Oh! It’s a Lovely War

I’m back from Belgium and my trip to the continent, and it was definitely an exciting experience! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post about my trip. I’ve been running around getting ready for my family to arrive, plus trying to finish up all of my work for next week! Also, my Blogger interface has been updated to the latest technology, so I’m re-learning how to use my own blog slowly but surely.And finally I’ve had a disaster occur. My MacBook screen got shattered sometime in the night, so my laptop is currently non-functional. I’ll tell you all about it later, but for now anyway, back to Belgium. Belgium was the first country I’ve been to in a while whose primary language isn’t English, so that was definitely interesting. Thankfully, almost everyone in Belgium speaks English. In the words of Julian, “Everyone speaks English, even the trash collectors”. That was one of his many one liners of the weekend. I just love him to pieces.

So we left London bright and early on Friday morning. We took Julian and Diane with us, which was really cool because both of them are super smart and both of them know a ton about World War One. Plus they’re my favorite professors, so it was fun to spend the weekend with them too. In order to get to Belgium, we took a bus to the port of Dover, where we took a ferry across the English Channel to Calais, France. Then we took a bus from Calais into the town centre of Ieper. That means we were in three different countries in one day, which is so cool! We finally made it into Ieper about 4 o’clock, which was 3 to us. We jumped forward an hour while we were on the ferry, so I had to adjust to the time change. We spent some time in the central square of Ieper, taking pictures and eating delicious Belgian waffles! Sara Ashley’s had nutella, bananas, and powdered sugar, and mine had chocolate, bananas, and powdered sugar. They were heavenly! We also found a really cool fountain/sculpture that we wanted to take pictures with, so here I am above, so happy to be in Europe!

The first thing we did after stuffing our faces with chocolate was visit the Menin Gate. It’s a war memorial dedicated to the World War One soldiers who are buried in unknown graves. It’s amazing how many names are engraved into the arch. It’s hundreds of thousands. Julian’s friend Dominic is the curator of one of the museums in Ieper and took us on a tour of the Menin Gate Memorial at dusk. Every night at 8, they have a wreath laying ceremony, where different organizations and schools lay a poppy wreath in commemoration of the fallen. It’s a really moving experience. It reminded me a lot of the Changing of the Guard at Arlington. It’s very somber and definitely reminded me how many people have died in wartime. After the Menin Gate,, it was time to find food! Belgium is known for many things, and fries is among them. They call them frites, and they’re amazing. Dominic recommended a good frite shop to us, so we headed there for dinner. Then after that, all of the IES kids went to a pub across the street from our hostel called the 12 Apostles. It was a Jesus themed pub, and there were statues and paintings of Jesus and the Last Supper everywhere. It was really odd, but we had a lot of fun trying the famous (or infamous) Belgian beer.

Saturday was spent touring battlegrounds, trenches, and cemeteries. We started out the morning by visiting a few trenches in Bayernwald. Parts of the trenches are original to World War One, but most of it was a reconstruction. It was still really neat to see though! We spent a long time there, and we found some World War One shrapnel in the ground which was pretty awesome.  After that, we headed back on the bus and went to Poperinge, the next town over from Belgium. While we were there, we had some free time to shop around and eat our lunches, and we also visited a war museum called Talbot House. It was a lodging house for soldiers before they were supposed to report to the trenches. We saw some WWI style theatre and entertainment, which was interesting, and we also climbed up in the attic to see the makeshift chapel they had there during the war. The best part about Poperinge is their sweets shop. They have the best treats, and I got a swan cream puff! It was so delicious. I know it seems like all I did the whole trip was eat, but i promise I actually did get out and see things!

After Poperinge, we went to Tyne Cot Cemetery. It’s a huge cemetery that’s dedicated to one battle’s worth of deaths. I found a picture online of Tyne Cot from the air, and I wanted to put it in my blog so y’all could see just how big it is. My pictures from the ground don’t do it justice. There are 12,000 soldiers buried here, and about 8,500 are unnamed graves. It was definitely a moving experience to visit this huge cemetery. Just outside of the entry gate is the battle ground where all these soldiers died, so we visited that too of course. After our visit to Tyne Cot, we went to another cemetery where they have a memorial to the poem, “In Flanders Fields”. That was pretty cool to see. I found a map of the route that people take to visit all of these cemeteries and battlefields, so I took a picture with it!

When we got back into Ieper, Sara Ashley and I went to the gelato shop and got a treat. I had tiramisu gelato, and she had banana gelato. Both were yummy. After that, we walked around the part of town we hadn’t explored yet and went to buy our chocolate souvenirs! We had a group dinner Saturday night with all the IES kids and the professors. It was a really fun time! After dinner, we just hung out at our hostel. On Sunday morning, European countries sprung forward for Daylight Savings Time, so we had to adjust to another time change, so we went to bed early to gain back that lost hour of sleep. We headed out from Belgium bright and early Sunday morning and took the ferry back to England! It was definitely a quick trip out of the UK, but it was so fun! I was sad to leave Ieper, but I was glad to be coming back to London where I have my own bed and bathroom! There are so many pictures I want to show you from Belgium, but they just wouldn’t fit in the blog. I’ll have to show you all my pictures when I get home in just two weeks! I can’t believe that it’s almost time to come home. Where have the past three months gone? I guess time flies when you’re having fun! Cheers!

Song of the Blog: Oh! It’s a Lovely War from the movie, Oh What a Lovely War

There’s No Place Like London

I didn’t think I was going to have much to report on this week, but it was definitely a much more exciting week than I was anticipating! The weather has been really cooperative the past week, and it’s even warm enough to wear short sleeves and roll up my jeans.

On Tuesday, Diane took my history class to the Foundling Museum. It’s a museum dedicated to Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital, which took in abandoned babies and small children in the 18th century. It was really neat! My friend Jessica interns there, so she gave me the insider tour. We spent some time in the park because the weather was so nice. After that, we had our pre-Belgium meeting and learned all about what we were going to be doing in Ieper!

On Wednesday, I had my architecture class. We went on a tour of the Westminster and Whitehall area, and the Victoria area. We started off at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, home to Wicked. We walked around that area, and then headed to Westminster Cathedral. The cathedral is the most important Catholic church in the UK, and it’s absolutely breathtaking. The best part of the church is that it has a really tall tower that you can go up inside of and look out around London. It has really amazing views from the top and you can see almost every major London landmark. We could see where we live and where we go to school, and it’s really cool to see London from the air and understand the geography of the city.

After our visit to Westminster Cathedral, we went over to Whitehall, where all the Parliament buildings are located, plus Westminster Abbey. It was a church kind of day. We didn’t go inside the Abbey, but I did get some really great pictures of it because the sky was so beautiful! I’m hoping for beautiful weather next week when everybody is here.

We also went to the Banqueting House, 10 Downing Street (home to David Cameron), the Horse Guard, and St. James’s Park. While we were walking around, my friend Dan and I were planning my trip to Boston in the future. He lives in Boston when he’s not in school and I’ve always wanted to go, so he invited me to come visit sometime over the summer. Maybe I’ll take him up on that offer!

