October 28, 2014

So guess what! My parents are here!  You all knew that.  That wasn't a surprise really.  Especially because 25 percent of my blog audience is my parents so they already know they're here anyway.

It's been interesting having them here.  When they showed up on Sunday, Mr. Pipp didn't give us much warning before the bus rolled up and they popped into campus.  I helped them take their stuff up to their room and then helped Mom find a spot to do her laundry, and gave them the general tour of campus. Mom and Dad actually went on another tour later that day, and the administrators actually showed them all the locked-up places I couldn't show them, so I guess my tour was just sort of complimentary.

Mom and Dad brought some very special gifts for me this semester - pens and highlighters.  If you go down to Gertrude's, getting a single highlighter costs about 6 euros, and a ballpoint pen is roughly 3.  That's about 5 dollars for a pen and 10 for a highlighter.  So I wasn't about to pay that.  Now I'm all stocked up and ready to go.

Mostly on Sunday it was just settling them in, we went to mass, there was a social that I dropped my parents off at, and then I picked them up again at 5 and they took me to dinner at Chinese restaurant where the entire menu was in German. We just sort of had to guess at what most of the menu options were, and we managed to pull it off beautifully.  I got pork fried noodles, mom and dad got chicken and shrimp fried rice respectively.

I took extra back to Clare and she said she'd never had real Chinese food.  Do you know how crazy that is?  How can someone survive without ever eating real Chinese food!?  Or Mexican food for that matter?  Washingtonians, count your blessings that you've had a burrito or a chimichanga or whatever your personal preference is.

On Monday I went to class in the morning as usual, and then after that I put my nose to the grindstone and started getting all my reading for Monday and Tuesday also done, so I wouldn't have to do it after my metaphysics class and would have time to spend with Mom and Dad.

After metaphysics there was a social with peanuts, pretzels and wine for the parents and students together, so I went to that, and then they served us dinner.

On the menu: prosciutto and some weird green melon, risotto and medium rare roast beef and vegetables, and also cake with eggnog drizzled in chocolate sauce.  We had the president of the University sit at our table and I got to talk to him a little bit.  He asked me what I thought should be done to improve the university, and I told him he had already fulfilled my biggest dreams - the gym got upgraded, and they put Wifi in all the main campus dorms.

After that Mom and Dad and I went back to their room and we talked for a while, and then when ten o'clock rolled around I went and grabbed a shower and then went out to a bonfire some students were putting on.  They have bonfires every once in a while but I haven't ever gone out there, because I can never tell who's going to be at them, because you just look out and see silhouettes.

But Monika told me that Clare would be out there, so I headed out and talked to Clare for a bit, then talked to some other kids, and eventually Sudie grabbed me and whisked me away to the swingset where we had a really nice deep talk, which was something I definitely wasn't really expecting out of her.  So that was really nice.

Overall the last couple of days have been good and I'm glad my parents are here.  It's making me miss home a little more though - I'm ready to go back and have Christmas and see my family again!!

October 23, 2014 - In Gaming Again

Ta-da! I forgot I had this blog so I'll update you on the minute and pointless details of my week since I got done with ten day break.

Since the week I got back all I have done is A) catch up on schoolwork that I specifically did not do or have time to do over ten day break, and B) watch TV because my brain is fried.

Of late the weather has been really really bad, rainy and grey, and so I haven't been energetic at all. I've started remembering to take my vitamins, hoping that they will make me feel better, because maybe I'm anemic.  But the dreariness has made me really grouchy, sleepy and I never am motivated.
So over the last week because my papers aren't due for two to three weeks yet, and I've mostly caught up on my reading (even though that doesn't necessarily mean I really comprehend everything I read), I've just been sitting around doing basically nothing.

I think I'm allergic to something here in addition to rain - I'm not sure what that thing is though.  Whenever I eat, my stomach ends up feeling really weird.  So I'm trying to eat more healthily and avoid larger quantities of gluten and dairy to see if that'll settle my stomach down.  Bad thing is, it's hard to find anything around here to eat that isn't gluten or dairy.

Yep, nothing really has happened.  Just sitting around trying not to fall asleep.  Today I got a couple more paragraphs done on an essay.  Yesterday I read a book by John Steinbeck... this weekend I'm not going anywhere because I'm bad at networking again and honestly, it's raining so much and I've spent so much money.  I also really want to go hiking up Book Mountain which I will do rain or shine (and I might get sick again if it's raining....), so I'll get that done sometime this weekend.

That's all for now, folks... I feel like my life is wasting away.  I'm really excited to come home for Christmas.

October 18, 2014 - Ten Day Break Part 2

Thank God there were no partiers on the bus from Fatima to Lourdes!  On our way back from Fatima we ended up traveling back through Spain and up into the south of France into the Pyrenees, where Lourdes is located.  When St. Bernadette Soubiroux was alive, that area spoke a sort-of dialect of Portuguese/Spanish, but now they're French speaking.

You know how I talk about becoming rich and buying a villa in the south of France? Well, there are villas in the south of France and they're beautiful.  Along the Spain-France border there are a bunch of white buildings that all have similar red roofs, but they're all decorated and constructed differently.  I can see where lots of architects would take inspiration from European buildings.

Once in Lourdes, we set off and grabbed another decent dinner to make up for spending the entire night on a train.  We were on the sweaty train again, but this time had better seats facing forwards where we could stretch out our feet, and I went to sleep promptly.  No fiestas this time.  We arrived at our hostel, which was entirely pink ... not sure why. We had two separate rooms, each one bright girly pink with roses on the bedspread.

This place had a shower.  I remember it especially because it had great Wifi, and a shower.

Because it got dark by the time we got there, we crashed for the night and then the next day we set off for the Basilica of the Rosary, which is also the location of the Grotto which was revealed to St. Bernadette, the spring, and the baths of holy water.

I liked Lourdes better than Fatima.  Maybe I just like French culture better, but I greatly appreciated the little coffee shops and the arrangement of the buildings, the beautiful architecture, and the fact that the weather was much better than Fatima, which tended to be finicky and rainy and windy a lot of the time.

We went down and saw the Grotto, and got to touch the cave walls and see the spot where the spring comes up from the ground.  St. Bernadette dug it out with her own hands.

