so as it turns out sometimes you have access to the internet and it is free and sometimes you have to pay and sometimes you can't find it at all.  it is kind of a strange feeling being so disconnected from everything that you know.  i don't have a cell phone which was weird to get used to at first.  i don't really call very often, and often do not have access to the internet.  therefore i have not written a blog entry for quite a while. 

brief overview of some of our happenings.  while we were in france we drove out to normandy for one of the days.  it was amazing.  the d day beaches had a very reverent feel to them.  we were also able to go to the graves sites for all of the people that died there.  we walked around for a couple of hours and it was a really good experience.  i drove around there and it was thrilling.  i am jason bourne.  we saw the louve which was a little overwhelming.  then we went down to spain. 

we got into barcelone around 1030 at night without a place to stay.  sometimes that works out allright and sometimes it does not.  it is hard to book in advance because we never really know where we are going to end up.  so we walked around to find a place to camp in a park and the police waved us off.  then we went to find a hostel and nothing had any room.  so we  were just walking around and a girl walked up to us and asked if we wanted a place to stay.  we took it.  15 euros per night and it was a dump, but it was a place to sleep.  we were happy.  while we were in spain we went to a park that a famous architect worked on named gaude.  the park was way way cool.  spain is kind of arid, so it was carved out of dirt but it was still really green.  we went to the top to see an excellent view of the city.  we also went to a picasso museum which followed his life work.  he was crazy.  later in the trip we went to a monestary high up in the mountains called monserrat.  it was spectacular.  they did their little chant thing and it was pretty dang cool.  We also went to a flamenco dance which i think was a good tast of the spanish culture. 

we next wanted to go to switzerland.  we started off for bern in the morning and got to montpillier france.  We got on the train to avignon and saw some missionaries.  they told us we were going in the wrong direction after an hours travel.  crap.  so we turned around and headed toward avignon but we wern't goign to make it to bern.  since they didn't stamp our passes we treated it as a free day of travel and stayed in avignon for the rest of the day and night.   it is a cool city cause it is all walled and that is where the pope lived for 70 years in the 1300s.  a very classic feel to it.

the next day we finished our leg to bern and got there in the evening to stay at temple housing.  it was nice.  took showers and used the internet and even got to wash our cloths and dry them in a dryer!  then we found out we were staying in a room that a couple were staying in and so they asked us to sleep in the bomb shelter.  that is not a big deal for us, but then they refunded our money so that was extra nice for us.  we got to use everything and it was all for free.  We went to the temple the next morning and it was all in french.  the temple president gave us a history of the temple and it was pretty dang cool.  we listened to it in english, but had to participate in french when necessary.  that was kinda interesting.  for the rest of the day we went to bern and longboarded and scootered around.  mcdonalds sponsors free rentals so we took them up on it.  it turned out to be really fun.