St. James’s Park is the park in front of Buckingham Palace. Right now, it’s home to about 12 eggs! We only had time to take a picture with one of them, but Sara Ashley and I are planning to have a picnic there soon and capture the rest of them. I really liked the egg I found though. It’s just like a robin’s egg, and it’s called “Song Thrush”. I just love the egg hunt, and we always find at least two or three in architecture. After class, I went to Hyde Park and took a nap in the grass before I started my Shakespeare paper.

On Thursday, my professor Julie took us on a walk of the Bloomsbury area to see all the famous sights of writers. On the way, we passed the hotel where Mom lived when she studied abroad here! So cool. We went to the London homes of T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and several others. It was a lovely walk, and it’s really cool to know how close all of that is to where I go to school. Thursday afternoon was spent writing the rest my Shakespeare paper, which I finally finished and submitted on Thursday afternoon. On Thursday night, I went with the rest of my IES friends to The Hunger Games London premiere. Midnight premieres of movies start here at 8:30, so we got to see it much earlier than all of our friends in the States. I haven’t read the book, but I did enjoy the movie. I’d recommend renting it when it comes out on DVD and giving it a try. Definitely interesting for a young adult plot. After the movie, I packed for Belgium and tried to sleep through my excitement! Stay tuned for my adventures in Ieper. Cheers!

Song of the Blog: There’s No Place Like London by Shirley Bessey

I’m Fulham ‘Til I Die!

Wow! What an incredible weekend it’s been! I had my Modern British Novel class Thursday morning. This week, we were reading The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. It’s a semi-fictional book about Idi Amin, the Ugandan president in the 1970’s. The main character of the book is Amin’s personal physician, who is Scottish. I doubt any of you have read the book, but you’ve probably seen or heard of the movie, starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy. Whitaker won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2006  because of this movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, go out and rent it. It’s great. The book is also fabulous, but a little difficult to get through. Anyways, after class I met up with Katie outside of the Tate Modern. We hadn’t been yet, so I decided that it was time for us to check it out. To get there, I had to cross over the Millennium Bridge. It was so nice on Thursday that everyone got to shed their coats! London with warm weather is just the nicest place to be. While I was crossing over the Millennium Bridge, I spotted this man wading in the Thames playing his guitar. In this picture, he’s still on the shore, but by the time we came out of the Tate, he was actually in the water. He does this pretty often apparently, and makes up songs on the spot about anything and everything. Katie and I watched him for a while before we headed into the Tate.

The Tate Modern was interesting to say the least. I haven’t really ever been to a modern art museum, so I didn’t know what to expect. I learned that I don’t really like modern art, but I could appreciate most of the  pieces in the museum. I also learned that I could become a famous modern artist, because most of the pieces in the Tate were things that I could have easily made myself. One of the pieces was a mirror. Just a mirror. So odd. My personal favorite was a pile of laundry. I learned that you can become a famous modern artist through procrastination and not doing laundry for long enough to make a mountain of dirty clothes. Maybe I should consider becoming a professional procrastinator and then I can call it modern art! I’ll let you know when the pile of papers on my desk become an exhibit in the Tate and then you can all come view it. I couldn’t resist taking a picture with the dirty laundry, so here it is!

After browsing through the Tate, Katie and I headed to Borough Market, which is one of my favorite places. We got pasties and yummy fruit juice and walked around checking out all the delicious treats. After that, we walked along the South Bank and enjoyed the ridiculously nice weather. We went to the National Portrait Gallery and I showed Katie all the best portraits, and then we headed back to LRH. We ate dinner and watched Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” for our film class this week. As expected, it was really funny!

On Friday, SA and I went shopping at H&M. There are at least 20 H&M stores within ten miles of us, and I saw a really cute houndstooth dress on their website that I wanted, so we went on the hunt for it. We went to the store in Knightsbridge, which is the closest one to us and the biggest one around. Sadly, they didn’t have it in my size, but I did get a really cute shirt that I’ve been wanting for a while. I’m still on the hunt for the houndstooth dress. I need it to show my Tide pride next football season! We took a leisurely walk back home from Knightsbridge, and then got to work on our Shakespeare papers. For dinner, I made pasta with Scottish mussels on top. It was surprising easy to make, and the mussels were SO delicious! I haven’t had them in a while, and they were just as good as I remembered. Maybe I’ll be a decent cook after all.

Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day, which is just as big in London as it is in Dublin. We had big plans for the day, because I was going to my very first professional football (soccer) match! I’ve been to lots of high school and college games, plus ten million of Peyton’s games, but I’ve never been to a real game. IES got us tickets to the Fulham FC vs. Swansea City game, held right down the road from us at Craven Cottage. I was really excited about this, because my favorite soccer player, Clint Dempsey, plays for Fulham. I got to see him in real life! It was definitely the highlight of my month. Here are the teams walking out of the tunnel. The orange players are Swansea City and the whites are Fulham.

Craven Cottage is a pretty small stadium by Premier League standards. It holds about 25,000 people. But, it was nice to be in a small stadium, because pretty much everyone had a good seat. As you can see in the picture, we were sitting right behind the goal, which wasn’t the best seat, but it was cool to get a new perspective on soccer. Fulham’s colors are red, white, and black, but we had to wear some green so Katie and I got ribbon and made red and green headbands. It was a little Christmasy, but very spirited! We ended up losing to Swansea 3-0, but it was still a really fun experience. Mom, Dad, Sarah, Peyton, and I are going to Jacksonville at the end of May to see the US Mens’ National Team play the Scottish National Team, so I’ll get to see Dempsey play again! Hopefully, we’ll win that game. Marek assures me that the Scottish team isn’t much good, so the US should probably win. I can’t wait!

I have a lot to share about Brighton, so I’ll write a separate blog for my trip. I finally got my Starbucks Gold Card in the mail, which is so exciting! Sarah sent me a picture of it, and I can’t wait to start getting all the deals with it when I get home. Cheers!

Song of the Blog: I’m Fulham ’til I Die, Fulham FC football chant

 

Brighton Rock

This weekend was really busy, because not only did we have all of our St. Paddy’s Day activities, we also went to Brighton! Brighton’s a lovely little seaside town in the south of England. It was supposed to rain, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but the sun decided to shine for us after all, so it was a gorgeous day! We headed out pretty early in the morning and got to Brighton about 10AM. We took a double-decker coach there, which was really cool. SA and I sat on the top part, so we got a really great view of all the sights along the way. The Brighton trip was a mandatory field trip for all the students in the British Youth Culture class, but I decided to tag along and check it out.When we got into Brighton, we had time to take some pictures, like this one of SA and me in front of Brighton Pier. Then we took a tour of the city with our tour guide Doug before our tour of the Brighton Pavilion.On our city tour, Doug showed us all the sights where they filmed the movie Quadrophenia, and also lots of famous pop culture places. It was pretty cool!