What I didn't expect was that the whole place was located under a humongous church that looked like a Disney palace. The Basilica was enormous!  Not only was there a massive church on the lower level (where we went to Mass that evening), but there was another church located on the level above it with an adoration chapel, and another, larger church on the very topmost level.  There was also a church and a crypt underground beneath the main square, but it was closed for entry when we got there. 

The place was so dang beautiful. The dome with the cross which is visible in some of the pictures is actually the top of the ground level church.

If you look under the right end of the castle you can see the grotto - it's the small hole underneath the strip of mossy green stuff.

I couldn't take enough pictures of this place.

Inside the topmost church

Leslie, looking like a princess

At Lourdes we waited in line for a really long time for a chance to go into the baths.  This was after we had filled up some containers with the healing holy water, which just comes in a bunch of taps out of the wall.  The Baths are somewhere you go if you want to be submerged in the water for a chance at healing, both physical and spiritual.  

We waited in line for about an hour and a half, all the while led in prayer by a bunch of boys who sang and said the Rosary in French.  They looked like they came from a private school or something, and they were very serious, enthusiastic, and good at what they did.  I think they were maybe fifteen or so.  I'm getting really good at saying the Hail Mary in French and Spanish, but I haven't gotten it down in German yet.

When you go in the baths, basically they have this complicated system where they wrap a big sheet around you and you have to take off all your clothes in one curtained area, and then when you go into the curtained area where the bath is, they wrap you in a white sheet and then they have you walk into the water, say your intentions, and then they have you sit down up to your shoulders in freezing cold springwater.  My teeth were chattering the whole time and they kept asking me if I was all right.

They don't give you anything to dry off with once you get out, and they wrap you back up in the first sheet and have you walk back to the first curtained area, where they then hold the sheet so you can redress in privacy (but also you are soaking wet). 

I'm not sure if I feel physically healed, although I know I certainly felt rejuvenated.  My metabolism has been doing weird things since the trip since all we've had to eat really is pastries or carbs (it's the cheapest thing to buy), so I haven't felt super good today.  I've stayed off the carbs and am going to try to rebalance my diet and eat at regular times instead of once in a blue moon or a bunch at once.  

I don't know about spiritual healing either.  Either way, it was an amazing opportunity to get to go into the baths at Lourdes.

I went to confession afterwards - they have a bajillion priests there, and I got a peppy British priest who reminded me of a cartoon character and was super sweet.  After that we ran into a bunch of other Franciscan students including the May twins who were there with their older sister, Stephen the other dude from the gym, one of the RAs, another guy who randomly walks up and talks to people, and a few girls from the cliquey group who were there looking for the May twins.  

It's different running into people off campus rather than when you're on campus. On campus it's a little more awkward, but when we were all meeting up, all tired and sweaty and gross and with adventures to tell, it got really exciting.  Part of it was because we were with Leslie, who is really popular and is friends with everyone, and everyone was excited to see her, but they were also excited by extension to see us.  Christian May even got so far as to run up to Leslie and hug her, then awkwardly decided to hug everyone else too which meant I got one.  Christina Praetzel, an RA, came up and told us a story about how she and Stephen snuck into Notre Dame into a mass they weren't allowed to go to, begged the people in charge to receive the Eucharist there, and then got in trouble later from some other authorities (I guess they don't like tourists going to Mass in Notre Dame). 

Anyway we went to Mass, and then after a nice dinner of pasta and wine at a little French shop on one of the avenues (we also indulged and got gelato that day, second day in a row), we went to the candlelight procession at Lourdes for Our Lady of Lourdes.  Let me tell you this one was exactly the same as the one in Fatima except it was colder and it was also bigger.  

Note about sharing rooms with people: it takes a special kind of roommate to realize that you don't have to keep chattering with someone to be friends with them while you are sharing a room in close quarters.  There are a few people I know with this skill.  Thank God both Leslie and Elizabeth share that skill, because I roomed with both of them on individual times and we were all just content to catch up with Wifi or just read or sleep without talking, and it was great.  We did plenty of talking and joking other times anyway.

However, Elizabeth and I both entertained each other in our sleep.  She talks in her sleep about cereal, and I make sad moaning noises.  The second night, she tapped me on the head to wake me up and said something I couldn't understand, only it turns out she was sleeping, and once again I was making the sad moaning noises.  

When Leslie and I shared a room we were both too wiped out to notice any noises from the other person. 

The next day was a brief adventure to find breakfast, go down to the Sanctuary to put our candles from the candlelight procession from the night before, and then we hit the train for our final day-long journey back to Gaming. 

This one was a little more hectic than the others but I think we're getting more experienced.  Our journey from Lourdes all the way back to Paris went without a hitch, and our train was much nicer. French trains tend to be on the high-class scale as far as trains go. 

At the Paris Montparnasse stop, thank goodness we had enough time to grab water - which was incredibly expensive, because French everything is incredibly expensive - and then we ran up and down the terminal amidst tons and tons of people looking for our train.  We ran around like chickens with our heads cut off before finding the metro and getting on it and losing Kristie in the process, and then we had to go running back looking for Kristie, got on the metro, almost got smashed in the sliding doors because the car was so full, and thank goodness the French are much nicer than everyone says they are.  They dragged us onto the metro forcefully before anything bad could happen, and we made it to Gare du Lyon, the second Parisian train station from which we needed to depart.

We went back and forth in the bus section of the station trying to find the train main lines, which are extremely well hidden and there are actually three doors to different train line sections, and our tickets didn't have marked which one we needed (the Diderot) section.  I ended up taking off running from my group, grabbing a policeman by the arm (he looked over me before he looked down and saw me), and begging him for help.  He directed us out to the train station, where we spent another 30 minutes racing around looking for the specific hall and the specific track our train would be at.  (A very kind French lady stopped without being asked and pointed it out to us.) 

We made it onto the train only to hear that something was going on - there was an accident somewhere down the line - and our train was going to be delayed about twenty minutes.  We sat in terror for the next how long.  We had by then been traveling for about twelve hours, with an overnight train to go.  We really didn't want to have to reschedule that, especially because we had reserved a sleeper car for the next and almost-final leg of the journey.  If we rescheduled, we'd be out both a sleeper car (maybe) and also getting back before the rush of returning Franciscan students.

We ended up talking to a few of the other people on the train who spoke German, and the next time an announcement came on the radio, they all looked up with gleeful expressions and waited until they repeated it in English.  Turns out they said something about connecting trains being held for us... at the same platform? (Which made no sense, since there can only be one train per platform.) 

