Nearly Punched someone today

The day began fairly uneventfully. Jenny and I walked to the metro together. I got off a few stops ahead of her and transferred to a different train to meet Nick again. As I got on the train I through away the useless metro ticket. I was getting them mixed up in my pocket and was causing all kinds of problems when I was trying find a valid ticket. This would come back to haunt me later in all it's gory detail.

The reason I was meeting nick was because we were exploring the French Army Museum today. And like nearly every invading army before us, we found a way around their complicated moat and cannon defense system to find our way around the defenses and into the heart of the museum.
Walking around the plaza inside it wasn't long before we found our first French over exaggeration. Anyone who knows a little U.S. Military history knows that the United States 101st Airborne Division were the first soldiers to reach Berchtesgaden. Bechtesgaden or "The Eagles Nest" was Adolf Hitler's own palace of sorts in the Alps. These silly Frenchmen were claiming that they and not the United States made it to the top first. I think they were confusing surrendering to the Germans first and reaching Hitler's Palace first. An honest mistake.
The rest of the museum was really cool. Our first stop was the tomb of Napoleon. It was very impressive with a huge dome and you could look at his tomb below. He was surrounded by his son and several of France's most famous military commanders including Vauban who I had to read about extensively in my military history class.
The next stop was the Royal weapons and Armor collection. It was soooo cool. It was all kinds of Medieval Armor. I didn't take too many pictures. Just one of a guy on his armored out horse. We did the ENTIRE museum. It went from the Medieval Period through Napoleon and through both World Wars. The museum did give the U.S. props for World War One which was nice to get a little respect around here.
After the little museum trip I headed on back. I used one of the ten tickets I bought this morning for around 11.60 Euros. I put my ticket through and threw it away before I got on the train. As I was changing trains there were several Metro workers stopping people and checking tickets. I said I threw my ticket away because it was useless. I then showed them the almost ten other tickets that I paid for. They assumed since I had no ticket I clearly jumped the gate and didn't pay even though I had all these unused tickets. They couldn't understand a word I was saying. I was SOOO pissed. I'm actually just getting over it now and it happened a couple hours ago. The penalty for this was 25 EURO!! twice what I paid this morning for 10 tickets. I was seriously about to punch someone in the face and tell them where to stick it. SO i basically got robbed by the government. I don't forgive such offenses. They are a country of whining babies and losers and always will be sore about it. It's not my fault they suck.

Going out with Jenny and her friends again tonight.

First Couple Days in Paris

Well now that I finished putting up pictures from the vacation part I guess I can start working on the France day to day things.

I'll catch you up on what has happened since getting back from jolly old England. Marc and Pattie accompanied us to Paris taking the Chunnel again. We got right after touring around again. We walked from the hotel, down the Champs Elysee the important street in Paris. It's where they have military parades and it's where the Tour de France finishes. On this particular day there was a soccer game. It was Portugal vs. Brazil. While we were walking there were Portugese people everywhere waving flags, singing, driving down the road flags waving and horns honking. The Brazil fans looked like someone died. At this point I assumed that Portugal had absolutely dominated Brazil, I mean the score had to be 5-0 or something. Only later I would find out that the actual score was 0-0. It was a tie. A freaking tie. No one in any sport should ever ever be that excited for a tie. That is why Americans don't care about soccer. Ties are for losers. ANYWAYS..............
We walked up the Champs Elysee to the Arch de Triumph. It's AWESOME. It's a huge arch that is home to France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's way cool. I was really impressed with it.
We then walked down another street on our way to see the Eiffel Tower. The tower is purdy impressive but compared to everything else in Paris it is actually a really ugly building. It's just a bunch of beams and columns that are now kind of reddish rusty. We took pictures anyways and headed back to the hotel.
The next day we wanted to see a the impressionist museum and Notre Dame. This day actually happened to be a Sunday. This means no entry into Notre Dame on the account of mass I believe. I'm not even sure we got pictures but I'll go back sometime since I have all the time in the world to see everything. We continued walking and reached an area full of little shops. It was kind of cool to see everything down there. We soldiered on to the museum to find that it was closed at 5pm which is ridiculous for a museum to close so early. Jenny and I are going to hit that one up tomorrow (Thursday).

