It's Almost That Time Again...

Taking a little trip down memory lane to my first blog post ever (who knew back then that I would eventually becoming a blogging addict!) and I remember telling you all a little story. It was about going out to dinner and not wanting to go to bed when I got home because it was almost tomorrow and tomorrow would be the day before I embarked on  my 4 month European adventure. Well folks, I hate to say it but once again, it's almost tomorrow. Tonight I have and American history exam and that will mark the end of the studying part of this study abroad experience (Yes, I took American history in Europe...go figure! And I have to say I much preferred the abroad part of study abroad than the study part!). Now I've had my fair share of ups and downs over the last 125 days but in the end there is not a doubt in my mind that the good outweighs the bad and that I would relive this entire experience over again.The friends that I have made here are great and have taught me things not only about life but about myself and I'm lucky to have gotten to know them!

I'm currently looking out my little bedroom window (it's currently raining, who woulda guessed!) and I'm really going to miss this place! Here is a bit of a summary of my experience for your reading pleasure!

125: The number of days I have been away from home

100: Hours I've logged in on Skype this semester...best invention EVER (this is a rough estimation!) 

95: The number of days Sherwood Hall has served me potatoes at at least one meal

19: The number of cards/postcards I got in the mail...I think that beats my combined total for the last 20 years!

15: Dollars that my cheap UK cell phone cost

9: How many seasons of Friends I watched over the course of the semester

6: The number of countries I have visited in the last 4 months

4: The number of times I did laundry this semester (can't wait for a a little wardrobe variety!)

3: How many flights I have been on for my journey home due to airline changes...maybe this time it will stick!

3: The number of giant bags of M&M's I consumed this semester

2: The number of jars of JIF peanut butter I've eaten this semester (they just don't make it like that over here!)

1.6: The current pound to dollar exchange rate (can't wait to not have to convert that in my head!)

I could think of many more but I've already been at this on and off for two hours (it is no longer raining but sunny and beautiful outside...get it together England!) and I really should be brushing up for my exam that I have in 3 hours! For those of you that are wondering what my life will bring for the next two days here goes...

Tonight I will take my last final and then do laundry so I have clean clothes to wear home. I've been picking out my "wear home" outfit for the last week, not kidding! I was always one of those kids that picked out my (and my brother's) first day of school outfits weeks in advance so really, this should be expected! Tomorrow I'm going shopping with some friends for one last hurrah together because I'm the first of our little group of exchangies to leave, sad day! Then tomorrow night I have  get to pack. I have been saving this as my little "you're going home" reward for the last 2 weeks so I'm excited to get packing! And this time will be easy because it's like a closing sale...everything must go! Then Saturday my taxi will pick me up to take me to the train station in Nottingham at a bright ad early 5:20AM...fun. My train leaves at 6 and then I'll get to London around 8, hop on the tube to the airport and then hang out there until my flight leaves at 12:20. I'll land in Chicago around 3PM on Saturday! I was originally going to land at 7 and have a stop in Toronto but God works in magical ways and Air Canada decided to do aircraft maintenance on my plane on Saturday so I got switched to a direct flight, boo ya! Then once I get home I will be hitting up Chipotle and or Portillos because that's basically all I've been able to think about for the last week. That and home cooked food (I'm sure mom is sick of me e-mailing her random food requests for things I've been craving all semester!). Then Sunday it's onto graduation madness and celebrating Craigy (that is pronounced craig-E) and all of his awesomeness!

I can't wait to be home to see you all (in case you couldn't tell!). Thanks SO much if you sent one of those 19 cards or sent up one of the countless prayers I know were said for me over the last 125 days.  I am truly grateful for you all and for this experience and I can't wait to tell you all about it in PERSON!! You think I'm funny in writing, well in case you forgot I'm a laugh and a half in person :) Ah, it's almost tomorrow...again!