So we leaped off the train and hit the ground running.  Some people tried to help us, but someone caught a lucky glimpse of a sign that said that a train destination Budapest was taking off soon - it was directly down the platform from us, and we started running right as the conductor blew the whistle for the doors to shut.  We started yelling "WAIT" at her, and when we got there we jumped onto the platform, asked if the train stopped at our stop, and when it turns out it did, we realized that we had made our final connection by the absolute skin of our teeth. 

I have little more to add to the story - we made it back safely, we're super glad and tired, I got all my laundry done and showered and scrubbed myself completely clean.  Now I've got to finish this up and probably ought to go get started on catching up on reading so that I can be ready for Monday, but I really don't want to.  I've been back in Gaming since ten this morning and have done very little productive today and it's already seven-thirty.  Why not laze around some more?  There aren't a lot of people back and it's kind of great.

Final thoughts - everyone said the French would be really unhelpful but they were actually really sweet.  As long as I approached them and said a French phrase first like 'excusez-moi' or 'avez-vous un moment?' they were perfectly willing to give me as much help as possible, even if it meant talking in French slowly so that I could interpret from there.  In fact, everyone was willing to help us, and went above and beyond.  

We ran into a Portuguese man on a train who wanted to tell us about how he was a veteran of the Vietnam war - I think he thought I was Vietnamese? And he couldn't communicate with us well, even though he was speaking Spanish.... if I asked him what he was saying or to say it slower he just mouthed it, which was even less helpful, or drew it with a finger on the chair, which was even less helpful.  We ran into several groups of cheery French men who tipped their hats and said "bon-soir, mademoiselles!" or called us 'madame' and tried to help us when we were going the wrong way.  

We also got several helpful recommendations from French shop owner ladies who were very gracious about us asking randomly for hostel locations or recommendations for places to eat.  

In Portugal we had Nuno, of course, and many helpful Spanish-speaking people.  I even managed to interpret a decent amount of Portuguese and I helped a group of Hispanic tourists who couldn't communicate with the Portuguese by speaking to them in Spanish.  I had a lot of fun talking to people in Spanish - I could formulate what I wanted to say and got it understood, and it was a wonderful feeling.  (They wanted to know where there was a place to light their votive candles and the shopowner had no idea what they were saying.)

We also ran into a sweet lady in a shop who was selling Leslie a St. Joseph statue, at which she tried to communicate to us by gesture how much she loves St. Joseph, and I watched them painfully communicate through waving their hands around, and then a little Italian lady came over to translate for us.  The shop owner (Maria Jesus her name was), gave Leslie a St. Joseph medal for free and blessed us repeatedly, and the little Italian lady told us not to slip because we were beautiful and didn't deserve to fall. 

We went back the next day and Leslie gave Maria Jesus her miraculous medal in exchange, and the little Italian lady wasn't there so I had to serve as interpreter.  Maria Jesus pulled out a pamphlet about an American singer named Christopher Duffley and assumed that we knew who he was, and I managed to read the pamphlet in Portuguese because it's easier to read than to listen and translate that way, and Maria Jesus was really impressed and thankful that I knew what she was getting at.  Anyway Leslie and Maria Jesus hugged and cried all over each other.  

That's the kind of people we ran into - there were a lot of old people smiling at us and definitely glad to see young Catholics out and about.  We felt really safe for the most part except for a few creepy guys in the metro, who I just ignored, and nobody pickpocketed us or even tried, I'm fairly certain.  We ran into a couple of people on pilgrimage from California from Fatima to Lourdes and kept running into them at Lourdes and we traded spots to go and things we'd seen, which was really neat.  

I don't think I contributed much to the group in the way of making reservations but I was definitely one of the mellowest, least-panicky people in the group, I made some decisions when the other girls were waffling, and I led the way and followed signs when they were busy panicking about where to go.  I also served as the main interpreter and managed to humble myself enough to sound pretty stupid when asking for help.

I also managed to make a few friends.  It was really cool to talk to them and get to know them a little better.  I think it was a well balanced group and I felt truly included by the end, even if I hadn't been good friends with them for all the years they've been good friends.  We went and got kebabs for dinner together at the stand in Gaming. 

I also went to the Spar and got some food.  Blessed, blessed food that isn't just bread.  I was so freaking excited. 

So overall I'm glad to be back.  But it was pretty good.  I regret a little bit that I didn't go with the other groups who went off to Croatia and Greece to hang out on the beaches, or to Florence or Venice, or hiking in Switzerland, but that's okay.  I had my own experience and it was unique, and it's the best I could have asked for in the group-less situation I found myself in.

These should not be allowed

Portugal morning

Lourdes candlelight procession at its end

October 18, 2014 - Ten Day Break Part 1

Over the last couple of days I have been having a crazy adventure the likes of which I will probably never have again.  We started out our journey with an overnight from Scheibbs in Austria to Frankfurt, Germany.  In this we discovered that those little sleeper cars you can buy are actually kind of stuffy but at least they can fit up to six people and it's kind of like a close quarters sardine box with the smell of stinking shoes and dirty train body.  It was quite an experience to say the least, but I managed to get a decent night's sleep.

Our arrival the next day in Paris was delayed by a train connection we had misjudged, so when we arrived we ended up having to chill out in Brussels, Belgium for a few hours and catching a later train to the Gare du Paris Nord, or, the main Paris train station.

One of my favorite pictures I've taken, of the beautiful hall church St. Maurice's, in Brussels, Belgium

Inside St. Maurice

A street in Brussels

The outside of St. Maurice

One of its stained glass windows

In Brussels we walked around and got some food and saw the parts of the city around the train station.  Brussels is a pretty city with the same larger buildings as Krakow and Vienna that are basically apartments built with old style architecture and balconies, and then it has a good amount of other modern businesses.  Brussels doesn't smell as good as Vienna or Krakow though and isn't nearly as clean.  While the first two seemed to have a lot of maintenance done on them to keep them fresh, you could Iook at the bottoms of buildings and see wet spots where people had peed, and in fact we walked right past one woman pulling her skirt up to squat and pee on the beautiful St. Maurice hall church.

St. Maurice's was easily one of my favorite churches so far. It doesn't look like it was in use much, although they had the blessed Eucharist in the tabernacle, but it had wide open spaces and huge pillars and as the name implies, was built after the styles of the Viking halls.  It had lots of stained glass and was honestly more simplistic but elegant than a lot of the churches I've seen so far.  I kind of wish they still had masses in there.

