The sweet life.

These folks seem to have things pretty much figured out...



I've noticed a trend, on this blog, to just embed videos. In order to shake things up a little bit, along side the video link in this post I'll also include a link to a fantastic looking recipe for tomorrow's dinner...

http://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/lentils-and-beef-stew-estofado-de-lentejas-con-carne

Check it out! I looks delicious!

Canada Day Film Recommendation

I just watched One Week staring Joshua Jackson and enjoyed it thoroughly. I thought it was a quirky and intelligent film and unashamedly Canadian. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something to watch surrounding our nation's 146th birthday.

The soundtrack is also pretty awesome. CBC Radio 3 had this to say about it...

"Michael McGowan, writer and director of the new Canadian film One Week, says that with this film, he wanted to "create a narrative that was also a love-letter to the county." Well, if his movie is a love letter, then the soundtrack is the mixtape he made for his girlfriend, Canada."

Colourful traditions

As promised, here are the pictures from our recent road trip to the Dunkerque Carnaval!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48141953@N02/sets/72157626147664009/

If you're inclined you can learn more about the history of the carnaval here or even visit the official site here.

Our trip to Ireland

We made it! Compared to some of our travel companions who'd be en route for days on end we had it pretty easy. Even so we had a hell of a journey but in the end arrived safe and sound in Moycullen, Co. Galway.

Words to live by

Travel light - preconception and prejudice are unnecessary luggage.

Road trippin`to France!

Why not? I've been living in Reading for about 6 months, haven't been anywhere outside the home counties yet, and the cost split 4 ways for petrol and the round trip ferry ticket made it too good an offer to pass up! We're gonna hit up Lille the first night and then off to Paris for the 2nd and then back over to the UK for the 3rd. Not a trip I would fly for, but taking a car somehow works for me!

I've contacted friends in both cities that I made a few years ago when I first passed through France, and hopefully the 4 of us will be able to find a couch together but who knows? I'll take lots of pictures though, and post, perhaps, the best 3 or 4 of them!

Jamie likes to be bad abroad!

Jamie recently came to visit and he brought the devil along with him. Together we tread the cobbles 'neath bow bells seeking neither fame nor fortune, instead just having a good time. In London we hit up the portrait gallery where we each worked in pastel to reproduce some of the modern art in an impromptu artist lead exercise, checked out Camden Market and took pictures of some of the city's main attractions.

At first Jamie found the whole experience somewhat surreal, but before too long he got excited!

Then he just got carried away!He's home now, in Canada, and England can breath a sigh of relief. I, however, will miss the guy.

As it turns out

Well, it would apear that I've been pfaffing around with the HTML of my blog for the past 5 years (sweet Jesus! It's been 5 years since I started this blog!) when low and behold, I could have just abandoned the whole thing and picked a new template from blogger.

I'd known that was an option for a while, but I didn't know I could make something look as cool as I could! I'm still going to try to personalize my blog a bit, but I decided that it was time to upgrade a little. (hopefully everyone can read the text on this blog!

So in addition to that, Ayden has been over to visit England and it was great to get a chance to hang out with him! It's been 3 years since we really hung out, and even before that, with me living away at University, the time we spent together was limited! It was good to see him and I'm going to miss him now that he's gone back to Canada!

The pictures I've posted were either taken by or of Ayden on our bike trip out from Salisbury over to Stonehenge! Because we took the old byways we ended up spending a great day together and seeing a lot of countryside in the bargain. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed being outside and breathing the fresh country air! (I mean that literally! It's not a figurative reference to the wafting scent of bovine feces!) I'm going to make a point to do this more often! Fiona is keen as well, so I think we'll be railing and trailing on weekends in the near future!

It's a small world...

... but there's a LOT of it to see!

visited 19 states (8.44%)

Create your own visited map of The World

About a boy

And the boy is me!

I've been back in Ireland now for almost a week, and then I head over to Reading again tomorrow morning. It's been good to be back! It makes me a little homesick for the place!

There's a magic about this place. Something that gets inside you and leaves you always longing for more! It's a laid back nature of the place, the easy going attitude of the locals, and the likelihood of a walk down shop street ending in a random party on the beach where you meet a man who lives in a hole in a tree and paints teapots for a living! Its just that kind of city! You're allowed to be yourself here, and so long as recreational drinking and random adventures are your thing, you'll find a home in Galway.

It's going to be hard to leave the place, but leave I must! For now...

Disco Disco

This guy is big in Turkey. I'd have guessed him Bulgarian and so did my Turkish hosts in fact, but as it turns out, he's not! He does however play exactly the type of music that I'm into at the moment.

See what you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gViaOYgV8yI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be7O4m9rOZE

At long last

Well, ıt's been a whıle. It's been so long ın fact that I can't remember half of the thıngs I want to wrıte, and the thıngs that I can remember are so abundant ın number that ıf I trıed to transcrıbe them all I would have to neglect all else and probably dıe of starvatıon.

So. ınstead of all that I'll ınstead tell you that I mılked a cow ın Latovnık, Bulgarıa. It was later ın the same day that she'd gıven bırth. At about 8am at the neıghbourıng farm Aıden and Aıesha's cow gave bırth. We came by to see ıt after breakfast (about 9 am) and the baby was just tryıng to stand and was stıll covered wıth after bırth.

