A Mixture of Light and Shadow!!!

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Mammoth Caves!!


Thanks to the
Memorial Day, we had a long weekend, which we certainly used very well. Chris, his two friends “Brian” from Motorola and I, drove the whole way to Kentucky to Mammoth Cave National Park




Friday May 26
We hit the road at midday, in our rented SUV, which wasn’t as big as we thought and we almost didn’t fit in it.
There was only 1 requirement in order to go underground in the cave and that was to bring High-top, over-the-ankle lace-up boots, for your safe tines in the cave. But 20 minutes before arriving to the campsite, at 9:30pm Chris said: “I forgot my boots!!”. Our tour was at 9 am next morning… but we were in America!!! So even in Kentucky, and in a county that was in the middle of nowhere, we just drove to a super Wal-Mart, open 24 hours, 9 miles away and got hiking boots for 11 dollars at midnight. Isn’t that great??
Back in the campsite, I discovered that Americans camping style was a bit different from Colombians, or at least from what I was use to. Everybody was sleeping already, there was no noise at all, nobody was playing the guitar, the fires were already extinguish, no drunk people… anyway; we had a couple of whiskeys and went to bed.

Saturday 27
I woke up early and absolutely sick, after throwing up all the food that was in my stomach for the last days, I went back to bed and at 8:45, feeling like shit and very weak, we went to meet our group to take the
wild cave tour, which is by far the toughest adventure I’ve ever had. Plus I was very weak, so that didn’t help. We were underground for 6 and half hours, crawling and climbing most of the time. It was a lot of fun, but it is definitely a one-time experience.
This is how we looked when we came out.







At night we got together with Sarah and her husband Nathan, who are Brian Jone’s friends and we had a great time and excellent American style camping food (hotdogs, hamburgers, apple pies and the most delicious smores which are grilled marshmallows, with a piece of chocolate in between two graham cookies.

Sunday 28
We took the violet lantern tour, which was a beautiful tour with old stile lanterns, which showed us how were the things in the caves many years ago.



In the afternoon we took our last tour called
frozen Niagara, which was in my opinion the most beautiful one.




After all this caving we went from bottom to top! On the alpine slide, probably the highlight of my trip!! God!! That was so much FUN!!




Monday 29
We packed all our stuff and after a great breakfast we headed to Sarah’s and Nathan’s house to say bye and that gave me a better understanding of the south style living. They are more relax people, with a harder to understand, but very nice accent and that morning I got introduced to the
bluegrass music, which is some sort of country and very nice music.




After wise, and thanks to Nathan’s advice we went to
makers mark distillery, which is the currently the oldest operating bourbon distillery in the nation. They gave us a tour that showed us all the process and at the end we could buy and dip our own bottle in the wax.


So now I have a personalize maker mark bottle. I am not a very big bourbon fun, but it was very interesting to know that makers mark distillery sells their barrels to
Laphroaig, which is, as a matter of fact my favorite brand of whiskey.
We arrived to Chicago around 10:00pm. It was a great trip, full of adventures and lots of fun!!
Click here to see more pics!!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Happy Birthday Blog!!


My Blog is one year old!!
Having a Blog is the best idea in the world. It is so much fun to be able to go back on time… so many memories, trips, friends, experiences!!I am SO happy with my Blog!! I hope I can keep it forever and always continue uploading it often.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

The Davinci Code


GREAT movie!!
Im not too much of a reader, so I don’t care if the books are better than the movies, cause I cant compare them. I am a movies kind of girl and it has become an obsession for me to go to the movies and be able to see the locations and think: I’ve been there!!I cant imagine reading this book and having to imagine the churches and the paintings and the pyramids at the Louvre… I think that watching the movie and listening to the accents is much more fun. Anyway, excellent movie, very interesting topic, great actors and wonderful cinematography!!

Friday, May 19, 2006

Which superhero are you??


I am SUPER MAN:
Mild-mannered, good, strong and love to help others!!

