Three sheets to the wind...

So...a funny, but true story.



Today Kelly and Elise and I went to Fuller's Brewery and took a tour! Fuller's is an independent brewing company in the UK that does quite well for itself! We learned all about how the beer is made from a nice old British man who told funny (sort of) jokes. The best part of the tour was the taste testing at the end. I believe in total we tasted 9 different beers....yum! We only tasted about a quarter pint of each of the beers (which equaled a little over 2 pints in the end), but we did this in a span of about 20 minutes. Our tour guide was running a little behind with his tours and had to speed us along in the taste testing part. Needless to say, the three of us became drunk very quickly due to the amount of beer we were consuming in the short amount of time. Oh yes, and the strength of the beer increased with each new beer we tried, so we were pretty much stumbling out of the brewery laughing!! We then proceeded to the pub located on the brewery site and had lunch and another pint of beer! So, drunk by 2pm, passed out by 4pm, and headache by 7pm....but all is well!

The other great part about this story is that we took the tour with a young British couple. At the end of trying all 9 beers they were absolutely fine! They were probably so used to drinking all of that beer that the three of us American girls looked like light-weights! Anyway, it was really fun. My favorite beer of the bunch was the Honey Dew. If you pour it in a glass, cover the glass with your hand, and swirl it around a bit you can really smell the honey. It's very potent, yet so delicious!

Sorry to my mom and dad who are going to read this, but as the saying goes, "When in London, do as the Londoners do." Actually I just made that up, but I thought I'd try!

Face lift!

DO NOT BE ALARMED!!!! I often get bored with elements of my life (i.e. myself, my hair color, my room, my blog, etc.) so I like to switch things up a bit! I thought dots might add a certain spark in my life/blog that I was missing. Please let me know what you think of this update (i.e. you hate it, it makes you dizzy, you're going to be sick, or you just don't care) and I will think about your thoughts for 2 seconds before I ignore them!

Have a lovely day!!!

Let's Dance

Ah, it's a lovely semi-spring day in London today! I say "semi" because it keeps going in and out of being sunny and being completely overcast. Well, that's London for you I guess. Today has been the first day that I have taken to just lounge about. I did have plans to go to some museums today, but after not being able to get rid of a headache, I decided I would stay in today. OH MAN has it been nice! I've propped myself on our couch and have been working on homework all day long! Since coming to London, I've really forgotten the true meaning and pleasure of lounging about. In just about one month I will be returning home from this crazy adventure of mine. I'm sad at the thought of leaving, but jumping at the thought of being home with my friends. I really feel like I'm ready to get back into things. Being in London has been like one big vacation. I sometimes forget that I'm actually here for school! I've also been reading like a complete mad woman....and I'm not talking about academic books! I've been reading books that I want to read! I've already read 7 books and 4 plays while being out here. I'm lucky if I can even get through half of one book that I want to read in a given semester. I feel like I've completely rediscovered my love of books. If I could be a professional reader, I would definitely take the job! Anyone hiring?!?

So, an interesting thing happened at our flat last night. Our electricity went out! Not just our electricity, but the entire block!!! Well, the fire trucks began to arrive and they started putzing around. Our power was still not on when the trucks began to leave!!!! We sat in darkness for two hours!!!! I was only annoyed by this because that meant that I wouldn't have light to read my book!!! I didn't even care about my computer or television...I just wanted to read!!!

Seriously, if anyone is willing to hire me as a professional reader, I'm down with it!

The rantings of a pirate

After about a month of entertaining people in London, I feel like I'm finally ready to go back to my normal existence. I had so much fun and so many adventures with Andy in Italy. I can't even begin to describe all of the amazing things we saw. We briefly got a taste of the following cities: Venice, Florence, Sorrento, and Rome. I had only ever been to Venice before and was pretty biased when we first arrived in Italy. However, I must say that after having seen more of Italy, my vote goes to Florence. I absolutely loved it there! It was very picturesque and there was just so much wonderful art, architecture, and history. Although I have really enjoyed London so far, if I could do this whole studying abroad thing again, I would probably choose to go to Florence!

Andy and I managed to pack pretty much everything you can possibly think of seeing in these cities into our trip! I think we were both completely exhausted by the end of it, but it was definitely worth it and I would do it again if I could. This is a small list of the things we saw and did:

VENICE: St. Mark's Basilica/Square, Doge's Palace, Rialto Bridge, Accademia, short excursion to the island of Murano, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Santa Maria della Salute
FLORENCE: Accademia (where we saw Michelangelo's David - very impressive), Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi (saw many paintings that I've studied in previous art history courses!), San Lorenzo, Piazza Michelangelo (spectacular views of Florence and we watched the sun set from here!), Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, Palazzo Pitti, the Duomo (we even climbed to the top of the dome...463 stairs!!), Bargello (where we saw Donatello's David - equally impressive)
SORRENTO: day trip to the island of Capri where we saw The Blue Grotto (hole in the cliff where Roman's used to bathe - the water was the most amazing shade of blue), the Gardens of Augustus, and Monte Solaro (we took a chair lift to the top of this mountain where we saw the most breath taking views); short excursion to the town of Positano on the Almalfi Coast, took a day trip to the Pompeii ruins (this was one of my favorite parts of the trip, except it was raining the entire day)
ROME: Santa Maria Maggiore, Fontano di Trevi, Pantheon, Capitoline Museums, Mercati Trainei, The Vatican (climbed to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica - 551 stairs!!!!), Vatican Museums (where we saw the Sisteine Chapel), The Colosseum, ancient ruins in the city itself

So, maybe that wasn't the shortest list, but we really did do everything!

A few days after Andy left my sister arrived in London. A few days after she arrived my parents arrived! I was sad that Andy was gone, but it was so nice to see my family and more familiar faces. I'm so glad that they had the chance to come over here and see how we do things "London style". Lianne left a few days before our parents did, so I had some nice quality time with the rents! I hope they all had as much fun as I did...even when things got crazy!

This is a random thought, but I had a really interesting experience the other day when I was waiting to meet up with my parents. I went to a Cafe Nero near my work to get something to drink and read a book. While I was standing in line to place an order I heard, what I believed to be an old man, ranting at an invisible person in an almost pirate-sounding voice. I couldn't make out what he was saying. I only understood that someone or something must have done him great injustice because he was really having at it. So I got my cappuccino and sat down with my book...all the while this old man, which I soon realized was a woman, went to order another coffee. While "she" stood in line she continued to rant in this awful pirate voice. When someone spoke to her to take her order she responded in a normal voice and with a sound mind. However, after her order was taken, she continued to rant again. Well, someone must have taken her spot in the cafe, for she proceeded to sit on the couch across from me, drink her coffee, smoke, and rant in her insane guttural tones. I continued to read my book....I was really not about to move. I had to concentrate really hard on the words I was reading to stop myself from bursting out laughing. The experience was really interesting I must say. She really let him/her/it have it! And when she was done getting everything off her chest, she simply walked out of the cafe. I later translated this incident to my mother, prefacing it with, "I really shouldn't be laughing about this because someday that will probably be me!"

Anyway, pictures will be up really soon....I promise!

I'M BACK!!

Andy and I just got back from our trip around Italy today. I will put pictures up soon from both Italy and Marseilles. Right now we're both pretty exhausted from our adventures....Andy leaves tomorrow morning for the states :( I will miss him a ton, but my sister and parents will be here later this week! Too tired to write anymore right now....CIAO!