central station and take a train there. but due to the crazy fiasco of customs and 3000 people trying to catch a cab i had to use an alternative method. considering the only currency i had was 30 US dollars and euros i managed to swindle the 'cab driver' to give me a ride with two different currencies! the conversion place was closed and the ATMs were broken.yeah it was great. got to add something to make it interesting.

this is my uncle bob. he is so cute. he is really nice and likes to laugh. he was in a motorcycle acciedent a really long time ago, so thats why he is in a wheelchair. we got him some new glasses when we were there :)

so i spent the time in connecticut in the hospital with my mom, crazy aunt, and my uncle. i have to admit that was probably one of the most intense experiences of my life in soOOoooo many ways. i can't be more happy that i had my mom with me. she was pretty much the most amazing thing. i am glad that i was able to be there during this whole situation. i think i am really okay with it since i KNOW that i am living on my grami. my mom is like her and i am like my mom. i am stoked she helped make us this way. now when i travel i feel like i am doing it for her.

well my grami passed away after about 10 days that i was there. since my grami is a born and raised hawaiian she wanted her ashes spread in the ocean where she grew up. so i jumped on a plane and went from new york to hawaii for about 4 1/2 days. i made the most of it for sure! maxi let me use my old car and my boards so i felt like i never left. and travelling during this was horrible. the second major airlines in hawaii went bankrupt, ATA also went bankrupt, and over 1000 flights a day were getting cancelled from american airlines since their planes weren't up to standards. talk about madness! yeah so a whole bunch of people were getting stranded across american and here i am trying to travel across the entire thing!

this is my mom and i before we paddled out to spread my grami's ashes. it ended up being a really nice day.we got a whole bunch of leis to throw out in the water. aunty lisa came too and that was really nice. she is such a sweetheart and i don't think any of this would have been possible without her.

this is my mom and i paddline out. i am stoked for my mom since she doesn't surf, but was a rockstar on the board.

so i finally took a fun 2 day trek back to the netherlands. *oddly* enough!! everything went smoothly. i made ALL of my connections AND my bags ended up where they were supposed to be even though i changed airlines and everything. i think that was a first for me, EVER! well that was pretty cool.

well i got smacked with jetlag 3 days later. i almost missed one of my water polo games thanks to the fact i slept through all my alarms! i woke up to a call from my team manager an hour before my game and it takes my 2 hours to get there. so after doing the math, i would have missed everything. by some stroke of craziness some random man was driving to the game was in the area! i warmed up with 2 laps then the game began :)

so i got back and i went into to work. i busted my butt for the next week or so and things are going well. i am making some really cool advances, so i am super excited. my boss is pretty amazing, so that is always fun.

i left about 10 days after i got back to go to Catania in Sicily, Italy for the European Championships Final Four. It was so cool. I love sicily. it reminds me so much of hawaii. with the giant volcano and the beaches. man the driving is insanely crazy there. it is pretty hilarious. we ended up getting 4th in the tournament but that is pretty good since it is in the ENTIRE europe. yeah its cool.

this was the pool that we played in. it was pretty crazy with all the fans that were in there. the fans for the catania team were really loud with their drums and stuff like that. it was pretty cool to experience.

this is our team. we played pretty well together. our little goalie did so good. i think she was my favorite to watch play this whole season. she's only 17 now but she has just gotten better and better. i am super excited for her that she will get a lot better.

we stayed in this orange vineyard with like 4 houses that we had to ourselves, ALL of our supporters and the owners. It was so great. there was like a total of 53 people or something who came along. that was awesome. i think it was pretty much every water polo person i ever met in the netherlands.

it was really cool since there was a pool and mt. etna right behind us. the weather was nice the whole time we were there. one day was a little chilly but nothing like the netherlands :)

this is nina. she is so cute. she is a little police officer. she lets me sleep over her house some times and we have lots of fun laughing and silly water polo things. she had to leave a little early since she had to go to work.

so of course a few of us went out one night while we were there. it was soooo hilarious since the place we wanted to go to turned out to be a hard core heavy metal show. so 7 of us piled in this teeny weeny car from one of the mothers and drove around catania. just for the record, sicilians don't speak much english and dont like accents. so we ended up finding this cool bunch of bars in this sqaure. we ended up in this one bar where we are still not sure if it was a gay bar or the italian boys just dress like that ;)

when we got back one of my teammate's brother who was with us jumped in the shallow pool. he ended up cutting his elbow on the bottom and had a huge cut. hahaha :D heel slim!

oh yeah i went up to mt.etna. i got in a big snowfight with my coach it was great. we didnt get to see lava but it was still pretty awesome to see a different kind of volcano. the rocks were different than the ones in hawaii. well makes sense other side of the world and all.

this was on the way up in this sketchy bus. thats iefke in the back and me, marianna (mini), mieke (another one of my rockstar olympian friends)

while we were there one of the days we went to taoromina which is this awesome city. mini and i wanted to stay there but i think they would have noticed.

we went to the greek theater and we were taking silly pictures
oh yeah 2 ice cream cones ;)

mini the model. i told her she should be a reef model. hahaha

no people this isn't hawaii. i know it looks like it

isn't the view gorgeous. i swear it really does look like all the postcards

i got to see beth while i was there. it was so great. she is a bad ass italian speaker now. she got to hang out a bunch. she used her italian to get us some parking spaces with this mafia parking guy it was cool. we saw this old fish market of all this fresh fish with all these old sicilian men screaming random things. the atmosphere was probably exactly like how it was back in those days.

i really like this pic

its soo cool since that is probably how it was like wayy back in the day

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we later went to the place where the cyclops threw rocks in the water after ulysses fooled him. it was pretty cool. this is the next cyclops.

this is micheal ( marianne's brother) he is totally cyclops in this pictures

and michael is such a good photographer he caught the rock that cyclops brittany threw in

this is beth doing something sketchy right before we leave. probably talking to her mafia friends :)

so in the netherlands on the 30 may is queen's day. we happened to be in the airplane at the time of all the festivities but mini and i made sure that we did our best to keep the dutch tradition alive ;)

queen #1

queen #2

woohoo fun times!

oh and since a life as a queen is so hard we fell asleep

we happened to find these eggs with smily faces. wonder how that could have happened...

karin picked my up from the train station at like 4 in the morning. i made some drunk friends on the way back it was cool. they were impressed with my dutch. i have to admit it got a lot better. spend a week with dutchies and it helps ;)

the next day went to meike's. her brother's freakin amazing bad ass band was playing. i was super stoked since i heard some of the songs that they are going on their cd and i vote them as bad ass! yeah so luckily i could make it to one of their shows finally. meike's friend iris happened to be in town too. that was really rad since she is soo cool. man the stories of where she has been and where she is going is pretty awesome. and she is so humble about her successes. she works with the god of volcanology or something. crazy man. anyways we went to joost,meike's bro,'s show and it was so good. it reminded me of the good ol days of punker rocker shows back in hawaii. oh man you definately must see this band live. if you can. to all of my reader fan people. their drummer is so cute. he is super into the music and puts his all into it. well i guess you have to do that when you are the drummer of a nemo band :)

the insanely talented artist meike strikes again. she made this piece for iris. it is so so so good! i almost tried to steal it in the night when we were sleeping with each other

so it was meike's birthday the next day. and we all hung out in the garden and ate some nice apple cake and drank coffee and took excessive amounts of pictures of meike :)

meike's mum aka. my 2nd mom. she is so cute. we danced to valerie by amy winehouse at the place where joost played music

this is some good good food

little brother. i think it is a nice pensive look

oh and meike's daddy. i love him. that is such a good picture of him. i like how him and joost are in such a good mood. they are probably looking at meike picking her nose or something ;)

yeah so stayed at meike's an extra day and hung out and made some awesome jewelry from these beads meike's parents got from the ivory coast. all of them have such character in it. they are all different. they are like little people.

aren't they really cool? my favorite is the stringy looking one. it is my ingenious design of having a reversable necklace

this is my personal concert from joost. so he can play canon in D in this insanely incredible way. man i am so in love with it. i wish everyone could here it. nah but it is really good. sounds good on the electric.

joost, meike and i also played volleyball, soccer and some funny dutch game outside. we had a wonderful laughing fit at the end of it all. man it was so great. it is so much fun to just do silly things with. oh yeah and i kicked joost's ass while we were in the back yard ;)

i finally made my way back to my house and finally saw karin. i lugged back a 4/5 kg bag of clay with me. she's passed out on the papsan chair since it is almost midnight. hope you had fun with you 40 min break while you read my update. i tried to keep it short since we all know that there are a million other silly things in there :)

going to greece in about 3 weeks! woohoo..
oh yeah quick where's britt date..
now - 29 may in the netherlands
29 may - 9 june greece
9 june - 18 july netherlands
19 july - LOVE PARADE in berlin!
18 july - 11 august adventure (maybe in croatia and slovania or france or i dunno..)
11 august -13 august LA
13 aug - ~20 august vegas
~20 august - who the heck knows when NASHVILLE
don't worry everything changes every second with me, but this is pretty much all that i know right now. let me know if you want to rendez-vous somewhere ;)

there are just some days you won't forget

2008-02-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

i know as you read my blogs you must think that my life has been nothing but crazy fun adventures and everything is amazing. but the truth of the matter is it hasn't been so rosy colored all the time.
there are so many things that have really changed me since i've been here and in turn has helped me learn a lot. without this whole experience here there are some life lessons that i might not have figured out. true a lot were the hard way but those are the ones you don't forget right?

well this was one of those days when you realized all that things really can turn around.