Finally we made it onto our train to Paris and got through the various train stations where they rerouted us due to us getting lost. We showed up in the Gare du Paris Nord (north station) and discovered that Parisian train stations are actually like hell on earth.  This is because there are six million people, six million possibilities of being pickpocketed, there are signs but they are all confusing, and we managed to get onto the metro system and figure out enough that we purchased a ticket, escaped the craziness that was the station, and made it out into the city.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa - just kidding, just kidding.

Kristie, Leslie, and Elizabeth under the Eiffel Tower

A quick shot of Paris

Paris at night, as viewed from a bus

Note about the metros - I may be from the suburbs but I'm no city slicker.  I greatly dislike public transport, I don't like being in crowded stations, and I certainly don't like not knowing where I'm going.  Paris has two directions - Nation, which is towards one large main station, and Etoile, which is for Charles de Gaulle Etoiles, the main station on the other end of the city.  Somehow we managed to navigate through this labyrinth of about 20 different subway lines to get where we needed to go.

At night the city is gorgeous.

 We got onto the bus and drove down the main streets including the street with the huge opera building and made it out to the street with the Eiffel tower. We took some pictures, and chilled out under the tower for awhile (I was particularly tired because of my bag).  I was slightly disappointed because we had lost six hours and we didn't get to go see Notre Dame or the Louvre due to lost time, but I'm glad we didn't try, because that would have been absolutely hectic.

After that we headed for our hostel.  We were all tired and cranky because we hadn't had enough to eat and we had missed two trains and we just wanted to crash, so I figure that it was just a result of that that I was getting super annoyed with my group.  We asked a lady for directions and she gave them in French, and I understood what she said and tried to talk to her but I was interrupted by my traveling companions who told me to shush every time I tried to ask a useful question and basically informed me that I was wrong and knew nothing.

At that point I was feeling a little like the random extra in the group, so I was glad when we got to the hostel, finally took a shower, and got WiFi and crashed.

When you're out traveling, by the way, WiFi is a precious, precious commodity.  You thieve it off shops and nearby hostels, you hog it when you're in a hostel and they give you the password so the signal is strong.  It's key for making plans and goofing off and reading books and uh, keeping in touch with people.

The next day we had to pretty much just leave Paris. We did have some time in the morning though, so we went to the Rue Du Bac, which is the street on which St Catherine Laboure's body is kept in a shrine dedicated to the Miraculous Medal.  We also got groceries for food in an incredibly upscale grocery store.  I kid you not, there were several levels and it was also full of glass and gold display cases and when you paid, you inserted your money into a machine so the cashier didn't even have to touch your cash.

The shrine itself was pretty incredible. There was a statue encasing the remains of St. Louise du Marillac, the incorrupt body of St. Catherine Laboure, and a relic (we think it was the heart) of St. Vincent de Paul.  There was also the chair in which Mary appeared to St. Catherine to reveal the miraculous medal.  We were all a lot less grumpy due to having grabbed a decent meal.  I'll put up pictures of the Miraculous Medal shrine when I get them off my phone.

Back on the train to Fatima this time. It was going to be an over night but we hadn't gotten to reserve a sleeping car, so when we got to the first Spanish to Portuguese train, we received a rude awakening. The train wasn't near as nice - and I use nice as an extremely loose term - as the others we had been riding. We'd even been spoiled earlier that day by riding a train with an outlet to charge phones.  This one - was disgusting.  You could see the dirt on the seats from other occupants. We were also stuck in the only four seats facing backwards, which means we were facing two other people and we had no foot space.

The night turned out to be a long one. It smelled like bathroom and there was a group of drunk people who decided to party almost all night, turning obnoxious Spanish music up and yelling to it and screaming and drinking, and every once in a while, Leslie says they got off the train at a stop, ran around screaming, and then got back on.  I slept through it, sort of. I heard them, but I didn't realize what was going on - I thought they were a really bizarre dream.

Anyway, we woke up from that feeling absolutely disgusting and very tired.  We ended up in Caxarias, Portugal, which is a short distance from Fatima by bus.  Caxarias had a bathroom that wasn't nasty, and it was quite a while until the bus, so we all changed and freshened up. We then adventured out to grab breakfast at a little cafe across from the train station.  There I managed to actually utilize my Spanish speaking skills, including finding a supermarket. Turns out that if I slow down my Spanish and make a lot of synonym guesses, I can communicate.

Because we had eaten, my traveling companions were much cheerier and were were happy to let me do the talking. Maybe the long train ride traumatized them.  Caxarias is a tiny town and it was amazing how cheap everything was.  All of us got a pastry for breakfast and a drink and the total added up to about two euro.

(Note on the food.  I am so so so so so sick of pastries and breadstuffs. It's the cheapest thing you can buy, but my body wasn't used to the huge amounts of carbohydrates and lack of water, so while we were traveling I felt really sick.  Now that I'm back, I tried eating some other stuff and my body freaked out at the difference.)

In Portugal, we spent a little time in Fatima seeing the shrine and basilica, which were crowded because it was the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima.

Fatima Sanctuary

They were saying mass when we got there and it was raining and windy.  We were pretty miserable so we got lunch and WiFi and made a hasty reservation for the first place we could find to spend the night.  After reserving it we went and found a taxi and ended up going straight there.  The taxi ride wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be - between all of us it was maybe ten bucks each or even less.

When we showed up we were incredibly surprised. Turns out we hadn't reserved a hostel.  We were actually staying in a Quinta in Ourem, Portugal, which is basically a remodeled Portuguese country manor which had been turned into a bed and breakfast.  We were introduced to the owner's wife, who said she was from California and spoke good English as well as Portuguese.

Note on Portuguese - it sounds a heck of a lot like Spanish, but they mash their words together and use a lot of "shhh" sounds instead of "s" sounds.  When we were briefly in Spain I had been so happy because I could read all the signs and could understand a large chunk of what people were saying, not to mention communicate with them if I needed to.

Anyways this Quinta did not have a room reserved for us.  They had an entire apartment.  That's right.  It had a loft, a full bathroom, a kitchenette, a TV, a common area, and they gave us full access to the walking trails and to the remodeled barn which had been turned into a lounge, a bar, and a beautiful spot to relax.  On arriving there we ditched our bags, I took a shower and headed to the lounge.

A foresty road at the quinta

Our apartment had a spiral staircase.

