my first blog--ever!!

hey guys, so i am finally back in canada and i am missing absolutely everything about this summer. i had to smooth out some wrinkles with my tuition and rent, but everything seems to be going well, i will be heading to kingston on tuesday.
my trip around europe---
well, it was absolutely amazing. it is too bad you guys couldn't come with me, but it was also very liberating to travel alone. i have met some very interesting and crazy pple. In Paris, my first day there, I met up with Andrew, another Riser (the dude from munich) and we went to see the city. Paris was not as well lit as i thought it would be and there are so many freakin tourists! 2/3 of the population in Paris were apparently not Parisians, so it gave me an excellent chance to practice my spanish. I also took a bick tour---word of advice--never take a bike tour when you are about to leave a city. they told me so many intricacies of the city and the various buildings that one MUST go visit when one goes for a walk around Paris. So unfortunately, after finding out all the best and coolest places that I can visit, I had to leave!
but during my stay there, i also met a lot of interesting people. there was a bunch of engineers from amsterdam, an english teacher from the uk, some coreans, and some crazy slovakians with really strong liquor!
i stayed up all night on the day that my plane left for amsterdam, because it was suppose to leave at 6 in the morning, meaning that i had to take the shuttle to get there at 3 in the morning, leaving 2 hours for check in time. so i just got drunk with a bunch of french, dutch and british people before i left.
in amsterdam, i stayed at the flying pig hostel, which, i found out later, was one of the few hostels that allowed smoking pot inside. so basically, when i got there, there were just massive amounts of potheads rolling all over the place. i think i fit in there pretty nicely, cause arriving from the airport at 10 in the morning, i hadn't slept for 24hrs and so i was pretty disoriented.
since i was just messing around alone, i decided to meet some people and just chill with them. that was how i met this girl who burnt down two warehouses when she was high on acid. she was pretty cool tho, she straightened out and has a very interesting perspective on life. the second night, i decided to go to another hostel and met some really tame people compared to the first hostel. but they were cool nonetheless. some guy got so drunk off of beer in his home town in the states that he lost his truck for 2 days only to find it parked across the street. what an idiot. i think he got offended when i laughed way to hard when he told me the story. and no i did no try mushrooms. but the red light district was pretty funky. i got offered all kinds of drugs and all the girls were exactly as everyone described, very pretty and in red little rooms. it was pretty surprising to see that about half the curtains were closed! what a busy night that must have been.
so then i was off the belgium, where i met up with annabelle, the girl from hohenheim. she showed me around the cities and her university town called Gent (pronounced Gaun in french). so first we went to the monuments and graves of the fallen soldiers from the first world war at ypres (i learned quite a lot about it in school since canada took a big part in that) and then we went to Ostende, this beautiful city by the sea and so we walked around the beaches and the wind was blowing craziness. at times, i thought i was going to either fall over or fly away from the shear force of the wind. anyways, had some belgian beer and off we went to Brugge. It was one of the pretties and most picturesque cities i've seen and the cobble stone street combined with the architectural marvels of the buildings made me fall in love with that city. anywhere you look, it could be an image fit for a postcard. and lastly, gent was just awesome. student town with lots of night life. unfortunately, when i visited that place, all the students were still on vacation. but still fun.
so that was about it. end of story for now. not bad for my first blog ever!
miss you guys and hope you are all doing very very well in school
katie