As you all should have noticed by now, I have somewhat of an AWESOME Amish beard going on! To be honest this beard started as just a small defience to my mother. The background behind that is actually very simple;
1. Before I came here I lived with my parents
2. My mom hated my beard
3. She made me shave my beard
4. Now I am halfway across the world
5. She has no say
6. My beard is long!
However as of recently I have been noticing that my beard has been getting a lot of attention from family and friends alike on Facebook. For this reason I have decided to post some of those comments for you all to see!
My mom thinks I am ugly with a beard
Best Part; The two of them liked each others posts
With that being said, I was going to shave tomorrow since it would be the end of "No Shave November", but I couldn't live with myself if I ruined relationships amongst family and friends!
The beard shall live on, and with it the hair!
And to the people that don't like this.... Maybe when you get here I will clean up a little bit ;-)!
Yesterday Matt and I went grocery shopping after school. Of course being college boys we wait until the very last moment to go shopping for food, so naturally we eat the largest meals right after we go grocery shopping.
That preface is true, but doesn't even begin to describe what we had for lunch yesterday!
This is Matt preparing our french toast / grilled cheese / burgers for lunch. We cooked the burgers, made the french toast, and then put the two together with some cheese. Ooo and we deep fried some fries for our side dish!!
To the right is Matt after we finished cooking. But below are the photos of how it looked close up!
The best lunch we have had so far: French toast grilled cheese burgers with fries and Pepsi.
This is an opened up view of how delicious this meal was. As you can see on the right, all you need is fries, ketchup, and the burger.
Although it looks unhealthy (IT IS SUPER UNHEALTHY) I am sure that you would enjoy it as well, so next time you think about making a plain old boring grilled cheese, just think about all of the possibilities. For instance, add a few slices of bacon on the inside, maybe you would enjoy an over-easy egg inside your sandwich. Regardless, we have to suggest that you try your hand at making one of the sandwiches, and then immediately call your doctor for a check up!
This weekend we spent 5 days in Ireland for our long Thanksgiving break. Matt and I really enjoyed ourselves, and had a great time. This is a list of a few of the things we did
1. Learned about Ireland's rough history with England 2. Learned about how Guinness is made 3. Drink Guinness just to make sure they made it right 4. Recognized that they drive on the wrong side of the road 5. Visited Trinity College 6. Taste tested Guinness a little bit more 7. Had an Irish Thanksgiving 8. Enjoyed Guinness and the way it was made 9. Spent time with friends 10. Visited the Cliffs of Moher
If you think that sounds like a lot.. it was. In fact I had planned on writing this yesterday, but Matt and I got home and went straight to sleep!
Thursday morning Matt and I went on a walking tour of Dublin and saw all of the "must see" buildings, monuments, and locations in the city. But while on this tour we got a nice lesson in the complexity of the situation between The Republic of Ireland and England, and mainly why England still controls Northern Ireland (the reason why we didn't visit Belfast). The following photos are some of the cool places we visited:
This is the courtyard of the Castle
Castle Entrance Tower
Trinity College Tower
This was built to hide the slums behind the castle when the Queen of England came to visit
Castle Tower and Church (original)
Christ Church
Ha'Penny Bridge
Besides seeing all of the city, Matt and I went on a tour of the Guinness factor with some of the other USAC guys. I found it very interesting (and fun) to see how Guinness is actually made! The tour was very interactive with things you could read, touch, watch, and TASTE! Dublin was a really cool city and I really enjoyed spending some time there. If you are in Europe I would highly suggest getting to Ireland because the countryside was beautiful, the people were nice, and the beer is good!
The guys (and Julia) at the start of the tour
The Gravity Bar (great place to enjoy a Guinness and check out the skyline)
Me outside of St. James Gate at the Guinness Factory
Every year for Thanksgiving my family does 2 things. We go to one
side of the family on Thanksgiving, and we go to the other side that
weekend. This has been the tradition for as long as I can remember.
However this year since I am studying abroad I will be without either
side of my family on either day. In fact right now it is 9:30 am and I
am in a hostel in Dublin, eating breakfast and getting ready to go on a
tour of the city!
Besides the traditional food that every family has each year, there is
one thing I enjoy about Thanksgiving that I don't think is unique or
special, but rather just something that I look forward to every year;
after eating lunch we all sit and watch the Detriot Lions get killed by
whoever it is that they are playing that year!
