Belize Address!!

We have all our flight and staging info now...and with that we now have OUR FIRST REAL ADDRESS IN BELIZE!

Greg and Kevina Casaletto
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 492
Belmopan
Belize

We will be able to receive letters and packages to this address for the entirety of our service. However, once we get our final placement we might get another PO box closer to us. Any who, they said the Belize postal system is not nearly as fast or as predictable as the US. If you want to send us a letter just put the date on it and number them so we know if one got lost and can figure out about how long it took.

A few other tips for mailing things:
-Put postcards in envelopes or else they might end up as wall decorations in the post office.
-If you want to send a package try to use a padded envelope instead of a box. Boxes tend to be taxed and opened more frequently.
-Also, it can take anywhere from 10 days to a month for mail coming from Belize to arrive in the US...so be patient with us:)
-And hey, if you want to start sending stuff now we might actually get it by the time we arrive!

Now I must go back to organizing and packing. We are still taking carloads to Good Will...just when I think we have almost nothing left to our name we discover another closet. Good news: We can now park a car in the garage!!!!

Video Post!

Okay here goes our first attempt at posting videos. Fingers crossed!




Okay I hope this works!

Kilkenny, Ireland

Still fitting it all in 1 bag each! Gotta love RyanAir's baggage restrictions!

Instead of hanging out in Dublin for a few days until we flew back to the US my Cousin Bob invited us to stay with him and his girlfriend Madeline out in the countryside!! When we first arrived we were nervous we wouldn't be able to find them (I have never met Cousin Bob) but immediately Greg was able to pick him out due to the immense family resemblance to my dad and his brothers!! After a quick stop for tea and cakes we went to Madeline's awesome house, which is about 10 miles from Kilkenny.

We had a lovely time talking, great food, and then after dinner the kids taught us a traditional Irish game called hurling. Kinda like lacrosse/football/ and soccer combined and without any pads except a helmet.

Catching up with Cousin Bob before dinner

Hurling in the backyard!!

The next day we went and explored Kilkenny. We climbed the tower at the old church. From there we could see all of Kilkenny. Inside the tower there is a little man at a little desk who collects the money to go up...what a job.

An old abandoned church.

View of the Smithwick's Brewery from the tower.

Climbing the tower

Where my cousin works and us walking around town. Music at a REAL Irish pub!

The last night we went out to a pub (a REAL Irish pub) to hear some real Irish music. It was pretty awesome and we had a wonderful time hanging out with Cousin Bob and Madeline. There was this old man (the blur in the dark blue shirt in the photo below) who would fall asleep and then wake up and nod his head while the accordion player, guitarist, and harmonica played. I thought this was quite entertaining. As I looked around at the many photographs on the wall I saw a picture of the same trio of musicians and the same old man, only they all had darker hair, and more of it. They were even sitting in the exact same places!

We had a wonderful time in the green countryside of Ireland! We hope to do a video post soon of our best videos from Europe soon. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Paris

Waiting at the airport I was wearing jeans because Paris weather was supposed to be kind of chilly. Well my knees were kind of itchy, I had some mosquito bites so I didn't really think anything of it. When we were waiting for the plane I realized I was really itchy. I went to the bathroom and I had a rash all over my lower body and lower back! Luckily we had Benadryl so I took three of those and hoped for the best.

So we stayed about an hour outside of Paris in a small town of about 1,000 called Saint Sulpice. The bed and breakfast was wonderful. The couple that owns it has a 1 1/2 year old (which is the reason they opened the B&B up two years ago)! They both get to stay home with their son and he already knows french and German! The B&B was an old farmhouse that they converted into rooms! We got the loft!

Our lovely room, with real towels, our own shower, and Q-tips!!

Downstairs for breakfast, the stairs lead to our loft.

I met two Kevins there!

When we first got into Paris we walked over to the Montmarte Cathedral that is on top of a hill overlooking all of Paris. We walked along a little more and then headed over to the Catacombs Museum.

Walking around Paris

View from Montmarte.

