Buda Pest (Buhdapesht)

This is all out of order. sorry. Anyways this is Indi, Anna, Willow, and Me. we all roomed together in Budapest. yeah - we get along great. This is during the day long tour and we were really bored on the metro.

We took a bus to get to the castle and the buses there are a lot smaller. Yet we still managed to cram everyone from our group on there plus a few hungarians. me and Indi - being scared for our lives. There are actually at least nine people in this pic.

We were walking along and i decided to take a pic - so I said look up (meaning at the camera) so Willow looked up and everyone else looked at the camera. Anna, Willow, Indi, and me.

The old part of town and the new. Stark difference. That is actually a pretty good looking part of the old town.

Budapest was awesome! It is actually two cities combined to make the capital of Hungary. On the left side of the river (see first pic) is Buda and on the left is Pest. Buhdapesht is how they pronounce it there. The first pic is Indi, me, and Alisha on the boat ride. The first night we took a tour of the Jewish district. the synagogue that we went to is named after the street it is on. The street is (translated ) tabacco street so we went to the tabacco synagogue. This was also gustapo headquarters during WWII. The next day we had a tour the entire day. That is a really llooong time and when we got on the boat most people went to sleep. Including me for a little while.

A pretty cool store named after two of my brothers.

Willow, me, Anna, and Indi with our Hungarian Ft.s.

That's right Ft. 15,000.

honestly there wasn't a whole lot to do in Budapest if you didn't have a metro card. Everything is way spread out. Plus on the last day we got lost and walked about seven miles off our map. On the last day I still had a bunch of almost useless money left so we went shopping and I got some pretty cool stuff.

Pies till 4 a.m.

so last sunday Cassandra, Tawny (prounced toni by all germans) and I made dinner for our entire group. Cass had this crazy idea that we should make pie for dessert. So we stayed up till 4 a.m. making pies.

Our pies: orange merengiue (we forgot to buy the lemons), Berry, Apple (the square one) Coconut, Pumpkin, and Chocolate.

Tawny and Cassandra mixing the whip cream (It never really got whipped. It was still saucy.)

Me making an amazing pie crust.

all our groceries. it looked a lot more impressive in the cart at the store.

Again all our groceries. I forgot to mention that the stores close here around 7 except for the one in the train station. We started at about 8:15 so we just made a made dash through the store and hoped we had everything we needed and enough of it. But we forgot some key ingreidiants such as the lemon. My work at aspen grove has paid off. I made some pretty sweet subsitutions. And thanks to mom for sharing with me the recipe for the jougurt pie a long time ago.

Fall

So I took this picture about a week ago. It is of the courtyard of the apartment. The trees are so beautiful right now.

Rhino at Schoenbrunn

As requested a Rhino for Josh. Does anyone else have a request. There are a lot of animals at Schoenbrunn and I have a picture of most of them.

Athens, Greece

Athens was a really cool city, it was really large, really white, really clean (for a large city) and had tons of dogs and cats that were everywhere. Weirdest part was that most had tags, but no one seemed to be owners. And there were lots of random small churches in the middle of squares.

On the last day we went and saw the Temple of Zeus and the stadium and then went to the flea market and of course got some more gyros.The acropolis through the ruins of the temple of Zeus

Trevor, Willow, Me, and Joseph at the Stadium

Nikki, Sydney, Jen, and Me in front of the Temple of Zeus.

It is REALLY BIG!

Aegina, Greece

Aegina was so amazing! I suggest everyone if possible go there on the off-season. Basically we bumbed around on the beach for two days. For dinner we ate at a restaurant and we were the only ones except for the owner and her mom and some other really old lady. After eating she would put on egyptian music and told us to dance - So we did. It was hilarious, bucause none could dance really except Sydney. The two old ladys really enjoyed it and kept clapping for us. Also traffic stopped to have a look. The entire town had nothing better to do apparently. Temple ruins. Nikki, Joseph, Willow, and me.

This is where we went swimming on the second day. Look closely and you can see five people in our group. The water was ridiculously clear even when we went swimming at night you could see the bottom underwater when you really deep.

Willow and I debating how to get into the water and if jumping from this rock would be safe.

Ta da! it was safe. It took us about ten minutes to decide that because we were kind of sissies.

Willow and I having lots of fun.

After swimming around we tried to get out in another spot, and we were still being sissies so it took us about twenty minutes to get out. There was fish, crabs, something large and unwelcoming-looking, quicksand and so on. Anyways we had a blast.

Grease and Greece

Greece was awesome and also very greasy. The traditional fast food is called a gyro (pronounced euro, and somewhat like a doenner) and it is super delicious and cheap. Consequently I had it quite a few times. Not to worry though I also had some healthier foods including swordfish and Kalamari (squid) and they were also delish. We spent two days in Athens and two days on the island of Aegina. Since the tourist season ended about two weeks ago we literally had the beach to ourselves and practically the entire town. Being a student has some definite benefits - everything we went to was free - awesome! In Athens we saw one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, the acropolis. We also saw the Angora and lots of other ruins. and one of the rocks that we saw was where Paul preached. After all this we climbed to a theater on the tallest hill in Athens. The city is white and goes on forever. Then of course we went and got some gyros. Yum Yum!

Nikki, Willow, Sydney, Jen, and me (all the girls on our trip) This is at the top of the highest hill in Athens. The city is HUGE!

Me with the throngs of tourists and the Parthenon.

They are rebuilding part of the acropolis. I think the newer marble looks better.

An ancient theater

Jen, Nikki, Trever, Willow, and Sydney watching an amazing show in the theater.

Parliament

On Friday I took a tour of the Austrian Parliament building. I got to sit in the chair of the President of the National Congress. Indi, Jillian, Me and Covey, in the national congress hall

The house sitting on top of the parliament building right now

Heeresgeschichtliches Museum im Arsenal

Or in other words the museum of the history of the Austrian Army. I went there on Wednesday with Alica and Indi as seen below. It was pretty sweet.

Schoenbrunn Tiergarten

So yesterday Ruth, Kasia, and I went to the Schoenbrunn Tiergarten (zoo), because it was a holiday and everything else was closed, and because it was also way awesome! We were there for about five hours. Yeah that awesome. We also went to the Palmenhaus (green house) and the Wuesthaus (desert house )This is one of the really cool looking flowers in the Palmenhous.

This is the giraffe I petted. The laws are a lot different here. We were able to go into some of the cages with the animals. That would never be allowed in the US. For example we went into a bat cave. Scary. Some how in the dark these bats know where you are and don't run into you. We didn't get to be in the cage with the giraffes, but I did get to pet this one.

A polar bear for Spencer.

A hippo

Me with two panda bears. Ok all my pics of the real panda bears didn't turn out to good. Which is sad, because they just had a baby panda bear and apparently it is really difficult to have a baby panda bear in a zoo. This contributes to the fact that they are an endagered speices.