Monday, October 8, 2012

Two.One.

AshMarie, Bee My Shizzle, and Taylor all turned the big two one this year!  It seems like just yesterday that I refused to buy them booze. :)

Ah... who am I kidding? I'm not that much older than them, especially by looks *wink wink* and we all know they are far more mature than me at (most) times.  These girls get to have the most rockin year of their lives! Taylor spending a semester in London, Britt in Australia, and Ash in Chile.

I'm extremely upset that they are goin to miss my official send off into the real world (my first college graduation party) for such travels, but well, I'd miss it too. In fact, I'm considering it, but don't tell mami or papa yet.  South American travel for a few weeks before my return to Dublin?  It looks like a serious consideration to me!!

Happy birthday girls!! I wish you all the best and hope you're having a blast in college!  Live it up before you have to join the real world too.

Keep it real, homies. Party on.


Ash on the morning of her bday, after a great night and an interesting morning :)

green slime in the bush next to a bike race. what?





Taylor spending quality London time. Miss her.


The four greatest girls I know.  BanAnna included.


Me and Bee My Shizzle at the Phoenix Fashion Week for her bday celebration.
BLAST! Happy birthday Bee she's


xoxo - k

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Kelsey Jade Garcia

This entire post is dedicated to my childhood bestie and her new born baby.  RaeAnn has made such a cute little girl with a butt chin and one dimple.  Little Kelsey yawns just like Rae and dang, she's beautiful.

<3    7 lbs. 20 inches. August 17, 2012     <3

Rae, you are such a good baby maker. Well done. :)

LOVE YOU BOTH!! xoxo




Me and Rae and Kelsey Jade.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

AZ Round 5!!

So. I suck at trying to keep up with my blogs. I have been unusually busy but you won't be hearing any excuses from me.

So I'm back in Arizona trying to finish up at the UofA (our football team is currently rocking, if you haven't noticed).  This is my fifth and final year and I will graduate as a very poor but pretty darn educated girl.  Victory lap is where it's at these days anyway; nobody really finishes in four anymore.  (I tell myself this to make myself feel better).

Since Dublin, I have been crazy with school and first exams, which I didn't do as well as I wanted on, but I did them, and that's what counts.  I also met up with the American lady that I met in Dublin at my event ESOF!! (I'll tell the full story below) She asked if I was still looking for a new internship for my last year of school and I said yes! I have been working for AURP (Association of University Research Parks) for a few weeks now and I love it!  I have been working with the events manager and the marketing director there so it's been great experience for when I graduate and go back to Dublin.  They are currently in Madison, WI for the International Conference, and I just can't wait to hear how it goes.  I get paid well, for an intern, and I really enjoy it, so what more can you ask for?

My friend Amber is getting married in November, and me and all my AZ girls are in the wedding in Northern California!! I am so excited for her! And I love her hubby, they are just perfect together. :)  We just had the bachelorette party last weekend, and we rented a limo, went to a fancy resort, yadda yadda. enough said. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! Especially since me and Anne are the only ones who live here in Tucson still. Haven't seen some of those girls in years. It was good.  CONGRATS TO AMBER AND ROBIN!!  (They started dating officially over my 21st birthday. That's my claim to fame in all of this. haha)





BACK to what I haven't told you about Ireland yet:

While I was working for Conference Partners, I got to help organize and attend three conferences over the summer.  Conference Partners is a pretty good sized company and is planning about 20 to 30 events at any one time, I'd say.  Anyway, the events I mostly helped with were James Joyce Symposium, EuroScience Open Forum, and UK Research Forum.

James Joyce (11-15.06.2012) was my first conference and was over my third week of work or so.  I was still pretty new at the area, but turns out, my tourist direction-giving-skills are supreme.  Almost every single delegate was American so I was like their pride and joy.  I made so many friends including this little lady named Barbara and her husband and this other guy named Fritz.  They were all so extremely nice and they truly appreciated it when we helped them with anything.  It was a good buffer conference for me because they were American and just nice people all around.  Fritz was a bit different.  He was from Switzerland and apparently a big deal in the world of James Joyce-ers (Joyceans I think they call themselves. whatevs).  He would come to the desk everyday and bring me chocolates and ask to take pictures with me.. It would be creepy if he wasn't like 90 years old and he took pictures of everything, so it was ok.  And I liked the chocolates. :)  This is also where me and Ali became buddies.... aw Ali.

UKCRF was also a smaller conference.  It was also fun and also at Trinity College Dublin.  The delegates were all doctors so it was a different atmosphere, especially when dealing with the delegates.