We headed back and got cleaned up for dinner. We went to a little Irish Pub to grab a few beers for the USA vs Ghana soccer game. Beers were completely unreasonably expensive. They were good though. We left at half time and went to a little restaurant to have something to eat. I had a little baguette sandwhich and we had some wine as we watched the Americans blow it but as I stated before, I really don't care.

Marc and Pattie left in the morning and Jenny and I made it to our apartment for the remainder of the summer. It has everything of a regular apartment but only smaller. That is the same with everything in Europe.

Monday was Jenny's first day of work. This left me at the mercy of the French population for the first time ever. As I learned from my Army training I should probably scope out the surrounding territory. South looks purdy boring. It's a very heavy residential area so not many shops and what not. I did find a basketball court so I might have to invest a few euros and get a basketball so I can dominate some Frenchies. I didn't do much that day. I hung out most of the day updating my blog then I went to the Trocadero with the FIFA Fan Fest and the view of the Eiffel Tower and had a couple beers and watched a soccer game.
That night we met up with Jenny's friends from her Arcachon classes. It was alright we ate super expensive cafe food (never again). The bakeries are much cheaper or the street vendors and its just as good. We called it a night early.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I bought a baguette in the morning from a bakery, some sausage from the super market and headphones from the walgreens wannabe store. In the store I was asked something by a nice french old lady to which I replied by staring like an idiot. She laughed and moved on. Later I met up with my old roommate and one of Jenny's classmates, Nick Dial. We visited the Arch de Triumph and Eiffel Tower. I went back to the apartment to meet up with Jenny so we could then ride the subway way up to north Paris to meet up with her friends again. We had some actually cheaper beer and their hostel (cheapish hotels). We then went to the Trocadero along with thousands of people to watch Portugal vs. Spain. This place was packed. My pictures are from when there was barely anyone there this was absolutely crazy. Spain one so they were crazy happy. Portugal lost so they were assholes. There was one point crossing the street where the light was red these people crossed. Someone got bumped by a lady driving a car. They freaked up and started pounding on her car. Then one Spanish fan actually kicked out her passenger side window. Ridiculous. Seriously what was that about. At this point I was really mad, I was hungry and there were crazy people around that I couldn't understand and I went into defensive mode. We finally got back to our apartment late. Woop exciting day.

More Picys from the trip

These 2 pictures immediately above are from Giverney. That if you remember from a couple posts ago is where Monet lived and made his paintings. All of the others are from the trip to London. From bottom to top:

1. our awesome hotel room that we had before they took it away. It was the Henry the VII room haha.
2. Jenny and I in a British telephone booth
3. London China town
   
4. London Bridge. This one hasn't fallen down yet.
5. For all you Harry Potter fans this is platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross
6. This is most likely a commercial or picture for an advertisement but it is a man on a crapper in front of Parliament. Silly British folk.
7. Protests against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
8. This is Jenny holding up Stonehenge. She's purdy strong.
9. This is me in the torture chair in the Clink. It's a very scary place.
   

Jack the Ripper!!

I can't believe I forgot to talk about the Jack the Ripper tour. It was so cooool!! The tour started at Tower Hill right next to the Tower of London. This is at the border of the old Roman city of London and the entire Metro area. Our tour guide was actually a Beefeater (Tower of London guard and brand of Gin) at the Tower of London by day. He was quite possibly the best story teller I have ever heard. We started at Tower Hill and went to several sites in the old poor area of Whitechapel. Times sounded purdy tough at that time. It was an awesome story and he told it well. I would go again but I would get a more private tour complete with pub crawl. Best tour ever.

Sites of London

Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey is very close to Big Ben and Parliament. It is a really impressive church. I believe that this is where the coronation of new kings and queens takes place as well as the royal weddings and what not. I've heard it is really cool inside but for 15 pounds (about $17) we didn't think it was worth it. Actually a lot of buildings charge to go inside and not just a buck or two it's like $20 a person which is absolutely ridiculous.