Brighton is absolutely beautiful, and it has a little dash of quirkiness that makes it so fun. I took so many great pictures, and it was so nice to have some sunshine and warm weather for a change. One of the coolest things in Brighton is the Brighton Pavilion, which was once a palace for the Prince Regent, George IV. Henry Holland designed it, and SA and I think it looks like the Candyland castle. It has the oniony domes just like the Russian cathedrals, but its very Asian influenced on the inside. It’s really neat. We got to tour through the whole palace, including the state apartments where all the monarchs slept. Victoria’s rooms were pink and green! George IV used it, and so did William IV, but during Queen Victoria’s reign she sold it to the city of Brighton to use. Now it’s a tourist attraction, but it’s really neat. Plus, since I’m obsessed with Victoria, it was awesome to go to a place that she used to go when she was queen. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but SA and I snapped one outside of the palace.

After the palace, we went to the Chocolate Festival that was going on for Mum’s Day weekend. The British celebrate Mother’s Day earlier than us, and it was yesterday. So there was a lot of activity going on around town. There was chocolate everywhere, and there were a lot of Easter themed chocolates. They were so tempting, but I stuck to the samples. After perusing the chocolate festival, we headed back toward the ocean and had fish and chips overlooking the water. My favorite part of Brighton was the Brighton Pier. It reminds me a lot of Myrtle Beach, just a really elegant and clean version. I took some beautiful pictures from the pier of the Brighton shore. Another really cool part of Brighton was that the white cliffs of England start in Brighton. They’re not as stark as the ones in Dover, but they’re still really cool! You can kind of see them in this picture in the far right shoreline.

The pier is made up of food booths, ice creameries, and a lot of rides. SA and I couldn’t resist riding just one ride, so we did the Crazy Mouse roller coaster together. It was so fun! The roller coaster went to the edge of the pier, so it was like we were going over water. SA took some pictures of Brighton from the ride, but I don’t think any of them turned out since we were moving kind of fast. It was so fun to be like a little kid running around riding rides and eating candy floss (British cotton candy). We spent basically the rest of the afternoon on the pier just enjoying the atmosphere and breathing in the salty air.

Our last major activity before boarding the bus was heading down to the water. SA and I really wanted to feel the water. We were going to stick our feet in, but since we both had boots on we decided against it and just stuck our fingers in. The water wasn’t actually as cold as I was expecting. It was cool to know that I was touching the Atlantic Ocean, and that 4,000 miles away my family was seeing the same ocean. It makes the world seem a little bit smaller. We also took a souvenir from the beach. Normally I take seashells, but the beaches in England are made of pebbles, not sand, so we took a pebble. SA found one that looks a lot like South Carolina, so she took that one. Mine is just cool and I think it’s going to make a great paperweight. After sitting on the beach for a while, it was time to head back to London.

When we got back to London, SA took a nap and I fixed dinner. After dinner I felt really tired all of a sudden and a little sickly, so I decided to head to bed early. Brighton was probably my favorite day trip that I’ve been on so far! It might be rivaled by Oxford, which I’m going to visit next Friday with Katie. I didn’t think I was going to find time to go, but I’m so glad I found a time to go since it’s my favorite place in England. This week is full of paper writing and boring things, so I doubt I’ll do anything too noteworthy during the week. But, I am heading to “the continent” on Friday and will be in France and Belgium this weekend, so look out for a recap of my adventures in Europe!

I have so many pictures that I want to show you from Brighton, so I’ll leave you with one more picture! This is the beautiful and fun Brighton Pier!

Song of the Blog: Brighton Rock by Queen

A Day in the Life

Hello all!

Sunday was a BEAUTIFUL day. I got back into town from Dublin about 11:45, and Sara Ashley couldn’t bear to stay inside all day and waste the nice weather, so we decided to go on a walk in Hyde Park. We walked around the whole perimeter of the park, stopping along the way at the major sights. We checked out Speakers’ Corner, which is where anyone can come and speak their mind about any issue they want. We get a lot of “end of the worlders”, and also a lot of “come to Jesus” speakers, but there’s never a lack of entertainment. We had fun checking that out for a while, and then we kept walking. It was about 63 degrees, so neither of us wore coats and it was glorious. I could feel the sun warming me on the inside and it felt so nice to have some warmer temperatures. We rounded a corner and came upon the Italian Gardens, which are beautiful, and further down the road we found the Peter Pan statue! We ended up where we started, at the Albert Memorial. I love Prince Albert, so since it was a nice day and so warm, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a picture with him!

After walking round Hyde Park, we headed back down Exhibition Road, which is where all the museums are. Neither of us had been in the Natural History Museum yet and I really wanted to check it out, so in we went. It was one of the coolest museums I’ve ever been to! They have it split into zones, and each zone has a theme. The Red zone is rocks and volcanos and the like, the Green zone is plants and animals, the Blue zone is water and sea life, and I haven’t been to the Orange zone, so I’m not really sure what’s there. But anyway, we had an absolute blast. I found several nautiluses in the museum. The nautilus is one of Kappa Delta’s symbols, because like the nautilus, we keep growing as individuals and as a sisterhood throughout our lives. It’s my favorite of all of our symbols, so I wanted to take a K∆ photo with the nautilus shell. We took a leisurely walk back home, and then started working on our homework for Shakespeare.

Monday started out as a typical day. Sara Ashley and I went to Shakespeare in the morning. After Shakespeare, my day became not so typical. My censorship class was cancelled because my tutor was sick. Since I didn’t have class, I decided to head home early. But I couldn’t get home because the Piccadilly line was closed. I assumed it was for something dumb, like a signal failure or someone dropping their bag in the rails. But it was actually really serious and scary. Unfortunately, a 55 year old man committed suicide in the underground really close to where I go to school. Because of this, the Piccadilly was shut down for the rest of the day. It’s really sad that people do that, plus it scars the driver for life. It’s much more common than you would think though…over 100 people commit suicide in the London Underground every year. I ended up taking the bus home.

Tuesday was a sad day, because it was Mom’s birthday and I wasn’t home to celebrate it with everybody. I did get to participate in the opening presents portion of the day, so that was nice to feel like I was a part of things. I sent Mom a joint birthday and “mum’s day” present, which was the book Five Minutes Peace. For those of you not familiar with this gem of a children’s book, it’s the story of an elephant family called the Larges, and the middle daughter is named Laura. All Mrs. Large wants the whole book is five minutes of peace from her children, but they keep annoying her. I loved this book when I was little, partly because it had my name in it and partly because I like elephants. Sadly, our original copy suffered a painful death by Nicholas and is no longer readable. So, I gave Mom a new copy of Five Minutes’ Peace so she’ll always have a copy!

Tuesday was also a happy day because I went to the Hunterian Museum for my history class. The Hunterian is the life collection of the surgeon John Hunter, who dissected cadavers and preserved organs for medical research in the United Kingdom. There are hundreds of preserved organs, bones, teeth, you name it. I was fascinated by the museum, but most of the people in my class were really grossed out by the whole thing. They had some old eye surgery tools, including a cataract knife. I thought that was really neat!

I woke up on Wednesday feeling pretty crummy, but thankfully I didn’t have class until 1:30 so I was able to lounge around all morning before I had to go to class. My architecture class met at South Kensington today, so I didn’t have to go too far. We walked all around the Kensington and Knightsbridge area, including Hyde Park, the V&A, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, and Harrods. It was a busy day! I took some pictures of the interior of the Natural History Museum because it’s just gorgeous. We also went into Brompton Oratory, which is the second largest Catholic church in England. It was absolutely breathtaking. I think I’m going to go there for Easter Mass! On the way home from class I went to the Post Office with my friend Dan, and then I went grocery shopping and fixed dinner with Katie. I’ve been struggling through The Last King of Scotland for my Modern British Novel class all week, but I’m almost finished! Only two more books to go for that class.

