Last Day. Biggest Sad Face ever.

So today is Friday, May 29th. It is 9:45pm as I write this. This means that I have 9 hours left in London before I have to leave to head to the airport. I cannot believe I just burned through 4 months. Where did the time go, seriously? I realize that I have had some amazing experiences but I have this weird feeling like tomorrow I am not going to leave. Tomorrow feels like it is just another weekend trip and I will be back here Monday morning. Do you ever get that? While I love all the people back home (there's no easy way to say this without offending people) but I don't want to go home. Going home means this semester has come to end, that it is officially over. That starting Monday I have to head back to my summer job. That this summer has begun and thus starts the count down until the end of college and furthermore the closure on a stage of my life. It bums me out to be honest. Peter Pan was right, growing up isn't fun and why would you want to?

Alrighty now that I have turned this into a cheesy editorial I will move on.

This past week I have been trying to do the last couple of things on my to-do list and revisit some of my favorite places. Yesterday I went to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. I had been to neither of these and they sounded like fun. The Natural History Museum was cool but just another extention of 3rd grade social studies. It contained information that I had already learned a million times over so I stuck to looking at the displays instead. IT had all kinds of displays: minerals, fossils, animals, and bunch of other things. I thought most of the displays were cool-the dinosaur stuff being my favorite. They had an actualy dinosaur only exhibit but the queue was rather long so I opted not to go in. The museum had animal which was more like walking through a zoo but with specimens with empty souls. There were tons of taxidermed animals. While a child would love this I actually found it quite sad. Just the fact that these were dead animals stuffed and put on display--i don't know, it just made me sad. I think it is the fact that my mother is an animal lover and that growing up in my household was like being a part of dr. dolittle's world that I felt this way. Seeing the staple stitches on the giraffe's stomach where they inserted the foam and stuffing is what did me in. This bummed me out a bit so I decided it was time to go. I had been there close to 2 hours and saw what I wanted to. Then I went to the Sciene Museum-thinking it would be a larger version of Robot World in the Dells. But it wasn't it had some early models of inventions likehe printing press, a loom, early automotives and space shuttles. But other than that there wasn't much so it was a bit of a let down but still cool.

This morning Dani Sam and I went to have our last meal in London. We woke up and went and had full-english breakfast. Delicious, as always and I am definitely going to miss it. I didn't really fell like going to anopther museum so Dani and I opted for going to Hyde Park and laying around there for a while. It was a gorgeous hot sunny day so I soaked up as much sun as I could. I ended up taking close to a 2 hour nap there as well. After some much needed lounging, Dani and I walked to Buckingham Palace, a few blocks away and then strolled up to the National Gallery. Trafalgar Square was very busy today so we jsut stopped for a second and then head to Leicester Square and Covent Garden (Theatreland). Also so busy so we walked around the block and headed back to Nido.

Here I have been just doing some finishing touches to packing and will prob go to bed soo nsince I have to get up so early and head to Heathrow Airport. I will be back in Chicago tomorrow at 2pm central time. Crazy stuff. Not looking forward to the almost 9 hr. flight. Not fun.

List of things I will miss most from London:
1. My friends from here.

2. Kebabs, Crown Fish, and Tesco (they kept me fed this semester)

3. The parks. (Hyde, Regent, Green, St. James, Highbury)

4. The diversity of people.

5. Walking around and seeing history left and right.

6. The tube

7. Dani talking in her sleep (quite entertaining)

8. Sam turning every word into a plural (Tescos, Convent Gardens)

9. Mike's random catch phrases ("These beans are bomb!")

10. Lady Gaga marathons and the "downstairs"

See you London, you were Amazing!

And see all of you guys soon. Thanks for reading the blog too, made the writing worth it.

