Updates? Well kind of…

Ok, it has been almost a month since I have last posted on my blog. The video of Spain and Germany I so promised to come out when I got home has been pushed back to the point at which I hope it will be out before summer ends. Now enough of the bad news, I have some good news, I am writing this blog on Uncle Larry’s laptop, so if any of you family members didn’t hear, my Mum and I decided to visit the Griller Family for a long weekend. We took a 6 oclock flight from DFW to Orlando , meaning we had to wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning which was just perfect for me because I couldn’t sleep until like midnight but that was my own problem. The only thing that made that early flight nice was that we got upgraded to first class (thanks to my Dad) so I leisurly passed out comfortably in the lush leathery and spacious seats, and I got a pretty decent breakfast! We arrived around 9 and our wonderful shoefuir, Uncle Larry, drove through the golden marvelous roads of Orlando (ok not that magical but hey, when I was kid, it seemed like it with all those theme parks). Ok I am being a little too elaborative in this post, hanging out with my cousins has been a blast so far, they have grown so much since I’ve seen them last. (I am a little tired because we just finished playing in the pool but you got to take advantage of the best weather sunshine state has to give) [note: I barely have anything negative to say about Florida for I plan to go to college here] Ok, a little bit of what we did so far, yesterday we went to Aquatica (new Seaworld waterpark) which was tons of fun, Jason and I being the daredevils out of the bunch, went on a bunch of big waterslides (and Uncle Larry too, but he kinda got wimped out after the first one we went on) while my Mum [Aunt Sandy ] and Aunt Esther mainly hung out with Joseph, but they went on some slides too. Throughout the day though at the park we kept on seing rain clouds hover grimly over the park, but that didn’t interupt are time until about mid-day. We were (luckly) all together by our beach chair spot under one of those big built in umbrellas, when all of sudden big 40 mph winds came out of nowhere with aggresive rain and eventually led to little umbrellas being violent flown across the park.  After 5 minutes being huddled under the big umbrella with a bunch of other people we decided to walk through the storm to leave the park, and might I say we were drenched by the time we made it to the car. But my Mum, being the postive sunshine on a rainy day, treated us all to Friendly’s for lunch, so the day was not the bad after all, and we got to enjoy the park for the most of it. So today we woke up and went to the family’s church. The church was part Chinese and English but dominatley Asian, but none the less its God’s house so I felt a warm welcome to their church. And might I say the people of the church had quite character and a strong voice for the Lord. So enough rambling, I don’t believe my blog posts have ever been in balance but that’s what blogs are for to write your thoughts and thats that, I’m just not the best interperter of thought.

All the pictures so far can be located in the Photos section along with photos of my mum’s first house as it is today in Orlando in there aswell, and I might write one more post about this trip and the Spain & Germany video will be done sometime in the future.

Last days here

In the small, old town of Wildeshausen, is where we spent most of our time in Germany. (click the links for it to be located on google maps). As most of our time was spent in this town we didn’t just stay in town. One day we decided to drive outside of Bremen (the biggest city near us) to go shopping at this big mall. We took the Autobahn to get there of course, driving around the range of 120 (which was the some of the towns speed restriction due the noise level) and up to 180km on long straights of road. The mall we went to had all types of stores, mainly the same you would find in the states other than that they have pharmacies in the malls which i find quite weird but I guess it can be convienent to have that. I personally wasn’t interested in the European clothes stores for I find their fashion kind of goofy and sometimes homosexual, for instance, it’s normal for guys to wear capris and long v-necks going all the way down to their stomach. Wearing that in the states would cause you to be thought as a fag.

Only one store kind of some what caught my interest and that was “The New Yorker”. As you can tell by the title, this store was obviously trying to be as American as possible. And they sure pulled it off well. Although kind of pricey, I really had an urge to buy something but I knew that the Forever 21 in the states had similar stuff but for way cheaper.

Ok, another day we decided to go to to go to this really cool swimming park called the Ostseebad located in Scharbeutz, (I don’t have the pictures because Caitlin brought her waterproof camera that day and she forgot to bring the transfer cord for the trip so I will update pics of that and when we went cliff climbing when I get back) and after that we went to see a good friend of Mrs. Essex’s, Marianne. She had a really beautiful house and I was fascinated by her wonderful landscaping in her backyard. Obviously this was a good opportunity to work on my photography. More photos in the photo section. Well I gotta take a 4 hour train ride to Frankfurt so I’ll be a Frankfurter for a couple days and maybe I will fit in a n update before my long 9 hour trip plus an additional 3 hour flight from Newark. As the end of my trip is about there I wanna note I still have some minor updates when I get home, like videos and such, so keep on reading

Exotic Dining

Looking at Alex’s most recent post entitled “To Eat a Scorpion” reminded me of a dinner we had in Spain. I can tell you now though, that I didn’t go as far and beyond as my bro did with dining choices but I sure jumped out of my comfort level to with take an opportunity to treat myself to something that I might not come across with again. On the menu, which was nicely translated in English for me, (not all restaurants have treated me to that) in the starters, there was a dish labeled “Goose Liver Mousse” that caught my eye, just thinking of that made me kind of queasy but I being as outgoing as I am with food I chose that, on the entree I was particularly looking for seafood and then I saw squid. There was two choices though, with or without ink. I wanted to get the full experience so I did with ink. To sum it up, my taste buds were quite satisfied with my decision And there is a link with more pictures from the dinner in the photo section, but I forgot to take the picture of the goose liver, but there wasn’t anything special appearance wise, it was like a thick spread for bread with jam.