ESOF (10-15.07.2012) is where it's at.  It was in the Convention Center for a week and we had over 5000 delegates attend.  There were so many amazing things there, like little tiny electric cars and stuff that they got onto the second floor somehow.  And there was a submarine that they brought in. Just some cool stuff.  So this one day a lady comes to registration and I hear her American accent so I say my dutiful American hello and ask where she's from, and she says Tucson!!!  So then I said me too and after a bit she asked for my contact info in case I needed an internship when I got home.  And I did!!! She is a wonderful boss too. I actually don't see her much. But it's fun.  The same day at ESOF, actually like 20 minutes later, I tore my dress from the bottom all the way up past my butt cheeks to my back!!!! Instant karma.  I got way too much good karma and the world had to fix itself.  It was also only 9 am, so I put on my long jacket, ran to the nearest pharmacy, bought a sewing kit, and sat in the bathroom naked in a stall sewing my dress back together.  Rough day after that. Haha. But well worth it. Cuz now I have a job. So there, karma.

Pics that Fritz took of me and then emailed me. What a nice dude:






I also haven't told you about how me and Larri went to a hurling match at Croke Park! It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen!!! Hurling is now my favorite sport followed by rugby and football.  Geez.  We saw so many people just hit others as hard as they could with their stick and some of the sticks broke and some didn't, and I thought some legs should have broke, but they didn't. It was mostly just insanity.  On the way into the stadium, we got caught by this lady who had scarf things that she sold to us.  But to be honest, we didn't know which team to root for, Kilkenny or Galway, so when she asked what colors we wanted, we just told her to pick.  Ends up, she picked the wrong team. Haha. We also go face paint on the way in by some guy that was all about it.  (Later we found out that he was our bartender friend's brother. Weird.)  Not only did we end up sitting next to this chick going for Galway (we were decked out in Kilkenny colors) but I'm pretty sure she could kill both of us at the same time, if she wanted to.  Also, we were losing, badly. Eh. What can you do?  It was still the most amazing thing I've ever seen.  They need to start wearing some padding.....


PICS soon... when Larri helps me find them... eesh.  FOUND THEM!!!








Friday, August 10, 2012

Doolin/ Cliffs of Moher 23-24.06.12

Doolin is the most amazing place I have been in a long time.

Me and Larri had a great time and learned so much about each other.  By this, I mean I watched her throw up seafood chowder into a giant bag and held back her hair for a bit. Until I almost threw up into the same bag and had to leave for some fresh air.  But still was blocked by about 7 other people throwing up as well.  A little background to this story:

Me and Larri decided to go to the Cliffs of Moher and then jump off the bus and stay a night and then hop the next bus the next day to go back to Dublin.

It all worked so perfectly except for the fact that Larri's roomies were throwin a rager at her house the night before and we all know Larri can't resist a good party.  I kid I kid.  It's hard to avoid when it's happening in your own house, and with people you adore.  So I had no choice but to hang with her and make sure it all went smoothly.  This is when we learned how to dance like a Brazilian hottie.  Only minus the hottie, and minus the Brazilian really, we looked silly.  But this Brazilian chick really, and i mean REALLY wanted to teach us to dance like her.  She kept yelling at us, "SEPARATE!!" meaning that she wanted us to detach our top halves from our bottom halves.  It was so hard, and we kept whining back at her, "But we don't separate like that. We're just Americans. We're unworthyyyyy." haha. I got better at it after about 3 hours,  Larri on the other hand is hopeless.  The girl just refuses to separate. Haha.

So we went to bed late... and got up really early which equaled about 3 hours of sleep followed by a bus ride and some galavanting around the most beautiful place ever. But Larri looked like this, just to put how we felt into words:


On the way we stopped at a castle called something with a B. I'll figure it out and change it when I think of it. And we found this cool old Gaelic phone booth so we had a photoshoot. It also happened to be outside a restaurant where I had some amazing soup.




We also found this cool headphone-shaped statue thing so I put Larri in there and took a pic. I think it's nice, huh?






  And this classic tee that I considered buying for my father. :) typical.


We went to the Cliffs of Moher first, and even though it was hurricane-ing all over our heads, it was the most breathtaking experience. Pictures really just do it justice.  It's something you have to see for yourself.  There's a path that you can walk either direction along the cliffs, but at one end where the path ends is a sign that says something like, DO NOT CROSS OR YOU WILL FALL AND DIE, AND IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL SLIP AND GET SO MUDDY THAT YOU WILL BE EMBARRASSED ALL DAY WITH POOPIE PANTS. So all the girls, and the few boys, that I work with told me that I HAVE to cross this sign cuz that's where all the most amazing views are and there's like a secret castle at the end. But then they did say that if it's rainy or even a tiny bit windy, don't go cuz you will fall and die.  And I am their most valuable intern afterall. :)  Needless to say, Larri and I are some of the most uncoordinated people I know, and decided not to crash and burn by trying to be the cool kids by breaking the rules.  We did go see the castle on one side though.  Paid our 2 euro to go up and see the views from the top. Extraordinary.













