pictures!

so, I pretty much came home and passed out yesterday without even bothering to change clothes, shower, brush my teeth, etc. I woke up at 11pm when my parents got home from Florida, gave them their souvenirs and then took a sleeping pill so I could sleep through the night. I made it all the way to 7am, baby! I'm ready to take a nap right now, though, so I'm inhaling Diet Coke like oxygen to in order to find the strength to stay up until bed time tonight.

here's the pictures I took. I haven't edited out any unflattering ones yet, so I'm sorry that you may have to view images of me that may cause momentary blindness. Maybe I'll get around to deleting those ugly ones one of these days, but right now all I care about is the distance from my computer to my bed.

yay for America!
Meg

home sweet home

i'm not sure if any one will read this, but we have made it home safe and sound. what a whirlwind two weeks it's been. after traveling for 18 or 19 hours and staying awake for 25, i have still managed to wake up at four this morning. yea for jet lag!!! the past two weeks were amazing. hopefully we will get some pictures up soon for everyone. i'm not in any hurry to get back on a plane, or travel any where in the near future. for now i am perfectly content with home. that's a good feeling for one who always feels restless and the need to go places. maybe i got it out of my system and i'm now ready to settle down. which i guess is a good thing since i'm getting married in two months and two days, but whose counting? :) but i'm sure life will hold many more adventures and many more travels, i hope at least. for now however, home is good, at the risk of sounding cliche, it really is where the heart is. i will always look back on this trip with happiness. what a great opportunity it was to explore the world with two amazing girls who were somehow able to put up being with me 24/7. to aimee and megan, thank you for your patience, for the memories, and for your friendship. it was an amazing experience and i'm glad i got to share it with the two of you. and now i should try to go back to sleep because i have obviously been rambling on far to long. love to all, it's good to be home.

rheanna

so long, farewell, auf wiedersein, goodnight.

so the trip is finally drawing to an end; tonight is our last night in Europe. i´ve had a wonderful time here and have had some great experiences...and some great gelato!
there is not much to do in frankfurt-apparently, the allied forces bombed the crap out of it in 1944 so there is not much left here, historically speaking. we wandered around the old part of town that was reconstructed after the war-it was very charming, in a very german way. i like germany-most of the people we have met here have been very kind and i would not be opposed to returning again one day and exploring the country some more.
i bought some amazing chocolate for my family today, so not only to you guys have me to look forward to seeing, but my chocolate as well!
cant wait to see you people tomorrow.
much love
meg

guten tag, ja

grettings from frankfurt. italy was fun, probably my favorite part of the trip. i got my hair sniffed twice by our waiter on our first night there which was pretty interesting. we had a lot of fun, took a lot of pictures and ate some gelatti. yum. i can´t believe our time here is coming to an end. i´m so grateful for the opportunity i´ve had to come and a thousand thanks to meg for planning this not so little trip. i can even forgive you for getting us lost :) i have to be honest though, i am so ready to come home where i can actually communicate with people and read signs, and tell people off when they make me mad. oh the little things in life. this has been an amazing time and i hope to come back someday with my man :) love to all!

the land of MY people

my german heritege is strong here and i could feel the force once we landed. german flew fluently from my lips. i can say thank you and everything. well just thank you. love i told them that you are the real adonis and none of these supposed "adonis"(s) come even close. the rain on the beach megan mentioned was a blast we were soaked through and through. i still think my hoodie is quite damp. some stories we have forgot to mention are as follows; when we were in the louve rheanna sat down on a long escilator ride and shortly after doing so we hear in english over the loud speakers. "for your safety and the safety of those around you do not sit down on the escilators. thank you" yep they were watching us. they had us pinned the moment we walked in that there was going to be trouble. she´s lucky i didn´t track her down and slap her. few days later when we were in madrid at the non breeders diner with the crap of a waiter some old man walked in and tried to steal another mans purse. yes he had his purse hanging on his chair behind him. i was facing what was going on and if he would have gotten any closer to taking it i would have said something but this breeder was just "observing" for the time being my scowling stare caused reah and meg to turn around which scared the man off. he didn´t know i was watching. well that is all the time i have. love zou all
aimee

its all drawing to an end...

