Thanksgiving!

While it was hard being away from friends and family for thanksgiving, instead of hanging around in London I took my last trip to Germany for the semester. Charles and I made our own humble Thanksgiving meal on Thursday. Charles even cooked our own little Turkey, all 4 pounds of it!
In total, we went to three German markets: Amberg, Regansburg, and Nuremburg. Regansburg was a big disappointment, so we headed back to Amberg (the city Charles lives in) and found that their market was much better! But I would have to say that the Nuremburg Market was by far the best! We got plenty of German treats during our walks through the city centers, we even got Gluewein (mulled wine) and a couple of souvenirs!
Today has been a very successful day! I have had grad-school deadlines looming over my head since I have gotten to London and they are coming up Very quickly. Instead of going out and doing Chistmas-y things, I stayed in Vandon house and got 3 out of four of my applications completed (Duke, LSU, and UW)!!! All that is left is my application to UT Houston and for my professors to send in their recomendations.
On another note, during my application process I stumbled across the daily announcements for TLU and found out that I am one of the 2009 Who's Who students at TLU! It was a complete surprise, I had no idea I had even been nominated, but no surprise to find out that it was Dr. Laird (my advisor) who nominated me. Anyways, I thought it was really exciting and a nice surprise during the stressful hours of completing online applications while the Internet was going in and out.
I only have two weeks left here, its bitter sweet. Tomorrow we are going to cambridge for the day, I think it was probably a good idea I got a lot of my school stuff out of the way todayso I wouldn't be stressed out the entire time thinking about it. This way I can enjoy the day!

Dublin, Ireland!

MY trip to Dublin was the first trip I planned when I arrived here in London. It has been marked in my calendar for almost two months now, so I was looking forward to Ireland for a while now.
We arrived at our hostel late Thursday night, I was still recovering from being sick and my roommate was sick as well so the four of us girls just stayed in and went to bed.
On Friday, we went on a 4 hour bus tour of the south east coast of Ireland and then ended up in the Powerscourt Gardens. The country side was BEAUTIFUL! It was everything you see in the movies (PS I love you). It is definitely beginning to feel like Christmas here, the weather was so cold!
One of my friends, Haley, that I go to TLU with is currently studying in Northern Ireland so she came down Friday afternoon and spent the rest of the trip with us! It was so nice to see a familiar face from home! Later that night we went out to this dinner and Irish Dancing show. The dancing was like River Dance... they moved their feet so fast I could hardly keep up just watching them! It was great fun and we also got to hear a little bit of Irish music after the show.
Afterwards we made our way down to Temple Bar, it is the most famous bar in Dublin they even named an area of the city after it (kind of like Austin's 6th street). Of course, I got a Guinness.
On Saturday we headed out to the Guinness Storehouse. We took a tour of the brewery and learned the process of how the beer is made. And at the top, we got a free pint of Guinness! It was the best Guinness I have ever had! Not that I had much to compare it to, but still... lol
The city was very expensive, but the people in Ireland were so friendly and welcoming. There was just this relaxing feeling the city gave off, kind of like being at home while we were there. The country was so beautiful, I definitely want to go back and spend more time and see more of the island someday.
I will post pics soon!

Neuschwanstein Castle

This past weekend I spent in Germany with Charles. He kept his promise and we went to the Neuschwanstein Castle. It is what Cinderella's Castle was created from. Since this castle is in the mountains I got to see a little snow!

The castle is in a small town in Bavaria about 3 hours from where Charles lives, Fussen. The town was so cute, one of the picturesque towns with old buildings and cobblestone roads everywhere.

We headed up to the castle early Saturday morning to get a head start on the day. We took a bus up the mountain and first went to a bridge that is supposed to look onto the castle. Well, we got there so early that we were the first ones on the bridge and at first there was too much fog to see anything! But after only a minute or two it cleared up enough to get a glimpse of the castle.
(Charles, the first one on the bridge in all of the fog)

We went on to tour inside the castle. It was like a fairytale castle! All of the walls were painted with Biblical scenes of landscapes. There were Swans all over the place, apparently it was King Ludwig's favorite animal. But I was disappointed by not seeing very much gold or very many jewels in the castle.

Being back in Germany was a nice little break again from all of the people in Vandon House. It was really nice to stay in a quiet place again and have access to American foods too! I like to think that going to the base in Germany is like visiting a mini-America... such a luxury!
By the time I got back to London on Sunday afternoon I was as sick as a dog. I somehow managed to make my way from Heathrow Airport back to Vandon House via the tube with out any energy. And then spent the rest of the night in bed.
By Tuesday I was still feeling terribly and I decided it was time to see a doctor. Luckily UK has a National Health care system so I was able to walk down to the National Health Services, only a block away, and see a doctor (for free might I add!). I am currently taking some medication the doctor prescribed for me, so I am hoping this clears up pretty soon!

