Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in ivstoner's LiveJournal:

Sunday, September 10th, 2006
8:06 pm	testie type thingy... yeah My Personality Neuroticism 35 Extraversion 78 Openness To Experience 48 Agreeableness 54 Conscientiousness 61 Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report MySpace Surveys, Bebo and MySpace Layouts by Pulseware Survey Software Current Mood: hungry (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
1:11 pm	maybe rebe's was right?? Your Deadly Sins Wrath: 60% Envy: 40% Greed: 40% Lust: 40% Gluttony: 20% Pride: 20% Sloth: 20% Chance You'll Go to Hell: 34% You will die in prison, in a puddle of your own blood. How Sinful Are You? Current Mood: hungry (Comment on this)
12:58 am	once again MUAHYAHA Your Seduction Style: Ideal Lover You seduce people by tapping into their dreams and desires. And because of this sensitivity, you can be the ideal lover for anyone you seek. You are a shapeshifter - bringing romance, adventure, spirituality to relationships. It all depends on who your with, and what their vision of a perfect relationship is. What Is Your Seduction Style? Current Mood: cold (Comment on this)
Monday, August 7th, 2006
2:07 pm	or my full name... but i prefer the first one :D You Are The Star You represent the ultimate in truth and purity. Insightful and illuminating, you provide guidance for others. You also demonstrate unselfish, unconditional love. You posses many spiritual gifts, including the ability to heal. Your fortune: Your future is looking brighter by the day. The near future will be a time of both hope and healing. Luck is about to come your way, perhaps the best luck you have ever seen. Life is about to get a lot easier and much better! What Tarot Card Are You? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:03 pm	MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You Are The Devil You don't represent evil, but you do represent the animalistic side of humans. You demonstrate what happens when we listen to our first instincts. At times you tend to be materialistic and hedonistic, giving in to temptation. Admit it, you're guilty of acting first - and forgetting to think later! Your fortune: Right now, you may be having a difficult time as a result of choices you have made. You need to think about what's important in your life, and discover what chains you down. It is the time to acknowledge your faults and take steps to overcome them. It's also the time to let go of any fears or inhibitions that are holding you back. What Tarot Card Are You? Current Mood: hungry (Comment on this)
1:54 pm	emotional thingy You Are An ISFJ The Nurturer You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal. A good listener, you excell at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for. You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist. What's Your Personality Type? Current Mood: hungry (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, August 4th, 2006
12:50 am	The Pamplona adventure For this entry we have not just the city, but also the very fun travelling into and out of it... hee he thump. Well after a lovely time in the south of france it was time to move on, and of course the next stop was the running of the bulls. It was happening while we were in europe, so OF COURSE we were going to head there. Unfortunately we didn't really have accomodation in pamplona..... or anywhere near there, so it was going to be somewhat of a crash into and out of the city.... and so it all begins. Leaving Marseilles wasn't very difficult. We caught a night train and I spent most of the night awake talking to a family from the US and keeping everyone else on the train up all night, opps. ;-) then the transfer at 4 in the morning onto a train that would bring us to a town called Irun. Right on the border of France and Spain, and trying to get out a quickly as possible. But alas, they were bastardly and wouldn't let us on the train that was leaving pretty much right then. (though I could see why, it was already only standing room there) So now we get to sit around in this tiniest of towns waiting for the next train into pamplona... only a 7 hour wait. Some food and a little bit to drink at the reastraunt in the station and we sit there until it's time for us to leave. A good plan. I personally am very tired and decide that I want to take a little nap, and of course with my luck a security guard happens to walk by and smack me in the back of my head saying "No sleep here". Oh happy times indeed. Eventually we get on the train and enjoy a slightly rocky sleep into pamplona. Found the lockers for our bigger bags, we head off to explore and enjoy the city. Since we were in Spain, and it's very hot is Spain, I only brought the pair of shorts I was wearing and a spare shirt to change into when I got to smelly and sweaty. We wandered around got something to eat, wandered some more, walked the length of the run (which really isn't that long at all) and then wandered into the fairgrounds. You know the rides they sometimes have at shopping malls for real reason whatsoever, well they had alot of them in Pamplona. At this point I was really starting to fade, and all that I wanted to do was get a bit of sleep. So park bench time it was, found one made my bag into a pillow and away a went into sleepy land.... .for about 40 minutes. I awoke in shivering so badly that my teeth were clattering together, it had to be in the area of 7 to 9 degrees that night. So no sleep for me. Instead I took this time to make some calls back home (since at this time of the night everyone else is wide away at home) and then wander around some more until the other two woke up. A few hours later I come back to seeing only Phil sleeping on the bench now, it had gotten to cold for max too now. So after max got back again we woke phil up and found an all night cafe sort of thing and sat down there till it was almost time for the run. Now we wander towards the track and seeing as we've all had a really fun nights sleep get lost and