Lone Traveler....

Hello All,
I got back today from a five day trip to London and Paris to see friends from dear old Vermont of all places. However, first off, I successfully cooked a Thanksgiving feast for my friends who don't live in the states!!! this was amazing saying that it is rare that I cook. Mom sent me verrry specific email on how to prepare the turkey. Instead of turkey i did Chicken because my oven is super small. But I did what the instructions said, including homemade stuffing. It turned out amazing. My friends showed up at 7ish, bringing salad, scalloped potatoes, homemade ice cream sandwiches and apple pie, and of course tons of wine (that seems to be a pattern of ours). We were all happily full of homemade food. It was a great send off to my travels alone to London and then Paris.
I got up early the next day to get an early bus to London where It took me and my friend Tori and hour to find each other because there are apparently two Victoria's Stations. Ugh. However, it all worked out and we then went back to her house to drop off all my luggage. We then went and got Indian food and found really cheap Pashmina's wooooo. Where we both bought more scarves then we needed :) From there we went to Leister Square where we sat in line at a comedy show to get cheap tickets where we then met up with Harry and watched the most amazing comedy show i've ever seen. I laughed myself silly with good friends. it was one of my favorite nights while traveling so far. What was also really exciting was that one of the actors of the show was a starter of the whole comedy store and we got to see him act and his name is Neil Mullarkey. We got the amazing opprotunity to meet him after thanks to harry. He was really nice and we talked and took pictures with him for a good five minutes. it was really cool.
The next day I took the train to Paris!!!! However, I will tell you that epic tale tomorrow! For now I must sleep!!! goodnight all. xoxox

Dublin Ireland

I got the lovely opportunity to go back to where my relatives lived and go to Ireland. However, I was unable to connect with my family. I had never been to Dublin before, but after finding a five pound ticket, said why not. So myself, Jenn, Pip and Anna all made the half an hour flight to Dublin on Thursday evening. We found our hostel and just hung out the rest of the night, had some tea, and talked over what the next couple of days would bring. We got up bright and early on Friday and got our surroundings and walked the city. Looking at cute little places, passing by the famous Temple Bar and the famous Trinity College. Trinity was amazing. There was some sort of graduation going on and so there were a lot of people milling around the breathtaking campus. We also went and saw the Book of Kells, which was really interesting. It was good, just the lighting was a bit dim, so I of course had to work extra hard to read it, but the history the book and how it was put together along with the alphabet it self was incredible. We then got to go into the Library which is the size of a ballroom with two story high books filling its shelves. Mom I thought of you the whole time, the books were not organized like they are in the states. The biggest books went on the bottom and the smallest on the top, and there were letters on the shelves starting with AA and going on the Bb. It like you look for the author , it correlating to something else that slips my mind at the moment, but basically the book you are looking for could be in three different places. The books that fill this library are still in use today, however, you have to have a very good reason for using them. They have thousands of first editions of books from famous British authors that every two weeks they change what are in the disply cases the run up the middle of the ailes. Seeing Trinity was one of my favorite things about the trip.
Saturday we had planned on going on a tour to Wicklow where Brave Heart was filmed, unfortuantly we didn't get intouch with the tour service early enough and had to go on Sunday. So instead, we went to a ruby game in an Australian bar because Anna and Pip are both Aussies' and this was unbelievable. I've never seen a bar so full. That following night we met up with a guy we met in Rome and did a bar crawl with him and his friends. Which was really good but very tiring.
Sunday we got up and went to see Wicklow, which was a lot of country side and really a lot of sitting, i think it would have meant more to me if I hadn't already been to Ireland but it was still really beautiful to see the many secret Ponds and waterfalls that are hidden just outside the capital of Ireland.
Pictures will follow this, but I'm about to go meet a friend for lunch. So i must go a little quicker then planned. I am finding myself missing home when i found out my family is having thirteen amazing people over for thanksgiving :( but alas there is always christmas!
Always Love.

VT in England

This past weekend I went to the Lake District with five friends and what I found made me so happy. it was Vermont...except not. We went to Lake Windermere. It is a common tourist attraction with many cute market towns to see. My friends and I rented a little cottage for the weekend and greatly enjoyed ourselves with lovely Halloween party spent in front of a fireplace and laughter. The next couple days consisted of viewing the lake towns near by, we went to Keswick where we viewed all the markets that were displayed on the street. One thing I really enjoyed was that there were dogs everywhere. However, they aren't very friendly. Alas, it was fun to be around them anyway. Our first day ended with a gorgeous view of one of the lakes over looking the mountains. Our second day there was my friend Anna's birthday so we had a morning party with presents and scones. it was delightful. We then drove in the car and went to Coniston which is another near by town, and we proceeded to go on a hike up a small mountain walk, which ended in the most amazing sight of the mountains. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to finish this post when I figure out my computer its broken. hope everyone had a fun weekend and GO OBAMA!!!! woooooooooo.
Love

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.