The loft - I wanted to stay up here but also did not feel like sharing a bed.

Outside the Quinta Alcaidairia-Mor

Note on showers: when you've been in a train overnight and wearing the same gross clothes for almost 48 hours, when you've been sitting in dried sweat from other people and greasing your face by just existing in a compact car of other people's recycled breath, a shower is the most beautiful invention which definitely tops sliced bread.

Five or ten minutes after going to the lounge I came back briefly to grab a bar of chocolate I'd bought in Caxarias. Everyone except for Leslie, who was in the shower, was dead asleep.  Both Elizabeth and Kristie were upstairs making no noise whatsoever.  It was maybe six thirty in the afternoon.

Well, I took that as my cue to have a nice relaxing evening chilling.  Even when I enjoy my travel companions I definitely need to just have time to be on my own or thinking on my own or reading or writing. It was so peaceful in that barn.  I ended up skyping Mom and Dad.

This is when Nuno came in and introduced himself to me, he's the owner. He urged us to go to the candlelight procession at the square that evening because that's when bunches of people would be there. I told him it sounded lovely but that most of us were sleeping and we we would have to grab another taxi.

In the morning I went walking around the Quinta on my own waiting to go to the shrine and kick off the next day.

Good morning Portugal

We ended up sleeping and going to the procession the next night instead (there's a video on the previous post).  To get to Fatima the next day we ended up getting driven by Nuno instead of having to call a taxi. They fed us a heavenly breakfast all you can eat bread, cold cuts and cheese, brownies, coffee, fruits, and jam, beforehand.

Nuno drove us because he was taking his little daughter Sofia to preschool.  She rode with us and I asked her a question in what I hoped was passable Portuguese, and she answered but I'm not sure what she said.

When he said goodbye to us Nuno was incredibly sweet, he gave us all kisses on the cheek and asked us to call him if we needed any help. He also asked us to rate his Quinta well online because he's bad at machines and doesn't know how to up publicity. I absolutely loved him, he was great. He was a little intimidating at first but he turned out a very fatherly figure. His little mansion was gorgeous. He said he didn't get a lot of American tourists, but that the Quinta had been used for several filming projects.  They also give horseback tours and have sheep.  I went on a walk in the morning before we left and said hello to the horses out in the field during the sunrise.

Fatima - we got to see places like the homeplaces of the three children of Fatima, which was a really long hike in the blazing sun carrying our backpacks.  There's a place full of Portuguese oaks where the children used to shepherd their sheep, and it's very old testament looking. There they had the stations of the cross and monuments where Our Lady appeared twice, as well as if you walked down to the city you could see the third appearance occurred, in a garden behind Saint Lucia's home.  We tried to do the Way of the Cross but we got lost on the paths and suddenly managed to get from the Fourth Station to the Crucifixion.  I wasn't too sad about it.  By that point in the sweltering heat I was exhausted from carrying my backpack and everyone else was walking so much faster than I was.

Earlier also we were allowed to walk through the basilica (which was being reconstructed) in one small area and see the tombs of the Little Shepherds.

In Fatima we got really familiar with where we were going because we were there for two nights, which would have been nicer if we stayed in the same hostel for both nights.  However, we didn't... we ended up going to Hotel Pereiras which was located on the main avenue leading to the Basilica.  We had paid for two separate rooms which were mixed dorms, which we were nervous about, but Armando, the guy in charge, gave us a four person double room together so that we could stay as a group, for no extra payment.  He was really nice about it.

At Fatima we also went to the evening procession which involves saying the Rosary in a bunch of different languages and carrying around the statue of Our Lady of Fatima which is crowned on the 13th of every month from May to October in honor of the major apparitions of Mary, and processed around the main square.  After every decade, they sing several verses of Immaculate Mary.  Let me tell you, they may sing it in different languages, but I am pretty freaking sick of that hymn (they played it for the Lourdes Processional also).

However carrying a candle around and singing and praying was kind of interesting.  There were less people because it was the day right after the major feast day.  Apparently on October 13th, the square is crowded with thousands who can barely move, so they just stand there and sing instead of processing with the priests carrying the Mary statue.

During this time we got awfully familiar with the main mall center, which had three levels and several touristy shops and some eating places.  We got a decent meal at one of the eateries which reminded me a little of Roaster's at home.  While we were in Fatima we also bought a heck of a lot of Rosaries and got them blessed.  I have so many Rosaries for people now that have been blessed at different places that it's hard to remember which was blessed where.  I also have to remember where I put all of them because they are so small.

The little stores in Fatima are crazy.  There are an incredible amount of small shops so that if you want to buy something, you have to do no more than just turn around and open your eyes.  Most of the shops sell the same thing, so I'm not sure why they bother having more than one of them or what the people get out of running individual ones.

We also got into a bit more of an equal footing. Hanging out with Kristie, Elizabeth and Leslie is interesting because they've known each other for a long time and are pretty close which meant I was sort of disadvantaged.  They're also pretty super-Catholic which I find difficult to associate sometimes when all they will sing is praise and worship hymns or all they can talk about is this Catholic family camp they worked at.

It was interesting talking to Leslie a little about the cliquey group I've seen her hanging out with.  She said that she decided to leave the clique and not travel with them anymore because everything ended up being centered around the guys in the group and none of the girls seem to want any other girls joining them.  They also apparently have a hard time deciding where to travel and so end up going nowhere, and just standing around in these cities doing nothing.

On the contrary when I was traveling with the girls, I had difficulty stopping to take a break sometimes.  They are very driven and don't seem to enjoy just standing to take pictures very much or just enjoy the view.  The only time we really took breaks were during Mass or Adoration, so I came to enjoy those times not only for some Jesus time but for some break time.

Traveling with them was also interesting. At first I thought they were aggravated with the fact that I just wanted to read my book on the trains, and they would just sit there or read or do whatever, and sometimes they'd also talk.  Turns out they were glad that I didn't talk much on the trains - we all just needed some down time to recharge and think and I guess they get motion sick on trains.  They told me when I got back this morning they think I'm the chillest of all of them and I didn't freak out at all.

Okay, so moving on from Fatima to Lourdes.  Having spent a couple of days in Fatima walking around and seeing various things, going to masses both in English and in Portuguese, going on a couple of cheap tours, we got on another train to Lourdes.

This post is getting really long so I'll continue it later.

