vacation from a vacation?

tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow!!!!

Break is here after hell week of work and tomorrow the roommates and I are off to Italy..woooo...we plan to do the P diet while we are there...Pizza Pasta and Pastries....oh and gelato of course

I had a test and three papers due this week... my test was an essay test in art history, my advertising paper was on whether or not 30-second commercials will soon be obsolete, my graphics paper was comparing three different news programs here in the UK, and my psych paper was a fake report on a client using a specific approach we learned in class. Yeah...fun times.

I have a paper due in art history the tuesday after we get back which is stupid and stinks..maybe ill start it tonight?? prob not...

Yesterday I went to Wimbledon with my soc. of sport class. It was pretty cool but looked so different compared to when it is set up for matches...there aren't stands around most of the courts so they just look like patches of grass..that are extremely well kept. Wimbledon is sponsored by Rolex so all the clocks on the premises are from them..they are huge and gold and so fancy. loved it. My camera died when I got there but i'm gonna steal my friends photos so no worries.

well off to pack and get my life together and what not... ahh im soooo psyched!!!

STUDYING abroad

ugh...midterms...

next week i have 4 papers due and a test...no fun. I don't think they should have midterms abroad.
nothing really exciting this week...just recuperating from dublin and getting my work done, or at least attempting to.  Went for a few runs as study breaks.  Tomorrow morning I am going for breakfast with my psych professor (and whoever else in the class joins) to go over our papers... we are traveling out of central london towards his house in a more residential area...and he is buying allw e can eat : ) should be interesting.  Sunday some of the roomies and I may take a visit to a market before our last cram in of studying.

Yesterday after my 2-5 class we were detained in school for another hour or so.  There was a bomb scare in the tube station down the street from school, the one we take to get home.  The school highly suggested we not leave the building until further notice....everyone panicked a little bit but we felt safe at school.  Ended up just being an abandoned package in the station and they were being extra cautious.  I mean all the blocks in the area were roped off and everything...at least we know they are prepared and aware.  Thank god it was nothing, Kylie and I still decided to walk home instead of taking the tube...it was a long 45 min walk.  When we got home laura and flynn were freaking out about us so they had chicken noodle soup and bottles of wine ready for us on the table...we had a nice family dinner to calm everyone down.

Well back to studying... but I saw this quote in our hostel in dublin and i really liked it so thought i'd share.

We can all FLY as HIGH as the DREAMS we DARE to LIVE...... Unless we are a Chicken

Luck of the Irish

Took Dublin by storm this weekend!

Flew out thursday night...so proud of myself cause I did it all alone...it went very smoothly.
London tube -> airport express bus -> ryanair plane -> airport bus ->walk to hostel
Talk about transportation, jeez louise.  Once I navigated my way to the hostel I put my stuff down and changed then went to meet up with the crew.  Took a cab to our friends house ( two girls from Syracuse are in grad school in Dublin).  We all went to a pub that was crazy...irish soccer, i mean football, fans screaming and yelling and spilling beer everywhere...loved the spirit.

Friday morning our friends who are studying abroad in florence came!!! They snuck up on us in the hostel lobby and we all screamed like 5 year olds in excitement. The hostel was really nice and in a great location, they let us all stay in the same room...plus we had one italian women that didn't speak english (kinda felt bad for her) By the time we all got caught up and ready to go it was lunch time so we went to a cute place for fish and chips and some bulmers cider..pure love. We then began sight seeing...did the tourist bus thing hop on and off. We saw a lot of really cool things including St. Patricks cathedral and trinity college.  Trinity is gorgeous, it looks like Hogwarts from harry potter.  Our next stop was of course GUINESS. It was just a huge museum of the history of the beer and how it was made...a few free tastings...a tutorial on how to pour the perfect pint...and then a beautiful view of dublin from the 7th story. Then back to the hostel and got ready for the night...got dinner at a nearby pub...Alex and I decided we had to be adventurous and try the traditional Irish food so we got Guiness and steak pie with a baked potato....not too shabby if i do say so myself...we then went to the girls house and then out to Temple Bar.  We realized temple bar is actually an area not just a bar but there is The Temple Bar which is a bar and it was just a huuuuuugggeee pub.....really cool...had an awesome night with everyone.

