quote of the day

i need a body sized wet nap.

quote of the day

you're on holiday...calories come later. --Sound of Music tour guide Sue

and

when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window. --Maria von Trapp

quote of the day

writing opera is now my one burning ambition. but they must be French rather than German, and Italian rather than either. --wolfgang amadeus mozart, february 7, 1778

we toured around the his home and birthplace today, which happened to be his birthday. he would have been two hundred and something.

DAY THIRTEEN

we woke up early and jumped on a 7am train for a 2 hour train ride to a little mountain village called fussen. this town is home to the neuschwanstein castle, which disneys sleeping beauty's castle is modeled after, i believe. it is also home to another famous castle, i just dont remember the name of it, or have the patience to go look it up. i loved this little town. albeit a tourist trap, it was quaint and quiet, and a lovely breath of fresh air. we took a tour of the nameless castle, and also took a handful of pictures. then we hiked up a MASSIVE hill to neunschwanstein. i was sweaty and out of breath by the time we reached the top, but the castle was beautiful and worth the hike. while i was silently cursing myself for allowing myself to get so out of shape (as i often do when forced to exert myself), i was mildly entertained by the horse drawn carriage and clean up crew that kept blowing past us. the humor in the foul smelling, zamboni type clean up brigade momentarily took my mind off my burning thighs, for which i was very grateful. anyways, we got to the top and enjoyed even more lovely scenery. now an even better view of the nameless castle that was nestled between trees and high mountain lakes, and the other natural beauties that surrounded us. the beautiful waterfall & bridge kind of made me weak in the knees, but the yodeler and his lederhosen made everything all better, as yodelers and lederhosen often do. i also found a souvenir for my mom, right outside the castle, so that made me pretty excited as well. once we finished the neushcwanstein tour, we took another jumping picture, and then headed back down the mountain. we opted to walk through the town a bit, and discovered the goodness called a "snowball" which was some sort of deep fried rice crispy treat covered in chocolate, whipped cream, frosting, peanut butter, caramel, etc. very unhealthy, i know, but EXTREMELY delicious. we finished all our treats and then enjoyed a 2 hour train ride back to the city. i thought long train rides would really end up being a bummer part of the trip, but they turned out to be totally appreciated. between my ipod and the question game and figuring out the exact way to settle in to our little train benches, our train rides were extremely necessary recoup time. we made it back to the hotel settled in for a minute and then headed out for dinner. we were serenaded by some little boy we named piccolo pete. when we got his attention from the 6th floor hotel room, his recorder squawked & squealed in the most hilariously piercing way. we got packed for the next day to head to salzburg, and then hit the sack.

quote of the day

keep your sticky body away from me. --george

DAY TWELVE

so after the glorious night train experience, we found ourselves in munich. i had heard munich described as the most beautiful city in germany, and so i was extremely excited to get to spend a few days there. we jumped off the train and spent a little bit of free WIFI time at the station starbucks where we each ordered a cup of hot water for our instant oatmeal packets. a bit sick of the hostel scene, we opted to try to find an affordable hotel for our 2 days in munich. clean bathroom & comfortable beds being the priority. lucky for us,we found a hotel, booked it online and then started walking. it was only a few blocks from the station, which was great. what was NOT great was that we had to pass a handful of porn shops & strip clubs to get there. i was pretty surprised to see such raunchiness in what was rumored such a "beautiful" city. we got to the hotel, finagled with the front desk lady for a bit, showered off the night train nastiness and then got ready for church. after a 15 minute train ride and then wandering for another half hour, we realized we wouldn't be making it to church today. who would have thought it would be so tough to find church (or anything else, for that matter) when you can't ask for directions because you dont speak the language or understand the street signs or maps, etc. it was sad, and a bit frustrating. a bit dejected we headed back to the train and found some awesome blackberry bushes just on the other side of the fence. they were beautiful!! nothing to assuage frustration like a delectable treat. (for the record, my church attendance can not be bought, bribed swayed with food. but these berries were great mood healers.) we got back to the hotel and napped and then headed out to rathaus square for dinner. german food is interesting. lots of sausage and spicy meats and very vinegary salads. it was kind of an appreciated change of pace from all the sweets & pastries & nutella id been eating. giant pretzels are served like dinner rolls, which is kind of fun, and they also serve a beverage called, apfelshuler, which is a lot like martinelli's sparkling apple cider, but not as sweet. the little place we found to eat was pretty and quiet, but overall, i dont know that german dining experience is anything to write home about. after dinner we napped again (sigh) and then went on a gelato tour. we tried a few scoops of gelato at 2 or 3 different establishments within walking distance of the hotel, and we were not dissappointed. afterwards, we walked around the square a bit more, stopped by a pizzeria to watch a few highlights from the tour de france, and then waited for the giant cuckoo clock to ring. after about a half hour chris & mel got tired of waiting and decided to head back to the hotel. george & i were sure if we waited long enough we be able to witness ALL the cuckoo clock goodness, but even after an hour & a half, such was not the case. we got back to the hotel we found that my less than brilliant laundry drying strategies left my new jeans with unfortunately placed singe marks, and very easily could have started a fire. oops. sorry munich inn. its a good thing i brought another pair of pants!!

