Glass, Masks, and awful flights

Wednesday – December 17, 2008

The coach ride to Florence was pretty. It was sunny outside and we could see the hills and mountains. It was overall a pretty scenic route. When we finally reached Venice about 1 o’clock that afternoon, it was cloudy (of course). We had a little ways to walk and I was little bitter about it because my backpack was so freaking heavy! Finally we walked down this skinny little alleyway to our hotel. Once we got our keys and room numbers (me, Meghan, and Jess were in a room together), we dropped off our stuff and decided to explore.

The first thing I noticed was the multitude of glass stores. There was a ton, selling all sorts of different glass objects like bracelets, necklaces, earrings, figurines, etc. There were also quite a bit of stores that sold the masquerade masks. They were the real deal, too, and expensive I thought. Of course, since Venice is a touristy type place, there were a few souvenir shops but a majority of them sold the glass objects.

I loved the fact that there were bridges everywhere because water ran throughout the whole city. It was great! I really wanted to go on a gondola ride, but it was cold and rainy. One guy saw a group of us walking across a bridge and he yelled out for us to come ride on his gondola..but we just ignored him.

We were all a little hungry so we decided to take a little snack after exploring a little bit. So where do we stop? McDonald’s of course. I mean, what American would pass up the chance to eat Micky D’s when they haven’t had it in almost 4 months?! Can I just tell you, it was one of the best fast food meals I’d ever had. I swear Venetian people make our own chain restaurant food better than we do. They encourage people to sit down and eat; not take it and go. McDonald’s isn’t a fast food restaurant to them as it is to us. It’s nicely furnished on the inside and it’s much more inviting. They even sell beer. It’s crazy. They had a lot of the same items on the menu, some of them were called different things and they had a few extra items. Overall, it was a good place to get a small snack.
We explored a little bit longer but we decided to eat dinner because we thought we had to be back in the hotel by 7. That’s what we heard…that because of the flooding that had been occurring, the hotel locked up at 7 until 11, so we decided we’d rather be inside during all that instead of outside. So we ate at a little Italian place. I had some spaghetti and meatballs. It was pretty good. Then we washed it all down with gelato, of course!

After we got back to the room, some of us got a little restless, because we didn’t want to be cooped up in the room all night, but we stayed anyway. We played cards, listened to music, and even heard a little gossip from some random people. We had a variety of people come in and out of our room that night, and each time they brought some new information about what was currently happening with students or what happened during the semester with various students. It was fabulous! Sandahl and Kelly were even in our room for a while and we all hung out for quite a while. Finally everyone left and we decided to get some sleep so we could explore the next day, since it was our one and only full day in Venice.

Thursday – December 18, 2008

We woke up that morning and ate breakfast at 8:40. That was our designated breakfast time. Their dining room area held only about 6 people at a time, so we had to have specific times we could come eat. The guy down there was really nice and came over and would ask what we wanted: hot chocolate, etc. Then he’d ask how we wanted our eggs cooked and he’d go cook them for us really quick. I drank some hot chocolate and ate some scrambled eggs. It was a nice little breakfast.

Everyone was ready and we met in my room at 9:30. We decided to go to St. Marco (St. Marks) and we were going to use the boat taxi’s to do so. They were actually called the “Boat Bus.” Well unfortunately it was cloudy outside, and we had to deal with the random sprinkling/rain for that day. The taxi ride was cold but enjoyable I guess, haha. Once we got to St. Marks, we wandered about for a little bit, and then enjoyed some souvenir shops. It had started raining a little more at this point. We decided to walk back to more familiar territory. We looked at some shops on the way back but a majority of them were glass shops like we’d seen before. We ate lunch at…guess where? McDONALDS! Because it was just so gosh darn good the first time! Afterwards we wandered around for a little while longer and looked at more souvenir places.

Being in Venice is wonderful, but after about a day there isn’t much more to do. Coming from Rome and Florence when it’s jam packed with adventure and exploration…Venice is a little boring after a day. We could have gone to see where they make the Murano glass but we heard it was expensive and decided not to. Since there wasn’t a whole lot more to do, we decided it was nap time! So we went back to the room and hung out a little bit. We napped too, until about 6:30. Then we decided it was time for dinner.

Jessica and I wanted to eat pizza pasta since it was our last night in Italy but we didn’t want to be fat kids and eat one each ourselves, so we split both! It was a great decision and our meal was absolutely wonderful. We enjoyed each other’s company for a while and had a good time winding down. The only thing about the Italian food I didn’t care too much for, was the bread they automatically gave you and charged you for. I thought it was bland and not very tasty. I definitely prefer French bread to Italian. Silly that they charge us for it and we don’t even eat it half the time or ask for it!

It had stopped raining so we bought some gelato one last time and decided to enjoy it while standing on a bridge and looking at the water. It was dark at this point and we were all pretty slap happy. At one point Adrienne was filming us saying something really retarded and these 2 guys approached us and were trying to sell glow in the dark items and in unison, after the first word the guy said, all of us yelled “NO!” and the guys got the hint really quickly and walked off. On the video Adrienne made, you could hear it all happen, it was sooooo funny. It was definitely a great moment. Other than that, we just continued to act a little stupid and enjoy the rest of the night.

When we made it back to the room, we decided to play some cards. Jeff came upstairs to join us because he loved the new card game we had taught him while in Florence. He ended up doing really well and beating me continuously. So we all played cards for a while and then Jeff left and I decided to shower. Jessica French braided my hair when I got out, because I like my hair French braided before we travel since it’s much easier to contain that way. Everyone packed up their stuff and then went to bed. Travel days are never that much fun and for some reason are always exhausting.

Friday – December 19, 2008

We woke up and got ready. I ate breakfast at 7:00 a.m. It wasn’t anything much. After I finished eating, we went back to the room and got our stuff. Finally, everyone was ready to go and at 8:00 we started the walk back to the coach. It was a beautiful morning. It was definitely the best day we had in Venice. The sun was rising, and we could watch the vibrant colors dance across the sky. It was wonderful. I stopped to snap a few pictures…wishing it looked like that the whole trip.

We loaded up the coach, got situated, and then headed out to the airport. We got there about half an hour later. Let me tell you, the whole experience flying back home was awful. We had so many delays, and flights pushed back. We missed our second flight because of all the delays coming out of Venice. We had to wait until 6pm for our flight and because we were just circling the sky for 45 minutes trying to touch down. It was awful and dragged out way too long. By that point, I was just ready to be home so it didn’t add to the stress levels.

Finally we made it to Heathrow airport in London. We had to go and pick up our luggage that we had left with Harlaxton. Doug was there (my favorite shuttle driver) so we all hugged him once last time as we grabbed our luggage. Well, then we heard that the students who went on the Italy trip Option 2, their flight from Rome to Heathrow was cancelled. So we didn’t know what they were going to do because some of them had flights with us from Option 1. Some students guarded all Option 1’s luggage, as well as Bronwyn.

Well, me and my friends decided to weigh our bags and redistribute our luggage. I was screwed because mine was way too heavy but I wasn’t sure what to do. I ended up just using a duffel bag I had packed, and put all the heavy stuff into that. Technically I was going to be checking 3 bags which was going to cost some extra money. I didn’t care at that point.

After we finished, we all created a huge bed on the floor with sleeping bags, and jackets and everyone tried to sleep for a few hours. It didn’t work for me very well.


Saturday – December 20, 2008

Finally around 6am, I got up. Jon Harvey came to see us and so we all got to say bye. But me and a few of my friends had to pack up and head to terminal 4, so we separated from the group. It was sad to leave them. But we hugged and said our farewells and headed our separate ways. Jon helped out a little bit with some of our bags, which was nice.

We went and checked in, and I ended up having to dish out 135pounds ($200) in extra fees for my luggage. Sheeeesh! I about died. I paid it, and headed on my way with everyone. Finally at 8am, we boarded the plane. The flight was about 8 hours and I watched 2 movies since It’s always hard for me sleep: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 & The Notebook.

Finally we arrived back to the states and I was freaking out a little bit because of Customs. I had a few Cuban cigars in my luggage as a gift for Josh. I didn’t want to get arrested! I was randomly chosen (as well as Daniel) to go through a special customs area, and so I was really freaking out then. I told the security guard that I had some cigars that I had written down on my customs form but they were Italian, and for someone as a gift. He put my bags in this huge Agriculture scanner, and sent me on my way. It worked out fine. Daniel wasn’t so lucky though, he was trying to bring Absinthe back and they confiscated it.