so it´s wednesday already...i cant believe it! we made it to frankfurt this morning and managed to find our hotel...after i got us lost...again. we are staying in the coolest hotel! its an old house with beautiful crown moulding and lace curtains. its very cozy!
yesterday we made our way out to the beach. i have a theory that the rain and beautiful american men are following me around europe...that theory continued to hold out yesterday, in the rain department at least. we´ll just say that by the time we got back to rome, it looked as if we had taken a dip in the ocean...which we didn´t.
last night we went out to dinner with our other three roomates-one girl was from the states and the other two girls were from canada. we went to this little hole in the wall place that an american couple we met the night before had recommended and had a really good time together. it was nice to make some friends! we took pictures and exchanged email addresses.
we made it to our hotel today around 1 and promptly fell asleep. eventually we made our way to an italian cafe next door and had a traditional german meal of weinerschnitzel, which we thought was kind of funny. tomorrow we are going to hit up the old part of town as well as ransack a supposedly amazing chocolate shop. i cant wait to come home and get some pictures up here!

peace auf!
meg

Ciao!

today we started things off right with waking up to our half naked roomate...another beautiful Amercian Adonis. What can I say-beautiful american men flock to me in Europe...now if only this would happen back home!
we hit the Vatican this morning and boy, what a monument to humility that place is! It was pretty amazing getting to see the Sistine Chapel but I think we were glad to leave the large tourist groups behind.
Afte the Vatican we were able to go to this really cool church that was decorated with the bones of 4000 Carpathian monks...very cool, very creepy. We ended the day with a visit to the spanish steps and meandering through the streets.
Tomorrow it's off to Ostia and the beach, weather permitting. I can't believe we only have 3 days left in Europe. I'm very excited to come home and be surrounded by all things familiar!
Much love!
Meg

bonjourno...or something like that

hello people. we made it to rome safe and sound last night. we are situated in a hostel with 3 other roomates...last night there was a snoring argentinian sharing our room but he left today luckily. today we did a bunch of touristy stuff (when in Rome!). we had a lot of fun walking around and seeing all of that cool ancient stuff...
this morning we went to church. we happened (was it really coincidence? i think not) to find the elders on the metro and we were able to follow them to church. it was a really cool meeting. i think the best part by far was watching the sunday school class errupt into a big italian arguement about the scriptures and watch the elders just shake their heads and mutter 'thats not right...' and 'the Lord is holding my tongue' when he wasnt able to translate. it was really awesome! we also had a really cool opportunity to meet a man in sunday school who is from Kenya. He actually translated the scriptures and temple ordinances into an african language! how awesome is that? pretty darn awesome, i would say.
we're off now to the Trevi fountains to toss a coin over our shoulders and wish that one day we will come back to Rome again. So far Rome is agreeing with us a lot more than Madrid and I am very thankful for that.
Happy mother's day to our dear mothers-we promise that we are (trying) to behave. We love you! (this is a joint post, by the way. we only have 15 free minutes on the internet)

Ciao!
meg rheanna aimee

farewell, madrid.

it´s our last day in madrid-tonight we catch our plane to rome (yay!). we never found the town we wanted to go yesterday...we ended up riding the train for four hours. i guess sitting on the train for four hours was a lot better than sitting in the hostel for four hours. last night we went to TGI Fridays-hands down, the best meal we´ve had since we left Phoenix. i think we are all really excited to leave madrid.
it´s raining again today but we are now homeless so that means we have to go out into the city...we are going to go see the Madrid Temple and then probably make our way over to the airport around 2. we have really enjoyed our hostel (minus the eastern european children) and hope that our next place is as great as this one.
until later
meg

I love Chris

That is all!