Big Ben and Parliament
Parliament is actually the main building in this complex because Big Ben is the clock tower attached to the houses of government and Big Ben is actually not the name of the tower. I can't actually remember it's name. I learned it from our boat tour guide but I do remember that Big Ben is the name of the Bell in the tower. The bell rings every hour. Parliament is a cool building too. I think you can visit both of these buildings but it'll again cost you a significant price. The architecture of both is really cool it's like a texture that you would have to see to appreciate. You may remember Parliament as the building that houses MI6 and the offices of James Bond. In the move Tomorrow Never Dies, James jumps out of his window into the Thames River which is also the cleanest commercial river in the world.
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a little outside the city. We took a bus tour to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Oxford. This is one of the residences of the royal family of England. Queen Elizabeth II lives here occasionally. I'm told she doesn't care much for Buckingham Palace. Probably has something to do with all the tourists and London being one of the biggest cities in the world. I'm not sure how many properties the royal family owns but I think they are well taken care of. As for the castle there is a little village outside the castle complete with designer shopping stores and silly things like that. The oldest part of the castle has been there since around 1100 AD and has continually been improved as defensive technology increased until about the renaissance period. This was when most castles in the world stopped being defensive structures and started being palaces. There is an audio tour of the castle that I wanted to listen to but I think the young man at the counter was having a laugh when he gave me the Chinese version which I didn't realize until I was already in the castle. So I walked around and saw the sites on my own which wasn't too bad. We got there just in time to see the changing of the guard. Very cool little piece of tradition. As a former Army in training guy I can appreciate the traditions of some of the most powerful nations in the world. It did look a little hot in those big hats though. The rest of the castle we just walked around. We saw some of the old rooms that I think aren't really used anymore except for tourists and some of the ball rooms may be used for official state type business but I think the actual living apartments are on the other side of Windsor where the tourists can't go. We completed our tour and kept on truckin to our next destination of Stonehenge.Stonehenge
Stonehenge was about an hour and a half drive from Windsor Castle. This was a really cool site. No one for sure knows who built it or how they did it. They do know that the structure has been in existence since 3000 BC, that's 5000 years old!! The cool thing is that some of the stones came from over 100 miles away. They think people rolled them on logs and were drug by hundreds of people. We just missed the Summer Solstice. That is apparently when all the crazies including hippies and Druids and other pagan religious types come party at Stonehenge. There were still a few recovering in their RVs the next day when we got there. I was really impressed by the site. It was way cool.

Oxford
Oxford is the continual place of learning in England. It was built during the Renaissance period and modeled off of other universities in France. The university had its problems like all universities mostly revolving around college kids versus townsfolk. That happened even at the beginning so I'm glad to see nothing has changed. Oxford apparently still has the same learning environment where the students do most of their own teaching with a little help from professors blah blah. It's actually a cool little place. One of the dining halls was apparently the basis for the dining hall in the Harry Potter novels but we didn't get to see it because it was closed. We did walk around and have a pint after a long day of touring. This was our last stop on the tour and we had an hour bus ride back to London.

British Museum
The British museum is really cool too and the coolest part was that it was totally free. Jenny and I did donate a little bit. I slid them one Mr. Lincoln for letting me view their priceless artifacts. You could literally spend days in this museum. It is huge. They have Central America, India, China, Middle East, Roman, Greek, and of course Egyptian. We spent most of our time in the Egyptian part because we were a little pressed for time. They have mummies and artifacts from the entire Egyptian period. The coolest artifact of all was the Rosetta Stone which I have below. It was originally found by Napoleon's soldiers when they invaded Egypt, it was part of a wall actually because someone needed stone. They recognized it's historical importance but it was stolen by Great Britain when they kicked the French out of Egypt. The stone has several languages on it because it is a royal decree or something so it has Greek and late period Egyptian as well as Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphics) that is how archeologists broke the code and could finally read all the ancient Egyptian writings. Purdy cool huh.


