a night with the stars...

ok so i just got back from my holiday going about my business and anyways i have been a bit busy latley. so this past weekend courtney, amaya, jenna, and i gathered up our blankets made some sandwhiches and headed into london to have a picnic in hyde park. we also stopped by harrod's to buy some fun sweets to eat after our sandwhiches. basically its been really nice out and we wanted an excuse for going outside to play about. so when we got to hyde park we found a nice place to sit and people watch. we sat next to the serpertine lake and just chilled and played the "would you rather game" my favourite one that i came up with was... "would you rather have rakes for arms or wheels for legs?" think about it and get back to me.

amaya and i waiting on the train platform to go into waterlooall of us looking really intelligent eating at our picnic! :)

so after that amazing day it was hard to top it but we so did. so on monday in england was st. george's day and london decided to celebrate with trying to beat the world record of the largest coconut orchestra EVER! you might be thinking kathleen, what are you talking about. well think back to monty python and the holy grail. well basically a whole bunch of people gathered in trafalgar square and we signed our name on a register so they could count us all up and we were given coconuts so when the time was right we all clapped them together!!!!

some of the crowd working their coconuts!

so we had a dress rehersal and the cast of monty python and the holy grail on the west end came and coached us through a song from the play and told us when to clap our coconuts together. it was soooooooooooooooooo much fun. nothing like a few thousand people all together clapping coconuts together. and the best part was that it was all FREE!!!! oh yeah. and after we broke the rocord. the previous record had been held in new york with about 1789 people or so with:

oh yeah! when i come back to the states if you all want my autograph thats totally cool. cause i am now officially in the guinness book of work records!!!!! genius!

anyways after the breaking of the record they showed the movie in the square and everyone sat down and it was turned to a giant outdoor festival!!! it was so cool. if you have been to trafalgar square that just invision almost 5000 people sitting on the ground laughing at this movie and using their coconuts in the appropriate places!!!!!! it was brilliant!!!!!

everyone hangin out in trafalgar sqaure waiting for the movie to start...

just a few knights of the round table....

so after the coconut orchestra we ran around the corner and hit up leicester square where the london premier of spiderman III was going on. it was insane. i thought that i had just left a lot of people. but there were so many more at the premier. i was pushed and i was shoved but basically i saw everyone i wanted to see...

not a good picture because my camera is lame BUT the blonde girl with the black backless dress is kirsten dunst...good ole spidey himself, toby mcguire. basically this face is saying "kathleen, run away with me" but i told him no...my heart belongs to his co-star, james franco.

after this amaya and i grabbed some dinner so we could kill some time before we ran to picadilly circus to go the stage door to grab daniel radcliffe's autograph cause i still havent gotten it from the time that i went to see equus like oh i dont know...about a month ago. so we get to the stage door and hang out for about an hour and daniel never came out (or any of the other cast members) lame. i guess they dont come out very often. so now i have to go back again sometime and try to get this stupid kid's autograph. BUT all is good cause while we were waiting there none other than james franco (from spiderman III) came to the back stage door to say hey to daniel and we were basically about 3 feet from eachother!!!! :)

he proposed and i said yes....so basically my life is set. see you all at the trevi fountain!!!

so that is my life basically. hanging out with stars, rising to stardom myself. i dont think that my life can hit another high point. i might as well stop blogging now forever cause from now on all my blogs with just be going down hill.

rome in picture format

so after greece us three went to rome. and i feel instead of boring people with stupid details that nobody really cares about i would try blogging in pictures (with captions, silly) and highlighting important parts and maybe a thought i have along the way. mainly the reason for this is because i have a big ambition of maybe doing two blogs tonight...we'll see.

danielle, myself, courtney and in front of the colosseum. we got a great deal on the photo. inside the colosseum...and then what do you know...there i am in front of the colosseum!!!!the trevi fountain. hands down my most FAVOURITE place in all of rome. i seriously could sit here for hours and days and the i could basically die here. it was so pretty. it's so crazy cause its just on the backside of a building, so you are walking down a street and then all of a sudden there is this gorgeous giant fountain!

