Dickieville Newsletter, July and August 2007

And, as usual, you can see all the photos in the Photo gallery

Brie on EXPLO:

First off, EXPLO WAS FREAKIN' AMAZING!  One of the best times of my life.  The people I hung out with most of the time (shown in rainbow below) were like family to me by the time I left.  'Course that's probably happens whenever you spend almost 24 hours with people every day for 3 weeks.  I took two classes there, though three if you count my study class (mini course) as a class.  But my first class was Exploring Popular Science (EPS) and the second Creative Writing (CW).  EPS was fun, but my CW class was composed of some really cool people!  We also had a Dora (from Greece) and a Diego (from LA)!  I took full advantage of this fact by suggesting we write a story about Dora and Diego exploring together!  I would be Boots of course.  But Diego, being a party pooper, repeatedly refused, even with my bribes of hugs.  And everyone helped me decorate the board on my birthday with lots of "Happy B-day Brie!" chalk drawings.  My study class wasn't really "fun" but that's kinda obvious considering the subject.  But I did get to meet this really cool girl named Sarah who lives in Tokyo!

Other than classes, there were main events every night.  I didn't go to all of them, but I did go to the hypnotist who got this guy Keith to think he was explo's top cheerleader.  He went through three mascots, doing the Banana dance, the bunny hop, and (I think?) the cow moo!  Another guy became the "friend of all fruit" (which apparently has feelings and doesn't like to be eaten).  He protected his friends by putting them down his shirt so no one could get them.  That is until he became extremely hungry and began to eat his friends.  Then the hypnotist made him "realize" what he'd done and he frantically pulled peices of apple out of his mouth trying to stick them back onto the fruit before slamming himself onto the floor and performing CPR.  Good times.

There were annoying things about explo, but the good things outnumbered those by far.  Though one good/bad thing was that the food was so bad I barely at any and lost about 5 lbs!  Seriously though, Yale cooks need to go to Amherst and learn a thing or two.  And also more veggies!  I don't like veggies but they only served them 3-5 times while I was there, and they only looked edible once!  One funny thing to note, there were about 10 Dans there. (including RA's)!  And I was friends with one of those Dans and dating another one, which got to be extremely confusing in conversations at points.  We got to the point that we labeled them "our dan" (the dan that we were friends with and "my/your dan" (the one I was dating).  Sadly, only the gregory's (Sabrina is 2nd to the left and Kay right in the middle) live near enough for me to continue to see them.  And they still live a whole hour away!  But Dan lives in Florida, Jen (right of Kay) and friend Dan in Iowa, and Melissa (left of Kay) in New Jersey. :' (  I actually cried when I left!

*NOTE* - I made a slideshow of explo, which you can see here

We had a visit from Liz, Caroline, and Emmy Stuart while Will was in Finland (more below).  They were out East to spend a week in Maine with Liz's parents, Trina and Jim (Duff).  Jim & Trina stopped by as well but I didn't have the camera out while there were at the house.  Caroline has shot up like a bean pole and Emmy is not a little girl any more.  We saw them a few weeks later in California (also more below) .  Comments by Brie:

Will on his Finland trip

In July, I went to Finland, along with 20 other people, to play tennis. It was a 9 hour flight, but we basically had the back section of the plane to ourselves so it was a lot of talking and for me watching movies on my PSP.

It was a looooonnnngggg flight. Then we took a 2 hour bus ride, but we had a private bus chartered out with seats that reclined. I finished a movie and then I fell asleep for a good hour or so. We had assigned host families, that we stayed with for 3 nights, then we went on a ferry boat, it was closer to a cruise ship, I mean this thing was huge hotel rooms, slot machines (I'll come back to this later), hot tub, and the most important thing in Finland a Sauna!

As it turns out the legal gambling age there is 15, or if there's someone 15 or older with you, as most of the labels implied. We stayed in a bed and breakfast while we played a tournament on the island. Lots of poker between the older kids every night. One night they even had a poker tournament. I came in 3rd in 14's at the Finland tournament on red clay.

We rode the boat back, and stayed with our host families for another two nights. We had a day of sight seeing in which we went bowling in black lights, a lot of fun (there's a video that you can watch here).  We then took the 10 hour flight back home.

Brie had her 16th Birthday party at a indoor water park along with her friends.  The whole gang is smiling except for the party pooper named Cody!

CMASS, a Massachusetts Model Rocket Society, sponsored a second launch for the year in Acton, and this time Will went with Dave.  Having lost the Hawk on the prior launch day, they were down to the Intruder and the Phoenix.  The wind was unbelievable but, having learned a lesson from the prior launch, they angled the launches into the wind.  The end result, both rockets landed near the launch site.  Unfortunately, the Intruder broke up on landing into unrecoverable shards, and the Phoenix, on it's second launch, blew the engine compartment and is now awaiting replacement parts.

Shirley Goss and Nephews Ethan and Dana visit from Montana, staying with Bill and SangOk. 

We spent August 22nd - 29th in California, visiting with Janet (Kate's Mom) and Bill Garber. 

We visited the Getty Villa on Malibu Beach.  Paul Getty, the oil tycoon, spent a small fortune ... well, a large one, really ... building a replica of a Roman villa in which he housed an impressive art collection of ancient Roman and Greek statues, pottery, mosaics, and other art.  The most amazing thing, it was free, and tickets were available a few days in advance.

A panoramic view of the center court, with a pool that had to be three hundred feet long.  Kate and Brie to the left.

And then there's the beach, which was also relatively empty for a Saturday.  This was Anne Krall's high school reunion; Kate was busy trying to get Bill Garber's new computer working but Brie, Will and Dave went to see them.  Nick had his boogie board, he borrowed one from someone else, and Will found out what it's like to have your skin rubbed off with sand paper.  Later, Liz, Caroline, and Emmy Stuart came up to visit and we went to the beach with them as well. 

Briezle hangin' in the water with Emmy!  Mostly to keep Emmy from getting knocked over by any freak waves.

And, finally (really... this was literally up until 15 minutes before we had to leave for the airport, Dave was still digging sand out of his shoes when we dropped off the rental car), hang gliding with Nick Krall.  Jumping... gliding? ... off an embankment over the beach, you were never more than ten or fifteen feet off the ground, but despite the lack of opportunity to do serious bodily injury, it was a lot of fun. 

And we have to have the obligatory shots of Tasha and Patric