Time for Easter Break

Hi everyone! I don't have a BA Word of the Day this time :( sorry. Nor any pictures. I am writing this in a bit of a hurry because I need to leave in 10 minutes to get to my coach that will take me to the airport. And then I have to catch an airplane that will take me to Frankfurt, Germany! However, I wanted to inform you guys of the cool places I will get to go. So here is a really rough itinerary of what I will be doing until April 11!

March 30- flight to Frankfurt, Germany at 3:25pm
March 31- spend the day with Chelsea (my old roommate from ISU that is studying abroad in Germany) in Frankfurt; flight at 8:45 pm to Venice, Italy.
April 1-  Venice (taking a day trip to Verona)
April 2- Venice
April 3- Venice to Florence (day trip to Pisa)
April 4- Florence
April 5- Florence to Rome
April 6- Rome (and on Good Friday as well!)
April 7- Rome to Milan
April 8- Milan
April 9- Milan to Barcelona
April 10- Barcelona
April 11- Back to London late at night
April 12- London
April 13- To Amsterdam to meet up with Chelsea again (tentative)
April 14- Amsterdam
April 15- flight back home and Easter Break is done!

I hope everyone has a good week and a half! I shall miss you all! Until then, Cheers!

St. Paddy's Day, Playing Hooky, and Barbecues!

 BA Word of the Day:  lido. Apparently British people feel that outdoor pools need a separate name from indoor pools. Lido (pronounced lie-doe) is an outdoor pool.

 So, it was St. Paddy's Day last weekend! There was a big parade and celebration at Trafalgar Square with green stuff, bagpipe players, and plenty of beer.

 Oh and Connect Four on the stage. Which was kinda epic. The MC was freestyle rapping the whole time and made up songs about people in the audience. It was pretty fun.

 And Chester went with me! Lots of people were a little put off by the fact that I wanted to take a picture of a teddy bear dressed in green (particularly the guy who just couldn't put his St Paddy's Day festival guide down so that I could take the picture)

 Apparently Irish people (or whoever really) like to put applesauce on pork. I ran into the same thing at Sunday roast today (but they were out of pork so I had to get roast beef). Applesauce on pork is quite nice I must say!

 On the way home, Chester and I enjoyed a Barq's root beer together on the bus!

Monday (or whenever, I'm not really sure) I went for a walk and got a nice shot of a fox in Highgate Cementary. It seems really weird to me all the wildlife around here. Foxes, all grey squirrels, the works.

 Tuesday I decided that instead of going to my one hour class in the middle of the day, I would play hooky and see a bunch of different sites around London all day before going to Singing in the Rain. I went to St. Paul's Cathedral. Only this time I actually went in! And, even though you aren't supposed to take pictures, I took some anyways. Because that's how I roll. Fun fact to anyone that will be living in London:  You can go in, tell them you live in London when you buy your ticket, and they will give you a ticket (for the same price as single entry) that is valid for a WHOLE YEAR! And it probably takes a whole year to get through the audio tour, which is free with entry and done via iPod!

 And I got a nice picture of all of the front of St. Paul's Cathedral from...

 ...An old bus! I got to ride one of the cool old buses that I always see around. And then we all got kicked off the bus. They had to end the route early because of a demonstration at the Indian Embassy. So I walked to Covent Garden for some yummy food

 Then, somehow, I ended up on Southbank. I really just kinda roamed around London to be honest.

 The boat that is suspended in the picture to the right was some sort of competition for the Olympics year. It's meant to be a room for someone to live in. Epic view that would be!

 And then I decided I needed to walk to Big Ben

 And Westminister Abbey. Unfortunately it was closed :(

 Then I went back to Trafalgar Square. Seems to be recovered from St Paddy's Day. :) I wonder how quickly Trafalgar Square got over its hangover. At least by Tuesday from the looks of this picture.

 I feel like over the past few days I have been seeing occupations of people who didn't quite make it to London's West End. The lady trying to sell CDs singing at Covent Garden. The street performer at Covent Garden. The people blowing bubbles with string on Southbank. And this cool guy, painted in silver, pretending to be a homeless drunkard.... or he actually is a homeless drunkard... just painted in all silver. How much do these jobs pay do ya think? :)

That night I went to Singing in the Rain. It was INCREDIBLE!!! It rained on stage and everything! I felt like a little kid, totally amazed at the whole thing.