October 14, 2014 - Oktoberfest Video

Yes, I may be in Portugal on ten day break right now, but you know what that means? Even though I'm getting terribly behind on updating everyone on whats going on, I have found that even weird hostels have better wFi than main campus despite the fact that main campus recently upgraded their internet systems, so uploading videos is way easier here.

Here you go, ten days late -

And from tonight in fatima, a candlelight procession they do every evening ffollowing a multi lingual Rosary.  We missed the big one for the anniversary because we were tired, but last night was the feast night of the  Fatima apparitions, and apparently there were thousands of people.  Tonight we got the tame version, which I'm totally ok with.

October 8, 2014 - Stir Fry

That's the current state of my mind right now, basically just stir fry.  I'm sitting in our windowsill across from some guy on the terrace down outside who is smoking tobacco, and I am utterly refusing to study or to do anything of any worth.

I forgot in my last blog post to talk about Oktoberfest - how could I forget!  It was such a 'big thing'!  Basically it was five euro to go in and buy expensive food or beer for more euro.  There was a live band and a ton of people, though I couldn't say for sure how many actual Austrians there were versus Franciscan students.  I think there were more Franciscan students.

At first I wasn't really sure what to do, it was kind of awkward.  Clare and I shared a pretzel and talked to John... after that we talked to some more people and got situated near the band.  Neither Clare nor I have dirndls (that's the traditional Austrian dress), because we showed up to the dirndl rental late, so we were both just kind of dressed up, but it was really a weird experience to see all these guys wearing these suspenders with straps across the chest and weird flaps over the crotch (lederhosen) and women wearing these gingham and flowery dresses that, if the people had been older, would have looked really grandma-ish and rather silly.

Note about the Franciscan rental dirndls opposed to Austrian dirndls today - it looks like Franciscan got theirs from an earlier time period.  Austrian dirndls have updated for the younger sector with much lower necklines that make more of a W than a V.

After the band started playing, some people got up and started dancing at the dance floor.  These were all Franciscan students who don't know any Austrian dances, so I just sort of watched them. At one point a giant conga line of students ran by, led by David the LCI student, and somebody grabbed me basically by my collar and dragged me in.

I didn't pay for any beer, but Oktoberfest is very liberal with it - I sat down in front of an empty mug, and someone ran by, grabbed it and filled it up, and just gave it back to me.

Most of the fun I had involved just people watching, and also watching the band.  One of the guys in the live band was incredibly sassy - he moved his his body back and forth to the music and laughed a lot and made great facial expressions.  The music involved brass instruments, played partly by the singers who would sing and then play during interludes, a guitar that was the same model as Clare's, and on one occasion a bass guitar.  I took a video, so when I have some more time and internet and I don't have to study, I'll upload it.

Tomorrow night I take off for Paris.  We still don't have housing for Paris and we don't have housing for Fatima either, so Leslie is saying we might not really have many opportunities to shower... that's going to be fun, knowing my preference for staying as squeaky clean and non-greasy as possible....

Sleeping on a train will be interesting.  I'm looking forward to a break from classes, but also I'm kind of nervous about the trip itself and about finding housing/the right trains.  Also, I'm going to have to take some schoolwork with me to do, and I'm not excited about lugging around my large hiking backpack full of clothes, soap, and books.

Anyway, pictures and videos to come.  I'll try to document exactly what happens in 10 day break so even if I don't make a blog post during that time, I can still be accurate when I come back.

Now to study!

October 7, 2014 - Midterms, Also Known As I Haven't Studied In Days

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a plan for 10 day break!  This plan is completely a result of me being a complete idiot and doing zero networking with any of my random scattered friends because I forgot that they all have their own groups and probably wouldn't be inviting me to do anything, and I am terrible at planning, so I didn't assemble my own ragtag group.

So at the last minute I ditched David the LCI student who wanted to take me to Budapest to see his home town, because after Budapest neither of us had any idea what would I would do after that.  I then attached myself to Leslie's group, which is going on a super-touristy pilgrimage to various sites in France and Portugal.  I had asked some other friends if I could go with them, but they told me no, there were too many people and it would make things too complicated.

In France we'll be visiting Lourdes and Paris at the least, and in Portugal we'll go to Fatima during the feast day which marks the anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady. Which means that Fatima will be packed.

Here are some fun highlights of what looks like a crazy, crammed, overscheduled 10 day break:

• Camping!  Fatima will be so packed that apparently Leslie is commandeering a tent.  So we can camp.  In Fatima.  For three days.  Hopefully with a bathroom for a shower, or something.  God only knows.  
• Huge crowds in Fatima because of the feast day, as previously mentioned.
• Sleeping on a train overnight for 4 of the 9 nights involved in 10 day break.
• Sleeping on a train to Paris.
• Sleeping on a train to Fatima.
• Sleeping on a train to Lourdes.
• Sleeping on a train to Gaming.
• Extreme tourism!  Apparently our schedule is jampacked with sites to see, things to do.  I was kind of hoping for something a little more relaxing and adventuresome, but it sounds like if something goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong.
• Staying with nuns in a convent!  The only payment they ask for letting us stay with them is that we do a holy hour with them.  This part isn't so bad. 

So I'll take my camera, a ton of clothes to pack around, and I guess some soap since it looks like we'll be pitching camp unless I want to go out of my way to find a hotel and meet up with my fellow campers (and possibly get really, really lost). 

I guess I am pretty grateful I have a plan. So I really shouldn't complain.  Before that, I was looking at a bleak little stay in Gaming, because I don't think mom and dad would approve me wandering around Europe on my own, nor would I really approve of it.  I'd probably wander into the blue and never come back, unless some kind European decided to pack me back to Gaming over their shoulder once they found me alone in the wilderness...eating berries, dressed in leaves....

Midterms are this week.  I aced the metaphysics exam, I'm almost positive, and I think I'll be able to BS my way through Christian Marriage without a hitch, but I'm worried about medieval history.  I'm good at remembering reasons why things happened, but not the order in which they happened or the dates or people that made them happen.  

I haven't been really inclined to study this week.  I got really stressed out about having no plan for 10 day and got depressed, and some of the people on campus have been really aggravating me with a holier-than-thou attitude, so I have been holing up in my room or in the tea kitchen and doing my own thing without bothering much to socialize with people. 

