I think for today's entry it is best for me to first write what I actually wrote and then write what I probably meant to say...

What I actually wrote...

Today started at 10, which I can't believe I slept in that late. I keep getting lost and it kills me. I couldn't find anything. It took me forever to find Stopera. It wasn't too exciting when I finally did. And then I walked around until finding Rembrandt House.

Then I walked a million wrong directions finding Vondelpark. Then this is the crappiest blog ever. Then I went back to the hostel then I started

Dude I talked to two Canadians the night before (unintelligible scribble).

met up with Joe and Jackie and Lawrence. I can't write fake blog at this time. We took pictures than drank beer.

Fuck this is a fucking horrible blog on paper.

It's 3am I don't feel tired and haven't eaten a damn thing today. I had a cookie and frites. I need a goddamn bike. I need to go to a brown cafe and a coffee shop and a performance at Concertgebau. I suppose I should sleep.

And I also want to get high already.

I dunno.

I should move to Canadia. But then I'd probably have to stop calling it Canadia.

What I probably meant to say...

I woke up at 10, which feels late for a vacation. But I have seven days so I guess I don't have to rush anything. Last night, right after closing my book I decided that if I'm going to make this work I'm going to have to make this work. I bought myself another Heineken and asked a couple of guys if I could join them. They, of course, turned out to be Canadian and ended up being probably 18 or 19 (they hadn't yet started university). They were pretty awesome guys though. One wants to be a graphic designer/artist and the other a chef. I wish I had gotten their email addresses.

Today, as I said, started late(ish). I decided that my plan would be to go to see Stopera (I feel like I can't go anywhere now without at least checking out the opera house) and Rembrandt House then headed over to the Van Gogh Museum and Vondelpark.

This plan was somewhat foiled by the fact that I have absolutely no sense of direction and can't read a map for the life of me.

After walking in all kinds of wrong directions I finally stumbled upon Stopera...which wasn't really that exciting of a place to see. Probably prettier at night. I stumbled upon Rembrandtplein which was a cute little grassy area with a statue of the painter.

More wandering until I hit the Rembrandt House. Seriously, these Museums are impossible to find because they are all just in houses that blend in with other houses. Rembrandt House was OK, but not spectacular. Basically the first half of it is just his house set up to look like it did when he lived there. There is a lot of art work on the walls but only one of them is a Rembrandt. The man who worked there who at first thought I was German pointed out a series of paintings to me that were all sleeping guards with prisoners escaping. I doubt I would have noticed that without him.

The second half of the museum was an art gallery. The exhibition that was playing was Maria Sibylla Merian. You probably don't know her name but she drew lots of flowers and bugs and stuff and some of it probably looks familiar. At this point the audio tour began going into great detail over every piece of art. At this point I gave up on the audio tour and just looked around saying "That one is pretty."

My goal next was to make it to the Van Gogh Museum and Vondelpark. Yeah...so I managed to get lost. And loster. And lostest. I did find about three parks but none of them were the ones I wanted to find. I don't know where I was, but I honestly walked around for a couple of hours. It was grueling and terrifying. And I was cursing the fact that I had almost the entire week left to survive.

Finally found my way across a bridge, found my way through a market, and found the Heineken Experience and I knew that was near where I wanted to be. I finally found that on my map...still got lost...but made to to Museumplein. By that time I didn't really feel like going into the museums and managed to, somehow, find Vondelpark.

Vondelpark is beautiful and relaxing and beautiful. Its basically just a big park. I stopped and got a cookie and that was the only food I'd eaten so far. I wandered about. I sat down for a bit. I took some pictures. I reveled in the fact that I finally found where I was going. Then I nervously took off hoping I would be able to find my way home.

After a quick bite of some frites with fritesauce and some freshening up I headed to the monument to meet Joe. Joe's a truck driver from New York who I'd met earlier in the day while photographing some statues. He's into photography too and we'd agreed to meet up to go shoot some night shots. Also joining us was Jackie from the Philippines who Joe had met even earlier and Lawrence from Israel who just happened upon us.

We headed over to the red light district to shoot from the bridge (you can't take pics of the girls, but you can shoot straight on from the bridge) and did the square and some canals. Amsterdam is gorgeous at night.

At one point a guy came up to us and asked if we were a club. Lawrence made up a whole story about our club. We are so starting a facebook group.

After shooting we headed to a bar to grab a Heineken and chat. And then we called it a night. Apparently I went back to my hostel and wrote the worst non-blog entry in the history of non-blog entries. I honestly don't know where the Canadian rant came from...

