Annie & Joe's Travels

Unexpected, but much needed weekend

2008-06-22T22:50:00.010-10:00

Even though the Navy promised me that they weren't going to make Joe go on a deployment for 6 months - 1 year, Joe has been sent to Guam for 5+ weeks. BOOO :( I've barely even been in Hawaii that long... This sucks, but oh well, we don't have a choice in the matter. Joe is in Guam being surface support for the SEAL Team, so it should be pretty relaxing and he might finally get some SCUBA diving and spearfishing in. NOW, I just have to find things to do to occupy myself for the next month until Crystal gets here in 3 1/2 weeks, since I still don't have a job.

So I go to check out a new beach because we're trying to find Joe's parents a cool place to stay on the island when they come over for Christmas, and instead, I have one of the best days ever! The Navy runs a large group of beach cottages a little west of Pearl Harbor, called White Plains. I got to the beach around 2pm with intent to go to their housing office and ask to see one of the cottages, but they were closed. I had all intentions on going to the beach for a few hours, so I went ahead and parked the car. Thinking that this was a small, private military beach, I was shocked to see over a hundred cars in the parking lot and a packed beach. They were having a small Quicksilver surf contest, so I thought that maybe it was just super crowded because of that. The beach is not private and must be a pretty popular place among the locals since there aren't many good beaches on this corner of the island.

OK, so I'm lying on the beach listening to my IPod for about an hour and a half until it dies. I was going to pack up and head home, but I pulled out my new book (hesitantly) and 3 pages into it, an old guy comes up to me and tells me I AM going surfing with him. I quickly laugh and tell him that I've never surfed, but it didn't take much to convince me to go get a free lesson from a local, who's obviously been surfing for awhile now and even is offering a board for me to use. SWEET! What an awesome offer. He tells me his name is Tony and he shows me where to put the leash and we head into the waves. For the next 45 minutes, I was having the coolest time ever. I haven't been much of a fan of the saltwater and insane currents since I've been on the island, but having a 9 foot board under you changes the insecurities completely. I loved it! I caught 10 waves in less than 35 minutes in the water and stood up on the first try. I think I got up on 7 or 8 of them. It was so much fun. I think I'm already addicted. After surfing he told me to grab my things and come up to their pavilion and meet everyone. Over the next 5 hours, I met almost 20 people, ate some awesome BBQ pork and steak, admired some of them playing their guitars and bongos and singing cool Hawaiian music, laughed, drank beer, talked about surfing, ate Portuguese deserts, etc. It was soooo much fun. The girls I met were so nice and all offered to continue to teach me how to surf. We partied and hung out until we got kicked out of the parking lot since it was closing. Sunday is their normal day to be at the beach, so I told them I would come again tomorrow.

I went ahead and rented a surfboard for a day with MWR on base and headed to the beach again on Sunday and found them all chilling and drinking in their pavilion. This time, there were 5 people from the Navy too. 3 girls, 2 guys and they all work nearby on Ford Island, which is right across the harbor to our house. They fed me delicious BBQ again and I was ready to attempt surfing again, on my own. The waves were pretty low today but I figured if anything, I'll get a good workout from paddling. I stayed out there for almost an hour and a half, but only caught 2 small waves. Oh well, my body was hurting so bad from yesterday still that I didn't mind to much. I have 3 years to learn and I have the board until tomorrow afternoon, so I'll probably take it down to Waikiki or something and see what kinds of waves are going in the mornings. All the guys told me that morning is the best time to surf. I didn't hang out too long today since I had a lot of stuff to do around the house, but before I left, a girl named Penny came up and talked to me for awhile. She told me that everyone here is good, safe people and she has a 9' board for me to use for however long I want to use it. She just learned a couple months ago, but prefers a little shorter board. She's going to bring the board for me next Sunday and I can have it for as long as I want it so I don't have to keep renting a board from MWR. NICE!! Also before I left, I got offered to go to a BBQ Friday night from one of the Navy girls. I'm excited, it could potentially be a not-so-boring time while Joe is gone. I got home and checked out all of my sore spots and bruises. My right knee is completely bruised, my right hip bone feels like its been smashed by a hammer, my ribs is sore, my pelvic bone is sore, and my inner biceps have little bruises all over them from paddling. Oh well, totally worth it!

I took my rented board down to Waikiki for a few hours on Monday morning to see if I could catch any waves on my own. I got down there and there are a few tiny little waves, but I just drove a half hour to get there so I laid out for an hour before hopping on my board. I paddled out pretty far, but then I started to get scared when I saw reef and giant rocks popping out of the water hundreds of feet out from the beach. I paddled around them until I got out to where some waves were hitting. It was pretty scary, but I couldn't catch anything big enough to get me up. I only stayed out for a half hour, but it was still a good time. I will not be bringing a board down here again though, the exposed reef is too dangerous, especially with a board that's not mine. I returned my board that afternoon and am not going to let my body heal until the weekend arrives.

Hiking Manoa Falls

2008-06-22T22:45:00.010-10:00

There aren't too many "great" hikes on this island, but Manoa Falls was labeled number 1 in my book. It's a short hike with a 100 foot waterfall at the end, but there are a lot of trails you can hook onto the hike that make it more fulfilling and adventurous. The hike is in the Nu'uanu State Park in the Pali Mountain Range. Shortly after Joe and I start our hike, we are greeted with this amazing entrance that looks like a jungle. It was so breathtaking. The vines and tall trees lush with so much greenery was beautiful. The hike up to Manoa Falls was only .8 miles in at a moderate slope, but was wet and slippery. Also, there were giant roots and rocks all over the trail that made it hard to keep your footing, even in hiking boots. The trail was cool though. There were fields of green bamboo everywhere and spots that had so many vines that you wouldn't ever be able to get through it if something was chasing you. We took our time getting to the "waterfall" because we were so distracted by the playground that the rainforest offers. I was busy playing with centipedes and taking pictures of awesome flowers and Joe was completely amused by climbing the bamboos like he was in Cirque de Sole and finding the perfect bamboo walking stick to bring home. After about an hour, we made it to what was supposed to be a descent waterfall. Not really, quite disappointing. It was about 100 feet, but barely any water. We probably didn't see it in the right season or something. Instead of turning around, we connected with the Aihualama Trail to make our hike total up to 5 miles. This leg of the hike used switchbacks to get to the top, because it was a fast incline in a short distance. This mountain was tall! In just a few minutes we were already past the top of the waterfall. On this trail, you could see Diamond Head and the entire Manoa Valley. It was beautiful. When we got to the top of the mountain, it came out to the Pauoa Flats. We didn't want to make the hike much longer, so we just played around on the top of the Flats and made really sharp spears out of bamboo with his knife ( in case we found some wild boars). Joe wants to get his hunting license for real so he can go boar hunting with some guys from work. After playing and walking around for awhile, we headed back down the mountain to the car. There were a lot less mosquitoes than we planned for and I read about, but hey, thats even better. The hike was fun and it was worth the drive up here.

The (Cheesy, Super Touristy) Dole Plantation

2008-06-22T22:44:00.009-10:00

Every time we drive to the North Shore, we drive by the Dole Plantation. Joe has been dying to go just once, even though I told him it is supposedly a total tourist trap. We go up there for an afternoon and WOW, was it lame. The only thing worth going there for is the garden tour and fresh pineapple ice cream that is amazing. Here are some pictures:

The flowers here are: Hibiscus, Himalayan Red Bromeliad (same family as pineapple), Bird of Paradise, Ti plant for hula skirts, and Bougainvillea.

I thought I left these in Maine....

2008-06-22T22:02:00.008-10:00

After another good day at Sandy Beach, I look over to the Northeast and see a small mountain to hike before we head home. I've seen the trail from the road before and figured it would be a quick mile up and down before we drive the long trek home. The Ka'Iwi trail was straight up, and shortly we stumbled upon large patches of prickly pear cacti. How weird? Neither of us would have guessed that we would see cactus in Hawaii. While hiking to the top, we read some signs about whale sightings right off this point, which immediately started getting us really excited for winter to get here. Right after reading the whale signs I look out into the ocean and see the island of Molokai! I knew that it was only about 125 miles away, but I didn't think I'd see it from here. Awesome... Anyways, almost to the top, we look down along the ridge and see the headlight (lighthouse) that I had read about, the Makapu'u Headlight. It was tiny and odd compared to all the ones I had seen on the NE Coast in Maine and Massachusetts, but nonetheless, a lighthouse in Hawaii. We took some pictures and went a little further to the top to see the coast of Waimanalo and Bellows Beach. On our way down, the view to the south was beautiful. We could see Koko Head and Koko Crater, which is where Hanauma Bay is nestled. We also saw a nice golf course, archery field, and Diamond Head off in the distance. It was definitely a nice 2-mile hike to finish up a day of lying on the beach.

Day at the Beach(es)

2008-05-14T21:45:00.014-10:00

It's a beach day! We headed over to Hanauma Bay this afternoon because this is the beach you constantly hear people brag about as their favorite for snorkeling and simply, the view. We hopped on H1 and I finally got to drive by Diamond Head and the Punchbowl Crater. I can't wait to see those close-up and do the hikes and touristy-stuff involved. About 30 minutes from our house, I start to see the surroundings to Hanauma Bay. On the right is Koko Head and on the left is an enormous volcanic crater called Koko Crater. Right in between those is the gorgeous bay, called [Hana-uma], which is almost a perfect circle formed by a crater that filled with water and reef. Immediately, I knew I was in for a treat when I could see the crowds of people forming a line to get into the Nature Preserve. First time visitors must watch a quick film on how to protect the reef and all of its animals and then you can sign up to be put in the computer so you don't have to watch it again next time you visit. 10 minutes later, we were walking down the really steep hill (which you can pay $1.00 to ride if you can't manage the hills) that brings you down to the beach. The walk down is incredible. I almost got run over a few times for stopping and taking pictures. This circular bay is astonishing, you can see every piece of reef from above and even see some of the larger fish from 300 feet away. How cool is that? Even in the pictures I took, you can see exactly what I saw. The reef has a bunch of different spots with certain names. Joe wanted to snorkel the Keyhole and the Back Channel. He did both last month with Dominic and they saw a turtle. Nervous, but really excited at this point. We laid on the beach for a little bit, then we were ready for our adventure. We snorkeled for over an hour! I saw the most beautiful, colorful fish I had ever seen. Now the coral reef is pretty bland and rocky (well it is a volcano and all...), but it's crazy how close you get to the thousands of fish. We saw a 1-2ft long parrotfish, awesome tangs, some fish that had every possible color on them, a few puffers, angelfish, and a bunch on other random fish that ranged in size from 1" to 2'. I still hadn't seen my turtle, so Joe brought me out past the buoy to the exact place they had seen one. We stayed there for a few minutes until we realized we weren't going to see one and started swimming back. I started to get really scared because every kick or stroke I was making, wasn't moving me anywhere! The current was WAY to strong for me and Joe had to come help. I yelled at him for bringing me out past the buoys, but he quickly recovered and hold me to hold onto his foot while he swam me in 20 feet. WOW, that boy is one hell of a swimmer, no wonder he's such a good dive candidate. He would be the guy you want dolphin rides in a pool from as a kid. I felt like I was holding onto a small boat bringing me to safety. Oh well, I got away from the current and we started snorkeling back. We stayed on the beach for a little longer and he wanted to go somewhere different to do some body-surfing. I looked in my book and read that Sandy Beach is one of the best places in the area for it. We left Hanauma, jumped in the car, and headed northeast for the next beach. On our way, I discovered than the Halona Blowhole is closed for a few months for renovations to the parking lot. We shortly found Sandy Beach, but went ahead a drove past it to find a quick bite to eat. Luckily, to our surprise, we found Makapa'U Beach and Waimanalo Beach, which we've both heard so much about. This area is mainly concentrated with locals, and has some of the best body-surfing and Hawaiian food on the island. We stopped in Waimanalo to eat lunch at a little BBQ shack, it was cheap and delicious. Plus, I had a snow cone afterwards. Joe said that the aquatic center in town was where they filmed 50 First Dates. We headed back towards Sandy Beach, but pulled off and took a bunch of pictures. There was a guy para-gliding with Rabbit Island and a lighthouse behind him. It was mesmerizing. Rabbit Island is kinda creepy to have read about. It's an island, which is ONLY inhabited by wild rabbits and seabirds, absolutely no humans are allowed on it. Gross huh? After watching the guy get a little too close to the power lines, Joe was getting anxious to go body surfing. We got to Sandy Beach and we both got a nice hint of "this is where the locals hang out." They were all partying in and around their pick-up trucks, blasting reggae music, flirting with all the cute girls, chillin with their surfboards standing in the sand, etc. The waves were big! Surprisingly, because the big surf doesn't get here until Oct. Joe hopped right into the water and all I could imagine was his head getting chopped off by a boogie or surf board. These people are crazy on those boards. I bet there are a lot of injuries here when the tourists all start to arrive. He came back in after a half hour and gave up. He said the waves were too strong compared to California, where he learned how to body surf. I tanned a little longer and we headed back home.

Our big pack-out is arriving tomorrow, so we need to clear out the garage and make some room.

P.S. - If you click on the pictures, it will make them bigger!

Hike: Aiea Loop

2008-05-14T15:03:00.007-10:00

It's the weekend, and it's time to go outside and explore... Joe took Dominic and I to the Aiea Loop Trail, which is a 4.5 mile trail that they ran one morning for work. The base of the mountain is about 2 miles from our house and then it's another 3 miles of winding road to get to the park. I didn't know what to expect, but it sounded like a great Saturday workout/adventure. We got up to the park and started the trail immediately. Just 1/4 mile in, we were on the back side of the mountain facing the gorgeous mountain range I had mentioned last entry (the one that looks like Jurassic Park on the East) and Highway 3, which is true, lush forest. The trees are so cool because they look so different than the deciduous trees you find in the Midwest. They really make you feel like you're in a canopy or jungle with Tarzan flying up above. Everything is so green and there are wildflowers around every corner. The hike was really turning out to be great. We were under the trees for 90% of the hike, which was a content 75-80 degrees. The few moments we weren't under the canopy were hot and sweaty. I went through my entire 2L water pouch by the time we were finished. Throughout the hike, we would pull off on side trails and see what scenery was out there. About half way through the trail, we could look out to the South and see Honolulu and the Airport. I didn't expect to see that kind of distance from up here, but it was such a clear day that nothing was being held back and we were much higher than I thought originally. Joe collected a variety of berries, leaves, and fruits during the hike to bring them home and see what kinds of trees and bushes are in the area. We all agreed that it would be fun to spend a few days camping up here and trying out our collaboration of survival skills. I'm sure there are so many more deserted areas in Hawaii that would really put us to the test. On that last stretch of the hike, I saw the entire view of Pearl Harbor. The USS Mercy was in port for the weekend (the hospital ship that goes and staffed with corpsman), along with the regular 10-15 ships that helps other countries in need; are stationed here, and some other random chunks of steel. It amazes me how clear blue the water is. I figured since it was a fuel and gunk filled harbor, that it would look brown and mucky like most other bays and harbors. Oh well, definitely not complaining on its beauty. 2 hours and 12 minutes later, we finished the trail. Everyone was exhausted and starving, so we stopped at a restaurant called Dirty Lickins and had hot wings, then went home. We both sat on the couch to watch a movie and both ended up dozing off for almost 3 hours. I didn't think we were that tired, but I guess it was the heat and humidity that drained us. After we woke up we made plans for Sunday and decided on a day at the beach.

First Week at Home

2008-05-09T12:12:00.017-10:00

ALOHA !!!
Sorry it took me so long to make my first post, but it's been a hectic and busy week and I finally got the Internet to work on my computer today with the help of my brother. Let me start off by saying that a 9 1/2 hour direct flight from Chicago to Hawaii is booorrriinnnggg. I actually would have been happy with a short layover in California or something just so I could have gotten up, stretched, and eaten something. NO MEAL, do you believe that? Anyways... flying into Hawaii in the early afternoon is the way to go. The view of the Pacific and the islands while you're landing is awesome. I saw 2 of the other islands and all of Pearl Harbor. I arrived on Wednesday, April 30th at the Honolulu Airport to Joe and his disgusting mustache. That thing was so gross and I could barely look at him, but I haven't seen him in awhile so I blew it off and he promised he would get rid of it once we got home. I later found out it was a competition at work to see who could last the longest without shaving it off and since he knew I wasn't going to be there for 4 weeks, he knew this was his only chance. Sorry, off track. He greeting me with a beautiful lei and wow, it smelled sooooo good! I don't think I have ever smelt something so sweet and fragrant. We grabbed my bags and he drove me home to see our new home. The entire drive home smelled so good, there are colorful flowers everywhere and they are so different from anything stateside. We only live about 6 miles from the airport and we drive along Pearl Harbor all the way to the house. The water in the harbor is crystal clear and blue. Our house is great, we live on the Pearl City Peninsula and we live about 200 ft from where he works and we can see the Arizona Memorial from the shore. Our house is adorable and a lot larger then anything we would have received out in town. No furniture yet, so we've got a lot of shopping to do. For the rest of my first day, I got checked into base and put in my travel claim. I visited the SEAL compound where he works and met everyone in the dive clinic. I'm so anxious to see what this state is all about and get all of the important things finished so we can start traveling and visiting all of the cool beaches. They gave Joe off work for the next couple of days, so we will be very productive.

One of the first things I have to do is get my car registered to Hawaii. You only get 30 days from the day it arrives on the island, which was the 14th of April. I have to do it since everything is in my name, I figured no problem, get my state inspection, my new license, and register the car. Easy. Nope. My car fails because my headlights point to high and my driver side window doesn't go down anymore and they say thats unsafe in case of a fire or if I get pulled over by a cop, they have permission to open fire if I didn't roll down my window. Wow, retarded huh? Hawaii has the strictest rules of all the states, great for me. They wanted of $800 bucks to fix these two "problems." Joe is going to work on the window himself and just take it out if we can't find a new motor at the junkyard and maybe try lowering the headlights himself. I was pretty aggrevated to say the least and now we'll be pushing to get this all figured out by the 14th, which is right around the corner.

We've got a perfect day open, sunny and about 85 degrees, so we headed for the North Shore. We first stopped at Waimea Bay to do some snorkeling, which my book said is the 2nd best place to Hanauma Bay. On the way there, we drove right by the Dole Plantation, which we'll save for a later date. Waimea Bay was so pretty, although Joe told me that the "sand" on this beach was actually parrotfish poop from coral. Interesting, but it was very sticky to your skin, wet or dry. After a few hours of snorkeling and seeing a wonderful array of tropical fish, we wanted to drive another mile north and stop at Shark's Cove to do more snorkeling. Instead of stopping, we went ahead and drove a few more miles to the North tip of the island, which is where the Turtle Bay Resort is. We walked around the resort for awhile and stopped at their beach to have a cheap drink at their Cinco de Mayo party because it was cheaper to validate our parking ticket for free with a drink each at the bar instead of pay $5 for every half hour we were at the resort. I had my first taste of fish tacos at the beach party too, they were made with two giant swordfish steaks. Yummy. The view was beautiful, but we're talking about the North Shore where they have the famous surf competitions, so needless to day, the water was much more rough up here than where we snorkeled just a few miles down the road. We left Turtle Bay after an hour and drove south, but we stopped at a few fruit stands to experiment with some strange fruits. We bought a papaya, a lychee (kinda yuck), a chico (really yuck) and some big round thing that we saved until we got home, which we later found out was the nastiest thing I've ever tasted in my life. I need to find the name of it. On our drive back down the North Shore, we spotted the famous Bonzai Pipeline, which we we definitely be visiting mainly during Nov & Dec for the Pro Surf events and then we stopped in the quaint surf town of Hale'iwa. I had my first Hawaiian shaved ice from Aoki (thanks Jill!) and it was perfect, cheap, and topped with my all-time favorite snow cone flavors. I will be eating many of these over the next 3 years. On our way home, I saw my first Hawaiian rainbow. It was so bright and huge!! We headed back home and stopped at Home Depot for some cleaning supplies and tools for Joe's backyard project.

Joe had to work for the Marine's 4th Force Reconnassaince Team over the next few days on their base, which is in Kane'ohe, on the East side of the island. He was asked to be their dive medical coverage for their drills, so that was really cool. I went ahead and drove with him to the east side of the island and did some traveling while he worked. Let me just say, the East side of O'ahu is breathtaking. You drive right thru the Pali Mountains in a long tunnel and get the picturesque scene of what you imagine Hawaii looks like when you get to the other side. Kinda like the Jurassic Park opening scene (but thats really filmed on the other island, called Kauai). We both decided that we are going to spend the majority of our time on this side of the island. I spent the first day at the Kailua County Park Beach, which is the #1 swimming beach in my guide book. It was gorgeous! The beach was probably 1 mile long, light blue and green waters, small islands a few hundred feet out, wind surfers, and rolling waves, and of course, the awesome mountains behind you. I tanned for a few hours and took some walks around the park until my IPod died. It was very relaxing. He called after 4 hours and was already finished with work. I went and picked him up on the Marine Base and we headed to a furniture store to find a dining room table and maybe a bed frame. A strange thing about the place he worked on this base, was that you had to literally drive thru the middle of the runway to get there. There's a flashing stop sign that has railroad arms if a plane is taking off or landing, otherwise you just drive fast and pay attention to the skies is the arms are up. Cool, but kinda creepy. Of course I had to take a picture when one was taking off 50 feet in front of my car on the way out of base after picking him up. On the way home, we stopped by Brookstone and found our TemperPedic bed that we want and drove to another place where we found a dining room table and drove home with it tied on the top of my ghetto car.

The next day after dropping him off at work, I went to the city of Kane'ohe and checked out a few spots mentioned in my book around the area. First, I went to the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden. Not anything like our botanical garden, but it had a really cute pond and I walked a few miles of trails with different trees to look at. No flowers, not even a good visitor center. I was one of two cars in the parking lot. Oh well, the next one on my list has flowers. Next, I went to the Haiku Garden. It was a really small garden, but it was all around a big pond with some awesome flowers. As I walked through the garden, you could hear all of the lizards scatter every time I took a step near the flowers. I need a book to figure out what I was looking at, but they just amaze me how colorful they are. I felt like I was in the Climatron. It only filled about a half hour of time, so I went ahead and drove north to the Byodo-In Temple, which is an exact replica of the Uji Temple in Japan. You first drive in through the Valley of Temples, which is a huge non-denomitational cemetery until you get to the beautiful, tall and black Japanese headstones at the entrance to the Buddhist Temple's parking lot. The gravestones were so different than anything I've ever seen. You pay $2 to enter and you start by walking over a great bridge that leads to the bell and temple grounds. I rang the bell for good spirits and fortune. The bell made a beautiful, long, low tone for almost 30 seconds. It was an awesome sound. I took off my sandals and entered the temple. The Buddha is a 30 ft tall, 24-ct gold plated replica of the original at Uji. It was very relaxing and peaceful in the temple until a tour bus of rude people entered. I lit my candle and sat there for a few minutes to take in my surroundings. After exiting his temple, I walked around the entire temple grounds and the large pond filled with huge koi and a black swan. It was a really cool experience and the temple is right in the lush forest with the Pali mountains right behind it. I got some really good pictures of the area. After visiting the Byodo-In Temple for an hour and a half, I drove back into the town to see the island where a few Gilligan's Island episodes were filmed and check out a local grocery store. I bought a pineapple and headed back to base to pick up Joe. On our way home, we stopped in Honolulu for a few hours to walk around.

We relaxed and worked around the house for the next few days, because the Marines called Joe and told him that one of their subs caught on fire, so work was canceled. He didn't have to report t regular work either, since he was technically assigned to the Marines for the week. Awesome for us, we actually got stuff done. Over those few days, I painted our living room wall royal blue, cleaned the sectional we bought online and put it together in our living room, built another bookshelf, cleaned the kitchen, and put up some shelving in our bedroom. Joe stayed busy working on the backyard and fixing my car window for the state inspection. He spent an entire night taking the window completely out of the door. It will pass now! We shopped for groceries and bathroom decorations and have started major recycling efforts at the house too, so we took a giant load to the recycling center. The house is starting to look like people live in it, even though we still don't have a bed. It should get here next week sometime and our big packout should get here Monday.

Yesterday, we spent a few hours doing the tour of Pearl Harbor. We arrived at the USS Arizona Memorial and started our tour a half hour later. The tour starts with a 25 minute movie about why and how the attack occurred. I definitely learned a lot about the history of Pearl Harbor and the movie was very moving when they started talking about the sheer-numbers of deaths that happened that day of Dec. 7, 1941. After the movie, you take a small Navy ship out to the memorial that is placed over the center of the bow of the USS Arizona battleship. It was really quiet and serene and amazing to see that there is still gas and oil leaking from the ship. They have the other ships from Battleship Row labeled so you can see how close our ships were lined up during the attack. We got back on the boat and looked around the gift shop afterwards. The tours were over, so we figured we'll drive onto Ford Island sometime next week and do the tour of the USS Missouri. It was a nice tour, but definitely short. We headed home to relax because Joe starts normal work again in the morning and has to be ready to workout and 6am.

I hope you enjoy the first set of pictures. It's been an awesome first week and we've done a lot more than I thought we would, but its been priceless to have him off work for a few days. I have applied for 2 jobs on base with MWR, but am still looking for other options. Jobs are really hard to come by on an island this small. The State Parks or Honolulu Parks and Rec are not hiring for anything I am qualified for. I've got time and I've still got so many other errands to run for now. Goodbye for now.

The start of something new...

2008-04-27T17:38:00.013-10:00

HELLO EVERYONE,
Here's a little update on me....

After leaving Sicily for my college internship, I got a job in Brunswick, Maine working for the Navy's single-sailor program. The week before I started in Oct 2006, Joe and I got engaged during a trip over to Italy to see him for a month. My job was awesome and I got to travel all over the Northeast and do endless amounts of outdoor recreation (for free!) I traveled all over the state, took multiple trips to Boston, visited my sister in Northern Maine a bunch, worked the Navy's famous Fleet Week in New York City, hiked Maine's Mt. Katahdin, 5 times, snowboarded all winter long, and basically got paid to have FUN with some really cool people!

Joe left Sicily in June 2007 and got stationed in Panama City Beach, FL to start a new career in the Navy by going through Deep Sea Diver School. A few months into his school, we both decided it was silly to still be over a thousand miles away from each other, so I left my job and moved to Florida to live with him for a few months. I arrived in Florida in October and started looking for a job in tourism, which I thought was going to be easy. The only thing I could find, was driving school buses for the school district. They paid me to get my CDL, so I went ahead and drove buses for 5 months. It actually turned out being a great learning experience and has opened up options up for working with kids in the future. He graduated from Dive School in March and they re-stationed us in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he will work as the Dive Medical Technician for the Navy's SEAL teams. Oh darn, huh?

We left Florida to drive to Arizona for our wedding, which was in his hometown of Tucson, on March 22, 2008. It was absolutely beautiful, memorable, and so much fun. After that, we flew to St. Louis (my hometown) for another wedding reception. Immediately after both wedding celebrations, Joe headed to Hawaii to begin working and I stayed in St. Louis to help my parents through prom season at the tuxedo shop. It was so awesome for each of us to see our friends and families before moving to Hawaii for a few years. I flew to Hawaii on April 30th, and we have already moved into our new home on the island of Oahu. Now its time to start looking for a job, decorate our home, and start our 3-year honeymoon in paradise. SO HERE WE GO.....ENJOY!

New name:
Annie Murphy

New address:
197 Austin Ct.
Pearl City, HI 96782

Same phone numbers:
Annie - (314) 566-9457
Joe - (314) 591-9426

Maine is a marvelous place to vacation!!

2006-07-27T15:48:00.000-10:00

Mon. July 24 - I left St. Louis airport at 4:30pm and arrived in Bangor, ME at 10:00pm. My layover in New York La Guardia was really short, so it was a really quick day of flying (especially compared to flying back and forth from Europe). Amy, Gene, Eric, and Earl were all there to pick me up and then we headed up to their house in Medway, which is about an hour drive north of Bangor. Amy gave me the house tour and we all just hung around the house until bed time.

Tues. July 25 - Day 1 in Medway and we all woke up around 10am to make it to Earl's tattoo shop (Bad Girl) by noon. Gene, Eric, Earl, and I headed to the tattoo shop and Gene and I were going to drive the car to Baxter State Park so we could go do some hiking while they worked the shop. Amy had to leave for work around 7am, but she would be home after work. We hung out at the tattoo shop for about an hour and a half and then headed towards the State Park. Since we were Maine residents (well at least the car was) we got right into the park and got a parking spot right away. Gene and I were just going to walk around the Sandy Stream trail and see the lake, but we ended up taking on a lot more than we originally bargained for. We walked along the Sandy Stream trail and headed to the first platform to look for a moose. I really want to see some moose while I'm here. As soon as we walked up to the first dock, there was a moose right in front of us across the small lake. It was so cool. We sat there for a few minutes and took some cool pics of it and continued on around the lake. The next platform was really cool because it had a huge rock you could sit on, but the view wasn't as good for the moose siting. After we were finished around the lake, we decided to walk a little further down the path. We came to the sign to hike up South Turner Mountain and decided we had nothing but time to kill, so we headed up the mountain. South Turner is 3,200 ft tall and the path was pretty much straight up with huge rocks to climb over continuously. It was really fun and we both pushed each other the entire way to the top. About 3/4 of the way up, there was a natural spring that we filled our water bottle up with. The water was cold and crystal clear so neither of us were too worried to drink it. Plus, we hadn't planned on hiking to the top of this mountain, so we only had 1 liter of water with us for the day. After about an hour an a half, we made it past the timberline and started to ascend up to the summit. It was absolutely wonderful up there and you could see out for miles. We could have seen so much more, but the weather was pretty murky and the rain clouds were covering a large part of the park. You couldn't even see the top of Mt. Katahdin. We took a bunch of pics and climbed up pretty far to the summit until the wind starting really picking up and it started to rain. We decided that we should start heading back down before the weather got too bad and especially since no one knew we were climbing the mountain today. It was so much fun and definitely a great workout. Going down was really hard since our legs were shaking and tired. We made it down in 45 minutes and headed back towards the lake to see if any more moose were there drinking. N0 more were there, but we took our time and stopped back at all the dock spots to check out the beautiful view. We left Baxter State Park around 5:15pm and the 1 hour day at the park turned into 4 hours. It was such a fun day and Gene and I really had a good time hiking. I can't wait to do more over the next 2 weeks while I'm here and plus, a moose on the first day was a total surprise. Earl, Gene, and I are planning to summit Katahdin (the tallest mountain in Maine at 5,300 ft) this weekend after Gene and I's legs stop being sore. We were a little late leaving the park, but Earl had karate practice after work so Gene and I just dropped off the car with him and rode home with Amy. Before we got home, the boys, Amy, and I went to eat dinner at the local diner at the Irving gas station. I had a really tasty meatloaf dinner. We got home and chilled around the house for the rest of the night. Amy's last day of work is tomorrow, so we will all be able to do a little more after tomorrow night.

Wed. July 26 - Eric and I stayed home for the day because the weather was pretty rainy and I needed to catch up on some sleep after that hike yesterday. I woke up in so much pain today. It was crazy, my right leg that I step with is soooooo sore! Eric and I were gonna go down to the Penobscot River and fish and swim, but it ended up raining throughout the main part of the day. Instead, we stayed around the house, played with their dog Loki, and watched some movies. Amy got home early, so we headed up to the Hanneford grocery store to do some shopping for the week. Once we got home, Gene and Earl shortly showed up after and Amy and I started making dinner. We were making homemade pizzas tonight. The pizzas turned out really good and we were all in the mood to play board games tonight. First, we played an entire game of Cranium and then sat down and played 6 rounds of Scattegories. It was a lot of fun and everyone had a good time. We all stayed up pretty late since Amy didn't have work tomorrow, but finally went to bed around 2:30am. Amy, Gene, and I are going to Bangor tomorrow to hang out for the day while Eric and Earl work the shop during the day.

Thur. July 27 - We all woke up early this morning to go up to the middle school that was having a rummage sale to look for a desk for their house, but it turned out being quite a disappointment. After we got home, we got ready to leave for Bangor. We ended up leaving the house around noon and got down to Bangor in about 45 minutes. Before heading downtown, we stopped by Stephen King's house. It was so gorgeous and the houses all around the area are just amazing. We walked around the "downtown" and went to the Discovery Museum that they had. Mom had bought a St. Louis Science Center membership that gets you into all of the science centers around the US. We hung out there for awhile and it reminded us of our Magic House in St. Louis, MO. We had a lot of fun, but we all realized we were way to big and old for this to be amuzing very long anymore. After the Discovery Musuem we headed up the road and river to taste some home brews at the Sea Dog's Micro Brewery Restaurant. The micro-brewery is in Portland, but I was interested in tasting some Maine made beers. The restaurant was really cute and Amy and I shared a 10-beer sampler of most of their brews. There were some really unique ones and a few gross ones, but we were really happy we choose the sampler thingy. Gene had a few glasses of their home-brewed root beer and it was really good. The bartender also let us try a glass of their new blueberry soda and let me tell you, it was deee-licious! I bought a few for later this week. We ordered an appetizer of cheese quesadillas to set us over for awhile during our day in Bangor. We walked back to our car and headed over towards the mall for an oil change, Old Navy, Petco, and Sally Beauty Supply. The weather was hot, but it looked like it was gonna rain soon. After some shopping, we drove around the University of Maine Campus. The buildings were really classic and the sports arenas were huge. After driving around the campus, we headed into Orono for dinner. Amy has heard of a really good Mexican restaurant called Margheritas, so we went to find it since we all love Mexican food. We walked right into the busy restaurant and got sat right away in this cute little room in the lower lever that we had to ourselves. We each ordered margheritas and had some awesome chips and salsa. The food was excellent and the place looks like it does a lot of business. After a nice, relaxing dinner, we headed back around the Univ of ME campus and headed back towards home. Before we got home, we went to Walmart for some batteries for camping and sunglasses. We got to the house around 10 and just hung out for the rest of the night. We want to go hiking tomorrow around Baxter, but the weather forecast isn't looking too good. We'll see.