porn, churches and fake transvestites

yesterday was an interesting day. if you read aimees blog you heard about the lovely movie at the muesem. we then walked forever to a small church where goya painted the ceiling. it was beautiful. on the walk home we passed some boys dressed in outlandish drag with a video camera asking for kisses. meg and amiee passed and i happily obliged. it was funny, on the cheek of course. we had paella at the hostel with-gulp- seafood. i ate what i could trying to stomach it but as soon as aimee started hacking into the crab shell i had to leave the table or else there was going to be something far worse ending up on the table other than seafood. oh well, at least i tried :)

grumpiness abounds.

i think it´s safe to say that we are all a little grumpy today thanks to the small village of eastern european children to stayed at our hostel last nigh-i say ´'stay' and not 'sleep' because i´m pretty sure they did none of that...
it´s rainy and humid again today. yesterday we hit up a modern art museum-there was some pretty cool stuff there. of course they had the picasso exhibit closed off and I couldn´t see Guernica, the piece i was most looking forward to seeing on our visit to madrid. i´m going to be honest-a lot of the stuff in the museum was absolute crap. seriously. all i need is a paint roller and some paint and i too can be an artist...
we did go to this really cool church (one day i´ll put the name on here) that houses frescos painted by Goya. they are absolutely amazing! i´m not a huge Goya fan but i really enjoyed these frecos. it was worth the hour walk.
we also took a small detour to egypt...or rather, egypt took a small (or not) detour to us. Egypt apparently gave spain one of it´s monuments that was supposed to be flooded out when they built a dam in the 80s. we pretended we were egyptian and then had a hot irish guy take our picture.
we actually managed to stay out pretty late last night-made it all the way to 5pm! it´s a new record for us here in Madrid. we had a horrible meal of paella in the hostel and ended up running away from the eating area and back to our room to munch on some pringles, sweet rolls and chocolate that we had bought earlier at the grocery store. spain has not treated us too well, meal wise.
this morning we got up bright and early to catch the train to Segovia only to arrive at the train station and be told (we think, anyways...) that we were at the wrong train station. I would have argued back, but seeing as how I don´t speak the language...
so, here we are. it´s 11am and we are back at the hostel filling you readers in on our lives. I think we are going to go try and catch the train again...keeping our fingers crossed that we end up at the right station this time!
peace out, home skillets.
meg

T an A in Madrid?

the smoke clutters my brain. yesterday we went to centre de reine sofia. where we saw lots of salvador dali. i find him more disturbing than interesting now. he and some strange man made a movie in the 1920s about ´´erotic love´´ dont worry it wasnt a t and a flick but was teetering on early porn very very shocking for that time i am sure. in the same film they showed a lady get her eye slit with a an old school shaving blade and the ´jelly´ stuff come out. that was pretty funny becasue i sat further in the front and you can hear to shocked gasps from the back. yep those were my girls. the museum was more of a modern abstract art. can i say that it totally sucked. now i can appreciate good art but this was just crap. call me an uncultured swine but i´m telling you i was actually appalled that someone some people consider that crap good. it was terrible. i cannot convey to you how stupid this was. blah! we walked about everywhere in madrid yesterday. tina i hate to inform you that meg did not get the zoobies digits. although it was fate i see better in her future. we read it in the cards last night. meg can tell you the other places we went im sure. we had a cheap dinner at the hostel last night. carne paella. came out to be a seafood pink chicken dish in which we put the crab and unshelled prawn and megans dish to greet her when she came to the table. i forced Rhea to leave the table when i took my dinner knife and stabbed the crab in the back. she was done. we went up to our room to have some rolls, gourmet pringles, you heard it here first, gourmet salt and vinegar pringles and some of the most deliciouso chocolate. no mickey d´s and no spanish movie. we were hushed to sleep by a large group of ninth graders from...some other european country
adios muchachas

repeats?