Posted by valry at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the next week (hopefully all by Friday when I leave for Memorial Day weekend) I will be posting a day-by-day recap of my week in Amsterdam. Most of the journal entries will be taken straight from the journal I kept, maybe with a little more added...maybe with a little taken out ;-) Each entry will hopefully capture how I felt each day on that day. It was kind of an up and down journey for me and hopefully I will be able to reflect that. I'll post a few photos with each entry, but I'm guessing it may be about a month until you see the entire photo gallery. Sorry :(

It's easy to get lost here, but it's just as easy to get found. That's what I'm learning and I hope upon hope that that ends up being some grand-scheme-of-things metaphor. For now though, I am strictly speaking directionally.

As far as I can tell, the blocks work like this: on one side of the canal the numbers count up. On the other side of the canal the numbers count down. One side has evens and the other odds but neither side really seems to correspond to the other. In America a block is 100, in Amsterdam the houses are consecutive, each house if 2 after the other no matter how many fit on a block.

I haven't been here twelve hours and already my feet are full of blisters, my face is sunburnt, and my brand new $600 camera lens is broken. OK, to be fair it's not broken broken, I just accidentally dumped way too much cleaning solution on it and there's a fuzzy pool permeating the inside of it that's making all my photos blurry. Looking at it now the circle does seem to be fading and hopefully by the end of dinner it will be gone.

As I write this I am sitting at a table for one Haesje Claes waiting for a meal that is entirely Dutch and that I am pretty sure I won't like at all. I passed this place three times and on the fourth finally sucked it up and came in. I walked for an hour and a half looking for a place to eat that I felt I could go into. The first time it seemed too empty. The second time I didn't like the menu. The third it seemed too full. And the fourth I just went for it and asked for a table for one and was sat at the end of a table for six.

It's hard. And so far I am thinking that my quit my job and backpack Europe fund is quickly going to become a condo fund.

There is no doubt it is beautiful here. Amsterdam is kind of like Venice: there are canals (in fact, there are more here than in Venice), the streets are easy to lose (despite being a small place), and it's lonely.

Just a few years ago I still had it in my head that I wanted someone amazing in my life who would show me the world. And now I am trying my damndest to be the amazing kind of person who can show someone else the world. But I still wish there was someone special, or at least someone here to help me out, to make me less afraid, paranoid, and lonely.

And now its nearly 8pm and I have yet to eat and have done nothing but wander. And here is my food. I will be back.

***

Lets start from the beginning. My flight took off around 8pm last night. I watched a couple of sitcoms, 27 dresses, and...get this MK...they showed Top Gear. I ate chicken covered in a green sauce even though I'd asked for the pasta. I didn't sleep. That's enough about the flight.

I got in with no problems but when I tried to get a train ticket the machine rejected my atm card and asked for a pin for my credit card (I do not know a pin for my credit card). I thought for sure that I was screwed and would have to spend the entire week scraping by on only the few Euros I'd bought off my sister. Luckily later I managed to use both with no problems.

I found my hostel easily but couldn't check in for three more hours. I dropped off my bag though and went out wandering. I saw some sites, took some pictures, got lost, got unlost, found my way back to the hostel and checked in. I took a shower standing next to the toilet. There was just a shower spout and afterwards I had to mop up and squeegee the floor. I shouldn't complain though as it was pretty damn good to have a shower at all.

After freshening up I wandered off to find the Anne Frank Huis because I figured by that time it wouldn't be too crowded. I took off down the wrong side of the canal and then walked the other way back. At one point I found myself walking into a roped off line then quickly got out then realized that that was exactly the line I wanted to be in. It was pretty much unassuming...which...when you think about it...makes the most sense in the world.

The tour was sad and beautiful and powerful. Although, I felt kind of bad that I kept thinking that the apartment they were hiding in was way bigger than anything I'd ever be able to afford. It was interesting to go through because you actually entered through the door that was hidden behind a bookcase. You actually had to kind of hop up behind it. You actually had to walk up teeny tiny small stairs to get to the top. Anne's room was still decorated with movie star posters. And, the diary was right there. Although, it was a reproduction because they were safeguarding the real one until they adjusted the atmosphere or whatnot.

After the house I wandered around some more. Stumbled upon some statues. Stumbled upon some more canals. Then walked around huge blocks for forever until finally working up the nerve to get a meal. Let's just say Dutch food is...well...Dutch food. I had a hutspot, which is a dish with mashed potatoes mixed with carrots and onion, braised beef, bacon, and sausage. I hate sausage but I ate half of it anyways. (and, btw, my camera fixed itself by the time the meal came... thank god.)

After my dinner I wandered my way around some more. I sat down in the square for a bit, just to be out, but then this old(er) Kenyan guy started hitting on me and I had to get away. I was going to go to bed, because I believe I have now been awake for about 38 hours...but fuck it. I'm writing my journal and drinking a Heineken at my hostel bar. Everyone else is with someone else and I have a feeling I'm going to be on my own the whole week. And I don't know if I like this feeling.