++++++

The weather happened to be insanely nice last weekend. It was 21 C/ 78F degrees! This is incredibly warmer than it usually is since its usually about 5C. Well the sun was shining and I was skating to my tramstop jamming with my headphones on going to my water polo game on Saturday. I left a little early and took a tour through the forest before I had to catch the train.

We played won our game and had to take pictures for some photo shoot for the European League we're in. That was fun since we were running around the pool and doing silly things. Then our team decided to go out on the town. I thought it was really nice since we are finally doing something all together. I felt like we were only teammates and nothing more but after this its a lot closer. That is always good. I stayed at my friend Nina's house and we had a blast being the last ones out :)

The next morning I woke up and was super happy since the sun was still shining and I decided to meet Meike to go to the beach in Den Haag called Schevningen. I was a bit tired but as soon as I met Meike I was totally recharged. We had fun bouncing all around and talking too much and not paying attention to where we needed to go. We managed to get to the beach and were completely transformed.

We sat down and ate some fish on the beach just listening to the waves eating and talking about everything and everyone. We walked around without any shoes on and made drip sand castles. Meike brought her kite which we tried to fly with the tiny gust of wind that was there. It was pretty hilraious since we kept stumbling into the mini lake that was on the beach.

Then we made "the lady". We started making this lady which turned into a mermaid. It came out so cool! We were like little kids running back and forth to the water to collect shells and bring them to put on the mermaid's tale. Its pretty funny since people talk about me and meike in dutch but have no idea that we can both understand them! haha. It was great though. here is one of me and the lady thanks to meike's blog!

Since the trains weren't working for me to go back home I decided to trek to the other side of the country to Meike's house for dinner. As usual it was amazing, amazing food and great conversations. There family is so cute and it was nice that they were all there. Including my future husband ;) haha.

Meike and i escaped to meike's forest for some star gazing and tea drinking. And yeah so we go with our bikes to a place with no lights. Yup and my bike was the only one with the light. and we had no flashlight. muahaha. and it was a little bit muddy. it was hilarious since i had to cycle fast to keep the light going but i couldn't since i didn't know where the heck i was going! in the mudd too!! We had an amazing laugh about it.

When we got back I just checked my email really quickly and found out that I got funding to work at the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY!!!! Everyone was sleeping in the house so we had to do our wonderful silent celebrations :) It is so RIDICULOUSLY COOOOOOLLL!! i mean just one more step towards world domination. I am going to be looking at trying to find planets that are close to the same size as ours around other suns. It is pretty sexy work I think. We will call my planet, "Planet Britt" woohoo. and we can tell engineer jon to get us there while meike draws pictures on the outside ;)

Yeah so basically to top off an already amazing weekend of just smiles and good times, I find out that I am going to be working in a pretty amazing place. Next time someone says, What are you a rocket scientist? I can say well...

+++
pictures are all on meike's camera which will come soon ;)

and it keeps going :)

2008-01-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

in case you happen to be starting to read here you may want to head down a couple entries. i gave an update about water polo and started the whole picture montage with my friends. you should check it out!

well so here it continues. with the ice. man the sound of breaking ice is absolutely amazing. if you've never done it, find a pond crack some ice and drop it. simple as that.

of course meike is good at finding good climbing trees. i was ground fotographer ;) they were having a lot of fun

so when i got back from budapest the second time jon kelly and maxi were there with some skates. so we headed out. haha i didnt even change out of my ZVL gear. for the record, no you can not slide on only your jacket and running. but if your friend pulls you then that is a whole nother thing ;) just ask kelly

amazing action shot of jon in actual motion

so we were trying to take a group picture and this is what we get. muahahhahaha. so funny. kelly looks so cute!

there we are. ice skating crew!

so i made them go behind some wheats growing out of the side of the canal to create a jungle scene. yeah pictures werent that good but it was hilarious! jon the prey, maxi the lion, and kelly the hunter

CHRISTMAS!!! we went to meike's and this was us lighting there really cool cool tree!

we wore dresses to meike's house and we look really really pretty. the table was so nice. it totally looked like the movies! like how the dinners are in christmas time with snow outside and stuff.

you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA!! how amazing this desert was!! it was so sosososososo good. i never wanted it to end. and we had some amazing desert wine to go along with it. like i couldn't control my reactions since it was all like WOW!

meike's dad made this tree. and it comes apart so they can take it with them anywhere that they want to in the world. so cute! we had some awesome heart to hearts with meike's parents. they are such cool people with a very interesting life.

this was part of the little party at my place. can you guess what they are? maxis a detective and kelly is safari jane. muahahaha

meike's brother. i am secretly trying to marry him. not sure if he knows yet. if i cant be an adopted de Nooy, i have to try other options ;) haha

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
i just went on this last minute amazing trip to go snowboarding with my friend pete. here are some pictures of the endeavour...
=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

so this was this cute little man in geneva on his moped

this is out the window of the flat that we stayed in chamonix. yeah not too bad of a view

this is that mountain that you can't see in the other picture!

on the way up in a cable car. amazing amazing views ;)

ski lifts with snowboards

ok seriously the longer you look at this picture the younger i become! i mean i look like i am 8 after a while. it is an optical illusion

yeah only 1 1/2 days and thats me being a superstar! woohoo

hold on i have one of my snowboarding sponsors calling on the other line. muahaha, just kidding ;)

and so it ends. and the sun sets. and the boarders wait to go back down

i have to admit that was a pretty amazing last month. i want to thank everyone who made the trek to come to see me. i mean it was completely at the right time in a very nice recharging way. i had such a great great time. so just think you too could have fun, just come down and visit britt!!

this is what has kept me smiling :)

2008-01-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

so here is the update of friends and funness. don't worry i am managing to squeeze in some good laughs every once in a while ;)

jon ching is in the hood! yeah this cat flew over to come visit me during his break. pretty sweet stuff if you ask me.

we were just hanging out in rotterdam. we rode bike there and i managed to get us all nice and lost! haha i never bike into the city. we found the 4 flats that jon, richmond, casey and are going to live. its right on the water here

nice balancing act

so karin was still home when jon was here so we had a little party. meike came on down. and we drank some massive bottles of wine with our amazing meal that we cooked. well i just chopped things while jon and meike masterminded everything.

seriously only 1! of the 10 million of us trying to ALL get in there

oh meike so cute. it took a lot of her not to crack up while i told her sweet nothings to try to capture that face. muahahaha

really how did this happen?? i mean one second i am eating all the chocolate and the next i am covered in whip cream. yeah thanks karin!

hey why dont we play some reggage music and skank around in the netherlands! oh yeah :)

i finally lead jon and i home ;)

dont take that cute little look as being a nice cat. this is what i call "le diable chat"" which means devil cat. me and this thing did not get along and she gave me hell while i was at meikes house

thanks to jon's amazing picture taking skills and meike and i having some sexy eyes this picture happened

we went biking to meike's forest. it included throwing ice on ice and driving through water on our bikes. AND stepping in a GIANT pile of poo.

beautiful hands, beautiful picture. jon did it

man sometimes you just have to run. and this was one of those days and those places

and don't forget to kick up the leaves :)

more continued on the next entry...

water polo...ness

2008-01-11T10:16:00.003-08:00

so i decided since i lack in the land of updates this will be my 3 part series of what just happened in the last umm.. month.. well so here it goes. go grab some cookies and a cup of coffee or something and get ready for this. this is part one entitled 'water polo' which will be followed by 'friends and randomness' and to be concluded with 'other things that happened that dont fit in between there and i can't think of something more clever' ( might shorten that bit)

basically a quick little background to not get confused..

