go to krakow. (it's like prague except the beer blows and the vodka is excellent and it's easy to walk home drunk. not that it matters, stephie's parents.)

more to come.

AINT NO POLICE ISLAND!

first of all, there's a naked man in the apartment across the courtyard.
i wasn't going to post about THAT, but "topher" brought it to my attention.
he's just cleaning. naked. (naked man, not "topher", you'll be relieved to know.)
i feel profaned.

next, we apologize for the lack of posting. theoretically there should be twice as many posts since we are twice as many people, but we are making up for it with ARAN ISLAND PICTURE EXTRAVAGANZA!

last wknd we went to galway and the aran islands. we stayed at the smallest island, inis oirr. it was bee-u-tiful.
see:



here's a list of things we did:
-stayed at a real life hostel
-invaded one of two pubs on the island
-observed a stonecutter's convention
-toured the island via horse and buggy
-toured the island via bicycle
-jumped on rocks
-explored an old rusty ship
-explored a cemetary and 10th cent. stone church
-looked at pretty pretty water
-pointed at inishmaan and inishmore
-killed a cat
-participated in a ben folds singalong (...)
-frolicked with irish dogs
-befriended a PONY

ok, those last two things were basically just me. we also took many a picture. see fo yo'selves:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephiegrob/

also, since i'm having trouble putting pictures up on the internet in a timely manner, take a look-see at chelsea's photo thingy. i mostly look like a moron in most of those. "topher" looks like a dreamboat, of course.
...
http://chelseamorgan.zoto.com/galleries/dublin1/#%23

and of course there's more on facebook.

oh, and here's the thing about inis oirr: NO GUARDA AKA POLICE! weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

"topher" and i also want you to know that we don't just get "plastered" here.
in case you were wondering.
mom.

tomorrow is the equivalent of the irish superbowl. we'll let you know how that goes. it should be madness.

The Plante Family on Baby Suri

This has no relevancy to studying abroad, but I found it interesting none-the-less. See, my family has a blog (actually two, they have one for Survivor also) on which they recently discussed the phots of the new Katie-Tom baby Suri. These were the comments they left on said blog, enjoy: [I've included family relation to each name]

Pat said... [grandmother]
Your sister Lisa had almost that much black hair when she was born.
She was a beautiful baby and still is. All my other kids were bald, or only had peach fuzz. Go figure!
Old Tom has made such a fool out of himself, with that crazy Scientology, I don't think he is ever going to regain his popularity
again.

9/10/2006 1:00 AM


David said... [uncle]
I've seen babies with hair, but this one just does not look right.

9/10/2006 8:53 AM


David said...[uncle]
I have also been informed that high levels of Thetans causes rapid hair growth.

Lisa, you may be a powerful profit in the ways of Scientology! Who knows you may be one of Xenu's Queens! You at least have to be at a "Operating Thetan Level V"

This all may sound funny but its for real! Check it out on Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

People believe this crap!!!!

9/10/2006 10:00 AM


chris said... [me]
That baby's wearing a merkin.


Yep, definitely a merkin.

9/10/2006 4:41 PM

leah said... [aunt]
Theory #3
Tom is not the true father of sweet hairy little Suri. The real father is a red head. Suri was born with red hair. They had to color it black to look more like Tom. He didn't want to have a redheaded stepchild!

9/12/2006 11:54 AM

Pat said... [grandmother]
Leah your comment reminded me of someone else when you said Suri was really a redhead. When your cousin Cathy Fogarty Lynch was born she had a head of black hair. Martha took her to Mississippi to see her Mom and Dad, and when she came back several weeks later all of Cathy's black hair had fallen out and she had Strawberry blonde hair.

9/13/2006 6:31 PM


bigbuttbubba said... [uncle]
TO ME LOOKS LIKE A BOY.

9/13/2006 8:18 PM


David said... [uncle]
Russ. I thought the same thing.

9/13/2006 8:52 PM


Maybe that isn't funny at all, but my grandmother's musings reminded me of Thulani Davis, and the wise cracks reminded me of that classroom.

Cheers,
Chris

The Hill(s)

You may or may not have heard rumors that I--accompanied by Allie Gevarter--rolled down a hill that, when seen, takes one back to the epic battles of the Civil War (if said battles were fought in the United Kingdom). Well, I'm here to ease your worries and doubts, to show you, yes you, non-believers, that it is true. I did roll down said hill.

It's quite complicated really, hill rolling. To prep, we tested our aero-dynamics on a smaller, though none-the-less steep hill:



The Hills of Greenwich 1 on Vimeo

We then carefully mapped out the method to our mayhem, deciding that the Eastern side was prime for optimal rolling speeds. And soon enough we were rolling:



The Hills of Greenwich 2, Part 1 on Vimeo

Lucky for you, innocent viewers, these rude women couldn't wait in queue, and blocked your eyes from the pure brilliance of our roll. Due to a change in wind conditions we began to roam off track, but we trudged forward:



The Hills of Greenwich 2, Part 2 on Vimeo

Yes, both rollers survived. It was a moment of natural wonder; there was me and the hill. Hill and I were young and stupid, but after that we knew things would never be the same. Sure, Hill would always be a hill, and I would go on, never to roll again, but, when I look back, I know for a moment (only a second) there was nothing else in this radical world: just me, the grass, and a fifty-five degree incline.

GMT: Gettin' Mean Time!

The Globe Theatre, center for American tourists. When entering the local accent makes way for Southern twang.


Tate Modern loves Kandinsky.