On Monday, we hit the 30 day mark of days left in London. I love London and I’m so glad I decided to study abroad, but the closer I get to the end the more ready I am to come home. My fun fact of the day is that James Taylor wrote “Carolina in my Mind” in London when he was recording a CD at the Beatles’ recording studio here, so it seems fitting that I would agree with his sentiment in the song. I daydream about feeling the South Carolina sun shine down on my face, drinking sweet tea and hanging out with my friends. I’m getting to the point in the semester where I have a lot of work to get done and not a lot of time for much else, and it’s hard being far away from your happy place when your stress level gets high. I’m really excited to have my family get here in just a couple of weeks! We’re actually starting to get the nitty gritty details worked out now, and I’m having a lot of fun planning out all the things to do with them when we reunite! Once they leave, I have a little less than a week until I return to the US of A.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me full of fun activities, so stay tuned for all the excitement! In conclusion, I’ve included a picture of me post-Monument scaling. I’m posing with my certificate confirming that I made it up the 311 stairs to the top! Cheers!

Song of the Blog: A Day in the Life by the Beatles

Farewell to Dublin

Hello everyone! I just got back from Ireland, and it was wonderful! I had such a lovely time. THis post is probably going to be really long because I have so much to tell you! Before I show you all my pictures and tell you about the fun things I did, I have to tell you about getting there.

Before Katie and I could depart for Dublin, I had to go to my Modern British Novel class, which met at the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I had to go straight from class to Gatwick, and I didn’t have much wiggle room as far as time was concerned to get there. My class got out at 12:30 instead of 12:45, and I was trying to make the 1:00 train to Gatwick, so I literally sprinted from Trafalgar Square to the nearest underground station, took the tube to Victoria Train Station and ran through Victoria to make the train. I made it just in time to hop on the train and go to Gatwick.

Before my experience this weekend, I was a little dubious of the Gatwick Express. It’s a train that has a direct service between Victoria Station and Gatwick, which is about 25 miles outside of Central London. When I was still in the United States, I didn’t want to take it into London because it seemed confusing and like a stressful experience, so I decided for convenience and lower stress levels, I would just take a cab into London with Sara Ashley. After riding the Gatwick Express, I know I was totally wrong. It’s the most wonderful, easy, stress-free thing in the world. You literally get on, sit down, and relax for 30 minutes and it drops you off right below the check in terminal, so you’re right there! It seems kind of expensive, but compared to other forms of transportation from Gatwick, I’d say it’s a pretty inexpensive option for the convenience. Sara Ashley and I are definitely taking the Gatwick Express next month!

After my nice ride on the Gatwick Express, I rode up the world’s slowest escalator and made my way into the South Terminal, where I had to check in. It took me a few minutes to find the Aer Lingus counter, but once I did check-in took no time at all. The lady was so friendly and sent me on my way to security, which was a breeze! They didn’t even make me take my shoes off which was so great. They did do some kind of test on my liquids, but it didn’t take long at all. After security, I met up with Katie in the waiting area. From the time I got off the train to the time I met up with Katie, only 15 minutes had passed. That’s right, it only took me 15 MINUTES to check in, go through security, and find Katie. Best airport experience ever. The weird thing about Gatwick is that they don’t have the same kind of waiting areas as most airports. Instead of going directly to your gate after clearing security, you go to a big “holding tank” area with everyone in the airport and wait by the electronic boards to find out which gate to go to and wait until it opens. They don’t tell you which gate to go to until the gate opens though, so even though I got to the airport at 1:45, our gate didn’t open until 2:15. So I had plenty of time to kill before we boarded. We boarded our flight almost immediately after getting to the gate, and we had such a pleasant flight experience. Aer Lingus is one of those budget airlines, so you have to pay extra money for just about everything, including choosing your seat. Most of the time, you just let them assign you a seat unless it really matters where you sit. Katie and I both lucked out and got aisle seats with no one sitting beside us, so we each had a whole row to ourselves, which was so nice! The flight itself was supposed to take 70 minutes, but it got in 20 minutes early, so by the time we got up to altitude, we were preparing for landing. It was so great.

Katie and I got into Dublin and hopped on the coach into town and met her friend Caitlin on Grafton Street, which is the big shopping touristy area in town. Caitlin is studying abroad at Trinity College in Dublin and she was gracious enough to let us stay with her in her apartment so we didn’t have to pay for a hostel. Caitlin lives in Rathmines, which is a suburb right outside of Dublin, so she met us in the city centre to make sure we didn’t get lost. We walked back to her apartment and dropped off our stuff, and then I headed back into town to meet up with Jenny! My good friend Jenny is studying abroad at University College Dublin, so I wanted to have some quality time with her while I was in town. Jenny got free advanced screening tickets to Disney’s new movie, John Carter, which is a sci-fi movie about a Civil War vet that gets transported to Mars. It sounds really weird and we weren’t sure about it, but it was actually great! The best way I can describe it is a mix of Indiana Jones and Star Wars. I would definitely recommend seeing it. After the movie, we grabbed some dinner and chatted about everything and caught up with each other and then we went to Jenny’s favorite pub, the Porterhouse. It was fun to get to see all the places that she likes to hang out and all of her favorite parts of Dublin!

After hanging out with Jenny all night, I headed back to Caitlin’s apartment. Everything went so smoothly until I got to the gate to get into the complex, and the code wouldn’t work! I tried to call Katie on her phone, but for some reason our phones couldn’t call each other in Ireland. So to make a long story short, I had to call Jenny and get her to call Katie to let me into the building. Once Katie let me in, then we got stuck outside of the apartment. It was just a disaster, but we finally made it inside and went to bed. Some of Katie’s other friends from home also came to Dublin this weekend, so it was like a big party. They all got in on Friday at various times, so we spent most of Friday in downtown Dublin picking up Katie’s friends from the bus stop. While we were waiting for the last two, Caitlin took us on a tour of Trinity College, which is just beautiful! It kind of reminds me of Oxford. We went to see the Book of Kells, which was really neat. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the Gospels, and it was created by Celtic monks. I couldn’t take pictures, but there are probably some online if you’re interested. We also got to go to the Long Room, which is basically the coolest library in the whole world. It’s huge and it was like my dream come true.

After all of Katie’s friends got into town, we headed back to Caitlin’s apartment to cook dinner. One of Katie’s friends is studying in Rome, so she made us really delicious pasta with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes. After dinner, Caitlin took us out to some of her favorite places, The Bernard Shaw and The Bleeding Horse. Several of her Trinity friends met up with us, so we got to meet some new people and that was nice. I met a guy from North Carolina, and I was so excited to make a Southern connection with someone. Here’s a picture of Katie and me at the Bleeding Horse.