It mıght seem odd to mılk a cow the same day ıt's gıven bırth but worry not! We saved 2 teets for the baby and mılked the other 2 for us. We made pancakes (more crepes but apparently that's what the rest of the world calls pancakes. Who knew?) wıth the mılk and the colostrum gave them a great buttery flavour! The mılk was ın my belly about 10 mınutes after I'd taken ıt from the cow!

It was a good day!

Super Tea

This was a good cup!

I like this picture because it looks like we`re a wacky crime fighting team or something.

It was taken in Česky Krumlov in the Czech Republic at the hostel I was staying at.

The dude on the far right is in Budapest now, as I am, and tomorrow we`re going to meet up and see some stuff.

Lots of other stuff, I mean LOTS of other stuff has happened in the time since last I logged an entry on here, but I don`t feel like writing about it now.

Oktoberfest

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

I'm not going today! Aside from the beer I had this morning for breakfast (it was a traditional Bavarian breakfast apparently, and was composed of white sausage, white beer, and big ass pretzels. It was pretty damned good too!) I will be giving the drink a bit of a miss today. Instead I think I'll try to take it easy and do some corresponding with the folks back home.

Time for a recap . . .

For the moment I'm in Frankfurt (as pictured above) but will be leaving for München and Oktoberfest tomorrow. So far this has pretty much been the pace of the trip. Quick! We stayed in London for 3 nights at a hostal in Lewisham. It was even more awesome than you#d have imagnied. Folks there were awesome and Richard and I had some great times!

Now we're in Frankfurt and things are just as great! Last night we went out to try some local apple wine and some traditional Frankfurt foods. What we got was a 10 liter jug (it's the smallest they had) of apple wine and a HUGE plate os meat layed over a bed of saurkraut. Seriously, it was a plate of meat! Sausages, ham, whatever! It was delicious! And much to my dismay and misinformation it cost €11.50.

Today we forced ourselves to wake up before 2pm and are going to go walking and exploring for a bit.

On the road again . . .

Yes folks, it's that time again. The time to cast off the shackles of daily life in Canada in favor of adventure in Europe. A time to gain, a time to lose. A time to rend, a time to sew. A time to love, a time to hate. A time for peace, I swear it's not to late. But enough of this rhetoric, it's for the byrds!


My plans thus far are as follows . . .

23rd - Departure to London, England
24th - Arrive in London, England
27th - Arrive in Frankfurt, Germany
30th - Arrive in Munich for the last week of Oktoberfest
Sometime after that - Some other stuff

Yes, I find the secret of successful travel is to have a carefully laid out itinerary.

Here's the most of it!

I've been trying to find a way to post some of the 'best of' pictures from my year abroad. (that's the year I spent in Europe, not the year I spent as a woman. The pictures from THAT year are well hidden and for a good reason!)

So here's what I've got so far . . .

http://www.flickr.com/groups/799465@N20/pool/

I still have to post Norway, the Netherlands, Scotland and Wales and to compoung my frustration, I'll have to wait 'till next month to friggin upload them too thanks to the fact that I don't wanna buy a 'Pro' account!

All that aside, it is now time to look on dear friends. To vicariously bask in the Portuguese sun, to marvel at my adventures, and enjoy a few of the highlights of my year abroad!

Rome was nice!

Okay, so I've been neglect. Big whoopidy do! I've been doing other things!

Anyway, for everyone who was anxiously awaiting pictures from Morocco you're going to have to wait 'till I'm back in Canada. (Don't worry, I'll make a slideshow and invite everyone to their own private screening in my house . . . wherever that ends up being. Don't get too excited!)

Things are going great! I'm still having a ball but I'm a tad conflicted about returning home. I'm going to miss my current lifestyle, the friends I have over here, the way of life, everything. Then on the other hand I'm really looking forward to being back in Canada, with friends and family, familiar surroundings, and being able to just relax for a bit.

Regardless of how I feel, I'll be back in Canada on April 14th (good thing I checked! I thought it was the 15th!) after I find a way to get to London to catch my flight, and I'm expecting to be bombarded, immediately upon my arrival, by invitations to dinner, teas, pints, clubs, farms, cities, beans, eggs, salad . . . ok, I got a bit carried away. I'm a tad hungry!

40 hours on a bus

That's how long it took me to get from Saharan Morocco up to Barcelona. It was direct, but LONG and now that I'm in town I have nowhere to stay tonight and I'm a bit tired and hungry.

Anyway, Morocco was great, and I'm sure Barcelona will be too! I'm characteristically running out of time, so here are a couple of pictures to keep you up to date-ish.

No I won't the computer won't let me access my drive.

Another time dear readers, another time.

Not just another list.

Often when I post a list of sites it's not just I think other people might benefit from them, but also because I don't want to forget them myself. (Other times it's just something I think is funny in the moment, but I'm not going to worry about that one right now)

I found these sites recently and thought that I'd share them with everyone and keep them in a place I'll be able to find them later.

The first 2 are about volunteering in South America . . .
http://www.travellernottourist.com/index.HTML
http://www.volunteersouthamerica.net/

The nest one is about doing worthwhile things all over the world . . .
http://www.idealist.org/

And this one is about trading your clothes with strangers . . .
http://www.rehashclothing.com/

Have a look, be inspired, and send me a new jacket!