I’m steeling this post from Maria, who stole it from Kafre.
Maria appear to be super girl, Kafre is spider man. I didn’t qualify as a girl, but im happy with my result.
If you wanna know which superhero are you, click HERE and take the test. Please write me a message telling which are you!!
Don’t try so hard; cause anyway superman kicks everybody else’s ass!!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Pear Jam Concert!!


Happy mothers day!!

Baby Pooh and Chris gave me for mothers day, the tickets to see pearl jam, one of my favorite bands of all times. The concert was GREAT, it lasted almost 3 hours. Eddie Vedder came back to stage 3 times and continue singing 4 more songs when all the lights of the United Center were already on. He grew up in Chicago, so apparently the concert here was meant to be very special! It wasn’t to much of a show, only great music. They played most of the new album and a very fair amount of the old stuff. My night was completed when I heard the guitar staring to play better man, probably my favorite song!!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Mission Impossible!!


Really cool movie. I love this kind of movies; cool cars, action, great places… just nice stuff. When I was living in Bogotá, we used to go always to the premier of movies like this one or x-men, fast and the furious, and then we could comment for ever about the cars and the special effects… this time I went by my self and I kind of missed all that!!Apart from that I discovered that Shanghai is definitely one of the next places I would love to visit!!

Sunday, May 14, 2006

St. Louis.

St. Louis is probably the most boring city I’ve ever been to. There is nothing to do there.They are very proud of the Gateway Arch, which is pretty cool and very tall (630 feet – 192 meters). It was built between February 12, 1963 and October 28, 1965. It stands on the border of the Mississippi River, so west of the arch is Missouri and to the east is Illinois. Apart from the arch and the Busch stadium (cardinals – baseball) there is nothing else.
The highlight of the trip was the Westin hotel, which was very nice and from the window of my room I saw a baseball game. The wedding was fine, but Deirdre got sick and she had to go to the hospital, not my best trip, but here are some pictures!!

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

A 33% trip!



Chris and I decided once more to go on a trip together, probably not the best idea. This was the very first time that we went somewhere acting “just” like friends and it wasn’t easy.
Our history of traveling from the very beginning was as some sort of couple; during our very first trip to Vienna and Budapest we kind of started our relationship.
On the other hand, London, our last trip was still in the process of “saving” what we used to have and definitely enjoying being together.
Philadelphia was different. We just don’t get along anymore, at least not how we used to! From the 3 days that we spent there, 2 were hell and the last one was fine.The trick is not to talk about us. Which for me is almost impossible. The fighter in me won’t accept that everything is lost and the frustration and desperation bring out the impulsive Ingrid who makes and says things that shouldn’t be done or said.



I used to think that I was a good looser, but lately I’ve realized that it may only apply to paying games. But when it comes to important stuff or things or people that actually mean a lot to me, I’m the WORST looser on earth!!
Philadelphia is a very nice city, I really liked it. Actually, I would say that it is my new second favorite city in the U.S, after Chicago, of course.




The last day, we took a ferry to cross the Delaware River, in order to have from New Jersey a better view of Philadelphia.

Friday, May 05, 2006

The horseshoe!!


Yesterday I had a great time, while listening for the first time to live country music!!I went to a really cool place called the
Horseshoe and had a couple of bourbons with some nice people that I met in INTERNET!!!. But that's a different story that I for sure would tell later on!!

Monday, May 01, 2006

Cool Weekend!!! :)


This past weekend was GREAT!! I finally had A LOT of fun…
On Thursday, the fun began.I finally met Mary, a friend of the family, who was as nice as they told me she was gonna be. She took me out and introduced me to her boyfriend and his 3 roommates. Everyone was very nice!!
On Friday, I finally went to Madison St, in Oak Park, which is a street full of bars and restaurants. I met some people at a bar and it was fun.
On Saturday I went to see “the wet spots” which in my opinion is the best show I’ve ever saw. It was hilarious.

Finally on Sunday, I went to the movies and watched
UNITED 93, the film about one of the planes that was hijacked on September 11th. It was a very good but stressful movie. Then again,maybe it's just because I knew that it was a true story.