Saturday was our big touring day. We started off the day was a traditional Irish breakfast, which is pretty similar to English breakfast, only with black pudding. After breakfast, we hit most of  the major tourist sights in Dublin that we hadn’t seen yet. We checked out the Temple Bar area, which was really busy because there was a huge rugby game between Ireland and Scotland in Dublin this weekend! I’ve never seen so many men in kilts in my life. The whole city was decorated in green and white balloons for the game, so it was like a small St. Patrick’s Day.

My favorite part of the day was our visit to the Guinness Storehouse. It’s really cool, and they teach you all about the ingredients that go into Guinness and the process of making it. You get to taste different types of Guinness throughout the museum, plus learn how to pour the perfect pint, see different advertising throughout the years, and a bunch of other cool stuff! At the top, which is the 7th floor, there is a bar that has a 360 degree view of Dublin, and they give you a complimentary pint of Guinness to enjoy while you look out over Dublin. It was so fresh! Katie and her friends didn’t like it so much, but I thought it was great. We headed back into town and met up with Caitlin for late lunch at Lemon, which had really great crepes. We each got our own meal crepe and shared a dessert crepe made of nutella and fresh whipped creme. It was so delicious. On the way back to Caitlin’s, we walked around in St. Stephen’s Green, which is like a miniature version of Hyde Park. Everything was so green! Below are all of Katie’s friends and me in St. Stephen’s Green. We were missing one, but we had Ireland, England, Italy, Spain, and Greece represented this weekend. Now that’s world traveling!

We had a chill night on Saturday and stayed in and watched The Wedding Date on TV, which was so nice and relaxing. We all had to get up pretty early the next day to fly back to our respective countries, so we headed to bed fairly early. Katie and I got up at 6:30 and our cab picked us up outside of Caitlin’s apartment at 6:45. Again, we had absolutely no problems checking in or going through security. I forgot to take my liquids bag out of my carry on, so they had to re-scan my bag, but they were so nice about it. It was so different from American security. TSA could definitely take a few pointers from the Irish airport security. Katie and I both lucked out again on the flight home and got aisle seats. When we got off the plane and headed down to immigration, we saw a pretty long line in the non-EU passport side, which I’ve never seen before. We got in the line and started filling out our customs cards when I heard a man say “Did anyone just come in from Ireland?”I said “I did!” and he had me follow him around all the people to the front of the line. They were “trialling a new process” in the immigration department, so all they did was check my boarding pass and let me through. We bypassed probably an hour long wait in immigration, which was a miracle! They didn’t look at our passports, our visitor letters, nothing. It was a breeze! Our experiences with public transportation were so wonderful on this trip. We got back to LRH at about 11:30AM. I enjoyed visiting Dublin but I’m so glad to be home in London! I have a busy week ahead of writing papers and projects, plus it’s St. Patty’s Day on Saturday, so I know I’ll have lots to fill you in on soon. Slainte!

Song of the Blog: Farewell to Dublin

The Wizard and I

Wow! It’s been such a great week, but so busy! I’m sorry I took a hiatus from my blog, but I just got back from Dublin and realized that I never wrote a mid-week update! Before I post my Irish Adventures, I’ll recap you on the past week.

 Monday was pretty good day. SA and I had a field trip to the Globe Theatre for our Shakespeare class, and that was really interesting to go in the theatre. It’s a reconstruction of the real thing, which burned down a long time ago, but they have constructed it to look exactly the same, and most of the building materials are the same as the original. They don’t have any plays going on right now because its an open air theatre, so it gets pretty chilly, but their summer season opens at the end of April. Too bad we’ll miss it by a few weeks. After that, we headed back to IES and had afternoon class. SA and I went card shopping after our afternoon classes, and I just have to say, I love British greeting cards. I am a card perfectionist, and it takes me hours and hours to pick out the perfect greeting card for people. Most of the time, my chief complaint with cards is that the messages on the inside are too sappy and something people don’t really say. So my rule is that I don’t buy a card unless the message inside is something I would actually genuinely say to someone, and that rules out most greeting cards in America. Well, the British people apparently share my disdain for sappy messages, because 90% of their greeting cards have no message on the inside. This is enough to satisfy me, but the icing on the cake is that they are all literally the cutest cards I’ve ever seen. This makes my card selection so much harder, but I’ve decided that I’m buying greeting cards for everyone while I’m still here and saving them for appropriate holidays, because they’re just too darn cute!

When I got home on Monday night, I got to Skype with everyone in my family! Well, everyone except for Peyton, who it seems like is never home. Dad took me outside and showed me all the new flowers and pulled weeds while we chatted about classes and everything. Then I got to talk to Grandmama, which was really fun! I’m counting down to their visit, and they will be here in 20 days! I really can’t wait to see them all! On Tuesday, my History class had a field trip to the Monument to the Great Fire of London. The Monument was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and you can climb up in it and look out on the city of London. It sounds like a harmless activity, but it’s not. I almost DIED getting to the top, as did most of my classmates. It’s 311 steps to the top, which isn’t the bad part. The horrible part is that you have to climb these steps in a round tube, so it’s a circular staircase. Once you get about halfway up, you start to feel very dizzy and by the time you make it to the top (if you make it that far), you alternate between feeling like you’re going to faint and getting sick. If ou ask me, it’s not worth the view. You can get the same one from other places. Thankfully I did neither, but I was convinced I was going to die up there. My calves have been sore for 5 straight days. So if nothing else it was a good workout. Here’s one of the views from the top, of Tower Bridge, City Hall, and the Thames. When you come back down, they give you a certificate saying you made it to the top, so at least I got a souvenir! My tutor didn’t climb the Monument with us, and when we asked her why not, she said “I’ve done it once before and I’m not dumb enough to do it again!” So if that tells you anything…After the Monument, we went to the Guildhall Library, which was really awesome. We did research for our history papers, so I got to play with lots of old books.

Tuesday night was the most exciting night of the week because we went to see the London production of Wicked the Musical! Wicked is just so magical, and Sara Ashley and I had been wanting to see it the whole time we’ve been in London. So Jessica, SA, and I went to see it Tuesday. It was great! The performers acted with their natural British accents, which threw me off a little, but it was still wonderful. I love being able to have such easy access to musical theatre in London. I’ll be sad to leave it all behind. Next stop is Jersey Boys! Can’t wait. Here are us roommates in front of the Apollo Victoria. I wore green for Elphaba and Sara Ashley wore pink for Galinda!

On Wednesday, I went on a field trip with my Architecture class to Islington and Clerkenwell. I didn’t really know what was in the area, but I discovered the Arsenal Stadium. The only problem was there was literally a hurricane going on in central London. So we had to walk around in a torrential downpour all day. Thankfully, it stopped after a while and that’s really the only bad weather day we’ve had in a while. When we were walking around, I spotted this really cute door! I love seeing all the different painted doors, and I really loved this color. Islington is such a cool area, and I’d love to live there if I ever find myself in London again. I spent Wednesday night packing for Dublin and getting homework done before I left. That ends my recap of this past week…look for my Dublin blog soon! Cheers

Song: The Wizard and I from Wicked the Musical

Here Comes Peter Cottontail…

…hopping down the bunny trail, hippity, hoppity EASTER’S on its WAY! Hello! I’m so excited because it’s finally starting to feel like spring, and I’m really looking forward to springtime and Easter in London! Even Easter really isn’t Easter unless I’m in Atlanta with Grams and Daddydon, I’m interested in seeing how the Londoners do Easter. I’ve already figured out that they’re fans of the holiday season/springtime, because this year they’re having “The Big Egg Hunt”! The City of London has placed over 200 huge ceramic eggs all around the city, and they are decorated by some of Britain’s most celebrated artists. This weekend, Sara Ashley and I set out around Chelsea and Kensington to find some of these eggs, and we found several! But before I get into the eggs, let me tell you about the rest of my weekend.