Tower Bridge and the Tower of London
These sites were hit on Thursday. Jenny and I took off on our own and took a giant walk. We walked from our hotel past Big Ben and Parliament and across the bridge (this was when i was attacked by the homeless woman). We took a nice little walk down an area called Riverside because wow it's along the Thames River. I think it was redone recently. The are trying to make it a nice place to be and walk around. There are tons of little shops along it and nice restaurants. It's way cool. On the way we had a Magnum bar. It's a brand of Ice Cream bars but way awesome. This one has a white chocolate shell with vanilla in the middle but apparently there is one with strawberry ice cream in the center so i'm on the prowl. It took a good part of the morning to finally get to the Tower Bridge. This bridge is awesome. It's a suspension bridge so I think it was built around the same time frame as the Brooklyn Bridge so 1800s sometime. Right when the United Kingdom was at the height of its power. You can actually go into the bridge towers walk across and down the other side but this was again like $20. Not cool. So we took pictures and moved on to the Tower of London. This was the first stone castle in England. It was built by William the Conqueror after he took England. He was from Normandy in France and this was the last time that England has ever been invaded. The castle like others was continually improved until it wasn't in use. Apparently criminals were housed there in the dungeons. Speaking of dungeons Jenny and I took a dungeon tour. It was creepy because it was dark and they had scary sounds playing and all that. But it was free and actually purdy cool. But back to the Tower, it was also $20 to get in so we just took pictures.



Museum of Natural History
The Museum of Natural History is also a really cool FREE place to go. England has some cool museums most likely due to the fact that they controlled like half the world's land area at one point. Me and Jenny are way into animals and sciency stuff too so it was cool. They have some cool animals but some of the north american species they kind of generalize I think because the museum is old. Also some of the animals skins are so old they are really faded but it was neat o. The dinosaur part would have been sweet too but we had to get going and the T-Rex was getting cleaned I think. I did get a good picture right before I was attacked by two raptors though.

Boat Cruise
The reason we left the museum early was to meet Marc and Pattie for an afternoon boat cruise on the Thames. This was actually back down the same route as Jenny and I walked up that morning but it was cool to actually hear what everything was and stuff. The buildings along the Thames are cool. That is one of the things about London that I really liked. They kept a lot of the older buildings. Everything wasn't destroyed in the name of modern technology and skyscrapers. Also everything has a lot of history. It's crazy to think that a lot of the sites there are as old or older than the U.S. has even existed. The pictures are of an old building that is now home to the London Aquarium, I can't remember what it was originally for. In the same picture is the London Eye, a huge Ferris wheel where each car holds up to 25 people. Supposedly great views of the city for like $25 a head. The second picture is the Globe Theater where William Shakespeare's plays were performed in his time.
Picture of Me, Cole Prevost
Side note: Jenny has all the good pictures. She always has her camera in her bag. They are of better quality as well. I'm not much of a photographer.

Foggy London Town

So when I left last time we were all going to London. Cole and the Klein bunch. We all rode a taxi to Paris's Gard de Nord train station and boarded the Euro-star train to England. It was really cool. The trains are comfortable and it's a cool way to see the countryside. These aren't like regular trains though. This one in particular has reached over 300 km per hour in a speed test. I'm sure they only run it around 250 kmph but that's still over 100 mph. The turns are banked so that the train can run through turns at high speed. Anyways the French countryside looks a lot like the country would look like in the Great Plains except way more green. The towns are really old looking too. As we got closer to the English Channel I was hoping I would get to see it before we dipped down into the Chunnel (tunnel under the English Channel) but that didn't happen. The tunnel starts before you can see the water. The cool thing is you are only in a tunnel for 20 minutes before you pop out high and dry in England!!

Interesting side note: I'm still unsure of the distinction between the countries that make up the United Kingdom or Great Britain. These are the countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I think they are countries in a federation or something. The Union Jack flies over the Parliament which is a symbol of the UK but the English soccer team flies a white flag with a red crusader cross. hmmm I'm not sure.
London is an amazing city. Just from the train station to our hotel there was so much to see! There were parks, famous buildings, palaces, statues, they had it all. Speaking of the ride to the hotel this was my first experience of riding on the left side of the road and it was quite unnerving. Especially on little streets that are smaller than a U.S. one way street but apparently big enough for two in Europe. Our hotel was in a very good spot. It was within walking distance of a lot of things: Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus (time square of London), and tons of parks and statues. I'll break down each place complete with pictures in my next installment.


