Well this is my last posting. I'm HOME...haha and it took a couple of mishaps to get here. Basically the night before my departure me and chelsea headed out of the hostel and to the airport only to find that somewhere along the way between walking, taking a taxi, and taking a bus my passport had gone missing! WORST THING POSSIBLE. But for some reason I was actually really calm about the whole situation. I feel like I was so blessed to have such an amazing trip that maybe I needed a mishap to make it feel real. So there I was kind of shocked standing in the airport with chelsea with absolutely no possibility of being able to board my flight! This turned into quite the ordeal. First I had to go to the police and get a police report about my lost/stolen passport. Then I had to talk to the check in lady and the ticket sales and get myself on the next flight possible which happened to be the next day and then I had to trek it down to the embassy. After saying a weary goodbye to chelsea I realized that I was on my own and would have to figure things out for myself. So I figured out the bus that would drop me off and I headed down to the embassy. The embassy was really cool and exactly like the movies. It was basically this HUGE brick building surrounded on all sides by towering gates that were being watched carefully by the greek guards. After walking up to practically every single gate I finally found the one entrance that actually took in people haha. I was frisked and had my bag checked and had to take out all electronics and have my bag checked again and then go through a dectector before I could finally enter the actual building. When I walked in I was shocked to see a waiting room full of about 1oo people, how was i possibly going to get through it in time???? Fortunately because I am an american citizen I was quickly directed to a side room where I was relieved to find about five people in line. It was here that I explained my situation, gave my police report, filled out some paper work and took new passport pictures. It was actually all very simple and within two hours I had a brand new passport. Although I had remained calm throughout this whole situation my parents back home where suffering from insomnia,high blood pressure and I'm sure increased heart palpitations after I told them about my little discovery. I felt so bad for causing them so much worry but at the same time it was really hard for me to grasp the part that made this such a BIG deal. Things like this happen, and the world keeps moving, everything will eventually work out with patience. So for the rest of the day I was patient. I waited,hoping that they could get me on the second flight from heathrow to denver. It was out of my hands and all I could do was hope that my karma points had been tallying up enough to get me home. I rested up ate food and tried my best to relax until it was time to go back to the airport. I arrived at the airport around 6ish and went to the ticket counter in hopes that maybe one person had cancelled their flight and that I would have two boarding passes in my hand....no such luck. Unfortunately they still could not confirm a seat for me so I would be left to check again in Heathrow for the possibility of a miracle. I slept quite soundly through my flight from Athens to Heathrow and awoke right before the plane landed. I had to go through customs, where my new passport was scrutinized for a couple of minutes before they would let me collect my bag. Finally I was reaching the ticket counter, I was soo nervous! What if there wasn't any room? Where would I stay? What would I tell my parents?? I quickly explained my situation and was greeted with the sympathy of the BA lady. She immediately made a few phone calls and within minutes I had a shiny white boarding pass in my hand!!!! AHHH SUCCESS I was so relieved and so thankful and couldn't believe my luck!!! 9 hours later I was greeted by my father outside of the International Arrivals with my backpack on and a smile on my face full of relief to be standing on solid ground in the beautiful state of Colorado. I had made it.

Coming back home has been surreal. Walking through my front door I realized that my trip had come to an end I was home. Only hours ago I had been thousands of miles away in a beautiful country that housed me for six weeks, gave me wonderful friends, and left me with adventures that I will always cherish. Its weird adjusting back to reality. For the past month and a half me and Chelsea had been living in our own world. Doing exactly what we wanted when we wanted. Being completely in charge of our own destiny, we had the ability to do exactly as we pleased with nothing holding us back. People have asked me about my trip and when I try to explain I simply can't. Chelsea and I had a unique greek experience, I will never be able to do justice in explaining just exactly what we underwent during our travels. It was unique to our personalities and was a perfect fit for the type of travelers we wanted to be. To all the other backpackers we were the young crazy girls who had lived on hippie commune, had made life long friends with our village boys, and somehow managed to roam around Greece without any serious complications. We were some of the youngest travelers at the hostels and that made me feel soooo HAPPY.