After security and customs was finished, a few of us wanted to eat lunch and there was a Chili’s, so we decided to grub on some good ol’ American food. Me, Adrienne, Sarah Hood, and Daniel Brown ate together at a table. We just chatted and enjoyed each others company. When we finished, we headed to our terminal for a while and just chilled out waiting for the flight.

Several hours later, I was landing in Louisville and was greeted by my grandma, mom, and her boyfriend at the time: Dennis. It was great to be home! I said bye to Adrienne, as she greeted her family and went on my way home.

It was the best experience of my life. I wouldn’t have traded it for any other time in this world.



--I heard later that Option 2 students had to reschedule their flights and had to live in the airport for a few days. Some didnt' even get back home until almost Christmas Eve. So I was lucky!!

Naked Statues, Museums and Duomos!

Over a year late...but it's better than nothing!! Enjoy:

Sunday - Dec 13, 2008

The last place we left off at was Florence. We had just arrived and I was amazed at our very modern and spacious room. We put all of our stuff down and we got out our computers and ran downstairs. There was internet there, that we could access from the lobby only and we had to get a password from the front desk. While we were sitting there, browsing the internet, a few people from the Option 2 trip were there (they were going thru Italy from Venice, Florence, Rome so we were going in opposite directions). It was good to see some of them. I emailed everyone (well mom for the most part) to let her know that we made it to Florence.

It wasn’t long before we had all gotten a little hungry, so we took our computers back upstairs and we decided to go eat with Wes, Robb and Ryan O’Hare. No one could decide where we wanted to eat. Ryan was leading us around trying to find some place that he heard was good but we couldn’t find it. We ended up just popping into a little restaurant that a man told us we could get free wine if we ate there. They took us upstairs and basically had this little room to ourselves. Everyone ordered and ate, happily…for the most part. Ryan O’Hare is a jerk, let me clarify. He always has and always will be. I’m not sure why we decided to eat with him but anyways. It’s very easy for him to get into an argument with people and he always thinks he’s right when in reality he is very wrong. Anyways, Jessica got into it a little bit because he was making fun of the fact that she was from Wisconsin (saying that there is nothing special about the state) and that our favorite trip was Poland (which was stupid because everyone leaves Poland so there can’t be anything that great about it).

When we got the check, we noticed that we had been overcharged slightly for everything we all ordered. It wasn’t much, maybe a little over a Euro, but still. We paid and walked outside, but Jessica was pretty heated so she went back inside and told them we had overpaid and so they ended up giving us back the difference which was about 11 Euros or something like that. We all decided we would just put that money into getting some gelato. That’s what we did! Not all of us decided to get some, but a majority of us did and it was wonderful as usual. After we finished we decided to head back to the hotel.


After our long trek back, we grabbed our computers and headed back downstairs. We were craving the internet, hah! I called a few people from skype to tell them how everything was going and then we just all sat around not doing a whole lot. That’s my favorite thing to do! We were all pretty tired though, so we didn’t stay up real late before heading to bed.


Monday
We woke up and got ready for breakfast which was at 8:30. We didn’t rush after breakfast because it was pouring outside and we honestly didn’t feel like going out in it. We lounged around in the lobby (on the internet) until about noon. It was still raining but we knew we couldn’t sit around forever—we were in Florence!

Our first stop was the Duomo. It looked unreal from the outside when we saw it at night. My first thought of it looking like a decorated cardboard box hadn’t changed much in the daylight. However, I was able to tell it wasn’t in fact a cardboard box, haha. We went inside and it was not what I expected. It was very open and spacious. There was a manger scene in the middle to celebrate Christmas. On one side of the duomo there was a dome and we all went to try to stand underneath it because the paintings on the ceiling of it were pretty awesome.
Afterwards we decided to find the leather market which is a big deal though. We walked around and had a difficult finding which market it was exactly but eventually we found it. It was awesome and tons of little kiosk type booths set up selling basically the same thing but by a ton of different people. Most everything was leather: belts, wallets, purses, etc. It was really awesome though. There were a few purses that really caught my interest, but I thought better of it. Honestly I didn’t feel like paying for them. After wandering around for at least an hour, we decided to eat lunch at one of the little restaurants close by. It was a little pizza place (shocker there). It was pretty good. I got a coke and on the coke can had the “I love you” symbol in sign language on it, it was awesome, I was really excited! After relaxing from lunch, we headed back outside to enjoy the market. Half of our group disappeared and it was such a large market, it was nearly impossible to find them. Jessica, Meghan, Daniel and I went into one of the shops close by. We found this awesome friendship coin: meaning, it was divided in 3 areas. We each pitched in and bought the coin along with a necklace. Daniel—our wonderful picture taker—stood by and took a picture of us breaking the coin apart so we each had a third. After placing it on the string of the necklace, we each wore ours. It was really neat and we loved it!
We decided to go back to the hotel and just sit around until about 7. Then we went out to get dinner. Our choice of restaurant landed us in what would probably be considered a chain restaurant that I had never seen before, but had that commercial feeling about it. There were a lot of Harlaxton students eating in there, too. It was really good though. They had a part of the menu where you could build your own pasta and had a description of all the different kinds of noodles, sauces, etc. It was pretty neat. After dinner was finished, we decided to get some gelato (duh). I started to lead them in one direction because I could have sworn I saw a gelato place on our way the restaurant. Wrong! I was completely wrong. I led them back to the hotel without passing any place, so some of them decided they didn’t want to walk all the way back to a gelato place while it was still wet and rainy outside. However, the girls stuck together and ditched the lazy boys and decided to get some. You can never end a night in Italy without it!
At the end of the night, there will always be a group of Harlaxton students partying it up somewhere. So, we brought our breezers to Jamin and Jeff’s room and enjoyed the company of some half drunk peers. They were silly but we always enjoyed watching them. Finally we went back to our room (me, jess, and megs) and decided to play cards. Somehow Jeff and Jamin decided to join us and left their hopping party for a nice, relaxing game of cards. Of course Jamin was completely drunk and couldn’t catch onto the concept of the game, but that’s beside the point. We still had a good time. Finally we decided to call it a night and go to bed.


Tuesday
We got up at about 7:20 that morning and went down to eat breakfast around 9. We couldn’t decide if we wanted to join some of the guys and visit Piza or go bum around at the museums. The boys ended up going to Piza while we stayed and did the museums. Although I honestly probably would have enjoyed Piza a little more, I didn’t want to leave my friends.

Our first stop was the Uffizi. Considering I’m a person who doesn’t like walking through museums of art, I got bored really fast. It was all the same stuff and it wasn’t very interesting to me. Plus I had to pay 6.5 Euros to get in, just because everyone else was going. Oh well, I guess I can say that I at least did it. Half way through, Meghan started feeling a lot of pain and had to sit down. I gladly offered to sit with her so everyone else could continue walking through the rooms. Thinking Megs needed a little food in her belly, we tried to hurry up the rest of the museum so she could eat something. I did end up buying a cookbook from the gift shop before we left. Right outside the exit there was a little Italian place, so we stopped and ate lunch there. It was a pretty good meal and we enjoyed each others company.
The next stop on our list was to visit the Academy Gallery where David was held. I found it slightly more enjoyable because sculptures are more appealing to me than just paintings. Of course, we weren’t allowed to take pictures and there were some strict enforcers there to make sure that didn’t happen. Although, being a sneaky and cunning American, we were able to hide and take one somehow. It was really neat though. I didn’t think seeing David would be any big deal, but it’s huge! I had no idea how freaking big it was and the details were absolutely amazing. It was seriously one of the best things I got the witness. It was by far more exciting to see than the Mona Lisa.

We stayed and observed David for quite a while because it also gave us a chance to rest. Once we were finished, we tried to find the Christmas market which was supposed to be pretty good. It had started raining though so I wasn’t in a really good mood for exploring since my pants were soaking up all the water from the pavement. We finally found it and I didn’t find anything special about it. So, we decided to walk back and some of us split up. Jessica, Sara and Chelsea wanted to go back to the leather market but I wasn’t in the mood to continue trudging around in the rain, so the rest of us went back to the hotel. I thankfully took a wonderful nap until about 7pm.
When it was time for dinner, a few of the guys, like Jamin and Jeff decided they wanted to go ice skating. Well, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Meghan, Adrienne and Chelsea wanted to, but Jessica really didn’t. I didn’t want to leave Jessica although ice skating sounded pretty fun. So I decided to turn it down and go eat with her and Sara. We ended up eating at a nice little place and I had by far the most amazing Italian meal of my life. It was meat ravioli and I seriously think I would kill for some again. It was so freaking amazing. Gosh, I was obsessed and kept wanting to eat it long after it was gone! It was a good little dinner with just the three of us and we were able to enjoy a friendly conversation.