DAY ELEVEN

today we got up and checked out of our hostel. prime location, but i wont miss being inundated with marijuana smoke every moment of the day. george & i split off from chrissy & mel so that we could go to the anne frank museum. we had all of our stuff with us, and george held our place in line while i ran over to the post office to mail some postcards and mail home my broken point and shoot and a few other unnecessary items in hopes of lightening my load. (NOTE: the booth women have never been known to be efficiently light packers. this trip has proven such to be absolutely correct. thank heavens for the mail system.) i got back and while the line had moved, george told me that he had been informed that we would not be able to enter the house with our packs on, and the worst part, that there was no coat room for us to leave our things. after having waited in line for an hour, and knowing that we had to meet the girls to make our train to den haag to see the temple, we were a bit stumped. out of options, we asked an artist who was selling his work right across from the house if he would mind watching our bags while we visited the museum. "how much?" 5 euro ah, no thats too much... anyways after speaking with him i turned around and walked into the bike lane and into the path of an extremely preturbed older gentleman. i assume an amsterdam native, by his aggresive cycling posture. i narrowly escaped with my life, while he narrowly escaped with both his balance and dignity. had all the bystanders not been present im pretty sure he would have physically rebuked me such an indiscretion. luckily for me (well, and him too, i suppose), there were men women & children all around. we got inside the museum, and, like many other things on this trip, it was sort of surreal. i remembered reading "the diary of anne frank" in middle school, and so to actually be in her tiny attic home was very humbling. to realize it was between those confining walls that she ate & slept & read & wrote & played & dreamed...and the idea that she did all this while in hiding with her family was...quieting.

i long to ride a bike, dance whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free.--anne frank

on the way out of the museum there is a mural on the wall that describes how one cannot fully comprehend the pain and suffering encompassed in the holocaust. one particular quote read, "perhaps it is better that way. if we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people we wouldn't be able to live..."

after the anne frank house we headed to the train station where we took a 20 minute train ride to den haag to try and find the temple. i had the address, and figured it would be pretty easy to find. its funny, because while i always seem to assume that, the sitautions that arise never seem to validate that assumption. an extremely eager cab driver offered to take us to the temple. SWEET! someone who knows his way around. you can imagine our confused expressions when he pulled up to a town building adorned with a golden rooster, where he said, "there. your temple." "um, that is not our temple." "yes it is." the exchange continued like this for a little while, he drove to another location, a shopping center, and then "encouraged" us to end this 10 euro cab ride. boo. we wandered for a little bit, as a local shop owner where the mormon temple was and then, lo and behold, we found it! we were so excited. (on this trip, i learned that it is a very easy to be less than steadfast when you are searching for something in an unfamiliar place. this time at least we had both directions and a picture of what we were trying to find. that is more than we've had in the past.) i kind of started to laugh out of pure glee. i love the temple, but i especially love FINDING the temple. we took pictures, and then walked back through the town, grabbed some food at this awesome takeout grill and then tried to find our way back to the train. we lucked out once again, and then made our way back to the amsterdam station before our night train to munich.

the idea of a night train is rad. sleeping and travelling all at the same time for one price? YES, please. however, when you take away one or both of those necessary pieces, it becomes increasingly less rad every moment that you are either not sleeping or not travelling. travel--yes we did. all the way to munich. sleep, well not so well. there were no cabins available, so we settled on reclining seats. the bulkhead seats had oodles of space, perfect for a long legged creature like myself, but the rest of the seats, well, were not designed for the vertically challenged. and i got bug bites. not my favorite nights sleep. there. done complaining. we got to munich and had the full day ahead of us, and so thats what counts. =)

quote of the day

an american girl in anti-bomb hat? interesting. --windmill owner, outterkirk, holland