On this trip I experienced a type of independence and freedom that made me feel like I could do anything. This trip has been the most liberating experience I could have ever hoped for and I am so thankful. I learned that I could count on myself to solve my mistakes and that I could be independent of others. My heart and soul felt complete on this trip, I felt like I wasn't missing out on anything and I was sooooo incredibly happy. Having to worry about basic things like where we were going to eat, or where we were going to sleep made me feel SO ALIVE. I was so aware of that fact that I was LIVING MY LIFE and that I was in charge of ME. I've learned on this trip that I want my life to be full of this type of sponaneity and this type of adventure. I want my life to always be this FULL OF LIFE. This is my promise to myself, that my adventures don't stop here, my growth will not stop here, and my energy will continue to excel me into new places and new levels.

I would also like to mention that CHELSEA was the best travel partner I could have everrrr asked for!!! Chelsea understands me and I understand her and that is a unique relationship that we have that allows us to be the best travel buddies EVER. I am going to miss you soo much this summer but I can't wait for our next expeditions (because there will be many). I am so glad we were freshman year roommates because without her this trip would have been very different. I am so glad that we have become friends and I am soo glad that we went on this trip together!!! I LOVE YOU BOO. I am so lucky to have met you!!

Someone I met on this trip told me that I have a dreamers mentality. Which basically means I have kind of a delusional reality. I HOPE I always have this mentality in fact I LOVE this mentality. I think its because of this mentality that my dream came true and I traveled the beautiful country of GREECE.

I HOPE that everyone does something like this....its good for your soul!

Last but not least I would like to revisit my thanks. There aren't enough thank you's in the world to commend how perfectly this trip fell into place. With the help of amazing parents, and new found friends this trip was made into an amazing experience. Like i've mentioned before people really do make the place. TO EVERYONE I met on this trip, whether you were a fellow backpacker, a cohort at the sunshine house, a Bourtzi boy, or someone from the hostel it is because of you that my trip was so INCREDIBLE. I am so lucky to have met all of you and to have shared those experiences with all of you. You are wonderful and you gave me the time of my life!

PARENTS I LOVE YOUUUUU thank you for putting up with the stress of having a crazy traveling 19 year old daughter roam the land of GREECE. You let my dreams come true!

with LOVE and THANKS

JESSICA

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

5th night seeing the sunrise!!! we went to a really cool club called cavo paradiso and actually ran into people that we had met the night before! the DJ was really good and it was another successful night in Mykonos!

We leave on Tuesday and I come home tuesday night. Its a little bitter sweet because I have honestly had the time of my life here. I am happy to go home but sad to leave this amazing adventure behind.

See you on Tuesday

Jess

WE are in MYKONOS!!!! ahhhhh so MYKONOS is crazyyyyy

Pretty much we arrived yesterday to our hostel around 2ish in the afternoon and passed out in our rooms for the majority of the day. Can i mention that our room is basically a tool shed split in half painted in all white with creepy mental instituition-esque beds haha ahh o well I guess it does the job. After catching up on some sleep we ate, went into town and went on an epic quest for an atm. We then came back slept some more and woke up to our alarm at 2 in the morning....the perfect time to begin the night! We headed down to club paradise where a DJ named Ministry of Sound was performing. Ahhhh the club was sooo much fun. It was huge, and outdoors and there was this huge pool, and me and chelsea danced on a platform all night. It was soo much fun. And they played our favorite song called deep fear by sidekick! We danced until dawn making that our fourth day seeing the sun rise. We have also yet to take a a real shower since santorini so thats kind of gross but whatever we are backpackers so it doesn't matter haha.

I don't really know what else to say about Mykonos its just basically another huge party island!!!!Today I think we are going to do some actual sight seeing and go see the famous windmills and the classy pelicans.

Tonight there is another club called cavo paradiso that we plan on going to and I am soooo excited!!!

ahhh well my time is about to run out!