Catacombs:

Paris in the late 1700's was a huge metropolitan city. They quarried under the city for materials to build up on the surface. This was done almost gluttonously and the buildings above actually started to fall and collapse into the weakened earth and quarries below. Around this same time they were running out of space to bury their dead. Families would pay the priests to bury their dead and the priests, not wanting to turn down money, would just stack the bodies in 'houses for the dead.' Or they would build up 10-15 ft walls around cemeteries so they could then bury one on top of the other. Now this was becoming a real problem because as more and more bodies were buried the walls of some cemeteries started to actually burst and spew decomposing bodies into the street. People living near this would then begin to die from disease. Now, in almost every society disturbing the dead is a huge taboo. But, when the choice is between the dead or the living...the living usually takes the cake. The decision was made to transport all the bones into the extensive quarries under Paris. They were consecrated and the long process of transporting the bones was done at night while priests sang the funeral hymns. It was very cold and eerie. When we first walked down the 180 odd steps the only thing you could hear was the crunch of gravel under our feet and the echo of voices further along. Deeper into the catacombs there were large puddles and the roof would drip on you as you walk past hundreds of skulls stacked neatly into a heart or cross.

Some parts were marked with a sign indicating which cemetery the bones came from. The gap is a ventilation system for the catacombs.

Bike tour:

We once again went on the Fat Tire Bike Tour. We chose to do this and get some background history and save the Louvre for whenever/if-ever we return. This was good seeing as how we only had 12 hours in the city and there are 8 miles of gallery. There are so many pieces of art that if you spent just one minute looking at each piece 24 hours a day it would take you 9 months to see all of it!

Napoleon's Tomb

That roof is covered in 18k gold. It is also where Napoleon is entombed. He was buried in 6 caskets (one within the other like the Russian dolls) the largest one almost the size of a bus. His casket is on display a floor under where you can see it from. That way even in death you bow to him. Now he was not originally buried here. He died on an island in the middle of the Atlantic where he was exiled. This was his second time being exiled. The first he was given 1000 men to go with him and after hearing what was happening in France he and his men easily escaped and began to march up to take over. Twice France sent out an army to defeat this uprising. Twice Napoleon gave an impassioned speech and twice was able to convince the troops to march with him and join his cause. When he got there it was a bloodless coup. He was able to just say I'm in charge now...and he was. This lasted 100 days. That is how long it took for him to get himself exiled a second time. That time they made sure he wasn't escaping. It was here that he wrote his memoirs and his detailed funeral plans. He died on that island.

This is the military school that Napoleon went to. He finished the 2 year program in 1 so that his brother could use the remainder of his scholarship! The lawn in front of this is where he used to practice drills with his classmates.

We ran into 'Miss Jay' in Jardin des Tuileries park! He was very nice and made us show him the picture to make sure he 'looked cute'!! This park is where Marie Antoinette was beheaded.

The Eiffel tower was built for the 1889 world fair. It was initially on loan for 20 years at the end of which they were going to tear it down. However Mr. Eiffel would not allow that and the way he convinced France was by going to the military and telling them that if they ran a radio antenna up it, they would have the worlds tallest radio tower. It was the worlds tallest building up until 1930 when the Chrysler building in New York.

A crepe in the park and us on our sweet rides!

That spyre thing with the gold top is actually the oldest monument in Europe...it is egyptian and Napolian helped himself to it. Every year France recieves an offiical reaquest for its return.

We only stayed in paris for one day because when my sister and I went 4 years ago we did not have great experiances. This was a trial run to see if we might want to come again. We liked it. Hopefully we will go again and do the Lourve and some of the other main sights.

Barcelona

Relaxing in a park.

The dinning room in the hostel

As I mentioned before we got into Barcelona July 4th at night. We checked into our hostel (Dream, Be Hostels Barcelona), walked to a grocery store, ate dinner and sulked. We decided to just sleep in the next day and then walk around a little. We walked down the boardwalk and the weather was wonderfully hot! While we were walking we saw a guy sitting under a tree. He looked familiar, I looked again and it was John, one of the Canadians we met in Rome a week ago while waiting for the bus at 4AM! We talked to him for a while. He is touring for 3 months and said he was getting kinda over it. He is going to be an industrial architect so he was going to sketch some statues and buildings while he waited for his 10pm fairy to Ibiza.