Fri. July 28 - Today was a lazy day around the house since it was raining in the morning and Earl decided to go to the Emergency Room for his abdomen in the afternoon. His side has been hurting him for a few days, but it was bad enough today to go get it checked out by the doctor. When he went in, Amy went with him and they were at the hospital all night until she came home to pick us up and visit him. They decided that he's going to have to get his galbladder out this weekend. I guess he won't be climbing Katahdin with us huh? Gene and Eric and I watched movies during the day and 2 hours of ER. It was alright since there wasn't many other choices of things to do since it was raining for awhile. When Amy came to pick up us, we visited Earl for a little bit and played two games of Scrabble with him in his room. I won both games! WooHoo!! After visiting hours were over and we had to leave at 8pm, we stopped by the video store before getting home. I told them about the Showtime series called "Weeds" and convinced everyone to rent it. We got home and made some dinner. Amy made a really good smelling cajun shrimp stir-fry, I had cheese raviolis, and I don't remember what the boys ate. After dinner, we all sat together in the living room and watched the entire DVD of Weeds. It was about 2 1/2 hours of it so by the time it was over, we all headed for bed. We didn't plan anything for tomorrow yet since we wanted to wait for the weather and how Earl was doing.

Sat. July 29 - Amy woke up early this morning and sat with Earl at the hospital all morning. They decided that they are going to do the surgery Sunday and he'll have to rest for a week afterwards. Amy called the house and asked us what we wanted to do today around noon and we all decided to head to the State Park and hike some trails. We drove Earls car to the hospital and visit him for a few minutes and then we were off to the park. We got to Baxter SP around 12:45 and headed towards Daicy Pond to hike and park. On the way to Daicy Pond, we stopped by Stump Pond to look for moose but didn't find any. After about a 45 minute drive, we got to Daicy Pond parking lot. We took the trails that brought us to Big and Little Niagra Falls and played at each one for over an hour. They were gorgeous. Before getting to Little Niagra, we stopped to take some pictures at the Toll Dam. The water was much higher than usual they all said. We hiked over a mile to get to Little Niagra and the water and big rocks were amazing. We got some really cool pics before heading a little further down the river to Big Niagra. I did some rock climbing and we all played in the water for awhile. After that hike, we headed back to the parking lot so we could head up the road further to Daicy Pond. The lake was absolutely breathtaking and it reminded me so much of Glacier National Park with Katahdin and the Appalachians in the background. The pictures from the pond were completely flawless. There was a little library and ranger station in the area which you can rent canoes for only $1/per hour. It was really cool so maybe next time we'll take the time to canoe around the pond for a little bit and look for moose. We didn't see any moose the entire day, but we all had a lot of fun and got some nice exercise today. We left the park at 5:00pm and headed back towards the hospital to visit Earl again and pick up the car. The boys and I drove Earl's car back to the house to get dinner ready after a quick stop at the grocery store. (Gene and I needed water and granola bars for the hike tomorrow.) Eric prepared tacos for us tonight. After dinner, I uploaded the pictures from the day and we watched the rest of the season of "Weeds." Gene and I have to go to bed early tonight so we can get up and hike Katahdin tomorrow. Since Earl isn't going to be able to try with us during our duration in Maine, we're just gonna do it by ourselves. The ranger told us we need to be at the SP by 7:45am tomorrow morning to get a parking spot and pass into the park to hike the mountain. I'm excited!!! (but not too excited about the pain I'll be in for the next few days)

Sun. July 30 - Gene and I woke up at 6:30am to be able to shower and leave the house by 7 to make it to the park before the parking lots filled up. We packed the bookbag last night and prepared all of our water and snack needs too. We filled out water bottles and CamelPaks with good water and stuck them in the fridge overnight. I made snack bags with peanuts, got some granola bars, and made meat sandwiches to eat throughout the hike tomorrow. As soon as Gene showered and I packed all the last minute things such as headlamps, an extra shirt for each of us, toilet paper, the GPS, our park map, and some other things, we were out the door and headed towards the park. Amy had already left for the hospital before we even woke up. We stopped at the gas station for some apple juice and after the 45 minute drive we were at Baxter SP. We got a parking pass and drove to Roaring Brook Campground where we were going to start our hike to the top of Katahdin. After getting our boots on and applying some sunscreen, we were signed in and hiking on the trail by 8:45am. From Roaring Brook it was a 3.3 mile hike to Chimney Pond. The trails are crazy here because there are so many huge rocks everywhere, which really ups the hike's rating. Once we arrived at Chimey Pond (2,900 ft in elevation), we went into the Ranger Station to sign the hike log and then stopped by the pond to fill up our CamelPaks. We got there at 11:00 and the ranger told us it would take 2-3 hours to get to Baxter Peak (Mt. Katahdin 5,260 ft), which is another 2.2 miles. We headed up the mountain via Saddle Trail. The trail was freakin insane! It was literally 3/4 mile directly UP hill climbing huge rocks straight up the mountain until you got to the top of the mountain range. Some rocks were loose and our legs were starting to feel the torture. Once on top of the range, we had exactly 1 mile to go uphill to reach the peak. Katahdin is the highest mountain East of the Mississippi River and is the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. You're pretty much guaranteed to see some hikers finishing the 2,000 mile + trail during this time of the year up there. Let me tell you, this last mile was one of the longest miles of my life. It was tough! Once we made it to the top though, it was absolutely amazing and incredibly rewarding. It took us exactly 5 hours to go the 5.5 miles! WOW!! **A normal human walks 3 miles per hour....So just imagine the slope & incline of this mountain if it took us an average time of 1 mile per hour to climb and hike Mt. Katahdin*** It was so beautiful up there and the weather and sky could not have been any more perfect. This was the first day since I've been here that you could actually see the top of Katahdin. I was amazed by the number of lakes and bodies of water that were up here in this area. It was so cool, you could see for miles and miles from the peak. There were about 10 other people up there and the crowd kept moving for the 30 minutes we chilled up there. We took some cool pictures from the top and I just stood there and soaked in the accomplishment of this once in a lifetime hike. It is awesome how 5 hours of hardwork and effort can get you something so memorable and unique. Gene and I were so proud to have climbed this 5,000 ft + mountain that was part of the Appalachian Trail. Once we took our pictures, ate some lunch, rehydrated ourselves, and relaxed our legs and feet for a little bit, we were ready to head back down the mountain and get home. We finished the 5.5 mile hike back in 3 hours and 45 minutes, but were feeling the undescribable pain in our feet, ankles, and legs! We just kept wishing that the end was right around the corner, but we didn't have such luck. Once we finished the trails and signed out on the hiking log book, we were SO ready to get back to the car and go home. I was so tired and not looking forward to the hour drive home. Before heading home, we stopped by the hospital to see Earl and Amy and then went to the Irving for some french fries and onion rings To-Go. We made it home by 8pm and both fell asleep by about 8:30pm. It was such a great day and the hike was wonderful and rewarding! I am so glad we tried and succeeded this climb. Not many people (even in Maine) can ever say they successfully climbed Mt. Katahdin, but Gene and I now can. Definitely a fun day, although definitely NOT looking forward to the massive amounts of pain we'll both be in for the next 3 or 4 days.

Mon. July 31 - The boys and I woke up around 9am and just hung around the house for awhile until going to visit Amy and Earl at the hospital. It was a chill-out and relaxing day (especially for Gene and I) and for dinner we all decided on making shish-ka-bobs. We knew that we needed to pick up Crystal around 10:00pm, so we would have to make and eat dinner kinda early. We went to the grocery store and got some extra supplies so we could have some pretty fancy kabobs. They ended up being really good. We had chicken and beef with tons of different types of veggies. Earl was told that he might be able to leave the hospital tonight, so Amy stayed in Medway with him instead of coming to Bangor with the boys and I. The boys and I left the house early so we could see a movie before going to pick up Crystal. We saw Monster House at the cinema in Orono and it was really cute. Once we arrived at the Bangor International Airport, we found out that her plane was about 45 minutes late. She finally got in around 10:40, but her luggage never showed up. American Airlines told us the last plane was coming into Bangor in about an hour so we could wait to see if her luggage was on this one. We waited and no luck. They told her they would ship her bag up to Amy's house when it arrived. After the hour drive, we finally made it home around 1:30am and fell asleep shortly after.

Tues. Aug 1 - Today when everyone woke up, we decided to make our trip to Canada. After eating a really good breakfast made by Amy, Gene, Crystal, she and I headed off on our trip for the day. We drove up to Houlton where we went through Canadian Customs to get into the province of New Brunswick. On our way to the town of Fredricton, something funny definitely caught our eye. It was the "Worlds Largest Axe" in the little town of Nackawic. We stopped in the park with the GIANT axe and took a bunch of funny pics and began the humorous day of making fun of everything Canadian we came into contact with. After a short stop in Nackawic we were on our way to Fredricton, New Brunswick. We walked thru the streets of downtown Fredricton making stops at several locations along the way. The town was really beautiful and peaceful and reminded us of the Loop in St. Louis. We were all getting hungry so we went to dinner at a bar and grill called Bugaboo's Grill. Dinner was alright, but our Canadia waitress sucked. Oh well. We knew there was the "Changing of the Guards" at 7pm, so we quickly paid our bill and ran out to see it. After watching the short ceremony, we walked along the riverwalk and took some pics at the lighthouse and did a little more walking along the streets of the area. We left downtown and went to the "mall" to get Crystal some underwear since her luggage still hadn't showed up to the house. After the "mall" we grabbed some Frosty's at Wendy's and headed back towards America. The drive was long and the roads were pitch black, except for the crazy lightning that went on all night. Driving back though the US Customs was a pain in the booty since they're all on ego-trips, but we made it back to the house in a little over an hour. At the end of our fun trip to Canada, we all agreed that Canadians are very fun to laugh at and make fun of. This was my first time to Canada and it was really pretty and hilarious.

Wed. Aug 2 - Today ,was quite relaxing and we all chilled around the house for the early part of the day. After getting restless in the house, Crystal and I rode bikes down to the "Rec," which is a small beach with some sofball fields. Riding bikes down there was quite an adventure and sweaty too. After we got back home, we gathered up the crew and convinced them to come swimming. Earl had a favorite place down on the Penobscot River that he use to swim at so we all got our swim suits on and drove down the road to the rapids. Only Eric, Crystal, and I ended up getting in, but the water was cold and the current was strong. The mosquitos and moose flies were everywhere, so we only stayed for about a half hour. After leaving that location, we drove back down to the Rec and went swimming there. There was this really skippery dock in the water that amused us for awhile. After finishing up there, we went back to the house and all agreed on making a big lobster dinner tonight. We cleaned up and headed to the grocery store to pick up everything we would need, including 3 big ole lobsters. We got home and started up the water pot and everything else. We cleaned up the garage and made our dinner table outside for the night since this could get messy. Cooking the lobsters was really fun and they only took 20 minutes each. Just after about a half hour, we had a full meal (looked like a buffet) on the table and we all learned how to open lobsters for the most meat and had a nice, long meal. I had dishes tonight and wanted to clean them asap so the house didn't smell like seafood all night.

Thurs. Aug 3 - Earl was feeling a lot better today so we all went down to Baxter State Park to do some light hiking. At the big entrance rock we saw a baby moose and it's mother far in the distance. We started off by hiking out of Roaring Brook campground and did a 2 mile hike around Sandy Stream Pond & Russell Junction. It was a moderate hike, but Earl was starting to hurt near the end of it so we got back in the car and headed over to Daicey Pond to do some canoeing. We got to Daicy Pond and rented a canoe for Gene, Crystal, & I and rode around the pond for a half hour. It was kinda busy at Daicey Pond today, but the weather was so perfect that it was alright with us. Gene got out of the canoe and Crystal and I went out for another half hour. The pond was really pretty and she could see Katahdin from the back side. We saw a loon in the lake and decided to make up stories about it being a carnivor. We left Daicy Pond and headed home for dinner. We ended up playing Cranium (a board game) and Scattegories all night for a few hours. It was a lot of fun, but we needed to get to bed early so we could get up on time for tomorrow.

Fri. Aug 4 - We woke up early today around 6 to get out of the house by 7am for a full, busy day around Mount Desert Island. Today was our day to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor with Crystal and the entire Ferguson family. Unfortunately, Earl had to stay behind with Loki (the dog) since there wasn't enough room in the car for all 6 of us to fit. We were on the road for about an hour and a half before stopping at the factory outlet of LL Bean in Ellsworth. The store had some cool things, but most of it was still pretty expensive and selective. The headquarters of LL Bean is another hour or so away in Freeport, ME. After browsing LL Bean, we went to a grocery store to buy food for a picnic in the park and some other snacks for the long day. We had another half hour to drive before getting onto the island of Mount Desert, but before getting there we went to the Visitor Center to find some cool things to do on the island and around the park. On our way through Ellsworth, we saw the place that the Maine Lumberjack Show performs everynight of the week that we are going to attend as the last spot on our tour before going back to Medway tonight. Getting onto the island was really easy to navigate and we started our way through Acadia right away. Acadia National Park covers 2/5 of the island and has a bunch of spots to get out of your car, hike some trails, and take some beautiful pictures. The day started off cloudy and rainy, but the weather eventually started to clear up. Our first stop in the park was at Frenchman's Bay and then we spent some time traveling to and around Cadillac Mountain. The whole time we were up on the mountain, we were in a cloud, but once we started visiting more spots in the park, the sky was clearer yet murky. After Cadillac Mountain, we walked around Sand Beach and then Amy brought us down to Thunderhole where the waves crash into the natural crevasses in the rocks to make a loud BOOM sound like thunder. It was great and the pictures around this area were a blast to take and we got some good family pictures throughout the National Park. The Atlantic Ocean water was insanely cold! We drove a large portion of the park and after a few hours we left the park to drive to Bass Harbor where one of the most famous and pictured lighthouses on Mount Dessert Island is located. Before walking around the lighthouse, we ate lunch at the car. The lighthouse was called Bass Harbor Lighthouse and was closed to the public since it was the residency for a commander of the US Coast Guard. We walked on one side of the lighthouse and realized there was a cool nature trail to get to the other side of the lighthouse which was a wonderful view and made the trip. You had to climb down and over these giant rocks along the shore to see the tower, but the view and scenery was spectacular. After Bass Harbor it was time to head to the town of Bar Harbor to do some souvenir shopping and walking around the harbor. We walked along the ocean and toured the harbor, which was really fun and cool to see all the yahcts (dont know how to spell it) and lobster boats in the bay. After leaving the docks, we started our adventures of goofy souvenir shopping for about an hour. I found some really cute things and Crystal got some good deals on shirts and sweatshirts for people. Our time went by fast in Bar Harbor since we determined that we needed to leave there by 6pm to get to the Lumberjack Show on time to get a seat. Before heading out of Bar Harbor, we all got some yummy ice cream and then drove back to Ellsworth to the show. As soon as we got the show, I put on my 2006 Forestry Conclave shirt so I could get a picture with Timber Tina from Survivor and real, professional lumberjill competitions. We bought our tickets and found our seats before heading out on my mission to get a pick with her. She was crazy (and Amy thinks she was kinda drunk) but the show was looking like it was gonna be a blast. The show started on time and there were 4 lumberjacks in the show that were doing the compeitions for the Red Team VS the Green Team. They did almost all of the professional lumberjack events and she was a really good emcee doing really well describing the events and how they were used in traditional logging days. The show was about an hour and a half long with funny surprises and skits throughout it. It was a great and hilarious ending to a scenic and gorgeous day. We left the show and stopped in Bangor on the way home for a quick dinner at Wendy's because we were all starving. We got home around 10:30pm after a long drive in pouring down rain and fully-lit sky lightning. Once we got home everyone pretty much passed out from a long day and waking up early. I think we're just gonna chill out tomorrow during the morning and afternoon.

Sat. Aug 5 - We slept in a little late this morning and all sat around to watch Grandma's Boy before picking something to do today. That movie is absolutely hilarious!! After the movie, Amy asked if we wanted to hang around Bangor for the afternoon and evening. Earl's friend Aaron came over so him and Earl stayed home to hang out and Gene also stayed behind to relax. Eric, Crystal, Amy and I drove to Orono/Bangor to the mall to get her cell phone situation solved and then do some browsing/shopping at the mall. She got the new cell phone she wanted and then went to Best Buy to get a new DVD player since theirs was starting to give out. We then went to Dick's Sporting Goods Store to check out all the cool gear they had and burn some time. After the mall, we headed back into Bangor and first stopped by Stephen King's house so Crystal could have some pictures for our friend and then we went to see the giant Paul Bunyan to go along with my giant axe picture and Timber Tina. It was almost dinner time and we all thought that Texas Roadhouse sounded tasty. We had to go back towards the mall and the wait for dinner was only about 20 minutes. To burn some time, we walked across the parking lot to a party supply store where we played around and dressed up in their goofy party stuff. Once we got back over to the restaurant it was only a few minutes later until we were called. Dinner was really good and we had a really good time. After dinner, we had planned to go Candlestick Bowling at a place that they like to bowl. We made it just in time and played one string (one 10-frame game) of candlestick bowling. It was so much fun and it was Crystal and I's first time playing. Eric played last summer when he came up to visit Amy and Earl. The balls for this type of bowling are about 3 lbs and fit in the palm of your hand. The lanes are exactly the same, but the pins are basically heavy sticks that are in the same formation as regular bowling and you have to keep score manually. It was really tricky, but most definitely fun. After leaving the bowling alley, we got back on the highway to get back home for the night. When we all got home, we watched some Shark Week TV and loaded the pics from the week onto the computer. We are all going to climb South Turner tomorrow at Baxter State Park. That should be pretty fun all doing it together instead of just Gene and I.

Sun. Aug 6 - Amy, Crystal, and I went to Baxter SP today to climb South Turner Mountain. We arrived at 12:30 to the front gate, but the parking lot we needed was full. Luckily, the ranger has remembered us coming to the park about 5-6 times in the past 2 weeks that she let us go ahead and try our luck finding a parking spot. We started our hike at 1pm and began our 2-mile hike to the summit of South Turner. Before going straight to South Turner we stopped by Sandy Stream and saw a moose. We needed to keep moving so back on the trail we went. Amy is climbing this mountain with her co-workers in the next fwe weeks so this was going to be a nice practice for her and she could learn the trail. The weather was perfect outside and the trail below the treeline was nice and cool. We did really well and took our time to make it to the stop. Once we made it to the natural stream, we cooled off and tried to fill our CamelBaks with some clear water. After the stream came the treeline and from there you could see the sign at the summit from down there. We took a bunch of pictures and then kept on with our ascent to the summit. Getting to the summit was gorgeous and a very big accomplishment for everyone. (Go Orange Team!!!) We chilled at the summit for 20-30 minutes just admiring the view and you could see for miles. There were barely any clouds in the sky and you could see the entire range of Katahdin along with all the bodies of water surrounding and within the park. After that we started our descent back to the bottom to go visit Sandy Stream Pond before we left. We made it down the mountain in good time and walked to the first entrance to the pond. We saw some giant moose prints leaving the first dock, so we wanted to hurry up and get to the second spot which is the big rock at the pond. Walking up on the rock, we saw two moose right in front of our eyes (maybe 15 feet in front of us) and it was a yearling with its mother. They ran into the pond and the yearling swam across the pond while the momma stayed in the water to feed on algae. It was so cool. We were right next to these giant animals and they weren't even affected by us. About a half hour later came this HUGE moose that was easily 8 feet tall walking towards the momma moose in the middle of the pond. It was such an amazing site to see. This was an amazing day and definitely fulfilled any hopes of seeing moose this week. During our time watching these 3 moose, another one was swimming too. We sat there for about an hour and all agreed we were ready to go home and eat some dinner. We stopped by a store to pick up some fried chicken since the boys ate all the food we had set out for dinner. We got home and told everyone about our incredible 6-moose day and our successful hike to the 3,100 ft summit. After dinner we all watched some tv and sat around the living room.

Cardinal's Baseball Games in St. Louis, MO

2006-07-18T06:43:00.001-10:00

So I've officially seen the NEW Busch Stadium since I've been back home and I've already gone to two games. I went to the game with Crystal on Thursday July 13 and with my Dad on Saturday July 15. The new stadium is absolutely gorgeous and I've been spoiled already with amazing seats each time. Crystal and I were about 10 rows behind the Cardinal's dugout and Dad and I were in party boxes with a company from his work. The view of the Arch and the Old Courthouse is beautiful and the red brick is really unique to our city. I do miss the old Busch Stadium, but this one is great too and any Cardinal baseball game is always a guarenteed good time. Oh yeah, we won both games that I was at! That must be a hint.....I'm a good luck charm I guess.

Dad and I up in the party boxes

Reflection of the past 6 months

2006-07-18T06:23:00.000-10:00

So in the past 6 months, many great things have happened and some worldwide events have ocurred in Sicily & Italy while I lived there. It was hard to leave, but I must admit that I was there during an awesome 6-month period. Here's my list of memorable moments:

- 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy
- NATO Conference in Taormina, Sicily
- Donald Rumsfeld toured both Sigonella bases during the conference
- CBS filmed and aired the Amazing Race in Sicily (Palermo, Segesta, Catania, and Siracusa)
- Head of Sicilian mafia, Bernardo Provenzano, caught in Corleone, Sicily after more than 40 years of hiding
- Italian Presidential elections (Prodi defeated Berlusconi)
- 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany
- ITALY WON THE 2006 WORLD CUP CHAMPIONSHIP!!!! (2 days after I left)
- Mt. Etna is starting to erupt since its last major one in 2002 (one week after I left)

First night back in St. Louis

2006-07-18T06:22:00.001-10:00

I am home after over 20 hours of flight time and layovers in Rome and Cincinatti. It was a long day, but the jetlag surprisingly wasn't hard to get over. They say its a lot easier going Westward. Definitely true. After I arrived in the airport, my family brought me out to dinner for a big ole' hamburger at Fudruckers. I have been craving their burgers and fries for awhile now since there isn't very good beef in Sicily. It was a lot of fun. I talked about Sicily for a few hours until we all seperated and I went to go see some of my friends at a bar in South City called The Famour Bar. There, I hung out with Nick, Jeff, Jeff, and Crystal. It was a neat bar, but I was pretty tired and headed back to Crystals house to speng the night. After 6 months, I have finally been reunited with my bestest friend ever, Crystal! Here are some pics from our first night back together.

Leaving Sicily tomorrow...unfortunately :(

2006-07-06T06:32:00.002-10:00

Hi ALL, I am officially 12 hours away from leaving my wonderful home and friends here in Sicily. Im going to the Catania airport tomorrow with Joe, James, and Leslie at 5:30am to catch my 7:30am flight to Rome. From there, I immediately head back to the States into Cincinatti and then should be arriving in St. Louis at 6:45pm. Not looking forward to 17 hours of flying and airport confusion and aggrevation. I said all my goodbyes today, which was very hard and lots of tears, but I cannot be more than happy about this entire experience. The traveling I've been able to fit in, the amazing friends I met and become so close with after 6 months, the training and experience of Navy MWR, and everything else that has made my life change for the better. I am gonna miss this place and the people here so much and I hope they all know that I will try my hardest to stay in touch. I am coming back to St. Louis tomorrow for 2 weeks before heading off to Maine for 2 weeks to visit my sister, her boyfriend, and my brothers. AFter that, the real world begins and my job search continues. I've found 2 MWR jobs that I'm going to apply for this week when I get home. My cell phone should be back on by tomorrow night or Saturday afternoon. Call me if you want to talk, otherwise email or in-person visits are more than appreciated to help calm me down from my Sicily-Homesickness. 314-566-9457. I love you all and can't wait to see you. I'll be working on my photo album shortly after I get home. LOVE YA!

Barrack's Bash, EtnaLand, & SCUBA #5

2006-07-03T00:24:00.000-10:00

Fri. June 23 - CeCe and I have been working towards creating a "field day" for the guys who live in the Barrack's to get them out and have some fun after work. We planned the event for today at 4pm so the sailors could come and hang out all night and eat some BBQ when they got off work. Before I got to work, I went and got 3 coolers from ITT and brought them over to Take 5 to fill with ice and soda/water for this afternoon. It's been averaging over 100* all week, so we wanted to make sure there were plenty of cold drinks. For the event (much like the Armed Forces Challenge last week), we had planned a Gladiator Jousting competition, a Dunk Tank with Chiefs from random commands, Melon Bowling, Kickball, Sand Volleyball, and a Hot Dog Eating Contest. CeCe and I made 100 hot dogs in the crock pots for the competition and they steamed all afternoon. I went and got all the other meat out of the freezer to start thawing out for 3:30. I was going to BBQ for the day, so I needed to start that around 3:30pm to make sure it was done by the time everyone started to show up. At the beginning of the week, I made and hung up flyers for the day so we could hopefully get some participation. It's so hard to get these guys to do anything as a group, even with free food and drinks. Four oclock came around and no one was showing up. We didn't realize that the base softball team would be practicing today (tournament in Naples this weekend) so that eliminated our kickball game we were going to have. Throughout the day, barely anyone showed up so a few of us just played around on the jousting thing, I sat in the dunk tank for awhile, and ate some BBQ. It was disappointing, but not surprising. We didnt even get most of the games or eating contest out since no one was there. 7pm came pretty slow, but I just ended up watching the base team play some softball, cleaned up, and then headed home. Joe and I were going to go see X-Men 3, but we ended up getting a little sidetracked. Before the movie, we were gonna go have a drink with some friends over at Days Inn, but the Air Force guys that live in my set of barracks were outside playing beer pong and BBQing so they invited us over to the pavilion. I have met a few of them informally a few times before, but this was the first time I was actually introduced to them. There were about 12 of them playing and switching off, so it was pretty fun. They made Joe and I play the winners and we ended up winning ourselves and having to play another round. By this time, we were too late to go over to Days Inn and about to miss the movie, so we decided to just continue to play for a little longer. We eventually lost and said our thanks and goodbyes and headed over to the bar to hang out with some friends for a little bit. It was fun, but I couldn't stay out too late because I had to escort the Take 5 trip to EtnaLand Waterpark the next morning.

Sat. June 24 - Today was my trip to EtnaLand Waterpark that I escorted and drove for. This was my first time driving the 15-pax vans with people in them, so I was a little nervous. I was mainly nervous for the fact that I had to drive a stick up Motta Road. The hill in Motta is almost a 75* slope and if I was gonna get stopped on it, I would be so nervous about rolling backwards. I got to Take 5 and 9 people ended up coming along. Travis, Smitty, Joe, and I shared a cooler and brought some sodas and water along for the day. Only 1 or 2 of them had ever been there before, so I really didn't know how to get here. Surprisingly, no one even at ITT really knows how to get there since its pretty new. We left the entrance of Take 5 at 9:45am and didn't arrive to EntaLand until almost 10:30am. I got kinda lost in a city called Paterno, but it was funny and entertaining to the people in the van. Smitty and Joe were making so much fun of me driving that van, but I did really good driving it. I'm getting really good at driving a stick since I drive one to and from work everyday. We finally arrived and paid our entrance fees of 17.50 Euro per person plus 2 Euro for a lounge chair. It wasn't a bad price for an all day waterpark. The layout and design of the park was a lot more impressive than I would have ever imagined for anything here in Sicily. The slides were absolutely crazy and would have never passed safety regualtions in the US. It was so fun, we rode the slides all day long and ate some pizza for lunch at this really good pizzeria they had there. After lunch, we all decided to ride the Lazy River, but it ended up being not very "lazy." We were knocking each other off the tubes the entire time and messing with the Italians. It was fun, but obnoxious. I had planned to leave around 5pm and everyone was at the exit on time and we headed back to base. This time, I didn't get lost. It was so much easier to get there than any of us imagined, so now we all know how to get there a lot quicker.

Smitty Wayne, Travis, Joe, & Annie @ EtnaLand's entrance

Wave Pool and hilarious Italian's entertainment zone

Travis and Smitty flying off the slide

After we got to base, I had to drive myself and the van back over to NAS I. I went and bought some groceries so I could cook dinner and have some food for the weekend. I got back to my room and took a shower. I didn't even get sunburnt today! Thats a shocker. After my shower, I headed up to Joes room to upload all my pics onto his computer and cook some dinner. I made chicken, pasta, and spinach. It was nice to eat a real meal cuz it's been awhile since I've actually sat down and cooked something. We had just gotten done with dinner when all the ITT drunks called us from JOX. They had a paintball tournament all weekend, so they have been at JOX all evening celebrating the success of the tourney. There were teams from Rota, Spain, Germany, and northern Italy here for the European Paintball Tournament that Leslie and Leah set up along with our Sigonella Paintball Association. They called my cell phone and begged us to come hang out at JOX for the rest of the night. I wasn't really in the mood to even move (I was freakin tired from today), but they kept calling me and bribing us to get over there. I caved in and grabbed the Forino (my MWR vehicle that I drive all the time) and headed back over to NASII. I didn't even have a chance to relax or gain some strength back. I drove over there and stayed for a few hours. I danced with all the girls and hung out with some friends until I was just completely bored outta my mind and wanted to go home and get some sleep for tomorrow's dive. I had 2 beers, but since Sigonella has crazy DUI problems and breathalyzers, I wanted to be safe and just take the shuttle home since I drive a Government vehicle. It was quite funny to see all my bosses drunk, but I was so tired it was hard to be amuzed by them and too late to join in on the party. It was nice to get home and get some sleep, Chief was going to be there at 8am to pick us up.

Sun. June 25 - Today was my first dive as a certified open water SCUBA Diver. Chief Webber from the Flight Line Clinic (Joe's Chief) came and picked us up. It was going to be his first open water dive and Joe and I's 5th. He is currently taking the certification class and is really excited about diving. He is so cool, especially for a Chief. We drove to Aci Trezza and for the first time, was early to the dive shop. Tons of people were diving today, which I don't really like, but oh well. We loaded up our gear and headed to the boat dock. Since there were so many people today,we didn't get to dive for very long since it took sooooo long to get everyone ready for their dives. For most of the Americans, it was only their first or second dive, so all the dive instructors were busy with them. Joe and I ended up diving with Guiseppe and Chief came along. We dove 17 m for 33 minutes. The water conditions were great. It was clear, the water was calm, and the water temperature were perfect. It felt perfect in the wetsuit and all I wanted to do was go swimming. After our dive, Joe, Chief, and I did some flips into the water from the top of the boat. The water felt so good. Sylvie only made us pay 20 Euro since it was our first dive and we didn't get to dive very long today. My card didn't come in yet, but it should be here soon. She's hoping it comes in before I leave Sicily. We left around 1pm and headed back to Sig. Chief needed to do some grocery shopping at the Commissary, so we all went and grabbed some lunch and did some grocery shopping ourselves for a few things. I went home and ended up falling asleep for 3 hours. I set my alarm for only an hour, but you know how I like to sleep. I woke up and took a shower and started to pack some things up in my room. I did some last dishes and packed them into their original boxes so I could return them to James sometime soon. I cleaned up my kitchen and threw away some old things in my cabinets. It was very sad to pack boxes of clothes and souvenirs to send home. I talked to Crystal on the phone for over an hour, which helped cheer me up for going home eventhough I'd much rather stay here longer. After cleaning my room for a few hours, I went to Joe's to cook dinner again. It definitely helped wake me up a little. I watched a movie called "Tombstone" for the first time and played on Pirate's Internet for awhile. I don't want to leave in 11 days! This is starting to be very depressing.

Hike Mt. Etna, Dance, SCUBA Dive

2006-06-22T01:01:00.000-10:00

Fri. June 16 - I had off work today so I spent all day shopping for a dress and shoes for the Corpsman Ball. The hospital also had the entire day off for a 72 hour Liberty (no alcohol related incidents in a month) so a bunch of people were running around doing arrunds. For the morning, I went down to Catania with Erica and Joe to do some shopping. She still needed some shoes and I was excited for her help of finding a dress for me. Joe wanted a new dress shirt, so he came along too for a little bit before he had to go teach an EMT Class for a few hours. While he took Erica's car back to base, we did a few more hours of shopping. Neither of us found anything we liked, so we just walked around the open-air market and into some cute little boutiques until Joe came back with the car. It was fun, I've never really hung out with Erica, but we have a lot more in common than I would have imagined. After gettting back to base, Joe and I ran up to the Navy Exchange to see if they had a bright blue dress shirt. He got one in Catania, but it wasn't as vivid as he would have liked it to be. Picky I tell ya. Anyways, I did some grocery shopping and ate some lunch cuz I was starving. All we ate in Catania was just a typical Sicilian breakfast (cappucino and a pastry) really early this morning. I took a little nap and relaxed my feet for awhile until Erica and I headed back out to town. This time, we were gonna give it one more chance and we both decided on going to Etnapolis (the mall). I ended up finding a dress and some shoes, I wasn't fully satisfied, but I was in a hurry and at a dead end. I had to escort a trip tomorrow afternoon, so I knew I wouldnt have any more time to look. The shoes are hot though, definitely Italian. They are like 3 1/2" stilletos. My feet are going to be hurting for sure.

