Adventures in Meow-Meow Land

While living in Vienna, I took several trips to a place called Meow-Meow Land. It's a magical place where anything can happen. On my first trip there, I met a beautiful young lady and fell in love. She is the Princess of the Meow-Meows. Luckily, I knew how to speak the Meow-Meow language so our relationship took off quite quickly.

Together, we journeyed to Meow-Meow Land, often stumbling upon bad guys and meanies around every bend. We chased them away and fought them off as best we could. Occasionally, I would turn into Princess Meow-Meow's faithful steed and take her far off into Meow-Meow Land's beautiful countryside.

One of our many adventures in Meow-Meow Land

Princess Meow-Meow stole my heart away. She is so adventurous, energetic and beautiful. She also has quite the amazing imagination.

I even think that she liked me back just a little bit. We had quite the amazing relationship.

I'm going to miss seeing this pretty Princess in Meow-Meow Land. I haven't been back there since I returned home from Vienna. Maybe, someday, I'll be able to walk the streets and hills of Meow-Meow Land with my little Princess.

Wachau

The best part about doing a study abroad in Vienna is that I get to stay with the most amazing Viennese family ever. Not only are they awesome, but they also know of cool places outside of Vienna and they take us there on little excursions.

Sunday afternoon, we headed to a place called Wachau. There used to be a huge castle, Dürnstein Castle, that stood there. It is now mostly ruins as it was almost entirely destroyed by the Swedish Empire in the mid-17th century. This castle is where King Richard I "Lionheart" of England was held prisoner in 1192.

This has a large part in the Robin Hood legend that many of us heard as children. King Richard was captured during the Crusades. His brother John assumes the throne and taxes and terrorizes the people. Robin Hood comes in and steals from the rich to give to the poor and strongly opposes John and awaits the return of the good King Richard. Pretty cool stuff.

Now if I were to be imprisoned somewhere, Dürnstein Castle would be at the top of my list. I mean, look at this!

I know, right? This place was beautiful and it was an amazing day. This place was meant to have some legends attached to it.

No spot in the ruins is off limits. You can go anywhere and climb on anything you want. They have basically left it as it is with no safety railings or fenced off areas. The only thing they have is a small sign.

Down below the castle is a small town that is encompassed by the castle walls.

Thanks to my amazing host family for taking me and my roommate there. It was so much fun. They are such an adorable little family.

Talent Show

Welcome to the vicarious experience of the Vienna Young Adult Talent Show! I'll be with you guiding you through the amazing events of February 4, forgetting names and all other sorts of important details. Let's begin, shall we!

Meet Rebecca and Keily. They performed Adele's Someone Like You. Rebecca's English is awesome when you talk to her and when she sings, you would never know that she was Austrian! And Kiely nailed that piano part. 

Look at that concentration! It's no wonder she nailed every note on that page.

Meet girl and boy. :) Don't worry friends. I didn't forget everyone's name. Just these two. And maybe a few more to come... We'll see. I should really just find out their names. This post will be so boring without them.

Ok. Take two. Meet Tasia and Arnold, aka. Arnie. Tasia hails from Idaho but speaks perfect German (so jealous!). She also sings quite lovely. Arnie is going to law school but also plays the piano. He also sang this time around, which he said was not his best talent. They sang a duet from the movie Tangled  and then The Prayer (the one made famous by Josh Groban).

:: Sidenote :: Check this out regarding Josh Groban.

Meet Julia and Michelle. Julia plays the violin and Michelle plays the piano. They played fantastic piece. It was called the Israeli Concerto by George Perlman (Don't ask me how I remembered that because I didn't. I just asked my group. They are smart).

Yes. That is how it's done. Beautiful.

Then we had an improvisation, or rather, a comprivisation. 

Meet Peter. He's from Bratislava. He just sat down and made up a piece. Low notes. High notes. Pedal point. Everything needed for a successful composition.

Meet the best looking man in Vienna (other me: subtle Zach. me: Thanks. Humility and modesty are high on my list. other me: right). I played Fantasy for Horn by Malcom Arnold. At least my horn was shiny. That distracted everyone from the mistakes.

