I'm a rebel

Alright, I know you're all laughing. Who am I kidding? Me - a rebel, what a joke. Fact: I really am a rebel - a Runnin' Rebel. That's right. Today was my first day of graduate school at UNLV. I'm getting my MEd in PK-12 Educational Leadership. In English that means public school administration. I'm not entirely convinced that I want to become an administrator, but we'll see how it goes.

In other news, school (my day job) starts on Monday. I'm not even close to ready, but I don't think that time will stop moving for me to get ready. Does anyone remember the show "Out of this World"? The one with Evie - the girl who was half human and half alien and when she touched her fingers together everyone else would freeze and she could do whatever she wanted. I want that magic power! Too bad neither of my parents are aliens...................

My Tiger Beat Crush

Yes, it is true. Just like every 13 year old girl in the country, I have a huge crush on Zac Efron. Although I enjoyed his performances in High School Musicals 1 and 2, I did not love him until Hairspray. Have you seen it? If you haven't, you need to. I just bought the soundtrack and am enjoying it thoroughly. I'm sure I'm not the only slightly-too-old -for -him fan............will anyone else admit to this with me?

It's that time of year again............

Can you smell that??? It's the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, new backpacks, shiny new shoes. That's right. School is starting soon! I have mixed feelings about this. While it is VERY sad that my fun summer is ending, I am a geek at heart and really love school. So, it's back to Del Sol.

Back from North Carolina

I'm excited that I can now check North Carolina off of my list of states that I've travelled to. Besides 5 days of work-related conference classes, I had the chance to see and do some fun things. I went to the UNC campus (that's where the conference was), walked around the quaint town of Chapel Hill, ate lunch on the Cape Fear river, see the USS North Carolina battleship, go to the beach in Wilmington, wade in the Atlantic ocean, and survive pre-hurricane rain.

Here are a few pictures of the trip.

North Carolina

I'm going to be in North Carolina for a conference this week and it looks like I'll have a lot of free time. Any suggestions as to what I should do there??????????????

Rude Homeless Man

Today I encountered a rude homeless man. I exited the freeway and saw a man with a sign beggaging for help. His sign said "I'm needy. Any help appreciated." I felt bad for him - it was REALLY hot. I didn't really want to give him money, but I did have an unopened bottle of water. I know that water isn't that exciting, but it is something. I unrolled my window as he walked by and said, "Would you like a bottle of water?" he put his hand on his hip and sassily said "Is is cold????" I mean, would cold water be better than warm? Yes. But at least I tried. I mean, I was the only person who unrolled their window - give me a break. He decided to take the water and then say "Thanks a lot?" Oh well. I tried to be nice.

New Hair

I know it's kind of hard to see, but whaddya think?

Home Sweet Home

I'm back! It was a fabulous trip, so much fun, and I'm glad to be back. I'm going to go back and add pictures to my old posts so that you can see some of the fun things that I talked about.

I smell.....

It is official...I smell. I guess that is to be expected when you live out of a backpack. Yesterday we were in a random train station in Hungary. Very close to me sat a homeless man and his mangy dog, yet I was the one with about 30 flies all over me while he and his dog had none. Hmmmm......
Tuesday: We took a train to Vienna, which of course was late in leaving and even later in arriving in Vienna, which meant that we missed our trian to Prague. That gave us a few hours in Vienna which we spent walking from the Westbahnhof to the Südbahnhof (West Train Station to South Train Station). While walking we ate at a schnitzel restaurant. I tried to order schnitzel but just got chicken fingers and french fries - oh well. We caught the next train to Prague. When we got there we found our Hotel and then just wandered around a little bit.
Wednesday: We took a train to a little city outside of Prague calle Kutna Hora. In the train station we met two boys from London named Ashley and Harry. They went with us to the Sedlec Ossuary. It was a really creepy church/crypt where the bones of 40,000 people are arranged in the form of pyramids, garlands, a chandelier and a coat of arms. Don´t worry, I took lots of pictures.

On the train on the way back we met an 68 year old man named Joe from Texas. His wife hates to travel and he goes to Europe every summer by himself. He had some really great stories to tell and even showed us a few places in Prague when we got off the train.

We went to this astronomical clock that is like a cuckoo clock. On the hour, statues of the apostles parade through the windows on the clock and a skeleton rings the bell. Apparantly the people of the Czech Republic really like skeletons. Then we went to the St. Charles Bridge, which was really pretty. We went back to the hotel pretty early since Prague gets really crazy at night.
Thursday: We took a train to Berlin. We figured out the Metro system, found our hotel, and then went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Although we are all having a great time, we are all just about ready to be done with the trip and needed something a little bit like home.
Tomorrow we plan on going to a concentration camp, and seeing some of the more famous Berlin sights on Saturday. Then on Sunday we will stop in Hamburg on our way to Dusseldorf. I hope to have a really great hamburger and pommes (fries) in Hamburg before I get home and the diet starts. Sunday night will be in Dusseldorf and Monday we will fly home to Las Vegas. It has been a great trip - I will try to blog again one last time before we leave.

Hungary

Sunday: We got into Budapest and took a taxi to our hotel. It surprisingly turned out to be pretty nice. We dropped off our stuff and headed to a place called Hero's Square. It's pretty much a huge park with a castle, some statues, a zoo, etc.

I have been really impressed with Budapest. I wonder if Hungarians are offended by what Americans assume Budapest is like. It's the cleanest most beautiful city that we've been in so far. Lots of tree-lined streets, really wide streets, a great Metro system, the Danube going through the middle. It's great, aside from having probably the most crazy language and strange system of money.

Monday: We woke up early and took our own little walking tour of Budapest. We saw the Parliament building and St. Stephen's Basilica.

Then we took a series of busses and trams to Statue Park. After communism fell in Hungary, they decided to move all of the communist/era statues out of the city. They put them all in this park called Statue Park. We took some funny pictures imitating the statues.

We were then so hot and tired and frustrated with not being able to speak Hungarian that we ate at McDonalds. It was easy to point at what we wanted from the menu and we weren't worried about what sort of mystery food we'd be getting. Now we're back at the hotel just resting before we head to the Chinese marketplace.
Hope all is well in the states...................see ya!