DAY SEVEN

We slept on the benches at the sushi restaurant until about 430…and what a good sleep it was…really. We did awake, however, to find that our idea was catching…as there were various other vagabond types dispersed throughout the Sushi Yo booths. We gathered up our belongings and headed to our 3.5 horu train for Paris…sans travel brush and journal. We got to paris at about 10 am and went straight to our hostel…crossing our fingers and hoping that we would not be disappointed or disgusted, or both, with the fruits of our internet booking endeavors. And we weren’t. once we found our little place and dropped our packs off we headed back to the train to go downtown. We stopped at the Eiffel tower. …it was funny, it is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, and is THE symbol of Paris itself, and so standing there, in its gigantic shadows seemed kind of surreal. No Parisians serenading us with their accordions (that was only on the train)….no scarf & beret fashion statements, but paris and the Eiffel tower. It really was a lot prettier than I had expected. So many things can go wrong and switched around on a trip like this that I think I tried to protect myself (shocking, I know) by trying to NOT get too excited about any specific area slash monument slash city, so as not to be let down. I’ve always wanted to see the Eiffel tower, and so to finally be there was the bees knees. How did we celebrate? By taking a jumping picture, of course. Once we tired of jumping and repeating the phrase, “no gypsy” to all who approached us trying to coax our euros right out of our money belts, we trekked all over paris. We visited some type of grand veterans residence one of the French roayls established to honor and shelter those who had served their country. We passed both the grand palace and the petit palace and down Champs d’Elyse to get a view (from afar) of the Arc de Triomphe. Then we walked down along the siene to Notre Dame where we toured the beautiful cathedral, ate crepes and much to the entertainment of the other tourists at the square, took another jumping picture. We left notre dame in search of something extremely satisfying for dinner, and a few blocks later we found ourselves on a bustling side street complete with crowded shops and eateries. This is where I had my first kebab…not the skewered, alternating vegetable meat variety, but the gyro type. This one was stuffed with lamb, lettuce, ketchup and FRENCH FRIES. You heard me. They put the French fries right into the sandwich. It was MASSIVE, but I enjoyed every bit of mine and half of chrissys. Twenty minutes later I felt as though I might slip into a food coma, but there were no regrets. It was excellent and worth every bit of the seven month food baby. After eating we headed back to the Eiffel tower to get the night light view. We missed the glittering, but enjoyed the scene. Hundreds of people on blankets with full picnics and wine bottles just soaking in the warm Parisian night. Very relaxed. Like there was no where anyone else had to be. Ever. Then we realized we might miss the last bus and get locked out of hostel and so we were on the move. Again. We made it back, showered and got ready for bed. I snuck downstairs and emailed my mom to let her know what we were up to before heading to bed.

DAY SIX

We woke up and checked out of our little hotel in Ilford. It was pretty unsettling to leave a confortable nights sleep unsure of the quality of the conditions of the next room I would sleep in. We headed to the train station to book our train to paris, only to arrive and find out there would be no room for us until the following day. Boo. Kind of. It held up our itinerary a day, but allowed us a chance to get lost in London for a bit...to fill up that day we went to abbey road and ran amok in the crosswalk from the famous beatles record sleeve and then walked around temple church, westminster abbey and big ben. we have a new hobby for our european adventure...taking jumping pictures in front of noteworthy monuments. jumping picture yesterday = stonehenge...today? westminster abbey. after causing a semi ruckus on the lawn of the abby we headed to GAP and McDonalds for a two hour dinner & free wifi stint. I may or may not have fallen asleep on our stools right there in the dining establishment. I woke up to the glare of a woman sitting across the room from me. awkward. Oops. More accommodation searches. Bless George and the laptop he brought. This type of trip would be virtually impossible without the internet. We finished at McDonalds, we headed to kings cross rail station just before 10pm where we spent the night (or a five hour nap) on the booth benches of a sushi restaurant. really. don't knock it 'til you try it...

