rome. the self-proclaimed "capital of the world." there is so much to see in this bloody city. my feet hurt from walking every which where. venice was charming and nice, although seriously the ratio of tourists to residents is 3-1, no joke. sorrento was beautiful. the coastline and the villas perched on cliffs...amazing. and now rome. the food in italy has been tremendous. wowzers. the pasta here...oh so good. and a shoutout for justin kwan...they have carbonara here, hehe. when i saw it on the menu i thought of you and how you always made that dish. but seriously the food here is wonderful. funny though because their menus call mushrooms funghi. now when i first saw that i was like hell no i'm not eating anything with the word funghi in it. i mean cmon...what do you think of when you see the word funghi. just doesn't seem to associate with food. gotta change them menus man.

well my extravaganza traveling bonanza is about to end in a few days. from here i hit up madrid for a day then it's back to the US of A. america. home. so yeah...if you guys want any last minute gifts or things, let me know or it'll be too late. and make sure it's small cuz i have absolutely zero room in my backpack. i feel like a camel when i put that thing on. take care all and hopefully i shall see you people soon. this will likely be my last post on this xanga for a while...so as they say here in italy...arrivederci!

awesome. todaz was awesome. before i start though, i must saz sorrz to jen chen wherever zou are because i heard that zou missed out on canyoning in interlaken because it was raining. i went todaz and it was stupidlz cool. so first off i´m in a group with two canadians, 7 koreans (that´s right, 7 of those crazy folks), one british swiss girl, and mz sister and me. the koreans were funnz. after thez found out that mz sister was in fact mz sister and not mz girlfriend, thez were trzin to hit on her and stuff. funnz guzs. so we take this crazy vanride up the mountain to some canyon place, get our wetsuits on (i was like wetsuits, what the bloodz), harnesses, the whole vorks. i almost puke up mz breakfast because this guz is driving like adam, but with a van and me in the verz back with no air and all this gear on. great. anzhow, we finallz make it to our starting point and lo and behold...we have to rappel down a 150 foot cliff. i was psyched. mz sister started to cry, hehe. but i give her props because she sucked it up and went ahead with it like a pro. it was reallz awesome just to bounce bounce bounce all the waz down. so cool. then we hit frigid (i mean like ice cold ball shrinking i now can sing 20 octaves higher cold water, and now realize whz the hell we have these wetsuits on). from there, it´s a dream come true. we jump off 25 foot cliffs into water, slide down cliff like rocks, zip line through canyons, wade, skip, walk, saunter our way through the maze of rocks and water...it was just awesome. it was sooooooo much fun. canyonin folks. if zou ever get a chance, do it. DO IT. man it was so great. and the people i went with were great too. there was this cute little korean girl (peter min, i thought of zou when i saw her) who kept squeeling everz single freakin time we did anzthing. it was funnz. she got so tired at the end she kept going like eeeeh eeeeh as she walked through the water, haha. the canadians were funny too because thez tried to be all brave, but were reallz frightened and just kept shouting expletives when jumping down cliffs or sliding down rocks and waterfalls. hahaha. so good. SO GOOD. and of course the koreans were comical, posing and being all macho. ah man it was great. a good daz. oh zeah...and at the end we wanted to buz photos from the lady that did the photoshooting and i onlz had a large bill and wanted to see if she had change and she was like zoure coming to sodomize mz wallet. word for word. okaz seriouslz now. who the freakin hell sazs sodomize in the same sentence as wallet or money??? that has to be the strangest phraser i´ve heard. i was like ohhhhhhkaaaaz then. haha. i walked awaz still trzing to figure out the precise definition of sodomize and see if it matched up with what just went on, hehe. so zeah...it was a great daz of freezing mz ass off, trzing hard not to pee in mz wetsuit, enjozing good companz and of course, having fun slipping and sliding and jumping off cliffs that nearlz killed me. this was nothing like hawaii bz the waz. much more shallow and dangerous. zou had to land on zour back because if zou pencil dived...zou´d die. haha. nice aye?

anzhows...next stop veneto (venice). what will happen next...?

switzerland is beautiful. zurich was awesome. the city is quaint yet beautifully set near the lake. vonderful. okaz to get things straight...the y and z buttons on the keyboard are switched...so get used to it cuz i´m tired of editing.  traveling with mz sister is fun and nice, but at times we can get on each other´s nerves. she alwazs gets hungrz and i´m alwazs wanting to see this and that and not wanting to shop, another thing that she loves doing. but we somehow get bz without killing each other, so i guess that´s kudos for us. i do miss all zou guzs who are back in california and wherever the hell zou are in the world. how about this...we just all move to switzerland and live here zah? we can be like sound of music and frollic on the hills prancing around in the alps like we just don´t care. that would be awesome...until it got cold and until we realized we have no food and we had to eat grass. nice. only drawback to this wonderful countrz as of zet is the bloodz high standard of living. it costs me flippin (i know za´ll like this word) 5 swiss francs (about four US dollars) to use the internet for 30 minutes. outrageous! somehow we are not starving so that is all well and good.

