A Day in Dresden

The day we went to Dresden was the halfway mark of our time in Ukraine. Laria and I celebrated by blasting (if you can even call full volume on an itouch blasting) Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." Since we had our room to ourselves we went crazy jumping on the bed and screaming "Whoooooooa! We're halfway there! WhoooooAAAAA livin' on a prayer! Take my hand and we'll make it I swear!" Awesome. Until we realized it was 7:30 and people were still sleeping. Oops. What a great start to a magical day in Dresden, Germany. Dresden was AWESOME. I can't pick a favorite....but this is high up there.

Funny story. Remember how we went with Ukrainians? Even though they weren't on our tours, we would see them around the city. I am not kidding when I say they pose exactly like the picture below for ALL pictures. They never smile. They usually make these kind of faces. They are posers! So we had to try to become more cultured. Mine worked.

But in the middle of Laria's shot, a truck was coming up behind her. I caught her face right after she turned back to see it. This picture looks posed, but it is not. That is real life.

Our tour guide Sylvia

This was the most divine crepe I've ever had in my life. Nutella and bananas. How come no one ever introduced me to Nutella before Ukraine?! Too good, too good.

Eating our crepe

Awesome street crossing lights.

Eating bratwurst in Germany. Sweet! I don't even love hot dogs, so I was worried. No need for that because it was DELICIOUS!

Laria and I found an awesome old photo booth. After we took some cool best friend pictures we used them for her photography practice. Turned out pretty cool right?

Laria was jealous of my picture so we had to take one together. Also cool.

And that was Dresden. Two weeks ago from today. What? It's already been two weeks since then? See you in 6 weeks America!

Vienna

The next stop on our lovely adventure was Vienna, Austria. What an amazing place!

On the way to Vienna we had chocolate milk. This was hands down the BEST chocolate milk I've ever had in my life. Anna this is dedicated to you. I'm adding stops along the way to your plan for chocolate milk. Nobody on the planet loves chocolate milk more than Anna does. Nobody.

We are pretty cool right?

This is our wonderful tour guide Henry

Look at this beautiful place!

Mozart Monument. I should send this picture to my piano teacher.

You better believe we did "Ring Around the Rosies" in front of the monument for the Black Plague!

Told you so.

Had to document a drinking fountain because they do not exist here! Except this! Oh how I've missed them.

Quasimodo would have loved this building. So naturally, Laria and I impersonated Esmeralda and Quasi.

This man was too classic. I will show you the video one day if you remind me.

Nicest McDonald's I've ever been too. They even have an easy order! Which reminded me of the time I made mom do easy check out at the grocery store. I should've learned from that experience because this did not work.

Don't be fooled by our happiness to use this. This was before it denied my cards 10 times.

Journaling on the bus ride back.

Arrival to our hotel room in Prague. We spent the rest of our nights there and made daily excursions to new cities. Having a comfy bed and hot STANDING UP showers was marvelous. Too good for words.

More to come soon!

youtube videos that make me homesick

Today I did a unit on "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" with my Kindergartners. After reading the story and making caterpillars of our own I had a little bit of extra time in my rotation. What to do, what to do? I know! Show them Gus on YouTube! It's about a caterpillar and a butterfly, it will be perfect!

Wait...you don't know what Gus is?! Gus is only the most classic video my brother Sam has ever made. It features my siblings (and my brothers friends). Please watch THIS right away. It will make your day and it will make you miss my family. At least...that is what it did for me. And also, my kids LOVED it. They were laughing so hard. So dearest family, I want you to know you are funny not only at our house, but also internationally in Ukraine. Miss you!

And also. I've had THIS classic song stuck in my head all day. It makes me miss my roommates. So much. We may or may not have learned this dance and did nightly practices in our living room. To the girls of PV 47, I love you. I want to love you tender. How can I be sure your not pretender?

I'm so Hungary!