i play on the team ZVL which is in Leiden
i play with iefke and not with meike or karin
ZVL is the #1 team in the netherlands right now
we also play in the european cup which is with other top teams around europe
so when i fly to a foriegn land it is for the european cup
this is ZVL's first time in the european cup

okies that should be sufficient..

well we went to budapest for the first time and we played against some really good teams. funny thing was that we played against monica's team from germany. monica was my cute german friend from back in hawaii. we ended up winning against them which was a bit unusual. since they are considered really good but it was a good game. we ended up 2nd out of that tournament which was really good. that means that we advance to the next round. the bummish thing about the whole adventure was that we didn't get to see any nice bits of budapest. we were only in dunjavaros which is about 2 hours away from the centre. blah a little bummed about that but i am sure i will get back there one of these days.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

when we get back within a few days we find out that we are going back to budapest! not in the same place, but somewhere closer to the centre. that is pretty cool. i was a bit excited about that. i was like yeah i can finally see some of it. but yup now we were an hour away from the centre :P so same story

this time we ended up doing really, really well! we played against this russsian team and ended up winning. they were some crazy team that has never lost a spot to the final 4 in like 3 million year or something. so that was pretty sweet to knock them out.

yeah had a migraine in the beginning of the trip, so yeah that was not a very nice treat. now we move on to the top 8 semi-finals!!

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

now that we have found out who we have to play in the semis and hey guess where it is? no, not in greece or italy or spain or ANYWHERE other than budapest. but yeah is in budapest! we ended up getting matched up against the 1st budapestian team that we played and now we must get rid of them to make it into the final 4. we have a really good chance at it, since we only lost by 1 to them. we will see how that goes!

well water polo news is over
here are some pictures...

here we are in our sexy sexy robes! if you can't find me, i am the shortest one with the biggest robe!

this is my roomies on our first budapest trip. we had the best room :D

this is me doing something important in the game. the funniest part of this whole picture is iefke's face, not sure if you can see it or not ;)

here is some team photos. all cute in our little gear after we are in budapest (the second time)

with our lovely bouquet of flowers after on of our water polo matches.

what the heck have i been doing?

2007-11-27T06:47:00.001-08:00

woah didn't realize it has been a month since my last update. that is a bit strange. so this is the quick version with some pictures.

---stuff i did that i don't have pictures for---
1. went to a rad concert called night of the proms. and haha macy gray was there! yeah i sang "i try" for her to show her whats up. it was this cool symphony thing with a bunch of artists there on top of it. it was so cool! i love karin since she took me there. (NEVER MIND HERE IS A PICTURE! hahhaha)

2. got 2nd place in the nederlands in this cup final. its sucks we should have been first but since meike won then i guess it was ok. i got a dutch medal and some flowers :D woohoo. i can't complain

3. had an australian couchsurfer guy in my house. long story but it was so fun! i think i am going to go to sydney for next new year's eve. i am going to start saving now!

4. OoOOOOHHH this should have been #1 MEIKE gave me the BEST WARMEST COOLEST sweater ever!! like seriously i think i am such a bad ass and am immune to cold. i know i am not but this sweater is freakin amazing. and it is so soft. oh yeah i was hanging out with meike's family last weekend and they are soooOOooo cool. like we were listening to old records and music on her bro's computer. it was so cool. i am trying to have them adopt me ;)

5. oh got a museum card and now i can go to museums for free!! so now this is my saturday morning ritual. and thursdays sometimes too.

---picture time----

well yeah i have been hanging out in a tree near lizard's grove

with meike :)

just saw some kids sitting around. and doesn't it look like that picture of those people in new york sitting on some beam or whatever. i'll try to find it

only reading the best book ever!! and many many other :)

yeah i was sitting under the levitating tree. it was so cool i had to sit under it! on my tour de rotterdam.

----to come---

1. pictures from hungary since i am going there for a water polo tournament tomorrow
2. pictures with JON CHING!! since he is coming in like 2 weeks
3. pictures with JON CHING, KELLY MASON AND MAXI GROH and meike will probably be thrown in there ;)
4. some crazy stories :D

okies cheerio friends and readers.

escher, water polo and den haag

2007-10-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

this was another meike weekend. i need to start giving the experience a name or something. i'll think of something

last weekend meike came over. (pictures to come) and we went to lizard grove and hung out all date talking and chatting up life. its like she has this calming affect over you. in case you need to figure out life, just talk with her ;)

this weekend, meike and i had a water polo game against each other. the score was 12-7 and my team won. woohoo :) so now we are #1 in the country.

after that meike came over to my place where we found scared karin huddled up in the living room. yeah she was just watching final destination 3. we would have been there earlier if we didn't get um lost a little in rotterdam. ah whatever.

next morning we set out to den haag. we were meeting one of meike's friend's for breakfast/brunch whatever. so we got to his house and rang the bell, which he didn't answer, so we were like stuff this and we were out of there. i made meike hop on a random tram, direction didn't really matter, and we set off along the way. we missed a few stops but made it into the city center. we found a nice place to eat. then meike gets a hold of her friend, dialing dislexia was the inital problem. oddly enough he was eating in the place right next to us!! so weird.

we adventured through den haag and went to the ESCHER museum. it was freakin amazing!! i love him. this is my absolute favorite!!

well so that is that. and off i go. i am now a member of the library in den haag. yeah that is right. live in rotterdam, play in leiden and have a library card for den haag. i know it is hilarious :)

isn't this so true?? hahahaha

if training in a foreign language isn't hard enough...

2007-10-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

so as the title might imply, it is a bit strange being yelled at in another language. but i mean u get used to that. you follow what everyone else is doing. smile and nod those things.

yesterday was different.

so i went to training as usual and was happy that i didn't get lost. i was busy balancing only the most amazing used book store find ever on the back of my bike. yeah it was "einstein's 1912 manuscript on special theory of relativity". yeah flippin sweet! anyways.. so i was at the pool getting changed and went to grab my contact case so that i could SEE during training. since we all know that my vision is worse than a bat's. but yeah I DIDN"T HAVE THEM!!! what the freakin hell?!!? i can not believe i didn't have them. i was like oh my goodness what the hell do i do, no one else is as blind as i am. and practicing in with glasses in a pool doesnt work out too well.

a situation. that is for sure.

so i went to my coach and i told him what was up and he just said "we'll see what we can do with this". yeah and so practice was interesting to say the very least!! i think i did a lot better than u would have expected considering the state that i was in. i was passing pretty okay, i think better than when i did have my glasses ;) and i made a couple shots here and there. i don't even think i can describe this very well to anyone unless you are blind as well.

the moral of the story. life lesson # 712 - don't forget your contacts.

today at practice, i had them.

oh life

2007-10-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

so i was walking through the streets of Leiden today on my way to pick up my bike from iefke's house with my headphones on bopping to some awesome tunes. i had a hop in my step for some reason. i found joy in kicking up all the orange/yellow leaves on the ground. i suddenly realized i think i am going through one of these things called seasons. like i know they existed and i've been through some in passing but now i am living in the change. it is kind of weird but i am glad that i can notice it.

near where i live there isn't too much greenery yet since they are still building a lot however i did discover "the forest". that is what i call it. it takes about a 5 minute bike ride and then u are there. it is pretty cool. some parts are too close to the highway to enjoy the quietness of nature but i mean at least it is not concrete. i love just cycling through the woods with like the most awesome playlist on and a couple of really good books in my bag.

i found a couple places which i plan on visiting frequently. the one i found on sunday was freakin awesome! it is like this bench surrounded by these trees. it is like a secret hideaway. and there is this other cool place by the pond. the weekend was pretty nice, so i got to enjoy it.

when i was cycling back the howie day song "perfect time of day" was so fitting! and there was this INTENSE sunset. the colors were a freakin amazing and the sun was huge. a camera could not capture that.

so karin has completely made my day/week/year whatever. besides being freakin awesome and fun!, she got me a bunch of paints and an easel and some canvas. she said there was a sale and i had been bugging her to show me where the art stores were. i have an amazing idea, and i hope that it comes out!