Meghan and the rest of them ended up having a great time too. She didn’t get back until close to midnight! But apparently the ice skating rink was like in some dudes back yard and it took them forever to find the place. They said that the rink was tiny sized and had little hills in it, so it wasn’t even flat. I laughed so hard when I heard about it but they still managed to have fun, which is the only important thing.


Wednesday
In the morning we woke up a little before 8, so we could get packed up and leave for breakfast. We were leaving for Venice that morning. We left Florence about 9:30. Overall it was a pretty good experience in Florence. Of course it rained for a lot of it, so exploring isn’t always as fun—at least for me. Though, I would like to revisit it one day. If you are an avid museum go-er, or just enjoy countless museums, the Florence is a good place for you. I, on the other hand, don’t enjoy looking at a billion paintings, so it could be a little boring. I prefer walking around and enjoying the sights. Regardless, I had a good time. My next blog is about Venice, so make sure to keep reading!

Goodbyes and the Catholic Mother Land

Sorry this is soooo late! There is soo much to say and I just didn't actually want to sit down and do it, but now one city is done and two to go! :)

Wednesday - Dec. 10
Well, the day started off wrong when I dropped my keys in the toilet and then stuck my entire thumb in a pack of butter. After telling Sara about it while Dr. Green was in earshot—who made a comment about fishing out keys in toilets—I took my British Studies final and who knows how I did. I used 2 of the 3 hours given and wrote a lot. But there is only so much that I can do and so much pain I will endure (my hands were cramping really bad)! Anywho, people that were going back to the States were leaving to head towards the airport at 11pm, so we hung out with Merrissa as much as possible. We were so sad that she was leaving, that we basically avoided the subject. So, we played cards for a while and even asked Professor Green if he wanted to play with us…he declined. He was probably ready to get rid of us and have a new set of annoying American’s to teach a month later.

However, at 9pm, we went back to the refectory for an evening breakfast. All the staff, including the professors, served us. It was kind of nice but weird at the same time. Just an hour later, everyone started hugging each other, crying, and saying “bye” to all the friends that were leaving. Jessica and Meghan probably cried the most out of our group. Dr. Green and Dr. Owen (who are two peas in a pod…basically they don’t go anywhere without each other) stood by and watched, as some students came up and gave them hugs, saying their goodbyes. There were tons of students in the reception area, taking up every free space available, trying to see everyone and give last minute hugs. Doug (the shuttle driver who everyone LOVES!) came and gave me a big hug, picking me off the floor! Then Merrissa had to leave, and we all teared up a little bit because we didn’t want her to leave. We even ran outside after she left, chased her down and gave her more hugs!

After everyone was loaded into the coach, all the people staying went outside to wave off everyone. Merrissa started crying again when she saw us all standing outside. Right before they left, Sara Hilber ran off the coach screaming “I don’t want to go!” and ran to give us all hugs. Everyone of us told her to get back on the coach and to quit making a scene. A few minutes later, they were on their way. The coaches did two loops around the front and then they were gone. Very gloomily, the students walked back into the manor with unsure expressions. We weren’t really sure what to do next…. People were gone…. It didn’t seem right. Who knows if we’ll ever see them again?

I went up to my room, and just laid around for a little while. Then I decided I should finish packing for Italy and packing up the rest of my stuff to go home. Savannah decided to sleep in our room since her roommate was gone, and it was only Colleen and myself in our room. A littler after midnight we decided to head to bed.

Thursday
Thursday morning we woke up at 5 a.m. and got everything ready to go. It was a little sad, looking at our empty room for the last time. Colleen and I both glanced around the room, remembering the past 4 months, before we finally left room number 514 behind us, once and for all. We headed downstairs and checked out. Once again I was hit with the sadness that came with leaving Harlaxton as I turned in my keys and various forms. I went to place my backpack and purse in the lounge before eating a quick bite at breakfast when I started freaking out about my luggage. Most people were bringing an extra duffle bag, or something they could check when we arrived at the airport. I didn’t want to because I already packed all my belongings into my huge suitcases. There were a lot of weight problems with mine so I didn’t want to worry about all of that after I returned from Italy. I was planning to spend 8 days in Italy living out of a backpack. Talk about a great packer! Anywho, I began to freak out because my backpack was HUGE, especially since I was bringing my laptop and unfortunately no one had any extra space to help me out. I thought the airlines would end up checking my backpack because of the weight of it. Finally a few friends calmed me down and said we would worry about it when we needed to.
We ate our last breakfast in the refectory and then everyone began loading the coaches. It was nice to see Professor Owen walking around, saying goodbye to everyone at 5am. Dr. Green, on the other hand, wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Oh well for me giving him a goodbye hug…
After loading up, we set off for 2 hours towards London for the airport. We were flying on Alitalia, a little bankrupt airline. Why we would ever fly with someone bankrupt is beyond me…but that’s who the travel agent picked when they planned this whole trip for us. Our plane wasn’t scheduled to leave until 11:40, so we had a little time to kill, especially since the lines weren’t even open for us yet. Fortunately, Kinsley (our president) was able to get them to open just for the Harlaxton students so we could go ahead and get back security without any problems.

My group of friends went though just fine (they even let me keep my backpack). We found a place to sit, dropped all our stuff, then went in shifts to find food for lunch. Without much time passing, it was time to board. The one good thing about Alitalia was they gave you your seat number unlike RyanAir and EasyJet where you had to make a run for it in order to get a seat.
A few of the students switched it up a little bit and chose to sit elsewhere which created a little confusion. In the end, I ended up sitting next to Adrienne and Bethany (both WKU students). It was a good ride because we just talked about different trips we had all taken and how sad we were about leaving.

Finally, we arrived in Rome, or should I say, a little outside of it. We all hopped into another coach and drove for a little over an hour to actually get into the city. By the time we arrived, it was already dark. The place we stayed at was the Hotel Pacific. It was pretty nice..and of course had spiral type staircases (I hate those things) but thankfully, they also had an elevator! Kingsley gave everyone their room keys (which was actually just one, and we had to turn it in every time we left the hotel) and Meghan, Jessica and myself headed for our room. It was decent, with three single beds and a bathroom. Not a lot of wiggle room, but it would suit sleeping and bathing just fine. Automatically we became obsessed with the Bidet (sounds like Bah-day) and trying to figure out how it works. Just to clear things up, none of us actually used it…partially because we had no idea how! Hehe.

We freshened up a little and then went downstairs about 6:15 to wait for a group of people. Unfortunately the hotel didn’t have any internet because their service was down…so I couldn’t let Mom know we had made. We waited until about 7 and got a little frustrated because all the people we said we were going to meet, never showed up, and so we went ahead. There was a little Italian place really close, so we just stopped there. It was nice having just the 6 of us girls again, without any males around. We all ordered our first Italian meal and had a great time talking and enjoying the surroundings, even though our server looked less than thrilled a group of Americans were in his restaurant. We were courteous, mind you. We had left that loud, obnoxious, American way of acting behind.

After dinner, where do you think we went? To get Gelato! The most amazing ice cream ever on the face of the planet. If you don’t care about traveling the world, go to Italy just for the ice cream, you will understand why. We had to walk a little ways to find a place (especially since we walked one way for about half a mile, didn’t see one, then walked back). When we reached the place, quite a few other Harlaxton students had beaten us there. We all sat, talked about the plans for the next few days, and enjoyed gelato. Finally, we departed and headed back to the rooms so we could plan what we wanted to do the next 2 days. We learned, after being in Paris, that planning is key when there is a larger group of people and there are tons of things to do. The reception gave us a huge detailed map, and we circled the main places we wanted to see, then decided which days to do them.

Finally, everyone dispersed and went to their respected rooms. Meghan, Jessica and I listened to a little music but finally went to bed…although we weren’t really tired. It turned into a night wrestling match for a few minutes before we finally gave up and fell asleep before midnight.