:)

Wicked

So yesterday I woke up at 6am to go wait in a queue for Wicked tickets. In London, at the Wicked theatre, they have this thing where everyday, when the box office opens, they sell the entire front row for only 25 pounds. The normal price in this section of the theatre is 75 pounds. So for a third of the price you can get the best seats in the house. Having never seen the play but loved the music, I wanted to try and get these seats. So Dani and I awoke to head down to the theatre. The box office opens at 10am but we wanted to beat everyone and be at the front of the line--so 1. we could get front row and 2. to get front row center. Well we got down to the box office at 7:30ish and no one else was there. Winner! This was great, except it was freezing cold and rainy. Typical, not great, London weather. So we picked a spot outside on the steps and waited it out. It was so cold I couldnt even say. At around 8:15 we took turns going to get some breakfast. Up until about 9/ 9:15 we were the only ones in the queue. We felt kind of like idiots really. Finally one more guy showed up to join us. We talked to us a bit and we found out that we had showed up at the right time because usually people start showing up when we did, it was just a slow day. So that was reassuring. And after him a person here and there would show up until 10. The box office finally opened and Dani and I were the first in line. This was amazing. We got the tickets 2 for us and 1 for our friend Sam that couldnt come wait in line with us. We got the tickets and to our excitement we got the 3 seats that were dead center! How cool is that?! On top of the great seats the show was great. We were close enough that we saw every detail on the costumes and all of the facial expressions by the performers. I have never been that close before, I prob. never will. It was just a great way to see the show. I love musicals and this one is def. one of my favorites. If you get a chance to go see it-do.

Oxford

So as my time in London is drawing to a close, Dani Sam and I are in denial. While I love all of you, I am not ready to leave London. This city is so great and I have had so many amazing experiences that I am going to miss.

Monday, Dani Sam and I went to Oxford, home of the famous university and many other things. We found extremely cheap train tickets that cost about $18 for a return ticket. So we headed up for a day trip. The day went pretty smoothly travel wise adn with my past history that was a gift itself. The train left at 10:22A and took about an hour. I napped most of the time. We arroaved and headed off. None of us did any special research as in what there was to do we just wanted to wander and we did. We started off with heading to the city center. This city seemed rather small when compared to London, as most cities would and do. We walked down there major shopping street and saw up ahead a tall building and decided to head there. We arrived at the Christ Church (also a university) and saw that the building was shut off to the public but it had a huge open, park like area. We had some great sunny weather and decided to walk around. It was so gorgeous and the building was beautiful. We learned that the author of Alice in Wonderland actually was the math professor at the college in his hay day. Alice was the Dean's daughter and he would tell her stories as well. Fun fact. Another fun fact is that the Thames River, in London, actually runs up through Oxford too. Cool stuff. We wondered how long it would take to travel by boat. After waling through here and seeing some cool wild life (a few families of ducks with fluffy babies), we headed to the covered market that Oxford is known for. But when we arrived we saw that it was closed due to the bank holiday, which is similar to our memorial day. Bummer. So we then just wandered down some random streets and came across another university and walked onto the campus and sat down on a grass patch. Very relaxing that is until a woman came up an asked us not to sit on the grass. I guess it was the kind of grass that is just for looking not enjoying. Which was obvious when we thought about it later--I mean this grass was green, nicely kept, underneath a sunny sky.....oh wait that sounds like every other grass patch on the planet. We thought it was dumb that you weren't allowed to sit there but moved on anyway. From here we went and walked through another park and decided to stop and get ice cream and popsicle. My treat was of the tropical strawberry variety and I enjoyed it quite much. After hanging around there we went back towards town and stopped and got a snack at a local place. I got a cookie bar and iced tea. Delicious. This led to more aimless wandering and my purchasing of some surf shorts and a book. I bought the book "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs, the same guy who wrote "Running With Scissors." I am about 85 pages in and love it. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a new book to read. After spending time at Borders we had to head back to the train station to go back to London. The ride home was smooth and easy. Love it. I was glued to my book the whole ride anyway. Very cool city, glad I got to see it.

Dinner Time Sadness

The following is what happens when a person does not know how to cook. These were the dinners that Dani and I prepared for ourselves yesterday. It was too funny so I had to share. I bet you can guess which one was mine. HA

Yay!

I just handed in my last project! Woot Woot! No more classes-now we can have some fun. :)

End of the year Jolly

For the end of our stay in London, the school puts on one last shindig for us. For our end of the year party they took us out to eat and then a ride on the London Eye. I had been looking forward to this all semester but now that it was here, I find myself wondering where the time went. It did have a cool view of the city but we didn't have the best weather. Nothing terrible just some typical London haze. These are some pictures from then.