well i hope this week stays on this high note. i will do my best to keep it that way :)

funny...meike said that i was like paddington bear. and the more i think about it i totally am! i am super lucky to have some awesome ass people around me :)

photo essay part 2

2007-10-10T07:20:00.001-07:00

so this will be basically an explanation of the little photo series. once again in no particular order. thank you blog world :)

so this is at this freakin awesome cafe in amsterdam! the crossaints there were freaking awesome. and this view wasn't to bad either

my spiderweb obsession. i love taking pictures of these things. it is so hard but it is so nice in the end. there are so many webs here it is great!

so pete brought his fancy camera and i got to play around with it a bunch. i love this one and i plan on working on this type of picture some more.

so i am in the nederlands for like less than 48 hours and we go to some crazy water polo party. this is them praising the national team since they are going to the OLYMPICS!! yeah 3 of my teammates are up there and the beloved Meike too! so cool :)

still at that crazy party. i don't know how i ended up in this picture. haha. the guy in the pink shirt is named boris, i think. he looks like a boris

one day while i was chillin in leiden. i have to spend a lot of time just cruising around, since i have class in the morning and then i have a huge break til practice. don't worry, i am going to figure out how to make some dollars in this time :)

me and pete on a train. the reflections were pretty sweet.

so yeah the houses in amsterdam are really crooked like that! yeah mr. vincent van gogh i always thought you were being artistic. haha he was but really it was leaning over.

this was this cute little couple we saw on our way to the van gogh museum. they were so cute! the guy caught me taking this picture though. he didnt seem to care :)

so i have been inspired by my fish eye lens to put things in front of the camera. i found this blue piece of glass from a broken bottle on the ground. this is what happened. i think it came out pretty sweet. there are many more.

anyways that is photo essay #2...now i can go on to my meike weekend and then i should be pretty caught up. then it will be consistent updates. hahaha. lies :)

the much awaited photo essay, part 1

2007-10-07T07:03:00.001-07:00

thanks to liz asking just how hard is it to pictures up in the nederlands, AND IT ACTUALLY IS!!! the words are in dutch and i keep accidentally clicking the wrong one! however, Liz made me realize that i am in slack ville. but the truth of the matter is that my pictures are in a different land of my computer, hence promoting my procrastination. anyway here it goes.. yeah it is in no particular order!

These are pictures from the hike I went on with my family, amy logan and ms. pothead. it was a pretty nice day up on the ridge. yeah there are over 1000 steps on this thing! It is on some old railroad tracks... The orangy picture is my absolute favorite :)

right about here is where i decide that I am annoyed/ I can't figure out why this is all over the place and not in the order that I want it to be and decide that I will give it a grand what they are thing.. i might fix it later ( i might not)
football game with the fam, robin's 21st, a strenuous hike, my last dollah ballah with carena and the gang :)

i am sorry i am a bum just annoyed. the next one will be pretty and will have a bunch of pics from my holland adventures. i did put pics in my web albums so u should check it out!

another heads up if you look at my pictures, i gave a few some ratings...
tour de amsterdam, R; due to the red light district night scene
robin's birthday, R; due to some eating contest
the rest are all G, PG, good for the family and a bit random. pretty much brittanyish.. cheerio :)

2007-10-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

WOAH AN UPDATE!!

2007-10-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah as we all know I am a major bum when it comes to writing on my very own blog. It has to do with the fact that I have TOO much stuff to write I don't even know where to begin. Then all of a sudden it is like an assignment that I just keep procrastinating!

so here goes the mini update!

HAWAII

i was home for a couple weeks after my tour de england, nashville, connecticut and new york. it was sOOOooooOOOOo amazing! i mean i was just soaking up everything and realizing that all my friends and family are amazing. even just the ones i met during my short stay back at home. i had a pretty much amazing time with my old friends i hung out with. so i had a really good time punking a lot of my friends with my "new hairstyle" muahahahaha! i did get to surf, do my touristy drive around the island, and spend some precious quality time with a lot of people that i needed to. oh and BTW my family is freakin amazing. i love them all and my sisters are all old and such characters! it was so bittersweet being at home since there are so many transitions in everyone's life i see just unfolding before my eyes. a bit weird, but i mean what are you gonna do really?

some highlights of home...
+ art off the wall (my friends and i infultrated an wall during first friday and made the underground art scene happen! it was amazing)
+ almost broke my longboard in half getting barreled at the point. muahahaha!
+ my car and surfboards are in a happy place now. my legacy will live on :)
+ robin made me a freakin awesome pie
+ robin turned 21 and got jelloshots umm eaten off her! muahaha
+ got to see my friend asia who i havent seen since we graduated!
+ saw a lunar eclipse
+ got to see my dad play some gigs
+ went on a crazy hike with the fam in hawaii kai!

man i need to stop there are too many!

the NEDERLANDS!
this is my home base for the moment. i am living with my mate karin who i used to play water polo with back in the day in hawaii. and i am playing water polo with iefke's team. yeah so i am on every possible type of public transport available. you name it i am on it. trains, trams, bikes, whatever! yeah i dont mind the trains, its the trams that are like ugh. anyways.

it is so cool playing water polo over here. it is so much bigger than hawaii and they treat you like a superstar ;) yeah so i have been here almost 3 weeks and i have already had an article in the paper, online, and on the program for our first home game. i think that is pretty rad! anyways, i have been playing pretty good considering my massive training i gave myself over the summer ;) hahaha. oh yeah i was in a tourney 3 days after i got here. that went pretty well. and my first game that i had with my entire team, i scored a goal within the first 30 seconds i was in! that was cool.

oh my friend pete from cambridge came over for a visit and that was a blast. the first day he was here i dragged him to my water polo training, where he recieved his crash course in water polo. then on the way back from practice i get us lost on the tram! muahaha. nah but we had a lot of fun. we went to amsterdam for the weekend and went to the van gogh museum. really nice works of art. oh yeah and i ATE so much food. we sat at some cool cafes, and ate at a fancy restaurant and this other cool turkish restaurant. i took pictures of the hookers in the red light district and almost got beat up! muahaha. i got a really cool pic in it though.

for those of you who know meike, i got to hang out with her in the "middle" of holland in utrecht. that was so freakin awesome. meike makes me really happy and makes me remember why i decided to come to this FREEZING cold place :) yeah and we are going to be artsy this weekend at her place, so that should be fun fun fun :)

LAST night i was in a parade in Leiden with my water polo team. it was great yelling things in dutch i have no idea what we really were saying but remnants of it are still ringing in my ears. yeah it was the city's indendence day and there is 2 days of celebration. drinking, partying, carnivals. these dutchies know how to party! yeah and then after the parade we went and saw Koen's brother DJying at this huge tent. he was really good. and i kept getting lost in the sea of tall people. haha good thing i had a hat on, so i could be found.

so yeah 10 page essay over. i will add pictures later. i can't do everything at once! we all know that i am not that good. now that i got that out of the way i will do my best to keep a better update :) lies i know but i gotta keep you coming back for more ;)

slack slack slack

2007-08-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

don't know why the pictures act the way they do on this blog. but what the ever!

i know i am going to do a massive update which will recap my whole trip to connecticut and new york with my madda too... i might make a few installments in this since i do never have any non exciting days, as we all know ;)

10 august : mom gets in and we eat hawaiian food she brought. we went straight out to new haven, where yale is and partied it up. my mom got called a milf and there were a lot of gangstas roaming around. it was great ;)

11 august: NEW YORK!!! stopped being a vegetarian. ate canolis in little italy. changed my hair a bit. ate meat on a stick from a vendor on the streets. longest laughing session ever with a banana in my hand. times square. rockefeller center.
quote of the day: "its only a mystery if they don't tell what's going on." -mom
thanks mom :)

12 august: back to NEW YORK. went down an 18 block market instead of taking a touristy shuttle. bought some dumb things. like a poncho mom. went to the russian tea room. too the staten island ferry to see the statue of liberty.
discovery of the day : strawberry yogurt and sour cream + onion chips
thanks to me :)

13 august: higlights include. buying 8 pairs of roxy and etnies shoes for $35!! yeah thats right. i got roxy shoes for $3 oh wait $2.99. muahahaha. we were in a grocery store and we ditched our carts in the middle like bandits.

14 august: in the morning we picked over 5 lbs of wild blackberries! yeah for free!! mom gave me a tour of her little town of connecticut.

15 august: went to rhode island. it was swarming with haole people. i bodysurfed the atlantic ocean. yeah i am a badass. i tried to feed a french fry to a bird but it didnt work out to well. as we left rhode island due to my lucky lotto tix skills, we won a total of $6! oh yeah. later in the night we went to a bar. no other way to describe the people in there other than them being YUPPIE TOOLS. oh connecticut.