Me and Charles by the castle, we aren't very good at self portraits with my camera... its a work in progress :)
On a side note: I will be home one month from today... this semester has gone by so fast!

Parliament and fireworks

IT is beginning to look a lot like Christmas... I love it! Two nights ago, London had a big lighting ceremony on Regents Street in front of Hamleys, the well know London toy store. It is hard to believe that I only have 6 weeks left here. They had the band McFly turn the lights on, so it was neat seeing them.

Yesterday after a huge Indian lunch that our program had for us, we went on a tour of Parliament! It was really neat being able to walk through the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We got to see where the Queen will be on Dec 3 for the opening day of Parliament. We also got to see where Winston Churchill would stand as the Prime Minister and argue with other members of Parliament and got to feel where he would bang his fist down on the table to get his point across. It was kinda weird though... our tour was at 4:00pm and it was bright and sunny (an unusual occurrence for London) but by 5:30 (the time our tours was over) it was completely dark outside!
after...

This weekend is the celebration of Guy Fawks day and the UK's version of Memorial day. Lots of fireworks have been going off and will be until Sunday. But I will have to admit, I haven't seen any as good as the ones back home. I went with friend down to Millennium Bridge to see the fireworks over the Thames river. IT was cold and wet, but it was fun!

Election Day 2008

As we all know, the 2008 elections made history. To be honest, I am just glad they are over with.
Since I have been in London, I have seen and heard more news coverage about the US elections than I would have back home. I am not saying that there is more media here than back home about our presidential election… it is just easier to escape it back home.
The labor party is in power right now in the UK which means that most of the people living in London are liberal. So when people ask me where I am from in the US, they hear Texas and automatically assume I am conservative and then want to start a conversation about politics (mainly Bush, McCain and Obama). They then usually let me know that they are Obama lovers and how aweful McCain is.
I couldn’t even count how many times people would ask me who I was going to vote for (like it was any of their business anyways!). This happened all the time and now I am hoping that people won’t be so interested in it now that the elections are over.
On Election Day, everything went on as usual until about 10:00 pm. Everyone in the house/hotel became glued to the TV. I, on the other hand, had a test the next morning. So being the studious person I am (haha), I was off studying in my room. This became a mixed blessing for me. Instead of being increasingly frustrated about other people’s comments on the results of the election, I was able to concentrate on something else and not even hear who won until the next day!
Here’s to the next four years!

Germany :)

Being able to spend a few days in Germany was great. Charles picked me up from the airport in Nuremburg late Thursday and we headed back to his house in Amberg about 40 miles away. It was so nice to stay at a normal house again with out 40 other people running around the place. I had my own room and I only had to share a bathroom and kitchen with one other person! It was amazing!
Halloween just didn’t feel the same in Germany. We went to the base that day to go grocery shopping. I was so excited to see all of the American brands that we have back home. I know it probably sounds silly but I even bought a bottle of Ranch Dressing and Skip peanut butter to take back to London with me!

The base that Charles is stationed at used to be a German base before WWII. There was this old German style tower there and I think Charles was telling me that it was where Hitler used to go over his orders/diaries... I thought it was interesting.

We went out Halloween night (no costumes for us this year) and it seemed like most of the people who were dressed up were the Americans. On Saturday (Nov 1st) we went into town to go shopping but everything was closed. We didn’t realize why until we got back to his place… it was All Saint’s Day. Apparently it’s a big holiday in Germany, but we had no clue.
It was a quick and relaxing weekend. I know that all of my other trips are filled with things that I did and saw but Nuremburg isn’t really a town with a lot of exciting things to do. And that really wasn’t what I was planning on doing. But, I think next time I go back we are going to go see Cinderella’s Castle!

See, he lives by farms... and I found out the hard way that if you roll down the window... it smells really bad!

When in Rome...