Love from London one last time,

Stacey

10 Feet Taller or 10 Minutes Earlier

So the adventures of Stacey and Annette are the next and final installment in my blogs on my Easter holiday. Early Wednesday morning I took a train into London with all my belongings (I would have to bring them back to school at the end of holiday so I had to bring them with me). From the train station I had it all planned out how I would take the tube to our hotel, drop off my stuff and then hop back on the tube out to the airport to pick up my beloved mum. Well this plan sort of worked until I realized that the tube stops I had to transfer at didn't have stairs and I was well, how do you say, not exactly traveling light. Apparently the kind British chaps I encountered took pity on me and offered to help me with my bags. Little did they know my whole life was packed away in my suitcase and even the strongest of them struggled a bit with those last few stairs! By the time I arrived at the hotel I was a bit frazzled and I'm sure I did not exactly  impress the people at the front desk with my less than posh demeanor! But then I bolted off to the airport, found my mom, started crying because that's just what I do and then we headed back to the city.

That afternoon we decided to do something I have always wanted to do...take a double decker bus tour! We zoomed across the city on top of that bus and snapped pictures until my mom decided she was putting her hood up and was therefore no longer available for pictures. We saw all that London has to offer and got a coupon for a free river cruise  that we took the next morning. That night at dinner at a pub I was approached by a man asking if his friend could come over with the line "so my friends and I have a bet you aren't from England...did I win saying you weren't or did they" and talk to me for just a minute (he was a bit awkward and we all know I'm socially awkward so it was an interesting experience). Yes, I would get picked up in a bar for the first time with my mom as my wing (wo)man but then again, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thursday we took our boat tour of the River Thames and then decided to get off at the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. Dang those things are impressive but I can only imagine the headache you would get after wearing one of those massive crowns for a day. After that we decided to get some lunch in Covent Garden and sit in the park. Boy were we surprised when we got off the tube stop at Covent Garden and discovered that the only green around is the lettuce on a sandwich because the area is really a great area for shopping, outdoor markets, and street performers. Not exactly what we were expecting but we did enjoy watching the street performers and I'm sure mom was entertained when I went to go find us some diet pepsi and returned 20 minutes later because according to the directions I was given the nearest store was "down the street around the corner and then around the next corner and you'll see it then"...haha joke! After our adventures in the "gardens" we decided to head to Leicester Square to see if we could score some half-priced tickets to a show. Low and behold we saw that Legally Blonde the Musical was playing so we decided it was a must see and jumped into the queue to score some tickets. The show started off with a great number...until the curtain stopped rising after 2 feet. The singers kept on singing until the realized they needed to get around the curtain and then the band just kind of died out and the lights turned back on. Mom and I turned to each other and wondered what we had just gotten ourselves into but no worries, the rest of the show went off without a hitch and I for one thoroughly enjoyed myself and am now changing my career path and becoming a lawyer! (kidding about the lawyer part)

Now we had to rest of Thursday because Friday the wedding bells of Wills and Kate would be ringing bright and early...or at least our alarm would be going off at 8:30. Well that we the plan anyways but technology hates me so when I was finally roused from my slumber by helicopters outside my window and I looked and saw it was already 9am I bolted out of bed like it was on fire and hopped in the shower! We managed to get dressed and ready in record time and decided to head to our usual breakfast place- Pret a Manger (a chain in London that does coffee and sandwiches and breakfast food) to grab some yogurt and then head to the parade route to try to shimmy our way to the front of the crowd to catch a glimpse of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their way from the Abbey to Buckingham Palace. We cut across Trafalgar Square no problem because traffic was blocked from it as there were big jumbotrons set up for people's viewing pleasure. We exited the gates of the square, grabbed our yogurt and then went to enter back in only to find that the gates were shut because the square had hit capacity. How exactly a public square hits capacity I'm not really sure so we followed the crowd where the guards told us to only to find that we could not get in anywhere. Then we were hit with the genius idea to play the "but my hotel is in the square and I just wanted to get breakfast and I want to go back to my room" card to try to get us in but even our cute American accents and my puppy dog eyes didn't get us anywhere. Now by this point I was getting hungry but I wasn't allowed to eat the darn yogurt because without it our story was missing a key component! We decided to head back to where we started but by this time the gate had amassed quite a crowd outside it and we had little chance of getting to the front where we could talk to a guard but we were gonna try, darn it! (if only we had gotten up 10 minutes earlier!)