16 august: my grandmae tried to convince me there was an ikea in hawaii. it was in kalihi on the left past the prision. if anyone knows where that is please let me know ;)

will continue rest of the update later... SOON i promise :)

a little show i went to

2007-08-09T14:04:00.001-07:00

so i have been looking for the way to best describe the john mayer concert and i have been having a difficult time. i thought maybe i could do a play by play. but then i thought that was a bit boring. then i thought i could write nothing to symbolize my death from the amazing experience. but then i thought that was lame too. instead i am going to try to describe some very exciting moments in hopes you can relate. and then maybe you can understand just a little...

* when you are make the winning goal in a game against the team that was supposed to make it to the finals. and instead of them its you. and you are on that excited i can't believe that just happened high for who knows how long.

* when you are so happy and can't stop smiling and every little thing is so amazing, that if you tripped you would proabably fall on a bed of clouds

* like when you realized that you have $500 in you bank account and have no idea where it came from but don't care.

*when you find out you are having a baby ( not something personal but just maybe for other people)

* when you finally realize that everything is going completely amazing and you can't even find the worlds to grasp how you feel since they would be too simple.

those are just a few points. i know there are like a billion more. but those are the ones i could think of for now. but that is just a little what it was like. so here are some pictures

this is james morrison. he was the opening act. he is from england. oh how i love those accents ;)

this is ben folds. he was freakin amazing. he was playing the piano with his feet and all that jazz

i made friends with the lady next to me. her name is lilac. she was really nice and told me about all these cool places around nashville to visit like lakes and waterfalls and hikes and things like that. we are going to be friends when i get back :)

JOHN MAYER JOHN MAYER JOHN MAYER!!!!!!!

the lights were amazing. the sound was great. he told me that he loved me on stage.

he was playing stop this train. it was so cool. nice and acoustic. just john.

yeah he was really there. his name was on the sign. it was great!

these are my flatmates i made friends with. as soon as i mentioned that i was going to the john mayer concert we all became friends. it was nice!! they were super cool :)

exodus of england

2007-08-05T18:42:00.001-07:00

**oh yeah i have picture up!! ---> they are not cooperating with putting them on this word part though :( **

so as you might imagine. i didn't have a very simple way of leaving england. i had to do it brittany style obviously... here is the story.

saturday morning, very hung over, i "finish" packing and head out the door with pete. for some reason i decide that walking to bus stop is much better than taking a cab. pete dragged my 100lb bags across cambridge while i maintained laughing constantly for no reason at all.

we make it to london and have to get to brixton since we are going to drop off my bags at the house of one of mich's affiliates. so to get there we have these very detailed instructions like, jump on the tube, take the bus for 4 stops, walk a bit and the place is next to the prison. yeah a prison. but it is a safe neighborhood. humm... so i try to call the girl that i am staying with but she is deaf, so we have to communicate through text messaging which takes a little bit longer.

we get all the way up the stairs and nicole (the girl's house we are in) is really nice and lets me borrow some keys and we head on out.

we do the touristy thing and see the clock and the wheel and stuff like that. we say buckingham palace. as we are walking through this really nice park, we kind these kids playing on a slide. so i decide to play on it with them. as we walk away from the site, we see a little sign on the back that says please stay off, its a monument from canada. muahahaha..

so we have dinner with suzanne at this really nice place called tas. it was so very cool.

london is a cool place there were all these like plays on the road and stuff like that.

*next day*

so we go to the british museum in the morning and leave for the tube in enough time to make it to the airport. BUT i LOSE MY TICKET FOR THE TUBE!!! and the dumb ticket places are out of order and the line for the agent is SUPER LONG!! so after a frantic mess, we make it on the tube and to the airport.

i go to check in and apparently i miss my check in time by 10 minutes!! what the freak? 10 minutes! i am so mad/pissed/whatever. so i find out that all the next flights are over booked and that i would have a 14 hour layover in chicago! what the hell?

so instead i decided to go to jfk airport, drop off my things in connecticut, then fly out of la guardia. sounded A LOT easier at the airport, just to let you know.

with my dying phone at the very last moment i phone my dad at 4 in the morning hawaii time to try to call my aunty in connecticut to tell her the plan. everyone expected this from me! :)

oh yeah and while i was on my shuttle going to la guardia at like 3 in the morning, the shuttle breaks down! what the heck yeah? i was just sitting there laughing at it all. typical. so typical.

didn't sleep at the prision house (too many sirens) , didn't sleep on the plane, didnt sleep in connecticut (since i was only there for about 3 hours when it all came down to it), didnt sleep in the airport. so basically i was cracked out on coffee going a bit crazy.

i finally make it to nashville. the shuttle that i take drops me off FOREVER away from where i have to go. so i am walking down the road in 90 weather, sweating with a coffee in my hand. but some how managed to get every guy passing by me to say hey. euuwww.

oh yeah i SOME how made it. i don't even know how i get involved in any of this. but it all makes for a good story right? haha.

so it goes

2007-07-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

going to London tomorrow to do the touristy thing.

i have had a lot of fun here and i can't believe how amazing people are. i had a lot of fun this past week. i went to see the band the dead sixties and they were pretty rad. thanks to joey, i already knew some of their songs.

i want to a fancy restaurant with my flat mate. i ate a monkfish. i think that it was buddhist. haha

last night, turned it into tequila thursday and partied like a rock star at this place called fez. i think i broke pete's hand by accident :S what are you gonna do huh?

i went punting today. pictures seriously to come since i will be on a proper laptop now. if you don't hear from me for a while it is due to my transition period between destinations.

going to nashville for a week on sunday, going to watch john mayer on the 3rd!!! woooOOOhOOOO
connecticut til the end of august
home til 12th of september
and then holland onwards.

oh life. its funny how times keeps to just slip slip slip by. it is cool though. i like england. but then again i think that i will like a lot of places :) there are some really cool people out there. just gotta go find them ;)

cheers
-normandy

normandy. that's my new name.

2007-07-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

i have officially turned into this arbitrarily set stage in my life known as 23. i think it is just a cause for a party. like a personal national holiday. i quite like it, since i will at least remember it for a while. and every country i go, we can always celebrate my birthday.

this year my flat mates in cambridge threw me a nice big party with lots of people, fun and most definately wine. it seemed like the fridge was never empty. like a dream come true. so we had fun that night eating the salmon that they cooked and the cake. yeah a nice cherry cake.

here are a few highlights of the evening.
1. i discovered the trees in the garden outside are full of blackberries

2. when you dance with a full glass of wine you actually might spill it

3. bob was upset with his phone, so he took a hammer to it [yeah regretted it the next day]

4. i won a cappucino from pete, since we bet on some dating situation that was unfolding before our eyes

5. learned how to salsa.

6. some how decided that i REALLY did not want to dance hula in front of peole. odd yes i know.

7. i learned some useful life skill points. how to roll a cigarette. i just figured that i would learn in case i was in the hood by accident and the way to save my life would be rolling a cigarette, then i would be fine. i dont plan on starting to smoke, so don't worry about that.

8.lost simon's shoe somehow

9.i decided to wear this little backpack and people would fill it with presents and i wouldn't open it til the morning. and i didnt. [the contents: 50p, lollipop, 2 books, cd, boomarang, canary island cigars, 2 heavy rocks and string] i think it was a brilliant idea. and it was great in the morning.

10. i some how managed to stay up til 4 even when i started drinking at 4 in the afternoon. i think that is a new personal record

the next day was equally fun. i leaned how to ride a unicycle (slightly hungover). another life skill. we took the boomarang to the park. that was fun. til bob broke it on a fence. had my cappuccino ;) went to the gorgeous botanical garden. oh yeah i went to the museum the day before. it was amazing. i find that i am amazed by totem poles and their construction. there was a really cool maori exhibit and it reminded me of amy and our deep talk about indigenous people under my kukui nut tree.

oh yeah and the title of this blog is normandy, since i have a new name now. bob was a bit drunk and kept calling me different regions of france until he decided to settle on normandy, which some how caught on with everyone there. i like it. its kinda sexy.

tata for now. i am done making excuses on why i dont have any pictures up. truth is they are not there.