Street performance and Greg on Las Ramblas

I want all my olives to come like this!

Outside the Barcelona Aquarium...Look familiar Kaylyssa?

After we walked around for a while, down Las Ramblas and around the museum island we decided to go watch the fountain music and light show at the base of MontJuic. We caught the last 15 minutes of the show and it was pretty amazing. The peddling goods of choice at this tourist spot happened to be light up glasses and single beers from a six pack. My favorite part of the fountain show was when they made it really misty and it looked like blue and purple clouds floating around the fountain! The performance was to classical music that you could hear for about 10 blocks.

All at the Magic Fountain

The next day we went on the Fat Tire Bike tour. Here's some stuff we learned:

-There are over two hundred different saint's body parts in the Barcelona cathedral.

-The Catalan flag is the oldest in Europe...it dates to 1040. It is supposedly representing when King Harry was wounded in battle and another guy put his hand on his wound and dragged his four fingers across his gold shield. Hence, the yellow flag with four red stripes (however the two people in the legend lived hundreds of years apart).

-Queen Isabella and her weak uninvolved husband King Ferdinand led to the downfall of Catalonia.

-Columbus asked the queen two times to finance his trip around the world. Finally the third time she said yes, perhaps due to his daring personality and strikingly handsome face?

-When he marched back up her steps a year later she instantly took credit for the discovery, since she financed it, and allowed only Castilian Spain (where Queen Isabella was from) to trade with the new world.

Greg running up the same steps that Columbus ran up after finding the new world.

-Catalan lost independence and became part of Spain. Franco wanted all of Spain to have a national identity and made it illegal to speak Catalan or practice Catalanian traditions (you were executed for speaking Catalan in the streets).

-'Spanish' traditions were brought in and forced on the people, such as bull fighting. When Franco died on November 20th 1975 a party in the streets instantly broke out and lasted for 3 days...until all the alcohol in Barcelona was consumed.

Red paint on the last functioning bull fighting arena in Barcelona

-Barcelona zoo was home of the only albino gorilla in captivity up until a few years ago when he passed away from skin cancer. No joke!

-Don't worry though he had a good last couple of months. He had an endless supply of girl gorillas in hopes of another baby albino being born. None were though.

By the enterance to the zoo.

-Nakedness is completely legal in Barcelona...complete and only complete nakedness. If for example you have a scarf on, or just a shirt it's illegal. As is flashing. Gotta give the people fair warning I guess. We saw people utilizing this freedom quite a bit on the beaches and once on the boardwalk!

-The Sangrada Familia was Antonio Gaudi's baby. Construction began in 1832 and except for a couple decades off for the war there has been almost continuous construction on the building. There is a clear difference between the work Gaudi did and the work after his death because even though he left plans, he was always changing his plans.. The architects decided that instead of doing a great injustice by trying to do 'Gaudi' architecture they would make it an obvious contrast. They did so by making the faces and surfaces very angular and severe. They are planning on building 10 more towers with the tallest one representing Jesus to be 169 meters. This is double the existing tallest tower's height and it is one meeter shorter than the tallest point on MontJuic. This is because Gaudi said he didn't want to make anything taller than God's own creation (the mountain bordering Barcelona). The supposed finish date is in 2025 which almost no one is holding their breath for.

The fruit in this picture is made of Vanitian glass...so smooth that rain is all it needs to be cleaned.

Hanging out infront of the Temple, the dark part is what Gaudi saw finished.

-Gaudi was building this church for the common person and the poor. He felt there was a real disconnect between the churches and the general people. That is why it is an independently funded project (it has never been paid for by the government or the church). This is also why it is a temple, because any denomination can apparently worship in a temple. This brings me to Gaudi's death.