Friday
Well, on Friday it was supposed to rain to entire day so we were a little discouraged. However, we got up around 8, went to eat breakfast by 8:30 (sugar croissant, juice, and cereal) and then got everyone together. We decided to hit up the Vatican Museum first. That thing is full of sculptures!! It cost 8 euros with my wonderful student discount. My main desire was to see the Sistine Chapel. However, no one informed me that you had to go through about a billion rooms to get to it! Gracious, it took forever. After a while, all the pictures and paintings seemed the same and I got really bored. I love learning about this history of things, but I get soooo bored when I have to walk through long museums. I prefer castles or old cathedrals.



Anywho, we wandered through each room, and pretty soon we started rushing (until we lost Sarah and Adrienne somewhere) and then we took a short break. After waiting for about 15 minutes, with no sign of them, we pressed forward. Finally, we reached the chapel and I was little caught off guard. I didn’t think it would be so…spacious. I’d envisioned some huge church type area with pews and alters and all sorts of things. This was different. There were paintings that covered the entire ceiling and just a bench that ran along the entire wall. We had been warned that we weren’t supposed to take pictures within the chapel, but as I glanced around, everyone was. What do you think I did? Pulled out my camera and started snapping some too! They weren’t the greatest though because I was still trying to be sneaky; therefore, I didn’t use my flash. Most of them were blurry. However, I still have the proof that I saw it! Plus, a few of my friends said they went the next day and no one was allowed to take pictures. Security was really heavy apparently and was telling everyone to keep their cameras in their bags or pockets. So we lucked out!

We sat around for a decent amount of time on the pews, waiting for Sarah and Adrienne to show up. Finally they did. We let them take pictures for a few minutes and then we all left. After we exited the museum, a few of us were hungry. We walked across the street (which was next to impossible and our walking became running since no one would slow down!!) to a little café. I ordered a little baguette type sandwich, some others got a slice of pizza. We got it to go, though, because it was cheaper, and that way we could continue on towards St. Peter’s Basilica. We weren’t really sure how to get there, so we decided to follow the huge wall that separated the Vatican from the rest of Rome. Finally we reached it! By the way, it wasn’t raining yet so we were pretty happy. As soon as we reached the area in front of the basilica, excitement took over me…they were putting up a huge Christmas tree and nativity scene right in the middle! It was awesome. It took a couple minutes for our surroundings to really soak in….

When everyone finished their food, we walked towards the entrance. There was a short wait, but the line moved fast. Since we had to go through metal detectors, etc, it held up the wait a little. While we were standing around talking, these three guys standing in front of us turned around. They noticed Chelsea Kasten’s Oxford sweatshirt and asked if she went there. We told them no, that we only visited and that we were studying abroad some place different. A few more little exchanges were made and finally they asked where we were from. When they said Kentucky, I almost killed over. NO ONE was ever here that we’d met randomly from KY. So, I asked them what part and they said Lexington!! It was sooo weird! Of course, I told them I was from Frankfort. Two of the guys (who were twins) got pretty excited and asked me if I knew Claire Poh and Houston Hardy. They used to play basketball against Houston because they went to high school at Sayre. Then, they knew Claire because she goes to the same college as they do, now (High Point). It was crazy! Small World…

Finally, we entered the Basilica. It was also a lot different than I’d imagined. Chairs, pews, and other items didn’t clutter the center of the room. It was spacious. Wide open. We started taking pictures and wandered around. There were different alters and statues for different reasons. Jessica became absorbed in everything. She’s Catholic so it was really neat for her to see some of this stuff. (I realize my family is Catholic, but I have chosen the nondenominational path). After looking around for a while, we decided to head down towards the crypt. That was pretty interesting to see all the famous…well not necessary famous, but important tombs. I really wanted to see Pope Clement the IV or VI, I can’t’ remember, because he was the pope when the split with England and the Roman Catholic Church occurred, or when it was taking place. However, no such luck. When we reached Pope John Paul II’s tomb, it was beautiful, and it was clear that people loved him just by its beauty. Then we reached St. Peter’s tomb. Apparently it is the remains of Peter, from the Bible. I wasn’t exactly sure if that was true, but if it is, then hot dang! That was flippin incredible and unreal!


After walking through the crypt, we ended back upstairs in the basilica but decided it was time to move on. Once we walked outside, it started raining a little. Boo! Our next stop was Piazza Navona, because it was supposed to have a wonderful Christmas market. We walked around a little, and since we have become excellent map followers, we made it there fairly easily…with a little second guessing, hehe. As we were walking towards our destination, we had to cross over a river by bridge (shocker there). I didn't realize just how high the water had been until we were passing by some flags. We looked down towards the water and all we could see was barely the tip of a long line of flags. Dang, that water was high! One of the bridges was blocked off too because some kind of house boat or something similar and apparently floated down the river and rammed into the bridge. It was a big deal.



Anywho, the market wasn’t very good. It was more like a carnival instead of a market. Some rides were up, and they even had carnival type food. As soon as we got there, this guy came up to me asking if I wanted a bracelet. Immediately, I said NO. they never back down that easily though. He goes, “C’mon, you have none like this. Stick out your finger” I didn’t look at him but kept walking and said NO, very sternly! (I was a little surprised at myself to be honest). Once again he tried to get me to, but I told him NO, go away! The man walked around muttering unkind things about me. I didn’t care though. I’d heard about them, they are sneaky people. They act nice and sweet but as soon as they get those bracelets on you, its “20 Euros!! 20 Euros!!” and you can’t give the bracelet back, they won’t take it. It’s a huge scam. So, Chelsea and I were impressed by my “’no’ saying skills” and watched him prey on a few other tourists. It wasn’t long until another guy came up to me doing the exact same thing! No one else from my group of friends was bothered by them, so that was completely unfair. Well, I just told him, “no” before he had a chance to say anything to me and finally he got the message, too. Some of my friends found this little food booth that sold some kind of doughnut. It was huge and kind of flat, which nutella chocolate smothered on the top. I had a bite and it was amazing!!

Behind some of the booths were stores; I noticed a tobacco place. So, I made a beeline towards it. I really wanted to get Josh Hicks some cigars because I couldn’t think of any other gift to give him. Jessica went in with me, and we asked the man at the counter for some suggestions. He took us to a little room in the back with all his best stuff. Well, he explained some of the different ones and I finally picked two of them. It came out to be about 11 euros. After I’d bought them and started looking at them, I realized they were Cuban cigars. The freaking out began. I didn’t know what to do!! They are, of course, illegal in the States. Daniel told me to stop flipping out and that he would carry them in his luggage as long as I took off all the papers and separated the tube from the actual cigars. So, I did. Even though I was freaking out about the fact that at customs in the US airport, some officer will find my contraband and end up locking me in federal prison for the rest of my life, I was a little excited by the fact that I had 2 cuban cigars in my possession.

Our next stop was the Pantheon. We wandered around trying to find it, because the roads on our map weren’t really leading us in the direction we thought we were going in. Finally after taking a chance on one windy road, we made it! We stood in front of it next to a fountain for a while because there were a lot of people walking in and out of the building. The fountain was interesting because it had goofy faces and the animals/fish looked funny. After taking a few pictures, we decided to go into the Pantheon.

Once we entered the building, it was a lot different than I had expected…even though I didn’t know what to expect! It was sort of an open room, which things along the walls, nothing really in the center except a rope, blocking off a big circle. We glanced up and there was a large round hold in the top of the building, and since it was raining, water was coming through. There were seats on the other side of where we were standing, so we went and sat down for a while because our feet were sore. We didn’t stay too long because Jessica really needed to use the bathroom.
We whipped out our maps and picked a direction to go in…however, we started to get lost. Along the way we stopped by some souvenir places and then found this huge gelati/candy shop. Even though Jess was about to pee her pants, she let us all go in and get some ice cream! It was the biggest selection of ice cream I had ever seen, and it was marvelous! Everyone paid for their gelati and we rushed out the door, still eager to find a bathroom for Jessica. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize just how far we were from our hotel. It took forever! It probably took us over an hour to get back. It was rainy and nasty, turning dark, and Jessica was in some major pain.