It cost 2,000,000 pounds to name this building--delicate, striking, forward--'City Hall.'


A bridge that cost upward 6,000,000 pounds. A bridge.


OMG, four people, two hemispheres!

drinking dispatch.

the wine harvest season is just beginning here, and while that doesn't mean much for my day-to-day life (i've been attempting to avoid the moravian wines, which taste anywhere from disturbingly sweet to something like purple piss), it does mean that i got the chance today to try something i've heard about for a while - burcak.



burcak is a specialty of the early wine season. it's a very briefly fermented wine, so it's still actually fermenting as it's sold. it's only good for a matter of hours between when it's prepared and when it's consumed, so little shacks like this one spring up, selling wine out of pitchers and in large plastic bottles.



so i bought a cup.

it's still slightly bubbly, it's cloudy, i even had a grape pit in my glass. however, it's sweet - the best comparison i can make is grape skittles - not really a wine flavor, although there is the slight undertone of alcohol to it. the first sip will make you want to spit it out, but after a few more you start to warm up to it until finally you decide that it's the perfect way to drink away your saturday afternoon in prague.

more pictures from prague here.

Viva!

A producer came to BBC today whom had done some great work, all varied genres, but this clip was too good to be true.



It's from a serial (mini-series) called Blackpool, and it seems more or less amazing.

The best news, we got a chance to see 'The Office' pilot Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais shot for the BBC training module. It was just non-stop rambling. I loved it.

Oh, also, drunk driving is called drink-driving, and I think 'Wanker' is more offensive than 'Fucker.'

very special moments.

so the other night i'm on the tram with some friends on the way to a club. we're all just hanging out, enjoying the illogical czech transportation system, when all of a sudden these four german kids get on, all clearly blitzed. three guys, one girl. and we're all sitting around, watching these kids jump around, climb on the bars, all that.

then the girl takes the walk down shady street over to me, and upon arriving pulls out a sheaf of photocopied english-german translations and says:

"hello. i want to tell you that you look very special."

much giggling ensued, as well as a danke and some confused attempts to figure out if any of us knew enough german to respond.

while we were talking, she started talking to another one of my friends, who was attempting to tell her how to get to the club she wanted to get to - the roxy, a notoriously shady/awesome czech spot. during this conversation, she tells my friend:

"i do not drink alcohol, but tonight i take something which make me love."

my friend, confused, said, "makes you love?"

she says, "e! i take e!"

i get the winners.

czech these out! lol

(oh and here are the photos)

hey are there any puns you can make about the czech republic?

prague is wonderful. for real.

photos are still forthcoming, and i'm sorry to chris for hamsterdancing him (larke, this is your return for crazyfrogging me). let me just say - this city is a bizarre combination of baroque jesuit architecture and disgusting communist functionalism, both of which i find incredibly beautiful. it also follows absolutely no logic or grid and must be lost in to be believe.

i now have an intimate knowledge of prague's clubs, which are hilariously eurotrashy yet wonderful. some of them feel like john malkovich's head, some of them feel like wacky eurodiscos, some of them feel like a hole in a wall in the czech republic - perhaps because they are.

you can smoke weed on the street. not that i am, but.

beer is a dollar a half liter. invariably. cigarettes are two dollars a pack. invariably. wonderful meals can be had for five dollars.

i've tried eleven different kinds of beers. many several times.

it takes effort to go to bed sober in the czech republic.

i fell asleep on a tram once. i was woken up at 4 am by the driver, who spoke to me in very unflattering czech.

czech is the most difficult language you will ever attempt. it makes no sense. it is a gross artificial language. i know some words, but i still feel like a tourist constantly.

um. visit. and i should visit you.

LDN

[photos courtesy Paul Brewster]

Today there was a bomb threat on Lychester Square. Also, I ate ice cream, but it tasted more like whipped cream. European culture is so strange.

hi guys prague is beautiful the beer is cheap i took pictures you should look at them.

pitter-patterings from topher & stephie

aha. we are in dublin.
my computer is about to die, so i'll post an actual post later/soon.
but i think this sums it up so far.
oh-ho-ho, mom, i'm kidding.

do note: we are reverting to referring to chris littler as "topher" so as not to confuse our beloved readers. and this "topher" fellow is too lazy to post on his own, henceforth i've been instructed to post for the both of us.

over and out,
"topher" & stephie

Sunday with Sunday

Morning everyone. It's a lazy sunday, and I'm burnt from the past few days of excitement. My TV has 4 channels, and all of them are educational broadcasting, or it seems that way because accents seem to make people smarter. Except for the teenagers, they sound like morons.

Hope everyone across the continent, and back in the States is enjoying classes. We start Monday, but my program doesn't have much going on until next week. A few more long pub nights before I start acting like an academic, I figure.

Last evening was spent seeing this:

(Photo from the Gaurdian [see: Guardian's review of the show.])

Sondheim takes two separate acts--one following the life of Seurat while painting "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," the other dealing with his great-grandson's contemporary art--to tell the story of a single man leading the shift of an art paradigm both globally and personally. The show was crisp, nearing perfection performance wise, but used CG projections. First, people love these animated sets here. It's like Toy Story never happened. The concept fits the story well, and I get that it's a shift in theatrical paradigm just like the art in the show is for yadayadyada, but the point is it just felt distracting. Still, the show was more or less stellar.

And after the sixth curtain call, it appeared everyone else agreed.


And that's my first blog entry. Talk to you more soon.

Cheers,
Chris (Thomas Plante)