Sat. June 17 - This morning started out early with an ITT trip that I planned about 2 months ago. It is a family hike up to Mt. Etna. Since it was suppose to be planned for families with small children, I picked a hike around Monti Sartorius that was only a 1.9 mile hike with an easy terrain. 43 people signed up for the hike, so I knew it was going to be a crowded bus. I was happy to see so many sign-ups though, because we had originally only planned to use a 15 passenger van for the trip. We left NAS I at 8:30am and headed up to the North Side of the mountain. I have only ever been to the South Side (for snowboarding) and haven't been up there yet with all the snow gone. The drive through Zafferana (the entrance city to the North Side) was 2 hours long, but we stoppped along the way for coffees, pastries, and a bathroom break. It was fun, we had trivia on the way up and some information about this particular mountain (crater). We got up there and unloaded the bus to begin the hike. It was a connecting path, so everyone just went at their own pace and we just set a time limit of an hour and a half. The hike up to the top of the mountain ended up being pretty strenuous, but very rewarding to see everyone get up it. We all took some amazing pictures of the top of Etna and it just had alittle bit of snow on it. The hike was great. Joe and I got into a volcanic ash fight and kept kicking it into each other's shoes. At some spots, the ash was so thick that it made a nice exercise for your legs. When everyone got back to the bus, we were ready to get to the agriturismo and eat some tasty lunch. We drove to the spot where they had to come shuttle us to the restuarant. Our bus was way too big to fit down the street to get to the farm that the agriturismo was on. It was called San Marco and was run by a small family and some extra workers. It was so cute. All 50 of us were in one room with beautifully set tables and surrounded by authentic Sicilian dishes. The lunch ended up lasting over 2 hours and had 5 courses. It was so good. All of the good was so good and it was really cool because I sat with Rosario and Nino (our bus driver) so they explained all the ingredients and history of the food to me. It was really fun to talk with them during the entire lunch and everyone had a really good time. By the time lunch was over, everyone had to roll themselves out of the restaurant and back into the vans to bring us back to our bus. Joe and I had originally thought we would get home around 4 so we'd have plenty of time to get ready, but we didn't end up getting back to base until 5:30pm. Oh well, it was so worth it. Everyone was saying great things about the trip, no one got hurt, and they were all excited about next month's hike. As soon as the van was empty, we were on our way to get ready for the Corpsman Ball. The only thing I was really worried about was my hair. I have no sense of style when it comes to doing my hair on my own, so I knew it'd end up being really simple. We both went to our rooms to get ready and meet each other at Gust's car (we had to borrow his car since everyone else left earlier). I tried to just wear my hair done, but even that wasn't cooperating with me. I ended up putting it into a French roll, which surprisingly looked pretty good. I didn't feel very comfortable with the dress I got, but hey its Italy and that's what they wear. I totally felt like a skank but I had already asked a bunch of people what they thought about it and they all said it looked hot. Tonight was the World Cup Game between Italy and the USA so everyone was staying updated on that all night. Joe and I were finally ready to leave the barracks and we got to the restaurant in no time. It wasn't very far away, but by the time we finally got there, dinner had already been served. Luckily, we were still extremely full from the agriturismo so we were fine. The wine was flowing, everyone was there taking pictures and having an awesome time, and the dancing started shortly after dinner ended. Most of our friends were there and we hung out with the people from the Flight Line Clinic (where Joe works) and we all had so much fun. The game was on during the night so we'd send people back into the kitchen to get the scores from the Italians. There's been a lot of talk around here lately about this game so we knew whoever would lose, would be getting a lot of crap for it the next day. As many of you know though, we tied! I thought that was a pretty cool outcome though and we'd be able to avoid a lot of trash talk for the next week. I danced almost the entire night and my feet were hurting soo bad in these crazy high high heels. Joe was hurting pretty bad, so I danced a bunch with Flink, Andre (the other intern), and random other people. After the dance, we all headed back to base to go to Strike's and Days Inn for some more drinks and to hang out with our friends that didn't come to the dance (Travis & Pirate). Joe was DD so we dropped off the car at the barracks and then walked over to the bar. It was so fun to see everyone still dressed up and just having a really fun time. We stayed out pretty late, but both of us knew that we had to be up by 8am to go SCUBA Diving.

Sun. June 18 - We got picked up at 8:30am (yes she was running late) by Kat, Juli, and Chris and were on our way out to Aci Trezza for our last open water dive for our certification. They were running late from a long night last night and I wasn't feeling as chipper as usual. We got there and it was packed with people diving today. We were pretty late so as soon as we got there, we loaded our stuff and headed to the boat. We went out to Aci Castello again and dove the deepest depth for open-water divers, 18 m for 44 minutes. It was cool. Kat, Juli, Joe, and I dove with Guiseppe, who is the dive master. It was an extremely clear and calm day. Everything looked so beautiful today. When we got back on the boat, Giuseppe told Joe and I that we were now officially SCUBA certified. It felt so good to accomplish this. After the dive, we went over to Sylvie and Giuseppe's house for another BBQ. We couldn't stay too long because I had to be at work by 5pm. I wasn't scheduled to work, but I took Donna's shift since her parents just flew in to Sicily to visit her for 2 weeks. I called Dad for Father's Day and spoke to Amy and the Boys for awhile making last minute plans about my visit up to Maine. We spoke for almost an hour, it was nice to catch up with all of them. The boys sounded like they were having a really good time.

Armed Forces Command Challenge

2006-06-21T03:07:00.000-10:00

Wed. June 14 - Instead of working at Take 5 today, I got to help with the Armed Forces Command Challenge all day. This is like a giant field day for all the commands to earn points towards the Captain's Cup. It was so much fun. We started at 11am, but I got out there around 10:30 to start the BBQ. We had a lot of MWR volunteers to help out during the day so it was cool to bond with everyone throughout the day. We cooked tons of hamburgers and hot dogs before the events started at 11:15am. I was in charge of being the ref for Dodgeball along with the other intern, Andre. I had to be the dodgeball NAZI all day long and everyone was goin crazy. When guys get competitive, STAND BACK. I was scared! It was so much fun though. Some of the other activities throughout the day were Blind Volleyball (a huge tarp over the net so you cant see where the ball is coming), intense Kickball, Gladiator Jousting, and Water Tag. More people showed up than we thought, since it was a Wednesday workday and all. A few commands even got the full day off just to participate. The events went until almost 6pm. The whole day turned out to be a lot of fun, hot weather, good food, tough competition, and so much more. Public Works ended up winning First Place and AIMD got Second. They had a little ceremony over at JOX for them and got their pics taken and their tropheys handed out to them. Once I got home, I realized how much sun I had gotten throughout the day and saw the lovely new tan lines on my shoulders that I was gonna have to deal with during the Corpsman Ball.

A wonderful weekend to West Sicily

2006-06-20T23:48:00.000-10:00

Sat. June 10 - This was my weekend to get away from Sigonella before I leave. I decided yesterday to rent a car and head over to the West side of Sicily since I haven't had the opportunity to get over there yet. I asked tons of people if they wanted to pitch in on a rental car for the weekend, but no one wanted to. Losers. Oh well, so my favorite travel companion (Joe of course) and I were off on our own as usual. I don't understand why people don't want to get away from base for a few days. I headed over to the rental car agency across from the base at 8:30am when they opened and rented a little blue Nissan Micra. I was ready for a manual transmission cuz I knew that's all I would be able to rent at a lower price. I had been practicing all week with the work vehicles so Joe and I were ready for the challenge. I knew this was gonna be pretty funny in the small towns we were gonna have to go through. I drove the first leg of the morning so Joe could get some sleep and I have been done a portion of this drive already when I went to Agrigento with Smitty and Sticky. It was 2 hours until Agrigento, but I continued on SS 115 to Selinunte so we could get some kilometers in before stopping at our first sightseeing spot. The SS115 was all along the southern coast of Sicily and it was absolutely gorgeous. The weather could not have been any better and it wasn't getting unbareably hot yet. We got to Selinunte, which is one of the 3 major tourist locations with Greek Ruins. This one occupies the largest Greek Ruins in the world. Temple C was huge! It really some of the ones in Agrigento outta the water. I wasn't too impressed with the rest of Selinunte though, there was that temple, some giant ruins, and an Acropolis. Oh well, I got some good pictures and a nice hike out of it. I had looked up hydrofoil times yesterday at work for the Egadi Islands and knew that we had to make it to Trapani by 4pm so we didn't stay too long in Selinunte. We got back on the road, drove through the city of Marsala and arrived in Trapani around 3pm. Trapani was a lot smaller than I expected, but it was very clean and quaint. We immediately found the port after driving thru the downtown area and parked the car so I could go get the hydrofoil tickets. The tickets were 7.30 Euro a piece, each way, so we got the tickets for the island of Favignana at 4:30pm. These islands are off the west coast of Sicily only about 20 minutes away from Trapani. We have an ITT trip going here in a few weeks, so I've heard some great things about the 3 islands of Egadi. The hydrofoil ride was cool, the boat lifts up outta the water on its little legs and speeds away to the islands. The first stop was to Levanzo and then drops off at Favignana. It only took about 25 minutes to get there and once we got there we headed for the beach. We figured the water was going to be warm enough to swim since just last week in Citta del Mare, the water was a great temperature. Boy, were we wrong. We finally got to the beach (regretting that we didn't rent bicycles to get around the island) and the water was clearer than any of the water I've seen since I've been here. There were grottos and caves all along the coastline and you could see straight to the bottom of the sea. We climbed on the rocks and Joe swam around into the little coves and caves, but I could barely get in the water since it was so cold. I decided to do a little sun bathing instead to avoid the freezing cold water. We had to catch the last hydrofoil back to Trapani by 8:50, so we walked back towards the main part of town and do some souvenir gazing and stop at a little restaurant for a drink. We headed back to the port to watch the sun set and load back onto the hydrofoil. Once we got back into Trapani, we headed outta the city to find a place to go camping. It was really scary driving because there were no lights along the road and headlights were just not enough. I drove for quite awhile looking for a campsite and we eventually ended up in San Vito Lo Capo at a place called El Bahira. It was pretty late, so most of the crowd was already asleep. We crashed pretty quickly too from the long day and I had another long day planned for tomorrow.

Sun. June 11 - We woke up early and checked out of the campsite so we could get moving again. Neither of us had realized it, but this campsite was awesome. On top of it being huge and surrounded by absolutely amazing rock cliffs, there were 2 swimming pools, a private beach and dock, a few tennis courts, nice showers, and much more. We both agreed that this would be an awesome spot for camping with our friends if they ever wanted to drive this far. Unfortunately, its about a 4 hour drive to get here. I took a bunch of pictures right outside the campsite of the incredible scenery and small bay surrounded by giant cliffs and beautiful green hills. It's weird how the East side of the island is completely dead and brown, while this side is bright green and lushious. We were soon on our way to Segesta, which is the hidden away in the hills Doric temples Archaeological site that The Amazing Race was filmed at while they were in Sicily. We got a little turned around getting there, but we finally found it. You could see the perfectly preserved temple from quite a distance. I was so excited to finally get there. The whole site was placed so perfectly in the hills and I could just imagine living right along side of them. No one I know has ever been over here, but I am going to have to tell everyone how pretty it is on this side of the island. It doesn't even feel like I'm in Sicily over here, it feels like a totally different country. After we parked the car and bought the entrance tickets, we started the long hard hike up the hill to the ampitheater were they built the statues on the Amazing Race. There was an option to buy a ticket for the bus to bring you through the site, but we opted to walk. I now understand why we were one of the few people to be walking up this really steep long hill. We were soaked with sweat half way up to it. It was really cool once we got up there, but a lot smaller than it looked on tv. I climbed up the side of it to get a full picture of the ampitheater and then we checked out the acoustics of the thing by standing in the middle yelling out loud. It was crazy, but it worked. You wouldn't need a microphone or speakers to have everyone hear you in that place. It was fun, but starting to get really hot and I was anxious to get over to the gigantic temple. The Doric Temple was so neat. It was by far in the best condition of any temples here in Sicily, mainly due to the fact that it is away from the ocean and secure in the hills. We had more to see for the day, so we headed back towards the SS115 to drive along and get to Sciacca and Eraclea Minoa. Sciacca was pretty from the car, but we decided not to stop so we could spend more time at the famous beach of Eraclea Minoa. We stopped at one of the lidos on the beach and headed toward the sand. I laid out on the beach while goofball went and played in the freezing cold water. He was making fun of me for not getting in the water this weekend, so he came and grabbed me and threw me in. It was freezing!! I ran back up to the beach and we skipped rocks for awhile. Joe wanted to be buried completely, so he dug himself a hole and I covered him and made him into a mermaid. It was hot! Just kidding. We left the beach at sunset and wow, was it phenomenial. It was bright pink and purple and set right over the vineyards in the distance. Im starting to fall in love with Sicilian sunsets, I'm gonna miss em like crazy when I leave. Oh yeah, did I tell you....I DONT WANNA LEAVE!!! I took this leg of the drive again through Agrigento and all the way to base. It was pieceful, but tiring. We got to Agrigento and all of the temples and columns were lit up. That was the first time I had ever seen them lit up in real life, you always see them like that on the postcards though. Only two more hours til home on the crazy badly lit roads, but we finally made it. I hit rain about 30 minutes from base, so we were really priveleged to have such a beautiful weekend. I was so tired during the last few miles home, but I got there safely around 11pm. We unloaded and cleaned out the car and I headed to bed. I had to wake up early tomorrow morning and return the car by 8:30am. This was one of the best weekends since I've been here and I was so happy I got to finally see that side of the island. I would have really missed out on some gorgeous scenery if I hadn't made this trip.

Temple C at Selinunte

Temple C with the remains (behind the temple) of what is known to be ther largest Greek temple in the World.

My Favignaga feet (1 of 3 of the Egadi Islands)

Leaving Favignana headed back to Trapani on the hydrofoil.

View from our campground in San Vito Lo Capo. It is wonderful on the West Side.

And this is why it is going to be so hard to leave Sicily!

This is Segesta, the Amazing Race was filmed here! In the top left hand corner is the Doric Temple, which might I add, is in great condition.

The reason this temple looks practically perfect is the fact that it is the only temple here in Sicily that is no ruined by the weather. Its in the bottom of a valley and far away from the ocean (no wind or water damage really).

This is the ampitheater where the Amazing Race held their Road Block!

A really neat lighthouse along the coast on the way to Eraclea Minoa

Eraclea Minoa is known for its gorgeous sand beach and white bluffs. (Secret: There aren't too many sand beaches in Sicily)

Beach feet

Ahh, the famous white bluffs. They were quite breath-taking.

Normal Week

2006-06-20T22:44:00.000-10:00

Mon. June 5 - After work, Joe and I borrowed Sarah's car to head up to Motta so I could possibly find a dress for the Corpsman Ball. Before heading to the mall, I went and worked out for a little bit so I could start getting into the routine. After the workout and a shower, we headed up to the mall. A little past Motta, is the largest mall in Sicily. It's called Etnapolis and I had never been there before. It is really nice, but its hilarious that this is the largest mall here. Its 2 stories tall and less than a 1/4 mile long. Oh well, there are some cool shops in there though. But....just like Sicily, 75% of the stores are shoe, make-up, hair salons, or luggage stores. Oh well. I did find some really cute Italian clothes from a place called Berksha. I bought some new jeans and two colorful polka-dot tank tops. I also went to the Wanna-Be Sicilian Walmart, called Carefor, and bought tons of souvenirs and food for people back home. It was an adventure, but unfortunately no luck with finding a dress. I've got another 2 weeks to find one, so I'm not too worried. I just don't wanna wear the same one that I went to the SeaBee Ball in.

Tues. June 6 - My knee wasn't feelin too good today at work, so afterwards I watched some softball for a little bit and headed home. I had a really strenuous workout last night that aggitated my knee pretty bad. I made some of the pasta that I bought last night at Carefor and it was really good. Right after dinner, I took some ibuprofen for my knee thats been botherin me really bad and fell asleep for the rest of the night. The air conditioning in my room is amazing!

Wed. June 7 - Right after work I went and got my haircut across the street at Monikas, this is the same place I got my hair done for the SeaBee Ball at. She's really sweet. I asked her if she'd be able to do my hair for this dance, but she said she was going outta town. After I got my hair cut, I went over to the library and sat there for awhile updating my blog and MySpace pics.

A full weekend of SCUBA Diving

2006-06-20T00:03:00.000-10:00

Sat. June 3 - Today was my 2nd open-water dive in Aci Trezza with Sylvie and Giuseppe. Joe and I couldn't find a ride, so I took the big truck into the town. It's huge and of course the town's streets are narrow, so I was kinda nervous, but it was my only option if I wanted to dive today. Today was also my first real time driving thru Catania and with that big ole truck, it was lots of fun :). Anyways, we got there alright and the dive went well. We dove in Aci Trezza today instead of Aci Castello. It was nice, but the water was a little murky. After diving, we went over to their house and we all had a BBQ. A few other divers came along and we cooked a Sicilian/American BBQ lunch. They loved our bratwursts, they dont have those here. Sylvie made fresh bruschetta and we had lots of fresh bread to munch on. It was so much fun and their family is amazing. Unfortunately, I had to be at Take 5 by 5pm (til midnight) so we had to leave the party early. I ran home, slept on the car ride home, took a quick shower, and got over to the other base just in time. Work was long as usual, but this time it was even harder since SCUBA Diving really makes you exhausted. I got home super late and all I wanted to do was go to bed. There was no way I was gonna go out and kick it. I wanted to SCUBA again in the morning, so I didn't need to go out anyways.

Sun. June 4 - I went diving again this morning. It was a nice and small crowd today, so we got to stay under longer and got to 13 meters deep. We dove in Aci Castello today for dive #3. Only one more to go! The rest of the day was just spent chillin out and hanging out with friends.

Dinner and a Movie

2006-06-19T23:41:00.000-10:00

Thurs. June 1 - I had to train a new guy at work today, so hopefully I'll start to get some better hours here during my last few weeks. I'm kinda sick working on weekends and until midnight or so. When I got off work today, we all planned to go out to dinner to congratulate our friends on their promotions within the Navy. Our friend's Sarah & Aguilar got their HM3. It's a big deal here since the tests are really hard and not many people move up. Joe gets HN next week, so he's pretty happy about that. It was cool, I finally had my first dinner in Motta at a restaurant called Buongustai's. It's Sarah's favorite place to eat near base. It was really good. I offered to be the designated drier for the night so everyone could party and have a good time. All together, it was Travis, Joe, Josh, Sarah, Aguilar, and I that went in her tiny little car. It was quite amusing. I think I got drunk on water though after about 3 liters in an hour and a half or so. We all got home safe and chilled out the rest of the night.

Fri. June 2 - After work today I hung out at the softball field with some Public Works friends that I haven't seen for awhile. They were having a little BBQ out at the pavilion, so I stopped by and had a bratwurst during the game. It was nice to see them, I'm always so tired after work lately that I just hurry up and get back to NAS I. After the game, I headed back to NAS I because a bunch of us were going to go see The DaVinci Code at the theater. We had Adam go get the tickets early since it was rumored to sell out tonight. A ton of our friends ended up coming to see the movie so that was pretty cool. The movie was great, I really enjoyed it. Crystal told me that since she read the book, she didn't enjoy it as much as I probably would. But of course, the movies never add up to the book. I tried to make my day go well, but I did find out some horrible news earlier today from my Dad. My Uncle Chris (his brother) has been unfortunately diagnosed with multiple brain tumors. Please wish his the best of luck and I cannot wait to get home to visit with him. I hope my family is okay and coping with this sad news the best possible. Grandma, Uncle Chris, Aunt Gail, and the rest of the family, if you read this, I love you so much and I will be home soon to visit. You have been nothing but wonderful in my life and I will never forget the awesome weekends we all spent up at Mark Twain Lake skiing, wakeboarding, and kneeboarding. I love you. Please keep with updated.

Citta del Mare - Memorial Day Weekend

2006-06-07T04:21:00.000-10:00

Fri. May 26 - I worked at ITT all morning trying to get all the final details for this trip ready. I had to run home and pack in the afternoon and I filled Kat and I's cooler with ice, beer, and snacks when I got back to ITT. Michelle (the woman escorting the trip with me) helped me separate all the prizes and get all the luggage and extra things into a pile. Th 53-passenger van arrived around 2:30pm and I started to load it up with our stuff. That van was so overpacked, I honestly didnt think a few final bags were gonna fit. Everyone was one time and we left NAS I at 3pm on our way to Citta del Mare, which is in the city of Terrasini. There was an accident in Palermo (like always) which made our trip take 4 1/2 hours to get there. At the beginning of the trip, we played trivia (I hosted it over the microphone) and gave out prizes. The families were all having a great time, but once the trivia was over, they were ready to relax and nap for the rest of the drive. We pulled into Citta Del Mare and Michelle and I went to the reception desk to get all the rooms and keys settled. We had a few problems with the families who have been coming here for years with their rooms and their requests they made prior to the trip. We asked the resort to put the regular families next to each other so they could all share balconies and share babysitters during the weekend. We also made sure to request that they were all on the 3rd or 4th floors so they could have a guaranteed beach view. Well.....the resort didn't give us any of those things so I spent about 2 hours trying to calm down the families and put the weekend into perspective. I knew they'd all be fine by the end of the night or tomorrow, they really wont be in their rooms much for this all to be a big deal. It was fine though. We all went to dinner together and by then the few complainers chilled out and said VA BENE! (Sicilian for "its okay", "whatever", "cool"). Dinner was excellent. THere are a few places to eat the resort, so went ate at the Superior dining room tonight. After dinner, a bunch of us went to the disco and danced all night long until it closed. Kat, Joe and I were staying in a triple room and man was the view wonderful. The balconies for this resort are really cool, they all connect and our building had an excellent beach view. I felt kinda bad for the families who didn't get a good view, but we made sure to get full usage outta our balcony.

Sat & Sun - The weekend was great and relazing. The days consisted of lying out on our patio, playing in the ocean, going down the 3-tiered slides at the resort, swimming in the pools, snorkeling, goofying around, and just being on vacation. Kat and Joe and I hung out weekend and had an awesome time. We bought rafts for Sunday and spent a few hours chillin out in the bay. The waves were pretty rough, so we ended up just swimming in the pool for the later half of the day. The restaurants were so good and they fed you like you were starving. I haven't eaten that much in a long time, but it was all so good and their house wine that they served at all the meals was tasty. Each night we went and danced at the disco to hang out with a bunch of the people from our trip. I stayed in contact with all the families throughout the weekend just making sure I could help them if they needed anything. It was a lot of fun and most of the group bonded really well. Sunday night at a really funny comedy/karaoke show with the Italian staff. It was so entertaining and hilarious because you would never see idiots like this in America or other big resorts in other countries. We had a short day the next day, so after the show, we went "swimming" in the pool and headed to bed.

Mon. May 29 - We had to load the bus by 2pm, so we decided to wake up early, head to the beach, and have some last minute fun. I woke up early to pay the hotel and check out of our room and then headed out to our balcony to do some tanning while Joe and Kat got ready. Kat wasn't moving to fast so I got quite a but of sun in before headin down to the beach. Once everyone was ready, we did a few more trips down the slide and went cliff jumping with the other families that were already doing it. We got over there and everyone was having an awesome time jumping off the 15 foot ledge. Joe and I wanted something a little higher and traversed the rock wall to jump from about 25 feet. It was cool, the water was crystal clear and I bought goggles the day before so I could swim around the bottom. It was a lot of fun. We all headed back up to one of the rooms that the resort let us use for last minute showers and we were cleaned up and ready to go by 2pm. I got to the bus and a few people were there already loading their bags and everyone else was shortly behind. We pulled away from Citta del Mare at 2:15pm and everyone sounded like they had a great time even though some of the rooms weren't what they expected. The ride home was quiet because everyone slept, including myself. There was no traffic and we only did one bathroom break so we amazingly got home in a record time of 3 hours exactly. It took about a half hour for everyone to unload the bus and load up their cars. We had many compliments and thanks, so it felt really good when I got home. The second I walked in the door, I laid down on my bed and fell asleep for a few hours. The rest of the night once I woke up, I just relaxed and watched a movie.

The slides that Citta del Mare are known for

Kat, Joe, and I chillin in the sea on our rafts

The balconies at this resort were really cool and the ocean view from our room was AMAZING!

This is the oblong pool that we did most of our non-ocean swimming in. It was nice to get out of the salt water every once in awhile. The bluffs in the background outline the northern and northwestern coast of Sicily.

Our balcony at sunset in the bay

Triple cliff jumping near the resort with some of the families on the trip

Chill-axin on my balcony watching the sun about to start setting with ma-ma-ma-my Corona

Last SCUBA class and a normal week

2006-06-07T03:52:00.000-10:00

Sun. May 21 - We had a BBQ at Take 5 this afternoon and I cooked all day since the guy that works with me is a vegetarian and won't touch meat. It was fun to cook for all the guys. Not too many people showed up, but I knew most of the ones that did. I played sand volleyball with 3 of my Public Works buddies, but the sand was scolding hot. It was so funny. We'd run on the court as soon as the ball was about to be served and ran off it as soon as someone scored. After the BBQ, we cleaned up and I had to work the rest of the day and night at Take 5. I got off around 11:30pm. I really hate working weekends, I worked 24 hours total this weekend here.

Mon. May 22 - I was off work at Take 5, so I went over to ITT to help out. Most of my time was spent in Gear-N-Go helping clean up the camping gear from previous weeks. I cleaned tents and put them all away. I also did some work with filling the SCUBA tanks for paintball. Leslie started helping me get ready for my Citta Del Mare trip that I would be escorting on Friday. After work, I invited Juli to come to a small BBQ that I was gonna cook. Joe and I brought her to the commissary because she still hadn't bought groceries and we got the food for the cookout tonight. It was real small, but I was so in the mood for some steak and mac-n-cheese. Our friend Erika and her boyfriend Ray came up and hung out for awhile.

Tues. May 23 - Today was the last day of confined diving in the swimming pool on NAS II. We had our final tests in the water and then also took a 75 question written test. I had read and retained everything from the past 2 1/2 weeks so I flew through the test. I felt really good after my dive. Everything went great and I definitely got a 100% on the test. I even got the hard question that no one ever gets right about the pressure groups and underwater times. Right after my test, I had to get to work at Take 5 for the rest of the night. I am now just 3 open water dives closer to my certification! WOOHOO!!

Open Water Dive #1 & Pro Skateboarder (Greg Lutzka)

2006-06-06T04:25:00.000-10:00

Sat. May 20 - I had my first open water dive today in Aci Trezza, which is about 30 minutes north of Catania. Sylvie and Giuseppe's (our SCUBA instructors) dive shop is in that town and their boat is docked at a small port in Aci Trezza. Aci Trezza is where the famous Greek mythological "Cyclopes Rocks" reside. They are beautiful and huge just sitting there right in the ocean. There's a bunch of pics on the internet if you look up Cyclopes Rocks. I rode with some kids from the class and we needed to be at the dive shop by 8:45am. We got the gear ready and packed all of our equipment into their truck and headed to the pier. Once we got there, we loaded the tanks and gear onto the boat, got our BCDs ready, and got into our lovely, tight, wedgy giving wetsuits. It was about 9:30am when we got to the dive spot, which was in Aci Castello at the castle. We were underwater for a total of 54 minutes and dove to about 4 meters. We had a large group working on the skills and learning how to adjust for our buoyancy in salt water, so it took awhile down there. After we were finished with the skills and lessons, Sylvie took us on a short Discovery Dive to see the dive spot. The water was a lot merkier than I thought it would be, but it was still relaxing and beautiful. I saw some cool fish, theres one thats my favorite, its like 20 different colors. There were some sea urchins, little crabs, and a lot of anemones (sp?) and underwater seamoss. It was a lot of fun once I stoppedbeing nervous.

Greek Mythology "Cyclopes Rocks"

Sylvie & Giuseppe's Dive Boat

Aci Castello Dive Spot

I headed back home to Sigonella because the new Interns were coming in today and there was a big Skateboading Contect going on featuring a pro skater. It was called the Extreme Sig Slam Skate Contest and Greg Lutzka was the guest appearance. It was at our skatepark for kids 14 and younger. I love watching the little kids skate. They are so cute. I was supposed to help work it, but I really wanted to get a dive in since I only have a short time left here in Sicily and I need this certification to be complete by the time I leave. I got there and Juli had already went to her room since she got in this afternoon. James told me to find out what room she was in and introduce myself to her. The other intern's parents live here, so he is staying with them in Marinai. I walked around the skatepark for a little bit, but the event was pretty much over. Greg was just signing autographs now. James told me to go out to dinner with everyone tonight to meet everyone that was here with him and meet the new intern. I first went home and took a shower to get the crusty salt water out of my hair and took a nap. It was a long, exhausting week. I woke up and went and got Juli to go stand out in the parking lot to wait for the van to pick us up and bring us to Catania for dinner. We went and picked up Greg Lutzka, Master Chief Hickman (from MWR Headquarters in Millington, TN), and Dave (came along with Master Chief) from the Navy Lodge and we were going to be meeting up with James Baker (MWR Director) and his wife downtown. Juli is really nice, she had extreme jetlag, but we forced her to stay awake to get use to it faster. We parked the van in Catania and first headed to a small bar along Via Entea. It was nice to talk to Master Chief about MWR without feeling any pressure or anything, MC Hickman is hilarious. The good things about Master Chiefs is that they've been in so long and don't really care much anymore. They drink, they smoke, they curse, they just go out to have a good time. It was fun. After the bar, we headed over to the restaurant. It was kinda fancy and a few of us were a little underdressed. Oh well, they put us in the back. Most of the night, I spent talking to Greg. It was probably nice for him to talk to someone his age and a civilian since he's been promo-ing the European Naval Stations recently. He was really cool and didn't come off as arrogant or rude. He is 21 years old, been in the Pro-Circut for about 6 years, from Orange County CA, loves to skate, play his guitar, hang out with his friends and family back home in Milwaukee, and party it us in Las Vegas. The food was really good and I tried a bunch of new things. I had octopus, pan fried swordfish, fried calamari, a bunch of strange sausages, etc. Juli was really tired, but she did really good, especially being around such important people. It was a good night. We headed home and I found out there was a going-away party for two of our friends from the hospital, Merranda & Diana (they came on my Aeolian Islands trip). Joe was designated driver for the night, so he was gonna come pick me up when I got home so I could hang out at the house party for a little bit. I decided to ask Juli and Greg if they wanted to come to the party. Greg Lutzka was totally down for the idea. He probably hasn' t seen people our age in awhile and being under the Navy's eye lately on his tour, he barely has any free time outside of the demos. Once we got back to base, Juli and Greg were gonna come, but the catch was..Master Chief had to come too b/c he is responsible for Greg. That was cool with all of us and Joe came and picked us up and drove us to the party. We were squeezed in a little Fiat, but it was hilarious. We got to the party and it was pretty funny to see an aold guy roll up into the party with all of us. I introduced Greg & Master Chief to all of my friends and told everyone that Juli was the new intern. We didn't stay for very long because they had to catch a flight at 5am. We got them home, Juli went back to her room, and Joe and I went back to the party to help clean up and say our goodbyes. I got home around 3am.

Me, Greg Lutzka (Hot Pro Skateboarder), and the new intern Juli

CHEERS! I think he's had a bit too much to drink. Check out my tan...oh yeah!

ROME ENTRY FINALLY FINISHED!

2006-05-31T04:56:00.000-10:00

SCUBA Certification Classes....

2006-05-31T03:59:00.000-10:00

Tues. May 16 - SCUBA class went so much better today. I personally worked with Kevin and did a bunch of underwater skills and really worked on relaxing with the regulator and going over a bunch of other things. I've done so much reading in my book and really enjoying learning the theories, science, and info about the equipment details involved in diving. By the end of the pool session, I did the mask clearing, regulator retrieval, and buddy breathing.

Thurs. May 18 - SCUBA was awesome today. Only one more confined pool session left. The group worked in the deep, diving pool today which is 13 ft. I started with Joe, but ended up working with Giueseppe, the master diver helping teach the course with his wife, Sylvie. I did the lesson where you take off your entire BCD and regulator underwater and put it back on just in case you would ever have a problem with your tank. Guiseppe and Sylvie own an underwater video camera so he let me swim around and tape everyone. They are making a video for everyone in the class for us to keep that they've been filming since our first class. After I got comfortable enough, I went over to the entire group and we played around in the pool with torpedos for awhile. It was a lot of fun, but it was getting dark so we had to head home. I was really hungry so we headed home, dropped off my truck, and walked over to Days Inn for some dinner and a Murphy's. When we got there, we saw our friends Pirate, Travis, and Ryan so we sat down with them to eat. I had the grilled chicken and salad. It was a fun night and turned into a much longer one than I expected.

Fri. May 19 - I worked at ITT for the beginning of the day from noon to 4pm and worked on my Citta del Mare trip. I am escorting the trip with another woman, Michelle, who has gone on the trip for the past 2 years. Leslie and I went and bought a bunch of prizes for the trip to give away during the drive there. I have to come up with a bunch of trivia questions for the kids and adults for the trip. There were quite a few people working, so it was kinda boring. At 4pm, I headed over to Take 5 to work from 5-midnight. OH YEH!!! I put on a billiards contest, ordered some pizza, and had 8 contestants play along. It was fun. I searched online for jobs for hours while talking to Crystal, but didn't find anything that really caught my eye. I watched the movie called "The Hills Have Eyes" among the hundred I've watched since I've been working here, and let me warn you all, it was HORRIBLE! I have a super long day tomorrow and getting off at 12:30 at night SUCKED. Oh well. I'm looking really forward to tomorrow.

BBQ & Beach Weekend

2006-05-17T03:39:00.000-10:00

Sat. May 13 - I worked for Take 5 again today, but this time, I was in charge of doing a BBQ on NAS I (the base I live on). I had been working out the details with CeCe and I was going to meet the DJ at noon and we'd start the BBQ. The day before, I made flyers and put them all over the barracks on NAS I since that was the crowd we were trying to attract. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, tons of soda and water, a DJ, and lots of people brought their own beer. We couldn't provide beer since it was a Liberty sponsored event. We also played horseshoes and volleyball during the day. It was scheduled to go until 6, but everyone was pretty much gone by 4:30pm. We figured they all wanted to do their own thing since it was a Saturday. Before CeCe and her husband left, they invited me to the beach tomorrow before I had to be at work. I needed some more sun, so we planned for them to pick me up at 8:30 the next morning. It was fun though. I took a nap after the BBQ, but we planned to have a "Tamale Night" in Joe and Pirate's room. Tamale Night consisted of homemade beef and green corn tamales and refried beans that Joe's parents brought for us directly from Arizona. They were so good and we've got enough for one more Tamale Night. As I was eating, I decided to watch Saw 2. It was so good. If you haven't seen that one and you loved the original Saw, this is a great sequel. After the movie, I went to bed since tomorrow was gonna be a long day in the sun and then work.

