Croatia Experiment

I am trying to figure out how to post larger pictures on blogger. The way I found is to use the URL from flickr, it seems kinda complicated. Anybody have other suggestions?


Here is a shot from our first night walking around Split.


This castle was right next to the apartment we stayed in. I was in complete shock that this is what the people who live there walk by everyday as they are going through town, such a beautiful thing!


Here are the friends I went with, Jon and Raymond!


Our first day on the island of Vis, we dropped our things off at the apartment and headed to this beach! Oh yeah, and we bought some grass mats to lay on but they smelled so bad!


This building epitomizes Vis. Everything is beautifully run-down.


One of our greatest adventures was when we took a boat out to see the "blue cave". At a certain time of day the sun shines through the water and illuminates the cave in this perfect aqua blue color. I wish the picture could portray how amazing it was!


I think this picture was taken when we were still on the mainland. We took a busride for at least an hour to get to this awesome beach with the Yosemite-like mountains in the backdrop.


At the moment I can't remember what island these ruins were on. It was probably either Brac or Hvar. They were incredible and I loved that we could just explore this vast area and discover ruins for miles.


This is the final picture for now, a beautiful ancient amphitheater.

Hvala (thank you in Croatian).

thinking of this makes me happy

Lately I've been trying to picture myself in relaxing happy places. The most prevalent spot that comes to my mind is Europe. It's hard to believe that I have been so many places there! I feel very lucky but at the same time it's a little sad to not be able to go back anytime. I guess that's why I've been going there in my mind. Here are some of the places I'm imagining.

First GREECE:






And second Cinque Terre, Italy:

my brother is now in portugal

Yesterday Mike and I got to talk to my brother Kyle while he waited in the Cincinnati airport for his flight to Europe. It was so fun to talk to him! He is serving his mission in Lisbon, Portugal and I am just a tad jealous because it's going to be awesome to live there. I know missionary work is no vacation but he is very blessed to be in such a cool place. When we talked to him he said we should look up Portuguese tiles. I found a picture of a really pretty one on google. I'm sure there are better ones in Portugal, but he'll have to send pictures of those.
I am super excited for him and I can't wait to see pics of the place he's living!

Strange Man at my Doorstep

First of all, I am so excited to make things for you people! I have been thinking of all sorts of ideas and will be starting as soon as the semester is over. Now for the real news. A couple nights ago I was laying in bed in my dark house when I received a text that said:

there is someone on your doorstep, or your neighbor's doorstep, because he might have forgotten which house is yours.

It was from my friend Rachael so I thought: is Richard (her husband) at my door? Adorned in my PJ's, I cautiously made my way over to our front window which had its blinds cracked. I saw part of something about three feet tall (kinda big!) with a furry round band around the top of it. SCARY!! I walked back into my bedroom to get the guts to actually open the front door and peer at the strange creature straight on. When I got the courage, here is what I saw:
I busted up laughing immediately! How funny is that?! What a friendly guy... there was never anything to be scared of. Just in case you are wondering, we said yes to the question the sign posed (you probably can't read the sign, it is asking us on a double date). And for further entertainment, here are the guts of my friend:
I hope they didn't want those back...

This sounded fun

This picture is titled Something Special. I found it on google image search. I figured it's always nice to have a picture in your blog post that gives the reader and idea of what they are about to encounter. Now you know...you are about to encounter SOMETHING SPECIAL!!! So have fun :)


I just looked on my friend McKenzie's blog and found the following offer --->

"The first 5 people to respond to this post will get something made by me- my choice! This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees you will like what I make! (I can only hope!)
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It will be done sometime this year.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be... it may be cards, a bookmark, something delicious, or a complete surprise to you (and me)! Who knows?
5. Most importantly, you must offer the same deal on your blog. The first 5 people to comment on your blog get something made by YOU!"

I commented on her blog and can't wait to see what surprise she comes up with. Now it's your turn! Leave me a comment on this post and I will make you something AWESOME!!! (it will also be something special).