But before I talk about that, here is the background history for those of you who might not know what Thanksgiving is about; Thanksgiving is a holiday that is charished in America every year. In fact I would go out on a limb to say that besides the fact that Americans spend a lot of money for presents, in some households Thanksgiving is bigger than Christmas. However, just to make sure that everyone truly knows what Thanksgiving is about, I pulled this off of the History.com website for you all to have the "official" storyline of Thanksgiving.
This is how I envision it.
"In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn
harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first
Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries,
days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.
It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each
November."
Before pulling that up I actually had no idea that President Lincoln proclaimed it for a specific day in 1863 (learn something new everyday!).
I would also say that Thanksgiving is about food and watching the Detroit Lions get murdered!!
This is Detroits record since 2000; an abominable 2-9.
This is what it always looks like.
2000 Detroit 34, New England 9 - W
2001 Green Bay 29, Detroit 27 - L
2002 New England 20, Detroit 12 - L
2003 Detroit 22, Green Bay 14 - W
2004 Indianapolis 41, Detroit 9 - L (bad)
2005 Atlanta 27, Detroit 7 - L
2006 Miami 27, Detroit 10 - L
2007 Green Bay 37, Detroit 26 - L
2008 Tennessee 47, Detroit 10 - L
2009 Green Bay 34, Detroit 12 - L
2010 New England 45, Detroit 24- L
On a more serious note, Thanksgiving always gives me a chance to reflect on the things that I am actually thankful for. Every year while we are sitting around with family eating we spend some time to go around and talk about the things that we are thankful for. This year not being home for Thanksgiving has made me recognize how thankful I am to have a family that truly cares about me.
This is my family after my sister's graduation!
This year I am going to simply say that I am thankful for one thing, my family, because I feel that every year I under-appreciate my family because I am surrounded by them every day. I have amazing parents, and awesome sisters, and so this year I say "mom, dad, Kortney, and Kelsey, I am thankful for you all!"
So today tell the people you love that you love them, and of course don't forget to watch the Detroit Lions get murdered by Green Bay, because that is exactly what 20+ Americans in Dublin, Ireland are doing! Except we will be drinking Guiness and not Bud Light! (Dad go get a Guiness and drink up at first kick-off of the lions game!!)
This weekend as you know from the Stockholm post that I published a few days ago, that we went to Stockholm, Sweden. The trip was just Matt, Gabe, and myself, and we experienced the most epic series of events ever! If you have not read the Stockholm post click here first, as a basis for everything I am about to say. CLICK HERE!
Ok, so let me start from the beginning so that I don't miss anything (even the part where we woke up with 3 beautiful German girls in our hostel room).
Saturday morning we woke up to 3 beautiful German girls in our hostel room with us. (if you have ever stayed in a hostel you know this is like the ultimate). Normally you get smelly fat men or sometimes women from England who smell like alcohol, whose clothes smell like alcohol, and eventually YOU smell like alcohol. This is a perfect example:
Maybe them 30 years younger though.
After talking to the German girls we went to a cafe for breakfast. As it is only light in Sweden from 8:30/9:00am - 4:00/5:00pm, you have to utilize all of your time (we slept till 10:30)!! Also, let me mention how expensive food is in Sweden. The only thing we ate for 3 days, besides Gabe because he refused, was hotdogs from street vendors at 150 SEK each (1 euro or 657 dollars). However, because we got a discount for staying at the hostel, we had a full breakfast for 450 SEK!
So after breakfast we went to the changing to the guards at the Royal Palace. Where we got to see the army march like this for almost an hour! PS - this is actually my Youtube video!!
After that we explored the city squares and conducted the rest of our very touristy activities such as buying scarves to look more European! At 4:30pm it was dark, and to be honest we started running out of things to do for the rest of the evening, so we decided to go to the Stockholm Ice Bar. I of course was the idiot that when the man started handing me the parka for the bar. He promptly stated "No, you will want to keep that on. It is freezing in there!"
As we were walking in he stopped us one more time to ask us if we liked American Baseball.
I responded with a very quick "Of course!"
In which he responded in saying "Well, do you know Derek Jeter... (pronounce more like Gabe DeJong than Derek Jeter) He is in the bar right now." Obviously we gave him that stop messing with us, we don't believe you look, and he definitely knew it because he opened the door and his last words to us were "Go see for yourselves." If you don't know who Derek Jeter is, you should be ashamed of yourself, but even if you do, and mostly for the women reading this, here is another photo of Mr. Jeter;
Some say he is dreamy, others say he is an uglier me...