Sun. May 14 - HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! I left my room for the beach around 8:45 this morning with CeCe, her husband Eric, McGhee, and their daughter Britney. We drove to La Cucharachas since we all really like that beach. Not as many people ended up wanting to come that originally planned, but we figured if they really wanted to come down, they'd get there sometime in the afternoon. We needed to leave around 3 or 3:30 so I could shower and get to work by 5. The beach was pretty empty when we got there, but the weather was perfect. A nice breeze and a nice hot sun. We set up our towels and beach chairs and the tanning began. It was an awesome day. I studied my SCUBA book for awhile, listened to my IPod, and got some nice sun. Around 11, a few of our friends came to join us. A few of us occassionally went to go play in the ocean, and wow...the water has definitely improved over the past few weeks. It was actually bearable today. Once you got in past your waist, it felt really good. I ended up staying in the ocean for awhile just swimming around. The only down side to playin in this ocean is that it is sooooo salty. It's a lot saltier than the water around the States. For the last hour of the day, I ended up playing in the sand and water with their daughter. She's so cute. Britney's 7 years old. We made sand soup and ended up jumping over waves for over an hour. She was lovin the water today. CeCe said usually she doesn't get in since it's so cold. It was a lot of fun though. We packed up and grabbed some lunch around 3:30 and were on our way to drop me back off at my barracks. By the time I got outta my shower, I realized I got a nice amount of sun today. It felt good though, not like last month when I burned the hell outta myself. This was nice. I got to work in my big old ghetto truck and had another typical night at Take 5. I tried calling Mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day, but she wasn't home. SOOOO...Happy Mother's Day to everyone that it applies to and Mom, Grandma, and Grandma..I love you and thanks for everything.

SCUBA has officially begun...

2006-05-15T10:41:00.000-10:00

Tues. May 9 - I worked all day at ITT and had to leave there around 4:00pm to get everything ready for our SCUBA class tonight. Joe was suppose to be getting back into town today with his parents by 1pm, so I had originally planned to just ride over to NAS II with him. He never showed up during the day, so I figured he was running really late coming back home from Sorrento. I left ITT and had to meet with the SCUBA instructors outside of the main security gate on NAS II to sponsor them onto base. People that are not military related or have the special pass to get onto this specific base must be sponsored on by an ID holder to assure that they leave base by 10pm every night. This base is a lot more strict on rules and has some totally other ones than the base I live on and work at for ITT does. I got them on successfully and we headed over to the General Education Building for the first 1-hour section of the class. The class is going to be for the next 2 1/2 weeks, every Tuesday and Thursday for 4 hours. 1 hour classroom and then 2-3 in the pool doing confined dives. After that, we will be required to have 4 open water dives at their company in Aci Trezza (home of the Greek mythological Cyclopes Rocks). The class was full at 16 participants and they started the class by giving out the waivers and having us fill out a bunch of paperwork. I honestly thought Joe wasn't going to make it, but he showed up right before they started the first lesson. He's gonna be my SCUBA partner. Class went well and they wanted us to hurry up and get over to the pool for the "real lesson." I was in charge of getting the pool key, but then after that everyone helped unload their vehicle with all of the equipment we would be needing for the next 2 weeks. It took awhile to get everything underway, but we were soon ready to learn how to put the tanks and BCDs together. After fitting everything, we got into the water for the introduction. I was the only person in the class who could not get the hang of breathing in and out of the regulator. It was such a weird feeling and being nervous on top of that did not help. It was really frustrating, but the instructors promised me they would work with me next class and I would get it. I wanted to cry, but I promised I would come back next class. While I was spending time in the pool trying how to breath into the damn thing, everyone else was working on some basic procedures and hand signals. Oh well, I couldn't even imagine doing any of that yet since I would first need to feel comfortable breathing. The class went well though and I knew I'd get it sooner or later. I would talk to Leslie about it later at work one day to see if she had any problems like that when she first learned how. I figured I couldn't be the only person to not be able to figure it out right away. I was nervous for another reason now, I only had 4 more classes to be able to learn everything and get this down. Sylvie, one of the instructors was really sweet and told me she'd personally work with me on Thursday until I figured it out. That was cool. After class, Joe and I went and picked up Pirate from base and we headed up to Taormina to go see his parents before they left. Pirate hadn't met them yet and he had tomorrow off ( I didn't have to be at work til 3 and Joe was still on leave until Fri) so we figured we'd go up there and hang out with them tomorrow morning and afternoon. We didn't get up there until almost midnight so we decided to go grab some beer before we headed to the hotel. There was only one place open, so we went to it. It was a really cool Irish Pub called Time Out. We ended up having an awesome time, of course, and stayed there until almost 3:30am. We stayed at the Hotel Isobella that his parents rented a room for us all and they were staying at. There was a cute little note on the bed saying they'd meet us after breakfast in the lobby at 9:45am. We all crashed and went to bed so we had a good amount of time in the morning to hang out before I had to get to work.

Wed. May 10 - We all hung out and walked around Taormina all morning and early afternoon. The weather was great, a little on the hot side. We stopped to eat lunch at a trattoria/pizzeria. It was so good and the wine was great. I had to be at work by 2, so we packed up and left the town. There was quite a but of traffic, so I ended up running a little late for work. It was cool though. We brought his parents down with us and Pirate and Joe showed them around both bases after I went to work. Work was alright, I got an email from Dr. Cole finally asking if I could call her so we could talk about my internship stuff and graduation. I gave her a call as soon as I knew she in her office and we talked for about a half hour. It was so nice to finally get ahold of her and talk about everything that's been happening lately over here and back at school. She told me that she was going to be leaving Mizzou because she got offered a job at Indiana University starting next semester. She did get her tenure at Mizzou, but Indiana also offered her husband a job. I told her that I would definitely come visit her, especially now that I can visit Kate and Meg if I go up there. She sounded really happy about it, it will kinda suck not being able to come visit here though when I go back to school. I'll miss her for sure though. I will try my hardest to keep in touch with her since she's been a great reference for me for the past 4 years. When I get back into town, I told her I'd head down to see her before she leaves so I can get my internship manual and other stuff that I've turned in. She also told me that I won the "Senior of the Year Award." I thought that was really cool that all my friends and staff recognized my dedication to the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism department over the past 4 years. She told me I can pick up the award when I get down to school. The rest of the night was same old Take 5. Watched movies, made lots of popcorn, played Ping Pong with Smitty, and so on.

Thurs. May 11 - I woke up at 4:00am to go help pick-up Joe's parents and bring them to the airport. After I got home, I went back to bed and worked at ITT for the day. I just helped them catch-up on some work and helped Leah get the weekend trip ready. She is escorting a trip to a spa in Taormina for the weekend so she needed my help getting all the treatments and times ready. It was kinda hectic, but the day went by really quick considering I had SCUBA tonight again. I left work at 4:30 to go sponsor the instructors onto base and get to class on time. We learned a bunch more today and my lesson in the pool went so much better than Tuesday. I spent time with Sylvie on my own to practice breathing into the regulator and get comfortable with being underwater. I'm glad I didn't give up and really felt much better by the end of the night. By the end of class, I worked on clearing my mask with a few of the guys. I think my next class will go much better and I can start to do the underwater techniques and emergency skills.

Fri. May 12 - I worked at ITT Gear-N-Go all day helping Leah again with the Spa Weekend. She was freakin out all day. Near the end of the day, I helped Leslie with a 10-person birthday party in the Rock-Climbing Wall. It lasted about 2 hours and by the end of that time, I probably belayed those kids over 20 times. I was so sweaty, that gym has practically no circulation in there. The kids loved it though, we're gonna start advertising doing parties more often and maybe start charging a small fee for our labor (it takes about 2 or 3 of our staff to help belay everyone for a few hours). It was fun though, but I was ready to get outta there. I finally got back to my room around 6:30 and Smitty called me seeing if I wanted to go eat with him and his friend at the Hard Rock in Catania. I hadn't been there yet so I took him up on the offer. It ended up just being him, our friend Baumann, his Italian girlfriend, and myself. It was good. A typical Hard Rock Cafe, just a little empty since it was still pretty early for Italians to start eating dinner. I ended up just going home and watching the movie I've heard so much about, Hostel. It was retarded though so I went to bed so I could sleep in in the morning.

Rock Climbing on Mt. Etna

2006-05-15T10:05:00.000-10:00

Sun. May 7 - Kat came and picked me up at 9:00am this morning and we drove up to Mt. Etna. They climbed here last week, so she knew where to go. It was to an old waterfall on the south side of Etna about 3 miles from the base camp we usually park at for snowboarding. The location was called Acqua Rocca and it took about a mile hike to get up to. We drove up there with 8 other people so we all helped carry the gear and everything together. We got to the bottom of the waterfall and I immediately knew this was gonna be a good day. The waterfall was about 80 feet tall and the instructor, Pascal, told me we'd be climbing about 50 feet on most of the pitches. We started to set the climbs and he led climbed a few more to get everyone started. Another couple was there that day too, so they set 2 more pitches for us all to use. We eventually had 5 paths and they were each so different. We all took turns belaying each other and climbing throughout the day. I spiderwomaned up some hard ones and everyone was pretty amazed. It was awesome, it had been over a year since I've been climbing, but it all came back so quickly. The day was so much fun and we took a bunch of pictures to be able to put up at ITT. 4 oclock came by really quick and I had no idea we'd be there so late. We hurried up and took down all the routes and cleaned up. I called work to tell them I'd be a little late, but Kat tried to get me back as fast as possible. It all worked out and the day was what I had been craving for awhile now. I'm gonna start using the rock climbing wall in our gym more often with the club on night's that I'm off. I finally got to work at 5:45pm, but the guy on the earlier shift didn't mind. It was a quick shift and I got home around midnight since I had a lot to clean up and drive home in my big ole hoosier truck.
*** I love Mt. Etna for so many more reasons now... she's not just good for snowboarding. I can't wait to go hike up it once all the snow eventually melts.

Acqua Rocca on Mount Etna

Pascal and I climbing the center routes. I beat him on the way up. It was an awesome climb.

If you look in the very center of the picture, you can see the rock waterfall. Its about a mile hike to get to the waterfall from this parking lot. We are about 1/2 mile East from Mt. Etna South base camp where I snowboarded this winter.

I finally got to go Sea-Kayaking

2006-05-15T09:43:00.000-10:00

Sat. May 6 - I woke up and headed over to ITT at 8:30am to get packed up and load the kayaks for our trip to Giardini Naxos, which is about 35 minutes up the coastline from Catania. I rode with one of our drivers, Steven (he works for Public Works) and we took the truck with the kayaks on back while Rosario drove the 14-pax van. The weather was beautiful outside, but Rosario was worried about the strong winds being a problem getting the kayaks into the ocean. We arrived safely and started to unload the racks with the help from everyone. After about an hour, we finally had them all walked over to where we were gonna enter the water. The seas were kinda rough at the beach, but we had to try. The first few people tried, but everyone was tipping over out of the kayaks shortly after getting a few meters from the beach. The waves were just knocking people over. We were all getting pretty beat up on our legs and feet from trying to help people get in successfully, but the boats were coming right back in and bashing into our shins. It started to get really annoying, but it was definitely hard to get everyone into the sea successfully. After over an hour, the 11 other people were far enough into the sea that the waves were calm. The entire day was a lot of fun, we kayaked all the way past Taormina and ate lunch at a beachside restaurant. Some of the girls got sea sick throughout the day, but overall, it was exciting. The workout and suntan was nice too. We got back to Giardini Naxos around 3:30pm and had to pack everything back up. We got back onto base around 5pm and I just chilled in my room for the rest of the night. I went up to Pirate's room to borrow some of Joe's movies since he was still on leave. I had rock-climbing in the morning and work tomorrow night so I wanted to catch up on some sleep too.

New Job and Cinco de Mayo

2006-05-15T07:32:00.000-10:00

Wed. May 3 - After I got back to base, I took a nap and had to start my new job at 3pm. I knew I'd have to take the bus over there since it's on the other base, NAS II. The bus schedule is really inconvenient, so I have to leave my base over an hour earlier than I would if I could drive. James has found a vehicle for me to drive temporarily while I haven't really mastered a manual transmission. For these next few days, he is going to drive me home from work since I don't get off until 11pm or later. I am taking my drivers test for my Italian Translation on Friday so that should be cool. I get to drive a huge camoflauge pick-up truck once I get my translation card. The place I'm now gonna be working at a little more than part-time is Take 5, the recreational building complex for the single and unaccompanied sailors E-5 and below. I got there and CeCe, the manager, showed me around and gave me the run through about closing the building at night. I was going to be mainly working by myself and had to close out the register at the end of the night, take out the trash, turn out the lights, and lock-up the building. She went over everything pretty quickly, but I figured it couldn't be that hard. The shifts I'm gonna be working suck to say the least, 2pm-11pm each night I work. That means I won't be getting home until around midnight on nights I work. The night went well overall. I just sit there and play 8mm movies all night long, make popcorn, manage the Internet station (we have 20 unlimited access computers for them to use), keep the dining area clean, rent out pool sticks, ping pong equipment, and XBox 360's. It's an easy job, but I know a lot of the customers that come in through the night and a bunch of my friends come in and visit me while I'm on duty. The biggest challenge of my night was learning how to make popcorn in a popcorn kettle machine. I remembered going to the airport and visiting Dad at work when I found out I would have to make popcorn all night long. It was kinda tricky at first but a friend of mine that works at the movie theater gave me a thorough lesson. The night FINALLY ended and it felt like it took forever. Oh well, I will only be working about 25-30 hours per week here and filling in the rest of the time at ITT. James bought me dinner and brought me home when I got off. I got home around 11:30pm.

Fri. May 5 - CINCO DE MAYO!! I woke up early this morning to take my driver's course at 9am. I got there and there were about 15 other people in the course with me. It was cool, I knew the chief teaching the class. It was a good class, he said it would last until about 2pm. We went over basic laws, rules of the road, road signs, and some other boring stuff. The street signs were the best thing to learn because the signs here in Sicily and Italy are crazy. It was cool though, I took the test and passed with a 98% and then had to run over to NAS II with Pirate to pick up the actual license since I needed to start driving tomorrow. After class I headed over to ITT to hang out with the girls and catch up on what was going on for the week. Leslie asked if I would help her hand out rock climbing gear on Sunday morning for her club, but then she just asked if I would be interested in going with her. I told her yes and she called up our friend Kat to see if she would bring me up there on Sunday to Mt. Etna. Kat told me she'd pick me up after I handed out the gear and we'd go rock climbing for the day. I just had to be back for work by 5pm at Take 5. I helped Rosario clean all 12 of the kayaks for the sea-kayaking trip to Giardini Naxos tomorrow afternoon. He asked me if I wanted to go and since I had nothing to do, I said HELL YES! After that I headed back home for Cinco de Mayo to begin. I went and bought some Corona and limes and a bunch of friends went and played in a Halo Tournament. It was fun, I tried to play for a little bit but I am not coordinated enough to play video games. After the tournament we all sat around and drank margheritas. It was a lot of fun but I needed to get up early tomorrow morning to go kayaking with Rosario.

My FABULOUS travels to ROME & Pompeii

2006-05-08T02:30:00.000-10:00

Fri. April 28 - It started off as a super busy day at work and it only got crazier as the day went on. I was running around the office, cleaning tents and paintball guns, meeting with James about work, and gettin all my final info ready for Rome. I ended up not being able to book train tickets to get up there because for some odd reason, every overnight cabin was sold out. I ended up just booking plane tickets for Joe and I to get to Rome. We didn't get the best deal, but atleast we had a way up there. The tickets were $120 each for the one-way flight, so I wasn't too worried. It only ended up being a little more than $20 and saved us from an 11-hour train ride. Now we had time to get into Rome and party for the first night before his parents were meeting up with us the next afternoon. Work continued to fly by and I needed to leave early to finish up any last minute packing and find a ride to the airport. I came back from picking up my plane tickets and the girls at work threw me a going-away party. When I got back from Rome, I was gonna start working at Take 5 (the recreation building for the single sailors) so they thought I wasn't gonna be working at ITT any more. Oh well, the party was awesome and really sweet. James told me I would be filling in any extra hours that I wasn't at Take 5 back at ITT. We have a lot of outdoor adventure trips coming up that I will be helping with and escorting. Im excited about June and July trips. I left work at 3:30pm to catch our 7pm flight at the Catania airport. Our friends Sara and Travis dropped us off. We waited for about an hour in a half since our flight ended up getting delayed 45 minutes. Its really hard at this airport because they don't translate anything into English, so basically you never really know when to get into line to load the plane. We started communicating with a family and one of their kids and I started to play with the Slinkies Joe bought for the Spanish Steps. It was a lot of fun but then we realized we needed to get in line for the plane. Catania is so funny, you have to get on a shuttle bus to go 200 ft onto the flight line. Everyone always laugh when they see how far you actually ride on it. We got on the plane, Air One, and arrived at Fiomocino in Rome in about an hour and 20 minutes around 9pm. We took the train to Termini Station for 9.50 Euro each to try and find our hotel that we were staying at during the week. We eventually found the Hotel Lirico and dropped our bags off there so we didn't have to drag them around with us all night. The problem was: We weren't staying there tonight, we had nothing planned for a hotel or hostel for tonight since we were originally gonna be sleeping on the train. We quickly began to realize that it was an Italian holiday this weekend (Labour Day) and every room in Rome was sold out for Fri and Sat night. Even the hostels were completely booked. Oh well, we figured we'd be out all night partying and walking around that we could just work it out until noon the next day when we could check in. We started off by walking towards the Trevi Fountain cuz that is Joe's favorite thing in Rome. We first grabbed some beers and gelato right outside of the hotel and began our journey for the night. We finally found it after walking through the Piazza del Quiracle and took some cool pics at the fountain when it was all lit up. We knew two friends of ours that were up here this weekend too, so we called them and decided to meet up with them at the Hard Rock Cafe. After asking a million people where the Hard Rock was, we finally found it and ate some dinner. It was really good, but we were ready to keep exploring. Right outside of the Hard Rock Cafe, I found the Lamborghini dealer on Via Veneto. It was awesome. I took a few pics for the boys and Dad and Bill. We continued on our way towards the center of town. We eventually ended up at the Colosseum which was absolutely gorgeous all lit up and quiet. There was no one around and I was beginning to realize that this city is a lot smaller than I ever would have imagined. I got some cool pics of us with the lit up Colosseum in the background. Our friends left to go back to their hotel and Joe and I continued to explore the city. The Roman Forum was right next to it so we chilled out there for awhile and then walked around the Vittorio Emanuale Monument which we originally thought was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It started getting really late and we were sick of walking so we started off to try and find a place to stay the night. We looked EVERYWHERE and couldn't find a single room. By that time of the night, we had probably already walked over 7 miles and this was only dragging it on. I could barely walk anymore so we decided to walk to the famous Spanish Steps and try and sleep there for a little bit. They were watering the plants when we got there so it was kinda hard to sit on wet steps. Oh well, then we started walking back towards the hotel to see if we could sit in the lobby but we ended up just sittin on the ground floor and fell asleep for a little bit. Overall, I could not sleep so I just made sure no one messed with us. The morning came quickly and we headed back to the Roman Forum. We walked around and found a perfect spot to sit and get some more shut eye before his parents were going to arrive around 11pm or noon. No one was really out and about yet so I didn't feel bad for falling asleep. This wasn't a good way to start our trip, but we knew this wasn't going to happen ever again. Oh well, we both got a few hours in and I was surprisingly not tired for the day to begin.

Sat. April 29 - This morning we walked around until 11am when we started to head back towards the hotel. We stopped in a few times to see if they had checked in yet, but nope. We decided to go walk around some more and we soon stopped in at an Internet Point to check my email and look for any openings for a hostel for the last night I was going to be here. His parents were insisting that I stay with them during my trip, but I just wanted to check out my options to take the opportunity to see what staying in a hostel was all about. I wrote some quick emails to a few friends and Amy telling them that I got to Rome safe and how beautiful the city was. We left there after about a half hour (the Internet is so cheap at those places) and walked around the Termini Train Station for a little bit before heading back to the Hotel Lirico. When we got there, the front desk clerk told us they made it in safely and that they would be meeting us at a restaurant down the street for lunch at 2pm. We started walking towards the restaurant and soon ran into them as we were about to cross Via Nationale. They were so cute. It was so nice to finally meet them. About 5 minutes after meeting them, they were ready to head to lunch and grab a beer. We walked across the street to a nice little Irish Pub called Flann O'Briens for some Guiness and Kilkenny's. We stayed there for about an hour just talking about everything, the ride up here, my internship and schooling, how Joe likes the Navy, etc. It was really fun, I felt very comfortable from the get go. After trying to help pay for my part of my tab, Joe informed me that I might as well give up trying to pay for anything for the rest of the trip b/c his parents wouldn't allow it. Okay, whatever. It was awkward, but cool at the same time. After having a nice Kilkenny, we walked around to find a place to eat lunch. We stopped into a small pizzeria for lunch. It was really good pizza and local house wine. Joe and I still needed to put our stuff in the room, so we headed back to the hotel for a few minutes (we had to sneak me in since the room was only reserved for 3 people and they were retards about changing the reservation). We got to the room (the joke of sneaking me in past the little Chinese desk clerk was an ongoing joke for the rest of the week) and laid out our things. The room was small, but nice. I had the couch and Joe demanded on taking the floor. Gotta love hard Italian beds though... After cleaning up and taking showers, we decided to head towards the Colusseum. It was only about a 15 minute walk to get there and once we got there, we decided to take a guided tour through it to get through the lines quickly and learn the history. I had my little guide book with me the entire weekend, but this would make it a little easier. The tour paid the admission into the Colusseum, a tour guide, and audio equipment to be able to hear better for only 19 Euro. It was a really good tour. The Colusseum is still in great shape and is just breathtaking when you walk into the ring. Most of the original structure is still intact and only the outer ring is really missing. The hallways were amazing. The ceiling was so high and the arches were captivating as you walked around the stadium. Once we got into the center of the Colusseum, the stories and history all of a sudden came alive. Hearing the tour guide talk about the battles, the animals, the 50,000 people in the stands, Ceasar, etc you just kinda looked up and spun around slowly. If you thought about it hard enough and closed your eyes, you could feel the intensity of the gladiators. It was so fun. We walked up to the top of the stadium too where we got a 360 degree profile of the gigantic structure. I got some amazing pics of the pit (which is now exposed due to the original floor being wood) and the entire Colusseum. We left the Colusseum and headed across the way to the entrance of the Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is huge and includes a ton of structures, churches, parks, columns, and temples. Its like a giant historical playground with great photo opps. We spent well over an hour walking through it. We made it through the main walkway of the Forum, Palantine Hill, and to the Vittorio Emanuale Memorial when it started to rain pretty hard. It was a long walk back to the hotel since it was down pouring and out "waterproof" Columbia jackets just weren't cutting it. We eventually got back and decided to go take a nap back at the hotel since Joe and I were starting to slack from the night before and his parents were starting to feel the effects of their jet lag. Let me tell you, that was one of the best naps of my life. I felt so refreshed after I woke up from that. It was dinner time so we all decided to go back to Flann O'Briens to try out their food this time. It was by far a great choice, we had a great waitress and the food was wonderful. It felt so nice to sit and talk that we ended up stayed there for quite awhile. When we left the restaurant, it was still raining. Joe and I had planned to go on the Spanish Steps Pub Crawl (Bar Hopping tour) tonight, but since we got outta dinner kinda late and were now soaking wet, we decided to wait until tomorrow night. There are 2 pub crawls in Rome (Colusseum and Spanish Steps) and they go on everynight of the year, rain or shine, at 9pm. Since it was already kinda late to run over there, we just decided to go have some drinks with his dad at a nearby bar. We walked down the street and had a seat at the bar. Tom (his dad) and I were drinkin really good wines. I was drinking an Italian Cabernet that I unfortunately never got the name of and he was enjoying a Chardonnay. Joe was testing their selection of whiskies. We ended up hanging out there for quite a while and racking up a hefty bill, but it was a lot of fun to talk to Joe and his Dad about life back in Arizona. We needed to head back to the hotel because Joe and I decided that we were going to wake up early to go into Vatican City. His parents wanted to sleep in so they told us to go ahead without them. I slept so good and we had the alarms set for 7:30am.

Sun. April 30 - Joe and I woke up at 7:30am and headed down the street to Termini Station to catch the Metro Red Line to Vatican City. The train was only 1 Euro, but it was a nasty train/subway station. There had to have been a million people on that train and of course, we're in Italy, so they just keep on pushing in eventhough no one else can possibly get on. The ride took about 20 minutes, but brought us right into Vatican City. It was only about a 5 minute walk to get to the Vatican. The city was quite trashy, but with millions of visitors a week, what can you really expect. We got to the entrance of the Vatican and saw a giant line of people about 10 deep. It was insane. We wanted to wait in the line to see the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican until just a few moments later when...... we kept walking along the Vaticans 30 ft walls and just kept seeing the line go on and on and on. There must have seriously been hundreds of thousands of people in that line and it was NOT moving. We thought about it for a minute and agreed not to wait in the line. It would have taken over 10 hours of standing to get into the museum. Not worth it. I can always come back another time or just look at some picture books to get the sense of its beauty and majesty. At the end of the line was the entrance into Piazza San Pietro. The line to get into St. Peter's Basillica wasn't too long so we went ahead and got in line for it. The Piazza was absolutely breathtaking. The size of it alone was unbelievable. There was of course St. Peters and then inside on both sides of the giant plaza were two gorgeous waterfountains, all surrounded by giant arches and columns. I felt like an ant in this grand piazza. St. Peters was beautiful, the sun was shining on its huge dome and there surprisingly weren't too many people around yet. I got a bunch of pictures with it in the background. The line only took about 45 minutes to get through and neither of us couldn't wait to get inside. Joe has been to Rome a few times before this, but since they always came to party, this was actually his first time to get into St. Peters. We had to go through metal detectors before we could get into the basillica, but as soon as we walked through the giant gold doors, all we could see was beauty. Everything was perfect and peaceful. I was in awe of the massive size of this entire building and each corner you looked into was another huge addition to its structure. The ceiling was by far my favorite. The ceiling and walls were covered in gold, detailed with angels and birds, paintings, and mosaics. Directly to the right side of the entrance was Michaelangelo's Pieta. It was really cool to see his work since I knew we probably weren't going to be seeing the Sistine Chapel. We kept wandering through the giant church and made it up to the center of the church where tomb was. We were a few minutes into our visit when we started to be directed by security guards to stand still and move away from the center. Music began to play and a procession was soon to follow. It included about 40 people and they walked in line all the way up to the alter. A mass started and we stayed for a few minutes, but we really couldn't see since we were kinda far away and everyone in front of me was tall. After we watched the ceremony, we started to walk around the rest of St. Peters and headed out. I wanted to mail a postcard from the Vatican City Post Office, but since it was Labor Day weekend, the post office was closed. Oh well. We started to walk back into the Piazza when I saw a bunch of red shiny things glarin in the distance. What was it? Oh, what else but almost 40 Ferraris. I honestly thought it was a sign there for a second. How crazy was this. I started running over into the Piazza cuz this was like a dream come true for the sake of Dad, Bill, Gene, and Eric and I got to witness it (Na-NaNa-NaNa-Na). A Ferrari show in Piazza San Pietro. What could have been better? There were old ones, brand new ones, red ones, black ones, yellow ones, etc. It was a gorgeous site! I was in awe for like a half hour. Joe thought I was crazy, but I also took almost 30 pics of just the cars. It was so cool. The owners of the vehicles were walking around in their Ferrari gear and revving their engines. It was so cool. Joe had to practically slap some reality into me to leave, and then we headed over to a nearby store to buy some goodies. I bought some presents for the Grandmas and got some postcards of Rome and Vatican City. After we finally left St. Peters, we headed towards St. Angelo Castle to take some pics and walk back towards the city of Rome. We had to walk over a bridge over the Tiber River and stopped to eat some gelato on our way back. It was by far the best gelato shop I've ever been to. I had half mango, half mixed berry and Joe had Baileys. It was Fabulicious! We had planned to meet his parents at the Trevi Fountain at 1pm so we headed in that direction from the Vatican. On the way there, we finally found the Pantheon. It was gigantic, but not what I imagined it would look like. The dome on the Pantheon is only 4meters in diameter smaller than the dome in St. Peters Basillica. We headed down Via Corso and found them waiting for us at the fountain. The Trevi Fountain is so freakin cool. Its so popular in that town and theres hundreds of people in this tiny little square in the middle of a street intersection. After we met there we headed to a small trattoria for lunch. The little restaurant was so cute and they just had a few things on their menu so we each had a glass of their house white wine and some really good baked lasagna-ish noodles. After lunch we walked to the Piazza di Spagna and took pics at the Spanish Steps. There must have been a few thousand people on and around the steps. The street that is right in front of the Spanish Steps is Via Condetti. Via Condetti is the street with all the fancy couture shops and big brand names that you would associate Italian fashion with. We walked down the famous street after walking into some normal shops that his mom was looking at. We walked into the Burberry Store to look around, but I felt so awkward in there. On the street was Yves Saint Lauren, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, etc. It was pretty cool, I felt like I was in a magazine and could not stop thinking of how much my friend Bronson would be having at this moment. We got to the end of the street and I FINALLY found a sign for the Ferrari Store, which I had been looking for my entire time here. We got there and it was soo cool. The inside was all painted red and covered in Ferrari symbols and decorations. There was a full-size race car in there too. It was 2 levels of Ferrari heaven. I bought a bunch of souvenirs for everyone from there since I knew I wouldn't be making it up to the factory in Bologna during the rest of my internship. Sorry Bill. It was cool, eventhough my credit card got denied. I fized it quickly but the bank had just caught on that I was in Italy. DUH! Ive been buying things on my credit card in Italy for the past 4 months now. Oh well, inconvenient but comforting that they were actually watching it. I had just paid for 2 airline tickets, my overnight train ticket, and my $320 SCUBA class all on Friday. I'm sure that put up a red flag. We finished walking the streets, ate some more gelato (Pineapple this time) and started to head back to the hotel. We tried to ride the Metro from the Spanish Steps trainstop, but the train wasn't working at that time. We went ahead and walked the long way back to the room and took a nap before Joe and I were going to our Pub Crawl for the night. We woke up at like 8:30 and had to catch a taxi to the Spanish Steps since there was no way we'd make it in time. We hadn't eaten dinner yet so we grabbed some pizzas from a kiosk at the top of the Steps where the pub crawl started from. We soon joined the fellow team and paid our dues. There were 24 people in our group, we got our infamous Pub Crawl T-Shirt, and started to drink the nasty free beer they provide for the first hour. It was only 15 Euro and we were going to be going to 3 bars/discos and have little games at each one. We headed to the first bar right at 10pm. There was a beer chugging contest at the first bar and Joe totally won. I didn't think I had any competition among the girls, but wow, was I wrong. This one chick gave me a run for my money and beat me by a millasecond. I was so mad. Oh well, there were more to come. Joe and I won another contest at that bar but then we headed out to the next one. The group was already starting to dwindle down in size by the time we got to the second place. It was a small little underground Irish Pub. I drank some New Castle there, it was the first time I had seen that beer over here. There were body shots and a bunch of drunk people at this bar. It was fun though. This is definitely where I had most of my drinks. We headed toward the last place, which was a disco on a boat on the Tiber River. As soon as we got onto the boat I started to feel sick so we left. I didn't want to get sick and I knew we had a long way to get home. It was cool though. I found the way to Piazza del Poppolo to find us a cab. We got home safe and I immediately fell asleep in the room. We have a long day planned for tomorrow.

Mon. May 1 (Italian Holiday - Labour Day) - I slept in this morning and once we all woke up we headed down Via Corso to eat lunch at a really cute little ristorante with his parents. I had some pesto pasta and oil and balsamic bread. Lunch was really pleasant and did some fun people watching. The weather was absolutely gorgeous so before we headed out around town, we went back to the rooms to return our jackets. We decided to take the "City Siteseeking" tour around Rome and Vatican City. It's a big red double decker bus that is pretty common for sightseeing throughout the big cities in Italy and stops at the major destinations. You can get off at any spot and just jump on another bus every hour to keep going on the tour. We caught the tour from the Maria Maggiore Basilica that was near our hotel. Before loading the bus, we went into the Basilica to take some pics and admire its beauty. It's the second largest one to St. Peter's. It was gorgeous and very similar to it. We rode the bus through the first major stops and got off at the one in Vatican City. We walked the streets and I did some final shopping. The Vatican was closed due to the National holiday and the streets were filled with people. We met up with his parents a little later in the Piazza San Pietro because they wanted to visit the inside so we just walked around Vatican City before meeting up with them. We got back onto the bus and finished at the starting point. We got to drive by the garden Villa Borghese and through the Piazza del Popolo. It was beautiful and sure helped our feet relax. ** Here are some fun facts I learned on the bus ride: 1) Vittorio Emanuele Monument - 20 columns on the top represent Italy's 20 regions; Fountains on the right and left represent the Adriatic Sea and the Tyrhennian Sea. 2) Via Nazionale - 1st major rode built in Rome. 3) River Tiber - 3rd longest river in Italy; Runs through Rome for 55km; Tiberina Island is the only island on the river. 4) Largo Argentina- Julius Ceaser died here on March 15, 54BC; Largest Roman archaeological area. 5) Pantheon - translation into "Dedicated to the Gods"; Has the tombs of Italy's greatest historical figures. 6) Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II - Connects Rome and Vatican City. ** His parents got off at Maria Maggiore and we stayed on the bus to head over to Campo di Fiori. We ended up staying on until the Vatican again so we could go to this Chinese restaurant that Joe visited during one of his past visits to Rome. We ate Chinese, drank some sake, and then started walking towards the center of town. We walked all along the Tiber River so I could see the only island on it and go through the Jewish Ghetto. We also saw the Mancello Theater and some other things around the Via Emmuale Monument. It was a long day so we caught a cab to catch his parents before they left the hotel at 8:30pm. We convinced them to come with us to Campo di Fiori for some last night relaxing before I left in the morning. We jumped in a cab to save time and our feet. We ate some really good gelato and went to I Giganti bar for a beer. While we were there, we watched this crazy Indian magician guy. It was hilarious! He was doing the oldest tricks in the book, but he was definitely the entertainment for the center for about 10 minutes. We left there and went to Sloppy Sams for a last beer and glass of wine. None of us were impressed with Campo di Fiori cuz it was dirty and kinda slummy. This place is really popular so maybe it just wasn't cleaned up yet for the high season. We caught another cab back to the hotel and Joe and I headed back to that Internet place to find a train schedule for my trip to Naples in the morning. We checked our MySpaces and were headed back home. I packed up my bags and we hung out in the room with his parents before all heading to bed. My train left at 6:15 in the morning so we went to bed kinda early.