We encountered some interesting folks in this crowd but I think my favorite was the little boy perched on his dad's shoulder's a few heads behind us. The view from our place outside the square was a bit obstructed by a giant horse statue (if only we were 10 feet taller!) but that little boy would not be deterred. He entertained the whole crowd by giving a play by play of the royal happenings with phrases like "I can see Kate...her hair is down...her dress is lace...the sleeves are see through". SO cute! After making our way through the crowd for a good 40 minutes and getting pushed over by this crazy lady who really wanted to get the front no matter the cost (she pushed me! then complained that she couldn't see over someone's head! and then kept swishing her head so I kept eating her hair. I was like "lady, i already ate but thanks for the concern!") We finally made it to the front, gave our sob story to not 1 not 2 but 3 guards and their supervisor and we were finally let in the gates after 1 hour and 36 minutes of trying! After that we were home free and decided to hang out in Trafalgar Square with the masses that were there and catch the rest of the ceremony and parade on the big jumbotron which really turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the streets were PACKED on the parade route and we might not have seen much. Oh and funny (NOT) we were looking at the jumbotron and guess who made it on...my friend who kept feeding me her hair! SO not okay that she pushed her way all the way in the square and then up to a camera!

After the wedding and parade and first balcony kiss (LAME if you ask me!) mommy and I decided to head to Harrods to check out what all the hype was about. We got a bit lost and were a bit overwhelmed and decided to head to Oxford Street to hit up the "normal" stores. On our way over we decided to cross through Hyde Park where literally a million people had camped out to watch the wedding on more jumbotrons and the atmosphere was INSANE! People were dressed up in wedding dresses, their Sunday bests, or even decked out in the Union Jack flag from head to toe. Newspapers with details on the wedding had already hit the stands and we saw a pack of old ladies reading them and they were SO excited that we decided we better get some so we did! Only to realize that we got a different cover than anyone else so now we had to search for the old cover because it was practically a collectors item! We couldn't find any on the streets but we ran into a man who had one and traded us! Such a nice chap! We decided to stop in a coffee shop and catch up on our wedding news only to get so immersed in our reading that it took us 15 minutes to realize the music had turned off and they were closing down shop because they had already closed. There was another couple in the place so we bolted out so we wouldn't be that last awkward group that just wouldn't leave!

Saturday was our last full day in London so we decided to go out in style. We started the day with a nice tube ride where mom proceeded to get caught in the doors as they were closing, shimmy her way in the subway only to have her backpack get caught and a man behind her have to pry open the doors with his super human strength before the backpack was blown to smithereens by the whizzing subway. Caution kids...don't try that one at home! We decided to head to Regent Street for some retail therapy (it's stressful fighting your way through a crowd all day!) and then decided to experience an England tradition...high tea! We whipped out our guide books and mom discovered that the best place to have tea was the Goring so off we were. We got about a block away when I realized why the name of the hotel sounded so familiar. It just so happened to be the hotel that the entire Middleton family had been staying at for the wedding. I mean we would mistakenly go to this hotel not knowing what it was...it wasn't on the news all weekend or specially pointed out on our bus tour or anything. We walked in, well we were ushered in by a posh door man, and got some raised eyebrows when we asked if we could have high tea. They said "we might be all booked but I'll go check" (meaning: girl you crazy!) and then told "sorry we're all booked but you can have a cup of tea and a scone at the bar if you want" (translation: hahahahahaha............no). It was after we left the hotel that we noticed the lingering paparazzi and the gates up to keep away the crowds. We ended up getting our afternoon tea at Harrods and it was just lovely thank you very much!

On our way back to the hotel at the end of the day we came from a different way and guess what we discovered. Our beloved breakfast chain had another location that was literally around the corner from our hotel and which would not have required us leaving the gated area the day before and thus avoiding our entire debacle of getting back in. That would happen to us! (The next day we discovered a 3rd location across the street...what the heck!). That night we skyped with the boys back home to see Craig all dapper and off to his senior prom. Before that we had dinner at Garfunkels, the one restaurant we were told not to go to (sorry Mr. DeSanti!) but it was one of those things that you want more because you can't have it and so all week I joked about dining there and darn it I was determined!

Sunday when when mom and I were forced to part ways. I'll admit I got teary eyed as we said goodbye but I kept reminding myself I would be home in 27 days (25 days now!). I can't believe my semester has gone so quickly and is now coming to an end!

