thoughts from a travelling hailey, part deux, but with no punctuation.

heeeeeeeeeeey everyone. i didnt realize how much i took punctuation for grantid, but i am at a computer right now in nice, france that will not let me use exclamation points...my fave punctuation mark...brackets, or capslock. so...ha....this is almost too hard for me, but i want to write. i just hit spellcheck and it highlighted everything...because its not in french...haha!!!! i just copied and pasted exclamations...thats how cool i am!!!! wow.

anyways, where to start. i am in freaking france. and i am happy to be here. nice is like the los angeles of france, with its amazing shops and palm trees dancing around the streets. we are in a fun hostel type thing with free internet, so i am good to go for a couple minutes at least. im going to go to point form now, because there is so much to say i dont even know where to start, so i will share random notes from my travels.

1. candid travel update-since i last wrote we have hit the greek islands-santorini, ios and mykonos. italy-rome, florence, pisa, and genoa. and now nice france, and then off to paris for 4 nights!! i can hardly believe it, where has the time gone!!!!

2. i have smoked more this last month then i have in my entire life, but have not yet put a cigarette to my mouth. figure that one out. yeah. every single person smokes in europe. i am convinced. i dont think i would even think twice if i saw a toddler sitting on the side of the road with a cigarette hanging out of his lips. even babies smoke here!!!! i am smoking right now as i type. i am smoking like 5 cigarettes at once.

3. the greeks are the chameleons of cooking. they are amazing cooks, i loved almost everything i ate on the islands. they cooked north american food, italian food, thai food, aaaaaaaaaand greek food. and they did it better that anyone could.

4. i saw angelina jolie today. in nice. well her twin. danny had to tell me to stop staring. i looked at her like 6 times. i swear it was her. but then she was wearing this pink lipstick and i asked myself 'would angelina wear that shade of pink' the answer was 'no'. so it was not her.

and p.s. im not an angelina fan, but i just thought it was her.

5. florence has officially stolen my heart. i have heard about pick-pockets there, but i have never heard about this type of theivery. i loved every minute there and i need to go back. like this very minute. i have never seen such beauty before in a city.

6. i am the unofficial tzatziki queen. the greeks dont know it yet, but i actually am the unofficial queen, because nobody loves it more than me. i would even drink it. okay. maybe i wouldnt. but get this. speaking of odd drinks. i am a huuuuuge chocolate lover. seriously. i actually consider chocolate to be one of my main food groups. but danny and i went to this sweet cafe in florence called hemingway...where they are actually like chocolate experts or something, and i ordered this 'hot chocolate' in italian...and it was acutally a big cup of liquid chocolate. it was like drinking fondue. i couldnt finish it. but dang was it good.

7. the ancient roman ruins are probably the coolest things i have ever set my eyes on. i will have to post pictures, but they are just so insane, you almost cant wrap your mind around them.

8. we bought an original painting from a sweet tuscan artist in florence, that i am in love with!!!! i hope to post a pic of it because it is just beeeeautiful

9. we had one day in our travels, that i am not exaggerating, was probably the worst day of my entire life...the second worst, or the first worst...im not sure, but there were tears. many tears. long story short...some greeks are seriously so rude and one in particular...i dont mean to call him names, but he was an idiot and screwed us over like 100 euros or more because he was so brutally ridiculously stupid. i will tell more later. but we honestly considered coming home because it was such a bad day, it was like our entire world crashed around us. so not all has been fun and games for us....we sooooo appreciate everyones prayers.

10. time for bed. please continue to lift us up in prayer!!!! we have had such a good time travelleing together, and both feel we have grown as a couple, but we have a lot of big decisions to make in the near future, like where we are going to live once we are in vancouver, and where danny will work. and we want to be open to god using us, or open to live where he wants us to, so your prayers matter to us. thank you all for reading this. i will post pics once i get home. bonsoir!!!!

