Wichita Mountains!

Last Saturday Jackson and I drove three hours north to the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma (which we've pretty much decided is the only place worth going in Oklahoma...)

We wasted no time and soon discovered that our camp site was the feeding grounds of choice to a mother deer and her baby!

(pictures coming soon.........)

Then we saw buffalo and more buffalo:

Drove to the top of the tallest and oldest of the mountains, Mt. Scott, to look out over all of Oklahoma:

And, after locking my keys in my car and learning that one of the jobs of a police officer is breaking into vehicles for absent-minded people like myself, we climbed (literally climbed) the baby mountain Little Baldy right near our campsite:

The next day, we woke up to a flock of wild turkeys harassing our deer friends. Unfortunately, they were gone before we could get pictures. But then we hiked up the ~600ft Elk Mountain, a long and arduous 4-mile round-trip journey of impressive views and massive rocks:

Finally, we packed up and left as quickly as we could, sore and dirty and sunburned and tired. Three hours later, after driving twenty miles in the wrong direction out of Wichita Falls and missing the turn off for Denton (seriously), we made it home and I'm pretty sure I died for twelve hours immediately afterward. 

It was fun and exciting and adventurous and pretty and buffalo-tastic, but Jesus, I am done with camping for the next several years if I can help it. Twice in one school year is more than enough. Bleh. 

Potter-o-ween and Pyromania and Possums, etc.

So for Halloween, my friend Jenna and I decided to go as the Black sisters (or, you know, the LeStrange-and-Malfoy sisters), and I, as the resident blonde, was of course Narcissa Malfoy.

Despite that I didn't have a wand or a robe or pretty much anything else, I did have a pretty bad ass Dark Mark, courtesy of my friend Sarah. 

Although really, I feel like I still kind of looked more like a World War II era bar singer than a witch, it's the thought that counts on Halloween, right?

Anyway. This weekend was also Homecoming, which meant BONFIRE!

(also pretty much the only Homecoming event I attended. Whatevs!)

It started off with fireworks!

And then just FIRE!

And then MORE FIRE!

Until it was so big, I almost got my face burned off from all the way across the lake!

Not this guy, though. 

He's too cool. 

These people were with me, though. RETREAT! RETREAT!

And then I came home to house sit and found a ridiculously un-afraid possum. 

Still no kitty, though. :( 

But I DO love this Inuit who put his rightful name on his Senior shirt despite that no one will ever understand it except me. 

Ah, Mickey. Good to see you embracing your true heritage!

Oh, also, I saw Cloud Atlas. Not sure how I feel about it. It was long and hard to watch, mostly because of some really uncomfortable and slightly gratuitous violence. But the concept was interesting. I guess the verdict is that it could have been better but wasn't nearly as horrible as it could have been. 

That is all. 

Things That Make Me Happy (as inspired by Anna :D)

Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The baby parrots at Fish-n-Chirps.

David Tennant.

Jeremy the Cactus.

This kitty.

Playful Parties and Plentiful Picnics!

This is the masterpiece with which we celebrated the birth and subsequent adulthood of two of my favorite people: the lovely Crystina Renteria and the incredible Jackson Strecher:

The lobster's name is Armand and he decorated Jena's hair for most of the night.

And there's nothing like a beautiful picnic followed by a dip in a (ridiculously pool-like) fountain with three wonderful (if somewhat insane) people!

  

Also, my wonderful kitten Sue has something to say:

)(999jkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk]g5vbe\r=dgvbwdspc -0v

Word.

Day 26: Baileys Reunite! Maenporth At Last! (attempt no. 2)

So for the record, this is my second time writing this post, so I am quite frustrated. The first one was long and detailed and interesting and written in my new foldable bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone. But when I was finished, said iPhone failed to save the post, and all of my glorious work was lost. Due to my general anger at this piece of machinery, I'm not even going to attempt to replicate it, and just highlight the important bits.

1) I'm with my family again! And yesterday our relations, Jennifer and Roger, visited, and it was very nice to meet them - such interesting people!

2) I'm having fun but looking forward to coming home in a week. Maenporth is my last stop on this glorious journey, and a good last stop at that. But it will be nice to get back in the swing of things, focus on college, and makeup for missing hanging out with my dear friends and boyfriend for a month.

3) Stuff about how Maenporth is awesome. See picture below. Also, credit goes to the grandparents for owning the house and letting us come here basically all my life.

4) Sea kayaking. We did it in Maenporth bay. Saw the shipwreck (decaying but still extant), a purple cave-tunnel, and fluorescent blue seaweed that turned brown outside of the water.

5) Was accosted by a small Siamese cat with bells on to be his personal masseuse until further notice.

6) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Ohmygod just read it. I probably wrote an entire page about this book and now that's gone and I want to cry so just read the freaking book and be amazed by how beautiful and intense and well-written and deliciously long it is, and be confirmed in your humanity and blah blah blah whatever else I said it would do to you. Especially if you're Anna or Laura. And then come talk to me about it. And no, I don't give a crap if you've seen the movie. Just do it.

7) Books are amazing and I wish I could just read books all day and make money instead of getting a job. Oh wait, that's why I'm becoming a publisher. Cool. We're good.

Day 24: Ugh Travel.

Today is my travel day from Liverpool and uuuuuuuuuugh it has not gone well.