I'm now back at school. All of my classes but 1 are over and the last one ends this week and then I just have to study for my finals which start on May 19. I got my first paper back today and was a bit shell-shocked when I saw I got a 55 on it because I had forgotten that their grading scale is very different from ours and this grade really transfers back to a B at U of I. So for the next few weeks I will probably be sticking close to Nottingham and studying a LOT for my upcoming exams and getting excited to be stateside again. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers during my month of traveling, I would say if a massive bug bite is the worst I encounter I got off pretty well! Keep in touch and I can't wait to see you all IN PERSON in 25(ish) days!!!

Love from London (with my mommy!),

Stacey

Annette and Stacey take on London...watch out!

Our AWESOME newspapers!

I'm at a bar...with my mom!

Look at them with their papers! This was a legit candid!

There Goes the Pope!

So next I was off to Italy, the land of my dreams, the place I am bound to take my mother when I have a "real job" and money at my disposal (with my teacher's salary that could be a while, mom but don't you worry!). My adventure into the Land of Pizza and Pasta started in with a quick 16 hour trip into Florence. We were supposed to stop in Pisa to take some leaning tower pictures on the way into Florence but because traffic was so bad coming from Switzerland on Good Friday we had to veto that photo op :( Fun fact: The residents of Pisa call the leaning tower just the tower because they say "duh, it's pretty obvious it's leaning, you don't need to tell us that!". Florence was too quick of a trip to do much more than eat some Italian gelato, take a couple quick pics of the fake statue of David in the main square (the real statue is inside a museum to protect it from the weather), and do a walking tour with a tour guide that incorporated the term "French Renaissance" (pronounced ren-A-sance) into every sentence. I would love to go back to the city at some point but the place I was really excited to go to was Rome and that is where we jetted (well drove, but jetted just sounds cooler) off to. *Word to the wise...drivers (especially bus drivers) are CRAZY in Italy so watch out...also rest stops have the BEST coffee you will get in the whole country and it's cheap so try it out!

The only downside to Rome was that our hotel happened to be slightly outside of the city and required us to take a bus and 2 subway rides to get to the city but it's Rome so it was totally worth it! Our first night in Rome our trip leader, Greg, took us on a 4 hour walking tour where we saw all the major sights like the Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain, Colosseum and so much more!

Spanish steps!

Trevi Fountain

Well I hope you know what this is...

The greatest (well one of the greatest, I can't just pick one!) about Rome is that you can get gelato and pizza on one street and then walk one street over and see the place where THE Julius Caesar was killed. I mean, you can't do that in Champaign! The city is the perfect mix of modern and ancient history. The night ended at the Colosseum which was all lit up and our trip leader sitting us all down and telling us the history of Rome. While this was facinaiting for a history major like myself it was really made memorable by the gypsy man that kept interrupting. In Europe there are random gypsies everywhere and try to sell you things like umbrellas, roses and little knick-knacks. This particular man wanted to sell us roses and umbrellas and would not go away no matter how many times we told him no so he just decided to be a nice guy and hold up an umbrella for our trip leader so he wouldn't get wet and then just smile at us. After about 5 minutes of this game he asked where we were all from and as the majority were from Australia that's what we told him. He then proceeded to say "I love Australia. I go to Australia." and then walk away leaving us all confused but in stitches from laughing so hard.

Greg and his new gypsy friend

The only damper on that day was the fact that when I woke up my ring wouldn't fit on my finger because apparently I had gotten bit by a bug at some point in the night. Also, the hotel situation was a bit tricky. Apparently Rae and I have the worst hotel luck ever because our room was literally the size of a closet and you had to walk sideways to get around the bed to the bathroom but it was Rome so who cares!