Meet Teancum. He solved that Rubik's cube in 1 min 7 sec. Before his mission, he could do it in about 20 sec. Amazing. I have never conquered the cube. Bucket list.

Meet Aly. She plays... the... cello? Umm... I did not know that. Wait! Look below! Quick!!!

Meet Aly and Christina. That's better. Aly is on piano and Christina is on Cello. They brought to us an amazing piece of American musical culture. From the west coast in California to the U.K... (wait... that's not in America) they played a mash up of pop tunes from Katy Perry to Coldplay. Thank you America!

Meet David and Raphael. David was easy to remember. So was Raphael. All I needed to do was think of the Ninja Turtles. They performed a hilarious skit using solely sound effects. They rode horses (above ground and under water), flew off cliffs, had a showdown with guns... need I say more?

Meet Liberty. Or should I say LiB3RTy (looks like one of those verification words). He laid down some tracks that he composed and rapped his heart out about the church and love, two staples of the rap world. He even had us put our hands in the air. And we did.

Meet the Three Amigos. I have absolutely no idea what their names are and I am now too lazy to find out. They performed a skit all in German. Do I know what was going on? Nope. But I laughed at appropriate times when everyone else was laughing. All I understood was the amigo on the right repeatedly said, "Ich bin soooo schön" (I'm soooo beautiful).

I hope you enjoyed your vicarious talent show! 

Good Times

One time, my parents went to Mexico to pick my brother up from his mission for the church and left the rest of us kids at home. This was a good three or so years ago, I think in 2008. My sister and I decided to document for my parents what happens when they leave town. This is what we came up with.

We bust out the hard stuff. Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola. There's nothing that quenches thirst, adds pounds to your waistline and slows you down better. But that's nothing compared to what's next...

Now, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why we had two gallons of milk in the fridge and they were both open. But, since there were, there was only one thing that we could do. Chug!

Black Beauty

My friend has a beautiful car and I have been wanting to drive it for a long time. Finally, I had an opportunity to do it and I was not going to miss this chance. First off, you have to see this thing. Good thing I had my camera with me (it's basically a new appendage that is always with me), so I snapped a shot.

(I specifically edited this to look like it came from Top Gear) 

(The British one. Not the American one)

It is very nice to look at, but looks are nothing compared to how it drove. If you had a Black Audi A4 whiz passed you sometime today, bets are, that was me. I have never driven anything like this. Then again, I have never driven a car anywhere close to this new and amazing. 

The acceleration is so addicting. I literally wanted to hit every red light just so I can feel the rush of the acceleration, especially when the turbo kicks in. So much fun. 

I took it cruising up Provo canyon where there are some fun curvy roads. It handles like a dream. So smooth and tight, without any slipping, thanks to the quattro all-wheel drive. I wanted to just continue all the way to Park City, but I didn't want to use all the gas. 

Photo Shoot

I took my camera out for a little photo shoot the other day and just wanted to show you some of the amazing shots that I got. My model made it extremely easy to take really good pictures. It has been a long while since I have been out on a photo shoot. I had forgotten how much fun it is!

All images Copyright © 2011 Van Houten Photography

Album Cover

So, I was a little bored at work and started looking through my photos. I came across my Japan/Korea tour pictures and found this beauty.

Why was this never on the cover of the tour cd? Oh, man! That would have been sweet. If I ever get a rock/funk/whatever band together, we're going to do something epic like this for our cover. Awesome.

Camera!!!

So, I have always liked taking pictures. It was fun. But, it wasn't until a friend of mine introduced me to photography with a nice camera. Ever since then, I can't get myself to use my little point-and-shoot. It just won't produce the kind of image that I now know is possible with better equipment.

Initiate secret savings account and intense research.

After saving for several months and reading everything I could find about cameras, I finally decided to get one. Here are some of my favorite images from this week.

This is a leaf that fell from the tree in our front yard. It got caught on a spider web and was hanging there.

One morning when I woke up early enough to see the sunrise.

My dog. What a good lookin' pup.