found and lost and found about 4 times on the way to the arena. After finding a place that was reasonable to watch the run I set up camp and talk to some of the aussies that are around me, at the same time noticing this american that looks like he already did the run, but ran head first into one of the bulls. I can only assume that during this boys drunken adventures of the night tried his hardest to pick up a woman that happened to have one of those "large angry" boyfriend that pummeled him until he looked like he did now. Dried blood on the swollen lips and eyes.. not a nice sight. Unfortunately he must have heard us speaking english because he slowed waddeld/stupered over to where we were standing and talking and was obviously trying very hard to follow the conversation. At one point when he was almost behind me he realized that he couldn't stand up any more and grabbed my right shoulder... then my left with his other arm.... it was this point that the smile on my face turned into something more of a "WTF" look. One of the aussies I was talking to earlier then mentioned just loud enough for our drunken friend to hear, "You must have the patience of a saint" looking right at him.... yeah, eventually he meandered off and I never saw him again. Now the run has started, and my position is pretty much as close as I can get to the action. (about 5 - 10 feet away) camera running the entire time, and all that you really see is a whole bunch of really scared guys half running backwards and half walking. Eventually you heard a few cow bells and a pair horns went by... that was really about it though. When the run was over we went to the front of the stadium to wait for phil and on our way we saw someone that didn't get out of the way of the bulls quite fast enough, laying on a stretcher with tubes coming out of his throat. We weren't entirely sure as to what happened, but it obviously wasn't a good thing. (we later learned that he was paralized and later died) After waiting for phil to finish playing with the bulls, we made a b-line for the trainstation to get out of pamplona as quickly as possible for the sake of sleep... and had once again just missed the train we wanted. So more waiting, this time outside in on the lawn in front of the train station, finding some shade and sleeping... unfortunately the shade ran away from me and I ended up getting a lovely rectangular burn on both of my shins from the bottom of my shorts the the top of my socks. (which almost a month later still hasn't evened out) So now we can get on the train, getting to the transfer station and finding out that "the train we were supposed to be getting on no longer runs".... opps. So one more night of not sleeping, or at least sleeping on the hard floor of the train station. The next morning we get on our train into Bordeaux and then have the fun time of trying to find an actual place to stay. Luckily for us we found a hotel directly outside the train station for a very reasonable price. Next post, Bordeaux. Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006
1:32 pm	Marseilles Well for the rest of my entries I’ll be writing in specific about the cities I’ve been to in, with as much detail as I want to…… so there. This brings me to the adventure of Marseilles: In the south of France, Marseilles is a beach town that happened to be holding a beach volleyball tournament that a friend was playing in so decided we would head down there from Paris. The first “great” part of our journey started right in Paris when we got to the train station and tried to book our train down. It was completely full and according to the person selling the tickets, we couldn’t even stand on the train. This left us no choice but to book our tickets for the following morning out….. with no place to stay in Paris for the night. So we decided to become stow-a-ways of a sense. Grabbing our bags we trekked to the train station and managed to talk one of the conductors into letting us on the train….. for an additional 20 euros each :-S. So on the train we find our “seat”, bar stools for the 3 hour plus train ride. The only advantage was that our conductor couldn’t find us and therefore couldn’t collect his money from us, lucky lucky. Now that we were in Marseilles, we only had to find our bus and get to our hostel, simple right. HAH. Found the bus with relative ease but had a very hard time trying to find out where to get off the bus. The driver wasn’t sure were the street was, and since the stops have nothing to do with the streets that they stop at, it was interesting trying to find out where to go. After a very short time on the bus the driver tells us that we are at our stop and to get off. Of course we believe him and start to wander around trying to find our street…… nowhere (we later found out we weren’t even half way to the correct stop). Finding a map we realized that we were HELLA far away. So taxi time. Shouldn’t take too long at all. Unfortunately the driver had decided that we didn’t know what we were talking about when we gave him directions. So he brought us to the hostel he knew about instead. Needless to say that the taxi ride cost a shitload of money to bring us to the wrong place, leave the meter running while the driver went in and tried to find the address of the place we were supposed to go. Then when we finally got to where we were headed, tried to rip us off for 10 euro when giving us back the change…. Not a happy start. But alas we were finally there, a bed to sleep in, very nice reception (even though it was 1:30 in the morning now) and even our very own kitchen. A nice place to be staying really. After a very righteous sleep we made our way to the beach. It was later in the afternoon, so the temperature was perfect. The water was a beautiful way to cool down when we did actually get too hot. And of course topless women sunbathing, can’t really complain about that…. Well… not going to get into that. The next day was the first day of the volleyball tournament, so we had to find out how we were going to