Warning: Very Long Post…just skip the words and look at the pics if you want :)
Going to Italy was a learning experience. There was so much that I will try to separate it out by each day.
Day 1: Arriving in Rome
My plane landed in Rome around 9:30 in the morning, but my traveling partner’s plane didn’t come in until 12:30 so I had the pleasure of sitting at an airport for a long while! I noticed that as people from the EU went through passport control, they would simply flash their passports while they strolled on through the gates… me on the other hand, I had to stop, answer a few questions, have my passport screened and then was allowed to go on through. Getting through security wasn’t any more difficult than usual for me; I had just never seen how easy it was for EU citizens.
When Britanny finally arrived, the first thing on our agenda was to find our hostel and check in. As soon as we checked in, the man at the desk told us we weren’t actually going to be staying there but in another building. So we nervously followed this guy to where we were actually going to be staying for the next few days. It turned out that we were getting to stay in a two bedroom apartment with a fully kitchen and bath, so it was much nicer than we anticipated.

my first taste of gelato! yum!!

We found a nice little Italian place to eat dinner, or so we thought. We were eating outside and talking while all of the sudden this woman two tables away from me begins screaming at the top of her lungs while everyone at the table gets up as quickly as they possibly could and ran away. At first I thought that there was a bug or something gross in her food. But, it turns out that there was a man who had gotten down on his knees and crawled to the edge of the fence surrounding the restaurant and grabbed this woman’s purse and ran off with it! It was a good thing that this woman was screaming her head off as she chased him down the street because someone else heard and got the bag back for her. But it was just a really scary thing to witness. The rest of the night the two of us couldn’t stop thinking about it, we were so scared being in that city for that night. I think we checked the locks on every door and window in our apartment twenty times that night!
Day 2: Coliseum and the Forum
We were able to start the day fresh and have a better outlook on Rome after a good nights sleep. We went to the Coliseum and the Forum. We spent so much time in these two places… we looked at everything and went everywhere we could.

Just some old ruins..

THey also had drinking fountains all over the city where you could fill up your water bottles for free! I did a very good job of staying hydrated!

While at the Forum, we stumbled across this rally being held just a little ways away from us. Of course we were curious, so we went to check out what all the fuss what about. There were all of the signs and flags for the Democratic Party and other signs saying something like “Another Italy is possible”. We wanted to find someone to ask what this was all about, but before we could, it began to rain.

Day 3: Vatican
When in Rome, you must see the Vatican! And on the last Sunday of the month, entrance to the Vatican Museum is free. We heard that there wasn’t much of a line to get into the museum, and we also wanted to get blessed by the Pope at noon in St. Peter’s square, so we arrived at the museum about 10 AM. We quickly learned that we were not the only ones who knew the museum was free today. After waiting in line for nearly 2 ½ hours, we missed the Pope’s blessing and only made it into the museum 8 minutes before the last entrance. We knew that our time was limited in the museum so we quickly passed most of the museum and headed straight to the Sistine Chapel. This room was astonishing! I had assumed that since we were able to take pictures at everything else in the museum with out a flash, that we would be able to take pictures in hear as well. I began snapping shots casually until all of the sudden I noticed a laser pointer shining right on my face and in my eyes…initially I thought this meant he thought he saw my flash go off… but no, it meant no pictures at all in here. Apparently, instead of putting up proper notices around the entrance saying absolutely no photography, they think it is better to shine laser pointers into people eyes! I found this to be so ridiculous that I just kept on taking whatever pictures I wanted, just more secretively! I’m a rebel I know! Haha!
Getting lost seems to be a tradition that Britanny and I have going, so there is no need to stop now! On our way to the Trevi fountain, we somehow managed to get turned around and find ourselves on the Spanish Steps and then eventually made it to the Fountain. Then while we were in the area, we decided to stop by the Pantheon as well!
Day 4: Markets
For some reason, since I have arrived in Europe I have been really interested in going to markets around town. There was this well known market called "Campo di Fiorre" that was first on our list. It was the cutest Italian fruit and vegetable market. We picked up some peaches and explored all of the new vegetables I had never seen before.
We also found this very picturesque market close by where they sold paintings and musicians played their music for all who passed by.
We eventually made it to this huge monument that now houses the Italian version of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This place was so big but it was also so beautiful!
Day 5: Last Day
At this point, Britanny and I had walked basically everywhere in Rome atleast once from all the times we had gotten lost. It was definitely a long day for us. As soon as we walked out of our hostel, it was raining. Silly me, I thought we had left London, I didn't bring an unbrella. The rian continued all day while we were just walking around and taking in our last few hours of Rome. I am pretty sure we made a stop for our last taste of real gelato.
Since the day was a bit dark and gloomy, we headed to the airport early to relax and not have to worry about being on time. It turned out that our flight was 1 1/2 hours late so we have PLENTY of time waiting. When we got back to London it was SNOWING! It wasn't a huge amount of snow... it was more like a Texas snow. It was just such a surprise because we were coming from 80 degree weather in Rome back to freezing weather in London. It was also the first time that it had snowed in October in London in like 60 years...