we may be all writing the same thing but maybe it is from different views. europe really does have a smell of its own. most of the time its a urine b.o smell but every now and then you get a wiff of some really good chinese cooking :) or some flowers but whatever. i´m sure the other two are filling you in on what we did yesterday. so i will maybe try and get some others they may not. last night for dinner we ended up going to what i believe was a gay lesbian diner for dinner. rhea picked up a magazine on the way in and i told her i thought it was a gay magazine....sure enough. dinner was not bad our bottles of water looked like bottles of vodka although it would have made the night more enjoyable because our waiter was CRAP. after they cleared our plates they brought no check so i asked for it and we waited 30 min later i asked again and we decided if he didnt bring it we would just leave what little cash we had and leave. but he brought it. not the brightest gay man either. maybe he was so rude because the three of us were not lovers. but how did he know rhea and i could have been married to eachother. anyway i did NOT say thank you and i threw my napkin on the ground. yep you heard. so we went to mcdonalds for dessert and some fries. they would do america proud at least they were nice. at least they speak a little english. we had a guy sing to us there and back at the hostel a drunk asked if i was german
out of time love and hugs to you all

the rain in spain stays mainly in the plain, or madrid

ok chris you win, it´s raining today and supposed to rain the rest of the time we´re in madrid. but we will not let this dampen our spirits! ha! get it? dampen? right, anyways... so yesterday it was absolutely beautiful. we went to the museo del prado and then to this huge beautiful park where we saw the only statue dedicated to satan. it was called the fallen angel and was a really beautiful statue and fountain. everything in madrid is pretty close to each other so the walks are quite nice. we then went to dinner in this little resteraunt and can i just say are little waiter was lucky none of us speak spanish or are violent people- little punk. it dampened our moods a bit i think. later last night though we took a much needed trip to good ol mcdonalds for a little taste of home :) it was nice. i know there was a bunch of things i wanted to write about last night, but they have all since left my head. maybe meg or aimee remembers. oh well, adios muchachos!

it´s raining in madrid

this morning we awoke to rain...there is also a lack of prostitutes in the square in front of our hostel this morning. bummer.
yesterday we hit up the Museo del Prado. it was pretty rad. we got to see some amazing art from goya, ruebens, bosch, durer, rembrandt, valasquez etc...
while at the museum we also happened to bump into the boy from byu...rheanna and aimee believe that fate has brought us together...we´ll see about that one.
after the musuem we walked through some gorgeous botanical gardens and then made our way over the the parque del buen retiro. we saw this really cool statue called "the fallen angel." it´s one of only a few statues depicting Satan. it was really quite extraordinary. the expression on his face was really haunting. after we saw the statue, we meandered through the parc some more and hung out near the monument to Alfonso xii which is situated on a small lake. it was a gorgeous day outside.
following in the spanish tradition, we came back to our hostel and ended up taking a bit of a siesta and then went to search for some grub. we had a crappy dinner at some gay joint up the street...our waiter was a large turd and we couldn´t wait to get out of there. we then made our way back to the hostel to wait until 10pm so we could go to the flamenco bar. when 10 rolled around we discovered that none of us really wanted to go to the bar and were relieved that we were all on the same page! so instead of hitting up the bar, we decided to hit up the mcdonald´s downstairs for some fries and ice cream-food of champions, baby. we came back to the hostel and watched "the pianist" in spanish...and didn´t understand a thing. ¡vive madrid!

meg

summary of our first day in madrid

in a nutshell...prostitutes, discovering we are in the middle of the red light district, eating an amazing meal of paella, more prostitutes, shopping at H&M, prostitutes, meeting some people from BYU, prostitutes, chatting with the boy from BYU (who wants to become a dentist, natch), prostitutes, getting a coke from mcdonalds, watching a street fight and some more prositutes. can you see a pattern here? now i understand why this hostel got such good reviews! actually, we are in a really cool part of town that just happens to be part of the red light district...our hostel is really cool and our balcony makes for good prostitute watching. we did meet some people from BYU last night who are staying in our hostel-rheanna and aimee think it´s fate that me and the boy from BYU are supposed to be together so they keep trying to find ways to meet up with him again...he offered to show me where the supermarket was last night-i guess that means it´s love. too bad his sister came in and threw off his game. oh well.
today it´s off to the Museo de Prado and then we are going to a bar tonight to catch a flamenco performance. pretty sweet stuff.
there will probably be some more prostitute watching today as well.

