Photos Galore!

I retrieved my photos off of my hard drive and they are up! There are a bunch of videos at the end of the Sweden/Norway set. The problem is not fixed, but at least I was able to get the data off.

Ireland & Norway (finally!), plus the new move

Okay, I am finally back in the USA, but no longer in Colorado. Yes, I am in Maryland now! The week at home flew by WAY too fast. It was fantastic though! I got to see my roomie, have dinner with Tara and Colleen, spend a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa, have the ENTIRE Mazza family over for dinner, bake too much, visit the Ragans, and attend Grandpa Don's 90th Birthday Party! I also got my laptop and ipod fixed, went to the gym, and went canoing on the lake. Thank goodness for my messed up sleep schedule (from the eight hour time shift), otherwise I would not have been able to accomplish so much!

I moved to Gaithersburg, MD last Wednesday. My flight from Denver was overbooked, so I volunteered to take a later flight and earned a free ticket...yippee! I was thankful for my smart packing decision of limiting myself to one big suitcase, one small, and a backpack when I arrived because I had to navigate the buses and the metro. The girl I am leasing from picked me up at the closest metro station, which was super nice and much appreciated! I like the house I am living in - it is not super far from the office and the commute only involves one bus change. It is a safe area with a grocery store, parks, etc. nearby. I have been very lucky because this week was "cool" (relatively...hot for Coloradans) and not incredibly humid. I know that the time will come though!

I love my job thus far. My boss is great, but will not be around much because he travels quite a bit. His secretary is incredibly sweet, and has been great about showing me around and making introductions. I have my own cubicle and phone line, which makes me feel quite important. The one problem I have is that I cannot use my own computer (I have to use a Sodexo laptop in order to be on the Sodexo network), and I miss my MacBook all day long! I will never go back to owning a PC. Anyways, Thursday and Friday were a whirlwind of introductions, getting lost, and attempting to figure things out. I know that I am going to forget my ID card (required to enter every single internal doorway) one of these days and be in huge trouble! We are in the process of hiring another person for the Corporate Citizenship department because right now it is just Arlin (my boss), La'Shaune (his secretary), and me (haha). I attended two presentations of potential hires each day. I also made a lot of copies, had a conference call, a webinair, and received training on a new database that I will be working on next week. I have several projects to complete over the course of the summer and I love them. Several involve collaboration with people from other departments, so I will be able to see what other areas of the company are like.

Today I also went to Trader Joe's...YES! I am not going to lie, the fact that there is a Trader Joe's in Gaithersburg was a huge motivator for me to brave the humidity and move here. Haha. For anyone not familiar with its glory, Trader Joe's is a smallish grocery franchise, that features tons of organic and natural stuff, including, of course, tons of vegan deliciousness. I finally figured out the bus route there today and was not disappointed. I found cherry chocolate chip soy ice cream! Yippee! I also confessed my love of the company to the cashier guy (beginning with New Year's in Tucson, 2007) and I think he thought I was a little crazy. PS - apparently we cannot get these stores in Colorado because they sell their own brand of wine in-store, which violates state liquor laws. I say that is lame.

But let's backtrack a few weeks, to May 26th through 30th, to be specific. Where was I then? IRELAND! I LOVED Ireland! I miss that place! It was very green, true to its name! I flew into Dublin from Göteborg on Monday afternoon. I appreciated the fact that the Dublin Airport was in fact, in Dublin, unlike most of the other Ryanair Airports. I checked into my hostel, which was located right downtown. I stayed there Monday night and Thursday night, and it was one of the best that I have ever been to. Anyways, the first stop on my agenda with Trinity University in Dublin to see the Book of Kells. Wow! That was incredible. There was a great exhibit about the Book and its history. Plus, I actually got to see it. It was much smaller than expected, which made the ornate text and obsessively detailed illustrations even more incredible. The book, or I should probably say books because there are four volumes, dates back to 800 a.d., so it is amazing that it is still here today!

Trinity University

After The Book of Kells, I walked around and explored a bit. Dublin is a very multicultural city. I was really surprised by the amount of Polish restaurants and grocery stores; I wonder why the large influence? Everyone was incredibly nice and smiley, which was welcome after Sweden (the smile part and some of the nice)! I did not realize that the official language of Ireland is still Gaelic - most of the signs are in both Gaelic and English.