next stop is interlaken where i hope to be able to either go white water rafting or canyoning (basicallz throwing zourself off cliffs and waterfalls and just plazing around int he water...sounds like fun to me). we shall see. oh, and another thing...the train szstem here is freakin awesome. thez are on time to the dot. i checked. we pulled into geneva at a minute before 2:15 when the train was supposed to arrive at 2:15. amaying. much better than ac transit or whatever the US can put together...darn us americans. should learn a thing or two from the swiss. oh...and something i learned...the swiss flag is the onlz flag in the world that is square. odd isn´t it?  oh...and zoung people do drugs all the daz and everzwhere in geneva, haha. we walked through the park todaz nad all i saw were clouds of "stuff" floating in the air. voooonderful. well...take it easz folks and be good. i´ll be trzing not to get high off fumes while here in geneva. =)

the cruise has officially ended. of course my parents are worried sick that we'll die in some terrorist bomb blast and threatened to cancel our trip...but alas cooler minds prevailed (or did they?) and we are continuining on with our trip. next stop...switzerland.

the cruise was fun. ate of course sooo ridiculously much food it was insanity. the buffet is open 24 hours...so yeah...you can get a clue of how much i ate. i only exercised like twice on the trip, and twice i went to the sauna (weird story to follow). ah might as well tell it now. so the last time i went to the sauna this spanish older overweight dude just kept staring at me. it was really disturbing. i was like um...look elsewhere buddy. i tried to stare him down and be like what's up fool...but he just kept staring. i quickly got outta there and ran back to the safety of my room...but man...weiiiiiird. anyways, the ship was full of freaking old people. man! michelle i should've gone to the mediterranean like you. seriously there were like 20 young people on the whole entire boat. basically my family and i played cards 24/7 when on the boat. but yeah...no more cruises...i heard that those boats are massive polluters and so yeah...baaaad.

now to all the places that i visited. first was stockholm. laaaaaame. raining hard the entire time we took the bloody tour where the lady was super crazy and yelled at other tour directors to get outta her way, haha. awesome. the nobel awards hall was the only kinda cool place, but even that was kinda plain and just okay. i bet the city is beautiful without the clouds and muck, but that's really all i saw. after that we went to helsinki. ahhh...this place was nice. nice weather and just a cool place to stroll around. it's funny though because the populations of ALL the scandinavian countries doesnøt even amount to the population of california...so yeah...not many people. so whereas copenhagen is all blond hair blue eyed folk...these other scandinavian countries are a little more heterogenous...which is nice. the coolest place i visited in helsinki was the rock church. basically a church that is built into a huge massive rock formation...it's pretty cool. too bad they have all these tourists prowling through the area and stuff. plus they were selling all these postcards and things and i thought to myself...if jesus were here would he take off his belt and start whupping? i was tempted to...but thought better...=)

russsiaaa was next. our guide was named, of course, olga. haha. and she always said yah? at the end of her sentences. like this is the royal palace yah? haha. she was awesome. she knew sooo much freakin history it was insane. st. petersburg is really beautiful. it's venice, but with different colors and a drearier atmosphere...but nonetheless wonderful. peterhof's palace rivals versailles. the hermitage rivals the louvre. st. isaac's church is amazing just like st. peter's in rome. just a really cool place. it was funny because the hermitage has seriously sooo much wonderful art. monet, picasso, da vinci, rafael, matisse, rembrandt, cezanne, van gogh, gougane, manet, elvin...haha...jk...so many i canøt even name and so many i don' teven know because i donøt know art worth spit. but basically the guide rushed us through the entire place so that we literally had like 10 minutes per 3 of those above mentioned artists. i think some of my art lover friends would have jumped her. and the tours were so long and exhausting because we only had two days in the place that i fell asleep just sitting around waiting for other people to catch up, haha! but the best part about russia is the alcohol. not that i drank much, but it's just funny when they serve you vodka for lunch along with champagne and all this other beer. our guide was like yah...we drink vodka alll the time. crazy ruskies. i drank a little and i passed out on our boat tour of the city, no joke. i think i took like one picture the entire boat cruise through the canals of the city. hehe. but yeah...russia was amazing and the history of the country is sooo interesting i want to learn more when i come home...

okay so the last three ports were tallinn (estonia), gdynia (poland) and oslo (norway). didnøt even make it to tallin cuz so tired for russia. gdynia was nice but too touristy and poles seriously seriously have not seen asians because they stared at us eeeverywhere we went. oslo is awesome. man i love norway. it's so unbelievably exensive (8 dollars for a kebab), but it's such a beautiful place. the city is nestled in the fjord of oslo and seriously the land formation is amazing. all these tiny islands dotting this enclosed riverish body of water and the city is ringed by hills. plus it's super green and pretty clean that ahhh man...i want to go back. plus in the north of norway they have the northern lights. =) one of these days...who's with me?

so yeah...i'm frazzled and pooped by the cruise. it was more gogogo sightseeing than anything. now i plan to just sit and enjoy the sights of the alps in switzerland. oh, and if you guys remember...offer up a prayer for londoners. met lotsa british folk on the cruise and they seem apprehensive about what's happenin to their country. sad. if you don't know what i'm talking about...read the news! alright. iøm out. zurich here i come.