London was a fun place though. When we got there our first meal was at an English Pub. The food was good the beer was good. English food isn't a lot different than U.S. food. I think people are definitely in better health in Europe though. Not a lot of fatties. Throughout the week we tried all kinds of food. We had Indian food (supposedly the best Indian food in the world is in London), Lebanese food, and I even had a little bone marrow one night. It was actually really good. They have a lot of take out places too that have healthy food. You actually have to pay extra for food if you want to sit in a restaurant or take out place. There is a special tax for it. So even if the food is just kind of a grab and go they ask you if you are eating in or taking out and charge you accordingly.

The week went by really fast. We walked around all day touristing around and taking lots of pictures. The legs were sore by the end of it all. We even had time for Jenny to go shopping at Harrods (a famous London department store). After Harrods we found a little pub in the same area and watched the England vs. Slovenia soccer (football) game. It was a purdy high class neighborhood so it didn't get too rowdy except for a scottish man who had come in off the street and announced that England would win the World Cup and he just put 2000 pounds on it (pounds are about 1.25 dollars). After the game everyone was happy because they won and the Scottish man bought me a drink and after the drink asked me for 40 pounds so he could get back home. Seriously I was like no bro sorry. I wasn't that drunk.
That night we went to Piccadilly Circus for dinner and found a nice little place to eat. Before that we saw a nice little shop called Trashy Lingerie and thought it would be cool to take a picture. The picture didn't really turn out because my camera is crappy but long story short there was a nice little man who said he would take the picture with everyone in it and he did and then he kissed me on the cheek because he was a gay man and thought that I was good looking. This was a very awkward moment for me because my first instinct was to punch him in the face but that wouldn't have looked good. Needless to say he kind of left in a hurry and everyone laughed at me and told me it was ok. I however have been scarred for life.

Incidentally I was kissed on the same cheek by a crazy woman on the bridge next to Parliament the very next day. She was a panhandler and kinda came up on me and grabbed me. That was awkward too.

The last night we were there we watched a play called Avenue Q. It was really funny. It was kinda like the muppet show but inappropriate muppets. That was the 2nd play I've ever been to. Before the play we were in a hurry and had to eat fast and so we swung into the Pizza Hut haha. It was like Pizza Hut in the U.S. but seemed way better. I enjoyed it haha.

Well I loved London and had a great time the next time I will just write about the different sites in England that we visited.

Tootles.

p.s. A traditional English Breakfast includes: eggs, bacon, sausage, and baked beans. hmmm the baked beans were a surprise.

Cole Makes it to Europa

Hello! Bonjour!

Sorry it has been so long again. I've been busy busy traveling everywhere haha. My trip from Iowa to Paris was quite smooth. I didn't know if I should take the train when I got to Chicago or just take a taxi, sooooo I decided to get up at 4am and leave just in case I decided to ride the 2 hour train to the airport. I ended up getting to Chicago around 8am just in time for morning traffic. This again reminded me why I absolutely hate cities. I called the cab company and found out it was only 25 bucks to get a ride to the airport. I chose the cab because it only took 30 min. Chicago airport is supposedly very big but I didn't see much of it because my gate was literally right next to the security checkpoint. Since I was such a go getter in the morning my reward was waiting for 4 hours in the airport before my flight. I didn't do very much just mainly listened to music and watched the president of BP talk about how sorry he was and the congressmen in charge pretending to be mad while getting paid by oil companies at the same time.

The ride to Montreal was very nice. Air Canada is awesome. There were little TVs in the headrests complete with movies and everything. I watched the movie Invictus with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Its about the Apartheid in South Africa and the sport of rugby. I landed in Canada and made a quick trip through customs and had another 3 hours to wait. I felt a little overwhelmed because no one in that airport spoke English and I was all alone. I had a pizza and a beer and bought a Montreal Canadiens shirt to fit in.

The ride to Paris was a little more intense. I did get an exit row which was AWESOME. We left at 7:30pm from Montreal. I finished Invictus. Then I watched The Book Of Eli with Denzel Washington. It was kinda like Mad Max except Denzel is awesome and he's working for a good cause. While I ate I was given a nice meal of penne pasta, veggies, bread, a brownie, and some wine. I then drank about 3 more bottles of their wine to try and fall asleep. I think I did sleep for a bit but was then woken up by the sun seemingly minutes later. See we were supposed to land in Paris at 8:30am and something about the time difference and flight time made the flight seem quite short. Needless to say I was a bit of a wreck.