Tues. May 2 - I woke up at 5:30am, showered, packed some last minute stuff, and left for the train station with Joe and his tamales that his parents brought him since he wouldn't be back to Sigonella for another week and a half. I caught the Diretto train to Naples at 6:49 and arrived at Napoli Centrale at 9:30am. It was only 10 euro and I slept the entire time except upon arrival when I loved loooking at Mount Vesuvius and the awesome coast line. I checked my luggage at the train station so I didnt have to carry it around all day and went to buy my ticket for the Circumvesuviana to get to Pompeii. Round trip for that wasnt even 5 euro so that was cool. I caught the 10:41 train and man was it nasty. The train was pretty ghetto and Naples is so bad that they even have to announce "watch for pickpockets" every 30 seconds at the station. I arrived in Pompeii at 11 and got a panini (sandwich) before heading to the museum grounds. Entrance fees were 10 Euro and I went ahead an got the audioguide and map for another 6.50 euro. I walked the entire site until 3pm. It was nice, but hot and a LOT of walking. The sites were beautiful and had so much mystery and history involved around them, but by the time 4 hours had passed of seeing ruins, temples, rock paths, etc, it got kinda repeatitive. I took tons of pics and really enjoyed it on my own. I started to realize that traveling by yourself gets kinda boring and I really need travel company. I snuck into the top of the ampitheather that is there and took some cool pics. It was a really small version of the Colusseum, but it was nice. The art and grafiti around Pompeii was amazing that it could last through everything and the giant volcano eruption. Mount Vesuvias in the background was breathtaking. I loved it, it reminded me of Mt Etna so much. I finally headed back to the train at 3:30 because there wasn't much else to do in the town of Pompeii. I figured I could spend some time in Naples since I had quite a long time to burn before catching my overnight train at 10:30pm. I got back into Naples, got a map from the tourism office, and started to walk the nasty dirty town. The driving was absolutely NUTS and I almost got ran over like 20 times in less than a mile. I walked forever along the coast to see the port and marina and then finally made it to Castle Nuova. I continued to walk looking for a toilet to go pee and find some food. I tried walking into an Internet place, but it was too busy. It was surprinsingly really hard to find a sit down restaurant but finally found one called Zio Circo Mangianapoli. I had some tasty brushetta, 1/2 litre red wine, traditional Napolian pizza with buffalo mozzarella, basil, olive oil, and tomatoes. It was soooooo good. I loved it and the people in the restaurant really liked trying to talk to me. I was the only one there since it was still kinda early and I was impressed with my Italian speaking skills when I was talking to them. I walked around Naples some more and stopped back into that Internet place and talked to Crystal on MySpace for awhile. I needed to kill as much time as possible. I grabbed some banana gelato that was gross! and headed back to the train station to get my luggage and play the waiting game. The train came at 10:#0 and I loaded into my 4-bed compartment with 2 nuns from Siracusa. Our car wasn't full so it gave us some space to put our luggage. I listened to some music and slept until 6am when the conductor came by telling us we'd be in Catania in 30 minutes. I went and brushed my teeth and packed up. We got to Catania and the train pretty much emptied out since the last stop was Palermo. I had plans for my friend Travis to come pick me up in Catania, but I knew I'd have to wait 2 hours since he had a meeting all morning. I was originally just going to ride the public bus to NAS I but the busses don't start running until 10:30am. I ended up getting picked up by my friend Josh instead and we drove into Catania and I bought him breakfast for coming to pick me up. I finally got home to NAS I, took a shower, did some laundry, went online at the library, and then went to my new job at Take 5.

Beach bums

2006-05-08T02:17:00.000-10:00

So lately when I'm not traveling off the island, I've been chillin at the beach on Saturday and Sunday afternoons with some good friends. We have currently been going to "La Cucharachas" lido (pay beach) in Catania. We just chill out and soak up the sun for like 4-5 hours. The Ionian Sea has still been really cold, but we get in every once in a while to get the sand off of us. If any of you are wonderin or to answer the emails I have received from friends, yes, Italians love to be naked and show lots of skin. If you want to see some nude beaches, you can come here. It's not technically a nude beach, but there are tons of women (most are old and nasty) with no tops on. Also, its like Speedo centrale here. Old men, young kids, teenage guys, any of them. It's really funny and amusing to make fun of them all day though. Oh well, just wanted to mention that since I've been asked by a bunch of my guy friends back at school. It's not always pleasant on nude beaches just to warn you all. The beach is a lot of fun though and I've been down there a few times now with Joe, Pirate, Sara, and Travis. I can't wait for the weather to keep heating up. I'm gonna turn into a beach bum soon enough. There's a beach called Fontana Bianca down near Syracusa that I'm dying to get to. It's one with beautiful white sand beaches and tons of rocks and cliffs to jump off. I can't wait. I'll have some pics up soon.

Gotta love a snowy active volcano and a beach with a gorgeous ocean in the same photo....?

I LOVE SPEEDOS AND THONGS!!! NOT....yuck!

Aeolian Islands Sunset Pics

2006-05-04T08:18:00.000-10:00

Standing on the upper deck of the ferry looking back at Vulcano and Lipari.
The absolutely gorgeous sunset

The sun was almost finished setting
After the sun had set and we were pulling into Milazzo port and you could still Vulcano and Lipari in the distance.

Aeolian Islands Day 2 pics

2006-05-04T07:12:00.000-10:00

Standing on Lipari looking out (L-R) at Alicudi, Filicudi, and Salina. This is my fav. pic of the weekend.
Carlos, Joe, and I jumping off the pier at the Pumice Mines
Rosario and I on our moped after mine broke down down the road.
Doing my famous front flip off the pier.
The beautiful crystal clear waters near the pumice mines. The body of water that the Aeolian Islands is in is the Tyrrhenian Sea.
This is our awesome "moped gang" from the last day on the island. We had like 12 mopeds and a 4-wheeler driving the entire island all day. It was the most fun I've had in a long time.

More Aeolian Island Pics

2006-05-04T03:33:00.000-10:00

Me burried in lava rocks on the beach of Stromboli.

Island of Stromboli. This is one of the most active volcanos in Europe and has famous nightly eruptions.
This is the small island of Stomboliccia off of Strombolia. Thats a light house on the top.

The sun was starting to set on our boat tour as we were floating around the little island of Stromboliccia.

Aeolian Islands Pics

2006-05-03T23:37:00.000-10:00

The island of Salina
This was from our first drive around the island. We are on Lipari and thats looking out to the island of Vulcano.
This is the beach/bay that was right in front of our hotel, Baia Unci, in Lipari
Me standing on the giant rocks on Panarea during our boat excursion. The next island we were heading to was Stromboli to see the volcanic eruptions.
This is on the boat driving by Panarea and looking out into the distance is Stromboli

Aeolian Islands: My Special Project

2006-05-03T09:31:00.000-10:00

Planning
Early into my internship, I started to brainstorm on what I wanted my special project to include. Before I came to Sicily, I was looking in guidebooks and researching Sicily and discovered the absolutely breathtaking Aeolian Islands. I knew from the second I saw the pictures in the books that I wanted to visit them during my trip. As early March arrived, I started to research the islands and find out what activities and tours I could include on a weekend trip with approximately 13 customers excluding Rosario and myself. James Shipp and I decided to plan this as a Liberty (single and unaccompanied sailors, E5 and below) trip so we could get government assistance with costs and aim the trip to the younger community. I have worked with many of the single-sailors since I’ve been here and felt very confident that I could escort that population the best. Rosario and another local national in the office had been to the Islands in the past so they gave many suggestions for me to look into and Rosario told me that he would volunteer to drive my trip at no overtime costs. That gesture right there was a giant stepping-stone because drivers are very hard to find for a weekend trip and there are a lot of overtime and per diem costs involved. I wanted Rosario to attend my trip for so many other reasons, but the most beneficial would have to be his Italian/Sicilian translations during the entire weekend.
Since lodging is usually the biggest factor in determining prices, location, and availability, I immediately started looking for a nice, but affordable place to stay. With the single sailor community, I wanted low cost over luxury. Shortly into my search, my bosses told me about a place they have stayed at with previous ITT trips called Baia Unci. I found their brochure and website and had Rosario call them for prices and availability. Baia Unci offers camping and apartments (they call them bungalows). They were very interested in having our group stay with them and they quoted us a really low price of €15.50 per person per night. That was great news for my project and it gave me a good feeling about being able to make this a low-cost trip for the single-sailor (Liberty) community. The only thing I would have to do with Baia Unci from that point on would be to keep them updated on my room list and the size of apartments I would need.
After confirming the Aeolian Islands as a quick getaway and having my lodging guaranteed, I started to look up activities, guided tours, museums, and popular tourist spots that we could visit during our 2-day visit. Originally, I chose sea-kayaking around the islands, but a few weeks into that decision, the weather never started to warm up and the local nationals told me that I should probably find a new idea. After that major change in plans, I wanted to add a big tour and museum into the trip. I found a lot of information about guided boat tours to Stromboli to see its nightly volcanic eruptions. The prices were high, but I had to remember they were all day/night excursions on private boats. I knew that this was going to be a good addition to the weekend. The tour company we ended up using was called Paloma and they gave us a rate of €30 per person for an 8 hour tour of three islands. They later told us that they would cook a big dinner for the group for an extra €10 per person, but I vetoed that idea. The excursion was already going to cost the same as the apartments for 2 nights. I later went online to look for good museums on the island and immediately found great reviews about the archaeological museum on Lipari. The hours of operation were good and I figured that I could add that to the last day’s activities right before we left on the ferry back to Milazzo. The prices were also listed online so we had an exact figure available for our expenditure request.
After planning the activities, I started to figure out the transportation issues. Our ITT van was available at no cost for my trip and I wanted to be able to bring it onto Lipari so we had a vehicle to get us around the island. After that issue was solved, I started to look up ferry information. I did not realize it, but there are 3 different ferry companies that work out of the Milazzo Port. Since the timetable for the trip was during the low season, there were limited ferry departures to the Aeolian Islands. I had to find a time that would coincide with the customer’s work schedule and allow us 2 hours to get up there. After looking up each ferry company and their winter timetables, I decided on a company called NGI for the ride to Lipari on Friday night at 9:00pm. This would allow me to advertise the trip to leave at 5:15pm after everyone had time to get off work, drive to Milazzo, stop at an AutoGrille for dinner, and arrive in Lipari by 11:30pm. Since people could sleep on the ferry or hang out and play cards, I figured everyone would be ready for an exciting next day. For the ride back to Milazzo, I had to choose a different company. The second company, SIREMAR, is better known and has more departures on Sundays than the previous company. I found one that left at 6:00pm, which was perfect for a descent arrival time back to Sigonella. Salvo and I tried to call and fax the ferry companies, but they never responded with price quotes or confirmations. When Leslie, Salvo, and I tried to determine the expenditures for the ferry, we compared them with past ITT trips that they had made to the islands. Just to be safe, we overestimated the costs a little. The ferries are very risky during the off season and sometimes don’t run if the weather is bad or they haven’t sold enough tickets to cover the costs of fuel and labor.
After all of the decisions were made on daytime activities, lodging, and transportation, I had to start contacting the companies via phone and fax to confirm the reservations. At the beginning, we were estimating the costs and reservations for 14 people and an escort. I had Salvo assist me in making the phone calls and typing the faxes since they all had to be in Italian. This was a lengthy process, but everything except for the ferries were soon confirmed. Once the reservations were in, I had to sit down and create an expenditure request with Leslie to get the money for the trip. We estimated the costs, including covering all of the fees for Rosario and I, and came up with $114 per person. We decided to ask for a check request so I could carry cash during the trip and pay the expenses as it went. For the trip to get down to a catchy price of $99, I went to Gerry Morris for assistance with government subsidization. We talked about the trip, went over the expenditure request, and he told me that they would be willing to subsidize $15 per person through the Liberty program. Gerry and Leslie each gave me permission to start selling the trip ASAP. As soon as everything was settled, I wanted to discuss advertising the trip with the Marketing Department. Rebecca Wissler told me to come to her office the next morning to create flyers and posters so I could quickly get them hung up around base and in certain facilities. I met with her the next day and we created a fun, eye-catching flyer with a program called FreeHand. Before I started to hang them up, I headed to ITT to inform the staff on all of the details and told them to start selling the trip as soon as we got any phone calls or walk-ins. Rebecca called me over to the main office to pick up the printed flyers and I immediately started to hang them up around NAS I. I finished getting them up around our base and I got a ride over to NAS II to hang them up there and have a quick meeting with CeCe and her Take 5 staff. Her staff came in early for my meeting and they really responded well to the information and details I gave them about my trip. We were ready to sell this trip and I had a feeling it was going to sell out quick.
By the time I got a ride back to ITT Gear-N-Go, the front desk clerks told me that they had already sold 2 seats and had a few phone calls about the trip. I soon found out that an email from the Command Master Chief was sent out to the entire hospital staff. That was a great, unexpected helping hand. I sat at the front desk all day and the 12 seats for the trip were sold out by that afternoon. When we all sat back and realized that this was a huge success and a great offer for single-sailors, I started to plan for another 13 people to go to Lipari. The major task would be to find another driver for the van that would either volunteer completely or accept the least amount of overtime costs. I called CeCe at Take 5 and she was more than happy to accept the offer to drive for free. Since she was going to drive the second van without charging MWR overtime costs, I made sure to pay for her activities, excursion, ferry fees, and some meals to help keep her costs for the trip to a bare minimum. She was excited to help with the trip since Liberty is her program and she knows much of the community. With this settled, Rosario set aside another van for the weekend and we began to write up another expenditure request. Leslie only had a few days to get the check approved so we sat down and made sure all the costs worked out for 26 people and got it sent over to Pam at the financial department at the main office. Everything was looking great and we started to advertise that we had another van going to take more customers. Once again, the seats sold quickly and we had a waiting list forming by the next day in case there were any cancellations before the final payment day. After the trip sold out, Rosario began to worry about how much room we would truly have available in each van if each customer brought one bag and a cooler with them for the weekend. Each seat in the van was going to be full, so he thought about bringing the Forino with us up to the islands to help carry luggage and coolers. The Forino is a small truck with a large covered truck bed on the back of it. CeCe brought up the idea of having her husband come along on the trip to drive it at no cost to us. The idea went over well with my managers and we figured that we would have enough money to cover his costs during the weekend. Rosario began to feel much more comfortable with the luggage situation and we could easily bring a large BBQ pit with us for the beach now. With the luggage situation as a constant problem on short, weekend trips, I wanted to be able to conduct my Packing Demonstration before the trip. I have seen these young guys bring so much junk/stuff with them on a 2-day trip that it’s absolutely ridiculous.
Once all of the seats for the trip were sold out, I started on my rooming list for Baia Unci and my contact sheet for sending out important emails. The rooming list changed a few times due to people canceling and replacing them with new customers, but Baia Unci was very flexible with us since we were their main group of customers for that particular weekend. I created my contact sheets on Microsoft Excel so I could keep up with their payments and contact info such as phone numbers and email addresses. Once the list started to settle down and the cancellations were complete, I started to send out emails with important information for the trip. I created my documents for my meeting and mailed those out to the customers also. I really wanted everyone to have all of the information for the trip, including the correct times and location of departure and my contact information in case they had any last minute questions for me. The day of departure finally arrived and Rosario and I worked together to prepare the vans for the trip. Each van was clean and full of gas and CeCe’s husband, Eric, had the Forino with him at Take 5 prior to the trip so he could get the vehicle ready. CeCe was on time to ITT Gear-N-Go to pick up her van and we were soon on our way to the NAS I pick-up spot.

Fri. April 7 -
From the start all the way to the finish, the trip went absolutely wonderful. From the first pick-up at NAS I, I had a good feeling going about it. We were on time to the first pick-up and everyone that had originally signed up for this stop got on and the luggage situation was working itself out nicely. After a short drive to NAS II, we picked up the remainder of the group and took some group photos before leaving for Milazzo. Everyone was divided evenly into the vans and we had plenty of room for luggage and coolers thanks to the extra vehicle available. We were immediately on our way towards the Autostrada and we had time to spare so we took it slow and stopped at the AutoGrille on our way through Messina. We arrived to the port in Milazzo around 8:00pm and Rosario and I had to find the ticket company for our ferry ride to Lipari. Everyone got out of the vehicles to stretch and walk around while Rosario went to pick-up and pay for the ferry tickets. Since the ferry company had never faxed us back with confirmation prices, I did not know exactly how much they were going to end up charging us. The total was higher than we figured, but it was alright. I started to get a scary feeling about the price coming back to Milazzo. The loading time soon rolled around and everyone got back in the vehicles to drive onto the ferry. After we parked the vans and Forino, I got out to inform the group that they had 2 ½ hours to relax on the ferry until we would arrive in Lipari. I paid special attention to remind them to not get off at the first docking, which was the island of Vulcano. We locked up the vans and headed to the upper deck with the group. The ferry ride was smooth, a little chilly outside, but a great bonding time for everyone to get to know each other. I had a really diverse group of people sign up for this trip so it was fun to get to know everyone and where they worked before the trip truly got off the ground. We played cards, hung out on the front bow, drank cafes and beer, and shared stories until we started to pull into Lipari. The ferry was on time and everyone got back into the vans in a timely matter also. When we drove off the ferry, I had to meet the owner of the company that would be conducting our boat excursion to Panarea and Stromboli to pay him a €200 down payment. We found him easily, paid, and then met up with an employee from our hotel, Baia Unci, to drive us to our lodging destination for the weekend. They were waiting outside for us at the hotel and everyone got their bags and headed to the front desk. There, I met with Francesca and we divided everyone into their assigned rooms for the weekend. I switched a few customers into different rooms until everyone was satisfied with their room arrangements. The rooms were really nice and way better than what I would have ever imagined for only €15.50 per person/per night. Most of the people went straight to their rooms to either hang out or go to sleep, but a few of us decided to have a BBQ on the beach. I bought BBQ supplies and meat for our dinners, so we grabbed the pit out of the Forino and started to grill. A few of us hung out on the beach for a few hours until we were ready for bed. I showed Rosario how to BBQ "American style."
Sat. April 8 -
A group of people were up pretty early in the morning along with Rosario and me so we decided to take a van out to explore the island and find a place to eat breakfast. Rosario has been to the island before, but it is generally very easy to navigate since it has one major road to get around the entire island of Lipari. We drove the island, stopped at some nice view points to take pictures, and ended up in the main city of Lipari for brunch. Eight of us ate brunch together at a small restaurant and then we went out into the town to shop for souvenirs before we headed back to the hotel. At the hotel, a group of people were up on the roof of our hotel hanging out partyin so we went to join them for a little bit before the boat tour. On my way up the steps after putting my brand new sandals on from Crystal, I slipped and fell directly on the edge of the step on my knee nap. It bled like hell right away and Joe and John told me I needed some stitches. For once, Joe forgot his sutchure kit, so they just closed it up with super glue and wrapped it for me. It hurt so bad and felt like I broke my knee cap. I crippled my way up the steps and hung out to take some pictures before we needed to leave. The night before, I informed everyone on the trip that they had to meet at the front of the hotel at 1:30pm to head out for our boat excursion. The excursion company decided to pick us up at a marina that was closer to the hotel so we didn’t have to drive to downtown Lipari. This eliminated our need for the vans altogether now. A handful of people had already rented mopeds for the weekend, so I asked if they wouldn’t mind driving each of us to the marina that was only about ½ mile away. Everyone agreed and in less than 15 minutes all 27 of us were at the marina ready to catch the boat. By this time, I knew I was definitely going to be renting a moped before I left that island. We walked to the boat together and took a group picture before loading. Our group took up the majority of the customers on the tour so we all headed to the upper deck to enjoy our ride to the islands. The tour started off by driving around a portion of Lipari to get to Panarea. The ride was kind of rough, but everyone was having a good time taking pictures and relaxing. Some of the guys who had been drinkin all day got sick, but it was totally their fault for taking shots of Tequila before loading the boat. It took over an hour to get there, but once we got there, we had an hour to enjoy the island. Most of us walked to the large rocks and cliffs to get in the water and take some beautiful pictures of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A few of the guys jumped in, but I wasn't prepared to freeze my booty off and then hop right back onto a boat. After that, we all stopped at a small café to enjoy ice cream and beverages. The boat announced that they were ready to load up and head to Stromboli. Stromboli is one of the most active volcanoes in Europe and displays famous nightly eruptions. The boat ride to Stromboli was breathtaking and we saw many giant rock formations along the way. We arrived in Stromboli and had 2 ½ hours to explore the island until the started to set to see the volcanic activity. The group split up and some went shopping, some went to eat at nearby restaurants and cafes, and I headed to the black sand beach with Rosario and Jow. We hung out there the entire time and we burried each other in lava rocks. Rosario ended up fishing with the locals for awhile. Everyone started heading back to the boat. The sun was starting to set and the wind was getting colder. The boat had plenty of seating on its lower deck and everyone sat at the tables for the last leg of the journey. The boat went around a small side island called Strombolicca for photo opportunities and was then on its way to a small bay directly below the crater. I got some awesome pics of the sun starting to set around this cool little island. The boat never stopped moving, but we were able to watch the volcanic activity for almost 45 minutes as we rode back to Lipari. It was an amazing site to see and we had a few great eruptions that some people were able to catch on video. Almost everyone slept on the ride back, but I stayed awake keeping an eye on everyone. We arrived back to the marina at 9:30pm, but some members of the group were sea-sick from the long day. I made sure to pay the company and we all headed back to the mopeds to ride back to the hotel. From the hotel, some people left on their mopeds to explore the island and the other half had a big BBQ on the beach. Before everyone went their own way, I had to tell them about the check out process. Check out was at 10:00am and each person could put their bags into the designated room that the hotel was providing for us. I also told them about our departure time of 4:15pm. I was very upfront with everyone when I told them that they had to be on time so Rosario and I could get to the port to buy our ferry tickets. The group agreed and no one had any questions for me so they were on their way. Rosario and I cooked again, but this time we had a crowd of about 15 people. It was a lot of fun and kept the morale of the group high. I got everyone’s feelings about the excursion and we all talked about what they wanted to do tomorrow afternoon before we left the island. I started to get some great feedback about the trip, its low price, how much fun everyone was having, and received a few questions about Liberty and ITT. The BBQ went for a few hours and afterwards they all wanted to go out to a club or bar before they went to bed. I had to remind everyone that it was the low season and there are not many things to do on this island after hours, but Rosario asked the hotel staff if anything was open this late. He found out there was one club open in downtown Lipari, so we all made arrangements to get down there before the night ended. Once again, we rode the mopeds to Lipari and finally found the club. I rode with Rosario and he let me sit in front of him so he could teach me how to drive it. Let me just say...Rosario is freakin nuts on a moped and I was scared to death with his sharp little turns and no-hands. After awhile though, I got a little more comfortable and I started to drive pretty well. It was a lot of fun to ride the mopeds through town and by the time we arrived, everyone was determined to rent them all-day tomorrow for exploring the island. The club was nice but we did not stay for long since we were underdressed and beginning to get tired. We each had a drink and wanted to get back. Most of them told me that they would rather get some sleep tonight to be able to wake up early and ride all day tomorrow. We got back to the hotel safe and the group worked out a time to meet in the front.
Sun. April 9 -
The last day was already here and at 8:00am there were almost 20 people outside ready to go rent mopeds from down the street. Rosario came with us and in a short time we were all ready to explore the entire island. The first stop was breakfast. We all drove together to Lipari again and sat down and ate a big breakfast. More souvenir shopping followed the meal and we headed back to the hotel to put everything away. In no time, we were on our way and we headed in the pumice caves direction. Of course with my luck, my moped died up the first hill. I was the lucky one out of everyone who's tank had no gas in it. There was a huge group waiting to explore, so I decided to leave my moped on the side of the rode to pick it up later. I ended up riding on the back of Rosario's all day, which worked out better anyways so I could take pics and video of everyone driving around. It was a short drive to the pumice mines, but we took our time to get off the bikes and explore the crystal clear water along the coast. After taking some pictures, we headed down to the dock where the pumice is shipped out. Here, we all relaxed for awhile and some people jumped into the sea before heading out for the rest of the day. I jumped in of course! I was doing front flips and we were doing group jumps. The water was freezing, but it was a fun memory to add to the weekend. It was really cool because I had someone takesome time-lapse photos of us doing jumps off the pier. We continued on around the island for a few hours, occasionally stopping to take pictures and to walk along the beaches or cliffs. The entire island tour on mopeds took about 5 hours and everyone had a blast. I got some absolutely breathtaking pics of all the islands. From Lipari, you can see all of the other 6 islands. The skies were clear and the weather was perfect. The day on the mopeds was by far one of the funnest days of my life. Everyone just had such a good time driving around and stopping every 1/2 mile or so to take pics and enjoy the views. The mopeds had to be back by 3:00pm so everyone rode back into the town of Lipari to do any last minute shopping they wanted to do before we left. All of the mopeds were returned and I started to pack and arrange the vans for our departure. After everything was packed and people’s bags were in the vans, Rosario and I went to the main office to pay the balance. The company was great and we got some more information from them about rates and dates to possibly create another trip before I leave since this one was a huge success. Most of the group was on time to the van but I did have a few stragglers. The problem was resolved quickly and I took a head count in the vans before pulling away from the hotel. We arrived to the port and they had an hour to go get dinner before loading onto the ferry. Rosario and I went to pick up the tickets and once again, the ferry was more expensive than we originally had planned for. It was alright though; we had some extra money from not going to the archaeology museum. I decided earlier this weekend that we would only offer the museum to the people who wanted to go. In the morning when I asked everyone about it, no one seemed interested, and of course in the afternoon, no one wanted to leave their mopeds early. I had also heard a few comments after the boat excursion yesterday that some people wanted more free time to do things on their own anyways. We got the tickets and went to grab some dinner. Everyone was back in the vans ready to head home on time. The ferry loaded and I informed everyone that we only had a 1 ½ hour ferry ride this time around. I asked for everyone to be back in the vans as we pulled into Milazzo. The ferry ride home was much nicer. The company we used on our way home, SIREMAR, has large couches and chairs, a faster motor, tables to play games on, a larger upper deck, and overall a smoother and more enjoyable ride than NGI. I sat on the upper deck the entire ride home and watched the sunset over the islands. This was my first real "Sicilian" sunset I've seen since I've been on this island. It was beautiful. I sat there by myself, listened to my IPod, and was mesmorized by the gorgeous sunset. I took almost 15 pics of that alone. All together from the entire weekend, I took almost 225 pics. We pulled into Milazzo at dark and headed directly home for Sigonella. Halfway into the drive home, we stopped at another AutoGrille for people to grab some food and drinks for the remainder of the ride home. We pulled onto base at exactly 10:30pm, which is the time I originally had planned for. All of the vehicles had to come to NAS I due to the large amount of people to drop off, but only one van and the Forino went back to NAS II. I thanked everyone for coming and made sure the vans were clean and no one left anything behind. Many of the customers thanked us back and told us they had a great weekend. It was a really good feeling to see everyone go home happy and talking about the fun they had. Once everyone from NAS I headed home, CeCe and Eric headed to NAS II to end the night. The weekend was a huge success and I could not thank Rosario, CeCe, or her husband more. They really helped me out a lot and made this trip a definite success. I am so glad I decided on the Aeolian Islands for my school special project. I hope to make it back up to the islands before I leave so I can do some swimming and sea kayaking.

Malta Pics

2006-04-17T05:07:00.000-10:00

My Mediterranean feet
Joe and I being sexy on the rock as the sun was setting right before we left Malta
We found the fancy Hilton Malta and went and hung out in the private marina that they offer to their guests. We saw multi-million dollar yatchs and sailboats.
This was the bay right outside of our hotel in St. Julians

Jumping off the cliffs into the Mediterranean Sea
Standing in Sliema Harbor looking up to the capital town of Valletta
This is Grand Harbor where the movies Troy and Gladiator were filmed
This was my favorite little bay near St. Julians. It totally reminded me of what Greece would look like.
Here's me on the last day on the way back to the hotel with the Sea. I didn't want to leave Malta so soon.

Random thoughts of the week

2006-04-14T05:05:00.000-10:00

- I'm finally going to ROME! James gave me permission to take a few days off work at the end of April before it gets all crazy in May and June. I'm gonna head up there with 4 other friends and we're gonna rent a van for the weekend of April 28 - May 2. It should be a lot of fun. 2 of them have been up there before and know of the good spots to party and visit. I will make sure I visit every tourist spot there is. I'm also gonna try and plan the last day to the ancient city of Pompeii.
- I think I'm going to go ahead and get SCUBA certified while I'm here. A company is holding an Open-Water Diver certification course from May 9 - 23. It's going to include (5) 1-hour classroom lessons, (5) 3-hour pool sessions, and (4) open water dives out near Aci Trezza. It's only $320 and it's good forever. This would be pretty cool if I get to use it while I'm here. There are a lot of divers here and most of the women at ITT are certified too. This should look pretty good on a resume if I apply anywhere near the coast.
- My hair is getting really long. I'm deciding whether or not I want to cut it or let it grow out. It's been surprisingly cooperative and I think I wanna do some highlights. I don't know what to do. I'll see if it gets on my nerves at the beach.
- I got my final evaluation from James this week. It was really good and positive. He gave me 775 out of 800 points. Our new intern arrives in late May so James and I are working on a welcome packet for her and answering her questions via email.
- I'm gonna go to Citte Del Mare for Memorial Day Weekend as my extended trip. There were 3 to choose from, but I think I'll really like this one. I'm gonna escort it now since Leslie and her husband want to go somewhere else. It'll probably have 100-200 customers on it. Memorial Day Weekend is a huge vacation here.

Passport to Malta

2006-04-09T20:54:00.000-10:00

Friday March 31 - Today at work was crazy because I was trying to get all of my work done and help inventory the back room, but I had to leave for MALTA at 3:30pm this afternoon. I was working with Leslie most of the day, but had to help a lot at the front desk because customers were coming in like crazy. It finally settled down a bit and we got the vans filled with gas and ready for the ride to the Catania airport. Aaron (from Take 5) and Leslie drove the vans so I loaded my stuff into the van, picked up the people from NAS I and then we all headed to NAS II for their pick-up. The trip was created through Liberty, which is a government subsidized program for single or unaccompanied sailors ranked E1 - E5. The trip cost $248 and included airfare, 2 nights hotel, breakfast, and transportation to and from the airport. The let me go as a "single sailor." We got to Take 5 (the Liberty building) and picked up a huge group of people. Altogether, there were 22 of us going to Malta. We got to the airport and all checked in and headed up to the "International gate." If you would see this airport, you would laugh. Its tiny and ghetto and their actually trying to make it into a liggett International Airport. Sitting in the airport was a blast, we were all meeting each other and I was hanging out mainly with the guys from Public Works (Seabees) and Joe. Our flight was ready and we had to walk down to the shuttle bus to ride 100 ft across the tarmack. Goofy huh? We were flying Air Malta. It was a really nice plane and we left at 6:00pm. The plane ride was gorgeous flying over Southern Sicily and watching the ocean. It was only about a 40 minute plane ride and damn....Malta is small! We flew in, grabbed our stuff, went through customs, got my passport stamped (YEAH, i can stay at Sigonella for 3 more months now!!!), and met up with the tour guide lady who was driving us to the airport. We crammed into 2 vans and headed to Bay Street in St. Julians. Malta is a British colony so yes, they drive on the other side of the rode and other side of the car. It was a trip the entire weekend. I almost got ran over a million times for looking the wrong direction. We got to our hotel, which was called Bay Street also and it was nice! Art deco interior and the rooms were really nice for what I had expected for $250 bucks. We all got checkin in and settled and 10 of us went and ate at the Argentinian Steak House that was near our hotel. Looking out my window in my room was a Hard Rock Cafe, huge arcade, millions of cafes and restaurants, clothing stores, etc. It was right in the middle of all the action and all the dance clubs and bars were right around the corner. Before we went and ate came the dreaded part of the trip. The ATM!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhh, scary..... Yeah, so they don't use Euro down here, they use the Maltese Lire which is 3X our money. SOOOOOO basically, $1 was only $.30. I told myself I wasnt going to spend much so I only pulled out 50LM. That was already $150. Everyone else (the guys) was pullin anywhere from 100-200 LM. I told them they were crazy, but oh well. We went up to the steakhouse and had a great time. I ordered steak kabobs, a few people ordered giant steaks, and 3 people ordered kangeroo. Crazy huh. I was definitely trying that though. We figured out it was going to be really expensive to eat in Malta. The meals were all 8.95-16.95, which seems okay in America, but you had to remember to times that by 3! Oh well, it came with a ton of extra food so it was cool. My kabobs were excellent and the kangeroo was really tender and had no fat on it. It was a little chewy at Medium heat, but it was different. I wouldnt be able to eat more than a few bites, but it was cool to say I've eated some. It was getting late quick and Joe hadnt been feeling good all day so we just went and walked around for a bit then went to bed so we could get up early and go walking on the beach and do some cliff diving. I really wasn't in the mood to go get wasted everynight at the clubs so everyone else came here to do.