The Student Assistants took us on a tour of Olympic Park this past Friday, which we were really excited about since we’re in the host city of the Olympics. They’re building most of the venues from scratch, and they’re all located in the East End of London. Friday was a pretty dreary day, so the sky doesn’t look too nice, but SA and I took some pictures overlooking Olympic Park. The stadium building behind us is where the Athletic events will be hosted as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. After the Olympics, it will become the new home of West Ham United Football Club. Pretty cool! As you can see by all the construction equipment, they still have a lot of work to do to finish everything, and not a whole lot of time to do it! I’m sure that they will have it all finished by the time the Olympics roll around.

While we were waiting on our tour guide, Zaki and Ola (the Student Assistants) took us to Tesco to grab a quick snack. This Tesco was not the normal express stores we’re used to, this one was like a real grocery store! Sara Ashley and I were in awe. Zaki told us about a Tesco Superstore that’s relatively close to where we live, so of course we had to make a trip, since we had absolutely no food and were living off of spoonfuls of peanut butter. The Tesco Superstore was like heaven! It was two floors of everything you can imagine, and it’s open 24 hours a day! We stocked up and got most of our food for pretty cheap, which is good because we love finding bargains in the most expensive city in the UK. We also stopped by the Apollo Victoria Theatre on Friday afternoon to pick up tickets for Wicked! Sara Ashley was having trouble getting her ticket online, so we stopped by the box office and got her ticket there. The theatre looks stunning, and I can’t wait to check it out tomorrow. I’m so excited about seeing Wicked in London. This will be my fourth time seeing Wicked, and even though I’ve seen it before, I think I’m more excited than I was the first time! It really is one of the best musicals, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the London adaptation. I’m also planning to see Jersey Boys in a few weeks, so that will be fun too!

Thursday was our friend Natalie’s 21st birthday, and we were both sad that we weren’t there to celebrate. But, we got to Skype with her on Friday night for a long time, and it was great to catch up! SA and I  both slept in pretty late on Saturday, and woke up to beautiful blue skies! Sometimes the weather in London is deceiving, and even though it might look like great weather, it doesn’t mean it feels like great weather. We’ve had lots of sunny days where the temperature is below 30, which is not my idea of nice weather. But, this day we got the nice weather and the warm temperatures. It was a lovely 60 degrees, so we headed out for the day to explore Chelsea. We decided that since it was such nice weather, it was the perfect day for egg hunting. There are clue maps online that tell you how many eggs are in your “zone” and gives you hints about where you might find them. There are 20 hidden in our zone, so we wanted to take advantage of the nice weather and find as many as possible. We ended up finding 9, and they were all really cool! Some of them are indoor eggs, but most are outdoor. We like the outdoor eggs better, because we can take fun pictures with them. Each egg has a special name, and my two favorite eggs so far are “Union Jack”, and “Seraphina”. I’m hoping to find a lot more before Easter gets here, and I’m excited that Mom, Dad, Sarah, and Peyton will be able to help me hunt some of them down too! This is definitely the most fun Easter egg hunt I’ve ever been a part of. The Londoners really seem to be getting into it too. We’ve seen lots of people egg hunting around the past two weeks.

Several of the eggs were in an area called Duke of York Square, which is a nice little shopping area in Chelsea. It’s also home to the Saatchi Gallery, which is a pretty cool art gallery. They were having a food market in the square on Saturday, so of course we checked it out. They were selling pastries, cakes, cheese, pies, and all sorts of other yummy treats. While we were wandering around, we stumbled upon Partridges, which is an upscale grocery store, kind of like the Fresh Market. Sara Ashley and I have been reading a blog called “An American Girl in Chelsea”, and the author talked about Partridges and how they have an American food aisle. Since we were right there, we couldn’t resist going in and checking it out. We were pleased to find every kind of cereal we miss in America, plus lots of other yummy treats we can’t find in Waitrose and Tesco. They have double stuffed Oreos for only 69p, which is a great deal! They also have Easy Mac, Potato Buds, Hamburger Helper, and Aunt Jemima pancake mix. We were particularly excited over the pancake mix, because the Brits think that pancakes and crepes are the same thing. I can assure you, they are not. We plan on making American pancakes in the very near future. Sara Ashley took a picture of me with all the comfort foods around me so we could show y’all all the treasures we found.

Sara Ashley’s cousins were in town on business this weekend, so she met them on Saturday night for dinner. I stayed in and made meatloaf and mashed potatoes with Jessica, which is just the ultimate comfort food to me. It was delicious, and we had fun cooking. After dinner, we watched Serendipity, which is such a good movie! I spent the rest of the night tidying up in my room and finally unpacking from Scotland, which is definitely something that needed to be done. Sunday was a miserable day. It was rainy and 27 degrees. Pretty chilly for the first week of March! So we stayed inside all day, and Skyped with my roommate Caroline and just had a lazy day. About 7:30, I decided I needed to get some fresh air and get out of the dorm, so I went to Starbucks and worked on homework for a few hours.

The big excitement of the weekend was that we have a new resident in our kitchen. It happens to be a mouse. Naturally, I am not thrilled at all about this. Our kitchenmates don’t seem to understand the concept of dishwashing, and they leave their dirty dishes in the sink for days on end. I can’t stand it, so I end up washing them a lot, but I finally decided to let them sit until the girls decided to wash their own dishes, because I wasn’t doing myself any favors by doing the dishes for them. Apparently they didn’t get the memo, so we had dirty dishes in our sink for like 12 days. I’m sure this buildup of filth is what attracted the mouse, so I had a come to Jesus moment with our kitchenmates, and I think we might have actually gotten through to them. The mouse wasn’t the last straw for me though, it was actually a few hours before we discovered our new friend. I was washing the dishes in the sink because I needed a clean utensil to eat my dinner with, and I accidentally dropped a plate on the floor as I was drying it off. The plate broke and I got a gash in my foot. I’m fine now, but I was not happy at the time. My injury combined with the mouse was just too much for be to ignore, so I had to confront them about it. I think they’ll try to do better about washing their own dishes now, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

I think that’s about all for now…I’ll be updating you again on Wednesday afternoon before I leave for Dublin 🙂 Cheers!

Song of the Blog: Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Helter Skelter

Wow this week has been crazy! Ever since we got back from Scotland, SA and I have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off! The best thing about our Scotland trip is that we both have gotten back on a normal sleep schedule. Before midterms, SA and I were both staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning, but after getting up and being busy all day in Scotland, we’re back to going to bed by 1 at the very latest, which makes us energized for class!