Jenny was there at the airport to pick me up. It was sooooo awesome to see her again!! She said my beard was cool haha but it had to go. We got all my stuff together and went to our hotel. Then we had to bring all her bags to her bosses office so we didn't have to take it all on vacation. We ate at a nice little French cafe, saw the "other" statue of liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and so on. We'll have way more time to see all of these soon. That night we had some sushi and a few drinks and were so exhausted we went to bed early. Flying really takes it out of you.

The next day we got up and me Julie, Marc, and Pattie at the airport to snag Julie from the airplane. We drove out of the city of Paris to the little town of Giverny in the French countryside. For all you art fanatics out there, this is where the French artist Monet lived and worked. The countryside was awesome. It is sooooo green. They have a lot of farm fields with hay, wheat, and canola. They raise Charlais cattle and sheep. The towns are so old and the streets are tiny. It looks just like all the world war 2 movies I've ever watched. We passed a sign in one of these towns (well more of a WW2 memorial) and there were 2 guys from this little town named Prevost so I thought that was kind of cool.

In Giverny we stayed at a cool little hotel slash restaurant. I had my first crepe and it was awesome. We looked around the gardens and Monet's house and it was a nice little day. We went to bed early again because we had to ride the TRAIN to England!! England as you know is separated from France by a little thing known as the English Channel. That story next time haha.

I've having a great time!!

And off to Europe I go......

It has been awhile since I last wrote on this little blog guy. But the truth is nothing has really happened worth writing down in the last two weeks. But, I will recap anyways.

Two weekends ago I was supposed to go to Janaye Brown's (now Janaye Rayman) wedding in Spearfish, SD. I wrestled with the idea of making this gigantic 11 hour drive by myself in a car that needs new rotors and finally decided I would go and I packed a bag and set my alarm. The next morning I was still questioning my decision and about an hour in after consulting my mother and father that this was probably a bad idea. I could have flown there in no time on the way there. The way back, hungover, would not have been the best time and probably not the safest activity in the world with no one to keep me awake. Soooooooo I ended up just swinging in to West Des Moines, IA and stayed with Jenny's parents for the weekend.

It wasn't a bad weekend, I did some lawn construction, watched some James Bond, watched an Iowa Cubs game, and played with the animals. The lawn construction was actually really fun. Mr. Klein had a drain pipe that needed to be moved because it was causing the area around the outlet to flood and stay soggy. We moved the pipe so it flowed down a hill and didn't pool up. We had to first find the old pipe and get it out of there. Then we had to cut the sod path for the new pipe, make sure the ground was relatively level, put the pipe in and cover it up. Some extra work did need to be done at the outlet because its a little higher and uneven that it used to be but the whole thing actually works. It stormed right after we put it in and it worked great. As a potential hydraulic engineer I'm going to put this on my resume. James Bond movies are playing all month long on G4 but the days I watched I got From Russia With Love which is a good one then I got 3 or 4 of that one bond that no one likes. The Iowa Cubs are the Chicago Cubs farm team so it was a good time going to see that. It's the skill level of the minor leagues with the prices of the majors (1 24oz beer = $8).

Yep so that was that. Last week was the start of soccer's World Cup. After watching the first couple games that all ended in 0-0 draws I remembered why I (and the United States) hate this game. The soccer community is simply OK with ties. A team can supposedly be vastly superior to another and still the game will be a tie or the teams will be separated by barely one goal. In the United States if you suck and you are playing a good team you are going to get freaking killed and there's no getting around it. This explains why in some college basketball games, teams get beat by double their own score for example. Also the field is HUGE. This explains why nothing happens because it takes forever to get anywhere on this field. They run around for 90 minutes and both teams combined maybe take 10 shots in one game. You may argue that soccer is like hockey in that teams don't score very often but i would argue that at least it's way faster of a game and people get knocked down, smashed against the boards, and they don't cry about calls like certain soccer players. I believe soccer is the sport with the most complaining, it's ridiculous. Anyways just my thoughts on the game but I will watch it because sports are a bit thin right now.