After our quick trip along the cliffs without dying, we went to eat some lunch at a pub in Doolin, just a small town nearby.  I had pork and cabbage without any cabbage, which was confusing.  And Larri had the legendary seafood chowder. (Get it girl!!!).  Then the bus left and we checked into our hostel called Rainbow hostel (conveniently located next door to a real fun pub called McDermots... I think.  Then we went to the tourist office to see what time we could take the ferry to the front of the cliffs to get a cool view and obs didn't wanna go that day cuz it was hurricane-ing outside.  The lady says, "There's one leaving in 20 min, these girls are going too and so you can ride with them. Give me 20 euro each".  So we did. And then we rode with 2 girls named Johanna and Johanna from Malta to the docks.  It was still acting like a hurricane so the boat guy gives us a warning that we can turn back and get our money back if we don't wanna go.  We decided ah, naw, we can hack it.

Little did we know, it was gonna be like the Perfect Storm with raging winds and waves.  Larri would speak the whole time, which I found out was because she was afraid she would spew on me.  Thanks for keepin it in for me, Larri. :)  I was playin the whole time, whisper-screaming "ahhhhh, it's like the perfect storm!!! hold on tight, larri!!"  Once we stopped in front of the cliffs and it was safe to move, I say, "Hey Larri, that was fun. Let's go take some badass pics!"  She says, "GetMeASpewBag" all one word. haha.  I run for the biggest black bag I can find, holdher hair back until I felt sick, and then ran for the door. There were like 5 people throwing up in the front of the boat, and about 4 throwing up in the back. No escape. I took my pics, slipped and fell on my butt, hot boat man helped me up, I blushed, and then went back to Larri who looked like a sad, sleeping kitty on her bench.






These are the raging waters that made Larri ralph.

We went to the nearest pub for some chips and beer for me, water for Larri.  She felt better so we completed our walk home. Fell asleep for a few hours, and then went back to the pub.  I'm pretty sure almost everyone who was in a 20 mile radius was there.  Including a stag party gone wild. So fun.  Some randoms were playing music and everyone was dancing.  This one real drunk guy was talking way too fast and Irish and stuff. Hard to understand.  He tells Larri, "Don't ever color your hair!" she replies, "Ya, I go to college!" hahahaha. I almost died. Language barrier, you know.  We also brough our little German roomie with us cuz he was just so cute and tiny and we just wanted to hug him the whole time. The boy can drink beer like a German.

The next day we rented bikes from our hostel guy and went for a ride to the coast where we found the most amazing little path that took us into wonderland.  It was the most perfect day.  It was so sunny and warm with just a slight breeze.  We walked on the crazy rocks until the tide started coming in, and then it got scary so we ran back to our bikes.  We also found this bathtub that just had the most spectacular views of the coast and the cliffs. I want one. So. Bad.






I wanna get married here.



classic shoe pics.


Cliffs of Moher in the background.



On our way to the coast we found these church ruins, so we went in the gate cuz we wanted to see inside the church, and nobody was around.  There were wayyyyy too many graves though, and I don't know about you, but I don't like walking on graves.  Especially the creepy ones that have leaves all over the op and there might be the scary zombie people under there waiting to grab your ankles.  So really I just try to avoid it.  But we had to go in, so Larri walked pretty calmly, like a normal human.  While I ran and said, "I'm so sorry" like a billion times.  Didn't wanna hurt their feelings.  We finally made it inside and it was so cool.  There were only like 2.5 walls still standing and there were graves inside... it was just so cool.


                                  


We also stopped at these other cliffs to take a few quick pics on our ride home.  Pretty area, but we were so tired so it was a quick stop for us.  Plus Larri hated the Texan kid in front of us, so she had to beat him back onto the bus to put his chair back upright for him.  Sneaky little Jerri.




"What up homie!!"


Larri gets too close to the edge. Every time.



I got muscles. What up?

Then we went to eat at this place that Larri's colleagues told us to go to and Larri had a sandwich while I downed half a baby chicken. :)  We met with the bus and went home again.  It was by far my favorite trip this summer.

I recommend this trip so do it to it. :)



Loves and hugs and kisses too!

xoxo

Karen


P.S. I owe Larri a payback. Here it is. Enjoy!!