Posted by valry at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guy: So, are you the official photographer?
Val: No, I'm just a big competitive eating fan.
Guy: I'm not going to lie. That's kind of weird.

So, it's not that me being a little weird of a person is any big news to anyone. But, every once in a while you are confronted with a situation which may just illustrate how odd you are. And, well, when you are seemingly the only person to show up to watch a hot-dog eating contest that is not either related to or friends with a competitor, you may start to reevaluate your life choices...or you just realize that perhaps you are the most awesome person ever and just enjoy the day. I will go with the latter.

Saturday afternoon the Matteson Sam's Club hosted a hot-dog eating contest which served as one of the qualifying rounds for the big Fourth of July competition. It's not often that there is an official IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) contest anywhere near Chicago, so when there is you know I'm there.

The way these qualifiers work is that there are usually one or two ranked or emerging competitors with the rest being locals who just want to try it out. While I was waiting I walked around for a bit to talk to some of the people because, hey, why not? No one had any clue how much they'd eat and I think everyone thought I was a reporter at first and then thought I was crazy when I said I was just a fan. Yes, yes, I think I am officially a groupie :)

The event started out with a "neat" eating contest for youngins where they each got a hot dog with ketchup and had to eat it without getting anything on them. Heck, I certainly can't do that. After that was the main event.

One by one the competitors took their places, prepared their drinks of choice, and were handed a plate full of hot dogs. In the middle, in the prime position, was Tim "Gravy" Brown, the number 13-ranked eater and obvious frontrunner. Next to him was a newcomer Patrick Vandam (another Pat!!!) who had only competed in 3 or 4 competitions thus far.

The countdown began and they were off. The two in the middle gobbled down while everyone else took their time. Actually, after a few minutes many of them kind of just stopped eating and started watching Pat and Tim battle it out. It was pretty fierce. Patrick began edging out Tim, being passed plate after plate of hot dog.

It wasn't the sheer speed or the commonly-used shaking technique that surprised me about this newcomer. It was his level of cleanliness. Seriously, I think he would have cleaned up (no pun intended) in that neat eating contest. I've met some of these eaters right after a competition before, and let me tell you, it's not always pretty. They usually are kind of sweaty and covered in water/juice/milk and have food particles all over. He had no crumbs. Almost nothing. It was pretty insane.

Anyways...as the final moments ticked down it was slightly unclear who would win. But in the end the upset was announced: Tim Brown with 28, Patrick Vandam with 31. Not bad not bad.

Everyone else I'd talked to said they'd eaten about 7. One guy said he had one. Then I went and got my picture taken with Pat. :)

It was a totally awesome contest. Nad, Bryan, and I are going to try to make it to Coney Island for the big one on the Fourth. I can't wait!!!

PHOTOS HERE!!!

p.s. Next up...day-by-day replay of my week in Amsterdam!!!!! Its the recap you've been waiting for!

Posted by valry at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, we're going to work backwards here...

Last night was JoeJoe's birthday. OK, so TODAY was JoeJoe's birthday but we celebrated last night.

About 45 minutes after I was supposed to get there JoeJoe gave me a call because he was worried about me. I told him I was there but just trying to find parking so he offered to come help. This offered up a brilliant opportunity. Julie was in my car. Julie, who as far as Joe knew was 1,000 miles away in Florida. So...while we waited for Joe to come down, Julie hid in the back seat of my car, and when Joe sat down inside, She jumped up with a pompom and yelled "surprise!" And that, well, totally surprised the heck out of Joe :)

After finding parking we headed back to Joe's place, ate some pizza, played some Mario Kart, watched some blueray. And Alina baked a yummy cake! Then we headed off to a bar where I got my fav raspberry beer and we all chatted for a bit and I tried my damndest not to fall asleep.

I got some pictures here.

Posted by valry at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well...I think I managed to totally surprise Heather last night. Josh texted me that he was organizing a little engagement celebration get-together in Champaign. I really should eventually get some sleep, so I debated whether I should drive the two hours, but, come on, your twin sister only gets engaged once in her life, right?

So after work I took off and met up at Jeff's place where we played Mario Cart. For the record, "Val's even in front of you" is not an acceptable insult :(

We finally headed over to the bar around 10pm and Heather was certainly surprised to see me, especially since she didn't expect for anyone to be there.

It was great to see her and see the ring and hear about the engagement. The ring didn't fit so she wore it on her middle finger and flicked people off with it. She is so happy. And she asked me to be her wedding photographer! :)

It was odd to see Champaign, because it is SO different, but it was kind of fun to be back there chilling at a bar. And it was fun to hang out with Jeff and Lindsay so hopefully I will be taking some more trips soon.

