[Day 75] SNOW!

It's snowing!!!

This morning I heard raindrops on my window sill and I was pretty upset because I knew it was supposed to snow today. I opened my curtains and saw the weirdest combination of precipitation that I've ever seen. It was simultaneously raining and snowing. Rain was falling straight down from the sky and snowing was blowing from the canal area...it was so weird. There was a girl walking with an umbrella and two boys throwing snowballs. I wasn't sure whether to wear my winter coat or rain coat.

Anyway I decided on my winter jacket and went to Lit at 10. It was a struggle and really boring, that class isn't much fun. We're reading the Canterbury Tales, which I've already read. After that I had seminar and then Sammie and I walked to Hayfield for our usual Tuesday 3 pound lunch. I seriously crave their chicken tikka roll. Sammie and I always seem to have really intense conversations during lunch, it's interesting. After lunch we walked back to campus and I decided I couldn't bring myself to go to my Poetry lecture so I helped Kate and Erin bake a cake. I mostly just stood there and ate icing while they baked the cake. Then I finished my paper for Lit that's due tomorrow. At 4 I went to my Poetry seminar and then after class I went to Sammie's flat and she and I cooked dinner. We made delicious ravioli and sauce. 

I haven't really done much since. I'm volunteering all day tomorrow to finish up my volunteer hours. After tomorrow I'll have 25 done but I spoke with someone in charge and I'm allowed to use a few hours for travel time since I live all the way in Mile End.

The rest of the day it's been snowing pretty intensely; the rain is gone. Everyone here is walking around with umbrellas, it's so strange. I feel like there are more umbrellas out now than when it's raining. I think there are also a lot of people here that have never seen snow before. There is tons of yucky brown salt on the ground that's getting in my socks. I really wish I had snow boots right now...all I have are Sperry's. No good.

Also, the influx of weird kind of cute animal hats on campus are inversely proportional to the dropping temperatures. I don't get their obsession with wearing rabbit, panda, and cat faces on their heads. In any case, I'm happy because it's snowing!

M

[Day 74] They don't warn you about the cold

People always tell you about how much it rains in London but they never mention how cold it gets here. It is so damn cold here, I can't bare it. It's a different sort of cold that at home, or anywhere I've experienced actually. It's painful and bone chilling and nothing you do makes you warm until you're inside, and even then you're still probably cold. Currently it's around 1 degree C, which is basically freezing. It was supposed to snow this weekend but it didn't. Hopefully it snows tomorrow, that will at least legitimize the freezing temperatures. I wish I had brought my snow boots instead of rain boots, I would have gotten more use out of them.

Last night I watched Beowulf with Sammie because we have to write a short essay on it for Lit. In a lot of my classes I only have two or three papers due the whole term. It's nice because it's not a lot of work, but it sucks because so much rides on each paper. For Lit I have this one portfolio due on Wednesday and a final paper due the first week in January (hopefully that one will be done before I go home).

This morning I had history lecture and seminar. The freezing cold weather was enough to keep me in my warm bed, but I dragged myself out of bed to go and I was happy that I did. Our class was about the rise of middle class America in the 1800s and how that led to the suffrage movement. When I went to seminar later in the day half of our class didn't show up (probably because of the tube strike) and therefore I was the only girl in a class of three guys and the TA. I'm thinking I did a good job of representing the female point of view when we talked about our reading and women's suffrage, but probably not because at the end of every class this British kid Oscar always tells a joke and today his joke was, "Want to know a joke?" "Women's rights." He was joking though, so it's all good.

After class I did my homework for my Nova class and then figured out how to get to class. There is another tube strike today and tomorrow. I kind of feel like the tube strikes don't get much done because first of all, they schedule the strikes at least a week in advance and warn everyone about them. I got an email three days ago saying that there would be strike. Secondly, not all of the lines and stations close down. It's basically just limited service. It's very inconvenient because so many people use the tube that when everyone has to go to the same stations a ton of people get on at every stop. Also it's so awful waiting in the cold for the tube to come. I just took the District Line today but for the most part more stations were closed in the east than in central, which I also think is counter productive. I know the Circle and Piccadilly lines weren't working though, which would suck if you needed them. The tube strikes just confuse me though, I think they would be more effective if they were unplanned and lasted until the tube workers got what they wanted.

It took me a long time to get to class and when I finally got there our professor was grilling everyone about their homework. I don't really like him that much, but he is really knowledgeable. I think I just don't like his opinions and as much as he tries to leave them out, he subtly includes them and makes smart remarks about the US. Although I have to say after today's class I'm a little more fond of him because he kind of tore apart everyone else's essays today in class and he said mine was pretty good. That's kind of useless though for my final paper because I won't know what I can improve on.

Even though I get really annoyed with the class (mostly because I have to go all the way to South Ken) I think the class is really beneficial to my learning here. Since I'm taking it, I think about how stupid it would have been to live here for three months and not understand their current events and learn about their history and government. Of course I can't fully understand their current events because I barely understand the US current events fully, but I have a much better understanding of what's going on, especially with the budget cuts, and why.

On a lighter note, I'm listening to Christmas music right now. I miss snow. I'm excited that I'll be coming home right before Christmas, I think it'll be really cool to be coming home when everyone is in the Christmas spirit and decorations will be up.

M

[Day 73]Tate Modern and Oxford University

It's so cold here! I can't even describe it. It's a different kind of cold, it's bitter, painful and dry. I feel bad for the babies that are outside in this weather, no wonder they're always crying. Today at St. Paul's there was this little kid screaming its head off in a stroller, probably because it didn't have gloves on. I felt bad for it.

Today I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum with Kate and Erin. PJ left for the airport around 1:30 and after I dropped him off I took the tube to St. Paul's and walked across Millennium Bridge to the museum. The first exhibit I saw was "Sunflower Seeds" by Ali Wei Wei. I read about this exhibit a few weeks ago in The Evening Standard. Basically it's about one million porcelain sunflower seeds on the floor of half of the ground floor. It's actually pretty bizarre. I tried taking a picture of it but you really can't tell what it is in the picture. When it first opened a few months ago, people were able to walk on it. In the paper there were pictures of people laying on the seeds like they were at the beach. However after a few weeks they realized that with everyone walking on the seeds a lot of dust was spreading in the air and it would be bad for your health after an extended period of time. Now you can only look at the exhibit.

I walked upstairs and met Erin and Kate. We went to the fifth floor and we saw a lot of cool paintings, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstien, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, and Diego Rivera. I really liked the Warhol room and the Picasso paintings that I saw. I only saw one Rivera painting, I don't even know what it was called, but I was kind of disappointed by it. I wandered to the second floor by myself because they had already seen it. The theme of the floor was Poetry and Dream and I found an artist that I really like, Juliao Sarmento. He's a Portuguese artist and they had a really cool collage/sketch of his called "Dublin-Trieste 2 December 2009" that's a combination of his drawings alongside a sentence of a love letter written by James Joyce. There was a lot of interesting artwork in that room. It's kind of cool that I found an artist that I like a lot. I guess you could say Sarmento and Warhol are my favorites.