Sat. April 1 -Joe woke me up around 7:30 and we headed down to breakfast. We made some mimosas before we left the room and he decided to down a bottle of vodka by the time we were ready for the beach. He's crazy. Breakfast was delicious and we headed to the coastline right after. A few people were up and we all started to walk together. The beach was a few hundred feet from our hotel. We all started to walk around, but the group that was walking with us decided to stay at the beach in front of the hotel. Joe and I continued to walk towards the actual rocky coastline because we wanted to find cliffs to jump off. We entered the beach from a hotel and started our trek. We walked a few miles and then decided to jump into Med. It was so freakin cold, but it felt very refreshing. At that water hole, we started to hunt for sea urchins. They were everywhere. I had to wear my tennis shoes in the water cuz those things are sharp and they cover the rock surfaces underwater. We were pullin em off the rock and playin with em. I think we ended up catching like 25 of them. We threw em back in and headed further down the coast. We walked a few more miles. The rocks were giant and really sharp. I accidentally fell on one and now have a huge gash in my shin. We finally walked about 7 miles until we finally found some cliffs to jump off. The ones we found were about 30-35 feet high. Joe jumped first and I got some cool time-lapse photos. I got up there but chickened out. We jumped together. It was really fun, but wooooo, that water was FREEZING! After I jumped once with him I was brave enough to do it on my own. It was really fun. After a few jumps, we laid down on the lower rocks to sunbathe. Here is the problem. We both fell asleep for like an hour without ever turning over. Needless to say, the back of my body and legs FRIED!! It was one of those sunburns that just ruins your weekend. I could not walk later that night or the next few days. Anyways, back to the story. So after chillin out on the rocks like the Little Mermaid, we were starting to get really thirsty and hungry. We had no idea we were gonna be gone so long and walk like 10 miles, so we didnt bring anything. We walked another mile or so and came up to a little town. We immediately spotted a kiosk and they had the best ice cream ever. We each bought a 2-litre of water and a big ole ice cream. There was fresh cut fruit available and you could pick from vanilla, chocolate, or swirl ice cream. I got big slices of bananas, kiwi, strawberries, cherries, and chocolate syrup. We both agreed we were done hiking for the day and asked how to get back to the town of St. Julians where our hotel was. The guy told us to catch the public bus that runs every 30 min. We found the bus and totally missed an exit anywhere near our hotel. Oh well. It was definitely an adventure. The buses were great, cheap, and on time. We found out we got off the bus in Sliema. We decided to go ahead and walk around the town and find the hotel. We stopped and ate lunch, went into some shops, got a drink at the bar, asked a million people for directions how to find the Bay Street Hotel. We ended up getting back to the hotel in the evening and we all went and ate dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant (yeah, go figure...italian food). We met up with the original gang to eat. We were originally looking for a Mexican Restaurant (theres only one on the island and its in Sliema) but they werent all willing to hop on the public bus to find it. Oh well. They were startin to piss me off, but I think i was just hungry. The restaurant was really good, but yet expensive. After dinner, we all headed down to a pub and had some Maltese beer. It was really good. It was called 1565 and then there was another beer called Cisk. A little later, they all started takin shots of Sambuca and I was ready to leave. The back of my legs were so burnt that they were really stiff and rubbing on the back of my pants. I could barely walk and I knew it would be even worse tomorrow when I woke up. Joe and I headed back towards the hotel and walked around for a little bit. He wasnt feelin very good so we went back up to our rooms and chilled out all night. I wanted to get some good sleep and rest because we were gonna do the "tourist" thing all-day tomorrow.

Sun April 2 - We both woke up early and everyone from last night was just gettin to bed around 6am. We got up and went to breakfast around 7:30 so we could get an early start and head to the capital town of Valletta. Breakfast was good and this time we planned ahead for our long day out. We bought drinks and snacks for the day. The bus wasn't leaving for the airport until 7:30 tonight so we had plenty of time to tour the island and get ourselves lost. We walked around St. Julians for alittle but and found ourselves in the Hilton Malta. It was beautiful, you could totally tell this is where all the rich people and celebrities stay when they come to Malta. It had their own private Marina for all the customer's yachts and sailboats. We walked all around their marina and followed it out to the sea where we hung out walking on the rocks. I had flip flops on so it was pretty tricky and on top of that my legs would barely bend because they were burnt so bad on the back crease of my knees. We could feel ourselves frying in the sun so we were on a mission to find sunscreen. We took our Hilton adventures inside the hotel and bought some sunscreen. It was like 15 euro! Crazy huh. We got some souveniers and used their fancy bathrooms. After the Hilton, we were ready to explore the main cities. We hopped on the public bus and headed for Valletta. We thought we got off at Valletta, but we soon found out that we accidentally got off early and stopped in the Sliema Harbor. Thats the harbor where all the day cruises leave from. We could see the city of Valletta on the other side of the harbor, but there was no way we could walk to there. We jumped back on the bus and headed up the hill. Good thing we didnt try walking, it was almost 4 miles straight up hill. The buses end in Valletta Square. We got out and walked down towards the flea market to do some shopping. The flea market was crazy, they were selling everything imaginable and even birds in little cages too. I bought some Maltese souveniers and after we left the market, we walked towards the Grand Harbour. Before we got to the harbor, we saw signs for the Lascaris War Rooms from WWII. There was a beautiful courtyard that we went to the edge and looked down at the harbor. From the Harbor, you can see the town of Three Cities and the port. The USS Arley Burke (Destroyer) was docked there that week and some large cruise boats. After taking a bunch of pictures, we headed towards the War Rooms. It was really cool to walk through underground tunnels and into these underground rooms. The museum was 6 Euro to get in. It was all about the attack on Malta and Sicily during WWII. They had little headphones to wear that explained the tour in English. It was pretty hoaky and old, but it was alright. The story was wayyy too long, so we ended up just walking through and took a bunch of silly pictures with the mannequins. We left there and headed towards the town square of Valletta. The town was beautiful and the streets are all enclosed by giant limestone walls. We walked through the streets, stopped and watched a street vendor painting, ate lunch at a cute little ristorante, enjoyed some gelato, and walked towards the edge of town. At the end of the town was the old jail, which is now a police training center, Queen Elizabeth's Bell, and the pier where Troy and Gladiator were filmed. An old man with a horse and carriage asked us if we would like a tour around Valletta. It was a little expensive, but we both had some money left over and figured we might as well use it before we left the country. It was really cool. The old man was a native of Malta and was really informative. He brought us all over the city and way more than what we could have ever covered by foot. Also, it was nice to learn the details of the history of the buildings, stores, Grand Harbour, Sliema Harbor, etc. We left Valletta and took the bus down to Sliema. We walked around a little, but the sun was really strong still and we decided to head back towards St. Julians. We rode the bus for a few miles and got off early to walk around and say goodbye to the beach and Med Sea. We walked around and got back on the bus towards the hotel. We were startin to learn the bus routes and directions around Bay Street. We stopped into a little pub that had Murphy's. That's Joes last name, so we had to get one before we left the island. I had the Irish Red, I am starting to love that beer. After that, we stopped into the hotel to see if anyone had arrived yet for the bus back to the airport. A few people were there already and they were all going to grab dinner and hang out on the beach a little longer. Joe and I decided to go to that Mexican restaurant that no one attempted to find. We knew we didnt have much time, but we risked it anways. We ran to the bus and got off at Tex Mex. The food was alright, but it definitely wasn't anything authentic. We walked down the street to the coastline to see the sunset over my favorite little bay with all the colorful boats and played around on the beach and rocks before we headed back. We realized we were running out of time and frantically had to catch the bus back to the hotel to catch the van at 7:30pm. We got back with a few minutes to spare and everyone was ready to leave. We grabbed out bags and loaded the vans. The ride to the airport was freakin hilarious and everyone was so tired that they were slap-happy. We got to the airport, waited in the lines and went through Customs. The flight back only took like 25 minutes in the air. We landed in Catania and the 2 MWR vans were there ready to bring us home. I got back to NAS I right around midnight. The trip was a lot of fun and I knew I'd be sleepin well tonight. Next week will be another week of leaving the island. Destination: Aeolian Islands for my special project for school!

The Amazing Race

2006-03-30T21:23:00.000-10:00

Random Thoughts:
So I was running on the treadmill this week when the Amazing Race caught my eye. They are in Sicily for 2 weeks. They were in Palermo and Segusta this week, but next week's episode...they will be where I live. They showed that the main mission will be in Catania (which is only like 10-15 from the base) and I'll probably have been to all the places they show them driving through. SOOOO.. if you have time, you should totally watch it to see where I live and hang out. Ciao for now! I'm leaving the country for Malta in a few hours. I'll be there all weekend so I'll tell ya how it was when I get back next week. Party ON!
This internship manual that I have to write is killing me! I've typed over 65 pages for this thing already and I still have so much more to do. I've been kinda a hermit lately in my room, but I have no other choice. Would anyone like to help? Just kidding, I'm actually almost finished with the manual part of it.
ITT ia taking a group skydiving in Palermo next weekend. Ive been thinking about it and if they offer it again before I leave, I think I'm gonna do it. When else would I ever be able to say I skydived in Europe? Probably never. It is really expensive though compared to in the States...so I will have to think about it. Never know...

Agrigento and the funniest Circus EVER!

2006-03-28T20:42:00.000-10:00

Fri. March 24 - I worked almost completely on my special project today at work so I could start advertising and sign-ups on Monday. Final Project is: Weekend trip to the Aeolian Islands (April 7-9, 2006), ride the ferry to the island of Lipari, stay two nights in Bungalows, rent scooters for the island for Sat morning/afternoon, do an all-day and all-night excursion to Stromboli to see the active volcano erupting at night, spend Sunday around the island, visit the famous archaeological musuem, head back to Milazzo on the ferry, and drive back to Sigonella. With Government Subsidization funding, I got the trip down to a very inexpensive $99. Im hoping it does well and sells completely. After work, Matt and Matt came over and we hung out all night until I went to dinner with Josh, Joe, Adam, and Kelly for Josh's Going-Away Party. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Catania called Poco Loco. It was really good but I had to get home b/c I was exhausted and had a big weekend ahead of me.

Sat. March 25 - Today was one of the best days I've had since I've been here. Matt and Matt had a car rented for the weekend again b/c they had some friends who needed rides to the airport so we took advantage of it and headed down to Agrigento for the afternoon. They came and picked me up at 9am b/c it takes about 2 hours to get there. Agrigento is known for its Greek ruins that I've heard are better than most in Greece. We got down there and the weather was perfect. A nice breeze and the sun was out shining. The ride down there (its in the middle of the southern coast) was awesome. The rolling hills were bright green and it looked like pics from Ireland. There were wineries everywhere for the later half of the trip. We got into the city and finally found a place to park. We had to walk about 2 km to get to the park entrance. It was 10 Euro to get into the "Valley of the Temples" and the archaeological museum further down the road. We first did the east side of the park where the 3 big, major ruins are. The pictures I took turned out gorgeous with the bright blue sky and white clouds in the background. On this half was the famous Concordia Temple. This is the temple you see on all the guidebooks for Sicily. It was huge. The only bad part about these temples is that there is a lot of scaffolding on them b/c they are trying to restore them. There have been a lot of earthquakes in Sicily's history and they are starting to crumble. These structures were from 530BC. They were amazing though. We snuck under the fences a few times to get some better pics. I will try and get the pics up by next week, but my internship paperwork is kicking my butt. Ive already typed over 40 pages just for my reference manual and still feel that I havent made a dent on it. After the Concordia Temple was the Juno/Hera Temple. We headed back towards the entrance and made it to the Hercules ruins. Those were amazing. It reminded me of the columns at Mizzou, but of course way better and 2000 something years older. Another really cool part of the whole day was that barely anyone was there so none of my pics have ugly tourists in them. Even when there was a school group at the Hercules Temple, I got up on the top rock and just grazed over all of their heads to get a pic without them in it. We had to leave that entrance and head over to the western entrance. Here was the Temple of Zeus/Jupiter, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and a really cool rock creation that looked like a giant man lying down. It was actually an example of what the statues looked like along the sides of the Concordia Temple. It was such a cool site to visit and the beautiful weather made it even better. I took about 50 pictures, but you have to in a place like that. That is by far my favorite historical site I've visited since I've been here. I dont know if any other place in Sicily will top that. When we left the temples, we walked up to the archaeological musuem. Let me just say, their museums are nothing like in the States. This musuem was a few glass cases with random pieces of pottery, terra cotta, and statues scattered around. Matt was craving McDonalds so we tried our best Italian to figure out if there was on in Agrigento. There was (theres only 5 on the island and his mission is to visit every one of them) and we eventually found it. Their McDonalds are awesome. They have a full cafe bar in them next to the normal counter. The menu is different (and expensive) and has a lot of cool extras on it. The Big Macs are good, but the States' are still better. They try though. We headed back towards Sigonella around 4 and got back at 6pm. After we got home, they let me try and drive the manual transmission again. This was a good training day. I learned how to start and stop like I would in traffic, how to stop and go on a really steep hill at the hospital (that was really hard and time consuming), and a variety of other things. I made a lot of progress today in the parking lots and around base. They were pretty impressed. They are both realy good with cars though so I understand more of the mechanics when they teach me. We then just hung out in my room until Matt wanted to head home since he had duty all day tomorrow and we had day light savings time tonight so we were losing an hour of sleep on top of that. Josh and Adam called me and asked if I wanted to go to the Circus in Catania with them. We saw it last night when we went into Catania for Josh's going-away dinner. It started at 930, so Matt and I followed their car at 8:30 since we knew parking was going to be horrible. We had to idea what to expect. The Carnival was nothing special so we just laughed about how bad a Circus could possibly be. We found pretty good parking and everyone walked over to the circus together. It was 15 Euro to get in, but we had nothing else better to do. *Warning: what I am about to describe to you was freakin hilarious and probably way more funny if you would have been there* The show started at 930pm and the place was pretty full. The show started with dancers and a clown, pretty sane right. But then, after the dancers left the stage, the clown brought out a BABY HIPPO. it was like their version of a pot belly pig. What is GOING ON HERE? Are you serious, thats a hippo walking out in the middle of the stage....Is this legal?.. Anyways, the show must go on. Let me remind you, we are by far the only Americans who had the guts to experience this event. After that, they bring out 4 giant CAMELS which women on them. Besides just having camels in a circus, they were DANCING CAMELS! How did they possibly train these 2,500lb creatures to dance. I mean tap dancing with rhythm and all. My stomach was hurting so bad from laughing. After the camels and some dorky clown acts, a guy came out with a horse. What kinda horse? A DANCING HORSE. It was dancing on beat, moving its legs like humans and bouncing around shakin its butt and head. We were all amazed at how they possibly trained these animals to do this. The entire time I was sitting there, I was regretting not bringing my camera with video recording. A few normal animals came out, but then the tiger show began. Not just a few tigers, 10 of them! Giant ones. Mean ones. We were all sitting at the edge of our seat to see the trainer guy get eaten and we weren't too far off. About 1/2 way into the show, 4 of the tigers started to attack each other. They jumped off their pedastals and started fighting, seriously. The trainer freaked out and pushed them into their cages. Once it calmed down a bit, he whipped one of them right in its face. It was animal cruelty 101. It was pretty sad actually. After that passed, came the trapeze artists. They came out in the tightest, skimpy little body suits ever. it almost looked like liquid latex was painted on these people. It was 3 guys and a woman. Here in Sicily its normal to see naked women on billboards and on the beach, and thats definitely what these kids almost got outta this woman. She had on this leotard thing that was a thong, high cut in the front, no back, and barely covered her boobs. I was in shock. The guys with me were lovin it though. They were really good though and ended the show on a great note. The circus ended up being 2 1/2 hours long so we were extrememly satisfied with our decision to come here. It was one of the funniest times Ive had here and it was surprisingly really fun and entertaining. We all left the show and headed back home. This was maybe the coolest day Ive had here. It was so much fun.

The famous Concordia Temple at Agrigento

Greek Temple of Hera

Smitty, Sticky, and me on the Temple of Dioscuri (A.K.A. Castor and Pollux)

Sun. March 26 - My entire day was dedicated to working on my internship manual.

Best Bowling Game EVER!!

2006-03-26T04:42:00.000-10:00

Sat. March 18 - Woke up around noon and went and watched movies with everyone chilling out in the barracks. I watched a History of Violence with Murphy and it was really good until the ending, we also watched Madagascar with everyone down in Adam's room. We still had Murphy's birthday for tomorrow, so we planned a night of bowling here on base. I havent been bowling here yet, but we have a 10-lane bowling alley in our Midtown complex where I work. It was cosmic bowling from 9-12, but we had to get there at 8pm to reserve 3 lanes. We had 16 people coming, so it was about to get a little crazy. They come bowling up here all the time, because you can't beat a Saturday night for $10. It was cool, everyone got there on time and the lanes were all lit up. I met a bunch of new people tonight that were at the lane next too us. We had to play league style, but it was cool. Its just hard to have over 20 people drinking and paying attention to whose turn it was. My first game was alright, it had just been forever since I've been bowling, and cosmic bowling on top of that. It really makes a difference when those lights are off and the lanes are flashing. I scored a 116 my first game, which is normal, but it was the 2nd game that was amazing. I don't know what came over me, but I was on a roll. I was getting strike after strike and spares if I didn't get that. I was starting to beat all the guys and from the 5th frame on I had the highest score on the board of 20 people. I know you won't belive me (AMY), but I scored a 190! I was jumping up and down. Thats like 40 more than my highest score ever and that was only once. It was awesome, I was in such a good mood. We left at 12am when it was over and all headed back to our rooms. Everyone was still really tired from the night before and we were all gonna have a BBQ for Joe's 21st B-Day tomorrow.

Sun. March 19 - It's Joe's B-Day today so Adam, Sarah, and I had been planning it out for the past two days. We were gonna do a BBQ outside in the pits next to our barracks. We had everything planned for people to get there around 6, but as the day went on, the weather just kept getting nastier and nastier. We decided to change the plans around and just bring him out to dinner, but that didn't work either. By 5pm, we finally decided to just buy him a cake and throw a little celebration in Chris' room (hes the Resident Advisor, so his room is the biggest). It was pretty cheesy, but Joe didn't care. About 10 people showed up and he opened his present and ate some cake. We all ended up going to see a movie afterwards and just ended the night early. I had a bunch of work to do, so it didn't bother me.

St. Patrick's Day

2006-03-19T23:06:00.000-10:00

Friday March 17 - Work was awesome today, everyone was in such a good mood for St. Patty's Day. I came into work all green-ed out, like usual, all chipper and happy that it was Friday and St. Patrick's Day on top of that. Work was just a good day overall, a bunch of my regular customers came in and we just talked for awhile. The day was just laid back and everyone couldn't wait to leave work and hang out together. All the staff was going to JOX later tonight since we had authentic Irish Dancers flown in last night to dance all night. I convinced a bunch of my friends to head up there for a little bit since they were going to have Guiness on tap. I got a ride over there from James and James with the van and the Irish dancers who were rooming right next to mine. We got over there and then I met up with Matt to go eat Subway. We all got to JOX around 8 and I found all the MWR staff and friends that I knew would be up there. It was cool. My friends from the barracks had a few Designated Drivers so we headed into Catania for the rest of the night. We went to the two Irish bars downtown and celebrated Joe and Adam's b-days. It was so much fun and this was definitely a good St. Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick's Day celebration at JOX Sports Bar.

We all hung out here, drank green beer and watched Irish Dancers straight from Dublin. I later went out with some friends into downtown Catania for 2 b-day party celebrations.

SeaBee Ball Pictures

2006-03-19T22:43:00.000-10:00

This is Matt and I at the SeaBee Ball at a restaurant in Palagonia.

This is Matt (Sticky on the left) and Matt (Smitty on the right). They're roommates in the barracks on NAS II. We're all going to Malta together at the end of March.

Matt and I by the palm tree. The landscaping at this place was gorgeous. There's was a huge pool behind us.
These are all the guys that work together at Public Works.

Mt. Etna, BBQ, & Taormina

2006-03-15T06:13:00.000-10:00

Sat. March 11 - I left for Mt Etna once again to escort a snowboarding trip this morning at 8am with Rosario and a full van. I sold all of the seats this week at work, a full van load. The weather was looking good at first when we got up there, but of course it was too windy to open the lifts. Some people actually got one run in, but by the time I got up there after having a cappucino, they decided to close the gondolas. Good thing they did b/c it just got windier througout the day. Some of the customers were walking up the hill and just boarding down a few hundred feet since it was most of their first times anyways. I stood in line waiting for them to open the lift for about an hour, but later gave up and went and ate lunch with some friends that were up there. I had my first foccacia. It was really good. It was salami and cheese and they heat it up on a grill. We all just hung out at the little restaurant for a few hours before the weather started getting really bad. I talked to Rosario and he asked me to go find everyone so we could head out. It was starting to snow really bad and the winds were making it like a blizzard. It took almost an hour to get everyone rounded up, but we finally got out of the parking lot. As soon as we tried to move (we were one of the last vehicles up there to leave) our tires couldn't get any traction. I hopped out and helped Rosario put on the snow chains. It looked like I was growing icicles from my hair. I was so cold and my ears were frozen after just spending 10 minutes putting on the chains. We finally got going but couldn't see more than 50 feet in front of the van the blizzard was so bad. We drove for almost 15 miles at about 20kmh. We finally got out of the snow, took off the chains, and headed straight into rain all the way until we got back to Sigonella. We got back a little early so I went home and took a shower and a nap. I was invited to a BBQ with some friends that work at the gym ealier this week that I really hadn't hung out with yet so I wanted to go to that to be able to meet them a little better. I called Matt since he still had his rental car and asked if he would like to join me for the BBQ. He came and picked me up and we watched EuroTrip before we headed to the BBQ. Before we went to the BBQ, he tried teaching me how to drive a manual for an hour. I did alright, he started teaching me last time I went to his hockey game. I didn't do too bad. We went to the BBQ and met all the people. It was fun to see them outside of work and the food they had was really good. We only stayed for a little bit because Matt had 24-hour duty in the morning and I had some laundry and cleaning to do at home. He brought me home and I got a call from my friends Kelly, Adam, and Josh at midnight asking if I wanted to go dancing. I got outta bed and put some jeans on and headed over to the dance club. It was fun. I just danced for a few hours and hung out with some friends. We went to a really cool club called the Dome. Its about a mile from base and it fits about 10,000 people. I was one of the 20 Americans there, but they had a room for House music and a room for Hip-Hop. It was so much fun. I just kinda babysat all my friends that had been drinkin all day and we rode the shuttle back to base around 4am. It was a lot of fun though.

Sun. March 12 - I got a phone call from Matt this morning saying that he got out of duty, so I jumped in the shower and we made plans to go to Taormina for the afternoon. I didn't wake up til almost 11, so we were on the road by noon. He had the rental car until tomorrow, so he didn't want to waste a day with a car in Sicily. I knew how to get up there from giving directions so many times for ITT, so we headed north and got there in about 45 minutes. We got past the toll and headed down towards the beach first. The sky didn't look to clear so we knew we had to take advantage of the sun while it was still out. We walked down the beach, a little park, and took some pics of the sea. It was near a really cool island called Isola Bella. Its a really popular spot during the summer. I got some cool pics of the beach though. Its really dirty during this time of the year, but they'll start cleaning em up next month. We left there and headed up the giant hill towards the tourist-y city of Taormina. It's one of the top places to visit while in Sicily, so we figured we'd see what the fuss was all about. Getting there was interesting, we had to park in a public garage and then figure out how to catch the free shuttle bus up to the city. The entire city is on a hill, so your not recommended to drive up there. We finally figured it out and immediately headed for the famous Greek Ampitheater. It was 6 euro to get in, but luckily we beat the big tour buses and we got some awesome pics with barely any tourists in them. It was beautiful. It was built in 200 BC by the Greeks, but most of the actual remains are Roman. It was placed right on top of the hill side with an amazing view towards the ocean. My boss told me that all ampitheaters look towards the ocean or the sunset. We played around in there and I got my favorite pic so far taken of me standing in the bottom of the ampitheater and you can almost see the entire theater with little ole me in the middle of it. It started to rain really bad as we were walking out and the 3 tour buses were entering the theater as we were leaving. Eventhough it was raining, we stayed and walked down the main street with all the shops and restaurants. The shops were all big-designer names and everything was really expensive. I was starting to wonder what the big fuss was about this town. It was gorgeous architecture and roads, but the stores were way over priced. I did buy a few fun things, but we just continued to walk the strip until we were soaked and really cold. I bought some cool presents and we got some really cool shots of us with the MED behind us. The view from up top was awesome, you could see for miles down the north and south coastline. I wish it wouldn't have rained so bad b/c then I could have gotten some really cool pics of Mt. Etna from Taormina. I tried to upload the pics I took, but my blog is being really strange with uploads lately. Ill get em up there eventually though. We left Taormina around 4 because he needed to get back to base and take over for his friend that was taking his duty for the morning. The drive back cleared up a little and we stopped to eat at an AutoGrille. That drive along the coast is breathtaking for sure. He dropped me off and I went and saw a movie with some friends. I got home and worked on my homework for a little bit. I have to prepare for my green-week at work in ode to St. Patty's Day. I'm going to wear something green everyday!

Greek/Roman Ampitheater in Taormina

Looking south down the coastline from a piazza in Taormina

I FORGOT TO TELL YOU THE GOOD NEWS

2006-03-14T05:11:00.000-10:00

I've been so freakin busy I haven't really be able to write on here in awhile, but I have good news for you all. (I Hope!). I have officially been extended as an intern until July 7, 2006 here at Sigonella. It should be awesome to experience a summer here in the Med. I'm so excited. I've heard some fun stories about the beaches and boat cruises. Today, Leslie told me I was basically going to be the Recreation Aid until I leave since the real job position never filled. No one was qualified enough. It should be really fun and a great resume booster for me. I'll be creating and leading outdoor recreation trips such as camping, boat trips, beach trips, hiking up the volcano, and visiting some national parks around Sicily. I'm really happy she asked me to do this because now I'll feel a lot more confident and comfortable applying for a Rec Aid position with MWR when I get back to the States. I am sorry in advance if I miss anything back home, but I promise I will make it up. You'll just have to remind me. I miss ya'll already and will be missin you like crazy in the next few months. Remember to email me if anything is going on back home that I'm missing out on.

SeaBee Ball

2006-03-13T22:19:00.000-10:00

Fri. March 10 - My friend Matt invited me to go to the SeaBee Ball with him this past week. The SeaBee Ball is another version of the Naval Ball, but it's for the Public Works Command. He bought my ticket and his roommate and himself were gonna rent a car for the event. I had heard some great things about this dance/dinner/award ceremony and everyone said that this was a more-fun version of the Naval Ball. **Fast forward to Friday** I went to work today with intentions of leaving around noon so I could go to my hair appointment that was at 1pm across the street at some German lady's salon. I ended up leaving around 12:30 but made it over there with plenty of time to spare. I was growing out my nails all week so I painted them hot pink since that's Matt's favorite color and of course, he had to wear his fancy dress blues (they're actually black though). I went and got my hair done and he came and picked me up from my barracks shortly after. My hair looked alright, it was a little fancier than I've ever had it done. I brought my dress and shoes over there since we had a few hours until we needed to leave for the dance. We were planning on leaving at 5:15 to allow ourselves some time to find the place. Once I got over to NAS II, we walked around and went to the NEX and the computer lab so I could check my mail. We ended up just hangin out at the dorms and I started to get dressed and get all perty around 4. I helped them iron their uniforms and it was a lot of fun getting all dressed up again. I borrowed some shoes from a lady at work and man by the end of the night I had 2 bad blisters. Oh well, I needed to borrow them really bad. I wore my black dress that I wear to weddings, pink eye shadow, pink toenails and fingernails, and my green and hematite bracelet. I looked pretty cute if I say so myself. They all looked so handsome in their dress blues. I was going to a dance with two little sailor-boys. Just kiddin, no wait, really. We got in the car and headed towards a city called Palagonia to a fancy little restaurant/hotel. We got lost a few times, but eventually made it there. I surprisingly saw a bunch of people I knew that I had no idea they were seabees. It was cool, we took a bunch of pictures and found our seats. Everyone just hung out outside and eventually went in for the ceremony that started at 7pm. They had a MC who was absolutely annoying the entire night. There were some guest speakers and awards given out before dinner. It was really neat to see the color guards, everyone standing at attention during the National Anthem, and so on. It was really formal and fancy, but it turned into a huge party shortly after all of that. The food was not too good, barely any of the guys at my table ate the food. I knew what a bunch of it was from workin at Tony's, but the service was really slow and unorganized. After dinner, they had more awards and gave away some awesome door prizes. I won 3 bottles of wine in my goodie bag. Matt was up for an award. Hear this, he is the youngest SeaBee at Sigonella. AWW, how cute. He's a fresh 19. I joked with him and his friends all night that I was his "older" date. His friends are really fun and we all hung out all night together. Matt got an award and had to cut the cake with the oldest SeaBee, the Admiral, and his Command Master Chief. It was cool and I got a bunch of pictures of the night. After the awards, the party and dancing started. We all danced for hours and went home around 1pm. They are really serious about drinking and driving on this base, so everyone had to blow into a breathalyzer before leaving if they were driving. Matt offered to DD tonight so I didn't want to party to hard without him. His roommate Matt was pretty drunk by the end of the night, but altogether it was a total blast. I'm really glad I brought a nice dress over here in case that kind of event did come up. I had snowboarding in the morning so we all just crashed on NAS II to get over on NAS I by 7:30am so I could have time to change and take a shower.

Etna and another costume party

2006-03-07T04:42:00.000-10:00

Sat. March 4 - I can't believe I've been here for 7 weeks already. I have so much more stuff I want to do and see. I'm trying to get on the trips to Malta and Corfu, Greece that are coming up in April and May. I went to Mt. Etna with Rosario today and a big group of people that I finally convinced to get on the ITT trip. We got up there and the ride up was clear and blue skies. Once we got up there, we saw vans and cars coming down and the gondolaz were not moving. I figured it was closed due to the wind because it's been closed all week for the same reason. We got up there and the van was shaking from the winds being so strong. The people on the trip were kinda disappointed but I made the most efforts I could. I'm pretty good friends with a few of the ski patrol and they told us it would not be opening all day. I asked if the North Side would be open, but they said that was closed too. We decided to all just hang out at the shops and eat some lunch/breakfast before we headed back down the mountain to go home. It was a short day since we got back around 11am. The entire time I've been here, I've never actually been home on a Saturday afternoon. It was a strange feeling, but everybody was gonna hang out and watch a movie. As soon as I got home, the tired feeling hit. I went to my room and laid down for a few hours since there was another party tonight. I headed over there after I ate some dinner and had a good nap. The theme was an Office Party. The guys had to have ties on and the girls had to have a skirt on. The party was fun, but only like 6 people showed up. We still made it fun and we played some Dance Dance Revolution for about an hour. I'm so bad at that game, but it is humerous to watch. I finally got to bed around 2am and had a nice Sunday of sleep ahead of me.

A long week of ITT

2006-03-07T03:58:00.000-10:00

Mon - Fri. Feb. 27 - March 3 - This week at work at long and boring in general. We had some really busy days, but I worked the front desk almost the whole week. We did get in 10 new boards though again and they are puurty. I love em. The one thats my size is green and white. I've been waxing and sharpening them and a few of them went out for the weekend. It was crazy, but every board that we own went out this weekend. I have so many friends here now that come and rent on a weekly basis. I went and saw 2 movies this week at the movie theater. The Family Stone was alright, but Hoodwinked was a little better. They were cute though. I got enough people to sign up for the Saturday Etna trip so I'll be escorting that and meeting all of my friends up there. The weather was absolutely gorgeous this week. I got really good news on Tuesday. James asked me to go to lunch with him and he offered me an extension to my internship. I told him "Of Course" and we decided on Fourth of July weekend. That way I can be here to help plan the huge festival they throw for the 4th of July. Its called the Freedom Fest. I have run into a problem with extending my Visa though. My Visa expries on May 20, so we are trying to get an extension to it in my passport. If it doesnt work, I will only be here until May 20. It's alright though, we'll figure out in the next 2 weeks. I also got good news on Wednesday. My friend Matt asked if I would like to attend the SeaBee Ball with him on Fri. March 10. It's the fun version of the Navy Ball, but is just as formal. I'm really excited, it should be a great time. I've heard its a total blast. Luckily I brought my black dress, now I'm just trying to find some shoes. I'm getting my hair done at a salon across the street. It's a big group of people going and we're renting a van. I'll have pics from that for sure. I went to a crazy party on Friday night, it was so much fun. Everyone was dressed up and it was a bunch of people on the second floor of one of the barracks. My half-way mark of my internship paperwork is due at the end of this week. It's been so much work, but James is writing my mid-term evaluation over the weekend. I need to mail Dr. Cole all of my paperwork on Tuesday when the Post Office opens for the week.