Finally, we made it back and she jumped in the bathroom. We all sat in the room for a while and rested from the activities we participated in earlier that day. It was a good day. Our feet were throbbing with pain and our shoes/socks/pants were wet. We couldn’t just sit around forever, though, so we decided on a place to go eat: the same restaurant Daniel ate the night before. It was pretty close to our hotel so we didn’t mind walking there. I ordered a Penne dish that was apparently cooked with Vodka (that’s what the menu told me anyway), and it was amazing. Everyone was fairly happy with their meal, other than the bread they gave us. I’ve come to realize that Italian bread is not so good. After dinner what do we always do? GET ICE CREAM! So, we walked to the same Gelati place (and those people were less than happy to see our smiling faces). I ordered the Straccatelli, which has become my new favorite. We ate our ice cream and headed back to the room where everyone relaxed and talked. Finally we all departed and went to bed. Somehow a night wrestling match erupted again between Jess, Megs, and me. I definitely dominated…and Jessica lost terribly! Hahaha. It didn’t last very long before we all drifted into a nice, restful sleep.

Saturday
Well, we all woke up and low and behold, the sun was shining! We didn’t think that was possible, considering the lady told us at the front desk that it was supposed to be rainy every day we were there. By 8:30, we were downstairs and eating breakfast. It was the same thing as Friday, so it wasn’t very appetizing. However, I ate it anyway because I knew I’d need my strength and who knew when we would be eating lunch?

Since we had decided which places we wanted to go on Thursday, no time was wasted determining where to start first. We headed towards the Metro. Their Metro system is seriously lacking compared to the Underground in London, but it’s understandable since there is so much history in Rome that they had to build the Metro around them. Naturally, we were limited in the amount of stations available, but we were lucky because most of the stations built were fairly close, if not right next to, our destinations!

Our first stop was the Coliseum because it was the furthest away from our hotel. We thought we would go to the farthest point and work ourselves back up. It was pretty nice that the station was literally right next to the Coliseum, so there weren’t any chances we would get lost. Words cannot express the excitement and amazement I felt after seeing the Coliseum for the first time. Wow. It’s huge…a lot bigger than I could dream of. The sun was still shining which made those feelings multiply. It was awesome!!

We started to walk around it, noticing all the dressed up Roman soldiers and the horse drawn carriages. Some of those soldiers approached us asking if we wanted a picture, so all the girls said, “Yes” and we jumped over on their little platform while the guys took our pictures. Little did we know it was some sort of trick/scam and after we jumped off the platform, they bombarded us with “5 Euros, 5 Euros!!” They were pretty mean about it, too. Well we were all pissed because they didn’t tell us it cost anything! Everyone reached into their wallets and pulled out the money they were asking for, and we walked off pretty heated. At the same time, we had to laugh at ourselves. DUH! Of course they weren’t going to do that for free. We felt pretty stupid, but decided it would add another crazy, goofy, embarrassing story to our European adventures.

Thankfully the line to enter wasn’t long, so we were able to pay and get our tickets quickly. We walked up a flight of steep stairs and finally made it to the top. Wow…again. It was magnificent. Truly. It was big, too, and was able to hold at least 50,000 people at one time. I’m not sure why I loved it so much, but I think it had to do with the history of it. The coliseum is OLD! We could see the original stairs that thousands if not millions of people had walked on before me, a really long time ago! They were corroded, and looked more like a ramp than actual stairs. And cats were running around carelessly, as if they owned the place. It was fabulous.

We took a lot of pictures. Seriously, I probably used half of my memory stick of just the Coliseum. We walked around for a bit, and then decided to head upstairs to a different landing. The stairs leading towards the top were steep! Once we made it, it was set up like a museum almost with artifacts everywhere and then a little description of that certain item. We looked through the different artifacts and then walked out onto a landing. Gosh, I loved being there. There were a few flat stone type surfaces, so we all jumped up there individually and posed like a statue. Then Chelsea Kasten joined me and we took a picture like warriors battling hundreds of years ago.

I decided I wanted a picture of me jumping in the air, looking fierce. So, Chelsea sat on the ground a little ways away from me and waited for me to jump off the stone. After jumping, I seemed to have lost my balance because I jumped right on top of Chelsea. It was hilarious. I just rolled right off of her while all my friends watched and laughed. I didn’t want to get up. It was rather embarrassing, even though I was laughing at myself. Finally they picked me up off the ground, exchanged a few more giggles, and went about our business exploring.

After we had spent quite a while soaking up all the history associated with the Roman Coliseum, we decided to head towards the Forum, which was right next to it. We had to walk for a little bit to find the actual entrance though. We had already bought our tickets for the Forum when we paid for our admission into the coliseum so we didn’t have to wait in line (yay!). Once we entered, it split in two different directions. We decided to go right. We wandered around for a while, taking pictures and enjoying the scenery.

Pretty soon we had seen all that we wanted to see and we needed to head on because we had other things on our agenda. Our next stop was the Trevi Fountain. We got there without any problems (thankfully) and decided to each lunch before taking pictures. There was a little fast food joint right next to it, so we all plopped down to eat. A few of us had to use the bathroom, which was used by both men and women. Let me be the first to say how disgusting that thing was. There was no toilet paper, paper towels, soap, nothing. It smelt disgusting but beggars can’t be choosers. I had to deal with it.

After lunch we wandered down a little alley because I was on a mission to find some biscotti and tomato paste for Mom. I found some biscotti with the help of a very nice saleswoman but no tomato paste. Then we popped into a few souvenir places. After browsing the selection, we headed back towards the fountain to relax and enjoy. It had grown a little cloudy by this point, but it wasn’t raining so we were glad. We sat down and started fishing out coins to throw in. I threw in 2 coins at first, but then later I threw in one more, haha! It was fun. The fountain was a little crowded but it wasn’t too bad, so I didn’t mind acting a little goofy. Me and Daniel sat down on the edge of the fountain and were talking, but got in a little bit of a play argument, but were making faces at each other. Well, little did I know, Adrienne was taking pictures of the whole thing and it turned out to be really funny. It captured me hugging on him, and then our argument starting, and how our facial expressions changed from happy and goofy to pouty and frustrated, then both of us turned out backs to one another and were ignoring each other. It was hilarious.

We sat around for quite a while, just enjoying our surroundings and soaking up the fact that we were in Roma! But, we still had at least one more place to visit so we decided to move on to the Spanish Steps. When we showed up it was really crowded and there must have been some kind of show or event about to happen because they were setting up something. There were people everywhere and by that time the clouds were a lot grayer and less inviting. We all grabbed a seat on the steps, like the 5th one (we didn’t walk too far) and watched all the festivities. We did see Savannah, Kelly and Sandahl, so Daniel went and grabbed them. So, they all came over and said hello. By the time they left it had started sprinkling unfortunately. So we started to move towards the Metro so we could head back.

However, everyone wasn’t ready to go back in to the hotel, so we decided to walk to a market that we had seen on our way to the Vatican the day before. I was a little grumpy and didn’t want to go because it was raining by this point and my pants were getting wet. Not wanting to be a party pooper, I trailed behind. We wandered around the market for a little while but I got bored pretty fast and didn’t feel like buying anything. So, Jess, Megs and I went back to the hotel to relax before dinner. Boy, that was not fun walking back in the rain with soaking wet jeans. Blah! We just sat around and listened to music in the room for a while which was nice.

When it was time for dinner, we weren’t sure where to go because there weren’t a lot of places close by and I didn’t feel like walking very far due to the rain. So, we went back to the same place we went our first night in Rome. The waiter seemed less than thrilled to have us back at his restaurant and put us in a little side room, so it was out of the way of the actual restaurant. Well, it wasn’t long before another Harlaxton group of students arrived and they were placed in the same room. Again, shortly afterwards, there was a larger group of people show up that we didn’t know. They were also placed in the same room as us…after a few minutes we recognized the accents as American. They were typical Americans too: loud and obnoxious. It was really funny that these waiters were throwing every single American into the same room, which was out of the way of everyone else. Since we had been in Europe for almost 4 months by now, we were pretty quiet and weren’t loud like we used to be. After a few minutes, the noise level began to increase because of the Americans we didn’t know. They even staged a fake engagement, with screams and laughter. It was really annoying and at that point I was annoyed and embarrassed to be considered American. When it was time to order I got the Penne w/ Vodka, because it was wonderful at the place we went to the previous night. About half way through our meal, another group of students came in our American filled room, and low and behold, they were American’s too. By no means were they as loud and obnoxious as the other group. So, we had a full house of Americans, all shoved into one little room to keep away from the rest of the Italians. Nice.