Movie Premiere and Football Game!

There is a big film festive in London this week with a lot of big movie premiers going on everywhere. On Monday Britanny, my roommate, had gotten free tickets to a movie premier called Hunger. So we headed out (in the rain) and made it right in time for the movie. Strangely, there were no previews for other movies and not really any concession stands for popcorn and drinks.
The movie was really intense. It was about Bobby Sands the Hunger strikes that went on in Northern Ireland about 30 years ago. After watching the movie, I'm still not completely sure on what these strikes were about but I am definitely going to look it up. And if you are curious, just look it up too! It was really neat though, since it was a premier, three of the actors were there after the showing to talk about the move and answer questions about it too. There weren’t any famous actors in it but the director was a Turner Prize winner (a big award given in Britain to rising artists).
Last night I got to go to my first football match! It was cold and we had to take a couple trains to get out there, but it was worth it. The game we saw was Charlton vs Bristol City. The two teams aren't huge teams but it was still a good match. The football stadium was huge!

Just some of us at the game!

At one point in the game they announce that there were almost 22,000 people in attendance that night. Since I don't know too much about football, I wasn't always 100% sure one what was going on so I usually asked the girl behind me. Being at the game reminded me of my high school football games... you have the people who are there to watch the game and then you have the crazy fans who are there just to yell at the refs and the opposing teams. I even got to see one guy get personally escorted out of the game from three policemen!

Some the intense fans at the football game... notice all of the yellow and orange policemen at the top!

My computer went to the doctors today for diagnosis! I made a new friend today at the IT Help Desk, I think his name was Sheldon. I somehow deleted my administrative account on my computer so when I go back next Wednesday with my external hard drive he tells me he can put everything back to normal again!

Amsterdam

Going to Amsterdam was an experience in itself. This was my first time to fly out of one of London’s airports. Our flight left London at 8:30 AM, so we decided to leave our hotel a little after 5:00 AM. We wanted to leave extra early because we had just heard about our friends missing their check-in time at the airport by only 4 minutes the night before.
We had already looked at which train we needed to get to London City Airport and knew how much it would cost us but we did forget one minor detail…. The tube stations don’t open until 5:30am! So we stood around the station for a little while waiting for the station to open. We took the first train of the morning and made it there with plenty of time to spare!
We flew through KLM airlines. On the plane they served us a sandwich along with drinks, it was much nicer than US airlines. When we were arriving in Amsterdam, we were a little nervous about having to speak Dutch where ever we went, but after walking around the airport for a few minutes we realized that everything was in English! Central Station where the trains come in

We checked into our hostel as soon as we got there and then went sight seeing. Friday and Saturday was filled with museums, canal tours, and taking pictures with a lot of getting lost in between.
On Friday, after searching for an affordable place to eat we found a good little Itialian restaurant for dinner. The cost of eating in Amsterdam was more that I inticipated... we had a hard time finding a place to sit and eat at for under 10 euros just for the main dish! And we soon realized that almost every restaurant there had some kind of cat that would walk around the place while people were eating dinner! (gross! but no one else seemed to mind)
Our Italian Dinner, they put us right next to the oven... it was so warm :)

We were able to go to the Anne Frank House, the Van Gough Museum, the FOAM photography museum, a couple markets, a tour through the canals, a lot of tulips and even a windmill!

Walking through the Anne Frank house was amazing! Everything in the museum was in Dutch and English, so thankfully I was still able to understand everything. I remember reading part of Anne Frank's Diary but not much of it. It was so sad that out of the 8 people hiding in these tiny rooms for two years that someone would rat the out. And that out of the 8, only 1 survived the concetration camps (Otto, Anne's father).
The Anne Frank House
After walking through Amsterdam, it looks like the city is stuck in time… all the buildings are beautiful but old. One thing that I realized about Amsterdam is that they have some many different kinds of transportation around the city. It was complete chaos when trying to cross the roads with out getting hit by something! They have trams, trains, cars, boats, motorcycles, vespas, and bicycles just to name a few. But mainly, there were bicycles chained up everywhere aroundthe city.