Italian Roller Hockey

2006-03-02T02:52:00.000-10:00

Sun. Feb 26 - I finally got to sleep in today. I really needed it, but after I woke up I headed over to the library for a few hours to work on some homework and update my Blog of course. Matt called and asked me if I'd like to go to his roller hockey game down in Siracusa today. I had nothing else better to do and his roommate, Matt, had duty today. I told em yes and he picked me up around 1pm. We went and grabbed some Subway before we left to go meet his team at a stop off the highway. We had to follow them because this rink was in the middle of no where and the town is about 2 hours away. We got to the highway stop and I met all the people from his team. They are all locals from Messina and two of the guys are from Sigonella. Matt and this guy Kevin are the only Americans on the team. They were a really nice group of guys and their wives were really nice too. We started driving there and the ride was beautiful. The scenery of castles and ruins on the sides and tops of mountains is amazing. We got there in about 1 hour and 45 minutes and the rink was seriously hidden in this town. It was a giant dome made of strong plastic and supported my metal poles. The inside was nice and he said that this was one of the better roller hockey floors he's played on here in Italy. We had to sit around for an hour before the game was going to start and after he got dressed I went on the rink and practiced with him. I didnt do too bad I don't think. I'm excited to see Jeff start playing again when I get back home. The team they were playing against was a professional Italian team and they were called Team Noto. Noto is the town next to Siracusa. These guys were no joke, they were all young, tall, and really good at hockey. Matt's team is a group of older guys and it's just a hobby for them. They told me that they'd lose, but after the game I was surprised how bad they lost. Matt is the youngest at 19 and the only other younger guy is 21. Everyone else is over 35 years old. The game was really good eventhough they got killed by the other team. There was one huge fight and man was it crazy. I think 50% of the players got hurt throughout the game. Those Italians sure know how to put up a fight. It was funny and the crowd was going crazy. The game finally ended and the score was a disappointing 21-2. Oh well. They just like playing hockey and its free for them cuz they have some big sponsor guy that pays for everything. After the game, I tried to learn how to drive a stick-shift in the parking lot. I did alright, but it was soon time to go. The team was going to eat, but here in Italy that means a 2-hour affair. I wanted to get home since it was already late and I still had a lot of work to do. It was dark and this was going to be a guaranteed adventure getting back home. Neither of us know the roads very well and in the dark, everything becomes more complicated. We got lost in about a half hour in Siracusa because roads were being blocked off due to the Carnevale ceremony and some other religious events. That definitely didn't help. We eventually found some road signs pointing us to Augusta. I am kinda familiar with Augusta so I knew that if we got there we'd be in better hands. He works the cranes at Augusta too so we could figure it out, hopefully. About 2 1/2 hours later, we finally made it back to Sigonella. He dropped me off and I went over to the barracks and played Dance Dance Revolution for an hour before heading to bed. My legs were tired from sitting in a car all day, but the day was a lot of fun. I never thought I'd be watching a hockey game in Italy. That was really cool.

Mt. Etna & Carnevale!

2006-03-01T04:15:00.000-10:00

Sat. Feb 25 - I had to leave with Rosario to Mt. Etna at 7am to be able to get to Augusta Bay by 8. The ride was very tiring, but as soon as I got there and met the 5 people I was escorting, I woke up a little better. The ride was fun and got to meet them pretty well since there were so few of them. One of them was from Soulard which was pretty funny. We talked about St Louis for awhile and everyone asked me a bunch of questions about my time here. They were from the USS Kawahawa, which is a civilian supply ship. The sky was beautiful but once we got to the top, it soon became a blizzard. I met a few other snowboardin friends up there but the weather was absolutely nasty. We tried walking up a few hundred feet, but we eventually just gave up and boarded down. My face and eyes were getting bombarded by ice, snow, and wind. It was very frustrating and I was very sad that the whole day was now a waste. The ski lifts were closed due to the wind and it didn't look like it was going to clear up anytime soon. I ate some lunch and then just walked back to the van and took a nap. We had to leave the mountain by 3pm and I was so ready to leave around noon. Oh well, they all had a good time up at the sit-down restaurant sitting my the fireplace. We finally got back and I immediately went to my room to lay down. A group of us were gonna go to Acireale for Carnevale, but I couldn't get ahold of them. When I woke up from my long nap, they had already left. I called my friend Matt from an Etna trip and asked him if he wanted to go. We met up and left around 9pm. I have never been there and he just rented a car for the weekend so I knew this was going to be an adventure. I called some people to get directions and we got there in good time. Luckily, we could see the ferris wheel from right off the highway so we found the center of the carnival pretty easily. We finally found a parking spot and walked to the carnival. I was thinking this was going to be some fancy party with a parade and people dressed in costumes. Yeah, I was soooo wrong. This was a freakin school carnival. Kids running around, trashy carnies, drag queens, and people walking around hitting each other with rubber hammers and noise makers. We rode two rides, the ferris wheel and something kinda like the octopus. I ate a chicken and mushroom panini and we were the laughter of the panini stand. I couldn't understand a word they were saying and they couldn't understand us. We ended up getting a good deal and they asked us for some US dollars. I dont know why cuz it's not worth as much. It was funny though and the panini was delicious. It was getting boring and the weather was getting really cold so we left around 11:30. We got back and went dancing at Strike and met up with some people there. The night was alright, but the Carnevale was really disappointing. I can't believe thats what that was and people make such a big deal about it. Oh well, I'm glad I didn't cancel any plans for it.

Night on the town: sushi, Irish beer, and dancing

2006-02-28T22:14:00.000-10:00

Fri. Feb 24 - Work today was crazy, I was running to and from ITT to the MWR Admin office all day with paperwork, time cards, etc. Leslie is leaving for 2 weeks on Sunday so we're trying to get ahead for the next week so it's not too crazy when she's gone. I had to go to the Admin office to talk to the big guy too about snowboarding for the rest of the month. The weather has been really rainy (which means snowing on the mountain) and stormy and Leslie and really worried about all the recent accidents we've had on the mountain. The south side of Etna (the side we go on) gets hit by the sun everyday so it ices over every night. I had to talk to him about whether or not we would cancel the trips for the future. We advertised them throughout the first month of March, but its not looking like their going to continue. We got our last order of boards in today (10 of them, their really cool looking) and that was the main argument point for the guys over at Admin. They want us to make some profit on them before the seasons over, but Leslie is convinced that the season is over. Anyways, after a lot of arguing (not with me though) we decided to cancel the trips for the next week and I just have to bring up a group of sailors from the USS Kawahawa to the mountain on Saturday. I got back to Gear-N-Go and started to wax the new boards. I got 4 of them waxed and I'll keep working on those next week if I find some time. My friend Joe came in a gave me a CD that he burned of all his pictures from Calabria. That was really nice and theres a bunch of videos on it of everyone jumping the ramp we made on the mountain last weekend. Mack and James asked if I would like to go to dinner with them in Catania at a Sushi Restaurant. I convinced Leslie and Amber to go to and we planned that out before we left work. They were going to pick me up at 8:30 so we could get down there by 9. I went home and got kinda dressed up since this place is really fancy and costs about 60Euro a person. They said they'd buy me dinner. Okay. It's kinda weird and I tell them no, but they make fun of how much I work and how much money I don't make. Mack always tells me I'm making like $3/hour when it's all said and done. The resturant was called Oxidana. We got there and I ordered Tamaki with tuna, avocado, and rice and Terriyaki Chicken for my main course. I ate some battered veggies, tried crab and fish roe. It was alright, the fish roe was too fishy tasting. I realized that Japanese beer called Asashi is really good. After dinner we went to Waxy O'Connells which is the Irish bar in Catania. It was crowded with so many Italians but we found a quiet table in the back. We stayed there for awhile but then headed back towards base. Before we got to where they were gonna drop me off, we decided we weren't done for the night. Theres a club called Strike across from NAS I so we went in there to go dancing. I danced of course and the music is actually American music. The disco was crowded and by the time we left, my bosses all left in a cab. You have to blow in a breathalyzer to get into housing or onto any base. I got home at 3:30am which is crazy cuz I have to get up in the morning to go snowboarding with that ship. Leslie leaves Sunday, but I think the office should be okay for awhile while she's gone.

Time keeps going by faster at work

2006-02-28T21:53:00.000-10:00

Tues. Feb 21 - I went into work today itchin the back of my leg. I was there with Leslie all morning by myself and she is really an awesome boss. My leg was bothering me all morning so I went and visited a friend of mine at the hospital to look at it and he said it was two spider bites. They just put some cream on it and I went back to work. A bunch of boards were getting returned from the weekend so I spent a lot of time in the back. I helped do the paperwork for the trip over the weekend. I had to attend my weekly managers meeting with James at the Admin office and that lasted for almost 90 minutes. Those are getting kind of boring, but they really help me see the total picture of MWR at Sigonella. Back at ITT, James came in with a big package and told me that if it wasn't for me, he'd never get any mail. I've been receiving letters and packages so it's pretty fun. This one was from mom and dad. Thanks. I'll have a sugar buzz for like a month with all the candy in there. If anyone would like, you could send me gummy worms and sour gummy worms if you get bored. They don't sell those over here at all. After work I went and saw Fun with Dick and Jane with all the people from the trip. That was freakin hilarious. I love Jim Carrey. You should all definitely see it if you haven't. Sorry, our new movies at the movie theater aren't exactly new to you. After the movie I went back to my room and fell asleep. I'm still trying to make up for the sleep I didn't get over the weekend.

Wed. Feb 22 - I started on my special project today at work finally. James told me not to freak out about it since it'll be a small group that I'll be taking. When I first received my internship, I went out to lunch with my friend Kendra and she gave me a Top 10 guidebook to Sicily. I was flipping through it and saw the blurb about the Aeolian Islands and that you can sea kayak around them. I told myself that that was going to be one of those things on my invisible "checklist" of things I must do while I'm here. It's five gorgeous islands with an active volcano on one of them. I immediately thought about that and that's what I'm going to plan around. I asked the Italians at ITT if they knew of any details and they told me about a campsite that they use when they go to the island of Lipari. It's got bungalows and their not badly priced. We own 11 kayaks so I figured that with a driver and myself, I'll only be able to plan the trip for 9 people. That's okay though, I'd rather keep it small and be able to have more control over the situation. I looked up the bungalows online and they will work out great. Its right on the beach looking out at the sea. I went through about 5 books to find a bunch of information about the island and called Liberty (single sailor program) to tell them to block out the weekend of April 8-9 for my trip. The trip to Malta is the weekend before that but it gives it another week to get a little warmer. Rosario told me he'd like to take the trip with me and he'd be the driver. It's gonna be a blast. I already know a bunch of friends that said they would like to go. The Liberty program is subsidised by the government and is only for single sailors E1-E5. This way I can make the trip a lot cheaper than if I did it through ITT. After work I went and partied at my friends Adam's barracks room and met a ton of new people. We had like 9 people in this tiny little room. Its always nice to meet more people that live on this base now. It took 5 weeks to finally meet people who live on NAS I, but it's working out now. The nights are starting to go a lot faster now that I actually find something to do.

Thurs Feb 23 - The morning at ITT felt like a day at the tux shop. They asked me if I would like to decorate the office for Carnevale to help advertise our trips. I immediately busted out the construction paper, decorations, and make some flyers on the computer. It looked really cool and I cut out "ITT DAY TRIPS: CARNEVALE" in big bubble letters. I found some Mardi Gras colored streamers and masks and finished in about an hour. Everyone was very impressed and told me that I get to decorate the board every week. Leslie didn't think I had that kinda talent I guess. After that I settled down at a computer to catch up on my school reports. I did a weekly report for last week and started on my case studies. It takes so long to write these papers, but I'm really getting into the case studies I'm writing. I worked on my special project some more and everyone is really into what I'm doing. The ladies at the front desk have never gotten to plan a trip so their kinda envious. I forgot tomorrow was Friday since the week was going by so fast so I spent the end of the day getting the boards ready for pick-up tomorrow. There aren't too many boards getting rented this weekend, the weather is looking pretty crappy.

Snowboarding Pics from Etna

2006-02-26T01:20:00.000-10:00

Here are some pics of the groups I've taken up there. The first one is Kim and I on the ski run at Etna. The last one has Mack, Amber, and Kim (MWR employees) and the one next to Kim is her husband Mike. The guy on the right is Justin who I've met through everyone.

2006-02-26T01:09:00.000-10:00

These are going from the town of Messina to the Reggio Calabria and vice-versa. Messina is where the Campari factory is. In the 4th pic, you can see the island of Sardinia in the far background.

Ferry Ride and Scenery

2006-02-26T01:05:00.000-10:00

Reggio Calabria Pics

2006-02-26T00:44:00.000-10:00

Here's a few pics from the weekend. I've got plenty more on the way. This ski resort was in the Altomonte National Park.

Reggio Calabria Ski Weekend

2006-02-23T22:51:00.000-10:00

Feb. 17-20 - President's Day Weekend Snowboarding Trip
Fri. Feb. 17 - Hi, sorry its taken so long to get on here and write. I was just seeing if you were paying attention Dad:) Just kidding. It's been crazy around here though and I've been really busy. This weekend was awesome though. Friday at work was completely spent on getting ready for the trip to leave at 4pm. I was working in conjunction with Leah getting all the paperwork, waivers, hotel reservations, etc ready. It was all going really well and it was nice to finally spend some time with Leah. Her husband was coming along and Amber was rooming with me at the hotel. We had 22 people signed up and the time flew by on Friday. We were rushing around buying beer and stuff for the nights since there is NOTHING in this "town" where we were going. I packed the coolers and we got some food and snacks for the ride. I waxed and sharpened my board and had to bring Amber's and mine to the bus. Some people showed up 15 minutes late, but we left at good timing for 22 people. We called roll and Leah gave some basic instructions and details on our weekend stay. The bus ride up there was nice, I got to see Taormina from the highway and we had to go through Messina to get to the port. It took about 2 hours to get to that point due to rush hour traffic. We got in line for the giant Ferry and in about 45 minutes we were parked on the lower deck. The ferry ride took about 35 minutes so you're allowed to get out of your vehicle and walk around the decks. This was the largest ferry that crosses the Mediterranean at this point. It was 4 levels, had some restaurants and little pastry shops. Everyone got off the bus and by then it was really dark. I went by myself to the upper deck to watch it float across to the mainland. It was so peaceful and eye-opening. I've never felt so free and relaxed in my life. I just stood there facing the mainland with the wind blowing and the cold air hitting my face just smiling and realizing where I was. I was peacefully sailing across the Mediterranean and felt that I was completely alone on this ship. My mind blocked out all the sounds and all I could do was smile and think. I'm halfway across the world and hopping from the island of Sicily and getting to the mainland of Italy. The lights from both cities (Messina and Reggio Calabria) were gorgeous. I didn't want the ride to end. I only imagined how much more wonderful that ride would have been with some friends exploring Europe. At this point of this entire trip and internship did I feel the most proud of my self and independent. I could totally do this forever. I would enjoy other travelers with me, but just being alone and having no one else to help me or talk to is a big experience. I loved it. I know it sounds corny but I knew my life was changing at that moment in time. This was going to be a great weekend already. We docked and headed up for the town of Gambarie where the ski lift is. It was windy roads in a giant bus. Two things that don't combine very well. It was actually amazing that we didnt get in a head-on collision going up those curves. That was only another hour and a half and we had arrived. Things are so different at night. I couldn't wait to see it in the daylight. I was already anxious to see the ferry ride during day light. We got into the hotel, put our bags away, the rooms were really nice for being an Italian hotel, and the hotel had dinner waiting for us. I got my board all set up and we headed down to dinner with everyone. They had two nice big tables for us that we'd sit at the rest of the weekend for breakfast and dinner everyday. That was all included, lunch was on our own. When your snowboarding all day from 9:30-4 you don't even think about taking time out for lunch. We ate dinner, 4 courses, it was really good, and then headed up stairs to start the party. We played Cranium for a few hours and everyone was ready to go to bed. I found out that Leahs husband is a complete jerk and is a boardgame-Nazi. He pissed a bunch of people off that night so I dont think I'll be hanging out with them for the rest of the trip. Kim and Leslie called us to say HI and we all needed sleep for tomorrow.

Sat. Feb 18 - I woke up at 7am because breakfast was at 8. I went ahead and got dressed for the slopes since the lines are usually pretty long to get passes and get on the lift. Since we got in at night I didnt see the slopes. Before eating I went outside and took the only picture I took for the whole weekend. It was really inconvenient to take my camera up on the slopes. I'll have to get em from everyone else on the trip. I'll definitely find some though cuz it was beautiful and breathtaking at the top of the mountain. Breakfast was typical Italian, a pastry and a bunch of coffee. Shortly after I headed for the slopes and went with Amber. The ski lift was 18 eruo and it wasnt too busy. They only had two runs open and one of them is a toe-rope. I'll get to that in a minute. The lift was really long and the ride was awesome. You could see northest Sicily and just imagine how large the island really is. It was such a clear day that you could see Mt Etna peeking out of the clouds. That was the one picture I really wish I could have gotten. It was awesome, it literally looked like it was floating in the ski. The ride was interesting since you have to ride with the snowboard attached to your foot. That was an interesting first-time experience. The top and getting off the lift was hilarious. I fell as soon as I slid out of my seat since you have to go down this hill with one foot attached. I almost did the splits. I didn't care, a bunch of other people in our group had never done that before either. I figured I had all weekend to work on it. The slope was great and I realized I would really be able to work on the skills. It was powdery and not too crowded. I met up with the really good snowboarders in our group and started to hang out with them. I boarded all day and then a few of us got the bright idea to go down the slope with the toe-rope. I had no idea what I was in for but the guys who have been boarding for years said its really hard and frustrating. The problem was was that this hill was a 64* slope for about a mile. It was insane to go down, you couldn't even see the path in front of you sometimes since the slope was so steep. I did a lot of cris-crossing down that hill. I got the the bottom, it ended up being a really fun and long ride. The other run was too short. It took like 10 minutes to get down and then you have to stand in line for 35 minutes to get back up. I got to the bottom with some friends and started trying to get up the toe-rope. You have to have one foot in your bindings and then the other one has to sit on the center stomp pad on the board. Then you have to proceed to grab this pole thing with a little plastic disc on it which is all connected to an extending wire. The problem is that for snowboarders your riding this thing up sideways. Skiers have no problem cuz they just put in between their legs and ride up facing forward. I tried it 3 times and the furthest I got was a few hundred feet up this gigantic slope. I didn't even make it a 10th of the way up. I wanted to cry cuz I was so frustrated, but no one could really get it. I finally gave up and started walking up the hill cuz there was so other way to get back to that first run and the ski lift. Not a good idea. I felt like I was hiking Mt Everest with really uncomfortable boots, sweating, and carrying a 10 pound board. I was getting no where and every step I took I sunk into the snow. I was probably gonna go into shock or something if I would have continued to try and walk up this hill. My friend Josh came down and gave me some Gatorade and took my board for me. He was skiing, so he brought my board up the toe-rope with him so I didnt have to carry it up. I was hiking for about an hour, sweating and not being able to regulate my body temperature with the outside temp so I just layed down to rest for awhile. I still had another 20 minute hike to go. Josh came back down and told me he found me a ride. I just had to snowboard back down to the bottom and they would drive me back to the hotel. Basically, if you couldnt get up the hill you were stuck. Luckily the guy gave me and another guy from our group a ride b/c we could not get up that hill. The car ride was hilarious and all I wanted to do when I got to the hotel was take a shower, take a nap, and eat some lunch. I didn't get to take a nap cuz I got a 2nd wind so Josh and I went and ate lunch. The party started early but it was so much fun hanging out with this new group of people. Amber doesn't really like to party and these guys were all my age or near. They were so much fun and reminded me of so many people back home. It was nice to finally meet some people that live on NAS I with me. The two girls were really fun too, I'm gonna hang out with them more often when I get home. We partied, ate dinner as a group, it was alright but pretty much the same thing as the night before. After dinner we all made our drinks, played some board games and card games, and headed to the park down the street to keep the noise down at the hotel. Tonight was the disco at the hotel. The open up a room and hire a DJ and dancer. We all hung out there until it closed. Italian dancing is freaking hilarious. Its like perverted line dancing. If we would have taped all that dancing we could have won Americas Funniest Videos. They think they are soooo sexy, but its complete laughter. It went pretty late and I was dancing the entire night to the funny Italian music. After that, a bunch of people went to bed (the older ones) and we all stayed up to party. We played BS in the lobby for a few hours and just had an awesome time. It was 5:45am when we all finally went to bed. I knew tomorrow was gonna be painful.

Sun. Feb 20 - I woke up bright and early at 7:30 and headed for the shower and breakfast. I was actually feeling okay, just sore from my extreme mountain hiking yesterday. My groin was killing me too from constantly doing the splits trying to get off the ski lift each time. It was all funny memories though so I didnt mind the pain. Sundays are like holidays for Italians so needless to say, the slopes were packed. Amber was skiing today so I just hung out with all the "Cool Kids" all day. It took almost an hour to get my lift ticket today. The slopes were wonderful again, but the standing in line for the lift started to get really annoying. Luckily I had all these guys to entertain me while we waited. They are nuts. When your standing in a giant line with pushy Italians, you just stand there and make fun of them and yourself. I have never laughed so hard in one day in my life. They would just stand there and yell out crazy things in other languages and dance around and just be goofy. The Italians couldn't stop staring and laughing at us. Half way through the day, they made a giant ramp that was about 8 feet tall. We just sat there for a few hours and watched them all do jumps and stuff. I took a few runs down by myself to improve. I asked them all for some tips and by the end of the day I could do everything. It was a great feeling. I have everything figured out now and now the seasons almost over. I'll get one more weekend in for sure at Etna though before the ice really starts to hurt people. I got a phone call from Leslie saying that they had to Helicopter another guy off of Etna this weekend with our trip. Today was awesome and we were all surprinsgly more awake than we thought. They took some really cool videos and pictures of the day so I'll have to get them. I stood under the ramp while someone flew over me. That was pretty cool. We got a few more runs in and had a hundred snowball fights throughout the day. We also had some wrestling matches for the Italians' entertainment. They love the tricks the Americans do. Thats why the USA rocked the Olympics in snowboarding. We got down from the mountain, showered and headed to the pizza place. 6 of us hung out and ate pizza over there while everyone else were taking naps. We got everyone up and we started playing cards again and goofing around. The hotel was pretty crowded so it didn't matter how loud we were. We walked around the "town" which took about 10 minutes and later headed to dinner. I tried swordfish for the first time. It was alright, not fishy tasting. It actually tasted like really tender chicken flavored with lemon. Dinner was an absolute blast. The funnies conversations were going and everyone was so slap happy from being tired. We ended up sittting down there for awhile just laughing with everyone. After dinner we went up to play a final game of Cranium. I couldn't convince anyone to play Phaze 10 all weekend since it involved too much thinking. The Cranium game was intense and the whole gang played. Well the 12 cool people ya know. The older people and Leah and Amber were drinking wine in the restaurant all night. The game went for a few hours and then we all just went and hung out in the big quad room. We watched some Italian MTV and a weird movie while we were in there. The night ended pretty late, but we had nothing to do in the morning except get on the bus at 10am.

Mon. Feb 20 - I slept in til 8:30 and went and ate some breakfast. I had a chocolate croissant. Its really strange, but I really enjoy the coffee over here. I think in another way though I feel forced to drink it since there's nothing really else to drink. I did have some blood-orange juice though. That was tasty. Everyone met up in the lobby to check out and the lobby was a mess with all of our gear and bags. I played the cafe (espresso) game with 3 of the guys. Its really stupid but I drank 4 shots of espresso in like 5 minutes. I knew this was going to be an interesting bus ride home. We loaded the bus and I sat with all the younger people in the back this time. I really wasn't too happy with Leah and her husband so I avoided sitting up front with them. I knew I'd have an entertaining time in the back. The ride down the mountain took forever since you cant see cars coming around the bends. I took a few pictures coming down of the landscape, but the bus never stopped long enough to get any really good ones. It was gorgeous though, I just stared out the window for about a half hour knowing that I probably wouldn't see it again. The espressos started to kick in and a bunch of people were getting car sick from the curvy ride to the bottom. We got on a small ferry and headed back to Sicily. The water was really rough from the winds but it was a really cool view of both the mainland and Sicily. You could see Sardinia (the other Italian island) it was so clear. The ride was beautiful and the ocean was clear blue. It took a little longer to get across since it was smaller and the winds were pretty bad. After we crossed we stopped at an AutoGrille (truckstop with a cafeteria). I got some pesto pasta and everything was way over priced there. It only took about an hour to get back to Sigonella. The bus ride was fun but everyone was starting to get really tired near the end. We got back, I brought everything back into ITT (it was closed for the holiday) and unpacked when I got home. I had a massive pile of laundry to do. They offered me to go to dinner at this really good Chinese restaurant in Catania that night around 8. I had time to do laundry, shower, watch some tv, and take a nap. We left for the restaurant and were on our way to Catania. These guys have all been here about 2 years so they know all the fun things to do. This Chinese restaurant was really good and the floor of it was a giant aquarium all lit up with flourescent lights. It was a lot of fun and wrapped up the weekend nicely. It will be so nice to have these guys to hang out with now on NAS I. I think I'm gonna get a ride to Carnevale with them this weekend after we go snowboarding on Saturday. As soon as I got home I crashed. I was so tired. The weekend was so much fun and for $130 you couldn't beat it.

My Submarine Tour and Kim's Going-Away Party

2006-02-16T05:13:00.000-10:00

Thurs. Feb 16 - I met with the MWR Director, James Baker, this morning at 8:30 am to head to NAS II to attend a monthly Advisory meeting that I need to attend for my MWR Program. The meeting lasted about 45 minutes and had representatives from MWR, the Navy Exchange, the Commisary, and Safety. Most of the questions were geared to the NEX/Commisary but James was asked a few questions concerning the skatepark. After the meeting was over, we headed back to the Administration Building to head out to Augusta Bay for our Submarine tour. We got one of our 8 passenger vans to use for the trip and all the big dogs and me piled in and were on our way. It was the MWR Director, some of the big-time managers that I hang out with all the time, and little ole' me. They are the coolest group of people to hang out with, they are hilarious and love making fun of each other. We got down to Augusta around 11am and walked onto the pier where the gigantic USS Emory S. Land was anchored. The Land is a tendor ship for subs that just floats around in the Mediterranean when it's not docked in La Maddalena. We had to walk through that and down a giant 40 ft ladder to get onto the submarine (USS Toledo). The USS Toledo is a nuclear powered attack submarine. The sub looked to tiny compared to this ship, but only 1/3 was out of the water. It is 360 ft long, 30 ft in diameter, and has a 20ft sail. As soon as I got on it, 3 guys from my tour yesterday shouted out my name and started talking to me. It was pretty cool cuz it was right in front of my bosses. They were like "damn miss popular." It was funny, the guys kept talking to me and one of them gave me a cool photo of the sub in a nice Navy folder. They broke us up into 2 groups to fit through the sub and be able to hear the guide. Amber and I were in one of the groups so of course being women we got the full-details, secret rooms, too-much information tour. No women are allowed on any sub in the US due to difficulties with birthing and grooming reasons. It was so cool. This guy, Minter, gave us like a 2-hour tour of this tiny ship. We weren't suppose to go in a bunch of rooms, but since he had the ladies we got a little further than we were really suppose to. We got in the torpedo birthing room which holds 19 out of the 36 torpedos on the ship. The sub is from Connecticut so they have only been at sea for about a month. Its crazy but these guys look like ghosts since they never see the sun. He brought us into the captains quarters, sonar room, torpedo rooms, birthings, dining hall, control room like in the movies, and the computer room. It was really amazing to actually see how these guys live. I don't know how they do it. Theres 165 shipmmates on this sub which is only made to fit 110. You can't even walk straight down the halls, you have to turn constantly. If you were over 6' you had to duck the whole time. It's insane what they have to sleep in. They share beds (take shifts) which are so small that you can't sit up in them. It's almost sad that they aren't allowed better conditions. Everyone was really nice though and didn't mind us touring the ship. We got to tour all three levels and the upper deck. You can walk all along the top deck, I'm so glad they let me come on this tour with them. They leave port tomorrow. Italians don't ever know when nuclear subs come in luckily, they are too hidden in our port. I've heard that carriers start a hissy-fit around here. You can supposedly see them from over 5 miles away in the ocean. I wonder if we'll have one of those come in while I'm here. We never know about ships arriving until a day or a few minutes in advance since they're not allowed to reveil their port until they get there. It's all really cool to learn about. After we got back we all went and ate lunch and needed to get to work. I went into ITT, got some boards ready and worked on my blog. Leslie came me the final count for Calabria, 20. I'm really excited, I need to switch out my boots for the more comfortable ones tomorrow before we leave. I booked some day tours while I was up front at the counter and Leslie started talking to me about a job with MWR. She was asking me about college and what my plans were when I finish this internship. She was wondering if I would work over here for a few years if I could get hired. James told me the other day that its really hard for new people to get an overseas job at first. He basically said it would be impossible for me since I have no experience with them. Leslie said thats a bunch of crap and with my degree actually in recreation and tourism that she thinks I could. We talked for awhile and she's really got me convinced to try for Kim's position or something close to it. There's a lot more details I need to find out, but if I could start when I'm finished, I might as well try for it to be in it for the long haul. There's a lot of money and benefits to working in this program. I'll check it out more next week when I get back from my trip. I walked over to the main office to pick up the plaque they had made for Kim. It was really cool. Leslie asked me to go to the NEX and buy some wrapping paper and a small bouquet of flowers for her party tonight since she had to get home and change. I had a 5X7 picture printed out for her that I needed to get a frame for of a few of us snowboarding last weekend when her husband got in town. She always says they never have any pictures of them together. I left work and did all that. Wrapped her presents and got her a card saying Thanks for everything she's helped me with. Amber picked me up and brought me to the restaurant. About 12 people showed up and it was a lot of fun. We had wine and 3 courses. The Director took my credit card away and told me that I wasn't allowed to pay for my dinner. That was cool, two nights in a row of other people buying me dinner, I'll take it. They couldn't stop thanking me for yesterday and Leslie and Kim were bothering James and James all night about hiring me on. Today and yesterday were absolute awesome days. I got a ride home from Justin and threw in some last minute laundry so I could pack in the morning before work. I talked to Jeff for a little bit about the idea of working over here. We'll talk more about it later when I get some more details. I leave tomorrow at 4pm for Calabria. It's about a 4 hour drive, I'm so excited!!!!

Wilderness First Responder on Mt. Etna

2006-02-16T04:38:00.000-10:00

Wed. Feb 15 - I got ready this morning and had to be waiting at the front gate at 7am for my pick-up. I waited and waited and finally at 8am, the bus came to pick me up and be on our way. We headed for Augusta Bay and of course were already running super late when we hit an accident. That took awhile but we finally got down there at 9:30. It took about 1 hour 45 minutes to get up to the mountain. I had 50 people signed up but only 35 showed up. They were all from the USS Land and 3 of them were from the USS Toledo (Submarine). They were really fun and I introduced myself and told everyone what was offered on the mountain and gave them where I'd be in case they had any questions throughout the day. They had a guide with them, Jeremy, from their base in Sardinia, La Maddalena. He was really cool and knew the two interns from MWR that I met in Millington, TN. The ride up there was fun and I got interviewed by their TV crew that was with them all day. We finally got up there around 11:30 and I headed straight to the mountain after I showed everyone around real quick. I met Amber and Rosario up there and Amber and I went snowboarding. We got in a few runs and stopped to eat lunch with our groups at 1. After lunch we headed back up for a few more runs before we each had to leave, but thats when all hell broke loose. I just got my snowboard on and went a few hundred feet when I heard my cell phone ringing. It was Leslie from back at ITT confirming that I was Wilderness First Responder Certified and she had a mission for me. You can pretty much guess what came next... Someone from Rosario and Ambers Create-A-Trip got hurt about 1/3 of the way down the mountain. I hadn't reached him yet so I didn't hear or see anything about it yet. She told me that she got a call from Rosario after a few people came down to him to tell him that someone was hurt and they think it was his back. I hung up the phone with her, snowboarded down to the accident to find this guy lying on his side and a huge crowd was already gathering around him. As soon as I got to him, I told everyone about my certification and another there had the same thing. He was really awesome and thankfully knew Italian and English. He was our only source the entire time that could translate anything. He assessed him and took all the necessary action to make our decisions. The problem was everyone else around him that had to put in their 2 cents. Tons of Italians kept coming by and telling us what to do and getting in the way. My first concern was that this guy had on a t-shirt, a thermal, and a pair of sweatpants. He was already getting soaking wet and the wind didn't help the situation. He was on his side and everyone was trying to get him to turn over onto his back. It was his back that was hurt! His chief was with him and he was telling this kid the exact-opposite of what he should be doing. The Sigonella ambulance had been called and so was the Catania Helicopter. Everything was on its way, you just have to accept the fact that its going to take at least an hour to get anything immediate or actual medical attention. There is a ski patrol on the mountain, but somehow there were no doctors on duty today. Hmm.. gotta love Italy! This guy and I did what we could and had it figured out to a lower back injury. We both agreed it was probably just his tailbone. He fell from a standing position, but it was pretty icy today. I couldn't get a signal on my phone to assure everyone and him that help was coming so I walked up a little ways to get one. As soon as I turned around, I noticed that the guy turned himself over onto his back. By then some snowmobiles came down, but they didnt have a stretcher or any blankets with them. It was freezing and this guy was getting more and more wet at the minutes went by. I was really scared he was going to go into shock or get hypothermia before the helicopter got there. I was pissed that the kid rolled himself over, but at least that helped prove the fact that it wasn't a spinal or neck injury. People were making a much bigger deal out of it that it should have been. We finally got a blanket delivered and we recruited 5 other people to help us get him on it. The helicopter finally arrived. That was a cool site to see. It was big, yellow and red, and reminded me of a flying Oscar Meyer Wiener-Mobile. It landed right on the ski path and 4 guys jumped out and immediately got him onto a stretcher and into the chopper. We tried to get Amber to go along with him, but the Italians weren't down for that and there was no room in it anyways. We got ahold of Sigonella again and told the ambulance which hospital he was going to be brought too. They will only fly them to hospitals in Catania, not into Sigonella. We cleaned up and headed down the mountain to fill out any reports, etc and I had to get back to my bus soon and bring the 35 sailors back to Augusta Bay. Two guys from Sigonella showed up at the bottom of the mountain to file the report. Everything was being taken care of and the guy was on his way to the hospital. The Create-A-Trip left and my bus left around 4:30. Altogether the accident took about an hour and a half. Italian medical attention is nothing compared to the US. It's quite scary how non-advanced they are. That is why we tell our customers to wear warm, waterproof clothing, and not to hurt themselves. We tell people flat out that it takes over an hour to get any serious medical attention on the mountain. It was fine, now things were out of our hands and into the base's ambulance and the Catania Hospital. I finally got to my bus and everyone was slowly getting on. We left right on time at 4:30 and everyone had a really good time. Most of them saw the helicopter, but only 5 of them went skiing during the day. We left Etna and stopped down the hill at a house thats completely covered by lava except the roof. The all really enjoyed that and from then on we were on our way back to Augusta. Traffic was pretty heavy but we arrived around 6:15. I finally got back to base at 7pm. That was a long freaking 12-hour day. James called me when I got back and told me he'd like to bring me out to dinner. Amber came along, I ate some really good tortellini and drank some red house wine. It was nice to sit and relax after that kind of day. I knew I'd be asked a million questions in the morning. I went home, made some phone calls to Crystal and Jeff and went to bed.