Strolling through town

Mrs. Essex wanted to show me some German architecture so one day we drove through town and viewed different houses. One house in particular still had a straw roof and a family saying above the door which I found quite interesting. Overall I am particular impressed on how much a nice old town like this managed to keep up with preserving it’s surroundings (in downtown they still have cobblestone roads). I also really enjoyed going through the woods and seeing some houses that were barely even noticeable from the road. I’ve been told the weather now here has been it’s best all year, PJ told me that past couple of times it’s been rainy and cloudy most of the time. I guess I am really fortunate. I added a link in the photo section containing pictures from going through town.

Germany

Flying through an airline called Ryan Air, which might I note was quite a new hybrid airline. We had special tickets that let us get on the plane earlier than regular ticket orders, and here’s the thing, when on board you can sit whereever you want so obviously we sat as relatively as close to the front, the flight was about 3 hours, which was about the same duration as the flight from DFW to Newark, which wasn’t that bad. The only thing that sort of annoyed me was that you had to pay for drinks, food, etc…I couldn’t even get free water, but I think I figured that out already in Spain. We landed in Germany around 9 or 10, and it was quite chilly outside, and waiting at the gate was opi (their grandpa). We made it to the home safelu and had a nice warm meal nicely cooked by omi (their grandma). And that’s where the confusion began, I sit nicely in my seat as German is talked across the table. But now I’m quite used to it. Although every time I hear my name in a sentence, I must know what they are talking about haha.

I added a link to the photo section, so you can see the interior of the house .

BTW, that’s not the house below that’s just a picture from driving through town.

Summary of Spain

Ok, I admit I’ve been kind of lazy on my blog posts but now I am going to bring you up to date on what I’m doing. You have asked what did I mainly do in Spain, and for the most part I relaxed. Apart from what my parents had planned in Spain my schedule (if there was any at all) was pretty leinent. This is how things were planned.”Hey do you want to go to the beach today?” “Yeah sure”. This is probably how my parents probably had things planned. “Only five more minutes till we have to make the next bus, and we have to make sure we are on time for our 1 o’clock lunch” Overall this trip has opened my eyes to another part of the world or I would say another hemisphere. Common things we did consisted of sitting out in the sun, going to the beach, swimming in the pool, shopping at local markets ex: flea markets, have lots of ice cream and walking around historic areas of town and, of course, in the evening, playing cards.

Water Activities

Generally I would wake up around noon and go tan out by the pool and later I would treat myself to lunch. Usually I had lunch around 3 or 4 and then or dinner around 8 or 9, becuae Europeans generally tend to eat their meals later. Anyways though, haha, the pool was a little cold after we filled it up the first day but after the sun came out, it was warm enough for a nice refreshing swim. We mostly played badminton though. The ocean water on the other hand could be compared to California waters, but mainly I think it was from the rain we had the first few days in the trip.

Shopping

By the boardwalk was a particular area where we enjoyed to shop. There was little booths where alot of handmade jewelry was made. I can tell you now, the locals sure know how to set their prices. Unlike touristy towns this town had their merchendise set at reasonable prices to make their living.

Not only were the small booth’s merchendise were priced low but the big chain stores aswell. One store specifically that we enjoyed was Ally-Hop. It had a modern/retro kick to it. When you walk into the store you might think everything would be priced for the high end quality but it actually wasn’t. I myself bought two Bob Marley squares for 3 euros each. Overall I was impressed by with shopping in Spain, but the only thing I saw was overpriced was electronics, videogames were set at 60 euros when in the states it would only be 60 dollars.

Traveling

I believe I already summed up the trips both to the castle and Valencia.

In the Evening

The schedule for the evening varied minimally throughout the days. It mostly consisted of us either going out for dinner or having a nice homemade meal. Then we would watch television (mainly for the Eurocup). After that we would play card games. The games we played were, spoons, b.s, war, revolution, crazy eights, but mainly we would play Rommé, which is a apparently a family tradition. I myself learned how to play this very fun game.

Oh yeah and we did one of those coloring puzzles one night.

Okay

To view the new pictures click on the photos link right above this post. Then you when you click on any of the links and they should bring you to my photobucket (online photo album). To view the pictures in a bigger size, click on the thumbnail and it will show up, click on it one more time to see the full resolution.

Valencia

One day we decided to drive a hour away from our main town (Denia) to go view the city of Valencia. When we arrived there we parked in a rather compact garage which is quite common in Europe. As we walked through the ever so glamorous 4 story mall I didn´t feel that far from home as many of the American brands such as Quicksilver and Billabong were not too far from reach. We finally made it to the other end of the mall and purchased tickets for the double decker bus tour. Let me tell you, Valencia is one beautiful city. Me and Pj found it quite humorous to see the bus run almost every red light in view. Apparently, as long as you, yourself are not at risk or you are not putting any oncoming traffic at risk, the streetlights are just a small precautionary device to save yourself from getting t-boned. So as we rounded half way towards our trip we stopped for food at this fast food place (can´t recall the name) that made really good fresh pizzas (none of that greasy American junk). After we finished lunch we continued our trip and as we pulled around one of the corners I see a movie a poster that read ¨Sexo en Nueva York¨ so apparently they are up to date on our movies. Not only that on one of the busy streets we saw a starbucks. It´s a shame the bus didn´t have a stop near that because I had a craving for an orange mocha frappuccino.

So I´ve recently discovered that its a waste of my time to keep on resizing my pictures for this blog so I´m just going to give links to separate folders in my photobucket that relate to that post, so then you can see them in full resolution.

>>>Valencia Photos<<<

More images from the previous post

More updates

Last week we went to this old castle in that is right in the middle of the town. I couldn´t pull that much information from it for it was all in spanish and I´m not fully fluent in Spanish therefore the information didn´t make that much sense to me.