DAY FIVE

Because I was lacking not only pajamas and a toothbrush, but also an alarm clock, I had to rely solely on prayer to wake up and make the first train to Victoria Station…and prayer works. Woke up from an excellent four hour nap in two over stuffed airport chairs. We made it to the coach station and we switched off looking for Melanie at the burger king and George at the coach station. we decided we needed to divide and conquer…Chrissy looking for Melanie and me looking for George. I did laps around the coach station and paged him over the loud speaker, but to no avail. I returned to the train station, empty handed. When I came around the corner and saw Chrissy, Mel and George all standing together in our meeting spot I threw my stuff on the ground and layed down in the middle of the station out of pure unadulterated relief. Our little group was united for the first time and we headed to the coach station for our all day tour to Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. Our bus overheated and broke down on the tour, which added to the hilarity of the day’s events. Bath was lovely, Windsor Castle was elaborate and Stonehenge was not only a lot smaller than I had pictured, but also home to our very first “jumping shot.” Aside from all the jumping it was such a peaceful spot….I could have layed on the grassy English countryside for the remainder of the day. We piled back in the bus and headed home. A few much naps were stolen along the way home. Once we arrived back to the coach station, we went on a hunt for fish & chips…we found an open pub, but no fish & chips. England is definitely not known for its cuisine, which I’m sure will be made up for in the weeks to come. We finished our dinner and jumped on the Tube back to Ilford, where I realized I must have left my travel journal on the bus. Curse. And I already had written close to 10 pages. Double curse.

quote of the day

margot astol: if i were your wife, i'd poison your tea..
winston churchill: if i were your husband, i'd drink it.

a little taste...

jumping for joy at stonehenge

so far we have close to 800 pictures from the past few days...buy unfortunately they dont want to load right now and its almost 3 in the morning and everyone wants to go to sleep and they dont trust me (or our neighbors) to be down in the hotel lobby by myself. which is safe and excellent, but sad for a lack of time to load pics to the blog. so, heres a rundown...late flight, LONDON, no place to stay, sketchy hostel, half dressed man hugging a boombox in my bed, tube & bus pass, double decker bus tour, tate modern museum, good hostel out in the boonies, losing george, missing the tube, spending the night in heathrow, running between victoria coach and victoria train stations, windsor castle, bath, stonehenge, losing my travel journal, spending an arm and a leg to get to the way to the temple and the finding out it is closed for maitenance, portobello road, pub for dinner, free wifi that actually works, nice police officers, cell phone that never worked, trevor and his umbrella, broken down tour bus,

DAY FOUR

the details of one of the most stressful, unsettling, crazy, long days of my life will come soon. maybe when i'm home and i have the emotional capacity to relive them

quote of the day

me: good morning
milkman: good mornin.
milkman: are you american?
me: is it that obvious?
milkman: you didn't even have to speak.

and

i'm sorry girls the temple won't open until tuesday...

DAY THREE

Did anyone else know its light in the UK at 4:30 in the morning? I certainly didn’t. You can imagine my surprise when I awoke at this hour, panicked because I thought we had slept in, only to look at my clock and realize it was still technically the middle of the night. We got up around 7 and quickly packed up our things and went downstairs (to the pub) for the free breakfast. Nutella has become a very important part of my life. Chocolate & peanut butter sandwiches. Yes, please. It was so splendid I made another for the road. So much for operation summer (2012) body…and I have a feeling the nutella is only the beginning. Crepes. Snitzels, streudels, baguettes…..dear heavens. Yes only the beginning. Anyway, once we took full advantage of the handy pub below we jumped back on the Tube and began the trek to ilford. Who knew that something “in London” could take an hour by train. I sure didn’t. no complaints though. The tube to the bus to the front stoop of Park Hotel…3 beds and a communal bathroom sans creepy boombox man? Yes please. Relief doesn’t begin to describe my emotions upon turning our room key. We dropped our stuff and jumped on the bus and back on the Tube headed downtown. We spent an expensive 15 minutes at the internet café in the Tourist Center and then decided to take a London city bus tour, on one of the red double decker buses. Totally cliché, but totally rad at the same time. On the 2 hour ride we saw all the major london sites, so it was totally worth the 20 pounds. The bus dropped us off right outside the national gallery where I saw a a ton of noteworthy paintings (so noteworthy I can’t remember what they were, other than the fact there were a few REAL LIFE van goghs. Pure awesome authenticity.) After the bus tour and national gallery, we jumped on the local bus and found Zara’s…a store chrissy had heard was super cute and super cheap. It turned out to be neither. So we went to H&M instead. While it is extremely hard for me to justify spending hard earned cash on clothes or other things for myself. It is even more difficult to justify spending money on such things AND having to increase the load in my backpack even by an ounce. Having to haul all my junk around on my back like a camel is going to do wonders for my spending habits.