Next morning we met up with everyone and went to Howth a small fishing village in the suburbs of Dublin... there were birds and seal lions and pretty water and hills...we saw a boat named Syracuse!!! We went to a seaside restaurant to warm up and eat (the wind on the coast made it sooo chilly) everyone got really good seafood... i got fried calamari and a veggie burger...then we headed back to the city and check out Grafton street which is the shopping street of Dublin.  You can't drive on it and there are street performers everywhere, so cool.   We met up with Lauras friend who lives in Bellfast who came to see her...he used to do a foreign exchange program and would spend summers with her family.  He came with his friend and their accents were so hard to understand...they explained to us the fighting between north and south ireland, never knew.  We went to the Porterhouse for dinner which is a famous pub/restaurant.  We had garlic bread and thin crust pizza : )  then off to the pub crawl.  hahaha. we went to 4 different pubs around dublin and ended at a club...free entry, some free drinks, and many specialty drink offers. It was def a good time.

Theta Does Dublin.

Next morn slowlyyyy awoke, packed up, went to the famous Kilmainham Jail.  It was interesting to learn about and really neat to see.  After that we had to part way from all our friends : ( it was so good to see everyone and catch up on everything in person.  I love that we can all get together and pick up where we left off, there is never that awkward first few hours re-meet up.. i love it, i love them.  So we said goodbye and the londoners were off.  We got on the airport bus, had not problems at the airport and easily went through...got some yummy frozen yogurt while waiting..and then hopped on our easy 1 hour 15 min flight.  Then another bus and a tube and finally home.


im exhausted. i have no voice. i loved dublin.
(all pics are already up on fbook)

Keep Calm and Carry On

monday- kind of just got my life together from this weekend...cleaned, grocery,shopped,class etc.
There wasnt enough time for the presentation soph and I were supposed to give in class!!! woo haha move that to next week.
tuesday/museum day...nothing to exciting...studied portraiture...went home for a nice run after...felt so good..there is something here about squirrels..people are fascinated by them..its disgusting..they literally go up to them and feed them and let them crawl up their legs..makes me wanna puke..or just shout rabies at them...i made great tomato bean soup for dinner..yes it was just a can..but it was easy and only 50 pents haha.
wednesday-had class forever...learned something interesting in adv. though: Why did Steve Jobs make the symbol for his computers the apple with a bite out of it?? Well the father of modern computers..Julius Turing.. was a homosexual during WWII and was highly discriminated against for it...he ended up committing suicide by eating a poinsoned apple...steven jobs then made the apple symbol in his honor...pretty cool huh.

Now today is thursday and i have class in ten min then am going straight to Dublin!!! wooo cant wait..hopefully the airport isn't too bad. oh and fyi the school set up a My parents are freaking out and I'm not sure what to tell them... Q&A Session about the terrorist threats haha...

update sunday night after my weekend in ireland

Paris....Cheese, Bread, Peace and Love

What a weekend!!!!


I don't even think I can begin to describe everything that went on this weekend but I will try to sum it all up


Arrived in Paris thursday night on the Eurostar train (a cool experience in itself) and took about a ten minute walk to the hostel.  We stayed at a place called Peace and Love...it was so funny.  The lobby was a bar, purple neon lights and all. The room was not bad, much better than i expected...3 beds and our own bathroom. We went out to a little piano bar that night getting pumped for the upcoming festivities of the weekend and...


I GOT A POINT ON THE STREETS OF PARIS!!!!!
the ultimate win...ran into a guy on the streets that I graduated high school with. How crazy!?!? We chatted a little bit and talked about how small the world really is.


Friday morning we found an amazing pastry breakfast place...quiche, crossaint, tarts, everythinggg galore. loved it. We then figured out the metro system...which people in France just hop over with no problem.  They dont pay and just jump over the ticket turning thing nbd.  Anyways off to the eiffel tower which you simply can not explain or understand at all until you have seen it for yourself.  It is huge! We walked around the area for two hours or so.  There are a million black guys that are illegally selling little tower keychains and what not...we saw the cops come and all at once the men started to run away..it was so funny.  After the tower we went to Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur.  Moulin Rouge is the red light district of Paris and extremely weird and sexy.....so weird...idk how i really felt about that.  But the Sacre Coeur is the Sacred Heart church with an amazing view and was really pretty on the inside...you have to climb up so many steps to get there though...gotta work off the crepe i got before we went : ) nutella and banana yumm.   The street leading up to the church was pure cheesy tourist shops.  After that we went to Notre Dame which is also the center of Paris.  