So of course being smarter than this guy we ordered our drinks and were just hanging out for a while until Gabe looked around the corner of one of the ice sculptures and literally gave us this look;
This is Gabe (not really, but this was Gabe)
All he did was follow this face up with "Derek Jeter is definitely over there!"
So as stupid American tourists would do, we instantly started walking towards good old Derek. Only to be stopped by a man that was his "Financial Consultant". We talked to him for a few minutes, and recognized that Derek was actually leaving the bar, so of course we said hello very quickly and got a nice wave back and out of site he disappeared. We finished our drinks and talked about how we really thought that was the coolest thing that had happened to us since we had been in Europe.
After the Ice Bar we had run out of money and went to an ATM. All weekend we had seen walls of posters like this one and Friday night we literally spent 30 minutes looking at all of these posters and wishing that one of the artists would be there when we were without any luck. HOWEVER when we were taking out money we had a moment of amazingness.
Wall of posters, my favorite one: Poetry Gang Bang (check my Facebook if you don't believe me.)
Dear Mom and Lucie: I want my beard to look like his!
Meet My Morning Jacket (look to the right). They are one of Gabe's favorite bands. There poster was directly above the ATM that we used. We were in such shock after meeting Derek Jeter that we knew this couldn't just be a coincidence, but rather we were meant to go to this show. Obviously we ripped the poster off the wall and started walking around trying to find where to go. We walked into a really cool bar we went to the night before and they pointed us in the right direction. Once we got to the venue we were surprised to see people already sitting outside and the doors didn't open for another 2 hours (bare in mind that Sweden is closer to the north pole than my middle name being Michael... maybe not that close, but it was cold!!) We discovered that the concert was more than just "sold out", but rather that people had flown from all over Europe to see MMJ's last show on their European tour.
We ended up making friends with a bus driver, and after us standing outside of the bus for an hour and a half (warming up at a local bar for a beer halfway through), he introduced us to their tour manager. After we talked to him and told him our story of being Americans, having him and Gabe call us crooks for being in business, and Gabe explaining that he was at the concert in Iowa City when Jim broke his leg, he told us we were in!!! It felt something like this... actually
After a celebratory beer we went to what ended up being potentially the greatest concert I have ever been to. The venue was at most 1,500 people (the reason why it was super sold out and not just sold out, the opening act The Head and the Heart was the best opening act I have ever seen at the concert, and we were second row the whole night!
Myself and Gabe before the concert started
The Head and the Heart performing
My Morning Jacket
Stockholm, Sweden is officially one of my favorite cities in Europe (Paris, France being the other one), and I must say that if you ever travel to Europe it should definitely be on your list!
This weekend Gabe, Matt, and I went to Stockholm, Sweden. It was an absolutely awesome experience, and I really enjoyed myself. Stockholm was not only an amazing city, but the people of Sweden were really cool as well. These are some of the highlights of the trip (excluding one of the greatest nights of my life!! - it needs to be a post on its own, so be looking for that tomorrow as well!)
This is Gabe and Matt at the cafe we ate at the first night! The food was amazing (if you go to Sweden you MUST eat the meatballs with jam), but if you look closely you can see a lady in the background. She was super helpful in telling us where to go during the day, but also at night so that we could have an awesome experience, and an awesome experience is exactly what we had!
This is a picture during the changing of the guards that happens at The Royal Palace that happens in Stockholm. Right before these two men walked out the leader (who spoke the whole time so you knew what was going on) announce "The Swedish Army Band!". This was not the first wave... this was the whole band! On a side note though, the changing of the guards was actually a really cool thing to watch, and if you are in Stockholm you should go check it out!
This is a photo that I took at 13:14:10 (1:14 PM) in Stockholm. The fact that our shadows were so long because the sun was already starting to go down brought up a very interesting conversation between us. At one point Gabe made the statement of why do some of the best cities and civilizations call the worst parts of the world home (aka why can't Stockholm be by the Equator and have it nice and warm there!). Regardless I think I will enjoy the 18 hours of sunlight a day in the summer if I go back next semester!
The rest of the photos are just photos of buildings, parks, city squares, and then the three of us in our new scarves. Stockholm is an AMAZING city, and I would suggest to anyone in Europe, or ever traveling to Europe, to take the time and go visit it!
