london in the summer time
i'm in london right now. i got here at 2am on saturday. i met up with stephanie and i came here with kate. we've seen pretty much everything worth seeing. the changing of the gaurd, the aquarium, paddington station, the orators in hyde park, big ben, westminster, soho, buckingham, regents park, green park, st james park, picadilly, leisceter square, dali universe, we've been riding the tube all weekend long. our hostel wasnt so great. its loud and right above a very busy street so we dont get much sleep. the pillows are lumpy and there's no hot water. we did get free breakfast though. yesterday we had the typical london dinner of fish and chips with a pint (cider beer for me thanks). this is a pretty nice town. expensive, but nice. i'm pretty ready to go home now though. i have one more day in malta a day in frankfurt a day on a plane and then finally i'll hit US soil. *whew* it's been one hell of a year.
It's all happening...
Everything is coming to an end now. its getting sad. today Lori(canada), Daniel(Idaho), and Alexis(France) left for Sicily; Marlo(montana) and Jenn(canada) left for Vienna; and Chris(canada) left for home. all before 10am. Julia and I went with marlo and jenn to the airport at 6am. we got a ride with marlo's friend, kurt. it was weird saying good bye to them. I spend most of my days in their apartment and now they're gone. and if i wasnt in marlo and jenn's apartment i was in daniel, chris, and alexis' apartment. So, now i have no where to go and no one to hang out with except julia and texas dave. i leave for london tomorrow evening with kate. we're going to meet stephanie. we come back at 4am on tuesday and i leave wednesday morning for home. i'll be traveling for more than two days but with the time changes it will be only one and a half days. I'll be back in minneapolis on the 16th. i wasnt able to get my flight changed so i wasnt able to travel any extra. its okay with me. i'm tired and i've seen alot as it is. and then i'll have more money to visit all of my new friends. I'm already planning on a trip to montana to see marlo in july. and then shes coming to minnesota a week later.
i have one more exam today then i'm done with university! its exciting. I'm working on packing up my stuff. i have a lot of stuff. i dont know where it all came from but its here and i dont know what to do with it. fortunatly we found a refugee shelter in the next town so we're donating all kinds of things to them. (they dont have a Goodwill here). Going home is going to be very weird. i know that. right now i'm just dealing with having everyone leave.
over the past week we've done a lot of stuff. i saw a temple finally. we camped on the beach again. We had an amazing dinner on a boat. we've had a pirate themed party at the residence. and we've been spending more time with the maltese guys marlo made friends with, kurt and greg and some times pejxu (say: pay-shoe, means: cat). and now everything is coming to a close. this is probably my last post from malta. see you stateside!
Papers!
The semester is wrapping up. We've been trying to find the perfect balance between study and fun. I think fun is winning out. I finished that huge paper and on the same day was assigned
another paper. But, so far i have 2 papers done and a presentation (well in an hour the presentation will be done) So, i have 3 papers, 2 reaction papers, and 4 exams left. *whew* exams start next week and i have them through the 9th of june. they told us we'd be done june 4th...
Marlo made some maltese friends and so, vicariously, so have I. since she invites me everywhere they go. Which means i've been riding in cars! *yes* Last night we were going like 45 mph and i thought that was quite fast. Since i've last posted I've seen Star Wars, been to the beach a couple times, and i've done some shopping. quite a lot of shopping actually. Nothing horribly exciting or memorable. The weather here is beautiful. We all have really reall nice tans. I think i'm darker than i was at the end of the summer last year. and my hair has bleached out a lot.
We're trying to come up with plans for the summer. On the 10th I'm going to London to see my friend Stephanie (from high school) and I'll stay til the 13th. Then, i could go to Egypt with Kate (from Ohio) we found a Nile Cruise. Or i could do some traveling with Marlo. I hope to have it figured out by the end of the week. which is coming up quite fast.
I'm nervous about going home. I dont know what to expect. I've gotten so used to everything here. its hard to believe that in a few weeks i'll be able to go to Target and buy
EVERYTHING i need in one stop
and i'll be able to drive there in my car at any time of day. no more Malta buses. I'm excited for Wendy's, DQ, and Chipotle and crappy daytime TV. I think coming home is going to be really really weird.
Camping and Hiking
This weekend was pretty good all considered. We went to Gozo to camp on the beach on friday night. there were 11 of us. We made a fire on the beach which burned down pretty quickly. there wasnt a whole lot of wood laying around and no one thought to bring anything thing. we had a couple pieces of cardboard, a phonebook and toilet paper. that was it. but we had fire long enough to make hot dogs and smores. it got really really dark and it was SO nice. there were so many stars. it was pretty great just laying in the sand listening to the waves and looking at the stars. it was really humid and then it got really cold and we got really wet from the water in the air and when we woke up everything had beads of water on it. I dont think anyone slept very well, at 3 am we were woken up by possibly the biggest man i've seen carrying the biggest gun i've ever seen. he was going to shoot some of the smallest birds i've ever seen. they shoot sparrows with shotguns here. once the sun came back it got hot right away. walking to town from the beach was pretty cool too. Gozo is alot more rural than malta and there were bird hunters out starting fires in the bushes and hiding in their stands, kind of like walking through a war zone. there were farm fields everywhere and they were all really small fields and it was really really cool. it was beautiful. Then, saturday night we sat on the roof and watched the fireworks in Valletta. They were celebrating the one year anniversary of being accepted in to the EU and it was a tourism thing kicking off fireworks season. Sunday we went on a hike with Receptionist Ray and he got us lost and we had to climb up some pretty steep cliffs and then climb down them. unfortunatly i ran out of space on my memory card so i can't show you what we were climbing... hopefully someone else has pictures. we walked past a nude beach from waaaaay up on a cliff. everyone was pretty amused by it. then we did a little bit of swimming and then later that night we watched south park and Chris Dan and Brett left for Egypt. I hope they come back. everyone was pretty nervous considering the shootings and bombings that happened this weekend. i think they should be fine though. Inbetween all of these exciting things i've been working on a paper. i started the actual writing of it today and i got 1600 words down in just over an hour and a half. good words too. so, i'm pretty confident about it. he wants 5000 words, but i dont think thats going to happen. close, but not quite. thats like 18 pages, thats like a dissertation, and its only worth one credit back home. so there you go. thats been my life for the past few days.