Glasgow

In order to complete my travels throughout the UK, I had to visit Scotland. Lucky for me, Alyssa is studying in Glasgow which gave me the perfect excuse to visit. The only downside is that my final project for my web design class is due next week, so trying to find time that I can leave and not really work on it was a bit hard. So I left for Glasgow Sunday night, my bus left at 11:00pm. The bus ride was 8hrs. or so, sounds like a ton of fun right? Well no, I will be honest, I wanted to kill myself, or others, after about 2 hrs. The beginning of the ride started out fine, I had a window seat the and one next to me was empty. But there was an odd couple sitting in front of me, old people, and children present. Individually not bad, but combined-not my favorite. I swear, if the people around me could have heard my inner thoughts they would've thought I was a crazy, homicidal maniac. It got worse halfway through when one girl decided to play musical seats and asked to sit next to me. As uninviting as I tried to make myself look, she still had the guts to ask me and I am not the kind of person who says no-so a seat buddy I gained. Yay (big sarcasm). I finally arrived to Glasgow and waited a few minutes for Alyssa. A familiar face. Yes! We walked to the nearest subway and took it to a stop closer to her flat. I have never been on such a small subway in my life! It was so tiny. Heightwise if you were above 6 ft. you'd have to duck to get in. Crazy stuff. It is quite the trek to her flat, let me tell ya. Not anything terrible but a lot longer than I would have guessed and dragging my suitcase up a hill was not the funnest thing I have ever experienced. But we arrived safely. I was incredibly tired so opted to take a nap, Alyssa agreed. We napped for a few hours and finally decided to get up and see some of the city. She went and showed me around part of her campus. It was gorgeous and the main building looked like a castle out of a Harry Potter film. The campus is also on one of the high points of the city so there was an amazing view on the edge. I could've sat there all afternoon but Alyssa insisted on showing me other places, equally as cool. We then went to go meet some her friends at a bar called Nude. They were serving mojitos for 2 pounds. It was cool to finally meet some of the people I had been hearing stories about-and they were all very nice people. From there we went to a pub called Curlers. There was a football match going on, the place was pretty busy, and there wasn't a lack of men. We hung out here for the rest of the night. It was very entertaining to say the least-watching the people surrounding me was very fun. One of Alyssa's friends sat and went on and on about how much I look like Anne Hathaway. I think it was for at least 30 min. Seriously, I get it, yes I kind of look like her at times, let it go people. Then we just headed home. Tuesday we woke up around 10 or 11. Her friends planned to have a picnic in a park, Kelvingrove. I was very lucky with weather while I was in Glasgow so the picnic was really fun. It was sunny and very green-loved it. Alyssa and some of her friends started to play frisbee-I chose to sun bathe. Afterwards, Alyssa took me down to the city center and showed me around there. Alyssa wanted to do a little shopping so we bummed around some stores. She bought a pair of pants and a shirt, I was content with being a consultant. She then showed me St. George's Square. It was cool but there was construction being done on it so it was hard to appreciate. By that time it was starting to get really cold so we headed back to Alyssa's and hung out there for the night. We went to this website called "textsfromlastnight.com" It was hilarious. You should all give it a look if you haven't already. Wednesday we slept in and by we I mean I woke up at 9:30 and Alyssa did so at 1. I pretty much just entertained myself via youtube for four hours. Don't get me wrong though-it's officially my favorite past time. When we finally headed off to great the day, Alyssa took my to the Cathedral and the necropolis. Both were really cool. The necropolis had an amazing view of the city. Even better it was another sunny day. The necropolis was my favorite thing to see. I know it sounds weird but I always thought cemeteries were cool and pretty--in a dark, emo rocker sort of way. So walking around the different grave stones was really cool. Yes I get how disturbing that sounds. From here we had to walk back towards Alyssa's campus to meet up with some of her friends and partake in what they call "Secret Wednesdays." Secret Wednesdays is where Alyssa and three of her friends go to this bar the G.U. to have one pound drinks. It is called secret wednesdays because they don't tell all of their friends of their ritual. They hoard the drinks to themselves--sounds like the startings of some great alcoholics eh? Alyssa has me worried. From there we just went back to Alyssa's flat for a couple of hours before I had to go to the bus station and take a night bus back to London. Glasgow was really fun and a nice city, but I was starting to miss London. The ride back was fine except I didn't get any sleep and was very cold on the bus. So i got back to my room around 7:30am and slept until 4pm. I had to get up at 4 so that I could get ready to go to the end of the year jolly that the school was putting on for us. Details to follow.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Happy Birthday!