get there and which beach it was actually at. As we were leaving to go and watch Brice play her game the owner of the hostel tells us that some people are coming in today and that we need to move our stuff out for them to move it. Not happy with that. So we head back in and start packing up as quickly as possible and then try to find out where he wants us to put our stuff….. but he ran away, no where to be found. So all our freshly packed bags stay in our room until we get back. Walk to the beach as quickly as possible just in time to watch the last moments of our friend getting knocked out of the tournament… in the first round…. Once again, not so happy. But at least we now had a tour guide for the whole day to show us around, and get us into the players area for free water and a shaded place to watch the other games. After a full day of being in the sun we made our way back to the hostel and finally found the owner, who promptly told us that we no longer had to move our stuff, and that we were going to be staying in that room for the next two days(the rest of our time there basically). So that is good news, no needing to move. The next morning we were woken up at 8 30 in the morning and told that we now had to move… right away….. very unhappy. After getting all of our stuff rounded up again we decided that we were going to the train station and booking our way out of there tonight. No more of this, besides we wanted to get into Pamplona for the opening of the running of the bulls if we at all could. Trains booked, but with a slight stop over in Irun (get into that next entry). But the bus ride and walk through the city centre was disgusting. Garbage everywhere, surrounding the streets and monuments, which were currently all under construction. The entire city just seemed to be in shambles, which didn’t help our time there to seem any better. As we were heading back to our hostel we all decided that we should get some food for the trip into Pamplona. Low and behold, doesn’t my luck pull through for me again. The cashier ripped me off for a euro, now I know that a euro isn’t all that much, but I really have to penny pinch while I’m out here. When I tell her this, she start making more of an issue of it then I did, and the then whole store had to come to a grinding halt as her manager had to count all the cash in the till to tell me that I was obviously wrong because she only had 0.80 over what she was supposed to… not a full euro so I was in the wrong… because there was no way her counting was wrong….. needless to say that I hate Marseilles, and I think all of you should too :-P I guess this has to do with the fact that most of the places we went to we had rather blessed experiences, but the time we spent in Marseilles was a terrible time, the only good times we had were with friends…. Nothing to do with the city, and certainly NOT the people there. I’m sorry this is so long… needed to rant I guess. I’ll be writing about Pamplona and the vicious traveling to and from there. Vaughn Current Mood: blah (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
10:19 am	leaving my homelands *sniff, sniff* Well now I'm leaving Edinburgh, and Scotland. Makes me sad that I didn't get to see more of it, but I am most def planning on coming back up here. The scenery and well everything here just has a warm and friendly feeling to it. I love it here, the kind of place I could see myself retiring. So in a short while we'll be heading back down to paris for a week of appartment living for a week while we plan the last stretch of our eupore tour. So far the plan is to head into spain, after all it is running of the bulls time :-D (Max and Phil can have lots of fun with that). It appears this will be a short entry as computer time is not free here... and well, I'm cheap. Talk to you when I'm in paris, I'll have time then. Vaughn Current Mood: sleepy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 16th, 2006
2:35 pm	been a little while Hello everyone, just letting everyone know that I'm still alive over here. Since I haven't posted one of these since I left Paris so here is what I've been up to. From Paris we took a train it into Brussels Belgium, then after some confused running around found the next train to get onto to get to Bruges. We got to our hostel at around 9 at night. It was a very nice and classy place, we stayed in a 3 bed private room that first night. We did some walking around until about midnight, then I spent the next 2 hours trying to get the phones working, or to find an internet cafe that was open. I did find a bar that luckily had free internet for me to use and managed to send off a few emails to let ppl know I was alive. The next 3 days of walking around Bruges was great, it was basically a venice, just without the ppl or the sewage smell I've heard of. Took lots of pics, unfortunately I have no idea how to actually post them on here so you'll have to ask me to send you some personally :-P. Next we headed back down to Brussels for 3 days. This was another smaller place where it's the entire center was walkable, must like Bruges. And we had seen alot of it within the first two days there. And luckily it was pretty good prices for food too :-D. Unfortunately we found out too late the the Dalai Lama was in Brussels and was teaching about emptyness. I do have to say that these first two cities in our Actual travels were a very good start, because the were both low key, laid back cities. Both smaller cities and easily walkable, and very comfortable. Then it was off to Munich for the opening of the world cup. We stayed there for 4 days and I personally plan on going back there. The English Gardens are absolutely massive and right at the south end at the beginning of the river that runs through the entire park.... people or surfing in the river... it was really weird, and kinda cool too. Viv as soon as I saw that I thought of you ;-). I sent some of the Pictures of that and maybe one of the vids of it to Rebe, so ask her to see them. Another interesting fact