peace out!
meg

a little somethin somethin from me

To answer some questions during the shower episode i was in our room scribbling. yep i didn´t shower for quite some time. i don´t remember the other questions. short term memory. i did leave my mark on paris and let them know what i think of them by puking there and leaving it for them to clean up. not unusual for me to puke anywhere i go. our hostel is the best i have ever been to and our view of the red light district from our balcony is amazing. rheanna says she feels like their gaurdian angel keeping a watchful eye over them. it really is kind of sad rhea and i saw one yesterday on our walk who didn´t look more than 14 15. the fight in the plaza below drew lots of police and ambulances but i would have liked to have seen some blood or a dead body for the show that was put on for it. pansy europeans just a drunk with a scratch on his ear. the weather has been absolutely wonderful for us. must run

prostitutes and fights- a beautiful day

ok, madrid is pretty much the coolest freaking place ever! first of all, our hostel is amazing, best we´ve had so far. there´s a nice clean bathroom in our room with an amazing shower head! it was like heaven in the bathroom this morning :) plus we have a balcony that over looks the plaza in front of our hostel. it was there as aimee and i were hanging out as megan took a nap, that we created a new game, "spot the prostitute" it´s definately a fun game. within twenty minutes aimee and i saw like for girls pick up skeezy men and take them into a place down the street. there are tons of them. the weird thing is, they seem to do most of their business during the day. at night the cops come out and the girls disappear. last night there was a fight out in the plaza and all these cops showed up and there was this huge crowd watching. it was pretty awesome. aimee and i did a little exploring in the afternoon yesterday and as we are walking down the street this man says to her, "you are beautiful!" ah, only in europe. watch out chris, you may have a little compition :)

sunrise, sunset

you know, it would be wrong of me to say that sunrises aren´t beautiful, because they are incredibly amazing and beautiful, but i have to be honest, i´ll be ok with not seeing another one for a little while. we said see ya later to paris this morning, leaving our hostel at 4 this morning. we finally made it to our hostel in madrid around 12:30. i´m so excited to be here. this hostel is definately the best so far. no more co-ed showers though, bummer :) jokes people, total jokes. they are playing all these american oldies at the hostel right now. it´s nice to have that little bit of home :) love to all!

Hola Madrid, and showering with an American Adonis

so we made it to madrid this afternoon! mostly i´m thankful that the computers at our hostel have qwerty keyboards (the kind we use in america, natch). now i can actually write something of substance!
some amazing things happened yesterday after my last post. rheanna and i decided to take a shower-i won´t lie, it´s been a few days. the showers at our hostel in paris were kind of gross and we didn´t think they had doors on them...after discovering that they did in fact have doors and being repulsed by the smell of paris and sweat, we decided to brave the showers. i guarded rheanna´s door while she showered and she guarded mine. as i was standing outside rheanna´s stall and handing her shampoo, this beautiful specimen of a man leaned in through the doors and asked if the showers were coed. "yes indeed" said i. sparks flew, trumpets sounded and then he was gone. a little while later, as i was handing rheanna her towel, the beautiful man again appeared, this time in nothing but a towel. again, trumpets and sparks. even rheanna, peaking through the door, could not believe his beauty. suddenly the showers weren´t so bad.
as soon as rheanna got out of shower it was my turn...so there i was, showering in a hostel in paris next to the most beautiful man we had ever seen (who happened to be american). of course we were completely separated by the wall of the shower stall, but still! it was probably the best shower i have ever had...even if it was in the nastiest shower i´ve ever seen. *sigh*
this morning we woke up at 330 so that we could be out of the hostel by 4 and have enough time to walk to our bus stop to catch the shuttle to the airport to catch the plane to madrid. whew! it was a long and very early morning. we flew ryanair and i was actually surprised at how well it went-mind you, there was not a lot of organization but still, we made it to madrid and so did our bags.
it took us a while to find our hostel-lots of walking down wrong streets only to find that it was about 45 feet from the metro stop we got off at. our hostel is really cute-we have our own room with a CLEAN bathroom and a balcony that overlooks one of the main streets in madrid. it´s an awesome area and i´m really excited to go do some shopping! right now i´m enjoying the american key board, free internet and classic american music from the 70´s.
i still have no access to uploading some pics on here-i´m pretty sure that those are just going to have to wait until we get home.
love to all!
meg