On Monday, we went to class as usual. Our Shakespeare class was dysfunctional, as usual. I keep reminding myself that it’s better than taking it at Wofford, but I have to say I will not miss that class when all is said and done. After Shakespeare, we had lunch with Stephanie, the Assistant Dean of Student Life from the Chicago office of IES. She’s touring around the different programs in the UK and Spain and talking to a few students about our experience and getting feedback. She was really fun and easy to talk to, but the best part about the lunch was that we got fed for free! After lunch, I had a presentation in my film class, which went really well. When we got out of class, SA and I had great plans to ride the bus home, because we had read in TimeOut! London that they were test running a new bus on the 38 line, which we take home to Chelsea. It’s all futuristic looking and cool, so we were excited, but for whatever reason it never came. So after waiting a while we finally just hopped on a bus. Here’s what they’re supposed to look like though.

I spent a few hours cleaning and unpacking from Scotland, and then it was time to head back out to the East End for my CORE meeting! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here for two months already! Hilary, our CORE leader, took us to Brick Lane for Indian food this time, so we were supposed to meet her at the restaurant at 8. My group set out at 7, thinking that would be plenty of time. We were wrong. We got on the Circle line, and about halfway to Liverpool Street, which was where we were supposed to  get off, the tube stopped. Not at a station, just in the middle of the track between two stations. There was a “passenger emergency”. And we proceeded to sit there for 25 minutes. To make a long story short, we ended up getting off early and taking 4 different tube lines to get to where we were supposed to go. We finally showed up at Cafe Naz at 8:35. Even though it took forever to get there, the food was DELICIOUS. I got chicken tikka masala (the national dish of England) and I couldn’t stop eating it! I was stuffed by the time we headed home. Just in time for us to try to get home, there was a signal failure on the Central line, so it took us just as long to get home as it did to get to the East End! By the time I finally got home, it was 11:45 and I was exhausted, so I went to bed.

Thankfully I had a much less active day on Tuesday. I even got to sleep in which was so nice! I had my first tutorial with my new tutor, Diane, on Tuesday. She seems really nice and fun, but I miss Julian. For our first class, Diane took us to the Museum of London to do research for our paper topics. I’m writing my paper on William Hogarth’s illustrations of Restoration period novels. Sounds so fascinating, I know. Even though that probably sounds really obscure to most of you, it’s what I study most at Wofford so writing a paper on it should be relatively easy and painless. After History, I headed to St. Paul’s Starbucks, my favorite hangout spot, to work on my Scotland blogs. I left about 4:45 with just enough time to make it to Covent Garden for Emily’s 21st birthday party. Unfortunately, there was a “passenger emergency” on the Central line, so St. Paul’s tube station was totally closed. I’ve learned over time that a passenger emergency usually means that someone dropped insert personal belonging here in the tube tracks, or they smushed themselves between the doors like an idiot and actually hurt themselves. But when it rains it pours, and of course I have every tube trouble known to man this week. I had to go all over East Jesus to get to Covent Garden, and I finally made it about 20 minutes late. My motto is “better never than late”, so naturally this whole being late to dinner two days in a row thing was not sitting well with me. But I was glad to be a part of Emily’s birthday celebrations and meet some of her Goldsmiths’ friends. They invited us to come play trivia in a few weeks, so SA and I are looking forward to that.

Wednesday was a really exciting day because I got to go to Dr. Johnson’s house! Dr. Johnson is better known as Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first English dictionary aka my hero. My architecture class went to his house to study the architectural features of buildings of that time period, but I was much more interested in Johnson himself. I found out that he was friends with Oliver Goldsmith, my favorite Restoration playwright, which is so cool! Goldsmith was probably in that house at some point. I also got to play with a first edition Johnson Dictionary. I got to do that at St. John’s College last year in Oxford, but it was much cooler to flip through the dictionary in the same room where it was originally compiled. On another positive note, I got an A on my architecture exam! so exciting. Plus, the weather was ridiculously nice, and has been pretty much all week. I’m loving London having temperatures in the 50’s. Wednesday night I worked on finishing Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, my latest book for The Modern British Novel. It’s a great read, and I would highly recommend it. It’s really weird, but in a good way! It’s the first book I’ve had to read for academia that I’ve actually enjoyed in a long time. There was a movie made a few years ago with Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan that’s also really good. Next up on the reading list is The Last King of Scotland.

Thursday I had class in the morning, and then I met Katie in the tube to head to Borough Market. Borough is open Thursday through Sunday and is the best food market ever. It’s similar to Pike Place in Seattle, just without all the fish. There’s fresh cheese, bread, pastries, fruits, vegetables, you name it, it’s there. Katie and I ended up eating lunch there. I got a beef and vegetable pasty, which was so good! We found a fresh squeezed organic juice bar, and I got the best cran-apple juice I’ve ever had! I’m definitely taking my family there when they come. They have really fresh fruits and veggies everywhere for so cheap! After the market, we walked on the South Bank toward Tower Bridge, and then we decided that we wanted to go to the St. Paul’s area. We go to St. Paul’s every Monday for Evensong, but we hadn’t taken the official tour of the cathedral yet. We were about 2 hours early for Evensong, so we decided to take the tour and stay for Evensong since today was St. David’s Day. Speaking of St. David’s Day, was the google logo in America Welsh themed? It was here in the UK and It was really cool looking! I hope y’all got to see it too. If not, I tracked it down so you could see it too!

Getting to look around in the crypt was really cool! I saw all kinds of famous people’s tombstones, including a lot of people I’ve studied in History and Architecture. Pretty cool! I think my favorite was Charles Hubert Parry, who wrote some of my favorite classical choral music, including “I Was Glad” which is what Kate walked down the aisle to last year. We also climbed the 257 steps up to the Whispering Gallery at the base of the dome. It was cool to see the interior from so high up with such a good view, but I’m not the biggest fan of heights and railing, so I refused to get close to the railing. It was really neat though! After that, we stayed for Evensong, and that was fun to celebrate Wales.

Tomorrow the Student Assistants are taking us on a tour of the Olympic Park area, which is sure to be a good time. Sara Ashley and I are also going egg hunting. London is having its first annual “Big Egg Hunt” this year, and SA and I are competing in it. It’s like the painted animals we have all over America, but it’s Easter Eggs, and there are 270 of them all over London. We’re trying to find as many as we can! We already found one, the Union Jack egg, right down the street from us. I’ll keep you updated on our progress! Dydd gwyl dewi hapus! (Happy St. David’s Day!)

Song of the Blog: Helter Skelter by the Beatles

My Heart’s in the Highlands (Scotland, Part Three)

Hello! This is the final chapter of LDM’s Adventures in Scotland! Last time I left you at Loch Ness, about to head to Cairngorm Mountain. Before the mountains, we stopped for a quick lunch in town, which was really good! It wasn’t too cold outside, but it had gotten a little misty, so I was glad I was prepared with all my waterproof gear!