Oh my goodness.....IOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS ahhh haha I don't even know what to say anymore. pretty much two nights ago after we left our hottie boys at the beach we came back and had this really long relax session in our room in preparation for the night festivities. After that we got something to eat and then went to this place called sunrise. Basically its a hotel that has a bar type thing on the top and its where everyone hangs out before the bars open. Well we met up with our hottie model friends when we got there and headed to the bars/clubs around 2. We then danced at every single place we could find and stayed out until 8 in the morning. We then came back and slept until four and headed down to the beach....yes i live the life haha. At the beach we thought it would be a good idea to take a shower in the ocean and that is exactly what we did. We have yet to have a real shower on this island, ah well we don't smell too bad.

Last night we met up with our new zealand friend and his friend and pretty much repeated the same sequence of events but this time we went to bed early....around 6 in order to get some sleep before the ferry we need to catch at 12:30 to mykonos!!!!!! We were going to go to bed earlier but then they kept playing such good music that we just had to stay! Ahhh oh and we also met up with our model hottie friends again. Pretty much it was a good night but now I am exhausted and kind of getting sick.

Alright well I have to go, we are about to catch the shuttle to the port!!!

ahhh I almost forgot to mention that I was proposed to by this Irish guy that was obsessed with me haha. He claims that we are going to go to paris in 2015 and will be wedded in 2016 he even wrote me a love note in chelseas book. ahh it was really funny.

CIAO

Jessica

AHHH IOS haha I don't even know what to say...

pretty much it is one of the biggest party islands in the world haha and that kind of describes it

The deal here is that during the day everyone heads down to the beach and recovers from the previous night. There is a place called farout camping down there and they let everyone use their pool and bar etc so everyone, and I mean everyone on the island goes there during the day! So yesterday we decided to head down after we got in and go for a swim! the water here is sooo warm and it was so relaxing! after swimming for a bit we headed over to the bar and got some fancy girl cocktails and we started talking to this guy. As it turns out he is from littleton colorado and he went to school in arapaho!! haha ahh its a small world. Anyways him and his friend are soooo extremely ATTRACTIVE omg they could seriously be on those bag covers for abercrombie. haha and they are 26 and really nice and they kind of have adopted us as their friends. SUCCESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS They are seriously like the poster boys for hot but whatever no bigs. So we hung out with them for a little and it turns out that they are staying at our hostel. So last night we met up with them at the bar and they bought us some beers and we began the night with welcome shots! From then on its kind of a haze we went to tons of different bars and partied until dawn ahhhh amazing!!! then we went to bed and woke up at around 2 haha the life.

Today we ran into our new hottie friends and we went down to the beach with them and they bought us beach chairs and we basically just hung around until six. Can I just say that me and chelsea feel like our game levels have skyrocketed???? For reals us and model boys

I almost forgot to mention that last night we went and ate at this asian place called Ali Babas and they served the most delicous pad thai it was seriously soooo gooood!!!!and after we got free jello shots!!

I would like to mention that me and chelsea have been super careful and watching out for eachother. And our model boys have been watching our backs too! haha sooo yup thats probably whats going to be going down the next two nights and then we are off to mykonos and even bigger party island that is like world renowned for its DJs....ahhhhhh yes!

SANTORINI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ahhh IT IS sooo absolutely amazing here!

Chelsea and I left Crete two nights ago and boarded a 6 pm ferry to the most beautiful place in the world. As it turns out three people that we had worked with at the sunshine house were also on the ferry haha so it was like one big Sunshine House reunion! When we arrived in Santorini it was really dark and we weren't really sure how to get to our hostel (which by the way is only 7 euros a night). Luckily there was a shuttle waiting to take us back to the hostel almost immediately after we got off the ferry. As usual everything was carefree. The night we arrived we ended up going down to the near by blacksand beach and hungout with a couple of people from the hostel and just relaxed and played music.