I think I have needed some down time, whether to recharge from previous socialization or to prepare for 10 day break, I'm not sure which.  But I spent some time chilling with Clare eating Croatian cookies and watching TV and that helped, and I've been zenning out playing SimCity during some 'study breaks', and today I plan to do some serious studying and then after that just let the knowledge percolate and do some writing. 

I really miss home, actually.  I can't believe I've been here half a semester.  It sort of feels like I'm missing out on Europe by having to study all the time, and my weekends are slipping away.  By the time I'm back in the States it'll feel like it never even happened and it was just a rapid fire dream.

------

UPDATE

Apparently according to Scott the RD, it is perfectly normal to be doing the amount of train traveling we're doing, and we're being smart about it by taking night trains so we don't have to pay for hostels, staying instead in sleeper cars.  So I guess that's good.

Also, we have located a place to stay in Lourdes, so we aren't camping there.  Fatima is still anyone's guess though.

I want you all to know that today I ate the healthiest meal at the Mensa today that I will probably eat in the entirety of this semester, and that I'm making a note of it because a) the healthier foods were actually available!! amazing!!, and b) I had the willpower to go for them instead of other things. 

• One spinach dumpling thing that didn't taste too bad even though it looked absolutely disgusting
• A bowl of peaches
• A bowl of cooked cauliflower, carrots, corn and peas
• An apple

I feel like the world might be ending soon. 

October 3, 2014 - The Carrenos & The Gym

On Thursday I once again was invited to spend time with the Carreno children, Lina and Daniel, and I accepted with great excitement.  I can't decide if Mrs. Carreno genuinely seems to like me more than everyone else, or if she's that way with everyone, but either way it's great how much she appreciates me coming over.  Every time I show up, she asks me if I'm sure it's okay I want to spend time with them, if I could take some time out of my schedule for her children, and she assures me how helpful it is for her and what a blessing I am and how angelic I am for being OK with doing whatever the kids decide to do (?).

Either way, I showed up on Thursday afternoon and the Carrenos were sitting down to eat lunch, I guess they forgot I was coming over or something, but they invited me to sit down with them, and I did, and we talked a little bit.  While they were eating, a bunch of teenaged dudes led by one of the campus managers came in and started remodelling their chimney, which apparently was malfunctioning.  So it was a clamor of kids yelling and us trying to talk and then the other people staring at us or talking in German over us giving directions.

Right after lunch I got ordered outside by the kids, who wanted to go climb trees and play in the mud.  Well, it turns out that all the backyards are connected, along with the houses - so there I was in what was effectively the backyard of the Pipps, the Lundblads, the Cassidys, the Wolters, and Dr. Hass (my medieval history professor), with not just Lina and Dani, but also a bunch of other yelling kids.

Turns out the kids love their connected backyards because they can run in and out of houses playing games with each other with abandon.  That's great for them.  That also meant that seeing a student outside, all the parents apparently decided it was safe to release their youths into my care.

I ended up monitoring Benjamin and Damien Wolter, Gianna Pipp, Lina and Dani Carreno, Harper Lundblad, and Hannes, Tobias, and Anna Cassidy.  That's eight kids, folks.  And they are all obsessed with climbing up trees, especially trees with really thin branches.

I was absolutely terrified for my charges most of the time.  I helped them climb up and then hovered around in what was for them a very annoyingly helicopter-mom way, and yelling for them to come down if they started getting up into the high, really thin branches.

I kept an eye especially on Gianna.  She has a bunch of older brothers, so I think she feels like she has to do a bunch of dare devil things as well.  She likes to climb up as high as she possibly can get, find the thinnest branch, and then dangle bodily off of it, all the while calling me a Baby because I get scared when she does that.  I wasn't sure how frequently these kids decided to turn into monkeys, so maybe I was being overprotective, but dang, my heart was racing.

Lina's not even four yet and she climbed up onto the lowest branch of a tree, and I made sure to hover around her... Benjamin and Simeon seemed a little shyer and didn't even try to climb trees, which is funny because their Dad is like an ex Marine general and super athletic looking, and his kids were the most hesitant.

Gianna has this thing where she leaps out of trees at random moments, yelling, "CATCH ME!" and I had to make sure that I was there to catch her.  Which, I'm not the biggest of people, so I was kind of terrified when these kids came flying at me down from a tree.  Even Dani decided that once he'd seen me catch Gianna a couple of times that he would try it out too, and Dani is significantly bigger than Gianna.

Anna Cassidy seemed to have the most sense of all of them - she's going to grow up into a firecracker.  She was ordering me around, going, "Student, will you please watch Gianna, I think she's going to jump", or "Student, what's your name, you need to go watch Benjamin because I don't know where he went", or "Student, can you please be with Dani", that last one because Dani decided to go knock on the Lundblad's door and invite their kid out to play.

None of the other children seemed to know Harper, so when they came to drag her out of her house she seemed extremely hesitant and it was funny.  I was really glad that Harper speaks English and was ten years old, and I found in her a kindred spirit... as all these other kids were racing around stabbing each other with sticks or throwing mud or leaping out of trees or crying randomly, she and I would trade glances like we were on a sitcom or something and we were looking at the camera in exasperation.

The other kids don't speak American English - they all have accents - so they kept calling Harper "Hopper".  I think it's a really cute nickname.  If my name were Harper, I wouldn't mind if that one stuck.

Anyway, when Mrs. Carreno came back to find me hording a squad of angry stick-wielding children she thanked me profusely and seemed very amused at the sight of me also wielding a stick (my stick was mostly for appearances and for looking more intimidating and authoritative).  She also told me she wants to have me over for dinner sometime after ten day break.

Jeez, I'm thinking, I saw some other girls over there at the other houses, and I think they were doing Ministry to Moms too, so what I want to know is why they came outside, stared at the chaos racing around me, and turned right around and went back indoors.  Were there other children that they were watching?  What the heck were they doing if they weren't helping me manage all these kids?  What is their purpose?  No wonder Mrs. Carreno wants to have me over for dinner.

Today (Friday) we had classes because we had none on Monday following Poland, so so far my entire day has been spent either in class or studying.  By this afternoon I got really sick of reviewing Aristotle and Aquinas and Plato, and Clare was in a really hyper antsy mood (she even got to the point of bouncing on the bed, which I thought was kind of hilarious).