Iain drove us to the base of the Cairngorm Mountain Centre, which is home to the Cairngorm Mountain Railway. This mountain is one of the few skiing locations in the UK, so it’s always hopping with visitors at this time of year. It’s located just outside of the little town of Aviemore, which is a really cool little resort town! The Mountain Railway is a funicular railway that takes you from the base of the mountain up to the top, where you can visit the mountain visitors’ centre, or ski down the mountain. The railway replaced the old chairlift, and at 11mph can get skiiers up to the top of the mountain in just 8 minutes! It’s pretty neat. Once you get to the top of the mountain, they have a viewing platform where you’re supposed to be able to see beautiful Scottish mountains for miles. Unfortunately, when we got to the top, we were in the clouds. It was really foggy and windy that day, so we couldn’t see anything but white. But I still wanted to take a picture to commemorate the experience, so here I am on the top of the mountain. The map behind me is what you’re supposed to be seeing behind me. My Medusa like hairstyle shows how windy it was. It was about -15 degrees Celsius up there with winds blowing about 20mph, so it was quite the experience! I don’t think I’ll be hiking in any subzero temperatures anytime soon.

After we made the trip outside, Jessica and I decided to thaw out in the cafe. On the ride up, they told us to visit the cafe for its infamous hot chocolate, so of course we had to try it. Let me tell you, it was the best hot chocolate I’ve had in a long time! It was so good that I wanted to pose with it to remember the Cairngorm hot chocolate for years to come. I loved the mug so much that I wanted to steal it, but I didn’t don’t worry. Hot chocolate and shortbread was just the treat we needed before heading back down the mountain.

After visiting the top of Cairngorm, we headed back into Aviemore to check into our hostel, which was right in the middle of town. On Saturday night, I shared a room with Sara Ashley, Jessica, and Katie, which was fun. We got settled in and unpacked for the night, and by then we were all hungry. We saw an Italian restaurant on our way into town, so we decided to trek out and eat there. It was really good! They had an all you can eat buffet, but we decided that we would be better off just getting the regular meals. I had really good fettucine, so I was satisfied. After dinner we headed back to the hostel and hung out in the Lounge for a while with our other IES friends which was fun. We played pool and cards and watched “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” on the BBC. The boys had never seen it before, and it was really funny to see how interested they were in it and what their opinions were on the crazy outfits they wear. I think they all have a new guilty pleasure! Katie and SA decided to go check out the nightlife in Aviemore, but Jessica and I were absolutely exhausted so we decided to stay in and just chat which was nice and relaxing.

The next morning, Jessica and I got up for breakfast pretty early to beat the rush. I just wore my pajamas and socks. As soon as we got in the dining room, the fire alarm went off in the whole building and we had to go stand outside in the freezing rain. Needless to say, I was not pleased. But after some hot tea and toast I was feeling much better. Sunday was our last day in Scotland, and it was really hard to believe that we had already come to the end of our trip. But, we still had one last adventure to complete before leaving the Highlands. We saved the best for last in my opinion. Iain drove us outside of town to the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, home to the only reindeer population in the UK. Reindeer were originally indigenous to the UK, but over time became extinct. in 1952, a Swede named Mikel Utzi reintroduced reindeer to Scotland and built a reserve for these amazing animals. IES decided that a bunch of college students would have fun being able to see the reindeer, so they scheduled a visit for us.

I dont think they realized how big of a hit the reindeer would really be. Our ranger guide, Jack, took us on a hike into the reindeer habitat, armed with reindeer food and treats. Once we got up there, there were no reindeer to be seen. Jack started doing this really weird yelling call, and magically, the reindeer started to appear over the hill. Imagine in the Lion King when all the hyenas start stampeding and you can start to get an idea of what this was like. I couldn’t believe that I was coming face to face with Santa’s pets!!! All my childhood dreams were coming true. Jack handed out handfuls of reindeer food, and then we got to FEED them! As you can see from the picture above, reindeer are probably the friendliest animals I’ve ever encountered, besides Ellie and Ollie. I think that Ellie and Ollie would be fast friends with the reindeer. They’re really gentle and sweet, and I had the best time hanging out with them! They just come right up to you and are not shy at all.  I think everybody on my trip would agree that this was hands down the greatest experience of the trip. I would say it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, and I’m so glad I got to have it!

I just couldn’t resist throwing in a few more pictures of me with the reindeer, especially since I got to feed them! Did you know that reindeer shed their antlers each year and grow new ones? Pretty cool, I know. After about three hours running around and playing with the reindeer, it was time to head back down the mountain. One added bonus of going up to the reindeer habitat was that we got to see the view that we were supposed to see from the top of the mountain the day before! It looks a lot like North Carolina, and reminded me so much of the view off of the porch at Stonewitch. I felt right at home! Maybe that’s why so many Scottish people moved to the Carolinas.

I had two people taking pictures of me, so the pictures of me feeding the reindeer are actually the same picture from two different angles! You can actually see both girls taking my picture in each picture, which is kind of funny. As you can see from the pictures, it was really warm that day, so I didn’t have to wear a coat at all! It’s finally starting to warm up in Great Britain, which we’re all so grateful for. After the Reindeer Centre, we got back on the bus and headed toward Inverness, which was our last stop of the trip. We got into town and had time to eat a leisurely lunch and look around town for a while. We found a restaurant with a really good meal deal, and it included the best dessert, creme brulee!!! It wasn’t as good as Dad’s, but it was still tasty! I particularly enjoyed Inverness because I’ve recently discovered that Kevin McKidd, who plays Owen Hunt on Grey’s Anatomy, is from the Inverness area.

After lunch, we got back on the bus to go to the Inverness Airport. The Inverness Airport is so small! It has one terminal and three gates. I checked in and checked my bag and everything seemed to be going smoothly, until I got to security. When I walked through the scanner, the buzzer went off, so they had to pat me down. I didn’t really care, but that was the most aggressive pat down I’ve ever gotten! They even checked the bottom of my feet. I’m glad they’re obviously thorough with their security, but I don’t think I look like a terrorist. Oh well. I made it through finally, after EVERYONE in my program saw my exciting encounter with the Inverness TSA, and then we waited for a while for our plane.

We boarded the plane about 30 minutes before takeoff, which was mass chaos. In Europe, when you book a plane ticket, you don’t book a particular seat. It’s a free for all basically. You have to pay several pounds extra to have an assigned seat. Since it’s a free for all, it takes FOREVER for everyone to get on the plane and find somewhere to sit. Jessica and I ended up sitting with Raza, who is one of the 12 boys in our program. He’s really nice and we had a lot of fun chatting with him on the flight home. It took about an hour and and a half to get back to London. We took a bus from the airport back to LRH and finally made it home around 8:30. Then it was straight back to homework for class the next day!

I had the time of my life in Scotland, and I would definitely say that I left a part of my heart in the Highlands. It is the most beautiful country I have ever had the privilege to visit, and I am so proud to be able to claim it as my homeland! Just look at that beautiful stream with the sun shining on it. Wouldn’t you love to wake up to that kind of landscape every day?! I know I would! I would say that Canada and Scotland definitely run a close race for my favorite country. My Scottish pride definitely rose to a new level during this trip. I can’t wait to go back and explore more of the country, especially all the Douglas and Davidson parts of Scotland. I hope you enjoyed reading all about my trip to Scotland! The places I talked about today are points F (Aviemore) and G (Inverness) on the map. I wish you could have all been there with me. Cheers!

Song of the Blog: My Heart’s in the Highlands