Ann Marie emailed me and told me "I don't think anyone would be offended if you just happened to post a blog about Europe." So if you are offended, I'm sorry. Talk to her. But here it goes....the beginning of the fantastic week I had exploring Europe. Making the next few posts may just bring me to tears for two reasons. 1: From already missing these beautiful places! Ah, take me back! or 2: From how freaking long it takes blogger to upload photos (if anyone knows a faster way...please fill me in).

You must know a few things about our traveling situation. There were 16 ILP girls in a huge double decker tour bus with lots of Ukrainians. I'm just realizing I didn't take a picture of that bus and now I'm kicking myself. Thank you google for providing an image that is similar!

We were on the top level and I shared the back with Laria! My seat was broken and kept coming unattached. Let's be honest, it was so irritating. But being the weirdy I am that loves traveling, I loved the bus! I just love the traveling part of traveling. Hours on buses, planes, and cars don't bother me. I enjoy it very much, which I was grateful for because we spent many hours on this thing. It took about 30 hours to get to our first destination! And another 30 back. Plus all the hours in between countries. It adds up to be A LOT.

Our first stop was Budapest, Hungary where we spent a day. We began with the famous Szechenyi Bath Pools (I had never heard of them before). It reminded me how much I like swimming! It was raining, but it didn't matter because the pools were very warm. They were pretty cool, definitely worth visiting. Minus all the naked old ladies in the locker rooms and the men who think they can pull of speedos.

Next stop, tour around Budapest! Once again, raining. And we didn't have access to our suitcases so we got to wear our nasty all-day-bus-ride attire around town. But the rain didn't ruin anything because Budapest was beautiful! Take a look for yourself...

Our group of 16 had a separate English tour. This is our tour guide Charles.

He loved us!

Now for the story of the pretzel lady. I found this picture on someone's facebook. It will be our visual. Please look to the right. The girl with the cute umbrella, that is me. It is too small to see, but I am holding a pretzel in my hand, just feet away from where I bought it. This was midday on Sunday and Laria and I hadn't eaten anything since Saturday afternoonish. We were starving. Well there was just no time to get food. But on our tour we saw a little lady selling pretzels outside this castle. Yes! Answer to our prayers! Well we still didn't know the exchange rate (which is 200 florints to 1 American dollar) and she didn't speak any English. We bought two pretzels (they were pretty tasty I must admit) and she charged us 1800. I thought it seemed like too much, but our group was far ahead and we had to catch up. We later found out that we had just spent 9 dollars on 2 pretzels. All the other girls went back to the same stand later and got them for 400 florints each. 2 dollars. We tried to tell the lady who suddenly knew enough English to argue with us and tell us we were wrong. She ripped us off! And only us! No one else in our group. We were furious! But now we just laugh about it. For the rest of the trip whenever something went wrong we simply blamed it on the curse of the pretzel lady. Dear Pretzel Lady, you know what you did. If you ever read this, you best be finding me to give me that $5 you cheated me out of! Or just give me pretzels, that's fine too.

We ended the night with a water/light fountain show similar to Disney's "Fantasmic" or "World of Color." It was cool...but Disneyland is better. Just saying. No pictures for that. And that my friends was the too short day we spent in Budapest.

Once upon a time...

there was a young girl. She dreamed of far off places, as most girls do. She wanted to see them all. But she never imagined her fairy tales would come actually come true. Some did for this very fortunate girl. She traveled to India, Mexico, and lots of places in America. She knew she was lucky. But a piece of her heart longed to see Europe. She did not set her expectations of this dream too high, for she did not know if the chance would ever present itself. She knew she should be grateful for what she had already seen and done. And she was. But life is magical, didn't you know? And sometimes (all the time) little miracles appear in our lives to lead us somewhere special...somewhere like Ukraine. And then when life can't get any better, it does. And you are off to more far off places; Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic to be exact. That little spot in this girl's heart became full. It was overflowing with joy, peace, happiness, smiles, love, and everything good in this world! This little girl was a lucky one. Yes, yes she was.

And even though her story is far from finished, she already knows it ends in happily ever after.