about Munich, for those of you that have seen the commercials for Disney land, or have actually been there.... the castle that is there, is moulded exactly from a castle that is just on the outskirts of Munich. Unfortunately we didn't get to go there on this visit, but that is one of the reasons that we are going back there. The other is that Munich has the largest zoo in europe. I like to pet the lions :-D. After the opening game of the world cup we spent the entire night wandering around and then just sitting in the train station waiting to catch our 5:27 train out of Munich, to Brussels, and then through the English Channel Tunnel into London. In London we've did some MASSIVE walking around the first day.... about 7 hours straight, saw alot and was just a little sore. Did some shopping and got more shorts and t-shirts. Thanks to Jo I managed to get them for nice and cheap too. Thank you Primark ;-). We also managed to get two shows in this week, the Producers and the Phantom of the Opera. Both were great shows and I loved them. Tonight phil is watching some shakespeare. Well that is what has happened so far. Tomorrow we are heading off to Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm looking forward to that. Anyways, I'll talk to everyone later. And if you want any of the pics that I've taken so far, just send an email and I'll try to get some to you as soon as I can. Vaughn Current Mood: lazy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 19th, 2006
8:09 pm	getting into tourism mode today was alot more eventful then the past few here in paris. after waking up it was decided that we were going to see Saint Chappelle. this being a rather small and rather old building beside the louvre. looking at the outside didn't nearly ready me for what was inside this beautiful building. the first floor was cool, though me max and matt all thought that it was somewhat small for the 4.50 euro it cost to enter. then we found the stairs leading to the main chapel area. incredibly tall lofted ceilings, stain glass on all walls with intricate designs on the walls below. the balcony right at the main entrance to the second floor was of course amazing stone work outlining the double doors. once i get a comp that i can get my pics on, i'm going to be putting some of the pics on here for everyone to stare at :D. after sitting down on the balcony for a good long while and staring at the amazing artwork, it was decided that we should go to notre dame. on our travels to notre dame we happened upon a wheat and bread festival (salivates). so after buying some cheap and still freshly warm bread we finished wandering to notre dame. this is of course, very large, very dark(as most churches from this era are) and had a service going on as we walked around. so we got to listen to the children singing... whatever song... keeping us entertained of course. after the walk through of notre dame, we found some food in our little latin quarter of paris. 4 euro for one of the largest sandwiches i've seen in a long time... and greasiest. so obviously worth it. then walked to our bridge of get relaxation, located at the east end of la louvre. HAHA almost french there... that was sad, i'm sorry. 3 hours of sitting on this lovely bridge we decided to go back to max's apartment and get some dinner(more nutella for me). managed to get a call in to mom, and watched matt nearly throw the computer out the window trying to deal with his friend booking the hotel/hostel for munich and berlin. it was an interesting ordeal to say the least. we've also decided how we're going to be welcoming phil when he finally arrives here in paris after his mishap with the passport. champagne and cigars by the light of the eiffel tower we figure is a good way to brighten his spirits. well i think i'm off to get some sleep here, it's 2 37 in the morning after all. talk to you again soon. Vaughn Current Mood: relaxed (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 18th, 2006
2:04 pm	hello to all my friends Just letting everyone know the situation over here. This is my first livejournal, I set it up a while ago but waited until I was on the trip to start making entries, so please forgive me if it all goes wrong. So I arrived in paris about 10 30 paris time (4 30 T.O. time). Had alot of fun trying to figure out the phones and where to buy the RER (metro) tickets. After a rather annoying 5 attempts at calling max's cell, finally got through to him got proper directions, and managed to arrive at his apartment sometime between 1 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon. after arriving and walking up an incredibly long and painful set of stairs, we went back out for a walk so max could do laundry and we could get something to eat. managed to find a nice place that wasn't too expensive for lunch, then went to haggendaz for dessert :| so expensive is the ice creamy goodness. then back to max's for some more lounging. went for dinner, luckily only about 10 euro each after tax's, makes me happy. on the way back to the apartment we walked along the river and talked about how awesome this trip is going to be, then sat on a bridge and watched the thunderstorm approach us. it was amazing, the lightening was literaly splitting the sky in half. then back to the apartment for sleep and talk. this morning(actually about 1 in the afternoon, but who's counting) we got up, and wandered do that grocery store, because i can no longer afford to go to places to eat. it's now all about the nutella sandwiches and 1kg of peanuts...... so many peanuts. it's actually a brick of nuts, it hilarious. went back to the same bridge after some eating took place and lounged in the sun for maybe 3 hours, it was a great day, nice breeze off the river, and the occasional cloud to block the sun. now i'm back in the apartment for dinner and telling you all about how the trip is going. i'll be keeping you informed mostly through here, so keep on checking up on me ;). signin' off Vaughn Current Mood: mellow (4 Comments |Comment on this)