After the museum the three of us came back to Mile End and I got Nando's with Sammie and Kate. Tonight I'm going to update my Shutterfly site and watch Beowulf so I can write a paper on it. Oh and of course listen to the Steelers game. 

Yesterday, as I said, Kate, Erin, PJ and I went to Oxford for the day. Oxford was so cool, I was expecting it to just be a campus but it actually has a town all around the campus. I guess there are a lot of colleges within Oxford and Christ Church is the most famous one. We took a bus for 13 pounds from Victoria to Oxford and it only took about two hours. It was absolutely freezing yesterday, so we all froze while we walked around and took pictures. We saw Christ Church Cathedral and the dining hall that inspired the Great Hall in the Harry Potter movies.

They had a lot of Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland themed things (the writer of Alice was a professor at Oxford). There were a lot of Christmas trees everywhere, which made everything so much cuter and legitimized the freezing cold weather. It was supposed to snow, but sadly it didn't.

It's weir that people actually go to school there; the dining hall was all set up for dinner later that would be later that day. There were a lot of tourists walking around, I'm sure people find that annoying if they go to school there. Everything was basically outdoors except for the dining hall and the cathedral. The cathedral is the oldest Anglican one in England I think. It used to be a  Catholic cathedral and then Henry VIII made it into an Anglican cathedral. I was eavesdropping on a tour but I didn't really get the full story. There is a really old window in there though, it's Thomas Beckett's window but he has no face because people took the face pane out so that Henry VIII wouldn't order them to remove the window. 

We walked around campus a little more, saw the library and some plazas/squares. They're obsessed with rowing, each college has its own team and there was a wall outside decorated with stuff about their V8s or whatever. It was kind of cool. In the book store they had a bunch of rowing t shirts and stuff with all of the colleges' different blades on them.

After we were done exploring the campus, we walked around the town. There are a few main streets and a closed roof market where we found the most delicious cookies ever. I got a triple chocolate chip one and all of our cookies were still warm when they gave them to us. We walked around the market and shopped for a while before going to a different street.

After the markets we stopped in the University bookstore. Erin, Kate and I all bought the same glorious navy blue Oxford University crew neck sweatshirt. I'm wearing mine right now, it's so warm. The four of us bought a few souvenirs and walked down the street to the Oxford University Press store. All of the citations I've done for papers now have a place in my mind because Oxford U Press publishes basically everything important. All four of us were really excited to go inside.

PJ had the brilliant idea for me to get some books. They had so many books that I want to read. PJ bought me three as part of my birthday present: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, The Great Gatsby by Scott F Fitzgerald, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It was so amazing I was really excited to get them. We also all took pictures with the famous Oxford English Dictionary.

By that time we were all pretty much ready to go home. We walked around some more and looked at Christmas decorations and shopped, then we found the bus to go back to London. I can't even describe how cold it was yesterday though, it was painful. I'm really happy we went to Oxford. I think PJ had a good weekend in London, it was great to see him!


M

[Day 72] Week of shows

This week has been so busy! I feel like I haven't written at all, so I'll start with Tuesday. Tuesday I had two classes, Literatures in Time and Poetry. My Poetry lecture is so incredibly boring, I didn't go this week. My professor is like a tree hugger hippie woman and I never really understand what she's saying in lectures. I don't think anyone does. I didn't go to lecture but I did go to seminar. Half the class wasn't there. Everyone was probably writing their paper, we had a 2000 word one due on Wednesday. After my classes were done I went to Camden with Vijay to go to dinner with some of his friends from high school. We went to this restaurant called York and Albany and there's some famous chef there, Gordon Ramsey. It was such a fancy dinner I didn't know what to do with myself. It was a three course meal and literally the only things I knew on the menu were two of the desserts. I can't even tell you what I ordered because I kind of just guessed. I liked my first course, my second course was kind of gross, and the dessert was delicious. I felt so proper because of the fancy restaurant and three courses, and on top of that Vijay's friend is studying at Cambridge so he was talking about all things Cambridge (like croquet and gowns and doing intense research). Needless to say, I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation. After dinner the four of us went to Leicester Square and got drinks. His friends left and Vijay and I hung out in Piccadilly for a while before going back to QM.

Wednesday morning I woke up super early to finish my two papers (two English papers) and then I went to meet PJ at Mile End station. I kind of guessed when he was going to be there and I forgot how long customs would take so I was there for longer than I meant to be.  We went back to campus and he took a little nap while I went to the library to print my papers and turn them in. That took like an hour and a half because I had to go through and cite them, which was super annoying because they don't use MLA format here and it's just difficult. At two a bunch of us (me, PJ, Kate, Sammie, Talhah, Hannah, Erin, Vijay, Matt, and Joe) met to go to the grand opening of Nando's for lunch. Nando's is this fantastic UK restaurant that has all different kinds of chicken and sauce. You can order a half chicken, a quarter chicken, chicken wings, a chicken burger, anything. They also have really good hot sauce. I got a chicken burger with cheese and chips.

After lunch, some of us went to see Harry Potter! There is a cheap theater down the road (only 4 pounds) and the theater was better than I expected it to be. The movie was good, there were a lot of awkwardly funny parts that I liked. I think if you separate the books and movie, the movies are much better. PJ fell asleep half way through because of jet lag and no sleep. It was pretty cool to see the movie in England though, especially the parts that were in London (like Shaftsbury Avenue).

Through my Villanova class we got free tickets to 39 Steps and I got an extra one so that PJ and I could both go. The show was at the Criterion in Piccadilly at 8 that night. We were going to get dinner/walk around there but it was really cold and we didn't really have enough time. The theater was cool because it was really small and the seats were close together, like a Broadway theater, and we were in the third row. The show was so funny, it was basically the same four actors playing every role. I'm glad we saw it. 

On Thursday I went to Queen's Park to volunteer at Salusbury World. I finished my graffiti artwork on the wall and helped with paperwork about one of the school's enrollment. There are a lot of Somalian refugees here and also a handful of Afghani ones. We're learning about that kind of stuff in my Villanova class. Obviously Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here, so it wasn't really a special day but it was cool to volunteer on what would be Thanksgiving. I came back to Mile End and PJ and I got ready and went to go see Wicked.

We ran into Erin on the tube and she told us that Wicked was showing in Victoria, not Piccadilly like I thought. I'm so glad we ran into her because the show was sooooo good and I'm so happy we saw it. It was my favorite show that I've ever seen. I think we both enjoyed it a lot. The singing was awesome and the wicked witch was so green. It was sick.