Well, my plane leaves for Paris tomorrow. I'm really excited about it. I've never really been outside the country. I did go to Canada a couple times but Canada is like America's hat anyways. I also went to Mexico but I don't count that either because it really wasn't that great of a time and I would have rather done something else with all the money I spent going there. I think I'm going to get up around 3:30 or 4 am and drive to Chicago. Park my car at Jenny's friend Alex's house. Thank you Alex you are a sweetie for letting me do that. Then it's decision time. I either pay under $10 bucks for a cab and train ride to the airport that will take around 2 hrs or pay around $50 to take a cab all the way and get there within a half hour. It's a big decision because I need to be to the airport at around 11 am for my international flight that takes off at 1 pm. I should get to Montreal around 4ish Eastern Time. Then my flight leaves at 7pm and I arrive in Paris at 8:30 am. Jenny informs me that they have TV screens in the headrests so I plan on watching Avatar since I have not seen that one yet. If Jenny's troubles with flying are any indication of how this is going to go down I'm in for a long couple days. I will write another one when I get there or as soon as possible. IF not it's off to England for a week and then after that Paris for the rest of the summer.

Au revoir!

Class is over

Again it's been about a week since my last post. But like last time a lot has happened since then.....

Last Saturday the 29th I was going to sleep in and get some rest and then head to the Mississippi River for a day on the river. I was awakened early by a text message from my friend Toby informing me that he had cracked his first beer. This was 9 am. This text sprang me into action. I grabbed my sunblock, shorts, my cowboy

hat, and a bag for the weekend.

I arrived at Buffalo Shores boat dock a little after 10 am. I cruised out there. I arrived with my bag and my 24 pack of Miller Lite. Toby and his friends picked me up and took me across the

river to a back water area where there were three boats already tied up together. One more would be added before the day was through.These were no ordinary boats they were all over 30 feet long. Each has a below deck area with bed, kitchen, everything. Not exactly what I was expecting. But, IT WAS AWESOME. Started drinking the Miller Lite. I applied the sunscreen. It was of the spray variety. This was a bad idea. I was too tough of a man, I did not get help and this would come back to haunt me. I spent the rest of the day standing in the water, drinking beer, and taking some slammers (tequila and squirt) off the back of the boats. Needless to say I fell asleep at around 5ish and woke up about 8ish. It was a nice little nap. I woke up and purdy to find that I had savagely sunburned my shoulders and back. In my haste to have a good day, I had not covered myself very well. There were sharp lines where I had clearly whiffed on my spray job. All in all though it was an awesome day.

I woke up the next day. Toby took me back and I made the 2.5 hour drive to Des Moines. I was on my way to see Jenny's parents and brothers: March, Pattie, Gusty, and Charlie. I stopped and had an egg mcmuffin and a sausage burrito with a large coffee. An hour later, my coffee was still warm slash hot. I made it to Des Moines and found there was work to be done. Marc and Pattie were working in the yard, Charlie was running around all excited, and Gusty was busy hiding. I first played with Charlie then I got going on some yard work too. I mowed the lawn for the first time in forever. It wasn't too bad. I was only going to stay for a night but the next day was Clint Eastwood's Birthday and I just couldn't leave. I also had to watch the hockey game and eat a steak. Important business. I had to leave and make it back for class on Tuesday morning. Charlie and Gusty were sad to see me go but I had to.

Tuesday was a fun day. We went out on the Mississippi River and looked for freshwater mussels and electroshocked fish. It was purdy cool. The fish would come right to the boat and get stunned. I netted a 40lb carp. It was hideous but it was the biggest fish I've ever caught. It was a short class on Wednesday. After class I had to work on my paper and presentation for the only grade of the class. I got done around midnight. Not too shabby. I gave my presentation today and for the millionth time in my life I realized that I am a terrible public speaker. I get so nervous that I can barely talk. But I got through it and I should be fine. Woop.

Tomorrow I'm getting up early to head to Janaye Brown's wedding. I was under the assumption that my friend Chantz was coming but apparently this is not the case. I'm a little tore up about it. Matt and Adam will be there though so that will be alright. I'm really not too excited about this drive though. It's apparently 11 hours. We'll see how this goes............