-normandy

signs you know that you are in a foriegn country

2007-07-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

so i went to the nederlands last weekend. these are a few things are key signs to know that you are not as close to home as you may think.
1: everytime you hop on and off a plane you need to show your passport
2: you are on the plane and they are speaking in a completly foriegn language
3: you get off the plane and there are english words but they are teeny weeny under the extremely long arrangement of letters. letters that you know but not like that.
4: the trains are nice except when this dumb chick got her arm stuck in the door as we were leaving and the train almost started! yeah she was being silly
5: to be in the conversation people have to stop and translate for you. ie, the laugh and you have a puzzled look on your face, someone interprets it for you and you let out a very delayed laugh to go with the rest.
6: yet a different currency. looks like pounds but not.
7: there are more bikes than cars
8: you feel like a midget because everyone is at least 6 feet tall. even the old people are tall. i think its because they drink excessive amounts of milk.
9: lots of things are very orderly, such as iefke's house, karin's neighbor's yard
10: you find yourself trying to learn a new language, which is fun and new but hard with a lot of gurgling noises.
11: oh yeah and water polo practice. yeah went to one of those. try to go to one where no one is speaking english. oh yes you just follow and smile.

so i had fun while i was there. karin's house is pretty huge. that is where i am going to be living next year. i love it she even has an indo board and two papasan chairs. she said that i can paint one of her walls and that she will take me to barcelona. humm nice. i had fun riding on the back of her bike and seeing the city a little bit. then i was at ief's house. it looks like you opened a modern magazine and that was it. it was really nice and neat. ief and koen took me around, saw the beach went to a casino, ate stroopwaffles from the market. that was amazing. saw some of those windmill things. wooden shoes. things like that. guess we know what is everyone's bday/christmas presents are going to be next year ;)

currently in cambridge, i think i am obsessed with books. i just read pompeii, started to read siddartha, a book about drawing, and this weird book about people's lives in a bland way. today i hung out at this big park called jesus green, had a picnic and read books. it was nice compared to the annoying morning of downtown sunny tourist ville of cambridge. i dunno why i was so annoyed with the tourist, i was one too but it was just like ahhh what the heck.

i made some friends here. we watched this indie flick last night about the dixie chicks saying they were not into bush and the whole entire drama around that. it was better than i thought it would be. then we went out dancing in a spur of the moment way. it was great.

lost my converter, gotta buy a new one which = cool pictures up

from exeter to cambridge

2007-07-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

i apologize ahead of time to those very avid readers of brittany adventures. as i do when i talk, i tend to ramble on a bit. so if you feel that these entries are too long, let me know and i will work on trying to do something about it. once again pathetic update on pictures. i am at work again and no pics with me. good news place i am staying in has internet, so it could be quite soon!!

+++LAST WEEK IN EXETER+++

tues = same old at work. went over to aude's house for an african dinner (since she is from benin) after i played squash with ben and dave. i did really bad since they are too professional for me and i started questioning my devotion to the sport, but realized i had a lot to learn. anyways after we had dinner at aude's we played 3D connect 4 which is really crazy/fun/think a lot. it was great with a bunch of really smart people since they all have different logic.

wed = played squash with aude after work. we are on the same level so it is good for the beginner like me. the went went shopping and rode back home on aude's bike which TREMEBNDOUSLY cut down commutting time. it was so nice. i went over to her place because it was her roommate's birthday. it was hilarious since guy's dinners are meat bread cheese and a lot of alcohol. it was just me and aude and a bunch of guys playing some quiz game on play station and then hanging out talking about life. this french dude who has the same name as daniel quinica's 300 lb friend, who looks nothing like him, and i were comparing the few tahitian words that he knew with hawaiian ones. it was fun. i made friends with this italian guy who was quite charming and gave me a ride home since it was late.

thurs = winding down to my last days at exeter. it has been great since every tea session had some sort of cake. yes it was mostly my doing. i played squash with the italian who was really cool and helped me get better. from tues-> thurs i became a changed woman. it was great since he would tell me what i wasa doing wrong. then i had to hurry home since i was having friends over for the last supper. i made an extravagant meal of spagghetti and salad and all the cheese in my fridge. i did make brushetta for the first time which came out quite good! so we huung out and played pictionary. i think me and aude can read each others mind sometimes. it was creepy a little. we had two cakes for my "birthday" yes i know this year we are starting early ;D. i had to wash everything in the world and pack to go to cambridge, but i thought it would be an injustice not to finish the bottle of wine that was left. there was about 3/4 of it left. i am not sure that it actually helped the whole cleaning process AT ALL.

fri = loaded up my 2 bags, meike's guitar and everything into suzanne's car and went to work. my bags are so FREAKIN heavy!! just keep this in mind for the rest of this entry. they each seperately weighed like 100lbs. and not too mention the guitar and my backpack full of stuff. so it was a half day at exeter and i was mindlessly doing not much as i cleaned up my things. my friends that i made at exeter got me a tshirt and a necklace and i thought that was sooo very sweet. they are so cool! i am really glad that i met them.
so suzanne, andy bunker (really cool astronomer guy), and i headed down to the trainstation. jumped on and headed out. *this is where it gets interesting* so our train is delayed because there was a suicide on the tracks ahead of us, so we jump off the train in london paddington (where it is wild an hectic) run over to the place where we catch the tube. don't forget that we have ALL my luggage and suzanne has a giant backpack, andy has nothing but helping me with all my stuff. we have to lug everything up a huge flight of stairs to get to the place you get to the tube(subway). that tube is delayed so we catch another one that connects one stop down. no elevators there either. we get to this place called kings cross where we have 2 minutes to RUN across the station to get to the cambridge train. if we miss this then it is a 45 min wait for the next one and we have dinner to go to in cambridge. so running with ALL this luggage and barely make it on the train. when we get to cambridge we are trying to get a taxi , we put everything into a taxi and it doesnt fit so he kicks us out. the taxi next to us is a massive van but the guy wont take us because some sexi cute girl is walking over! whatever. we FINALLY make it to the place that i am staying in and are just like woohoo.
it is a really nice place. my room is teeny weeny. basically a bed a window about 2m to the wall and thats about it. the rest of the house is really cool. i am living with 3 guys. you can kinda tell by the organization of things. so we drop my stuff and run over to the dinner that we were trying to make it to. we made it. we ate and hung out and it was fine.

sat = suanne and andy went to a rememberance service for a friend that passed away and i met up with them at suzanne's flat in the afternoon since they were having a litto get together. i hung out with pete (the guy who's house i am in) and bob (the other guy staying in there) in the morning and had an amazing cappucino from an italian joint. hung out at suzanne's all day with her and her friends. decided that i am going to teach myself dutch with the books that she has.
we went to a pub. played some games. then went to a thai place. it was really good. went to another pub had a guiness (which i decided i really don't like). made some more friends.

sun = cruised around the city centre and adventured cambridge. it is really cool and old and stuff. soooo touristy! blah that is one thing i can do without. i know i am a toursist but i mean i dunno whatever. suzanne met me and showed me where newton lived and where rutherford figured out the structure of DNA. oh just the litto old place. what the heck isn't that CRAZY?!?! i cant even remember all the names that she was droppin. it was like WWII all over again.
we bought books at borders and read them in a park. i went back for a shower at pete's then back to suzanne's. i know i have been there a lot. i skated there and skating on cobblestone isn't the easiest. but there were some really cool places though and smooth ones. suzanne lives in a flat that is next to this giant house where a lot of people live. so every sunday they have dinner together. there was about 16 people there and it was really nice. like a big family. met a whole bunch of cool people. later on in the evening we ended up getting into a religion discussion since this polish girl is a born again christian who encountered an atheist. humm put 2 and 2 together. funny thing she didnt think english was my first language for some reason. then she did then decided it was beautiful. went home sleep, etc.

mon = first day working at the institute of astronomy in cambridge. it is a nice facility by the time that i found it. i think i took the weirdest way to find it but luckily i did. i have a nice office here and you would think i am famous and important or something. haha i am really good at faking it all.

that is that.

life
to be continued...

up down left right

2007-06-26T02:27:00.000-07:00

wow i am already slacking on this thing and i haven't even had it that long!

so friday i played squash with a couple of my co-workers. it was great. me and aude suck! but we are at a similar level, so it was good. i won one and she won one. it was cool. so we left there and aude just bought a bike, so we brought it with us. she was on the phone with her boyfriend and i was riding this thing around. so i wanted to adventure down this path and then catch up with her but she ended up following me. so we got to the end and had no idea where we were. haha. it was great. we ended up taking the longest possible detour. we were like at the city centre! hahaha. but then we decided to go to the store and ended up meeting ben coincidentally who was going to suzie's. it was quite hilarious
then we went over to suzie's place and her roommate lucy and made us currie. it was fantabulous. i really liked it. we just hung out all night. we met this chick named joy who was hilarious! her trains of thought were so unique. i loved it. we watched this show dr. who which is quite popular here. i liked it a lot.