Friday morning we went into central to see all of the touristy things. We saw Big Ben, the British Cavalry Museum (all of Parliament St), Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. At the British Cavalry Museum I stopped to pet one of the soldier's horses. After we walked around that area (and froze because it's soooo cold now) we walked over Westminster Bridge to South Bank. The view from Westminster Bridge is awesome. We went on the London Eye and it was the perfect time of day to go on there, about 4:15 when the sun was setting and it was a clear sky. After the Eye we walked through the Christmas market and met Sammie, Kate and Hannah and went back to Mile End. Kate, PJ and I cooked dinner and then Kate and I went to the medic's party at the Griff Inn. Seeing Wicked and going on the London Eye were so much fun and I think PJ really enjoyed doing those two things too.


This morning PJ, Kate, Erin and I went to Oxford. I'll write about that tomorrow because there's a lot of stuff to say. It was really really cool though I'm so happy we went. I got this awesome Oxford University crew neck sweatshirt. It's so warm and comfy.


M

[Day 70] Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

I went to see Wicked tonight, it was awesomeeee. 

Going to skype my family now!

M

[Day 68] A little more Madrid

I only have time for a short post today, but here is some more about Madrid...

We danced and ran around El Kapital for about three hours before deciding to go home. There were six of us in our group so while we always stayed in pairs or larger, we got separated a few times. Luckily we picked a meeting place for 3am and at 3am we all met and let the club. As I said before, El Kapital wasn't that far away from our hotel. When we walked there, Colin's cousins were directing us, but they were gone and so we had to figure it out ourselves. We hadn't been to this part of town during the day so we were a little confused.

We almost got a cab, but we decided we didn't want to split up since the cabs could only take three of us at a time, and on top of that the cab that we stopped didn't know the street of our hostel. We continued to walk for a while and figured out where we were. We were walking down a street when Daphne got to the corner, looked right to the perpendicular street and announced that she saw our hostel. About the same time as Daphne saw our hostel, a group of three guys walked through our group. Next thing I knew, one of the guys ran up behind me, pushed Erin and ripped her purse off of the straps and ran away. Everyone screamed, Peter and I were the closest to her and both grabbed the guy and pulled him away from her before he ran away.

She was shaken up but we got her inside and called her banks to cancel her cards. She lost her camera, wallet and money, but luckily we locked up our passports in the hostel before we left. The hostel cameras weren't able to catch it on tape because he mugged her right around the corner from the hostel door, where there were no cameras on that street.

Today I went to Lit in Time and Poetry and got lunch with Sammie. I'm going out to dinner now, but I'll finish about the Madrid trip later or tomorrow. Thankfully Erin is ok and that was the worst thing that happened.

M

[Day 67] If Ryanair were to plan a weekend, it would be our weekend in Madrid

I'm back from Madrid! I really only have to say two things: First Madrid, you win. And second, If Ryanair were to plan a weekend, it would have been this one.

I guess I should further explain and describe Madrid because as crazy as the weekend was, I did actually have a lot of fun and enjoyed Madrid.

I'll start off with Thursday morning. Kate and I both weren't feeling well all day. On Wednesday I knew a cold was coming on but   I wasn't able to prevent it, so I spent Thursday suffering through a bad cold and not being able to breathe out of my nose. I volunteered after class on Thursday afternoon and had a lot of fun decorating the room. The only bad part was I got back to QM later than I planned and therefore had a lot of stuff do to before we left for the airport at 5:30. For some reason my boarding pass wasn't printing out and so we decided we would just handle it at the airport.

When I got to the airport, Ryanair told me I'd have to pay 40 pounds to get my boarding pass because I didn't come to the airport with it because I couldn't get it printed. After paying the 40 pounds for the boarding pass and standing in line to three really stupid, ignorant, annoying American girls (they're the kind of people that give us a bad name), we got on the plane and had the most awful flight ever. I'm never flying Ryanair again. Not only was I angry at them for making me pay more, but the flight was uncomfortable and annoying and their bright yellow color scheme is horrendous.

I should mention that I went to Madrid Thursday Nov 18-Sat Nov 20 with Kate, Erin, Colin, Daphne, Sammie and Peter.

We got to Madrid around midnight and Sammie and I talked to some cab drivers in Spanish and got us a cab to our hostel for 30 euro. We got to our hostel and all picked beds in the freezing cold room. We had an eight person room and since there were seven of us we had the room to ourselves, including our own bathroom. We decided we wanted to check out the night life in the city since Spain is supposed to do things much later than other cities.

We got ready and went out around 1am. We walked a few blocks to Puerta del Sol where there were a lot of club promoters trying to get people to come to their clubs. We ended up going into an Irish pub that had hip/hop music, it was quite strange. Also there were a lot of people smoking inside, which is something much different than at home and even than in London.  After about 20 minutes we left because we weren't having much fun and continued to walk around.


As we walked toward Gran Via, the main street in Madrid, we walked up this street that had a lot of shops but also had loads of hookers lining the street. It was a pedestrian street that only had stores and restaurants that apparently turned into hooker central at night. I've never really seen a hooker before that I definitely knew was a hooker until that (I live under a rock and in a bubble, remember?). Anyway, Erin and I were pretty amazed by all the hookers.



We walked to Gran Via and stayed on that street for a while. As we were walking we saw the cleaning people washing off the sidewalks and mopping up the garbage. That was a little odd, but I guess it's a good way to clean up all of the trash. We continued to wander down Gran Via and some other streets but we were all really tired and went back to the hostel and to bed.


Friday morning we woke up around 11:30 and took turns getting showers before we went sight seeing. Vijay had made us a list of things to see because he studied in Madrid one summer or something and knew the city pretty well. We started off at Puerta del Sol where we got delicious churros. Mine was filled with chocolate and it was sooo gooooood. I do have to say that the churro I had from the Brazilian stand in Camden was better though. In any case chocolate for breakfast is always a good idea.

After we ate our breakfast went to Plaza de Espana. Plaza de Espana was pretty awesome because there was a market there with a lot of jewelery and stuff to buy and there were also Spanish dancers on stage. We watched the dancers and ate yummy chicken and beef tacos from the nearby stand.

Fountain in Plaza de Espana

Spanish dancers

After Plaza de Espana, we walked to the Egyptian temple, Templo de Debod. It was built in the second century BC and dedicated to the goddess Isis. It was moved to Spain in 1960 as a thank you gift from Egyptians to the Spanish for help with saving various Egyptian monuments after a dam collapsed. The temple was so pretty, I wish we could have gone inside or seen it at night. The back drop for the temple was also really gorgeous because it was a lot of houses and trees on a hill in the distance. Peter got the perfect self timer picture of all of us, but it ended up being for naught because he accidentally deleted all of his pictures at the end of the day. 