When dinner finally ended we walked to get some gelato from the same place we had been getting it. It was yummy as always. Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel to hang out and relax. It had been a long day! We propped our large window open to let the breeze in, and we heard some fellow Harlaxton students’ voices. Looking out the window, we saw Scott and Jeff standing on a balcony a few floors higher. We started talking (it was about 9pm) but we had to raise our voices so they would carry over to each other. Then, some man popped out from a floor below us and yelled at us to be quiet because some people were trying to sleep. Feeling bad, we shut our window and Jeff and Scott decided to just come over to our room. It was so funny because as soon as they came in, they went straight to the bathroom to check it out. It was really weird. They didn’t need to use it; they just wanted to see what it looked like, lol. We all talked for a while and then the boys left so we could go to sleep.

Sunday
The next morning we had to check out of our rooms, so we packed up everything and headed downstairs. The hotel was setting aside a room in the lounge so we could put all our luggage since our coach wasn’t arriving until about 2 pm so the students would have the chance to go to Mass at the Vatican. After dropping off our luggage, we ate breakfast. We were planning to go to the Vatican, but I felt bad because I didn’t pack any church clothes. I only had my jeans and hoodie. Jamin, Jeff, Cory and Scott came downstairs and ate right next to us, so we were chatting a little. Some of them were going to the service as well, so we decided we would tag along with them. We picked up a few other Harlaxton students along the way.

It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining with very little clouds to get in the way. We made the journey to the Vatican just fine, and had a few minutes before the next service started. They had roped off a section of St. Peter’s for the individuals wanting to sit through a service, so we had to wait until the service before ours was finished. Finally, they were letting people out and allowing us to go through. We had to push through the crowd and rush over to the chairs so we could get a good seat. The service we were attending was going to be spoken in Latin, so I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any chance of me actually following what was said. They did have little sheets of paper for the service in a few different languages so we could follow along, or try to anyways.

The service was good, even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on. Since I had grown up Catholic, I could follow along the best I could, but it’s still difficult when you don’t know Latin. Our group gathered and met up with a few people before heading outside. Once we did, there were a ton of people standing around. We didn’t know what was going on, but it was crazy. People were chanting, holding up different signs, some people were singing, others were yelling. It was crazy. It seriously looked like a rally or a protest almost. If only we knew what they were actually saying, I think we would have realized it was nothing of the sort. We decided to walk on and try to avoid everything that was happening. That’s when we saw Jon Harvey! We all got really excited because he wasn’t traveling with us. He didn’t go on the school’s Italy trip, he was traveling alone for a while and hopefully going to meet his Italian family. It was a pleasant surprise to see him, so we stood in the back of the huge crowds and talked to each other for a while, still wondering what was going on. Then someone mentioned that maybe the Pope would appear at 12 since there was a banner looking thing hanging out of a window, so we decided to wait until then to see what happens.

I was very glad we waited!! I got to see the Pope! It was marvelous. Of course he looked like a little dot standing in that window, but I still could see him. He blessed everyone in six different languages, so we got to listen to him speak English and bless us! J It was awesome! Afterwards, everyone was trying to get out all at the same time which is always fun. People were everywhere! I can only imagine it would be like running with the bulls in Spain, only it was people. hehe. We all started walking down the road, in a different way we came, so we could maybe find some place for lunch. However, since it was lunch time and there were like a billion people out, everyone was thinking the same thing. Everywhere was full and it would take forever to eat, so we didn’t think we’d have enough time to make it back to the coaches by 2. Jessica and I got really tired of sitting there talking and wasting time, so we bought a little snack for our lunch (a canister of Pringles and a Sprite) and went on our way. Everyone else stayed and decided to find somewhere to eat.

I’m glad me and Jessica decided to go on, it gave us some quality time together. We stopped by a little market that was selling shirts and various other items for a few minutes. She was looking for a shirt for Mike (her boyfriend) but we couldn’t find one his size because Italian sizes are different than American. For instance an Italian Large is only an American Medium. I had made that mistake already when I bought a hoodie, thinking it was a large but instead it was only a medium. Oh well, it’s a cute hoodie so I still wore it, but it was a little tighter than I wanted.
We made it back to the hotel and sat in the lounge for a little while, waiting for everyone else to show up. Jess and I both decided to read. When the coaches arrived, we grabbed out stuff and loaded it into the bottom of the coach. We started to get a little worried because Adrienne, Meghan, Chelsea, and the rest of them hadn’t shown up yet. We picked out our seats and waited. They still weren’t there but everyone else was! It was getting a little ridiculous. Finally they showed up, and they were running to the coach. At least they weren’t abducted!

Once everyone was loaded into the coach we took off! I was able to sleep a little which was great because I never get to sleep on coaches; it’s just awkward. After a 4 hour ride, we finally arrived in Florence about 6pm. Everyone received their room keys and we took off to find our room. Meg, Jess and I had a room together again. Once we opened the door, I about fell over. The room was so nice and big! We had a ton of space, there was dark hard wood, and the bathroom was very modern and well done. It was awesome and definitely not basic!

BUT this is where this blog ends because the next blog will be about Florence!! All in all, Rome was amazing and a wonderful trip. I can’t wait to get back there!

Italy, here I come!

It's Wednesday which means at 11pm, most of Harlaxton's students will be taking a shuttle to the airport to catch flights back to America. The rest of us will be waking up before 5am to check out and go to an airport to catch a flight to Italy.

As of right now, I just finished my British Studies final. My hand hurts, among many other things. Last night while attempting to sign a pole (Harlaxton students always sign poles throughout the manor, making their mark on the school), I fell off a 6 foot step right on my butt and smacked my head against a wall. Talk about painful...and right at the end of Harlaxton! Not great timing... I had to find an ice pack and everyone made sure I stayed awake for a while to make sure I didn't have a concussion.

Other than a rather sore bum and neck, I'm doing okay. I had to sit on a fleece jacket during my final exam though. On top of that, this morning I dropped my keys in the toilet, and stuck my entire thumb in butter. Gahhhh, not a good way to start the day! Hopefully my test went a little better than that. Who knows. I'm just glad I'm finished!

My last week in England has been rather relaxing. The Family Christmas on Saturday was pretty good. We had a fairly decent dinner, then sang Christmas carols in the Great Hall. After we did that, we walked around to 3 houses in Harlaxton Village and sang the same songs. My feet were killing me because I was in big boots, but that's beside the point! One of the ladies baked us cookies which was very nice of her.

After we walked around the village, Jess, Meg, Daniel, Merrissa and myself went to the Greg for the last time. I had Bacardi and Lime..my favorite!! Then Daniel proceeded to steal a Strongbow glass for me because it looked cool. When we walked abck to the Manor, we decided to hang out in the Great Hall by the Christmas tree. We weren't the only ones in there. So we sat and chatted for a little while. It was fun, chatting and being goofy (not that we don't do that on a daily basis).

On Monday we had our date with the Brads (since we bought them at the date auction). So, we all went to this Chinese place called China 88, and ate buffet. It was really good too. Everyone ordered a drink, I got a mango blast, which was fabulous while everyone else basically got strawberry daquiris (sp?). After we ate, sang to american music, and made fun of each other, we headed over to the Goose, for one last time! Adrienne, Meghan and I shared a small pitcher of a drink called Woo Woo...which is a fruity drink that we like. Then we headed back to the manor. Me and jess stayed up and played cards and talked a little bit but then went to bed.

Tuesday was full of studying and doing nothing.

And now it's today! Jess and I are about to walk around the manor, taking pictures to remember everything. We're sad to be leaving...but we want to make sure we don't forget what it looks like! Tonight the British professors are serving us a late night breakfast at 9, so that will be fun! I think I'm going to harrass them when i'm back in the states, and send them cards, hehe. Think thats a good idea? hehe

Sorry this is such a short blog and kind of filled with pointless information. But I have 10 days til i'm coming home, and those days will be spent in the wonderful country of Italy! 3 days in Rome, 3 days in Florence, and 2 days in Venice. Then home, sweet home.
Hope everyone is doing well! I'll try to break the Italy blogs apart by city, so it doesn't become too long :)
Love you!
See you soon!

ps...Marshall, i know my writing isn't grammatically correct, as well as my spelling, but right now England doesn't care! Hehe!! :) Miss you!