I think both of us are cracking mentally.  I've been having intense longings to play videogames and not study, but I've decided on a happy medium where I just think about playing videogames and wasting brain space for hours on end, while I'm actually studying.  It's like my motivation, but I'm never going to reach my goal.  I also have been teaching myself German and Italian and memorizing European flags in between study sessions, which I realize is studying also, but it's studying something I want to learn.  Problem is I'm having trouble finding a comprehensive course that teaches languages the way I can pick them up, so I'll keep looking around.

Clare bought a Playmobil the other day in the toy/school supplies store and assembled it and it's standing on her desk, its name is Alexandra if I remember correctly.

Both of us have been making random comments and laughing hysterically and wandering around buying chocolate and eating it.  I don't think either of us feel particularly sane, but I can't figure out how individually we are going insane, because I think my insanity is different than hers.

I will admit though that today I broke and got some chocolate, but later this evening I was so tired of sitting around that I got up and went resolutely down to the gym, because I thought only one person would be there.  It's a really small gym, so I was kind of worried that it would be weirdly awkward...just me and one other dude, Peter Norton, workin' out to absolutely no music, in a tiny weight room...

This is it, there ain't no more.

But by the time I got down there, it was a large group of the more popular guys - Nathan (one of the twins), the tallest guy on campus Steven, Bradley (whom I traveled sort of with in Hallstatt, the sore loser of Egyptian Rat Race), and Cam, who looks like some oldy Italian movie star.

When they saw me come in, I think Steven sort of recognized me from main campus, because I saw him in the gym a lot last year.

I was sort of intimidated, but then I remembered I've been going to the gym and handling being with a bunch of dudes in a small space ever since freshman year, which aside from Bradley is longer than any of those other people have been working out at the Franciscan gym.  I just went to it and started doing my own thing, and it got really crazy really fast.

I kind of feel like the guys were showing off a little?  They put on some really really loud music and were jamming out to it more than they were working out at first, like they were dancing around and one of them literally started monkey climbing up the punching bag, and doing workouts really fast and punching each other and making a lot of noise.  The only person who didn't participate in this was Bradley, who I think was wondering why the heck his friends were doing that.  Head-banging and jumping around like they were crazy.

I laughed at them and kept doing my workout, feeling rather weak and incompetent compared to them, and then Christian came in (he's the other twin) and started doing the worm and they all devolved into more antics and yelling, and then as I was running both the twins just kept randomly smiling at me and I think they thought it was really funny that I was in there working out, because as I had come in, one of their girl friends was just leaving, I think she'd only been in there a couple of minutes and then left.

But anyway they put on a song specifically just for me because "it's a really good running song!!!" and when I got off the treadmill Nathan came over and gave me a high five and told me good job for working out with all the dudes, and I told him that I did it all the time on main campus, but it was still really funny how stoked he looked.

Man, they were hyper.  I think I worked out twice as hard just from all the energy in the room.  I think Christian was going to give himself whiplash and strain his face from all the head-banging and smiling.

It wasn't really what I was expecting workout wise, because I was really hoping none of the popular guys would be in there while I was getting sweaty and looking gross, but it was still really fun.

And then I went and decided to slack off homework and study more tomorrow because I've been studying all day, and I skyped my parents, and here we are!

It's almost midnight, so I'm too tired to write... I might try anyway and once my brain decides to fizzle, I'll watch TV or learn more German and then go to sleep.

October 2, 2014 - Mariazell Pictures

I recovered my phone so here are the pictures I took in Mariazell!

part of the main square

There's a balcony for getting nice panoramas of the mountains

The Basilica in Mariazell.  Apparently it has some miraculous statue inside it.  I saw the statue but don't know the story.

Coming out of mass in the Basilica

October 2, 2014 - Stupid Meetings

This campus sure has a lot of them.  Yesterday was a class in which I mostly just straight up studied for midterms next week, aside from the occasional break to goof off and do nothing productive.  (The mind needs to take breaks every 30 minutes of studying.  I stick to this policy, except I usually shorten it up to every 3 minutes, just to increase the benefits of my study periods by a factor of 10.)

Sadly, yesterday rained a ton and so we had a minor fiasco.  Clare left her laptop on the windowsill and forgot about it, so when the rain leaked through the window, her laptop got drenched.  We usually leave the window open just because it gets stuffy in our room.  I get cold sometimes at night, and I think it's keeping me sort of sick ish, but I feel like it's better than waking up to major stuffiness and being super sweaty.

Clare's laptop is recovered somewhat, but it's struggling somewhat.  Last night my laptop decided to stop playing music and start playing noises that sounded somewhat like a dying electronic cow, and then completely cut out all the speakers.  I rebooted it and it's working again, but it seems a little like things are just going kaputz around us like flies.

Yesterday we saw fliers up for a meeting at 8 PM, which meant that we had about 12 hours notice before this thing.  Right before Midterms. That's right.

The dang meeting went for about 2 hours and mostly covered everything that was already on the handouts they gave us, so I wasn't sure why they had to talk for so dang long.  Not only that, but it just sort of dragged.  I'm glad we'll be doing cool stuff in Rome and Assisi, but seriously, I started getting really antsy because they turn off the Wifi at 10 PM, and I had studying to do that involved internet research.

By the time the meeting was over we had to crowd around to sign up for the Scavi Tour, which is really popular.  It's a tour of the necropolis beneath St. Peter's Basilica which is basically the city of the dead where pagans buried people long ago beneath the hill, an actual city with roads and buildings, which was discovered on accident by workers who were working on the Popes' Crypt which is above the Scavi Necropolis and beneath St. Peter's.

So I'm super excited for that.  The rush to the signup board was intense and almost everyone is taller and pushier than me, so I felt kind of squished beneath shoulder blades.  Once somebody bumped me and shoved me backwards right into some guy's chest, and his chin hit the top of my head. I hope he didn't bite his tongue.  I was getting pretty claustrophobic, so I ditched and Clare was a dear and signed us both up.  Seriously, I wish there was some better way to sign up, like a nice online form....

This Rome pilgrimage isn't even for a month.  I need to figure out what I'm doing for ten day break, which is coming up soon, and so far I only have 3 days of it planned. Shooooot.

Not only that, but I've had so much class, studying, and other things to do, as well as general just socialization, that I haven't written in weeks.  I tried to get some in last night, but it had been so long and it was so late that I couldn't remember where I picked up, so I got a total of two sentences done before I crashed.

So, that's kind of depressing.  I'll be glad when I finish school and can focus more on what I love doing, after I come home from whatever job I do have.

October 1, 2014 - Videos from Krakow