 Templo de Debod

We wandered toward Jardines de Sabatini and found some tiny palm trees that were only five feet tall. There were like four fountains in Jardines de Sabatini and a lot of really weird plants. We saw the cutest dogs running around and playing with each other.

We walked through the gardens for a little while and took a bunch of pictures, some of them quite strange (like the girls hiding underneath a plant?), and then walked to the front of Palacio Real. Palacio Real is the official residence of the King of Spain, although he doesn't live there. Generally it's open to the public unless there is a state ceremony there. Palacio Real was gigantic! It was so much bigger than Buckingham Palace and I liked the architecture more. There wasn't really any greenery, so that made it less pretty and it was also wasn't guarded as much. There weren't any gates to get in, only guards standing by the doors.

After the Palace, we walked down the street to Almudena Catedral, a Catholic Cathedral in Madrid. Construction on the Cathedral began in 1879 but it stopped a few times for various reasons, like the Spanish Civil War. It was completed in 1993 and is in Gothic revival style architecture. It's really beautiful from the inside and outside, the architecture is sweet. It was set up in a cross shape and it was extremely colorful and extravagant inside. It was one of the most colorful churches I've been in. On the scale of famous, beautiful churches I've been to it was on the small side. But if I list the churches in that category (St. Paul's in London, St. Peter's in Vatican City, St. Patrick's in Dublin) it would be difficult for every famous church to be that large. Oh and it only cost 1 euro to get in, which was great for everyone.

We left the Church and headed toward Plaza de San Francisco. That's where the next thing in the series of unfortunate events that was the Madrid weekend occurred. Peter was looking through his pictures and accidentally deleted all of them, including our picture with the Spanish dancer man and the perfectly self timed picture of us on the hill near Templo de Debod. Those were pretty epic pictures and it was a sad walk to the next plaza.

We arrived at Plaza de San Francisco and looked at the buildings in the area for less than five minutes before we decided that we were done with architecture and just wanted food. Crossing the street was a little difficult, we ran through the round-a-bout, but Spanish drivers are much friendlier than London drivers and so cars stopped for us.

We walked up Calle de Toledo and saw a lot of cool things like a Spanish grade school, a huge candy shop, a lot of yummy looking restaurants that were closed because it was 5pm (too early for dinner in Spain), and another Museo de Jamon. Eventually we found a place to eat. Sammie and I tried to decipher the menu and Colin and Peter helped out with that too. We ordered a pitcher of Sangria for the table and all basically ordered random things. I ordered a tortilla espana (or something like that) and it turned out to be this pizza shaped thing made out of potatoes, onions and something else. It wasn't bad, but I ended up switching with Daphne because whatever she ordered had sea food in it and she's allergic. I'm not really sure what anyone else ate, except for that Peter, Sammie and Erin ordered fish and they got actual fish on their plate. I had to cut the heads off for Sammie and Erin because they couldn't eat it and look at it. Everyone else ordered the three course meal thing that they had for 9 euro so they all shared with me a little bit. The best part of the meal was the Sangria, it was really good.

After dinner we walked up the street some more to Plaza Mayor. Plaza Mayor was really big and what I thought of when I thought of a traditional Spanish plaza. There were a lot of souvenir shops, restaurants, and clothing stores. They had a Christmas tree set up in the middle and a lot of Christmas lights up, but none of them were turned on. We walked around, bought souvenirs, stopped in this really unique jewelery store where Kate and I each bought something then got two more things for free, and walked to the hostel. We were all tired, it was a long day with a lot of walking.

When we got back to the hostel it was only about 7pm so we decided we were going to take a nap before going back out for the night. We all froze in our beds and napped for two hours and started getting ready around 9:30pm.

Colin's cousin who is studying in Madrid and her friend came over to our hostel to hang out with us and possibly take us out somewhere. After that didn't really work out eventually we decided to just stick to our original plan and go to El Kapital. Supposedly it's the biggest night club in Western Europe (I've heard that from multiple people), but it's definitely the biggest club that I've ever been to. It wasn't too far from our hostel and it opened at midnight; we got there around 12:30. Next unfortunate event: we all stood in line and showed them our IDs, but for some reason Colin didn't have his and they wouldn't let him in. We all already paid to get in so we didn't really want to leave, but the bouncers wouldn't let any of us stand at the door and talk to him to tell him where the key was for the hostel safe was (which is where our passports were locked up in). So Colin had to go back to the hostel alone, almost got mugged, and he went to sleep.

Kapital was really sweet. There were seven floors with different furniture and music on every floor. The first floor had a huge stage with dancers on it and a giant dance floor. The second and third floors were partially open so you could see the first floor dance floor. The fourth floor was red and had white furniture and there was a karaoke stage. Kate and Peter attempted karaoke and I eventually got up too, but it kind of failed and we went to a different floor. The sixth floor was green and had these cool white couches and pretty good music, but there weren't many people there. The top floor was crazzzzyy. It had a bunch of round tables covered in white table cloths and big huge white curtains draping from the ceiling to the floor. There were large white chairs and couches all along the sides of the walls. That floor would have been nice if you wanted to relax, but we were all running around like the place was a jungle gym so we didn't stay there very long.

 me, Erin, Kate, Daphne and Sammie

I have to finish a paper I'll finish updating this later this afternoon and add pictures. Stay tuned. The worst is yet to come, but don't worry we're all safe.


M

[Day 63] Bella Venezia

Thursday morning Erin, Sammie and I woke up at 4:30 am to catch a cab to the airport because the train wasn't running that early. None of our alarms went off (or maybe we turned them off?) and the hostel guy knocked on our door to wake us up because our cab was there. We got ready in ten minutes and took a crazy cab ride to the airport. I was extremely tired, I can't remember being that tired ever. The airport was pretty confusing and we were all in a haze of sleepiness since it was 5 am. There was like 0 security (they didn't care about liquids, shoes, or coats) and we got on the plane and immediately fell asleep.

We arrived at Marco Polo airport around 9am. We took a bus from the airport to some area around Venice. Then we took a boat shuttle to our stop by our hostel. Venice was BEAUTIFUL! It was also freeeeeezing compared to Rome. Our hostel was more of a bed and breakfast and it was so cute. It was on the first floor of the building and the man in charge of it was so sweet. He let us shower even though our room wasn't ready. We left our bags there and went outside to experience Venice.

I still can't believe I was actually in Venice. I've literally wanted to go there for my entire life, simply because of the canals and gondolas. We walked toward St. Mark's Square, which is kind of the center of town. Our bed and breakfast was very conveniently located, we had to cross three or four bridges to get to the square. We were walking along the water and we noticed that the water was splashing up over the sidewalk. We joked about how we heard that Venice was sinking. Then we saw St. Mark's Square and stopped joking.

At first we were confused, why were people walking on those concrete picnic tables? Then we saw the water. The majority of St. Mark's Square was 3-5 inches underwater. I'm not kidding. It was so weird. There were tons of people following each other along these concrete picnic table things so that they didn't have to walk in the water. Then there were the people wearing rain boots who were trooping through the water. I still can't get over it.

The areas that weren't submerged in water had street vendors selling random Venice memorabilia. We walked around and got to areas that weren't submerged, took lots of canal pictures and walked in and out of stores. Also we saw someone from Entertainment Tonight filming and doing a recap of the movie The Tourist that was filmed in Venice with Angelia Jolie and Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp is following me!

We continued shopping after that and I'm not sure what the obsession was, but every store we went in had really fancy masks. They had regular fancy masks and then masks that had animal faces on them. They also had tons of leather items and I ended up buying a genuine Italian leather purse for 15 euro later in the day.

We got some pizza for lunch, which definitely not as good as Rome pizza (this was New York style). Sammie and I got gelato, mine was tiramissu. We wandered over to the Rialto Bridge and stood there in awe for literally ten minutes, just staring at the water.

We walked back to our hostel to take a nap because we were all really tired. We got back to the bed and breakfast and napped for about an hour and a half and woke up at 4:30 to go back outside. We walked outside and decided to get a gondola ride. We talked the gondola man into giving it to us for cheaper, and Erin asked him to put his gondola-man hat on. The gondola ride was so fun! It was perfect because it was dusk, not freezing, and something I always wanted to do. We went through the canals and saw the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, and a bunch of museums. 

After our gondola ride, we went to get dinner. We stopped at this little Italian place that we passed before and the host was in love with Erin. When we went back this time the guy kissed Erin on the lips because he was so happy to see us. I felt pretty bad for her, it was very strange. Italian men are so forward. I had spaghetti bolognese for dinner. It was was the perfect setting because we sat right next to the water by the Rialto, with a little fire heater right next us. So Italian. 

After dinner we walked around a little bit more, stopped in a bar and got Italian coffee, and went back to the bed and breakfast to watch Italian tv and sleep. Our beds were so comfortable and the room was so cute. We woke up around 9:30 and ate the breakfast that our b&b guy set up for us, then took the water bus to the bus stop. We took the bus back to the airport and basically sprinted to the gate because we were late. We just made it.

We took a bus back to Victoria station, which took 3 hours, and then took the tube back to school.  Friday night I went to Laura's play, Arsenic and Old Lace, in Whitechapel. I'll have to write about that later because it was hilarious. All day Saturday and Sunday I relaxed and watched lots of tv. This week I just did homework and went to class. Today (Wednesday) I volunteered for a really long time, but it was so fun because I got to design/decorate the art board and make graffiti letters. After that Sammie and I went to the Museum of London for a class and to the Senate House Library to return books, and then I came back to school. I wrote an essay today and now I'm going to go to bed because I'm going to MADRID THIS WEEKEND!

M

[Day 62] Two months

I last set foot on US soil two months ago exactly. Two months isn't really that long of a time, but it feels like forever.

I left off with our second day in Italy, when we attempted to see the Pope. Friends had told us to go to Vatican City early and the Pope was supposed to be at St. Peter's Basilica on that day (Wednesday). However the hostel lady told us to go in the afternoon, so we woke up around 9:30 and got ready and took the train to a stop around Vatican City. We walked down the street and started talking to an Australian lady who set us up with a tour of the Vatican and Vatican museum. She told us that we'd missed the Pope by three hours! We got there at 1pm and the Pope was out at 10am. It was really disappointing. Kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity that we missed. Anyway, we bought tickets to the tour and got lunch at an amazing pizza place. Rome pizza is seriously the best. I had two pieces, one magherita and one potato. Yummy.

It was pretty cool going into Vatican City because it's walled in and since it's its own country we had to go through security to get in. Unfortunately we didn't get a stamp in our passports, which is what I really wanted. Our tour lady told us a lot of things, such as the Vatican museum is the biggest one in the world (7 miles long) and that the Pope only wears Prada (besides his holy robes and such). We saw the Pope's private gardens and tons of rooms in the museum. One of the coolest ones was the Italian room. The city was gold crested and there were aerial maps of all different parts of Italy that were drawn before there was any way to get an aerial view of the ground. We also learned that Greek sculptures are more perfect and beautiful than real life people (beautiful mind, beautiful body). Roman sculptures are more realistic; there are bigger noses and wrinkled foreheads, etc. The tour was interesting, but really long. The end of the tour was Raphael's rooms and the Sistine Chapel. Raphael's rooms were beautiful, but the Sistine Chapel was kind of disappointing. For some reason I didn't realize that the Sistine Chapel was painted twice. The first painting is what I thought it would be, the Creation of Adam painting with the background of blue sky and clouds. This version of the ceiling was much more complicated, the Creation of Adam painting was in the middle of the ceiling but there were loads of other small paintings all over the place. It was really overwhelming, especially since I'm more of a fan of simple things. I would've taken a picture but you weren't allowed cameras. They had guys walking around telling people to be quiet and yelling at anyone with a camera.

After the Sistine Chapel we walked to St. Peter's Basilica. We saw Swiss guards (weird) and all of St. Peter's Square. St. Peter's Basilica was absolutely huge, our guide said that the Statue of Liberty could fit inside. I believe it because it was gigantic. We saw the Pietra also. The Pietra was surreal, I can't believe we actually saw it. Since 1997 it's been behind bullet proof glass because some guy took an ax or something to the statue and hacked off Mary's face. 

We walked around, saw some monks from the Franciscan Order, a lot of nuns and the beginning of 4pm mass. After that we walked outside and took tons of pictures because it was beautiful lighting and I couldn't believe we were there.

There were a lot of bishops walking around and eventually we talked to one of them (mostly because Vijay thought it would be hilarious to get a picture with one of them). Supposedly the Pope was in the Czech Republic a year ago and all of the Czech bishops came to Vatican City for a conference or something and to thank the Pope for coming. The first bishop that we talked to spoke English, and we talked to another one who spoke basically every language but English. He was with his brother and his brother's wife, who both spoke English. I talked to them about hockey a little bit, they were Bruins fans.

After that we figured out our way home, it took a while. We stopped at Piazza Fornati on the way and I got the best lasagna ever. The food in Rome was ridiculously good. We wandered around some more and on our way home we stopped at a pub. After the pub we ended up at an American club where I saw someone that I knew from freshman year at Nova. I was so excited though because they had on ESPN at that club. Eventually we split and went back to the hostel to go to sleep.

I'm going to make a separate post for Venice.

M

[Day 61 continued]

I'm angry right now for various reasons. This cheered me up.

I miss Lexi.

