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

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

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?

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

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 :)

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!!