here i am throwing in a coin. if you throw in one coin you will return to rome. if you throw in three than you are supposed to fall in love in rome. i only threw in one cause my italian isnt good enough. and because the only coins i had were large coins. you better believe i am throwing a twenty in that fountain!

me at the fountain at night with a rose that a kid from the hostel bought me...aww how sweet.the next day we went to the vatican! here i am doing the only cool pose one can do in st peter's square. we were kind morons cause we went on a tuesday and we didnt know this but it was planned that on wednesday the pope was gonna come out and wave his hand. uh oh. our bad. thats ok this way we avoided the crowds!

and i read in the papers today that the pope abolished limbo. can he do that?

we went and saw the sistine chapal and all of michelangelo's stuff. this is a painting that raphael (my favourite ninja turtle) did. it adorned the walls of a former dining room. huh go figure.

we did see the sistine chapel and it was really cool, really giant. i wasnt ready for all that. and by the time that i left my neck was hurting from looking up so much. oh the price you pay to view art.

some of the guards at the vatican....they know they look cool.after we were all vaticaned out we decided to walk home and while we were walking home we watched the clouds roll in, and the next thing we know we are in a freak hail strom. it was insane. but fun.

*also i forgot i saw where pope john paul II is burried. its really pretty. he is burried with all sorts of other popes in sorta a catacombe like basement. but he has flowers all over and a giant white block that has his name in it, and its too bad cause you cant take photos...otherwise i would have one. try googling it if you are really interested. but you probably arent.

are final full day in rome we walked around and wrapped up things he hadnt done yet, so we went to a museum where we saw all sorts of really famous sculptures (or so i was told) the only one i recognised was this one:

the statue of romlus and remus with their mama, the she wolf. i am sure you all know the story. sons of jupiter raised by a she wolf then romlus killed remus to have a great city...hence rome. there is more to it but thats the jist if you are looking at the screen and have no idea what i am talking about.i dont know why i keep putting this photo up, i think probably because its the only picture that i have with my hair down. hm. right now my hair is in hair limbo (not long and not short) but since limbo has been abolished i dont know where my hair is.the best gelato ever (minus festival del gelato...which by the way whenever people told me they just came from florence i would ask if they went to f.d.g or if they were headed that way i told them EXACTLY where it was. a kid at my hostel told me he was going there next, and he had a map of florence so i grabbe a pen and circled the spot for him. i should have gotten his email or something to see if he really went there or not) for 2 euro, AND it came with whip cream!we walked up to a park and saw the view of rome, here i am with rome.

this park was cool cause it had a giant statue dedicated to garibaldi (one of the unifiers of italy) and since i JUST wrote a paper about that before i left for holiday it was all still fresh in my brain and it was just really cool to see that statue.

basically there you go. i spent 3 full days in rome and it was hot. i had a good time i learnt a lot stayed in the best hostel i have had yet. found the place where i am gonna get married (trevi fountain) and it was just a really good way to end my trip!!!! now i have 2 more weeks of school and i am done with classes with only essays and exams to deal with!!!!!!!!!!!!

greece is now my middle name part II

pretty sunset from our 15 hour ferry ride...

ok so where did i leave off????? um i dont remember so i will just go from where i want to blog from... :)

so athens, our first day, anyways we grabbed lunch after walking around the acropolis and posing with the parthenon about a billion times. we headed to main area with lots of street vendors and food. by now we were all starving and ready to hang out for a bit and people watch. thanks to rick steve's europe on a shoestring we were able to find a place that was only a euro sixty for a sandwhich. i forget what it is called salaldkjfldjfladjfladjflzki. or something like that. a pita with tom's, beef, onions and some amazing seasoning. basically we ate there every day....IT WAS SO GOOD, i loved it.monica, me, courtney, wing, and danielle in front of the parthenonview of athens from the top of the acropolis, you can barely see the outskirts of the cityoh! courtney and i playing among ruins.....