[Day 61] La prima notte in Italia

I'm never going to finish writing about Rome, there's so much! Today started out as a great day and it's gone downhill from there, so I've kind of been day dreaming about Rome all day. I think I forgot to mention in my first post about all of the graffiti on the buildings. Most of it was in the area that we stayed, near the train station. I guess that wasn't the nicest area or something but there was a lot of graffiti. There weren't a lot of cops/ambulances/fire trucks in comparison to what I've experienced in London. Oh and it gets dark early, just like in London. Since the time change, it's started to get dark at 4:45 in London and is pitch black by 5. It's so bizarre, right now it could be 5:30 or it could be 10, you'd never tell the difference. Rome is a little better, I think it started getting dark around 5:15. They also started eating dinner later than in London too, around 7, whereas I feel like people eat around 5:30 here. But maybe not, I don't know.

I finished the last post talking about the Trevi Fountain, which we went to around 5 when it started getting dark. The Pantheon was only a 5-10 minute walk from there, so we went there next. The Pantheon was kind of a disappointment because it seemed like they were doing construction on it to restore it. The Pantheon was finished in 126 under Emperor Hadrian. It was built as a temple to the Roman gods and is circular with a hole (oculus) in the middle of the dome that opens to the sky. Apparently it's the world's largest concrete unreinforced dome. Whatever that means. When we went inside it was basically an open floor with some chairs and a lot of sculptures around the outside of the open floor. Beginning in the 7th century it's been used as a Catholic church/place of worship. We didn't stay there for very long and ended up walking around the outside of it more. Erin and I had fun trying to translate the Latin again.

By this point we were all hungry. We started back toward our hostel and ended up looking in a lot of souvenir shops and stuff like that. They didn't have anything too special, mostly crappy pope memorabilia or little statues of the Colosseum. We stopped in some shop to look at their colorful pasta and made a new friend, Vanessa. Vanessa was the store manager and she was so sweet. She kept giving us food and drinks to try. The store had a lot of creme liqueurs and she poured us each a taste of all of the different flavors to try. Some of them were disgusting, but white chocolate and pistachio were pretty good. She also made us try Grappa, which is this Italian alcohol that was absolutely disgusting. She was so nice to us and told us all about the area. We bought some pop and absolut from her and went back to our hostel.

Our hostel had free pasta for dinner but we all ended up falling asleep on our beds. We woke up around 8, too late for the pasta, so we went out to dinner. I got alfredo with red sauce, kind of strange, but it turned out to be really good. I love Italian food. On our way back to the hostel, we were walking up a hill and saw a really pretty domed building in the distance. We all thought it was really cool looking and took pictures of it. It turned out to be St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Really smart of us...

After dinner we went back to the hostel and showered to get ready to go out. The hostel bathrooms were pretty disgusting, but I guess that's what you get for $20 per night. We caught a bus (for only one euro!) and tried to go across town to Piazza Novana where we heard a lot of pubs and clubs were. It was raining and we couldn't see outside so we missed the stop. We got off of the bus as soon as we noticed and had to walk across a bridge to get back to the right area. The bridge was so beautiful, I wish I knew which one it was (Rome has a lot of bridges). We wandered around Piazza Novana for a while until we found a club called Anima that Erin and I had previously found on the internet. By that time it was 11:30 so we thought that there would be people there, even though it was a Tuesday night. We got inside and the set up was nice, they had a lot of couches and good music, but there were only about five other people there. We waited around for a while and decided to leave. The bartender stopped us and told us more people would come around 1am. We didn't believe her, but Vijay talked her into giving us drinks for the happy hour price of 4.50 euro, so we stayed.

As it turned out, around 1am a bunch of people showed up. We hung around each other for a while and eventually these Italian men started talking to us (or we started talking to them? I don't know). None of us know Italian, so Sammie, Vijay and I started speaking to them in Spanish. I guess it was more like Vijay spoke to them in actual Spanish and I struggled to speak coherent Spanish. I think Sammie was pretty ok with the Spanish though. They only spoke Italian but the languages are fairly similar so we were communicating somewhat. Poor Erin only knows Latin, so we had to keep telling them that she only spoke English. Most of them turned out to be pretty creepy so eventually we parted our ways and the four of us took a cab home. We got back later than we expected but we went to bed (after getting yelled at by the hostel people) and woke up the next morning around 9:30.

Erin and I got us breakfast from the kitchen (rolls) and really good red orange juice. The day before the hostel lady told us to go to the Vatican in the afternoon because it was too crowded in the morning, so the day before we decided we were going to go around noon. We all got dressed and caught the train to the stop for Vatican City.

That's a whole other story though and I need to do some homework because I'm going to Madrid on Thursday and I have two essays due next week. Today I got my third Poetry essay back and I got a 66 on it. The grading system is much different here, 70 is an A and 60 is a B. In any case I improved from my last two grades of 60 and 62 and my seminar leader said the class average was a 62 so I'm pretty happy with myself.

Vespas!

 

M

 

[Day 60] Good Luck?

I can't believe I've been here for 60 days! Crazyyyy.

Anyway, I have to go to class in 20 minutes but I might as well write something or I'm never going to finish writing about Italy.

After we were at the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, we headed for the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain was completed in 1762 and supposedly is a source of the purest water in Rome. We thought that you were supposed to make a wish and throw a coin into the fountain, but after I looked it up it says that if you throw a coin into the fountain you're ensured a return visit to Rome. Either way I'm happy with it because I made a good wish and I would love to come back to Rome.

We got to the fountain around 4:30 just when it was getting dark, so it looked beautiful lit up. There were loads of people there taking pictures and throwing coins into the fountain. After we all took individual pictures, I spotted a guy wearing a Villanova jacket and Erin went up to him and asked if he would take a group picture for us. He and his wife both graduated from Nova and his son went there and studied abroad in London. They were really nice and wished us luck and took our picture.

After that Sammie tried to take another individual picture of me on the side of the fountain, but the picture was interrupted when Vijay so rudely splashed me in the face with fountain water. I'm hoping it's good luck or something. I'm trying to be positive about having water splashed all over me.

I have to go to class now, but I'll continue this later.

M

[Day 59] La Dolce Vita

Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy <3                             

Seriously, one of the most wonderful places I've ever been. Rome was overwhelming and fantastic for so many reasons. I don't even know where to start.

I could start with the cobblestone streets, because there basically was only cobblestone, no pavement. On top of that those cobblestone streets were all tiny, narrow and in every direction you could think of. (Try reading a map of Rome, it's mad confusing. I think the person who set up the layout of downtown Pittsburgh had Rome in mind when he did so.)

I could start with the pizza shops, because they had the best pizza in the entire world. I don't think I'll ever fully enjoy another piece of pizza after having pizza from Rome (not even Pizza Hut Pizza).

I could start with the language, because there's something about the mix of Italian and English that just gets you...and the whole part where they speak with their hands more than their mouth.

But...I think I'll think I'll just start with the part where I got an hour of sleep before we left for the airport. By 'we' I mean me, Sammie, Erin and Vijay.

Our flight from Gatwick to Fiumicino was at 6:50am (I think) Tuesday morning, and the tube doesn't open until 5:30 am so we had to find alternate transportation there. I was under the impression we were taking the night bus to Victoria Station where we would catch the Gatwick Express to the airport. I packed and went to sleep around 1:15 am, woke up at 2:15 and went to Fielden 4 at 2:30 am to meet everyone. While I was sleeping Sammie and Vijay had decided we were going to take a cab that would pick us up at 3. (I could have made scrambled eggs, I was mad.) Erin came over at 2:45 and we got the cab at 3.


The airport wasn't as big as I was expecting it to be, I think I'm flying out of Gatwick for all of my flights except the one to the States. We were part of the few people there and we wandered around half asleep for about an hour. We had breakfast at Wetherspoon's (I got my scrambled eggs) and we all got mamosas just because we could. The waiter didn't know what mamosas were, we had to explain it to him. We got on our plane and I fell asleep right away, just as I normally do.


Rome is one hour ahead of London and I can't remember what time we got there exactly. I think we arrived somewhere in the 9am hour. We took a train from the airport to the train station right next to our hostel. It was pretty convenient because our hostel was only a few blocks away from the train station. I stayed awake for most of the train ride; the country side that I saw looked like any other country side, nothing special. The only thing I noticed was that there was a lot of graffiti on the buildings and a lot of tropical-looking trees. Anyway, our hostel, Downtown Alessandro, was on the third floor of the building and we couldn't check in right away but we could leave our bags there.


We dropped our bags off, Vijay got a map (which was a mistake because I felt confused for most of the day until he let me look at it) and we headed farther into town to see the sights.


That city is something else. It was warm outside, a big change from London, so we didn't wear coats. It's also not as flat as London, so once we walked a few blocks we started walking downhill. There were vespas and pizza places every two blocks and the streets weren't that crowded. Speaking of pizza places, I had absolutely amazing pizza that day for lunch. I had magherita, and then Vijay didn't eat all of his potato pizza so I had that too. (I had five pieces of pizza in two days.) Unfortunately, the goodness came with tons of olive oil and grease, which I got on my shirt :( I did a pretty good job of covering it up in pictures though.

Rome was very different from London. Cars stop for you when you try to cross the street. There are little alley ways off of every road, some of them are even sets of stairs with a little roof over them connecting to another alley. The buildings are mostly orange and brown, but they complement each other very well. The buildings that aren't orange or brown are buildings built by the Romans. Such as the Colosseum, which was the first famous building we saw.

The picture doesn't do it justice. Can you imagine turning a corner (turning left in our case) and seeing that peeking out between buildings? We caught a glimpse of it a few blocks before we should have, but we walked farther down to the main road, turned left and there it was. It's so large and ominous, it almost looks like it's going to start rolling down the street toward you and right over you. I got a feeling similar to the one that I got the first time I stepped out of the Westminster tube station and saw Big Ben right in front of me. It's a pretty overwhelming feeling.


We stopped every few blocks to take more pictures of the Colosseum and when I turned around to pose for a picture, there were more columns and buildings in the distance. It was so amazing I can't even find the words to describe it. In the distance on the left was my favorite building, Vittoriano o Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II. In the distance to the right were some columns, I think they may have been part of the Roman Forum, but they might have just been some columns. In any case, it was breathtaking. 

For the majority of the day, the sky was beautiful. It was cloudy but the sky was so blue sometimes. It was a little chilly in the shade, but I was happy I didn't have to wear a coat. We went into the Colosseum, I think it was like 12 euro or something. I wasn't expecting it to be so large. I don't know how much time we spent in it, but you could probably spend most of the day in there. There were a lot of artifacts inside and a lot of things written in Latin. Erin and I had fun trying to figure out what all of the Latin meant, since we both took Latin in high school. I read some of the sign posts (there were a lot) and learned, or should I say re learned since I probably learned this all in Latin class,  a lot about the Colosseum. 


Ampitheatrum Flavium began construction in 70 AD under Emperor Vespasian and completed in 80 under Emperor Titus. It could hold 50,000 people (and I definitely believe that after being there) and it was used for different events like battles, shows, and animal hunts. It's called the Colosseum because of a statue of Nero that used to be nearby that was called Colossus or something like that. It has a lot of underground tunnels and rooms, some of which we could see when we were at higher levels, to house animals and slaves.

I think I was most amazed by how big it is. I think in today's times we're used to having huge ampitheatres and stadiums, but it just always seems like ancient things were a lot smaller than they are now. I feel like the Colosseum was bigger than a lot of stadiums I've been to.
After we were done at the Colosseum, we walked over to the Arch of Constantine, which was right next to it. The Arch was built in the early 300s to commemorate Constantine's victory in an important battle. We then walked up / toward Palatine Hill, but we didn't know it at the time because Vijay wouldn't give me the map.


Palatine Hill is basically the beginning of Rome. According to legend, it's the location of the cave where Romulus and Remus grew up. They ended up killing their great-uncle, got in an argument and Romulus killed Remus. And so Rome began.

Palatine Hill overlooks the Roman Forum, which we didn't realize we saw until later Erin and I were talking about it and realized that's what it was. I think part of the reason we didn't realize what it was is because it's a lot of ruins. There are a bunch of half columns and crumbled buildings that used to be government buildings and the center of city. It's just so crazy that we were actually there and saw all of that stuff.


We walked down the street to my favorite building: Vittoriano. The Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was completed in 1935, so it's one of the newest buildings in Rome. It's absolutely gorgeous. It was dedicated to Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy. It's made of marble and has a statue of Emanuele on a horse and two status of the goddess Victoria. It hold the Museum of Italian Reunification and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There is an eternal flame that burns to commemorate soldiers lost in war. We approached it from the east, or the left side of it, and it was so amazing. The clouds were moving in the sky and I stopped before I got to the front of it and watched the clouds move over the statue on the west side of the building.

I'm going to go now because I have to do laundry and do some homework. Maybe I'll write more tonight or finish tomorrow.


M

[Day 58] Recap of Birthday & Family Visit

I have an unbelievable amount of catching up to do, but I want to include everything so this will probably be a really long post. I'll talk about Italy in my next post, later today.

I'll start first with my birthday weekend, which I still haven't finished talking about. Friday night, October 29, as I said I went to dinner at Hayfield with all of my friends and they got me a lot of presents and I had Kerahi Chicken for dinner. (I don't know how to spell it.) Then we went to Whitechapel for a party at the Griff Inn. That night we came back to campus and Kate picked up some pumpkin seeds at someone's flat for us to eat yum. Saturday was my actual birthday and Erin, Kate and I didn't do too much during the day. We mad Toy Story mac n cheese and sat around and talked, it was very relaxing. That night we decided to go to Fabric, which is this pretty famous club in Farringdon. Last time we went it wasn't that great but I was hoping that it would be better, and also I had no other ideas about what to do. Before we left, everyone surprised me by singing Happy Birthday to me in Flat 4's kitchen. Kate and Erin bought me chocolate ice cream and a 21 candle and I got more presents (21 bars of Galaxy chocolate, my favorite.) It was so sweet of them.