ps. rheanna got to see the beautiful american man´s derriere ;)

pss. to our mothers, we hope this post isn´t too shocking...although we kind of hope it is ;)

au revoir pari!

wow, what a crazy three days in paris! it has been amazing but i am ready to go to the country of my people, madrid, spain! this is going to be so much fun!

here is aimee

i feel that i have to input something. meg is great translating for us so we dont have to point at everything we need or want and i love how Rheanna starts to sing "im pround to be an american" when we find something we dont like. the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous
must hurry im running out of time but we love and miss you all
thank you for your comments

monday

our final day in paris! we decided to end paris with a trip to the louvre followed by lunch near the eiffel tower and then on to find france's copy of the statue of liberty. when we got back to our hostel we hit up the local pattiserie for a whopping load of treats followed by some really funny pictures. tomorrow we are off to madrid...we have a lovely 430 am bus to catch to get to the airport and we should be in madrid around noon. paris has been really great and we have all had a really awesome time here.
love to all
meg

pour ma mere

hello again! lots done today-tracked down the church near the musee pompidou and attended sacrament service (in english, natch). it was really cool. then we took the metro out to chateau de vincennes to do some exploring. we then ventured into pere lachaise and found jim morrison and oscar wildes graves. the cemetary was absolutely amazing! it was so beuatiful! tonight we are going to the eiffel tower-now that our tummies are full from yummy pizza we will be able to handle the lines sans grumpiness! im working on getting some pics up here but there arent any outlets to do so...you may just have to wait until we are back. i will say that my garden gnome is quite photogenic and is loving paris...as are the gays in town for the big gay festival. we are all happy and healthy and even saying prayers together in the mornings. we have definitely felt your prayers and are grateful.
well im off to the patisserie to get some yummy treats and then its to la tour eiffel that we go. much love to you.
meg

my feet hurt and rheanna is has blisters

today was a great day of pretty much traversing the entire city. we checked in to our next hostel and then we hit pretty much all of the main sites in the city...notre dame, eiffel tower, arc de triumph...we walked everywhere and me and rheanna were pretty tired...aimee was still going totally strong though. rheanna and i pretty much collapsed on our beds when we got to the hostel...did i mention that we had to haul our bags up 4 flights of stairs? oh yeah, good times. we went to a cafe tonight and had a pretty traditional meal all the while relaxing and watching people walk by. it was a great day.
love to all
meg

wow

So after a very long journey we are finally here! Longest plane ride of my life, but it's already worth it. Tomorrow we start our real tourist stuff and I can't wait! My time on the computer is about up so this is a short one, Meg pretty much said it all. Love to everyone!

bonjour!!

hello to everyone following along! I'm writing from our hostel in Paris. after 25 hours of travel we finally made it here safe and sound with nary a hitch...except for the screaming child on the way from frankfurt to paris. i'm totally ready to take a shower and go to bed. this keyboard is kind of a pain so im afraid i won't be writing a lot today. i have about 5 minutes left on this thing so i'm going to see if i can sign into my email...it would seem that the french do not want me to be able to sign into my gmail :(
more to follow...tomorrow we are going to get out and explore! Je t'aime!

xoxo
meg