The next day was Sunday and not just any old Sunday, but Easter Sunday and while I'm not Catholic I (along with most of the group) decided to take advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity and go to Easter Mass in Vatican City. We got up pretty early because we wanted to get an early start to beat the masses that were expected to attend (200-300,000! dang, that's a lot of people!). We hopped on a bus that slowly started to fill with people until we really couldn't move. We hopped off at the Vatican Walls and filed into Vatican City. We started off pretty far back but then realized that we could actually get into the square with out tickets so up we moved, closer and closer to the podium that the Pope would eventually occupy! After standing/sitting by another railing that was SO closer to come chairs that we were longingly looking at because we still had 1.5 hours til Mass even started and who knew how long it would go for (2 hours and 5 minutes for anyone wondering) we decided to just run through the gate that we weren't sure if you needed tickets to get through or not and grab some seats. Somehow we pulled it off and were literally so close to the front. I got pictures of the Pope without barely zooming in on my camera, talk about an achievement! The Mass itself was long and kinda boring but I guess that's what happens when you don't speak Italian or Latin. After the Pope gave the blessing to the crowd in every language imaginable we darted off to find some food and a doctor. A doctor you ask? Well remember that little annoying bug bite I mentioned earlier? Well apparently I was attacked on my arm as well and it was swelling up, turning red/purple, and growing in size and we figured it should get checked out. There was talk of a visit to an Italian hospital but I really wanted none of that unless truly necessary. (Don't be alarmed, it ended up just being a mosquito bite and I still have all my fingers and arms but whatever they feed their mosquitoes, it needs to stop!)

Me outside the Vatican on Easter Sunday

Just the Pope getting driven to his podium...no big deal

The Pope blessing the crowd

The rest of the day in Rome consisted of eating my first gnocchi (dang, that stuff is good), a tour of the Roman forum and the Colosseum and then Rae and I heading to her friend's flat (apartment) because we would be staying with him for the next 2 nights after the group we were on headed to their next city. For my last full day in Rome Rae and I met up with 2 boys from our trip that were also still in the city and bummed around the city for the day. We had some coffee at a nice outdoor cafe where the waiter hated us and kept talking about us in Italian to the rest of the wait-staff and then they would all stare at us. That night Rae's friend took us to this little Italian restaurant where I had some of the best lasagna and garlic bread (you could smell that one on my breath for a good 24 hours it was that good!) I have ever had. At one point I exclaimed "this restaurant is so cute, it's like we are actually in Italy" before realizing that yes, I was actually in Italy. Oops! The we headed off for what was promised to be the best gelato in Rome and it did not disappoint. A small cone was 3 massive scoops of gelato and I discovered that my beloved nutella is even better in it's frozen gelato form!

All in all my trip to Italy did not disappoint and I can't wait to return someday. I was a bit excited for it to end though because that meant that the real Queen Mum (Annette Burns for those of you that didn't get that one) would be arriving in England to visit her favorite daughter!!

European Domination

Hi again! As you can probably tell over the course of the semester I have discovered my new found love for blogging but dang, it's taxing after a while so now I'm all rested up and ready to share part two of my European adventures with you all! Now on our trip the phrase that everyone used was "dominate" and it kind of turned into one of those things that you attach to any action (ex, "dang stacey you just dominated that ice cream cone" or "guys, we have to dominate the street while crossing so we don't get run over by crazy Italian drivers"). Apparently when the group was in Paris a few days before we met up with them they were on a bike tour similar to the one I took in Barcelona where their tour guide used the phrase and it just stuck.

Another fun little aspect of the trip that doesn't really relate to any particular leg of the journey but still brings a smile to my face when thinking about it is the wake up song and the trip song. When we would fall asleep on the coach our trip leader would wake us up when we were stopping with this annoying techno song that we all grew to have a strong love/hate relationship with. And then every morning he would play the trip song and 2 people would stand in the aisles of the bus (no, it was not safe if that's what you were thinking!) and preform the choreographed dance that we all had to learn. Needless to say, I was rarely bored!

Now, after Nice we headed north to Switzerland and the Swiss Alps where we would be staying on Mt. Rigi for 2 nights. Now Switzerland was the one place that I originally was not really looking forward to going to because I thought it was just kind of randomly thrown into the trip but now I totally understand why we went there and it actually ended up being one of my favorite places that I visited. There is something really unique about staying a hotel that you have to take a cable car up 1400 meters to get to because it's so high up a snow topped mountain. I think the part that I enjoyed most was that I was with a big group of Australians, many of whom had not seen snow in real life. So of course we made snow angels and had a mini snowball fight. