Paris!

Well I have just returned from my 6 day stay in the most amazing city North of Rome, that would be Paris! We had the greatest time in France it was such an amazing trip. I feel like we had so much time there that I was able to see everything that I wanted to. And I got to experience the true French culture and way of life. And while we're on that note I decided that not all of the French hate Americans. And that if you at least attempt to speak French to them they are much more willing to help you find whatever you are looking for. By the middle of the week I got very good at a select few phrases. These basically included: Where is the bathroom? Excuse Me! I want one Chocolate Croissant! Can you give me directions to the Metro? and Do you speak any English!...so pretty much only the essentials! haha- but seriously I had such an amazing time I absolutely loved Paris!
So we started off our first day by going to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery! Sounds weird and creepy to go to a graveyard as our first site in Paris but in reality this place is awesome! It is the most famous of cemetaries in all of France. People such as Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Jim Morrison, and Izadorra Duncan are buried there. So after spending a few hours walking around Pere Lachaise we headed over to Notre Dame Cathedral! It was by my favorite Cathedral we have seen since arriving in Europe. It was so ornate and not to mention massive! The glass windows inside of it were the most amazing that I have ever seen and it was really neat to read about the history behind the Cathedral. (And all of the gargoyles were prett awesome too!) Those two things were the main events of the day- however we couldn't retire to our hotel until we had seen the Eiffel Tour! It was perfect timing because right as we came out of the Metro stop at the tower it had began to sparkle... it lights up all sparkly for about 10 minutes every hour! So it was perfect timing and we saw the tour at its best!
The next day was a very long one for us. We started out at the Musee D'Orsay which was an incredible Museum that housed two of my favorite works of Art! The original Degas portrait of the Ballerinas in Dance Class and the Monet water Lillies painting! We spent alot of time in this museum before moving on to the Sacraceaux... (sounds like sock-ray-ker) So we walked about eight miles up hill to see this church that sat atop a hill in Montmarte! It was a beautiful walk although farther than we had originally anticipated it being! This church was gorgeous and located just up the street from the Moulin Rouge which was fun to see! But the day was long and we retired early in preparation for the fantastic Wednesday we had planned!
We woke up early and all met in the front of the Musee de Louvre!!! First off we went straight for the Louvre's most famous resident The Mona Lisa! I have heard people say that it is overrated but I absolutely loved her! The painting was small but it was so incredible to get to see in the flesh! Well what is there really to say about the Louvre- it was incredible!!! I saw so many things that I have studied about in art classes and I was so excited that it was hard to take it all in at once. So we just picked a list of ten major pieces that we wanted to see and focused on those. These included some Greek Statues such as The Venus de Milo, and paintings such as the Virgin on the Rocks! I won't bore you all with these details of art that you don't care about... Lets just say it was sufficiently the best morning of my life. So later we walked past the Royal Opera House where the story of the Phantom of the Opera stems from! And we went to the Rodin Museum... it was so nice to come to this place because it was very low key. Located in the heart of Paris, however it was serenely peaceful. It was in Rodin's estate and the grounds were beautifully kept with his bronze version of The Thinker right in the backyard!
Thursday was a more relaxed day... we went to the top of Notre Dame and got a great view of the city, and we did alot of window shopping! Walked down the Champs de Ellyses and basically wanted to cry at how beautiful all of the stores were! We ate better food than we have had in the last three months combined! I ate more pastries than anyone needs... but I figure it was fine because I was only in Paris once right!!!
Friday was a day for the kids in me and Amanda! We went to Disneyland Paris! And it was awesome! Actually to be perfectly honest in comparrison to California the park was tiny and kinda lacking in the rides... but we had such a fantastic time nonetheless!!! And the funniest thing was going on a ride such as Peter Pan and having Peter yelling in French at Captain Hook! Ha- good times! good times! So most of it was in both english and french but yeah it was just really funny! Well that brings us to saturday where we spent the whole day traveling back to London! And now I am sitting on my bed just reliving the whole week and kinda wishing that I was back in Gay old Paris! It was so incredible and I even picked up some French!!!

My Own Canterbury Tale

This last weekend was our designated "live-in" weekend. Basically everyone from the program leaves London from Thursday to Monday, going in groups of two, and lives with an English family for a few days. Our group was spread out all up and down England, while some even ventured into Ireland and Scotland. Mallory and I were heading off to Canterbury and the small town of Herne Bay.
When we arrived on Thursday evening we were picked up at the train station by our host woman Carly and her two year old son Joshua. She was friendly enough, and what could have been a horribly awkward car ride back to the house with a complete stranger turned out to be only mildly uncomfortable. I was just beginning to think that our weekend would be one of the more pleasant experiences when we arrived at the house, and walked through the front door only to see two obese cats gazing upwards at me. I subconsciously covered my throat to make sure it wasn't exposed to the horrible demons on the floor. You know they say that animals can sense fear... that's pretty much what was going through my head at the moment.
We got settled into our room and I decided to just try and stick it out at the allergy centralized home for the weekend. This family had invited two strange Americans to stay with them and I didn't want to seem rude or ungrateful. So we basically stayed away from the house as much as possible the next day. We went into Canterbury in the morning and stayed until almost midnight. It really was a beautiful place. There was adorable little neighborhoods with quaint looking homes that had been there for decades. And we had a good time seeing the Cathedral and all of the religious sites surrounding it. Also we did some shopping (naturally) and spent alot of time walking up and down High Street, going in little boutiques and walking round the market. That night we didn't want to go back to the cat house too early so we were wandering and just happened to come upon a local theatre house. And just our luck there happened to be student tickets available for that nights showing of To Kill A Mockingbird. And for only 5GBP! Wow, that's a steal of a deal! So we decided to brave the local thesbians and see the play.
Funny thing about To Kill A Mockingbird, it is set in the Deep South in America. Well being in a small town in Brittain we were shocked almost to tears and laughter when the show began and we were hit with a mixture of an English, southern accent. And at times it sounded extremely Australian... it was interesting to say the least. And I suppose it was good acting by most in the cast to be able to pull off the accents. However, for the unlucky actors that couldn't afford a speech coach they made immense fools of themselves!
We got back to the house and I knew the second we walked in doors that it was going to be a rough night. My allergies had escalated immensly and to make a long story short I had a wicked asthma attack in the middle of the night. My lack of breathing got so bad in fact that I stuck my head out of our bedroom window for about a half hour. Which would've been no problem if there didn't happen to be a crazy wind and rain storm raging about. It's safe to say that I didnt get much sleep that night. So to sum up me and Mallory came back to London Saturday morning.
So here I sit on this Sunday night, with only two girls in my dormroom instead of the usual twelve. And I think I have almost forgotten what silence sounds like. It is very nice and relaxing to have a bit of alone time!
I'll finish this story with the most exciting of news! Just as a little back up for those who don't know... me and Sam have "reconnecting" if you will, since I've come out to London. We e-mail and keep eachother up to date on whats new in our lives. So the other day he called me to say that at work he saw on the internet some incredibly cheap tickets to London and simply couldn't pass them up! So Sam will be coming out here at the end of March!!! Yeah!!! I can't wait for him to come see my new lifestyle in this incredible city! Well I posted some new pictures for you guys to see... I'll try and update them a litte more frequently this week! And that's about it for my Canterbury Tale.

The Dreaded Day Trip

Here in London we've gotten on a pretty regular schedule. Every Wednesday we have a day trip where we get on a coach early in the morning and do not return until late that evening. These trips are usually neat; we've gone places like Oxford, and Cambridge, and Brighton. All have been really cool, but they always take all day to travel and see these things.
So yesterday we knew we were going to Wales. Everyone was excited for this trip, it is it's own "country" after all. The excitement lingered until Dr. Jacoby (he pretty much is the boss, our dad, the head honcho, you get the idea...) told us we were leaving by 7 AM. So that is really early but whatever, we were still ready to go.
We get onto the Coach and the first downer of the day was finding that Brian our regular driver was on skii holiday in Austria. Well that news was terribly upsetting because Brian rocks the world and always seems to find ways to wedge our ginormous bus into tiny alley ways. So our initial distress passed until we discovered that our second favorite driver Roger was not there either! This news was just as upsetting; and we just couldn't get into the regular swing of things with the ronchy two old men that were our drivers for the day. In fact they were so mute that they didn't even tell us their names. So driver one and driver two is what I'll be referring to them as our story progresses.
We knew that Wales was a little over 3 hours away so we saddled up and basically the bus went straight to sleep. Our first stop of the day was the famous Tintern Abbey. Which actually was quite beautiful to see. Although at the end of the day it is still a ruin and hard to grasp the full picture of the Abbey. But we did get some sweet pictures on some pillars (actually they are quite ugly which is why I will not be posting them.... but it kept us entertained~) So after the Abbey we get back onto the bus to go to see a coal mine! Well, that sounds swell doesn't it, driving 4 hours to see a stupid mine. But we as student have no say in the matter so we just go along with this idea. Well driver one and driver two decide to take an alternate route, that halfway through we came to a 11 foot bridge when we were a 12 foot 5 inch bus! So they were ridiculously embarassed and in the end our 30 minute ride to the mine had taken another 2 hours.
We got to the mine and did the whole "tour" thing underground. Totally creepy by the way! Although lets be honest I could totally pull of the hard hat/ flashlight/ batterypack/ dirty look. So yeah, the mine was scary and took like 2 hours of waiting in line. By the time we were back on the bus we still had one more stop by our gracious Dr. J decides to go to a closer village and let us get out and grab some food then we'll head back home. -As a side note we usually pack lunches on these days, but when we ate breakfast at 6 AM we ate our lunches at like 11 and it was now like 6 so we were starved!- We get to this tiny crappy town and everyone is laughing at how pathetic it is, so they let us off to find food and literally there isn't even one grocery store in the square. So we found some digestives (kinda like biscuit cookies... sick name though huh!) and some diet coke and we got back on the bus for our 4 hour long journey home.
Yeah yesterday sucked, but I suppose you just gotta put it in perspective. I still got to come home to our flat in Notting Hill!

And now a musing about Roma:
Oh how I love Italia! Someday I will go back there (preferably after I have learned Italian... which I am going to do this summer) and be able to better observe the culture that exudes from Rome. The people are fantastically real and raw. They will bear their sould to you on the street for the cost of 5 Euro. And afterwards give you a kiss on the Spanish Steps (only happened once... his name was Dieg). Their life is so fresh and pleasant. The men live to eat, drink, and smoke. While the women apparently love to shop and stay more concealed in the homes. The businesses are run by all men as it appeared to us in our tiny hotel Palla Cavicchi! Where by the way we were the only women in the entire establishment!
Our hotel staff was more like our brothers/fathers for our trip. They would drive us to the train station (we had to take a short train into Rome everyday) and when we were ready to come home they would pick us up at the station. They gave us a card with the hotel numbers on it... and told us to call whenever we needed something. Well the first night we got lost of course and starting wandering around cause we couldn't find a phone. We walked into some random hotel and asked if they could call our hotel. The man did and they were laughing and speaking Italian... we picked up on the words American-Blonde-Brunette-Bella (beautiful!) So the bar tender Andre came to pick us up in his tiny little car. When we got back to the hotel they were all in the lobby waiting for us. They said we were so worried about you! -We had lots of kisses all weekend!
We saw the Coloseum which was by far my favorite thing that we did! We saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevy Fountain, the Vatican, the Pantheon, the Masoleum, and every Piazza inbetween! I can't even describe to you all the beauty and majesty and lives in this ancient city. Rome was even better than I had anticipated it being. I was almost afraid that it wouldn't live up to the incredible thing I had built up in my head.. but it was even better than that!
I won't continue to ramble on forever but I will end this musing now by saying that Rome was an incredible place that I could have stayed in forever. I long to return to my boyfriends at the Hotel Pala Cavicchi and spend more time in Roma before I have to return to the dreaded and dreary Provo! Yes, I am a changed woman! I have seen beauty that is as old as the beginning of civilizations, and they took my very breathe away! Rome brought out the true Bohemian that lies within my rough and tough exterior! I love you all and I hope you had a laugh at this musing.
-Ciao