We wandered away from the shopping area and grabbed some food before heading to the Tate Museum of modern art. They had an exhibit about the Urban History of Photography. It was super interesting. It contrasted the differences between candid or street photography and formal studio portraiture. How the latter is usually reserved for the financially well off “dignified” portion of the population, and how candids are more likely to depict the common man in his natural “lowly” habitat. It was an interesting commentary, and an even more interesting viewpoint illustrated through photography. It was fun to see one photographers play on this and demonstrate it through a line called “Jump.” This line was where the by taking famous or “important” people and then photographing them jumping….all barriers broken down. All images washed away, only their underlying humanity and personality coming forward through a second captured on film, usually laughing or smiling. It was awesome. Another entertaining line within the exhibit was from a woman (I can’t remember her name or where she was from…all these details were in the travel journal that I lost. =( who would get hollered at by various men on her trek through sketchy parts of town on her way home. Upon their hollering, she would snap their photograph. Once printed, she captioned the print with their degrading comments. (the eyes through which their greedy sideways glances escaped were whited out to protect their privacy & identity.) photojournalism at its finest.

After the Tate we headed to yet another internet café to book our accommodations for a few more days…two hours later we realized we were about to miss the last train and so we had to sprint to the Tube station. Exhausted and out of breath we made our train and an hour later we were home. A hot shower in a clean bathroom had never been so appreciated.

quote of the day

me: its raining..
tour guide: welcome to summer in london

DAY TWO: Seedy

We arrived at heathrow, London airport at just after 3 pm. We sailed through customs and immigration (YAY for the second stamp in my passport…) and then met up with Melanie, the third of our group of four. Once we gathered our bags and mel we bought 3 day tube passes and headed downtown in search of a place to stay. We stopped at hyde park first, and realized we had no idea where to even start looking. So I asked a hot dog vendor for recommendations. As he was explaining how to get to st. christophers, someone came and tried to steal something out of his cart…so he excused himself and inbetween striking the offender sputtering off a colorful four letter word vocabulary, he came back to continue giving me directions. I was a bit terrified and a bit amused that he was so kind to us and so coarse with the thief. After thanking him, We got back on the tube. Tired and travelled out, we wandered about for close to an hour before we found the first recommended hostel. St. christophers. By this time I was sweaty, achy, grouchy and wishing that it was socially acceptable to wear the same clothes for the entire 35 day trip, so as to avoid having to pack much of anything. I was tempted to lay down on the floor in the lobby of the hotel and ask if we could just shell out a couple of pounds for the floor space instead of traipsing to another location, but I didn’t ask. Chrissy made a call to the other place, and off we went. We took the tube to the new cross exit and began wandering again. While doing so I kept remembering what rick steve’s said about the “seedy” parts of town. While im still not sure what seedy means, im pretty sure we were in a seedy part of town. We found our hostel and climbed upstairs. Once checking in we climbed another flight of stairs to find a dirty, dark, smelly room with 3 sets of bunk beds. My favorite part, however, that there was a partially dressed, possibly high middle aged man hugging an old school boom box wrapped in the sheets of mine and chrissy’s assigned bed. Uh…awkward silence. Um, which bed are you assigned to? 4. Oh that’s the top bunk. Awkward silence. Um…if you want to stay there we can take the top. Ok. Awesome. We dropped our bags in the corner, locked them, and then headed to the internet café, where we spent the next hour or two looking for different accomondations. We found a place, the park hotel essex in ilford, and booked it for 2 nights. Once I finished booking the hotel, I emailed my mom and a few friends asking for their continued prayers while on our trip. I was rattled about our temporary place of residence, but relieved it would only be for one night. After lingering as long as possible in the internet café, we collected our belongings and headed back down the street towards our hostel. Not wanting to go up to our room and joining our new bunkmates any sooner than necessary, we ducked into the pub located just below our hostel. Loud music, low lighting, social atmosphere, made it a little difficult for the trip planning pow wow we were going for, but it was still an appreciated escape. Within a few moments my lap and surrounding couch cushions were littered with pages from the guide books I ripped apart an hour prior to my departure, as well as London walking and Tube maps. The girls and I got some good planning done, but were apparently oblivious to our surroundings. We failed to notice our company happened to be predominantly well dressed, clean men in their late twenties. You do the math. Leaving the establishment appreciatively unscathed we headed back to our room, where we quickly changed and climbed onto our bunk, sans a shower. In some situations its just better to do without. This was one of those situations.