 And then Gee and I went to Southbank and Science Museum. She is in this picture, beside one of the eggs in the Easter egg hunt across London. There are over 200 eggs across London, all painted in different designs. After Easter, the eggs will be sold and the money will be used for some charity. Not sure which one. They are also trying to break a Guinness world record of largest Easter egg hunt.

 We also went to Mexican food at Lupita. I had a mushroom quesadilla, which was tasty! Vegetarians don't have it so bad! But I don't think it's for me :)

 And we went to Harrod's. There were purses for 1700 pounds, tights for 300 pounds, and who knows what else. Can you imagine being so filthy rich that you could just go in there and pick things out of there like they are candy? That would be epic.

 Maybe my fallback street job should be lifting cars! Haha just in case majoring in Human Resource Development doesn't work out. But anyways we went to Science Museum, which was pretty epic. We played games and maybe learned some new things.

 And THEN we got some ice cream! I feel like I eat a lot of ice cream. PS I don't want to talk about how much I spent on this tiny, yet satisfying, scoop of ice cream.

 And I don't want to talk about how quickly I ate it either.

 So last night we decided to have a Barbecue at the Castle! We all brought food and had a lovely time. But it took forever to light the disposable grills.

 Most of the pictures are slightly blurry because I have completely forgotten how to turn on the flash.

Today, we went to Sunday roast at the pub. It was really tasty... And other than playing on Facebook and writing this blog, there isn't a whole lot else I've done today.

I leave for Easter Break in a few short days! Frankfurt, Venice, Verona, Pisa, Florence, and Rome... in one week of the two I have for Easter Break! Still trying to map out where I want to be for the second half of my trip. I will let you all know my plans on my blog post before I leave. I hope everyone has a lovely week! Until next time, Cheers!

Seeing Eye Dogs, The Awkward Moment When, and Other Random Happenings of the Day

BA Word of the Day (with pictures again!):  Walker's/Lay's

In the UK, they are crisps and they are Walker's



In the US, they are chips, they are Lay's and they don't have gross pork flavors/flavours.

 Howdy y'all! I hope everyone has had a lovely week. Ok, let's talk about me now ;) This week has been.... interesting to say the least. Especially today. So Monday... I think that's when I did my most recent blog post. Ok moving on to Tuesday... I don't really remember much about Tuesday. I went to class, but that's all I remember. Oh and it was twin day for me and Matt (he's the student liaison aka RA for Greenview Court).Wednesday. I went to class (as usual) and then went to see “She Stoods to Conquer” which was excellently performed at the Olivier in the National Theatre. Unfortunately I 
didn't get any pictures because my camera was being fussy.

Thursday I went to my internship, came home, and hung out in the hallway. Oh yea, AND I got my ticket for Singing in the Rain! For Free! Thanks to London Met study abroad people! Other excitement for Thursday included the electricity going out in first floor B wing (not me thank goodness) and almost ordering pizza in a thick southern American accent, but then deciding not to because I would have laughed too much.

 So today I went to my internship, did a little work, and then mapped out how to get to Piccadilly Circus. Surprisingly enough, to get to Piccadilly from my internship, bus 38 takes me part of the way (which happens to be the route the new bus is running!). So I decided to head over to Piccadilly Circus for the heck of it. I didn't get the new 38 bus that time. But, once I did get to Piccadilly Circus, I saw a clown and had a lovely chat with a charity worker that was trying to get money or word of mouth advertising or whatever from people. He asked me about myself and I told him about the charity work I do back home. And then he told me about the charity he works for, which had something to do with helping blind people get seeing-eye dogs. Our conversation actually put me in a really good mood! Oh, and this picture is a fish made out of copper that I saw today. Took a picture of it for dad since it would be really cool to make

  And then I decided to venture over to Chinatown... And I got lost :) But not so lost that I couldn't find a bus home.

 But before going home, I had to stop in the National Portrait Gallery. Nothing too exciting. Just a bunch of people in paintings staring at me. It was pretty cool to see all of the art movements that I know about represented solely in portraits. You could see all of the changes that went on over time in art reflected in how the portraits of different time periods were done. 

 And then I thought it would be cool to just walk around a bit and try to find a stop with a bus that took me straight home. On the way I walked by the theatre that is showing Singing in the Rain and this one man band was playing in front of it.