saturday. met ben down at the city centre where it was pissing down. we walked around the european food festival. got some cheese and bread and went to ben's house. we ate. watched tennis. then we did arts and crafts. played wii. my pants were soaking wet so i was wearing the obnoxiously loud shorts that ben had. he wanted to get a frame for his picture that he made, so i thought we were going right down the road so i just wore these pants. oh no but we ended up walking all around the city centre! muahahaha. it was great. i could read people's mind and they were just like what the heck. and apparently 6 x8 frames are impossible to find!! anyways went back to ben's then i was walking home because i was tired. instead took a detour to suzie's house and hung out with lucy all night. we played clay. hahah i know art day. and we were going thru his library and listening to a million songs.

sunday..met suzie for a creme tea and it was really good! oh man i love those things. it is like gain 20 pounds in one sitting. but whatever. you only live once! haha. we walked around the quay and looked at a river. did some physics on a bridge. we were jumping up and down at the same time and shook the whole thing. it was great. borrowed some of suzie's cds and stuck them on my computer.

pretty chill weekend overall. it was nice though. i could have gone on a 10 mile hike in the rain but i really wasn't feeling that! haha. will put up pictures i promise!! i just don't have them on my comp. at work.

going to cambridge this weekend and holland next weekend. so those will be full of exciting stories for the weekend! playing squash tonight and going over to aude's for dinner.

oh yeah i forgot. somehow i contracted some english rash. haha it is so hott! i went to the doctor and apparently it is just one of those annoying things that are just there, itch a little, last 6 weeks, and look oh so hott! typical. unknown how it is contracted also. the best part about the whole thing is that the doctor visit was free! i am moving here. just for that reason only.

signs of aging

2007-06-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

i realized that i am getting older from a few key signs that have popped up

1: my nails are long. why? because i haven't had to play water polo :)
2: slippers is not accepted when you go places
3: i am white white white. no more gorgeous tan from being outside all the time. learning to live with it
4: oh yeah you really have to do one of those things called a budget. :P

well those are all that i can think of right now and will work on more.

i went to dinner at my supervisor's house two nights ago and it was really good. she is a really good cook and has this cool cook book. we sat around and ended up watching a movie also. it was some indie film that was just laying around. she is really cool and telling me about some opportunites in leiden, holland that she may be able to help me with so lets just cross our fingers for that.

last night, i played squash with ben and dave. it was really fun. i am pretty bad at it but it was really fun to mess around and stuff like that. they are really good squash coaches. who knows i might have found my new calling in life. haha nah just kidding.

after that we went bowling and it was sooo fun. there were about 9 of us and nobdy was professional or too serious about it so that made it a lot more fun. we had rounds of left handed bowling and things like that. hannah, dave's wife, was such a cutie and just got better and better as the night went on.

we stopped in at a pub later and played one of those quiz games. it was funny most of the time i had no idea what was going on, not too keen on british pop culture i suppose. i had a pretty rad convo about relationships with a happily married coupdle and a gay guy. very interesting view points i would have to say.

so i carried on hanging out with this gay guy named lucy who was so very rad. we were just talking all night long about random things so it was quite nice. he invited me over to his place for dinner and cocktails on friday. he lives with suzie so it'll be great.

back to work, enough procrastinating for the day :)

oh it only gets better

2007-06-18T04:38:00.000-07:00

sorry i am at work right now so i don't have my pictures of the weekend yet! but they were pretty rad, so check a little later and they'll be there.

£££££FRIDAY££££££££

Working on stuff at work. Natural thing to do. Then we left and hit the pub where we met up with some of the other physics kats who were quite cool. we went over to ben's house where he just bought a wii which was my first time at. that thing is soo cool! i am on the verge of buying one :) nah i have figured out my new life calling. i am only buying minimal amounts of food, no clothes, maybe a trinket or two, but other than, only plane tix. maybe accomadations and whatever. i met this guy who travels a lot and only brings out 25 of whatever currency, so he doesn't go bankrupt. genious i say. anyways, we played wii watched this piddly little firework show then carried on home. it was cute and a nice chill night!

€€€€€€€€€€SATURDAY€€€€€€€€€

so i woke up when i felt like it. because i could and ventured into the city centre. it was quite cool, everyone was out since there was a festival or something. i found this hippie fair by the cathedral. it was a nice little craft fair. i went into the cathedral and it wasssss sooooo coool. totally cool architectuure and stuff. i also went into the museum down the road and that was nice too. they actually had stuff from hawaii in there. i was like oooh home.

i randomly found this castle place and this really cool park. i took a million pics, so you can check em out later. oh yeah and i had some fudge on the side of the road.

then the unfortunate but not really i found this place called primark which is the uk equivalent of ross. so i spent the money i didn't have but they were on practical things like an umbrella, rain jacket, towel, etc. i think this is the point where i realized that i am never buying clothes again. i don't think that i have ever said that in my life, but i am changing my ways.

i had to hurry back because i was meeting suzie and a bunch of people for a night out. i took a shower and ran out the door. we had a couple of ciders at this pub that had a basement with a skeleton in it. really random but whatever. then we went to the cavern where they were having indie night. that was fun good music. suzie and i had waayy too many double vodkas with black currant and soda water. some how i got back home after a night of fun! suzie is seriously my partner in crime. she is hilarious!!

%%%%%%%% SUNDAY = TOUR DE BATH %%%%%%%%%%

so jenny, my flat mate and i decided that we were going to bath on the 10 am train. who knows what time that i got home but none the less i was not feeling too hot in the morning. so in a mad dash, i threw some clothes grabbed my wallet, camera, and an umbrella. i threw them in jenny's bag because i was like i don't want to carry anything really and we were only going for the day. so we ran to the station which was not fun and just made it on the train. being on a train with the trees and all in that state, blah not fun!

we made it to bath in one piece and had a creme tea which was pretty okay, not as good as my first but it was in the oldest house in bath. oh i forgot to mention the wonderful train mix up that i had. so being the train expert that i am, i accidentally bought a 1st class one way tix to bath instead of a round trip one like i wanted. which i didnt realize until the lady was checking our tix. sooooo we got and try to see how much a one way back would be and it would have been £ 30= $60! i was like ouch! what about next morning. that would have been £5 and i was like that is cool, ill just stay in a hostel for a night and that will be fun. so i found a hostel and then we set off on our day.

we walked around a bit and went into the roman baths. IT WAS SOOO FREAKIN RAD!!! i mean i thought i was going to just see some pool and be done with it but it was this huge extravagant museum. i loved it. i reccomend it to everyone in the world. so i took a million pix that day but my camera died at the end of it! i was like oh hell. left my battery at home along with my phone since i didnt want to lose it. so i was like oh man only mental pix from now on!

we walked around the city centre of bath. really cool place. we saw these massive trees and that was wicked! it is a cute little city. anyways jenny had to leave, so i carried on looking around. i found this park called sydney park and it was bbeeaaauuuttifful. so i hung out under this really cool tree for a while. just laying there and looking at the structure of the tree. amazing.

so i wanted to see university of bath and i figured i could walk there it would be fine. didnt look too bad on the map. oh but the map was not to scale and left out the fact that you basically hike up the side of a mountain and you dont even know if you are on the right road and there are a bunch of little roads that throw you off too. so i made it there and it was quite nice. there was a rock climbing wall on the campus and a massive sport facility.

back to the city centre, which took me forver!! and it was getting a little creepy cuz it was getting dark. but it was fine i only had to ask for directions once and i was going in the right direction anyway. so i made it back to the city centre and started watching tv thru a pub window. these guys invited me in and i hung out for a little bit. they were really cool and were telling me a lot about london and travelling and stuff.

left there and made it back to the hostel and hung out in the late night dungeon. just a cool place to hang out. i met a bunch of cool people where we talked to like 2:30 in the morning. this one guy went to like 56 cities since he graduated in may! so i was just talking to him about his experiences, very useful info on places to go. he was into political science and was more keen on the situations. i met these two irish girls who were so lovely and we were talking about getting married, being a bionic women and sharing our experiences with life. they were really really cool chicks.

i woke up in the morning and ate the continental breakfast. that was nice for a hostel. and then i jumped on my train. being that i was freezing from the night before and the sun comes up at 5, not the best sleep. so i fell asleep and missed my stop! seriously these things drive me crazy. so i was a fugitive and hopped on a train to go back to exeter. it was hilarious. i hiked up the hill and now made it to work. same clothes, took a shower though, and a cheesy british flag bag i got at a store there.

why would we expect any different right?! oh this is just hilarious!!!!

so it does rain in England!