2 weeks and counting..

Well this week has been rather restful. I had my last day of classes on Wednesday since all my Thursday classes were cancelled. So, i've been doing a lot of nothing, including not working on papers for that count as my final... Gotta love procrastination!

Wednesday Night was a poetry reading from the poetry class which I attending because Adrienne would be reading two of her poems. They were rather good if you ask me. Then we also attended the Choir Concert, which Adrienne also asked us to attend. It was a lot better than I thought it would be to be honest. I'm not one that loves going to those types of things, but they sounded very good, even though almost every song was in a different language and I couldn't understand them, hehe.

On Thursday we had a Convocation and Valedictory Dinner. We all dressed up for it too. I wore my new black and white dress I bought for the costume ball and my new boots. Everyone wore something similar. But we loaded into the shuttles at about 5 and went down to the little Harlaxton village church which is close to 1000 years old. Therefore there was no heat. Period. Which sucked majorly. We were freezing two seconds after we got there. But it was a nice little service. We did have to one by one get a certificate that said we survived the semester at Harlaxton, hehe. I didn't like walking in front of everyone, but you know how that goes. Finally, after everyone was frozen we went back to the manor for a reception and dinner.

Once we arrived, everyone either got a mixed drink (which was disgusting) or orange juice and talked, took pictures, and looked at the photo entries to the Photo contest. There were a lot of really great photos. We were all really impressed that college students took such high quality shots. They looked like professionals took them! I was sure I wasn't going to win anything because there were so many others so much better than mine and I never win anything, lol. Oh well.

Dinner started and we all filed into the Long Gallery, picked our seats and started eating our rolls. Once again it felt like I was on a cruise, because they served us our food (chicken, cooked carrots, zucchini, potato) and they were dressed nice. We even got cheesecake at the end. Sara Hilber decided in the middle of dinner she wanted to go back to her room because she was tired. We all got really angry because that whole night was for us: the students and she wanted to deck out early, like usual. So we just ignored her and she left.

After the food had been cleared, they started handing out awards for various things: sports award, principal's award, leadership award, photography award, and essay award. The photography award came first and my heart automatically started pounding. I mean, in my mind I told myself that I would never win, but my body still reacted with nervousness. They recognized 3 people with outstanding pictures first, but they didn't win 1st prize. I thought, well if i won ANYTHING it would be recognition. Adrienne, Jessica Reider, and Leil were the 3 that got praised. I was so happy Adrienne was one of them! All of their pictures were truly awesome. When it came to the winner, I just sighed defeat. Then the man read off "Creeping Darkness by Chelsea Eddins" My eyes got really wide and I just looked at my friends as they looked back at me. Everyone started laughing. I turned to Chelsea Kasten and was liek...do I have to go up there?! She started laughing and pushed me up, so I had to walk infront of the whole school looking at me and clapping. I hate doing that!! But i was so excited. I honestly couldn't believe it. They handed me a wrapped gift and I saw my British Studies professor looking at me and smiled, but I just glanced away. I hate being the center of attention like that!! Ahh!! But secretly, I was very happy and excited :)

This is my picture that won:

Anywho, the other awards that were given out, I thought were rightfully given. They all deserved them. I'm pretty sure we all got the same thing though: it's called a wrapper. I use it kind of like a scarf. It's navy and yellow (like my old high school!) with the Harlaxton crest on it. It keeps me warm! But I like it none the least.

When the dinner and awards were completely over, we headed back into the Great Hall for a slide show. It was pretty good. They played good american music about leaving and never forgetting things. I thought it fit pretty well. People were crying and laughing at all the pictures. Most people were drunk though ebcause they drank all the wine at their tables. Hah! Anywho, after the slide show, there was a Graffiti Night down in the Bistro. So, everyone got old white shirts and permanent markets so people could sign them. I wasn't going to do it at first, but I found an old work out shirt I was planning to throw away, and went down there. It was insane, the amount of people crammed in that small area. It was fun, but crazy. After I got a few signatures, I decided to cut out early and go to bed.

Friday morning I woke up around 9 and got ready. Seven of us girls were going to Nottingham for the afternoon. So, we bought our train tickets (less than 5 pounds) and were on our way. We went shopping first. We didn't really buy a whole lot. I bought a pair of sunglasses and a headband, so that was the end of my endeavors. Then we went to this pub which was really awesomely decorated, almost for Halloween. I'm not sure but it was really fun. My meal was only like 5 pounds for the largest piece of fish I have ever seen. (I got fish and chips). It was amazing though, I couldn't even finish it and that's saying something when I can't finish my meal.

We walked through the Christmas market and a few other shops before heading to the outside ice skating rink. We signed up to skate at 4 and we got 45 minutes. We did it at the perfect time because the sun always sets at like 3:30, and so it turned dark while we were skating. There were christmas lights all around us, it was sooo awesome!! Everyone was very unsure when we first got on the ice, but by the end of our 45 minutes, we were doing very well. I got 2 blisters from it, unfortunately but it's okay...it was worth it hehe.

We rushed back to school because we were having a Bonfire to make up for the bonfire we missed on Nov. 6 to celebrate bonfire day. Once we got back, i ate a quick PB&J, got my package that mom sent(THANK YOU GMA PETER FOR THE GARBAGE!!) , and ran out to the bonfire. It was huge!! So, we stayed out there a little bit but it was really muddy and raining a little bit so a few of us decided to go back. We were going to watch a movie at midnight, so we all just lounged around until then. When midnight rolled around, meghan and i walked down to the carriage house and watched My Best Friend's Wedding with a few other people. It wasn't til 2 am that the movie was over, and we walked back. I didn't wake up until about noon on Saturday morning!

Saturday (today), there isn't a whole lot planned. We do have a Family Christmas Dinner. i'm not sure what all that entails. but it gives the teachers a chance to bring their families, and meet a families are all coming for dinner. Apparently it's buffet style...which is probably the same way we normally eat in the Refectory. Who knwos? we also have a chance to go caroling throughout the Harlaxton Village and then come back for hot chocolate and cookies. Mom thinks I need to go. I personally don't want to scare away the few people that actually inhabit the small village, but I guess we'll see what I choose later tonight.

Packing has become such a nightmare. My roommates are all pretty messy so we are all throwing our stuff around the room trying to pack it up. We have to do room checkout tomorrow, which doesn't make a lot of sense since i don't leave the manor until early thursday morning! But, I've come to the conclusion that both of my checked bags will be over 50 lbs, which means, I will have to pay a $50 charge for each bag. I could just check a 3rd bag: my duffle bag, but the problem is, that is $150!! So, i decided I'd save 50 bucks and overstuff the 2 big bags I already have. I don't know how I have so much stuff!!! Guess I have to deal with the inevitable... I'll be home 2 weeks from today. My last full day at Harlaxton Manor will be in 4 days. My adventure is ending...

The two best friends I've made here, won't be ending though, as well as the other relationships I've made during the course of this Harlaxton adventure. Jessica and Meghan are actually coming to visit me in early January for a few days...so I know that we will remain friends. My one fear is that when I get back everything will be different. The girl that I mean in Lisboa, Natalie, said after she studied abroad, her friends changed a little bit back home. Everyone gets tired of listening to them talk about stories of europe and their study abroad adventures. They feel it's very snobbish and boastful and they'd rather not hear about it anymore. Good friends won't be upfront about it, but I'm sure some of the friends I have will be that way. It just sucks that the people I've grown to love here, were coming back to Frankfort and WKU with me. We have so much in common and we're linked in so many ways that my older friends wouldn't understand. So leaving this place will be difficult. But...I still have two weeks until I must face that reality.

Oh, Lisboa

My lastest adventure takes place in Lisbon, Portugal. A trip that we planned at the end of September and weren't too thrilled about going on when it actuallly came time for it. We wanted to stay at the manor and continue celebrating Thanksgiving with our new families. We wanted to help decorate the Christmas tree on Friday and relax around the manor. But for Sara, Jessica and myself, we were in an airport Thursday night, trying to sleep but failing miserably at it.

We were giggly and uncomfortable. Everyone was trying to quiet and caught a few hours of sleep before their early morning flight, but we just couldn't sit still or be quiet. At one point, Sara farted, very loudly and everyone turned around to her and me and Jess started laughing hilariously. A man behind us which spoke in a very heavy accent turned towards us and started saying stuff we couldn't understand, except we heard the word "machine gun" which made it even funnier. Then a Romanian guy across the way that had been giggling at us all night couldn't keep his composure and started laughing. It had to be the funniest moment i'd had in a while!

Our plane started boarding a little after 6a.m. and we rushed in line so we could pick out good seats. I've come to hate the fact that we dont' have assigned seats on these planes. Every man for himself! So it's crazy trying to get in line because everyone has the same thought: get the best seat possible. Well, we had a good spot in line, so it wasn't hard to get one with all 3 of us. I ended up falling asleep for most of the flight, for a little more than a hour.

By the time we arrived it was sunny and decently warm. That came as a surprise since it was literally supposed to rain every waking moment we were there. Our original plan was to go back to our hostel and take a short nap to rejuvenate, but we changed our plans to explore as much as possible until it started to downpour.

After finding our hostel, which was awesome, we headed out. We got on these trolly things that they have in San Fransisco, which run around the city. Thank God we rose those because this city was built on steep hills, EVERYWHERE. We went up to this view point, which was pretty cool. We got to look out over some of the city and the water. I love water! :)

Then we headed to the castle. It was 5 euros to get in, which wasn't bad. It had a great view of the city as well. However, the castle was very bland and there wasn't anything in it. We just walked around the wall of it, and climbed in towers which was pretty cool, but I was a little disappointed in it.

Then we walked down to the cathedral, which was free to get in. We sat there for a few minutes, and there wasn't much to look out. Basically no stainglass windows, just stones everywhere. Compared to the other cathedrals i'd been in, it wasn't very impressive. By the time we left there, it was pouring outside unfortunately. So, we hurried down the hill, huddled under umbrellas, back to our hostel.

Then we decided it was nap time. So, we slept for about an hour and a half, until 4:30. It had stopped raining by that point, so we went back out and wandered around a little bit, trying to find some place to eat, since it was about dinner time. So, we found this little cafe that was pretty cheap, and we sat outside at the tables. The server we don't think liked us very much, but oh well, he got over it. I had a burger and fries. It all totalled to about 7 euros, nto bad if you ask me.

It was raining again when we left, and we just wandered down the streets, popping in and out of various shops. I bought a few things, and it was a little after 7 byt the time we got back to our hostel. There was a new person in our 4 person room, it was a guy, and lucky me he was the guy on the bottom of my bunk. We didn't ever talk to him though. He went to bed at like 7:45, so the rest of us went out into the common room where there were shag carpets, bing bags, pillows, couches, and stools placed randomly.

We sat down and me and Jess started playing cards. Pretty soon, this girl plopped down on the couch next to us and started chatting with us. She was pretty cool to talk to actually, talking about what all she's been doing. Her name was Natalie and she's 25. She's been traveling around Europe since Sept 1, alone, going from place to place. This isn't her first time to Europe either, it's at least her 4th. But she's staying until Christmas Eve, then flying home to Minnesota. Another girl sat down and we all chatted for a while, until she got offended that me and Natalie didn't like Dublin and she left to find another group. No worries. Sara had left shortly before leaving the rest of us. Me and Jess taught her how to play a card game called Swiss, which we have come to love and play constantly. We ended up talking for quite a while, just getting to know each other and decided we'd eat breakfast together in the morning. So then me and Jess went to sleep.

The next morning, the hostel served us eggs and toast. Natalie ate with us and then we all got dressed and decided what to do. Apparently there was an aquarium, and it was due to rain throughout the day so we thought that was the best option. We asked someone at the hostel how to get there, and it wasn't too difficult to find.

The entree fee was a little over 9 euros with the student discount. So, we went in and looked around. We saw tons of fish...obviously, sharks, sting rays, otters, penguins, birds, sea horses, and a lot of other things that tend to dwell underwater. It was really fun, and i hadn't been to an aquarium in years so I was really excited. There were a few people there that really annoyed us though. I've come to the conclusion that people through Europe don't have a personal bubble. They don't mind pressing themselves right on top of you to see stuff or get by. It's really annoying as an American, because I like my personal space, but these people would shove you out of the way to see inside a tank and it became really irksome.

By the time we got out, it was after 1 and we were starving! So, we started walking and we were heading towards an area that was full of restaurants, but we never made it. Instead, we ended up back at the cafe Sara, Jess, and I had eaten the night before. I ate the same thing, and everyone else tried something different. After that, there was this large elevator that we went up. The purpose was so we could overlook the city, and it was really cool to go up in!

Sara didn't feel well, so we took her back to the hostel. Me, Jess and Natalie decided to roam about a little bit. We ended up at another view point, took a few pictures, after being offered drugs we decide to head to a cafe since the clouds looked pretty threatening.

Side note: People LOVED offering drugs to us. Sitting at cafes, they would come up to us and open their jacket and offer us cocaine, hash, or random other things. It was pretty insane. I didn't look at them, and just said NO, firmly so they knew i didn't want to mess around hehe. Mommy, I think a little bit of you came out in me during those moments...hehe!

anywho, we chilled at the cafe for 3 hours! Before we knew it, it was a little after 7. We had 2 cokes each and a pastry. We thought the bill would have been more than 20 euros, turned out it was less than 10! So we were pretty excited. We decided to walk back and get Sara for dinner, even tho none of us were hungry lol. Once we got outside, all the Christmas lights were on, so we wandered around and took our time to get back to the hostel so we could enjoy the lights.

We picked up Sara and decided to head towards the huge tree we saw earlier in the day from the elevator. Once we started walking, it started raining, shocker there. We walked a lot further than we thought it would take to get there. But it was enjoyable, walking the streets of Lisbon, all lit up for Christmas. Finally we reached the tree, tried to take some pictures but failed miserably. No pictures turned out good. It was just one of those moments we'd just have to remember.

Hunger was starting to kick it about this time, so we turned around. We had passed a Hard Rock Cafe on our way, and we were craving good ol' American food. So, that's where we headed. The prices weren't as bad as Paris, thank God. They were at least 5 euros cheaper for everything. However, once we got there, it was jam packed. The hostess told us it would be between and hour or 2 before we'd get a seat. But, we decided to stay. So, we walked over to the bar where Natalie ordered a beer, and we were approached by an American. He was working on various projects throughout Europe but didn't know any of the languages. He was in his 40s or 50s. I didn't talk much to him but Natalie carried on a conversation. It wasn't long until our names were called. I think we waited for a little less than an hour, so we were pretty excited.

They led us upstairs to our table. Our hostess was really sweet. Everyone knew very good English, too, so ordering wasn't difficult at all. Music was great and the atmosphere reminded me of being back in America. It was a nice change. We ordered and relaxed. We ended up staying for about 2 hours, just enjoying ourselves and talking. This was the last night we had to chat with Natalie, so we made the most of it. After paying 12 euros for my meal, we headed back to the hostel.

After changing into our PJs, we got the cards out and went into the common area. People were drinking beer because it was happy hour at the hostel. None of us drank anything though. It was pretty crowded in there, but we somehow made a little area on the floor to play cards. Sara didn't play, but the rest of us did. We played Swiss again. Natalie was off her game! I won everytime and she was a lot of fun to torment, hehe. I thought it was justified since she kicked my butt the night before, hehe! We decided to head to bed about midnight, but we exchanged email addresses so we could add each other on facebook and keep in touch.

Sunday morning Natalie joined us for breakfast before we left. She hadn't planned her next trip but was planning on doing that later that day, after she explored the city a little more. As for Sarah, Jess and I, we headed to the airport to go home.

It proved to be a really nice trip. I didn't really feel like going at the time, but i'm glad i did and I didn't want to come home. I've come to the conclusion that just because i'm traveling, doesn't mean I have to jump from place to place constantly. It's nice to just relax and enjoy where I am. Plus I met an amazing person that has inspired me to do more. Traveling is a fabulous thing, wouldn't you say?

This week i'm not doing a lot of anything. Last night my group of friends dressed in Christmas colors and took "family photos" by the christmas tree. They are rather cute actually.

This weekend, finals start. Tomorrow (Thursday) we have a Valedictory Dinner, in which awards are given out and students find out who won the Photo Contest (in which I entered!), but it should just be a fun night. On Friday, we the girls are planning a trip to Nottingham to go shopping and ice skating, so i'm really excited. Then on Saturday we are having a Family Christmas Dinner. It's coming to a close...