12 Thoughts from a Travelling Hailey

Random thoughts from my travels:
1. People from London are somewhat abrupt or unfriendly. I can't decide which one.
2. I love the old buildings in London. There is so so so much history here it is nearly impossible to wrap your mind around it. I love how they still use those old fashioned looking taxis too and the double decker buses. Very cute.
3. Pringles are everywhere in the world. I have decided there is nowhere there arent Pringles. I ate them in Africa in the middle of the Sahara dessert, and I ate them in the small airport town of Shannon Ireland. They are everywhere.
4. Driving should be illegal in London. It is so dangerous. Pedestrians and cars should have a 100 mile restraining order from one another, because we already saw a man get hit on his bicycle and I never want to hear a noise like that again in my life. I was sick to my stomach. I should rephrase....Danny SAW his bike fly in the air, and I HEARD a loud yell, and then we SAW a man lying in the middle of the road surrounded by honking cars and people. It was disturbing.
5. I hate flying. I hate it and I never want to do it ever again in my whole entire life. We had the shakiest flight EVER flying into London I actually almost broke Danny's hand.
6. Always pack light and buy more when you're away. You KNOW you'll end up picking up a few things so it is actually STUPID to pack your suitcase tight before you've even left home. I'm an idiot.
7. I want an accent. I don't care what kind, but not North American. Give me something interesting; different than everybody back home. Like British. I'll take their vocabulary too. Except the amount of swear words that come along with it.
8. I don't like Irish food. Well I didn't like ANYTHING I ate there (except the Pringles). But I really didn't eat a whole lot so...maybe I am not really sure. But the burger I ate was nasty and so was the salad. And their Coke made Danny sick.
9. Ireland looks like New Zealand a lot! So green, and there were sheep.
10. I like the noise horses hooves make on the road. There are all sorts of patrollers riding horses here in uniform.
11. You have to PAY to use the washrooms in the malls in London, or on the street corner. Not cool.
12. We went for East Indian food the other night with the family we're staying with and I absolutely LOVED IT. It was beyond fab. So delicious!!!!!!

Well there you go. 12 random thoughts!!! That's all for now. Hopefully I will have one more post while we still have free internet. We leave for Santorini, Greece on Saturday night! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pray for safe flights for us. I get so scared now with all these scary flight incidents lately. Your prayers are TRULY appreciated!!!!! Much love from the UK...

A Mini Update!

If you can accept my apology for not writing I would be VERY thrilled! I am sorry I haven't posted we have had literally MINIMAL Internet access for the last month. Out of control. It is nice to not have it tying me down, but at the same time I feel like I have lost all communication with everyone! Our Internet has been cut at our condo, and we are officially moved out and have renters in there until it sells. We holidayed at my Mom's side of the family's place on Vancouver island for nearly a week, and we were home for ONE day to prepare for our September long trip! Life has been ANYTHING BUT relaxing. Although we are enjoying ourselves!

On Aug.29 we headed to New York for a couple days where we enjoyed ourselves very much, although it was so busy, and we barely got any sleep at all, and had no down time! We arrived in the evening and hit Times Square so that was pretty amazing. SO much advertising pulling your attention, bright lights, a MILLION people-JUST INSANE! It was gorgeous weather and very fun. We were on the David Leterman show, and we were fortunate enough to see the sunset over the city at the top of the Rockefeller centre...where we could see miles of buildings and beautiful scenery overlooking the city. I LOVED Central Park and all its glory. It was 100x bigger than I thought it was. Absolutely HUGE! So many trees and little parks and fields and then you walk around the boundaries of the Park and its right downtown! We also went to the Mary Poppins Broadway, which I loved, and I was singing the songs in my head the whole next day.

We are now in London, England listening to the AWESOME British accents,(which make the kids like 100 000 times cuter than they actually are.) Before we arrived here, we were in Ireland for 2 days but just adjusting to the jet-lag and taking it easy. We didn't do a whole lot, but it was neat to touch down there and see a bit of the country. Their accents were sure funny. But now we are at our family friends' apartment which is in the heart of the city of London and very nice. They are so fortunate to live in such a cool spot! We will do some sight seeing tomorrow and then I think we'll be off to Greece hopefully in a day or two, so I will try to keep you up to date when I can. I have NO CLUE when the next time I will be able to write will be. It may not be until the end of the month! But I am thinking of you all, and I hope that you are good wherever you may be, as September has arrived! Time for bed for me! zzzzzzzz