2007-06-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

I have been lucky that the whole time I have been here it is yet to rain. I know quite uncharacteristic of the English country side. It could be that I brought my Hawaiian sunshine along ;)

I did already manage to slightly misplace my phone but it did get recovered at a pub down the road. that suzie girl and i are not a good combo ;) i have decided that i should wear it around my neck or leave it at the house until an absolute dire situation.
IDL working out quite nice. Actually getting things done today. I think that I should have Brittany's British vocab. I will start very small and add to it each day. This is just so that each of you can learn some Brit slang.

------vocab lesson #1--------
bird = chick = hot girl
bloke = dude (haven't quite worked out if it is too good at all)
ginger = red-head
fancy = when you like something
pub = bar ( go there after work every day)
fanny = women's private regions ( so this means don't call it a fanny pack here since they will look at you with a very appalled expression)
bum = butt
----------------------------

that is all for now. if you want to use these in sentences i will give you some examples.
"oohh, i really fancy that bloke who works at the pub. I heard his brother is a ginger which means Suzie will probably like him."

Say things like that and you will be in! Oh yeah and eggs are on the shelves not in refrigerators. And they have teeny weeny cars. Oh and it is day for like forever. Something about this whole latitude thing.

more and more adventures

2007-06-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

I only have this thing for a couple days and I am already slacking on the updates. So just a warning this is going to be a long one. A recap of the weekend and stuff like that. *~*~*~*I WILL ADD PICS SOON I PROMISE*~*~*~*~*~*

:±:±:±:±:±:±:±FRIDAY±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±
Work: 10am arrival
11-12 coffee
12-1 colloquium
1:30-2:30 lunch
4-5 tea
5:30 Leave for the pub

What the heck yeah?! Its like why bother even coming in or even starting anything at all. Its like lets just hang out until the next break.

So we went to this pub called the Imperial. It was a nice day out and we had drinks outside and it was like a giant BBQ with lots of friends and things like that. There were picnic tables and people on the grass and stuff like that. It was quite nice and a mellow night.

±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±SATURDAY±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±±::±:±:±

Aude, Jenny (my flatmate) and I went to this place called Dartmoor. You can check out some of my pictures. It was a really cool place. It is like this giant protected land and stuff like that so there are sheeps and horses just running around. There was a river running through parts of it so there were people playing in it. I had the BEST ICE CREAM EVER! out of this truck that was there. It was amazing!!!

We got back and went to a BBQ at Suzie's house (workmate). It was really cool a bunch of people that I work with and their friends and stuff like that. It was a blast. I learned a new game called Balderdash. I don't know if I am even saying it right but its a game where you make things up and people have to guess if it is correct. It is quite interesting after a few glasses of wine. We also played pictionary and I was on the foriegner team! haha I am the foreigner! I have to say it was quite hard with some people since they have completely different ways of saying stuff. Oh yeah and they had this thing on TV that is like American Idol but not really. It was to become the next Jospeh in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat production. And there was the mean judge with an accent. And the accent is and American one!! muahaha that is pretty funny.

±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±SUNDAY:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±

I met Aude at the Cathedral and we walked along the River Exe down to the Quay side. Apparently Quay sounds like key. So we went down there and they were having dragon boat racing in the river. It was really funny to come all the way here and see that. It totally reminded me of the time my mom and I did it at Ala Moana. It was quite comical. I had my very first creme tea. It was soooOOOooooo good. It was scones and jam and this creme thing that you eat with tea. Oh man it is quite amazing. We looked around at all the antique shops that were there.

We walked back to Aude's house where we watched Amelie. I looOooooved it. That movie is so cute and it makes me totally want to go to Paris and hey you know what I can! I think when Jamie Wendell comes I can organzie something with her. I want to work on my french. My advisor and Aude both speak french so they could totally teach me. I know only a few words like how to say I don't like fat head and stuff like that. Thank you Carena and Joey for letting me keep up with the important parts of the language ;)

I was walking back and I went on a slight detour mainly because if you walk straight down a road that doesn't mean that you are staying on the same road. Oh yeah and street signs don't exist either. They don't believe in that or something. So there are little signs on random buildings that you have to guess what road it is. But it was fine since I stopped in at this place called the Cavern. The were having live music and it was free before 9 so that is when it was. I had a beer and watched the two bands that were playing. They were very good. I can't remember the name of the first band but the second one was called Mohair. They totally rock! and apparently they had a number 1 in Honolulu about 8 months ago. I missed that chart topper and where they actually publish things like this. I bought one of their cds and got them all to sign it like a little fan that I was. I took pictures with the lead singer and the bass player since they were around. I can add it to my list of celebrities ;)

:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:MONDAY:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±:±

Back to work reading this ridiculously hard paper on some algorithm. I also was learning IDL and the art of programming. I went down to the pool for my lunch break and I got recruited to play water polo for the University. The lifeguard was like woah you are really good since I was egg beatering and swimming. I was really bad actually since I hadn't been in the pool for about a month! But it impressed them. I am going to go on Wednesday night and check it out. It should be quite fun.

We all went down to Dave's ( workmate) wife's party celebration thing for this grad house thingy. The Vice Chancellor was there. We had some free food and free Pimms. Which by the way is an amazingly good alcoholic beverage with lemonade and fruits and stuff in it. We got this guy Ben drunk for the first time too! It was hilarious. He is soooo funny and it just got better and better.

Then we went down to this pub called Hourglass. Very hot waitor helped us ;). Suzie and I ended up drink two bottles of wine together. We played a bunch of card games. Apparently "americans" all know how to shuffle cards. It is funny since the british shuffling technique is to mess it around on the table.

Suzie and I walked back from I have absolutely no idea where in Exeter. She was telling me stuff along the way but I don't remeber what they were. We also stopped in at a pub on the way back to have a gin and tonic for last call at a so called karaoke bar. It was hilarious!

So we were walking back and we found a very drunk girl passed out on the side of the road that Suzie ended up walking back home. She was really cute and totally smashed! I made it home alright and I went straight to sleep :)

That is it for now and here I am at work not doing anything, yet! The key word is yet!

cool little things along the way

2007-06-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

my wonderful analysis of the place goes as follows..

*yes it is as expensive as you think it is, but some things are a bit cheaper such as cheese and certain fruit
* i love the backs of the food you eat! there are so many informative things on there such as how much energy you get out of this, what types of foods are in it (standard i know), and some other cute funky things
* pubs are the place to be! everyone goes there after work and you DO NOT have to tip on every drink you buy. I went to this one pub by the river Exe and there were a bunch of ducks and it was so pretty
* it is really hard not to say things like the people around you. i have noticed my vocabulary to consist of words which have never usually flowed out of my lips such as lovely, cheers, midday, etc. it is quite comical
*it is nice that people actually smile at each other when you walk past each other on the streets

well i will work on this but these are the only ones that i can think of right now.

as far as work goes my boss is the kind of chick who runs around to a million places at once doing everything. hummm sound familiar. she is really quite cool and nice and has a bunch of work cut out for me. i was a bit intimidated at first but now i am like well guess i better bust my butt! her postdoc Aude is the nicest thing out there! she is so very cute and shows me around and helps me with everything in this amazing way that doesnt make me feel like an idiot. the rest of the students are all really cool and nice about everything.

the work day here is pretty great.some people dont follow it quite by the minute but most do. arrive work anywhere between 9/10, coffee break at 11, lunch at 1, tea at 4 and finish at 6 where you go to the pub. pretty nice huh? i don't know how you get anything done since once you get into a groove another little break that lasts up to an hour! haha i can get used to this i think ;)

This is the River Exe that runs through Exeter and the pub that we had drinks was right next to this.

only the beginning

2007-06-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

in England

far far away from home

but there are a lot of pretty trees and things like that
amazing architecture and gypsies on the streets

figured out why europeans are all skinny
1: have to walk everywhere
2: streets, sidewalks, etc. are very narrow

3: staircases are vertical and narrow too

4: cars on the road drive really fast

had to walk about an hour with a whole bunch of groceries
got lost a bit

have to remeber the whole left handed thing! 
cars on the left
people on the left
merging on the left
when you think you are lost go left