The next day was a HUGE day. In the morning we decided to rent atvs and explore the island with two other people from the hostel. It was sooo much fun!!! ATVS are honestly so much fun!!!! The only uncool part was that we had to wear these dorky helmets. Chelseas helmet was honestly a close resemblence to that of the rider in the movie seabiscut and it constantly was slipping off of her head. As it turns out I am an awful ATV driver and when given control I go about twenty miles per hour haha and almost manage to run us into a car. Fortunately Chelsea is actually very talented at manuevering these little things and was happy to drive me around. ahh I almost forgot about halfway through the day we were driving along the coastline and I had the bright idea of turning chelseas sarong into a cape!!! ahh so just imagine chelsea driving this badass atv with a seabiscut helmet and me sitting behind her with a cape flying in the wind! haha We decided that when our adventure becomes the movie this will be the opening scene.

The first place that we went to was a light house at one end of the island. It was soo beautiful and there were stunning views of the caldera everywhere we looked. Chelsea and I even managed to get in some action shots of us balanced precariously on the cliffs edge (no need to worry we were perfectly safe...). After monkeying around and taking in sights that I couldn't even really see because they looked completely unreal we drove down to the red sand beach. The red sand beach was exactly that, it was a beach with red sand haha. It was really cool and actually was a result of the huge volcano that resulted in the formation of the caldera. We waddled around for a while and after a refreshing dip we headed down to Fira.

Fira is a very cute little bouncy town right in the middle of the island. We kind of just went where our friends led us because one of them had been there the day before so we basically just did some shopping and ate a Gyro (AHH i'm so sick of those) and kind of just poked around. My favorite part of the day was when we went into Oia. Oia is one of the most stunning places I have ever in my entire life had the priveledge to go to. IT looks like a magical cliffside town full of white and blue and pink and yellow stucco houses stacked on top of eachother in the most precarious fashion. It is the weirdest little town but also one of the most beautiful little towns in the ENTIRE WORLD. In Fira me and chelsea kind of felt like we were being held back by the other two people that we were with so when we arrived in Oia we decided to split up. Oia is simply magical, it measured up to all my expectations and more. We walked around and stumbled down the cobble stoned steps that winded through the cliffside neighborhood. IT was so hard for my eyes to grasp just what they were seeing because what I was perceiving in my mind seemed absolutely unbelievable. This has always been my dream to explore these streets and see the town of Oia and to actually be standing there was an amazing feeling and made me feel so unbelievebly happy and lucky. I'm pretty sure the entire time I just kept saying "OH MY GOODNESS!" over and over again.



A it turns out we ran into five people from the Sunshine House who were now staying in Oia. Three of them happen to be street performers and we watched them sing for money while we were there. Its so weird to run into people that we know from other islands when we have only been in Greece for about 5 weeks it made me realize just how small of a world it is.

While we were in Oia we felt love sick for all of the couples that we were watching. ahh it was kind of depressing... but it was nice to see people being so romantic. Oia is definitely one of the most romantic places everrrr.

Anyways we wandered through for a couple of hours and decided to peruse one of the many fancy jewelry shops. We started talking to the owner and explained that we were poor backpackers and just wanted to look at the jewelery haha. He ended up being really nice and ended up letting us try on 48,000 dollar rings! Ahh it was actually quite ironic because we are like dirt poor backpackers and we wearing the most expensive jewerly in the store.

We felt luxurious in Oia and while waiting for the sun to set we decided to share a chocolate souffle that cost more then one night in our hostel. Ah well it was delicious and in this quaint little shop that overlooked the caldera. Can I just say that the caldera is absolutley magnificent????? It is the most mind boggling sight ever and its absolutely impossible to get sick of seeing it. I think the caldera is probably one of the things I love most about Santorini. After our souffle we headed down to the main look out area and watched the infamous Santorini Sunset. Once again it was too beautiful words. Just imagine a sprawling caldera,white stucco houses hanging onto the cliffs edge, and the beautiful colors of the sun setting all in one view. It was amazing.
I should also mention that at this point my camera decided to stop working and after years of anticipation of being in this place I couldn't snap a single picture of the beautiful view. haha I guess thats life. We then headed back on our ATV and ended up going out to some bar places with people from the hostel. It was definitely a jampacked absolutely wonderfully amazing day.