P.S. If you don't want to re-post this on your blog I won't be mad or sad...I really just want to make things for people :)

Hunger Banquet

Mike and I attended the Hunger Banquet on Friday. During this activity all the guests get split into different classes and eat according to their position. Upper class was served first and got bread, salad, mashed potatoes, corn, pulled pork, ice cream and a cookie. The middle class ate either pizza or a hot dog. Lower class got a plate of rice or tortilla chips. The purpose of this banquet is to promote awareness and involvement. A bunch of non-profit organizations had set up booths and we had a speaker talk to us about how the money earned last year at this banquet helped a school an in Africa. They made $11,000 last year and were expecting to make a lot more this time. I thought it was a really interesting event!

We met up with our friends from the ward, the Simonsens, but got split up right away because we had upper class tickets and they had lower class:( The picture above gives you an idea of how the room was set up. 70% of the guests were lower class and had to sit on the floor. The middle class, 15%, were seated on chairs around the perimeter of the room. And the lucky 15% who were upper class got to sit at tables in the front of the ballroom.

The lower class peeps were seated on cardboard and trash. Maybe a lucky few got a cardboard colored blanket.

There was even child labor! Children like this poor girl were selling flowers to try and scrape by.

Our entertainment included this group from the Radha Krishna temple. They performed chants and gave us a quick lesson on the three levels of peace. One is peace among all nations (no conflict or war), two is peace among fellow humans who surround you and three is peace within yourself. We also heard from KlezMore who played some Yiddish tunes, and the East African assembly who sang and danced. There was also a girl who performed a Mongolian dance.

The most surprising part of the night was that the couple seated next to us were also named Mike and Kara! What are the chances of that?!

Chental my BFF

Today I busted out a CD where I had burned all these pictures of Chental and I. It has been sooo long since I looked through them...they make me way happy! Now I'm going to post my favorites (i'm warning ya, there are a LOT of favorites).

Arguably our most prized accomplishment was this paint job on Chental's car. We had so much fun using neon spray paints to place handprints and other sweet designs all over it!

As soon as we finished painting we headed out for a ride through the town. We absolutely LOVED all the attention and surprised looks we got from people!

Chental and I loved going to shows. Here we are at Warped Tour where we got to meet Midtown (above) and Kris Roe, the lead singer for The Ataris (below).


In high school Jennifer, Chental, Mallory and I had a band called Crush the Infamous (Mal isn't in this pic). I had stolen my parents spare key to our church building, so we would sneak in regularly and have band practice. Eventually, my parent's realized the key was missing. But for the short time we got to play on this stage, we felt like stars.

Here we are with one of my favorite people in the world! DASHA! The three of us always had so much fun being weird together.

Nearly every Saturday Chental and I went to the youth dance. Our favorite part was getting ready because we always wanted to be super cool. Here we are sporting our dickies and aviator glasses. But there were other times when our outfits were outta control.

This is us at girls camp. Pretty scenery!

Story: For some reason we wanted to take pictures with these trees. And for some other reason we thought it would be funny if we pretended to make out with them. When we got this picture back we could not stop laughing because Chental looks like she got blown by a gust of wind and slammed into the tree and I am all seductive. The grace of my bent leg became known as DEER LEG and forever after we would bend our leg up like that to make each other laugh.

Another girls camp pic.

We wanted to go on a walk, but to make it a little more exciting I suggested that we paint our faces. Here is what we ended up with!

Purty.

Susan, our roommate and friend, got us these sweet 90's glasses. We thought they looked very intellectual so we had this picture taken of us.

Here are Chental and Mike at the surprise party I threw for her on her 18th birthday. I still think it is so great that they dated for a while and that I have pictures with my two favorite people in them.

Mikey I love your long hair!

Here we are in the same group at prom.

Note the sign painted on the wall.

This is us dressed up for 80's prom at Chain Reaction. It was a punk show where everyone dresses formal.

I thought I'd finish off this photo essay with pictures of our trademark: UGLY FACES. We were so into anything ugly.




But I do want to end with a picture where we look normal! I miss Chental, but it makes me so happy to think of all the fun times we got to share.