Happy Halloween from Manch

Happy Halloween!!!!! I know it's not until tomorrow but, I'm heading to the Lake District tomorrow to lake Windermere. It's supposedly really pretty! I'm very excited to be in the country and out of the city. I'm being a duck for halloween this year. Inspired by my bright yellow raincoat that I wear often because it rains daily.
The past couple weeks have been jam packed with a lot of social events. I recently experienced a Roller Disco, which is where you put on roller skates and skate in a circle to techno. However, at this disco there's a bar. a little bit more dangerous this way. No one was badly injured in this endever.













Last night I started Halloween a day early and helped celebrate my friend Tasha's 20th birthday. Where she hosted a Halloween party. It was some of the best costumes I've seen in a long time. Not as inappropriate as normal. We hung out there listening to music and dancing and of course taking LOTs of pictures.














I will post pictures of this weekend on monday! Have a great and safe Halloween:)
love to you all

Ciao Rome, Hello Reality

This past weekend my two friends Jenn and Pip and I all made the two hour trip to Rome Italy! None of us had ever been to Italy and were all very excited about what we were going to encounter on this adventure. We left Thursday night and took a bus to Liverpool where we stayed in a cheap hotel, which was actually very nice. We then got up at 4am to have to time get to the airport for a 6:30 departure. It was brutal but we all caught some sleep on the flight. We flew with Ryanair which is the cheapest place to get flights. We arrived on time and the moment the aircraft stopped a song blared through the speakers all about Ryanair and there ontime flight yet again. This was a very surprising and funny thing to hear, as none of us on all our travels had never travelled with an airline that had its own theme song.
We then took a bus to the city where we walked to our Hostel called Yellow. This was a nice hostel that was in the middle of the city so it was easy to walk to all the places we wanted to go without needing to take a bus. It rained for the first hour and then turned into a beautiful day that was in the 60s this is amazing saying that it rains in Manchester literally all the time. Seeing sunshine was amazing and uplifting.
After the rain stopped we went and explored the city and planned our next couple days. We decided to do a bar crawl with night scenes of the city, including the Trevi fountain and a few other sites. This was all through our hostel. We met one of our roommates at the hostel who was from Ireland named Conner who also went on the crawl with us. Once in the Yellow bar we met Vesko who was from Belguim. The tour was given by an already drunk guy named Tad from Iowa of all places. Now this seemed very odd that our tour guide of Italy was from the U.S. However, he proved to be a great tour guide who added funny lines about the city. Over all the night ended at three am, which was full of a lot walking and laughing our new friends, many of who drank way too much at the open bar portion of the night.
The next day we spent on a tour of the city seeing the main attractions. To save some space I'm going to link you all to my Photo page where you can see all of these adventures.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/home

This also has pictures from Wales and Manchester. If it doesn't work I'm also sending out an email that should let you have access.

On our wanderings we saw many side streets that at night were the home to many outside seatings of resturaunts that were so cute and we really wanted to enjoy the same experience. So we decided to splurge a little and go and have a late dinner (which is the norm in Italy) and ate at about 10pm at a little place that had candle lit tables. The food was amazing with great service. However, to take advantage of the time before dinner we decided to try and find this Gelato place that was reccommended by our tour guide called Old Bridge. We expected it to be over priced with not that much ice cream like we'd experienced before. However, this was not the case at all. I got three choices of flavors for 1.50 euro's. AND free whipped cream. On top of that the ice cream was unbelievable and left us wanting more. We then went to a Wine Bar that included free food, kind of a surprise when they were really good. I also had fried peanuts for the first time. Dad I thought of you while eating them, thinking about how much you'd love them:) From there we dashed off to our amazing dinner where we were the last table/people on the whole street, which to passerby's seemed very weird and we got very funny looks. We ended the night at the Trevi, by this time it was midnight and we just sat and took in the site that was before us, the beauty. No one spoke we just relived the best weekend of our lives. My mind drifted to everyone at home wishing I could show them what I was seeing, wanting to run the cities with them. But alas that is not possible so I took pictures instead. So please take a look at my pictures, I hope you love them. Happy Fall to you all. I miss you all.

Love

Do Like the Romans Do!

Today the weather was surprisingly nice in Manchester! It was sunny! I celebrated it and went to a near by park and just sat and read a book and took pictures of who passed and my surroundings. It was lovely, it felt like fall for the first time since I've been here. I've found that I miss the fall and the changing leaves and the cider drinking that one finds in Vermont. The only cider they have here is hard cider. Not a big fan I must say.

This past weekend was very nice, went and shot for the Nikon shoot around Manchester and had quite good luck surprisingly. I have found it hard to back into the state of being injured, its hard to have a creative mind. Alas, the outcome as been quite good I feel. I will post pictures later.

Livia in response to your comment I met someone who met someone who met Alan Rickman! wooooo. But if I happen to see him I shall give him my regards:)

I got the amazing opprotunity to go and see a show at a local theatre called the Palace and I saw Cabaret. This was quite exciting because Johnson did that show last year. It was really fun to identify the differences in the two shows.


















This following weekend I will head to Rome, Italy. I cannot wait to go to the famous sites that are there to see and take a million pictures of everything. I want everyone to drink lots of hot cider and donuts for me. I love and miss you all.

love

The British System!

The British academic layout is so different from the U.S. Yesterday I went to meet with my Tutor (prof.) about a number of projects he assigned...(kill me now) and he asked me if I was going to come for drinks at 2! I said sure? but didn't know what to expect saying that the last time the class met for drinks we were at a pub. I went to the classroom at 2 and was greeted by two tables full of beer. It was the weirdest thing. We proceeded to mingle and have a few drinks and take advantage of the free food.

The work load is mounting in my classes. What with the huge competition, which I'm freaking out about because I these great ideas, and then when I try to get it to work it doesn't. I'm using the past year as my sequence of photos, trying to include the big ordeals in my life, how I felt personally, as well as including the people that helped through that hard time. I just passed the year anniversary of me tearing my ACL. kind of crazy. We were also asked to show HOW TO... using a camera, and then building off of it. It's hard because the tutor wants it to be super boring. I chose to do how to swing on a swing. I haven't figured out if its working yet.

This past week I played football with the true footballers. When asked if it was ok that i had cleats i got blank stares looking back at me. "what are cleats?" i pulled out my shoes and they said "oh you mean boots" i was like sure. they loved hearing the different words we used in the U.S. After playing around for a couple of hours, I was told that i had to come on Wednesday for drinking games. That was insane. I'm going to spare you all the details, because it was unbelievable. Nothing happened to me, thankfully. After that we went to this huge club called Varsity! where we all danced the night away, at one point getting hold of a traffic cone. This among other things happened.

Tomorrow I head to Wales for the day! I'm really excited to keep traveling. Also because I barrowed a digital camera from the school, and its amazing. On sunday i am going to my dear friend Kathryn's house to have dinner, watch movies and steal her internet. Happy Birthday to my Brother Wesley. Hope everyone is doing well! i miss and love you all.