after hanging around for about an hour in the square we decided to move on towards a giant hill that (once recommended by the guide book) was supposed to have a really amazing view for the sunset. and we figured that by the time we actually got there (after slowly moving that way) we would be there. so we headed that direction and ran into the royal palace. we decided that it was a perfect time to sit on the giant stairs and wait for the changing of the guard and people watch again. we had fun trying to decide what country different people were from. when it was time to go check out the guards we were surprised to see the outfits on these guys. i had never seen any uniform like this before, or any routine of the changing like this before either.

they were all wearing skirts and doing odd karate crane moves, i was laughing really hard. it was just so odd to see!!!!!and duh i got my picture taken with him....i mean come on!

after that we found ourselves closer to the hill than we thought so we went to a supermarket an picked up some picnic like food so we could have a dinner while atop this hill. on our way there i decided that i was SICK of being taunted with all these orange trees that were everywhere, and i wanted an orange. did i mention that basically the only trees in greece are orange and palm trees. it makes the place smell brilliant. its amazing. so i picked an orange.but i didnt know if it was gonna be good or not since it came right off the tree...IT WAS SO HORRIBLE AND SOUR. oh my goodness, it was so sour i couldnt spit it out cause my jaw locked down and i basically had to bring the jaws of life to my mouth.....never again will i pick an orange from a tree...i know what happens.

once at the top of the hill we just waited to see the sunset, but it got really cold really fast and began to rain. so we ran inside the church that was up there for a bit to wait for the sunset to hurry up and then came out for the tail end of it freezing like no tomorrow. after that we went back to the hostel, we recharged and went out for a glass of wine and met up with some british girls from our hostel and all admired our real cute greek waitor.view of the acropolis from atop the tall mountain thing...watching the clouds move in right before it began to rain on us...back on the ground we walked past the acropolis to get a good night photoi bought a gift for my backpack (grief of a sailor, a.k.a grief) and i thought the sailboat was fitting.

the next day we went to a museum, went back to the same place for lunch, people watched, went to hadrian's library, roman agora, olympic stadium, and the temple of olympus (or the temple of zeus).

this was my favourite place in all of athens i just liked how GIANT these columns were, and its fun to try and think of how massive and impressive this place would of been in its prime

look how small i am in comparision...

that column fell over, and i felt bad for him so i named him wayne. it seemed fitting.this statue at the museum was giving me a look i didnt like...so i challenged him and he accepted. my favourite exhibit in the entire museum, only because i made the same thing senior year in pottery class, i made a piggy bank named henry EXACTLY like this! not a lie.me (with perfect form) in front of the olympic stadium about to win the gold.a view from the ferry going to the island.


our last full day in athens we decided to head out to an island that was about an hour away. originally we had planned to ferry it out to mykonos and meet up with mary but we had some problems with the hostel and realised that it was really expensive for just one night on the island. i was bummed. (sorry mary....) anyways we ferryed (can i make that verb?) out to an island called aegian ( i am pretty sure thats what it is called). anyways we get there and we headed right to the beach to sit and eat (it was lunch time and we brough picnic food). we basically hung out on the beach for the rest of the day playing in the water and being in the sun. none of us had our bathing suits though since we had originally planned to go to delphi that day, but that didnt work out. oh well we still had loads of fun.

the sun felt so good....can you tell i enjoyed myself???
wing was on the shore and told us to pose for the picture...this is the pose i went into instantly. i think that cements my coolness.courtney and i were digging our feet into the sand to see if we could find the bottom of the ocean. sadly neither of us did, we only got ourselfs really stuck in the sand and about fell over. like the poses we both had different techniques to get our feet into the sand.after playing in the sand we went to a cute restaurant on the ocean that was all white and had pretty couches for people to hang out on with tiki torches and huge fire pits. it was amazing. but basically i had about 5 euro on me total cause i didnt bring my wallet with me. ( i dont know why) and this is what 5 euro will buy you. a strawberry apple smoothie!!!

after the island we went back to the hostel to shower and change out went out to dinner for a farewell dinner to athens. it was amazing and i felt like i was gonna be full forever. the next day we had to catch a train back to patras so we could grace superfast ferrys with our beautiful selves for another 15 hour ferry ride back to bari so we could grab a train to rome. all in all greece was amazing and it smelt good and was just brilliant. i already know where i am gonna spend my honeymoon:

greece.