Then I met the bday boy for dinner!!!!!!!!!  We met across from the Galerias lafayette and hung out in the hotel for a bit... my feet were killing me from all the walking! The hotel was really nice...and the bathrooms had awesome wall paper haha...then we went to an italian restaurant across the street....salad, pasta, pizza, and of course tiramisu! It was delish and who can say they spent their dads 53rd bday in Paris!?  He then waited for a cab with me...cabs are impossible to get in Paris...especially in the rain. Back to the hostel and out for the night with the crew...3 girls 4 boys...we went to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées area and saw the arc de triumph lit up at night.


Saturday morning we went back to our bfast place but of course had to try different things.  Then we went to Jim Morrisons grave... i'm not that into music and dont know that much about him...but this graveyard was one of the most amazing things ever.  It was huge (took us a half hour to even find morrisons grave) and each grave was detailed and looked like a piece of art.  Morrisons grave was simple...had a lot of flowers..and a really cool tree next to it that people come and sign and write lyrics on...other famous people are buried there too...oscar wilde and some others. Then off to the lourve!!! We got in free with our student ids and didnt have to wait long at all.  The museum is massive... I never thought there could be a museum that large...jeez.  We hit the famous areas and others along the way...Nike, Venus de Milo, code of hammurabi, and of course good old mona.  Mona really wasnt that great...and she wouldn't stop staring at me  haha ( I know I am sooo funny).  But all in all I really enjoyed the lourve and seeing so many different things in it.  My friends and I were trying to apply our new knowledge from art class and identify things...we were occasionally successful.  I wish all the captions weren't in stupid french.


Speaking of stupid french...they really don't like us and are really rude when we speak english to them.  We got on the metro after the museum and had our first gypsy experience..AHHH. It was so gross and scary but actually really cool to witness.  A nice french lady (knowing we were stupid americans) pointed them out to us when they got on the metro.  They came in a pact and had the worst body odor i have ever smelt in my life.  They stood there and did whatever...got off and got on the carraige behind us...then next stop got back on ours...then got off....they wre laughing and cackling ahhh it was so insane to watch it all happen...people are so messed up. 
We got some lunch....they have sandwiches callled croque masseur...its like a grilled ham and cheese sandwich which is amazing in itslef but it most of the time is topped off with a fried egg on top...yumm..(almost as bad a fish and chips for the tummy).  We then went to the top of the Galerias Lafayette for an amazinggggdont worry ).  We spent an hour or so up there just staring off kind of not believing where we are.  Then we went to Napoleons tomb but it was closed for the day...so we went back to the hostel rested our feet for a bit...got some onion soup for din (its just onion soup there not french onion soup, fyi) and then went out for the night. Went out near the eiffel tower so we got to see it lit up at night which was beyond believable. 


Sunday...packed up and put our luggage in a room downstairs (kinda sketch but owell) It was gorgeous out!!! (dad might have brought the bad weather?) Went to our bfast place...then to the Musee D'Orsay.  Since it was the first sunday of the month all museums in the city were free! The line wasn't too bad but the museum was under some renovations which was kinda stinky.  But we got to see a Van Gogh temporary exhibit which was really neat...there were a lot of beautiful impressionists paintings. There was also a really cool model of the city that was under glass in the floor of the museum.  We then had time to go back to the Arc De Triumph during the day and really see it and explore that area...we had extra time till our train so we walked around for a bit then sat along the river and chatted..it was so nice and relaxing...


our train was delayed a half hour but wasn't a big deal (we also walked to the wrong train station first) ... and once we got back to london we were told there were terrorist threats here in europe..awesome.  At least I am home safe..exhausted but safe. (did i just call edgware rd. london home?)


Overall Paris was amazing...I never want to see ham cheese and bread again...and I am starting to feel very cultured.


Congrats if you just read this entire thing. Pictures will be posted tomorrow.


Au Revoir