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Back in the states and extremely jet lagged. Pictures will be posted soon.

No More Pictures

Hey guys,

Decided I am not going to post anything anymore. I want to have something to tell everyone about when I get home. See you all in a month!

-Chris

GERMANY

Hey all,

I just uploaded new pictures to my picasa thingy. They're from Amsterdam and Cologne.

More later!

-Chris

Netherlands

I officially started my trip on Monday morning...with a 10 hr flight with insufficient leg room and a very upset, British baby who insisted on screaming at 15 - 30 minute intervals for the entire trip. Still, overall a decent flight.

Here's a picture of Bryn and me at my parents house just before leaving for the airport.



Bill and Dennis met us at the airport! We knew Bill was going to meet us, but Dennis was more of a pleasant surprise. The 4 amigos reunited, we went to Amsterdam for a bit and then made our way to Utrecht, NL.



Here's a picture of me down some random street in Utrecht.



Here's a picture of Bryn, Dennis, and me at the Cathedral Tower (The "Dom" Tower), located near the center of downtown.



We also met up with a friend of ours, Jesse, in Utrecht. Here's a picture of me...and Jesse's Netherlands (feel free to kick me for that line later). Aren't the buildings pretty?

Anyway, we've been walking all over the place. Utrecht is really beautiful...at least the downtown area I've been visiting. Lots of shops and places to eat.

We spent most of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday messing around in Utrecht and Amsterdam. Today we went to Rotterdam, which is much more like a city, and Delft, which is more like Utrecht.

We went to a the Maritime Museum on Rotterdam, the Museum Park, Het Park, and the Euromast. The Euromast is this huge tower where you can pay a fee (8,30 Euros) to go up and look out over Rotterdam and its neighboring cities. Then we went to Delft around 6pm. It turns out that EVERYTHING shuts down after 6 pm. So Delft was sort of a bust, though we did find a few coffee shops open.

Oh, that reminds me. Did you know they don't drink tap water here?? No drinking fountains, except the one I found near the post office in Utrecht. Everyone pays a ridiculous amount of money (about 2 Euros) for a friggin bottle of water. Lame, huh?

We're heading to Amsterdam tomorrow to spend some time exploring the city. I really haven't had a chance to do that yet. I'll be leaving Holland on Saturday for Cologne, Germany on my way to the Black Forrest. We actually have the next 4 or 5 days pretty much mapped out (hostels/hotels reserved, etc.), and we'll be passing through Germany, France, and Switzerland.

I'm really having a lot of fun and the trip has been extremely relaxing so far. AND I got to stay in a hostel for the first time...with 13 other people in the room with me...many snored and did really strange things in their sleep.

It's almost midnight here, so I'm heading to bed. Feel free to e-mail me or leave me comments on the webpage!

I posted more pictures on the "More Pictures"link to the right. Check them out.

More Pictures

I started uploading pictures. Feel free to look through them (click on the link under...Links).

Frisbee and Skydiving ...

Last weekend was AMAZING. While we were at the Colorado River, my brother and I decided we wanted to throw ourselves out of a plane...ya know, skydive. Anyway, he came out last weekend so we could do just that....BUT FIRST...frisbee.

Thirteen or fourteen of us, including Keith, played some night frisbee on Friday. It was pretty sweet. We had a night frisbee disc (looks like friggin UFO) and everyone had glow sticks on their wrists. We played for an hour or two and then went back to Bryn's house for a small gathering.


Here's a picture of said gathering. The guest list included Bryn, Keith, myself, Kevin, Tom, Bryan, Caleb (I think?), Kari, Andy, and Travis was there for the beginning. I think Kevin, Bryn, and Keith closed the party at 5 or 6 am. I was still ... awake, but hardly in the partying mood, to say the least. I guess I ... sorta closed it...

Anyway, Keith and I got up at about 10 am Saturday morning. Bryn and her cousin Travis drove us out near Lodi to the 'Parachute Center' to go skydiving.



Here's Keith chasing this strange dog that was just wandering around the place...



Here's the two of us getting suited up...I like how they gave Keith the bright purple harness, haha. Awesome.

The plane ride up was probably the scariest part. It was really small and really hot inside. It was wide enough to fit 2 people and had a narrow walkway down the middle. The instructor strapped to my back was giving me a hard time too...saying things like my harness didn't fit right and it might fall off and then screaming "OH MY GOD, AN ENGINE WENT OUT! JUMP!" Of course he was just messing with me, but the part about the engine really freaked me out.



Now this one is kind of hard to make out, but there's a plane and just behind the plane are two TINY white dots...that's us falling towards the earth from 13,000 ft. I gotta tell you, it was both fun and horrifying all at the same time.



Here's Keith (blue parachute) with me in the background.



Here I am doing some ... strange thing with my arms out to my sides...not sure exactly what I was doing...probably just excited to be out of the plane.



And here we are back on the ground reinacting how we felt for the first 5-10 seconds after jumping out of the plane. The first few seconds are really, really intense. After that it's really laid back and enjoyable.

All around, a great weekend.

It has begun

I finally gave in and started a blog, mainly because I finally bought a digital camera (Canon Powershot SD850IS) and I have a lot of really cool things planned for this summer.