Good news about the Calabria Ski Trip

2006-02-15T21:02:00.000-10:00

Mon. Feb 13 - Work was alright, I've been working the front and the back about equal. We have a bunch of ships coming in this week so everything has been crazy trying to create trips for them with ITT. I was told that we might have snowboarding trips going Tues-Fri this week. Luckily, by the end of the day, they had only booked ones for Wed and Fri. I didn't want to work on getting the snowboards ready for our Create-A-Trip for Wednesday since I didn't know about Tuesday yet. I worked with Leslie a bunch at the front counter b/c we were pretty much there all day by ourselves. I booked a few more reservations for Calabria so that trip is definitely going. Leah, the girl who is going to escort it is still deciding whether or not she's going to go. If she doesn't find a babysitter, I get to escort it and get it fully paid. If not, I'll just tag along, learn how to be the escort and just pay like a hundred euro. Not bad for a 4 day weekend. It was really quiet around the office, a few employees didn't show up for work today. It was fine though, I got to hang out with Leslie. Kim stopped in for a few minutes today, but she's officially done with work. After work I headed to the library to check some email. I saw Kim and we hung out there til it closed. I got her email address and all that. She told me we're gonna have a going-away dinner on Thursday with everybody. That should be pretty fun. I went to my room and watched the Olympics and the Biggest Loser Finale. I think it's pretty old though.

Tues. Feb 14 - Happy Valentine's Day! Work was cheerful today and everyone was in a really good mood. I signed up 2 more people for the trip and Leah decided that her and her husband are going to go. It was fine, Amber told me that we could share a room and Leslie figured out the price we had to pay. It only came out to $130 US Dollars. She just took out the charges for the single room (now we have a double) and the transportation and hidden costs. That was cool, I already paid for it. We're all really excited. It should be a really fun trip because I know almost 60% of the people that are going. They've all been on past snowboarding trips or other trips I've escorted. I've heard its a quiet little place with nothing in the town but this one ski resort. There's 2 courses and lifts. We'll be playing a lot of cards and stuff like that at night. I'm excited because the courses are pretty simple and I'll be able to practice my "moves." Since now snowboards were needed, I went ahead and got all of them ready for tomorrow. It took awhile since the boards hadn't been waxed and repaired in two weeks. I waxed the 8 boards we needed just to be able to get that batch looking better. I also got my board ready and I spent some time on sharpening the back-edge. I have to take it home with me because I was told today that I get to escort a 50-passenger van of sailors (USS Land and Toledo) up to Etna for the day tomorrow. That'll be awesome, I'm kinda nervous. Leslie told me I can snowboard even though none of the sailors wanted to. They can ski and sled if they want when they get up there. Some of the sailors were already on base and wanted to go to the skatepark. That thing is getting used a lot, its awesome. I made some last minute park passes for them and we closed up shop. I loaded the van for the trip tomorrow (not mine) and brought my board home with me cuz I have to be out in the front waiting for the bus at 7am to ride to Augusta Bay and pick up my peeps. I watched some more snowboarding and saw the USA dominate in the halfpipe (men and women). That was fun to see. I rented a movie called Red Eye and watched that after I finally figured out how to plug in my DVD player in the room. It was really good, you should check it out. I hadnt even ever heard of it in the states before I got here. I've got a busy day tomorrow ahead of me, so I'll talk to you all later.

Speed Dating and Snowboarding, what a combo...

2006-02-12T22:00:00.000-10:00

Fri. Feb 10 - The Olympics start tonight. I'm going to try and watch snowboarding as much as I can. Our team is supposedly gonna beat out everyone. Today was another typical day at work, but I got some free time to work on my school reports. It was surprisingly slow for a Friday all day, but more than 80% of the snowboards for the weekend were being used for our trip and a Create-A-Trip for a boy scout troop. We got enough people to sign up for our Calabria Ski Trip for next weekend so I think I'm gonna go ahead and go on that. Their trying to find a good price for me if I can get my room paid for. The Olympics road trip doesn't look too promising. No one wants to sit in a car for 12 hours. It's alright, just kind of disappointing. I should be getting my visa/No-Fee passport in the mail soon. I got a package today from Jeff. He shipped my blanket over to me. It was sweet and just in time for Valentine's Day. I didn't do much work on the snowboards today other than load up the vans for this weekend. I'm going again tomorrow of course and a bunch of our employees are coming along to for the day. It's fun to have people to hang out with and try stupid jumps along the way while falling on your butt. The customers have been really fun lately and a few of our regulars are going with us tomorrow. I left work a little early to meet up with James so I could get a bunch of questions answered for my site evaluations for school. I couldnt find any of the answers for it, so I sat with him in his office for about 2 hours getting everything answered. Luckily no more site evaluations, just weekly reports, a few case studies, my project, and some other small things. It's been a lot of work keeping up with those and they each take about 4-5 hours to type. Dr. Cole wrote me back and told me that they didn't need to be so long. As you can see from these Blogs, I tend to write a lot. Oops. I got back to work and finished up some stuff. I went ahead and left work at 5:30pm to head over to Jox Sports Bar to set up for our first experiment of "Speed Dating." We had 20 people sign up and we wanted to decorate a part of the bar to look nice for the event tonight. They asked me to help them set up to get a girl's touch. They went all out. They bought an arch with flowers, some lattice for along the walls, white table cloths, roses, vases, candles, and some other romantic stuff. It was starting at 9pm, so we definitely got there too early to set up. Oh well, it was alright, I had nothing else better to do. So 9pm finally arrived and we were 5 people short from what had originally signed up. I bet you can guess what happened next.... Yes, they begged me to play. I had already told Jeff about it, so I went along with it finally after a lot of convincing. They finally rounded up 9 guys and 8 girls. Yes, so I had to talk to 9 guys for 5 minutes each. It was so cheesy, yet hilarious. I got maybe 4 good questions throughout the whole night. No wonder some of these guys can't find a date. Well that and theres only like 10 good looking girls that live at Sigonella. We got free drinks all night and it turned out being a good time. Here's the part that really convinced me to participate (well other than my bosses begging me to do it). The winners got a 100 euro dinner out in Catania and were going to be choufered (can't spell) in a brand new 2006 Jaguar all night (Dad and Bill would be so proud of me!). I knew one of the guys so we put our names in together (yes he has a girlfriend and he knew about Jeff) at the end to win. We didn't win of course. I watched some of the opening ceremony tonight on the tvs there. The night finally ended and I got home around 12:30. I needed some sleep for snowboarding in the morning.

Sat. Feb 11 - Snowboarding again today! 4 times in a week ain't bad, huh? We had tons of people going today and two extra vans than usual with the Boy Scouts. Our van was absolutely full, but we made it up there in good time. You can tell the snow is starting to melt and we're probably not going to get many more good weekends to get up there. I wish it would have a good snow again. We haven't had to use our snow chains since Rosario and I had to that first week I was here. The lava is starting to get exposed on the path and the snow thats there has turned into ice. It's kinda hard to get traction on a few of the spots since it's so icey. I'm gonna take some time this week and sharpen my heel-edge on my board that I've been using. It's still fun though and for 12 euro you can't beat a day on Etna. I've heard some good things about the other side of the mountain's ski lodge and lift so I wanna get over there before the snow disappears completely. Today was really fun though hanging out with a bunch of the MWR staff. I'm really starting to get the feel for transitions. I only landed on my tailbone hard once today. I'm getting better for sure. I hope the ships that come in this week decide to plan some trips all week. If they do, I am going to have to go on each of them because Kim's last day is Tuesday. They'll have to find drivers and then I'll be the escort who goes on the mountain to be able to fix peoples stuff and in case of any emergencies. It was awesome. The weather was cold today and cloudy, but I think I've just been spoiled from this Wednesday up there. After we got back, I went and got dressed while they were unloading the vans so I could go with Kim and her husband over to Marinei. Thats the complex they all live in that got flooded in December. Leslie and her husband Jake were having a BBQ so I just rode with Kim and hung out at her house until they got ready. The BBQ was fun and I got to hang out with everyone from last weekend. I met a bunch of new people too. It was fun and crazy of course. We hung out on their roof, had a campfire, ate some BBQ ribs and steak, and had a good time. I finally went to bed around 6am in their big fluffy guest bed.

Sun. Feb 12 - I woke up around 10am and they brought me home. I fell asleep in my room for another 3 hours or so and had to wake up so I could get to the library and commisary before it all closed. I got to the library, wrote some Hello Emails, and headed to the grocery store to get some water, Dr. Pepper, pasta sauce, and some other goodies. I needed more breakfast stuff since I'm gettin really good with eating breakfast everyday with my vitamins. After getting some dinner and snack stuff I rented a movie called Red Eye. It looks kinda good, its got Rachel McAdams from the Notebook in it. I figured I'd give it a try since I never saw it advertised in the States. By the time I got home and made some dinner, I fell asleep to early to watch a movie. I did watch some Olympics updates though between waking up and falling asleep. I ended up getting a lot of sleep yesterday to help prepare me for the crazy week this week. I'm hoping to see a sub early this week down at Augusta Bay.

Time is going by too fast!

2006-02-08T21:45:00.000-10:00

I can't believe I've already almost been here a month! Time flies when you're having fun I guess.

Tues Feb. 7 - I went into work a little early so I could meet Leslie again and see how everything is going around the office after being off yesterday. All of the boards were back from the weekend but Meagan hadn't gotten any ready for our Wed trip or weekend rentals yet. I started on those and got all of the ones I could get ready finished. We got seven new boards in yesterday and they are already all rented for the weekend. Those boards are going like crazy and Kim and I are like the new popular "snowboarding chicks" on this mountain and among the guys around base. It's so funny, we'll go eat together and people will stop and say hi to us. They said this is the most successful that snowboard rentals have ever been, they almost sold them all last year because they were afraid they were making a bad investment in them. While I was working on them Kim asked me if I had my board ready for tomorrow. I had no idea they wanted me to go again tomorrow. I double checked with Leslie and James about it and they told me to go ahead and that they are requiring that 2 people go each time for safety reasons. Alright, I'll go again...I guess. I loaded up the van after getting all the Wednesday trip ones ready and we've got 8 going with us. I worked at the front desk for the rest of the day and booked some tours and overheard some bad news. Ever since the flood here last month, money has been tight. At the end of the week, we are probably going to have to cancel our Calabria Ski Trip and Dublin due to lack of participants. We are supposed to have at least 25 for each, but we've only got a handfull signed up for each so far. You never know though, they said people come sign up last minute all the time. Maybe I can find a 4-day weekend to go up there by myself, it just won't be during St. Patty's Day weekend probably. I've realized that flying in Europe once your over here is really cheap. I've been lookin up tickets and nothing is over $300 bucks round trip. I'll have to start askin around if anyone wants to travel somewhere with me. These two months are gonna go by so fast though, its starting to scare me. I don't wanna leave, I'm having too much fun and meeting some awesome people. I told Kim that I'd take her full-time job as the Recreation Aid of the department. Sicily for a few years wouldn't be too bad... Anyways, I'm dreaming. Leslie and her husband are going to have a big welcome back BBQ on Saturday so thats what I'll be doing when I get home from snowboarding. Kim will give me a ride over there and back, I don't know if we're going boarding on Sunday again, but I've heard these parties are crazy and will last til early in the morning. That should be fun. I also got an email from the C5 Air Force guys saying that they're coming back to Sigonella and want to go snowboarding and go downtown. I'll probably hang out with them next week if they are here for a few days. They were hilarious last time they were here. Work has been nice because I actually offer suggestions of how to change forms or programs and they agree with me and let me change some. I've already created a few new forms for rentals and changed some of the existing forms to make them easier to understand and eliminate a lot of useless wordage. I'm been averaging working over 50 hours a week since I've been here. I dont want to leave ITT now since I'm really starting to get into it and they are showing me everything. Leslie is going to be a really good addition to this intern, she's really into helping me, even just after today. She suggested that I go to "Coaching Star Service" (a customer service class for managers) instead of re-taking a 2-day customer service training class that I took in Millington before I got here with MWR. It's at the Navy base in Naples, so she's going to try and set that up with James permission. She told me not to rely on it, but it would be really good for my position that I'm working towards as a manager. After work, I went with Kim into Motta (town near Sigonella) and she brought me to two Iron-works places where she buys a bunch of stuff and introduced me to the owners. I got some good ideas for X-Mas presents tonight. She drove me around Motta and pointed out some good places to eat and hang out and then drove me back home. I ate some dinner and sat around my room watchin tv and fell asleep early for my next day of snowboarding. She's going to give me some phone numbers of people to hang out with for after she leaves. She knows I want to travel around Sicily on weekends and she knows some people who do that pretty often.

Wed Feb. 8 - Another day of snowboarding.... how sad? We got going picked up our people and headed for the mountain. I brought my Ipod and some speakers for our ride up there today. There are no radios or anything in the vans so we decided last week to figure somethin out for music. It definitely livened up the trip and made it go by faster. That hour drive is like nothing now. We've got it down. We're getting good at moving quick and getting everyone dressed and on the mountain faster. Today was the most beautiful day up here ever. It was just like the first time I came up here with Rosario but of course I got to go to the top today. You could see the ocean, Augusta Bay, all the near-by cities, and all the craters down below. It was cold and windy, but the snow was groomed and perfect. She told me today was the day to try and learn some skills. A guy Keegan hung out with us all day and he helped me learn the transitions and getting down the mountain switching from heels to toes and vice versa. I took some really hard crashes right onto my hips and butt, but I knew it would be the only way to learn how to do it. They told me I'll get the feel of it and how gravity will keep me balanced after I get it a few times. I was doing really good eventhough I knew this would hurt really bad in a few hours. We made it down 4 times and taught 2 new people how to board. It was a really fun day, it wasn't busy, and the snow and weather could not have been better. I brought my camera with me the last two runs to take pics, but I don't think I'm going to do that again Saturday cuz it's really risky if I would fall on it. We'll get some pictures of us riding down and get Kim doing some jumps, but that can wait a little bit. I want to practice those turns more. I was talking to Keegan yesterday about catching some MAC flights on the other base for free cuz he works over there for traffic control. Here's the deal, I can try and catch a space-available flight to somewhere in Europe (everyone suggested Rota Spain or Germany) and get a flight back. The catch is, is that the flights are only every week or so. I would have to take a whole week off work to risk catching a flight back. I can't do that, a week is too much to get off. My time here is technically 13 weeks, but a 3-4 day weekend would be more feasible. We'll see, I just really want to do that before I leave. We ate lunch, got a group pic, got more popular with the Italian ski patrol, had fun overall, and once again, met like 4-5 new friends. These trips are so much fun and we've got 5 ships and a submarine coming in the next two weeks, so I have a feeling we'll be taking more trips up here next week. WooHoo for me! We got back around 5:15pm and re-did the boards from today for the weekend rentals. Everyone hung out at work for a little bit tonight and Kim, Mack, James, and I went to the food court to eat and hang out before everyone went home to do nothing. I got home, took a shower, watched some tv and fell asleep uncontrollably. I was so tired and starting to feel the pain from today's falls.

I'm addicted to snowboarding!

2006-02-06T05:01:00.000-10:00

- So I finally found someone who is gonna let me use their computer and Internet to get some pics online. I only had a short time to do those first couple pics, but I've got over 200 more to look through and get on the blog. I hope you enjoy them, I've got plenty more to take while I'm here.

Thurs & Fri - Happy Groundhogs Day! Work has been getting crazy and I am loving it. I hate slow, boring days and now that I know how to work the front counter and the back rentals, I stay busy and work over 50 hours per week at ITT. James told me I'm moving to my next spot next week. I'm not to happy about that but my bosses at ITT have convinced him to let me spend most of my time there. The snowboarding rentals and weekly trips are booking up so fast lately. Ever since Kim and I have been taking the trips and going boarding with everyone, the word has spread and we're getting some loyal customers to hang out on Saturday trips. It's been a lot of fun. A lot of our employees have been sick or having problems at home which is making the office pretty short staffed. It's alright though, we just have to work at a faster pace and move from the front to the back constantly. Friday was insane though, it was almost too much. Kim and I have been working all week from the morning and not leaving until around 6:30 or later. After the office closes at 5:30 is when we can actually get organized and get some work done. She ordered 20 more boards, but they still havent come in. We need them really bad because these boards are going on two times a week and their slowly getting ruined. It's alright though, we just come into work after we get back from our Saturday trips and get some more ready to go out again for the weekend. It's the most business they've ever done with snowboarding rentals since they've offered it here. She's leaving in about 2 weeks so I hang out with her for dinner and work since her house is pretty much empty and her husband is still out of town. Kim, Mack, James, Amber and I went out to dinner Thurday night across the street at the Days Inn Resturant. It was really good. I got home and watched to new season of Survivor, it was really cool. I can't believe they have a "Lumber Jill" on the show. I thought that was awesome....until they kicked her off first. What the hell? Come on, she's a lumberjack for crying out loud!! Oh well, Friday night we all ate at the food court together to discuss the snowboarding trip in the morning. We had a full van going and Mack, Amber, and this snowboarding expert Phil were going to follow us and hang out. It took me about 2 hours to load the van and try and somehow fit 14 snowboards and a set of skis in this 14-passenger van and still have room for all the guys coming. Kim is so fun to hang out with, I'm gonna miss her when she leaves. Shes fun to hang out with and actually likes teaching me how to board. She tells me I'm her entertainment and she likes to hang out with me too. I'll have to find a new friend after she leaves.

Sat. Feb 4 - Ah, snowboarding again. 2nd time around and I'm excited to get up there. I met Kim at 7:30 and we were on our way up the mountain around 8:15am. The weather was absolutely wonderful today, you could see everything at the top. There was a bunch of snow up there too so I knew it'd be a good day. Phil taught a few of us some more trips and by the end of the day I perfected my toe-to-heal transition for switching sides down the mountain. I really liked the shorted board I had today and was cruising down the mountain like I had been doing this for months. I did really good and yes, I'm addicted to it now. We've made really cool friends on these trips and it's fun to hang out on the mountain with really cool people. By the end of the day, it was only taking me about 15 minutes to get down the mountain. Snowboarding is such a good workout for your legs, abs, and butt. My arms are killing me though, it surprisingly takes a lot outta your shoulders when you fall and prop yourself up from the sitting position. On our last run, we found this awesome trench and started trying to do jumps out of it. It was hilarious, but I was down for trying it. Kim was amazed that on my second time on a snowboarding, I was already trying to do jumps in this huge, deep trench on the outter path. Oh well, what did I have to lose? An arm, a leg. Oh well, I didn't hurt myself (knock on wood) and I had an awesome time. We left around 4 and got home in about an hour. The weather was still great when we left. It did start to rain though on the way home, which is good because that usually means it's going to snow on the mountain. The drive home is so funny, you look back into the van and see 12 guys asleep from a long, strenuous day. I was trying to find someone to go downtown to Catania with me for the St. Agata Festival, but no one was interested. We got the van back to ITT, cleaned it out for tomorrow, and put all the snowbaords away. It took awhile, but Mack and Phil stayed around to help us unload. After that, Kim asked me if I wanted to tag along for a Create-A-Trip that she booked this week for 5 old ladies that wanted to go visit Mt. Etna tomorrow afternoon. She told me we could cover it up and take our snowboards with us. We just had to drop them off and we could do some runs on the mountain while they are sight seeing and eating lunch. I agreed and she was pretty excited that she'd have somebody to board with and take the boring, wet drive up the mountain. We had it planned out, she was going to tell the customers that I was the new intern and she was taking me along on this trip for educational purposes and to see how this system works. She told me to dress normal and we'd sneak our stuff in the back of the van. They'll never know. Once we finally got outta work, they offered me to hang out with them for the night at their housing community (the one that flooded). I went back to my room, got dressed, and grabbed my camera and cord cuz Mack told me I could use his computer to get those pics uploaded. The night was really fun, we ended up hanging out with 6 people down the street who were having a party around their fire pit. Half of them were my age and the other half were Kim and Macks age. They were really cool though, they reminded me of all my Forestry Club buddies. They were farm boys from Louisiana and Tennessee. I got some of the pics uploaded before I went out, but it was taking a really long time. I'll just have to go back over there and spend some more time on it. I'm so glad it worked though. I went to bed really late and was scared I wasn't going to wake up and feel very good for the trip in the morning. We weren't leaving until 10 though, so I figured I'd be fine. I stayed the night with Kim in her bare house, but it was a lot of fun.

Sat. Feb 5 - Kim and I got up bright and early and headed back to base to get ready for our secret-intentions trip. I ran home real quick though to change and grab some warm clothes. We had kept our snowboarding pants and jackets at the office though to dry out during the night. We mopped out the van and we went and picked up the 5 people for the trip. It had been raining all night and the weather was really nasty. Half way into the trip, the weather started to clear up and you could start to see the mountain. Since Sundays are official off-days for Italians, there was an insane amount of traffic getting up the mountain. I've never seen so many people in my life, they were all sledding down the craters and just walking around. Not many of them were on the mountain skiing though, so we figured we'd get 2 or 3 runs in before they wanted to leave. They only wanted to be up there for 3 hours and by the time we finally got into the parking lot, it was already past noon. We still wanted to go and the half-day ski lift ticket was only 8 Euro. Today was the day I found out how rude and annoying Italians truly are. They arrive in huge buses and walk around in their hot pink, turqouise, and baby blue snow suits and walk right in the middle of the street. They don't move for cars and since we're Americans they are even more ignorant to us. Oh well, we let the people out and we drove around for another 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot. The parking and driving system here on a Sunday is practically impossible. There were probably 25,000 people up here today. We hurried up and got dressed and headed for the lift. It was awesome, we walked right on and saw some people from base so we boarded down with them. I did alright, but I like the shorted board I had yesterday better. I did have one painful wipe out though. A guy ran directly into me from behind and I fell down the mountain, hit the back of my head hard, and my board flipped all the way over my head and I did a backwards summersault. I literally laid there for about 10 minutes holding my head because I was so dizzy. My tailbone was killing me too. I got up though and finished the run alright once my pounding headache went away. We got 2 runs in when they called to tell us they were ready to leave. We hurried up and ran to the car to change. By the time we were leaving, it was snowing pretty hard. They got in, told us they had a great time, and asked us the question "did you go snowboarding?" We laughed, told them the truth, and they didn't care. They were really fun to meet and the drive back was filled with conversation and stories about their travels around Europe. It was still raining when we got back to Sigonella, so we figured there was more flooding around her (Kims) house. We got back, cleaned the van again, and I went back to my room to take a nap before Super Bowl tonight. She wasn't coming to JOX to hang out for Super Bowl, but my boss told me he'd find me a ride over there when I was ready. I went back, took a shower, finally got ahold of Jeff, and took a nap for a few hours. I left around 11 and finally got picked up and brought to JOX right before the game was starting. I was still really tired, but I wanted to go and have a good time. It was me and the big-dogs hanging out all night. It was so funny to see the MWR Director, my boss James, and some of the other Administration act crazy when they got drunk and hyped up about the football game. I saw two guys from the snowboarding trip last weekend and played 2 games of pool with em. There is definitely an advantage to being a girl over here, I never have to buy drinks. I only had 4 Bud Lights, but I only had to buy one. $2 for the whole night ain't bad! Overall, the night was fun, but long. I got on the microphone and gave away a bunch of prizes because my bosses were a little to intoxicated to complete the task. The game started a little after midnight and ended at 4:45am. James told me I had to take the day off since I've been working too much and told me to get some sleep and catch up on some school work. Amber drove everyone home around 6am. None of my bosses could drive, so the 6 of us fit in her tiny Hyundai. Yes, 4 grown men (2 are fairly larger) and her and I in this tiny car. It was a total clown-car moment for like 15 minutes until they dropped me off and another guy. I was laying across them in the back seat, but luckily security let us out the gate and on our way. There's no way we were going to get in trouble anyways, we had the most important people at MWR in that car. It was fun though. I finally got to bed around 6:45am. ***After the game was over, James told all of us that he has a friend whos parents left their house in Torino for a few months to escape the Olympics madness and asked if we wanted to all take a road trip up there and stay there for 4 days during the Olympics over President's Day weekend. It's a 13 hour drive, but we'll just use one of the MWR vans to get up there. This will be awesome if it all works out. Its the same week as that Calabria Ski Trip I mentioned, but we don't even know if enough people are going to sign up for it to go. I think I'd pick the Olympics trip over that anyways. We'll see. I'll probably find out my the end of the week if enough people want to drive up there together, it sounds good to me.***

Mon. Feb 6 - I went to bed at 6:45am like I said, but not even 20 minutes into my sleep, the fire alarm in our building started going off. This was the loudest and most annoying sound I've ever heard. I got up, but some flip flops on and headed outside. There were only a few other people out there, but the firemen and everyone else showed up. I was freezing. I had shorts and flip flops on. It took about 25 minutes for them to fix the problem and I impatiently went back and my bed to go to sleep. Oh yes, only 20 minutes later comes the alarm again! Once again, back outside, freezing and waiting. About 30 minutes later, I finally get to go back into bed. Back to bed and yes, again, this time a little longer sleep, 20 minutes later it's going off once again. I was so aggravated and the people in my building weren't looking too happy either. It only took about 10 minutes to fix, but come on, it was 8 in the morning and I had only been asleep so far for like 30 minutes. Luckily, the madness didn't happen again, but I woke up around 2pm. I called Jeff and talked to him for awhile before he got the work, but then I went and took a shower and got ready to leave. I headed to ITT to visit beause my real boss, Leslie, finally got back in from the states. She was really nice and I went and talked to everyone for awhile before I headed over here to the library. I'll be in here for awhile today, but I'm not really in the mood to work on my report. I'm just checkin emails and catching up on my blog. I might go see a movie tonight, do some laundry and cook dinner. I've got a long week ahead of me, and yes of course, Im signed up to go snowboarding on Saturday already! I'll talk to you all later, I miss YOU!

Hydro-Speed in the Alcantara Gorge

2006-02-04T22:28:00.000-10:00

These are from my hilarious Hydro-Speed Adventure in the Alcantara Gorge. Let me tell ya, its hard to look sexy in a full 5mm neoprene suit.

Trip #1 to Mt. Etna South

2006-02-04T22:18:00.000-10:00

These are some of my pics from my first trip to Mt. Etna. You can see the lava rocks that are exposed the whole ride to the top, the craters that you can walk around, and on this trip you could actually see the Mediterranean Sea. It's usually to cloudy to see everything, this was a beautiful day.

A long week

2006-02-01T22:01:00.000-10:00

Sorry it's been awhile, I haven't really had too many exciting things happening and I definitely haven't found anytime to write you all or my school report for the week.

Mon Jan. 30 - I went into work today and I was the only one there with Kim for almost half of the day. I got a lot of work done on snowboards and getting them returned to get ready for the trips this week. As of today, 15 outta the 21 are already rented for Saturday and a few for Wednesday. The only ones left are the really short ones and the two really long ones. They probably won't get used. By the end of the day, I had almost half of them waxed and ready for their rental and almost all of them booted and binded. I'm getting pretty efficient at sharpening and waxing the boards. We did have two come back ruined from the weekend and two more in desperate need of some help from Rosario. It was nice today without all the staff and we got a lot of work done. As everything was being returned throughout the day, I started somewhat of an inventory list. They have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment here, and no record of what they have. I wrote MWR on everything in that entire shop today. Coolers especially, tables, chairs, helmets, boots, etc. When Rosario came in, he taught me how to use P-Tex, which is like a hard plastic that you melt to fix any breaks or deep scraps in the snowboards. A lady from a big swim meet over the weekend came in and returned 98 folding chairs and about 15 tables, so I had to help put all of that away. The day surprisingly went by pretty fast. Near the end of the day, I sat up front and worked with the customers. We had to cancel our trip to Venice today because not enough people signed up for it. They were only 2 short and throughout the next day, we had over 6 calls about it. Oh well, these people have to realize that we need to book the airline and hotel tickets. We did create a new trip for the month though. It's a trip that they did the weekend I got here to Reggio Calabria. Its a beautiful ski resort on the southern tip of the boot of Italy. The girls all really enjoyed it and they said the hotel was awesome. There's a selection of ski hills (easier compared to Etna thank goodness), hiking trails, and other outdoor things to do there and its less than $300. Kim told me that I'll probably just have to pay what their cost it. She said around $200, so I'm definitely gonna go. Its Feb. 17-20. I guess it'll be my Valentines Day present to myself since I won't be able to be with Jeff. It sounds really fun and I'll finally be able to get some games of Phaze 10 in with the staff. After work, I just went to my room and hung out. I have no hot water in my room still so I'll have to hold off on a shower and laundry. Nasty huh, they promised me their getting it fixed by tomorrow.

Tues Jan. 31 - I pretty much did the same thing at work today. All the boards finally got returned so I've been a waxing machine. I know I finished everything for tomorrow's trip and I've only got a few more to do for the weekend. We have a big problem with the 4 that got broke over the weekend. They're all boards that need to go out. Hopefully, the shipment we ordered about a month ago will arrive by Friday (fingers crossed). Well today was freakin crazy, it's been raining for about 24 hours now and the winds have been crucial. There were rumors of possible flooding again at one of the big housing complexes that everyone lives in off base, so many people went home early this morning and everything was shutting down. Kim and I stayed at the office all day because everyone else at ITT either went home around 11:00am or called in. I had nothing better to do than sit in my room, and Rich (another supervisor guy) asked if I would help clean out rooms and set up cots for possible emergency evacuations and overnight stays. This was serious and people were freaking out because they are just got all getting moved back into their homes from the floods in mid-December. We ordered pizza for ourselves and got a lot of organization kinda work done around the office. She was happy to finally get some stuff done and have time to get her work done without everybody asking her a million questions. I think we were one of the only buildings on NAS I that didn't close down. We had to go ahead and cancel the snowboarding trip for tomorrow because rain was in the forecast for the next 24 hours. NAS II was completely shut down all day. I called the people signed up for tomorrows trip and told them it was getting canceled and to see if they wanted to credit their account to another trip. Everything worked out great and I sent emails to all the people signed up for the Venice trip to tell them it was canceled. We ended up closing the office around 4pm and it was another night of doing nothing in my room. I was finally able to take a shower and get my laundry done. Secret Window and Blue Crush was on tv so I just sat and watched those. I ended my night early out of boredom. These nights just sitting in my room are really starting to take a toll on me. Oh well, everyone else was worried about the flood getting in their house, so I couldn't complain. Goodnight.

Wed Feb. 1 - I overslept today because I wasn't feeling too good, but I got to work around 10:30 and was still one of the first ones there. Megan came back today from being off all week due to the cleaners fixing her house from the flood. Her house was in the Red Zone which was the block that got hit the worst. Her house is one of the last ones to get fixed up. Rosario was trying to fix the 2 somewhat-fixable boards, but by the end of the day he could only fix one completely. Still no shipment either. I guess Ill be calling those people tomorrow and tell them that they can't attend the trip. We got our shipment of rock-climbing gear in today for the wall in the gym. They really ordered some nice stuff so I've been trying to convince them that I'll volunteer my time on Saturday or Sunday mornings to belay kids that don't know how to rock climb. Its a great wall, but during the entire time I've been here, I've never seen anyone use it. They've got the gear at the gym to rent for no cost, but I guess it's hard to find a friend that knows how to do all of that. James got back yesterday, so I've been talking about that idea to him. He's back for good and told me that I can probably just go on that Calabria Ski Trip for free. That was good news to hear. We also got some word about the Olympics now. The Naval Base in Naples and Gaeta are taking sailors to Torino and their sign up didn't go as well as they thought. SO NOW, theyve given us the details and said if we can take the ferry to Naples, that they can shuttle us to Torino each day and we just have to find our own tickets and stuff. I don't know how feasible this is, but if it turns out that people are actually gonna go, I'm going to try and tag along. I've got other things that I need to work on right now though. I have to start planning my special project, that's starting to worry me. I'm thinkin a Strong Man Competition, Eco Challenge, or some sort of Mini Olympics. Any ideas? James pulled me outta work around 3pm today because he told me they finally found a room for me. Its a room with a kitchen in it, so I had to wagon all of my things into my new room and get settled in. I ran to the commisary to buy some groceries, when it dawned on me that there is no oven in the room. How weird is that. Its only 2 burners and a sink different than my other room. Oh well, it's alright. Now its just really hard to get adjusted to a new room, especially when all I do is sit in it all night and watch tv and movies. I cooked some pasta though, that was a nice change from microwave dinners and burritos. The bathroom is really nice and the room and actually a little smaller than the last. I got some upgrades, but I think I took more downgrades moving into this new room. Oh well, 2 more months and a week and I get to come home and sleep in comfortable beds and not be bored and lonely everynight. I think people have just been busy lately and I haven't met anyone that lives on this base. All the people I've met either live in housing or on NAS II. American Idol was on though, so at least I got an hour of hilarious entertainment. This weekend should be fun though. I might go snowboarding again and Super Bowl is huge here at Sigonella. I'm running late for work, so I'll talk to you all later. BYE