For everyone else: Yes my mom is lucky and has her birthday 3 days from mother's day. Yes, I like photoshop-this is what I do. Cute right?

Mum's Day

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM!

Funny joke

My aunt, Jody, just emailed me this joke. I thought it was funny and decided to share:

Hymn #365
This is a hoot, but I suspect the minister didn't appreciate it.
A minister was completing a temperance sermon. With great emphasis he said, 'If I had all the beer in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river.'
With even greater emphasis he said, 'And if I had all the wine in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river.'
And then finally, shaking his fist in the air, hesaid, 'And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river.'
Sermon complete, he sat down.
The song leader stood very cautiously and announced, with a smile, nearly laughing, 'For our closing song,Let us sing Hymn #365, 'Shall We Gather at the River.'

Hope it made you smile :) Do you think this idea should be pitched to Noah's Ark? The lazy river could always use a redesign.

Art, Comments and Scotland. Oh My.

So nothing too special too report. There is an art supply store that is roughly 10 blocks or so from my building and today they had student day where everything was 15% off for students even on items already discounted and with ID you got this cool bag and a couple of free items. So today I went and checked it out. It was a great store, really. So I dabbled and bought some new amazing paint brushes that are absolutely gorgeous, marker pens, and a sketch book. Then when I checked out I got this cool canvas tote with a free tube of paint, sketch pencil, and notepad. How cool is that? Well it pretty much made my day.

Other news- well I know some of you were having troubles commenting on the blog and such and I finally checked it out and made it so anyone should be able to post. you wont need to make an account at all. So feel free to do so if you wish.

And Dani's parents are getting in today, so she is pretty excited. She's actually in the process of picking them up from the airport.

Sunday I am going to Scotland, finally, to visit with my friend Alyssa. The same friend I spent part of spring break with. This will be my last trip while here and lets me complete in seeing all the countries of the UK. Excited but I have a ton of work to get done before I go. So I am going to start that now.

Ta Ta

Style?

So I have been swaying back and forth over the past couple of months about whether or not I wanted to get bangs. Well, today I said what the heck, it'll grow back if I don't like it. So now I have bangs, lets hope its not like the summer before my senior year, which is when I first tried these out. My parents didn't approve--especially because my senior pictures were only a couple weeks away. Oh well.

You're still the same to me

Well there's nothing new to report really. Just bored and sick of writing the mound of papers that I have to finish. Dani along with all of my friends here, except Jack, have gone away for the weekend and while my friends have flown off to France and Spain, I remain here. I have found I have an addiction to YouTube--a website where you can watch pretty much anything you can imagine; stuff from illegally posted TV shows to a short clip of a walrus doing sit-ups (yes this exists and I have watched it a few times). But I find that even that along with Facebook, email, and itunes cannot entertain me. You may ask yourself why I am not out exploring the city, mean I am in London for pete's sake, but I am not allowing myself to do anything fun until I get my work done. Well, I am a big procrastinator and even my procrastination is no fun. I mean I am writing this right now....so in essence I am procrastinating my procrastination--I live a sad life huh?
Anywho I thought I would add in some fun facts about myself just for kicks (yes I am that bored) so here are 5 things you may not know about me, yes even you mom.

1. When I was in the 6th grade I wanted to be a professional boxer.
2. My first pet was a guinea pig named Oliver.
3. I've eaten a habenero pepper for a dare. Don't do it.
4. I own a '96 Thunderbird. jealous? ha
5. I once stayed up and watched the movie Good Burger in an all night marathon with my cousin Sara. We watched it 13 times.

Ok back to work for me.

Oh and yes the swine flu crisis has reached us here. It ridiculous and no I haven't caught it.