greece is now my middle name part I

my first view of greece from the ferry....


ok so as we all know i am sure i had like a 2 1/2 or 3 week holiday from school and during that time i went to norway, greece, and rome. now i will begin to tell you about the second two parts of my trip. so here we go.

alright so my trip consisted of myself, courtney, and another girl named danielle. we left on easter sunday and headed to stansted the airport that is like 2 hours basically away from me ugh. so we show up and its basically the most unholiday i felt so far from being here. i mean no easter egg hunt? whats that about??? so we jump our flight to bari italy and get our trip underway. since we couldnt find a single hostel in bari we decided to stay in the airport on sunday night and then head into town the next day and catch out ferry outta italy and into greece. our plan worked well until we found out this airport you dont really sleep at. it was nothing like stansted at night where it feels like you are at a giant slumber party. oh well after some very broken italian with night security we got it all sorted. after a very cold night cause they turned what seemed like arctic wind on (or some serious ac) we woke up around 6 and kinda hung out until we could get into town. our day in bari consisted of us walking around the port and by the ocean and then going back to the ferry launch and sitting out on a terrace for about 4 hours soaking up the sun and starting our tan! so when we finally hopped our ferry to patras greece (which was a nice 15 hour ferry trip) we found our place where we were gonna be sleeping and settled in. the place we were sleeping was the deck. yep the deck. the actual deck. imagine that. we didnt think it was gonna be that bad BUT the way they have it set up we were under cover but it creates a wind tunnel. the coldest thing i have EVER slept in in my life. it was horrible. so i woke up the other girls and we moved inside and slept on a stair landing, but it was hard to find room since all the other cheap/poor/unsuspecting backpackers were sprinkled all over the floor.

we rolled into patras the next day around noon but that was after us being woken up because some guy was trying to hoover us up, and i woke up to him basically sucking up my hair. whatever. not the best wake up call. so we get to patras hope a bus into athens, get lost because a lady cant give good directions and then find our hostel on good ole victor hugo street. when we got there we meet our other room mate and her name was wing from taiwan, she was sooo cool. we ended up hanging out with her everyday of our trip there. we called it an early night after some food and checking out the city at night a bit since we were all tired from travelling. but the next day....

we got up pretty early and head up to the acropolis!!!! we walked up there and found out the good news that all students within the eu get in for free. awesome, thank you england!!!!! when we got up there we actually saw some kids that we had met on the ferry and had seen previously the night before while we were eating. thought that was pretty funny since there are how many people in athens???? so we get up there and the first thing i see is...

forbidden to sing or make loud noises???? seriously what are they on about??? dont they know who i am??? whatev acropolis!

it was so crazy though being up there cause you can see soooo much of the city and i really had no idea how big athens is, but the city just crawls into the hills like giant arms. crazy. so even thought we were up there around 10 am it was already SOOO insane hot out. oh my goodness. it was rough, sweating buckets just standing is always attractive. but it was so crazy to see all of these different buildings, like the parthenon still standing after about a gazillion years, it genius.

it took me forever to take this picture cause people kept walking in front of me. i was mad.

ok dont hate me but it is really early in the morning and for some odd reason i started blogging and i wasnt tired and now i am three pictures in and about to pass out from exhaustion. so sorry to be so lame but oh well you will get over it. i will blog later and until then you all can deal with the amazingness that is like oh i dont know....4 paragraphs that lack significant detail and three pictures that arent particularly interesting.