We went to Fabric and it ended up being pretty stupid. Inga and Peter met us there, we had a group of about 10 or so. They had three rooms open but all they played was techno music. Apparently Vijay had been talking to the bouncer at the club next door before we went into Fabric and got some free passes, so we decided to go there. That place ended up being a lot of fun. It was much smaller and they played a lot better music. The majority of us stayed there until early in the morning, and then we wandered around London trying to find a bus to get home. It was a really fun night. When we got back, I hung out in Flat 4 for a long time. That probably wasn't the best idea, I should have gone to bed, but instead we decided to have a slumber party in the hallway. We got blankets and pillows and a bunch of us slept in the hallway. It was fun for a while until one of their other flatmates woke up really early to talk to all of her relatives on the phone and therefore woke all of us up that were sleeping in the hall. Either way it was a fun night. Oh and that night Kate, Erin and I were jersey shore characters. I was JWow and Kate was Snookie.

Sunday, Halloween, was a pretty chill day. Erin and I went into central and saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament Square, the changing of the guards at the Cavalry Museum and Diwali at Trafalgar Square, then we got dinner at Chipotle. It was a day of stumbling upon things because neither of us knew what was going on at the Museum until it actually happened. We just saw a bunch of people crowding around the horses so we decided to watch. At 4, there was this big ceremony for the guards to take the horses in for the night. All of the guards lined up and yelled some things, shuffled around, got off the horses and took them in. After that we continued up the street and found Diwali in Trafalgar Square. That was even more amazing because at first we both tried to figure out what it was and then we realized it when we saw the dancers on stage. There were so many people there, it was crazy. It was really cool, the music was good, and everyone was dancing and singing and yelling. We stayed there for about an hour until we went to get dinner. That night we watched Hocus Pocus, or at least part of it. On Monday I had class and a paper to start, so I did that in the morning. After that Erin and I went to Harrod's to look around. It was so cool, so many floors of so much stuff. We even got a Krispie Kreme donut (to share, because we're poor college kids).

After Harrod's I had my Villanova class so she went back to my flat. Around 11:30pm, Erin, Kate and I went to Victoria Station because Kate had to pick up her friend and Erin had to go to the airport around 3am. We dropped Erin off and picked Colin up and then tried to figure out how to get back to school since the 25 bus was on diversion. Eventually we got back and went to sleep.

Most of the day Tuesday and Wednesday was spent writing papers that were due on Wednesday. I turned in my Poetry and History papers on Wednesday afternoon and then spent 2 awful hours on a bus to Queen's Park to volunteer. Normally the trip takes me 40 minutes, but there was a tube strike and the trains from Mile End were bezerk. Volunteering was fun, I helped some kids make masks, and the tube was better by the time I was done volunteering.

On Thursday I had an awesome Representing London class. This class was a walking tour of a certain part of the city. It was for an assignment due in two weeks where we have to talk about London now and London in the 18th century.  My group of four went from Cannon St to Monument, over London Bridge, to the Borough Markets and back over Millennium Bridge. It was an awesome walk because two people in my group were British, so the other American and I got to see what they knew about London and things about British people in general. One of the most interesting things I learned from them was the reason that there are no trash cans in tube stations, and basically no trash cans anywhere. First thing is that they call them bins, not trash cans. But there are no trash cans in the tube stations or anywhere because they don't want anyone to put a bomb in them. They just have a ton of people that clean up the trash that people put places. It's mostly a very clean city in my opinion.


My family arrived on Thursday, I went to see them around 3pm. My mom, Aunt Helen and Aunt Carol stayed in the Blu Radisson in Portman Square, a few blocks from Marble Arch. Thursday night we went shopping on Oxford St and ate dinner in the area at Spaghetti Warehouse. I stayed in their hotel that night (it was a really nice hotel) and Friday morning I got up early to volunteer. After I was done volunteering I met them at Roaster's in Mile End and showed them my campus and my room. I don't think they were expecting the Mile End to  be how it is, but that's part of the experience. We left Mile End to go to Camden around 2pm. We shopped there for the rest of the day. I bought a lot of jewelery and they all bought some souvenirs for people. I left them around 6:30 and they ate dinner in Camden while I went to meet some people to watch fireworks.


I met Sammie, Talhah, Chris, Anna and Vijay at school and we went to Clapham to watch fireworks for Guy Fawkes. We ended up missing the fireworks, but we hung out in the area for a while. I felt like I was at a festival in Hyde Park at home or Munhall or something. There was actually grass and trees and not a million people everywhere. We went into a pub but it was crowded so we left and went to Piccadilly. We ended up at a club called Bar Rumba.


The next morning I met my family for breakfast at the hotel, it was so good. We went on the London Eye and took an Original Bus Tour to see all around London. We walked along the South Bank, which was so awesome, Leicester Square and Piccadilly and went to Oxford St. again. That night I went back to campus to bring some food back and I ended up walking around London with Talhah and Vijay that night.  We started in Piccadilly and walked so many places. At one point we were sitting outside of a military base playing a game. We also sat in Hyde Park for a while and talked. It was a ton of walking and I was tired but it ended up being really fun.

On Sunday after breakfast I did more of the bus tour with my family. We went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. It was different than the one that I went to last time because we saw it at Buckingham Palace and at St. James's Palace as well. We learned about the five divisions of guards and all about St. James's Palace, which is where Princess Diana lived. I even got to pet the police's horses.

Later in the day I went to the Tower of London with my mom and saw all of the royal jewels. It was freezing outside that day but it was so cool to go there, it's something that I've been really wanting to do. I think my mom really enjoyed seeing them too. They have all of the crowns and spires there, including the real diamonds. The room is in a big fault and there's security everywhere. The whole thing closed rather early though so that was disappointing, we didn't get to see everything in the Tower of London. After the Tower of London we took a boat ride back to Westminster and then a bus to Oxford St. We ate Pizza Hut for lunch, which made me really happy because I love Pizza Hut!


Mom and Aunt Carol left Monday morning and Aunt Helen left in the afternoon. It was really nice to see them I'm glad they came.


This past week was reading week, aka fall break. I volunteered on Monday and had my Villanova class, and then I left for Italy on Monday night/Tuesday morning! I'll write about that in my next post...

Tower Bridge at night

Did I mention that my family got me wonderful birthday presents? Because they did, I was so happy! Annnddd Mom bought me nail polish so I can finally paint my nails!

M