Beaches!
Alright, I will admit, maybe i skipped one class on tuesday to go to the beach. We went to Paradise Bay. It was so fun, i dont regret it for a second. We found clay! once we started afixing things to each other's backs the other people on the beach began to leave. Greg, Julia and Marlo all had fins on their backs and some how i got an... ashtray? and a parrot. After the beach we came home and had hamburgers on the grill. this time they were homemade burgers with real ground beef! and maybeYesterday (wednesday) I went to Comino. But only because class was canceled. And we had a really really great time. I got to barter with the boatman and we got to go swimming in the freezing cold blue lagoon and lay in the sun all day. then we came home and played capture the flag which was pretty fun even though only 8 of us played. it was boys against girls. boys won, but i was pretty close to catching the one with our flag. if he hadnt jumped over that wall... oh well. we got dirty and painted our faces and wore our sunglasses at night (for super stealth) and today i've posted pictures from the Rabbit, Cat, and Bonsai Show as well as our trips to Blue Grotto, Paradise Bay, and Comino.
Hotdish
Once agian, it's been a while. There just hasnt been too much to report. The weather has turned and it's now sunny and beautiful.
Last week on friday I made Hotdish for the weekly family dinner. it seemed to go over pretty well. Sunday we went to a rabbit, cat, and bonsai show. it was very strange. they had a dog show too. and i saw the biggest rabbit i've ever seen in my whole life! I took pictures.
This past friday Katie's(Idaho) parents were here and so was Paula(italian) so we had a table of 12 for family dinner. Katie's mom made cheese cake and, I dont like cheese cake, but i liked that. A lot.
We went to Blue Grotto on Saturday. it was lovely. The boys went swimming and Jenn and I were posted to J-Watch (JellyfishWatch). We did a pretty good job watching the 2 Jellyfish (JFs) that'd we could see but we werent paying attention to the ones we couldnt see. so, at the last moment i looked over and there was a JF right infront of Greg (julia's friend who's visiting). he was able to avoid it and got out of the water as fast as he could. Then an old fisherman came over plucked a JF right out of the water and proceeded to tell us how they work and how they sting and everything. it was pretty cool. and then he took the JF and chucked it up a hill!
Sunday we were supposed to have a girls soccer tournament, but the girls who organized it decided to cancel it and not tell everyone. they went to comino and 8 of us who would have also have liked to go to Comino met at 1 for a tournament that wasnt to be. we played anyway and we had a good time.
Thats really about all that i've done lately.
I've found a house in duluth with the help of my friend anne, it's nice to have that all squared away and in two and a half weeks i'm going to london for the weekend. there's only 5 weeks left of class and then i'm done!
And now for something completely different
Venice was a blast. I was really happy to see mom and dad and jake finally. They brought me all kinds of yummy food and things too. It didnt start off quite right though. I landed in Venice on saturday and they didnt have my bag. I didnt have an address or a phone number for where we were staying so they couldnt really help me beyond having me leave a discription and giving me a number to call. then, mom and dad's flight got delayed and they missed their connection and so i got to sit around in the expansive Venice airport for 6 hours. it was fun, really. fortunatly i didnt have a bag to lug around so i could go for a walk and watch the boats come in. and i had my cd player and a book. so i wasnt really that bad off. just a little uncomfortable. but, they finally got there and after a round of hugs everything was pretty much excatly like it was before i left, except we were in venice. we stayed in an apartment which was pretty nice, but it would have been better if we'd had a phone so the luggage people could call us and tell us when they were coming with my bag. I had to wait til tuesday to see my bag! We walked all over Venice and saw the Rialto and St. Marco's and the gondolas (didnt get to ride in any though) we bought some squid for dinner at the fish market one day too. that was fun. we also had fun experimenting with the various restaurants. we went to murano and i bought a glass ring (broke it the first day back in malta though... and i didnt get cut) we also went to Verona and saw Juliette's house that was coated in a thick layer of ABC gum. it was pretty nasty. and we saw a roman arena there too. We also got to go shopping in Venice for masks and souvineers. I got a pretty cool mask and a Beckham jersey. and we ate gelato every single day. my favorite flavor combo being chocolate and strawberry. and that was pretty much venice.
When i got back David was barbequing with this new guy, Neil. He was here for 2 weeks 1 week vacation and the 2nd week for a rugby tournament. So the 2nd week of spring break i got to hang out with a rugby team from Northern Ireland. They were really great guys and i had a lot of fun with them. We went to the beach one day and i looked over and there were about 15 guys laying on their backs in a straight line just glowing white. it was pretty hilarious. I got to see my first rugby game too. that is one rough sport. i thought hockey was violent, but it looks like child's play compared to rugby. man!
Receptionist Ray took a group from the residence on a hike on easter. it was a lot of fun and very beautiful. and we had a really nice easter dinner at lori's place too. probably one of the best easter's ever. I have updated my photo site so you can check out all the pictures.
the weather has been sucky since sunday, rainy and grey and gross. its depressing. AND we have to go back to classes. and thats malta for you.