Saturday night, Britanny and I met one of the others staying in our room. His name was Michael and he was a Chinese student studying in the UK that was visiting Amsterdam on his own for the weekend. Talking to him made me realize how lucky I am to be a native English speaker and to be an American. I am also learning how hard it is for non-Americans to live and even visit the US. I read that soon the US is going to require people to apply for permission to even enter into the US. I know that there are safety reasons for this, but sometimes it seems like the US may be going a little over board... anyways
I am so glad that I had the opportunity to go to Amsterdam, it was a neat city but I think it will be a while before I want to go back. I loved learning about the city's history and about Hitler's invasion of Holland, but there are too many other legalized things her that aren't really my style if you know what I mean.
When I got back to London, I found that my computer is not working properly. This means that it will take a bit longer to upload photos here. But I will get them up ASAP!

Lately

The weather has still been pretty good so here are some pictures from St. James Park again.

I have been a little ‘under the weather’ this past week. It seems that everyone here has been getting sick and I some how made it 6 weeks with out catching what everyone else has got. Since I have been feeling sick, I decided to take it easy this week and sleep as much as possible so that I will get better ASAP! I am sure my roommates think I am the laziest person on this planet this week, but taking it easy has helped a LOT!
I had my math third class at the London Metropolitan University yesterday. This is my only class with real Londoners. Half of my grade for this class is based on group work, so I get to talk to my other classmates a lot and learn a lot about who they are and what they think about London and UK and the US. It is interesting though that every class that I have had, my tutor (professor) has made at least one comment about America. His comments are usually of mixed opinion. But this time we were talking about predator prey modeling and Dr. Caley was giving examples like "big fish eats little fish", and "hound chases the fox", but then he said "America and the rest of us". Everyone laughed, but I was kind of caught off guard with that comment. I just find it really interesting how other people view us Americans and the US as a whole. No, not all the comments that I hear are negative, but this one just stuck with me for some reason.
It seems that travel season has finally come! I will be going to Amsterdam this weekend with my roommate Britanny. We fly out tomorrow morning and will get back late Sunday evening. I am really excited; this will be my first trip out of the country this semester! We are planning on seeing the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum and plenty of other places as well. This will also be my first time staying in a hostel… so wish me luck!
My fall break will begin the next week so I have planned to go to Rome, Italy for 5 daves and then see Charles in Germany for 4 days! As many of you know he has been on tour, but he is on his way back to Germany as I am typing this!
Check back sometime next week for pictures of my trip… The internet has been extremely unreliable lately. I am lucky if I can get my computer to connect at all! But we have been told that a specialist is coming in tomorrow to "assess the situation". I have found out that McDonalds has free wi-fi though, and its only down the street.
Haha, on another note…. Some of the places that aren’t necessarily the best back home are rally good here! The McDonalds here are really fancy compared to the ones back home! I’m not sure what their food tastes like because I have only had a McFlurry from there. And the Pizza Hut’s (now called Pasta Hut) are really good here too!
Well, that’s enough for now!

Stonehenge Bath

The weather this weekend has been beautiful! I am lucky to be living so close to st. James Park and Hyde Park. The leaves are changing color on the trees and the temperature has been just right lately. A friend and I went and just walked around the park the other day just soaking up what little sun we have left for the year.

Going to see Wicked was AMAZING! I loved it! It is a musical about how the two witches of Oz used to be friends and ended up how they were in the Wizard of Oz. I had already heard some of the songs from the musical before, but I just didn't know it.

Yesterday we had our day trip to Stonehenge and Bath. We left Vandon house really early in the morning and traveled via a coach. We spent about an hour walking around Stonehenge, it is thought that this World Wonder was built around 2200BC. It was just an incredible sight!

Bath was next on our trip. We got dropped off to do a little bit of exploring on our own and then had an appointment scheduled to go through the Romans Baths. For lunch we found a random pub/restaurant that had some good american food options. We also got a little humor out of reading the menu...

The buildings and streets of Bath were beautiful! There was a man playing music in the middle of the town square that had rigged up this machine so that he could play a violin with his hands while playing a guitar with his feet. It looked so neat and his music sounded so good too!

We also got to see the ancient baths and hot springs that the ancient Romans used. They used to believe that the water had healing powers but I don't think that's the case today! The water was green and really disgusting in the large pool outside. Sadly I missed seeing Jane Austin's house and museum, maybe I will get a chance later to take another day trip back to Bath.

I love how it seems like everything is so close to London! We have been able to go some really neat and historic places that are all with in 100-200 miles of us. I am so thankful that I am able to spend an entire semester over here and be able to do some traveling too.

One new and kind of exciting thing that has been going on... the value of the pound is going down! As a result of the banks failing and Brown/UK putting something like £700 billion into the stock exchange I am getting a better exchange rate, last time I checked it is down to £1 is about $1.62, it used to be that £1 was $2 when I first got here so I am not complaining!