Oh, and James was totally hitting on me all night. He even stole my phone and texted himself with it to get my number. Just sayin. hahaha.

So congratulations to my twin Heather. You are going to be a beautiful bride (well...as long as you don't flick people off too much at the wedding). And Josh, you best treat her right. :-)

More photos here!!!

Posted by valry at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Seriously people, stop getting engaged already!

I now know TEN couples getting married, presumably within about the next 2 years. I happen to know of those TEN couple THREE of the weddings are within nine days of each other. So...lets catch up on the congratulations to those who got engaged while I was away...

Congratulations Joe and Meredith!!!!

Congratulations Heather and Josh!!!!

In all seriousness, I couldn't be happier for the four of you!!! And, I mean, it does mean that I get to buy ten new dresses :-)

Posted by valry at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I don't think I have ever even left Illinois before completely on my own. So why I decided to pick up and travel to Amsterdam all by my lonesome is pretty much beyond me.

After day two I knew what I was going to write here: that this trip was simultaneously the best thing and worst thing I have ever done.

After seven days though, there is only one thing to say: this trip was the fucking best thing I have ever done thus far in my life. Period.

Amsterdam was...

Oh fuck it, Amsterdam really was:

While I was gone I kept a blog away from blog (aka my paper journal) so I'll be typing that up and posting all about it next week. I have a pretty busy weekend ahead though so you probably won't see much else before Sunday or Monday. Plus I'm pretty exhausted and go straight back to work tomorrow. It will probably be a few weeks before you get all my photos. But don't you worry, they'll be worth the wait.

Posted by valry at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the land of tulips, wooden shoes, windmills, sex museums, and coffeeshops!!!

So...I'll be in Amsterdam for the next week!

Eep!

Can you believe this vacation is here already? I sure can't!

What am I going to be doing there? Ummm...who knows! I don't really have any plans for once I get there. I'm mostly just going to play is by ear. I'm going all by myself and everyone thinks I'm brave. But really I'm not brave but am trying to teach myself to be. I think it's gonna be a blast!!!!

I may post while there...who knows...if not, see you in a week!

Posted by valry at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Let us all take a moment of silence to mourn one of the greatest car towers to ever exist.

They tore the Spindle down on Friday night.
With absolutely no warning.
I kind of cried a little when I found out.
Saddest. Day. Ever.

Posted by valry at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Scroll over the items to see what's in my camera bag!

Posted by valry at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

1. Happy Birthday Chris!
Yesterday was Chris's birthday, so today there was a party! We ate food including some yummy red beans and rice (and I made a yummy onion dip, and I cried A LOT making it because my eyes are wusses) and watched Snatch, which I have never seen before.

2. Sorry, that was a really crappy recap.

3. After completely filling a 4gb CF card in 7 hours on Friday night, I decided that the 12gb of storage I curently had wouldn't be enough...so I bought another 8gb card...and now I have 20gb.

Posted by valry at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

face painting.

rain.

fire dancers.

performance art.

rubber monkeys.

midnight circus.

Looptopia photos here.

Posted by valry at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what sucks about being sick for 3 months straight and being too stubborn to go to a doctor? You totally forget about your list and/or knocking anything off of it. So, what's Val's total for April? Zero. A big fat zero. Don't worry though...May will be a huge month of making up for it...Trust me, I'm going to get interesting again soon, I swear. Who wants to have an Indiana Jones marathon before the new movie comes out???

Brush up on flash (3)
I have been working on it...

Go to a coffee shop at least twice a month to write (5)
Did it this month

Watch all the seasons of 24 (3)
Watched part of season 3. The first episode was all about Jack's drug problem. It was hard to get into.

April total: 0
March total: 1
February total: 5
January total: 13
Total Points: 19

Posted by valry at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. My car is on Google Maps!!!!!

2. I got a raise yesterday! :-)

3. MK held a beer tasting last night at Taylor Brewing. By beer tasting that apparently meant just come and order a beer. I was almost done with my raspberry wheat (I SWEAR) but then Scott ruined it for me by pouring his tasting glass into mine :( While MK was working he was not eating his food...and it was right there...so I may have eated a handful or 2 of his fries...and maybe some of the bacon off his burger...

4. A conversation:
LINK7182: how was beer?
faeriewingtips: ok
faeriewingtips: ohno, sex is coming back
faeriewingtips: that was really out of context

5. I forgot how much I hate my natural hair color

Posted by valry at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

none of you will ever understand how brilliant of a moment this was. Damn you all for not embracing the horribleness of reality tv...

May I present Paula Abdul's critique of Jason singing...after he'd sang his first song of the night...

Posted by valry at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)