-Gaudi for the last 12 years of his life was living in the Sangrada Familia and was for all intensive purposes a hermit. He worked on plans and constructed models and rarely left the temple. One day he went out for something or another and he got hit by a tram. Now this did not kill him. He had a scraggly beard and haggard clothes on him and for a day he sat on the side of the street and people refused to help him thinking he was just some bum. The next day he finally got a taxi to take him to the hospital, but looking like he did they took him to the worst hospital where all the poor people went. There he sat again for almost a full day. On the third day someone walking past recognized him and immediately offered to take him to the best hospital right away where he would most likely have recovered. Gaudi's last words were, “No, I think I'll die here with the poor.” Which he did... a few days latter. He was building that temple for poor people and in the end he wanted to die among them. Gaudí died in that hospital 5 days after the accident on June 12, 1926, at the age of 74. And that too is where he is buried.

While on the bike tour we made friends with two Canadians, Igor and Erin (they were not traveling together, it just turns out that everyone we met was either Canadian or from Texas!). So after the tour we decided to go get something to eat and then go watch a movie on MontJuic. We met Igor's friend Roy and got some paella...YUM! Igor was on the phone much of the time trying to buy train tickets for the following day. When he came back he said, “...playing minds on my tricks” we gave him a hard time and he said his brain was all mixed up from speaking Spanish for an hour on the phone. Igor is originally from Panama. Then we went up MontJuic where they were playing No Country for Old Men (with Catalan subtitles) on the side of the castle! We had some snacks and drinks and they even had free mats for the grass! Now to get in, Roy was pretty sure he knew a way that wasn't checking tickets. After a hike up a mountain in the forest where we were crawling and grabbing on to plants to keep from falling....we still all ended up paying 5 Euros. The movie was really fun, the whole old mote area was filled with people and we even had our pack towels for the beach we used as blankets!

Paella and Sangria...Yum!

Sunset from MontJuic and getting settled in for the movie!

Yay for free cute glasses!

I don't know which of us was more excited.

The Sangrada Familia is in the background.

When the movie was over at around midnight we walked back down to the bus stop on the mountain. We missed the bus right before us and it was packed to extreme capacity as it lurched forward and away down the mountain. We were near the front of the new line for the bus and as we got on there was already just standing room. I noticed a little rail and said to Greg, “Oh, look a Kevina sized space!” and squeezed in between the rail and the backs of the seats. So the bus ride is not too bad and we stop at the bottom of the mountain near the Magic Fountain. Well, when the doors go to open Greg starts screaming...His had is caught between the door and the frame. We both push against it freeing his hand. We don't have time to celebrate or check for injuries because that 'Kevina-sized-space' turned out to be for the doors to fling into and now I am pinned, full body against the rail and I am quite concerned I might die! Greg, myself, and a couple other helpful hands that appeared out of nowhere, start pushing on the door. We are able to push the door back enough for me to squeeze out (very painfully might I add). After which the door SLAMS back into the space where I was once standing! I do a quick once over for any serious injuries and after discovering only a small bruise on my ankle I thank my lucky stars that I survived...and my strong husband too :). After a long, slow walk escorting one of our new friends back to the bus stops, we got on ours and went to bed exhausted!

Yay for movies on the side of castles!

The next day we decided to pack another picnic and head out to the beach for a good part of the day. There were men selling coke, water, or beer from these identical blue coolers. One man kept saying' “Da-doo, da-doo, da-doo!!” really fast and loud while pushing his cooler in peoples' faces. I do not know what word he was actually trying to say but it was funny hearing that echo down the beach as he tried to make some money. We saw another guy selling drinks that quickly laid down and took off his shirt (and put it over his cooler). A few moments later we understood why. A cop came up and after a few words and a very feeble attempt from the peddler to dispute it, the cop took the cooler! They guy only got his shirt back after a little yelling match! Afterwards we went and played on MontJuic some more and walked around the castle. On our way to the castle we saw a one legged, naked man taking a shower on the beach. Not a tan line to speak of. And that....is Barcelona.

This had a working fountain!

Finicula to MontJuic...the man made beaches for the 92 olympics.

Olympic stadium overlooking the rest of Barcelona...cool.

Feeding a stray cat off the side of the castle.

Not too many people (besides Kaylyssa) know about the different playgrounds on MontJuic!


This little rat was so happy! We played on this statue for almost 30 minutes!

Arial view of Las Ramblas and Greg outside of the Finicula at the top.