Norwegian Princess Part II

*please note the new template, thought it was time for a change even though i only have like 2 more months on this blog, but oh well. better late than never!!!*

ok so where did i leave off???? lets see, i believe i left off in bergen! anyways not much else happened except we took refuge in a pub from the rain and just hung out and people watched and sat in really really comfy couchy things. we had some major hanging out to do since we had to catch a night train back to oslo from bergen that night around 2300 i think. so we eventually grabbed our stuff from our hostel, said goodbye to bergen and hit the train. for some reason its 8 hours going back to oslo instead of the 7 hours to get from oslo so we had an extra hour to kill, BUT of course i get a stupid person sitting next to me. while we were sleeping she takes up her entire chair ( and mind you this girl is craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy skinny) and starts like snuggling into my arm and cuddling with it. i quickly took that away. and then she started trying to take over my chair too and push me up against the window. i put my foot down and didnt move, and i sorta made my elbow jab out a bit more than it actually did to make it more uncomfortable for her.....haha! anyways so we get to bergen at like 630 or something like and we have sleep walking go back to our original hostel, and since we cant checkin till afternoon and no place was open we all crashed on the couches in the lobby like hobos. oh well i got some better sleep.

so once we were up and atom we hoped a train and headed for the viking museum which we were all really excited for!!!! this is the museum that houses the three famous viking ships that you always see pictures of...as such:some important queen was burried in this boat ( a leisure boat, not a war one) and burried some farmer found it around the turn of the twentieth century.

so we show up a about 30 minutes early for the museum to actually open we really had no idea what time it opened at, and we were joined by some japanese or chinese giant group of tourists. and jenna, courtney, and myself were just sitting on a bench talking and next thing we know they are taking picutres of us and taking videos all the while trying not to make us wise to it. it was really weird, i guess we were some what entertaining but really we were all still really tired and just hanging out. hm, basically i famous in tokyo or some place. jealous???inside the museum, i am just about to vike... ( if you cant tell)

so this museum holds 3 ships, the one i am in front of. and then there is 2 more, one of them being in horrible condition but the first viking ship found ever in the world and another one that is a sea ship, meant for a long journeys. all the ships though were used to bury very important people. from the viking museum we hoped a bus back down to the harbour and went up to a fortress that is by the water to go to the norwegian resistance museum. and for some reason i had this idea in my head that during the war the norwegians smuggled out their gold on children's sleds, and sled them right under the nazi's noses. i thought i read a book about it, but the resistance museum didnt really talk about it. did anyone else read that book? i think the cover had a purple border and a picture of a kid on a sled looking slightly worried....a statue of fdr in down by the harbour, we thought we would go say hi. i even sat in his lap!!!!

from here we wanted to find a bathroom and we found a bathroom alright and we also found some really really really amazing cheesecake. can you tell that i am excited for it????

well i can...

from here we walked up to this park called viegland (or something like that) park. this park is basically the most famous park in norway, and it had some really really crazy statues. so this one guy dedicated his whole life really to making all these statues and they are supposed to represent the human condition and all stuff like that..you know anger, love, confusion and so on and so on. but at the center is this giant stick of people entertwined, and i am pretty sure that somebody said it was made from one block of rock. but basically this is a park where a lot of locals just come to hang out and bbq or whatever. we ended just sittin on the steps leading up to the "people stick" for a long time in the sun. it was just wonderful!!!!

this is angry baby...i am guessing terrible twos maybe? but its really famous i guess...

this is man being attacked by babies....this was my favourite by far!!! i like the one getting dropped kicked. classic times and crazy days!stick o' people....looks like children riding the mama.....

after this outing we basically called it a night at the hostel since we had a bus to catch crazy early in the morning that we had to get up around 5 and we were already exhausted. so we thought we had the room to ourselves and we did until about one am, when all of a sudden 2 girls come barging in with all their luggage, talk in normal voices, turn the lights on, and just being VERY inconsiderate. it really sucked. eventually jenna got up looked at them straight in the eye, not saying a word, turned off the light and climbed back into bed. ugh. they were so annyoing they woke us all up and didnt seem to care. so we were particularly quiet in the morning when we were leaving. ha what goes around comes around!!!

so tomorrow i leave for rome and athens and i am really excited so you wont hear from me for a bit but when i come back i will have some stories!!!! oh yeah and today and yesterday my dad was here to visit, it was really good seeing him. he had to teach up at a camp up north and swung it so he could come hang out here with me for a bout 2 days, it was awesome . we did london, he meet some of my friends here, and we did a really full day at hampton court palace and the gardens were soooooooooo gorgeous. anyways...until later!!!!!! ciao!