Day One: Europe Here I Come...

While my european adventure started months ago with all the reading and planning and researching and such, today the travelling officially started. my flight was scheduled to leave at just after 3pm California time, and so I figured it would be good to get to the airport by 1 pm, because it was an international flight. Cass got off work early, and after taking a picture of me and my #1 travel buddy, my 34 pound pack, we headed down 880 at about 12:50pm on our way to SFO. What we didn’t remember until about the 580 interchange was that we needed to take the san mateo bridge. Oops. We flipped back around and then got to the airport by about 1:25. NO TOO shabby, but I was still quite nervous. It was weird…in the days leading up to my departure, with the exception of a few fleeting moments, excitement was absent. The morning of I just felt incredibly unsettled, like I didn’t want to go anymore. Who needs Europe anyway? What really concerned me was that I wasn’t sure if my unsettled feelings were an inspired prompting to NOT continue on my voyage or just some travel jitters. I focused on the latter and set out anyway. There was a definite lack of airport security mishaps and so I checked in and got to my gate at exactly 1:45pm. Awesome.
So I aimlessly meandered around the unfamiliar airport, bought snacks and made a few phone calls before getting on my plane. The flight the denver was quite uneventful. Once I arrived, I met up with chrissy, we grabbed some food and then rushed to our gate to board our heathrow bound plane. Together. Thank you doug with STA travel for making that happen. Once on our plane, be began getting ourselves and our menagerie of carry on items situated. Then, it began to get very hot. And stale. And the lights kept flickering on and off. After about an hour of this, the pilot came on the loudspeaker and told us that the ground electrical unit was damaged and that they were trying to make it work, but that they may have to find another one before departure. I don’t know about you, but I was totally fine with them taking more time to make sure everything was working right….no need for ‘uh-oh’s” over the pacific ocean. Especially when I had already been unsettled earlier that day. They ended up not being able to fix the unit, and so we had to deplane and reboard a separate, functioning plane. The flight that was supposed to leave denver at 8:25 pm, finally pulled out of the gate at about 11:30pm. Despite a few turbulent moments where I thought, “great. We’re goin down….” The flight itself was pretty uneventful and I was able to sleep through most of it.

ahhhhhhhhh!

i had entirely planned on blogging about all my EFY adventures BEFORE i left for the grand continent of europe, but seeing as how i am not packed and my flight leaves in less than 6 hours i guess that won't be the case....

may i just say, that despite my lack of blogging about my trip, my excitement seems as though it might just over take me. i have dreamed about this trip for the past 8 years. AND NOW IM GOING! stay tuned for pictures, i'm hoping to be able to blog while im over there....we shall see...

quote of the day

imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. -- Francis Bacon

quotes of the day

lets just say, thank goodness for pants. --joshy

and

wienershnitzel settles my stomach --denise

quotes of the day

participant: that is dirty. (referring to brad's dinner.)
brad: YOU are dirty. and jealous.

and

he is a ninja at ping pong. --dallas

a talking to

so i always figured the first time i would dive into a mob of rioting 18 year old boys would be within the walls of my classroom. NOT at EFY. that, however, was not the case. in all the friday night EFy glory, some of boys began getting much too rowdy. like punching, stampeding, pushing, screaming rowdy. with a little help from beana, i successfully broke up a mosh pit, and all of its punching, headbutting glory. we gave the boys another chance, they of course, weighed the consequences (beana and i descending upon the situation in a screaming, frenzied fit) and then decided they should try again. we were there in an instant, and much to the surprise of the male counselors present, we not only broke up the mosh pit, but also successfully corralled and dragged all 8 boys into the lobby with piercing looks and pointed fingers for their well deserved talking to.

EFY is so grand...

DGL: What kind of animals should we be?
me: Ummmm…..lets be chickens.
DGL: Chickens on fire? Yes, definitely.

we proceeded to cross the finish line in a squaking, sprinting wing flapping frenzy, upon which occasion he dropped to the ground and began frantically rolling around. (to put the flames out, of course.) I fanned and blew on him to help with the process before heading back across the finish line. love him. love games night. love efy.

for the record...

it is.

complicated.

sometimes it feels like each thought or interaction with him is a calculated test to see if my heart is healed enough to love him and wish him well, but to also remain closed off and separate, yet still sensitive enough to be eager and open to someone new. how complicated.