 So I gave up on the whole walking around business and missed three buses that could have taken me to a stop that I could get home from. Oh, and I grabbed some gelato as well :D yum!

 Then, by some miracle, after having forgotten about my mission to ride the new bus... It happened to show up at my stop! I couldn't believe it! In fact, I was so excited that I could hardly even get any good pictures. How does someone happen to miss three buses that could have gotten her to where she needed to go, only to find the one bus in all of London that she actually wanted to ride? Seriously, it was fate.

 Oh, and the bus was so crowded. There was hardly a seat available. And it smelled because everyone was sweaty smelling from being on a crowded bus. It felt really cramped. The bus has two sets of stairs, three entrances where you can tap on, and a cool guy monitoring the hop on hop off back part of the bus.

 And then, like a dumb butt, I got off the bus after two stops because I didn't know where the bus was going. Even after I had made a master plan before leaving my internship to take the 38 home from Piccadilly. And now, I would like to present to you, The Awkward Moment When... series:
The awkward moment when you start taking pictures in a bus full of people. 
The awkward moment when you climb up the stares just to go back down the stairs after one stop. 
The awkward moment when you get off the bus that would have taken you to where you needed to go. 
The awkward moment when the combination of excitement from riding the new bus and realization of your dumb mistake cause you to be unable to sit down while waiting for another bus, thus you pace like an idiot because there is nowhere good to stand. The awkward moment when people look at you funny for boarding the same number bus that you got off of a few minutes ago. 
The awkward moment when you look out the window of the bus, eye level to someone's apartment, and see them standing right in the window in tight green briefs... and then you laugh out loud.
Yea... moral of the story, premature departure from the coolest bus around sucks. And is hilarious in hindsight.

 After all of that, I made it to Angel Station bus stop, only to find that I was going to have to wait 10 minutes for my bus. So, I decided that I wanted to go to the candy store just up some stairs and get something while I waited for the bus.
Hoping to find some Cadbury chocolates or something else British, I walk in to see a store half full of American candies, chocolates, and sodas and half full of sweets from other countries... yea. Just my luck. I go in looking for a cultural experience and I walk into an American candy store. Believe it or not, I walked in and heard the guy say "Sorry, I don't have any more Skittles. I'm sold out." I think that will be the only time I hear that in my life. Seriously though, I couldn't believe all of the things that we have in the US that they don't get over here.

 But, there were some pretty funny names of sodas from other countries (at least I think they are from other countries) such as Fukola Cola. Hehehehe!

Oh, and they had Duff (not beer) energy drink. I never even thought about the fact that they probably don't have grape soda over here.

And, my true love, which I believe I mentioned missing quite a bit in an earlier blog:  Barq's Root Beer. Ahhhhhh! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I paid the equivalent of $2 for a can of Barq's Root Beer. And I enjoyed every bit of it. 

Additionally, I had a conversation with a couple of guys in the store asking about some of the things they don't get that they can only get at this store. Unfortunately, one of them came in for Skittles. Then one of the guys said, "This is our opportunity to be tourists right in our own neighborhood. This store always has interesting stuff and I see something new every time."Oh, and some of the prices are outrageous. I was thinking, "How cool would it be to send giant Reese's cups to Zach from London?" and then I thought, "Nah, he could get at least 3 of those packets of giant Reese's for how much it would cost to buy one and pay for shipping." Oh, and if you want a Reese's little peanut butter egg this Easter, they cost the equivalent of $1.50 here. 

 AND! And, if you want some Lucky Charms for breakfast while in London, prepare to pay the equivalent of over $10 for one box. ONE BOX. $10. Yea. There were also Pop Tarts and other things I forgot I missed.


















That was pretty much it for the excitement of the day. Other than the smile on my face from seeing some lady get off the bus with a bag full of Barq's from the candy store. And the awkward moment when I moved seats on the bus to an open set of two seats so the lady I was sitting with could have some space, only to watch the next person that climbed to the upper deck sit next to that lady. Teeheehee!

 And the awkward moment when this is your bus stop and the bus can't get around the traffic for a solid five minutes but the driver won't let you prematurely depart. This wasn't my bus stop, but I feel bad for the people that did need this stop.

So I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! My weekend plans include St. Patty's Day events all weekend and maybe a pint of Guinness if I'm up for it (but I'll probably take one sip and give the rest to someone else :). Have a wonderful St. Patty's Day! Until next time, Cheers!