On Tuesday, I set off in the rain (yay Irish weather) to join a day tour. I liked this particular tour because we were in one of those fifteen passenger vans instead of a huge bus. Our guide took us to tons of amazing sites around Dublin. Our first stop was Four Knocks Passage, an ancient tomb. It looked like a little grassy hill at first, but then we saw the secret entrance. This particular tomb was over 5000 years old, which older than the pyramids! Our second stop was Mellifont Abbey, the first in Ireland. Only the very skeleton of the foundation remains because most of the stones were moved a long time ago for use in other building projects. How sad is that? However, one can still see the general layout. We went to see the high crosses at Monasterboice next. These HUGE crosses are probably ten feet tall and pure stone. They are covered with engravings of scenes from the Bible. I have no idea how they have managed to stay standing for so long! We had lunch at a cute little pub before our next activities. I had cabbage and potatoes - my very favorite! Afterwards, we moved on to the Hill of Slane...and ventured back out int the rain. There are some ruins of an old monastery on the Hill, but it is famous because this is where Saint Patrick first came to proclaim Christianity. I saws tons of cute cows too, which made me very happy. The final destination for the day was the Hill of Tara. This place was awesome! To the uninformed person, it looks like a bunch of small hills with some adorable sheep frolicking around. However, it was actually the meeting place of the ancient kings of Ireland! The kings were crowned there and the high king was chosen as well. There are also several underground chambers and burial places, hidden in the hills.

Monk washing up building at Mellifont Abbey

I set off for Galway when I returned to Dublin after the day's tour. I arrived after dark, so I only checked into my hostel and made plans for the next morning. This hostel was not anywhere as nice as the Dublin one, but I put up with it for two nights. Wednesday morning, I decided, was Cliffs of Moher day because the weather was supposed to be nice. I had to choose a big tour due to the absence of any small ones, but it turned out great. The guide was a tiny old Irish man, and he was hilarious! I would have paid much, much more just to go on a tour with this guy! The whole time he told stories about drinking too much, leprechauns, and faeries, and hitting on all of the girls in the bus (which was enormous by the way). It was great! He also drove on the "wrong" (for Ireland) side of the road for a bit "to make the Americans feel at home." But really, I learned quite a bit about important things too. We drove through the Burren, which is this weird, flat rocky landscape. All of the rocks have deep cracks, and tons of wildflowers and plants grow in them. There are also ancient remains in some! There are quite a few ancient tombs in the area, and really important artifacts have been found. Plus, it is incredibly beautiful! We drove along Galway Bay, saw a few castles, a lot of sheep, and horses. We went to a faerie ring and heeded warnings from entering...faeries kidnap people there. Oh yes, and we also saw the Cliffs of Moher:

The Cliffs of Moher

Let's see...INCREDIBLE, right? The weather that day could not have been more perfect! I took a million photos at the visitor's place, then crossed the "Do NOT Cross" area and took two million more. That was a really good decision because the view was much better. I was very careful and stayed away from the edge. I compared my photos to the ones in the gift shop, and have to say that many of mine are better. Yes, I will brag about it because I am self-centered.

View of Galway Bay from the Cliffs of Moher

On Thursday I walked around Galway a bit. It is a university town, rather small and very cute. Oh! On Wednesday night I also went to watch some ceili dancing...that was super fun! Anyways, Galway was great. It is a really cute little down. Across the river running through the center is Claddaugh Quay, the place where the Claddaugh ring was first made. I bought a new ring while I was in Ireland to replace the one that I lost on my first day at CC (that was devastating because I had been wearing it ever since I bought it at my last dance competition). I headed back to Dublin Thursday afternoon to stay the night before my early morning flight on Friday. I took the bus to Galway and back...good choice...we passed though so many cute little towns and I saw a ton of the beautiful countryside!

Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin

I returned to Sweden on Friday afternoon (and to my DISGUSTING house) to study up for my Monday final in Economic Geography of Asia. I enjoyed that test...seriously. I spent the weekend packing and getting everything in order for my departure the the USA. My final was a three hour, six-essay ordeal in the afternoon on Monday. Dad and Kenyon arrived in Stockholm the previous day (Sunday) but I left them to fend for themselves because of the exam. I took the train up to meet them on Tuesday morning - yay! It was so nice to see part of my family again! We covered so much ground in the next week that it was crazy. Our Eurail passes were awesome and we all agree that taking trains is THE way to travel! I even like sleeping on trains, and Dad and I devised some rather good strategies for taking decent photos as the car speeds down the tracks. The run down:

• Tuesday (June 3) - meet Dad and K, travel to Gävle, night train to Lulea
  
• Wednesday - explore Lulea, night train to Kiruna
• Thursday - Kiruna (furthest Northern city in Sweden), stayed in a great hostel, and our first experience with the midnight sun (it was sunny at 2:00 am...I kid you not)
• Friday - train to Narvik, Norway...this boarder-crossing journey is famous for its beauty! We saw reindeer, a moose, gorgeous snowy peaks, Abisko (famous from my Swedish workbooks), and the amazingly long Tometräsk Lake. Santa was also on our train, seriously...he was visiting from Japan. For some reason, the scenery completely changed when we crossed the boarder in to Norway and everything became super gorgeous. We stayed in Narvik Friday night at a great hostel, even though the sauna was locked, much to Dad's dismay.
• Saturday - hike in Narvik, great views of the amazingly beautiful fjord there, Dad and K went to the World War II museum, bus to Tronheim, walked around Tronheim and enjoyed the summer festival, train to Åndalsnes (adorable little town, right in the middle of several fjords...I am moving here), which was an incredibly beautiful journey, stayed at the most adorable hostel ever
• Sunday - Dad rented a car so that we could drive over the pass that we went over on Friday's train...we stopped and took way too many photos, saw so many amazing waterfalls, adorable lambs (I tried to pet one and failed), over four feet of snow at the top and skiers, the Geiranger Fjord (we took a boat trip in this one...wow!), trolls galore, and almost had a scenery overload. We stayed another night at the amazingly cute hostel because it was just that great.
• Monday - train to Oslo, which was late...so we missed our connections and ended up getting back to Göteborg, Sweden after the last train for Jönköping had already departed. We were able to get on a bus in the middle of the night, and arrived back three hours before my five am fligh
• Tuesday - I went back to the USA (Jönköping to Stockholm to Frankfurt to Denver) and Dad and K went to Copenhage

Wednesday - I wake up at 4:00 am and bake three cakes, two batches of cookies, and pancakes before 9:00 am...yay!


I am having issues with my external hardrive, which is also where all of my photos are stored. I do not even want to talk about that. In the mean time, about a third of the Sweden/Norway photos are up and hopefully more will be soon. I think that the photos speak for themselves.

Photo Mess of Insane Proportions

The good news is that all of my photos made it though the crash of iPhoto, which I used to like, and now I am not so pleased with. The bad news is that they are a huge mess and are going to take hours to reorganize (I have over 4000). SO, I think that I may have to wait until I am home next week to clean them up. Sadly, this means that I cannot put up photos from Ireland for another week or so...and I took some really fantastic photos there! Maybe if I pack really quickly tonight, I can work on it, but we shall see...

I also just remembered something else fantastic about Ireland - almost everything there is LABELED vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, etc! I cannot even describe how cool this is! I was absolutely raving about it in one grocery store to the checker lady, and I think she thought that I was a little bizarre, but it is a BIG deal. I usually have to spend a ton of time meticulously checking everything...plus, in the EU the preservatives/additives are numbered, so I have to check the numbers to see if any of the animal derived ones are included. I suppose that this might be a little more helpful than the vague US system (ex. "Natural Flavors" - what the heck is that?). ANYWAYS, it was super awesome. Oh yes, and I even found vegan fig newtons...which I have not had for four years.

I have my Economic Geography of Asia final today. It is a five hour essay test, which I think will bring back memories of AP exams in high school. I also need to pack EVERYTHING because I will be returning to Jönköping right before I fly home next week. I think that I might go to jympa as well because it will be the last time I can go. I am super sad about that. I love jympa. I have a feeling that this may turn into an all-nighter, depending on how long the packing takes. I am taking a SUPER early train to Stockholm tomorrow to meet Dad and K though! EXCITING!

I am working on laundry yet again, and need to get back to studying. I also need to stop eating frozen cookie dough...I made it last week because I had some ingredients that I needed to use up with the full intention of actually making cookies. Well, that did not happen because the only thing I like more than fresh cookie dough is frozen cookie dough, so yes, big mistake there.