I AM BATMAN

Hey everyone, check out this link to a video I got to be part of for my internship in London. Its for a fairly large company called the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT). I am Batman in the video. Its pretty funny stuff, really well done too, since our production included one professional actor and a cameraman, along with hours spent in the editing studio. Superman is a guy who sits next to me at work named Jules, and everyone else is part of the AAT. Here's the link:

http://www.aat.org.uk/superhero/

Enjoy.

Oui Oui en Frances

Sorry dad and grampaw, i know i haven't been writing very much. i'm busy and lazy. i have 21 total blog posts though, and thats more than most of my friends by an awful lot, so you should feel lucky.

we were in france this weekend for our Normandy 1944 class trip. we drove down to the coast in our crappy 15 passenger diesel bus, drove it onto a ferry, and crossed the channel overnight. we went at an odd angle on a big slow ferry way over to the Port of Ouistreham ("weesterham"), so it took us about 6 hours to cross the channel even though most people think of dover-calais, where its only 21 miles across and takes about an hour. so we got into france at about 630am friday. we had about 3.5 hours of sleep on the boat, and it is quite possible the most annoying and unpleasant thing in the world when the automatic alarm comes on about 530am, playing a loud, terribly timed orchestra piece over the radio piping into every cabin. it was still dark outside. we got into ouistreham and at breakfast at a local cafe. it was a small pretty town, which we saw a lot of this weekend. no big cities. the closest thing was the town of Bayeux where we stayed, and its only about 20.000 people, but if feels really small. there's still only like one big supermarket. its nice.

a french breakfast consists of bread (baguettes), a croissant, which is super soft flaky and awesome, jam or butter if you fancy it, a hot drink (we all got the best hot chocolate ever), and orange juice. nothing drastically different, but the bread there is darn-tootin good, i'll tell ya. then after breakfast we went to some places in aroudn the area. our longest drive the whole weekend was about half an hour, its all pretty close together, the war sites and such. we saw all of the normandy beaches, pointe du hoc, which had a lot of bomb craters and is along a really cool scenic coast lined with cliffs. we saw about 6 different museums this weekend. we saw pegasus bridge, where the fist casualty of dday occured.

the area of normandy france is famous for several things. not a lot of wine, actually. they have lots of orchards, and so make excellent apples of course, but also an apple brandy that is good as an apertif, sweet apple cidre, and lots of apple butter and spreads and such. they also have lots of good cheese. the countryside there is really pretty. most of what we drove on were narrow highways, without shoulders, where the super green grass in the ditch came right up next to the road. there were lots of fields, just like iowa, but no corn and beans. many were still empty this time of year, or atleast still looked like dirt. many others were endless seas of pretty yellow flowerd plants about the size of soybeans, that our teacher told us is used to make cooking oil. they have lots of cows, of many different sizes and colors. some were all white and absolutely huge, they don't have that kind anywhere else in the world. we walked on the beaches and saw remnants of Mulberry B, one of two artifical harbours created shortly after d.day to land supplies in france. for several months this artificial harbour was the busiest in the whole world. it was made by towing 5 story blocks of hollow concrete across the channel and sinking them just offshore of arromanches, france. they are really a site to see, and pictures from the war make it easy to imagine what it must have been like when it was fully operational during the early 1940s.

we went out for a nice french meal one night, and i ate duck which i've never had before. it was good. also had four glasses of french wine with my meal. i mean, they brought like 5 jugs of it out, so we had to finish it. no worries, though, the glasses were tiny. it was an excellent meal, though i could have eaten much more. i feel sometimes underprivileged as a young male who can eat whole animals at a time. i dont feel like i'm being fairly treated when i get a meal at a restaurant and can eat twice that much. its not my fault i'm a tank. i need to nourish myself.

this weekend we're off to climb preikestolen (google image that, everyone, its worth it) and see the countryside of norway. these last few days here over the pond will go pretty quickly, with lost of hw during the week and my only remaining wkend being spent in norway climing a big rock. if anyone wants any specific souvenir, tell me now, your time is running out. gramps, i will get your bottle of sherry before i leave from the tax free shop at the airport. we leave on may 8-a friday. i get into chicago airport at about 9pm that night, iowa time. then i'm riding with my friend to burlington, spending the night there, and i'll be back in perry sometime during the day on saturday, May 9. this semester has gone quite fast.

Spring break

just so you all know, ive been on spring break in italy this week. so i may not have internet or phone access till i return on sunday to london. yesterday our group went to easter mass in the