The challenges really started last night, when for some reason a whole series of Asian girls decided to show up scattered throughout the night in two hour increments, starting at about eight. And for some reason, unlike everyone else in the world, Asians don't have a problem turning on all of the lights in a room where five other people are asleep at 3AM. So that happened a lot and I hardly slept at all. -_-

Then I was almost late checking out because I was on the phone for longer than I had anticipated, but that was totally worth it, so it's okay. :) Except then I learnt from the reception dude that I couldn't get to the train station by bus, which wasn't a big deal until I turned around to see that outside it was pouring Texas-style. You know in cartoons when the person is walking along the side of the road and then someone drives by and they get soaked? Yeah, that was my life for about half an hour as I walked the half mile to the train station.

By the time I got there I was soaked and I had to struggle through the stupid turnstile to the bathroom with my luggage to get dry(ish) and then sit around in the freezing cold station with my wet bags for two hours. During that time I went to get lunch, but the couscous I bought spilled all over the floor and the pudding thing I got was awful. So that sucked. And to make things worse, that stupid train station - I kid you not - had exactly zero trash cans in the whole gigantic place. Not one. When I finally found a maintenance person and asked them why, he said "Security." I personally am not afraid of trash cans, but if I were a safety officer at a train station I'd be just as worried that someone would hand the poor custodians a bomb. And what's to stop them from leaving them under the seats? Or lying around as litter? It was frustrating. :-|

When I finally did get on the train, to my dismay there was not a space to put my luggage, so I had to ride with it all under my feet the whole three hours. And then when I got to London and taking two underground lines, I still had to walk half a mile uphill over cobblestones, then up six flights of stairs with my luggage to get to my room. Ugh.

But then I discovered that there's a white duck and a family of black sonethings and their six babies! Auntie Hannah, can you tell from my pictures what they are? They have spindly legs and a red beak, and the babies are very fluffy and awkward! :)

After I watched them for a while I walked through Holland Park to Kensington High Street, got some dinner at a little Arab-run patisserie, then walked around some and bought a £3 book (Time Travelers' Wife, because the movie was cute) at the Oxfam, a really cool kind of upscale good will that's all for charity. It's really cheap but good quality. Someone should invent that in the States. After that I just dirt of wandered, going into one store having a going-out-of-business sale. They have CRAZY good sales here, it's ridiculous. Don't you just hate it when you find something that's cute, useful, and totally on sale but you don't have the means/intention to buy it? That's what happened. I need to learn just not to go into stores when I don't have money, but this giant polka dotted canvas rolling duffel bag for £15 compared to its usual £75 was just so tempting! I didn't buy it of course, but I wish I had had it back when I was packing for this trip. It would have been perfect. Sigh....

Anyway, now I'm just going to go back up to the (rather strange) Holland Park hostel and relax and read and stuff.

Also, there is definitely an opera happening in the park right outside my window. Wut? O_O

Day 15: The Alps and Driving to Hiedelburg

Today was rather adventurous (except, of course, the six hours of driving). Let me recount, including all the breathtaking, vomit-inducing, and hungry-making details.

When I woke up (or more, when i gave up on the whole sleep thing) in Kitzbuhel it was raining, the town church outside my window was making an unholy fuss about it being seven o'clock, and my head was killing me. You see, despite it's many merits, the hotel Tiefenbrunner has possibly the hardest beds I've ever slept on. Dad, never sleep there.

But it had a lovely breakfast with a gorgeous assortment of granolas and cereals and meusli and fruits. And also more of those scrambled eggs. Seriously, what does Europe put in their scrambled eggs that make them so damn good? I thought The US was supposed to be on top of the "American breakfast" thing.

Anyway, it was still cloudy when we left, so we decided to hit the road instead of going up the mountain in the cable car. But as we were driving the clouds cleared miraculously (stupid clouds), so we turned around and sped back into town. After some tense disputes with the ticket lady about what the definition of "student ID" was and whether I really was 18, we hopped on a car and went to the top (1900 meters up?) where we then hiked downhill through an Alpine garden to the next station. The evidence of this adventure is below, including my encounter with a curious cow on the roadside. The other cows ignored me, but this one seemed to be very friendly and think I was interesting. Nice cow. We also saw a deer and some kind of hawk.

Fast forward several hours and we're in the road again. We stop for lunch at a rest station and I get a croissant. When I pull off a piece of it I discover that its not just any croissant - it's a ham and cheese croissant! I eat the piece and go in for another bite - only to glimpse, in one horrifying moment, a fat black fly living inside the pastry.

Oh my god. I don't even want to think about that anymore. :-S

You can imagine how difficult it was to explain to the German boys who'd sold it to me. But yeah. That whole situation was awful and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to eat a ham and cheese croissant again. Oh god.

So after that rattling incident, we continued on until we reached Hiedelburg, where we are now. We found dinner at a delicious Kurdish restaurant down the street. You know how good Mexican food is in Texas? Well, Middle Eastern food is that way here, because Arabic people are the main immigrants. Mmmmm. I love Middle Eastern food. :) And no insects! :D

So yeah. Now I'm sitting on a bed that is about as wide as my bed is long and is hopefully more comfortable than the one in Kitzbuhel. Tomorrow, we go back to Brussels, completing our European Circuit, and from there back to London, where I will strike out on my own the day after tomorrow. Hopefully that will go well. Ahem.

Stay tuned! :)