in the Spanish boonies

Before I came to my senses, I spent 3 days in a place I can't remember the name of in Spain helping a guy maintain his bazillion fruit/almond/olive trees. I took a few photos while I was there, here are two.

By coming to my senses I mean bailing on the work I did for free to live in the sweet apartment in central Barcelona I managed to trade my room in Stockholm for 10 days for!

Hanging out with animals

Some photos my Mom took this summer when we went on a photo safari and spent some time with cows and goats.

 So cute and smallll! Only 2 months old (if I remember correctly)
NO! 2 weeks, big difference. Mother informed me of the correct age.

 Hello!!

 I got really tall this summer!

 New friends

They have long tongues so I didn't want them to lick me while I wasn't looking

Nymphomaniacs in Stockholm

Today when I logged into Couchsurfing I happened to notice that included in my list of groups I belong to was one called "Nymphomaniacs in Stockholm (group for groupsex)" and I thought UHHH, when did I join that?! Upon further investigation I realized it was the Couchsurfing group for finding apartments in Stockholm and that the name had been changed.

WOOPS! :D Wonder how long the name will stay the same.

wandering around in Barcelona

Some random photos from Barcelona

a fountain that drew a crowd of maybe 150 people

visiting La bouqueria, the market

super expensive ham at the market

other things have happened on September 11th

Dad and daughter at Parc Güell

I'm sad!

The only people who say anything about my phlog are my Mom, Dad, and Dad's girlfriend, WAH!

I know you're looking at my phlog! Comments please!

Don't make that poor white kitty cry.

Le Pedrera

Some photos from the roof of Gaudi's La Pedrera in Barcelona.

Yesterday (to make you feel good) & Today (to make you feel bad)

Sundays are good for wasting time on a chocolate apple pie.

Sunflower-looking pies = good feeling

Today, it's time to start my first class of the semester, Language Technology, with a 1025 page text book covering things like "the entropy of English and entropy rate constancy" or "a log-linear model for pronominal anaphora resolution" and "finite-state transducer models of optimality theory". HUH?! (the ipod is there to compare sizes)

Brick-looking textbooks = bad feeling

France first time 'round

There was a big Smith reunion in St. Julien le Montagnier and I was one of the lucky two cousins who got to go, but compared to all the others, I practically live in the neighborhood.

I got to see my viscous cousin Chauncey who was really into his candy teeth.

I also got to see African Dad.

We ate a lot of food a lot of the time.

We went to a cool fort in Sisteron.

 Chauncey was REALLY happy about that.

Here's the fort's nosepicker, aka uncle Barry, caught on camera!

from a window of the fort

The mountain next to the fort. You can just picture the tectonic plates SMASHING together!

If you click on the photo for detail you can see the people walking around in between the layers at the bottom of the mountain.

Stockholm Summer

I got to spend some time in Stockholm this summer for the first time. For about 2 weeks the weather was PERFECT! Zach and I did some sightseeing.

In Waxholm. Note swan butt in bottom right corner! Cute!

Visiting Skogskyrkogården, the Woodland Cemetary

my hood! Hammarbysjöstad

Some of the many dead birds that popped up everywhere I went. The top one was found on my terrace when I woke up one morning, and the middle one was found in Hökvattnet on my Grandma's porch.

My birthday in Hökvattnet

Here are some photos from Hökvattnet where I celebrated my 24th birthday with my Mormor, Göran, Mom, Danielle, and Thomas!

We played my new travel Scrabble game and liked the no rules version that Zach introduced me to this summer. Results can be quite entertaining as you can see from "wildnazisex" and "gaytaebo".

Unfortunately, you don't always get the letters you want. It's a bit blurry but here is Thomas with only consonants (d, v, d, m, c, n, l) while I had only vowels (y, o, a, u, i, a, u).

Here we are eating birthday cake!

Here's Göran opening the can of surströmming (stinky fish).

Here's Mom looking nervous about the stinky fish.

The next day we went fishing. Here's Danielle smiling despite no results...

 Here's a dead skeeter I smashed, but I dunno who's blood that is.

Our last day Thomas finally got vowels! What words contain no consonants....

The new villa Smisk! Hammarbysjöstad version

I've finally gotten settled in, here are some photos of my new apartment.

my kitchen

my room, coincidentally turned out to be very green

check out that sweet rug, my Grandpa made that