Today was an entirely new adventure! ahh OMG today was possibly even more amazing then the day before! Today Chelsea and I decided to rent the ATVs on go explore the island on our own. We headed into Fira and bought some fruit and cheese (this served as both breakfast and lunch) and then proceeded to wander through Fira again. WE actually found this whole other side that we hadn't seen before and it too was amazing. It was the side of Fira that dangled over the edge and was very similar to the unsettling amazing view in Oia. Anyways it was in Fira that we decided we MUST RIDE DONKEYS!!!! haha this whole Donkey adventure was quite the chaotic event. First we had to walk down like seven million steps to get to the bottom of the port.when we got down there we were abrupty shoved towards some donkeys, paid five euros, and began what I was imagining to be a peaceful journey up to the town. I was COMPLETELY WRONG. Just imagine like twenty people, on these chaotic donkeys that were all racing eachother up the cliffside. These donkeys were all running into eachother and stepping on eachother and it was seriously like the funniest thing I have ever done. Everyone on the donkeys was laughing soo hard, and I wish that this whole situation could have been tapped because it was so hilarous. I of course was given the smallest donkey of the bunch, this resulted in me taking quite a beating from all the other burly donkeys. We didn't even have like a guide person, we were basically just on our own. Luckily we all made it up alive and in one peice.

After that adventure we poked around fira some more and then headed back to Oia. My camera started working again today which meant i could take thousands of pictures of what I was seeing. We walked around, observed more romantic couples and just kind of explored for a couple of hours. At one point Chelsea and I sat at this nice little spot in the middle of all the comotion and just took in where we were and why we were there. We then decided to treat ourselves to a FANCY meal that overlooked the caldera while the sunset. It was kind of foggy but still absolutely beautiful and my food was delicious! AFter feeling slightly guilty about the splurge we decided to head back and get some crepes in Perissa (the place that we are staying)

Tomorrow we leave for IOS!!! ahh one of the most infamous party islands in the world!!! yayayyyyyyyy

I am having a WONDERFUL TIME HERE!! and I am sooo happy!!! I come home in about a week and it feels so weird to think that this trip is almost ever. Its been so perfect and so amazing and I couldn't of asked for anything more

HOPE all is well

LOVE YOU

Jessica

I feel like everytime I write in this blog I am always saying that I am in some new even more beautiful place then the last. Haha well its always true. I never suspect that an even more gorgeous place is around the bend....but as usual it always is and I should stop being so suprised.

Today we went to Preveli THE MOST AMAZING STUPENDOUS BEAUTIFUL STUNNING GORGEOUS beach I have ever BEEN to. We got up a little early today and took the bus into Preveli where we were faced with an arduous hike down this cliffside until finally we reached a stunningly blue and clear beach. Suprisingly there weren't that many tourists there which made for a wonderfully uncrowded day. Preveli in part is spectacular because it is where a freshwater river runs into the ocean. The water was so clear and so warm and so salty that you can actually float without moving a muscle. Me and chelsea swam around for a long time, and then I got a little tired and went back to shore. I then read a little of my book and decided to sun tan a little (ahh did i mention I have a heat rash on my back???, I think its getting better though so no worries). anyways as I'm laying on the beach I look up and see someone who looks oddly familiar. Sure enough it is our hippie friend TIM who we met at the sunshine house. He is this german guy who is bike riding all the way to India, and he literally has dreads down to his knees. Anyways once the realization sets in I quickly get up and make a dramatic run towards him, frantically shouting his name. He saw me, and I think he was a little shocked anyways we hugged and it was so good to see him again! As it turns out he is living just a little ways up the mountain with some of his friends where apparently all they do is hang around and play music till their hearts content. Well anyways he is actually going to santorini tomorrow too, so we are going to go on the same ferry as him! haha ahh my life.

The day in Preveli was amazing and now I am back at the hostel where as usual everyone is out on the patio enjoying eachothers company. It is a wonderful place here and I will be so sad to leave tomorrow.

Next time i write Hopefully I will be In Santorini!!!!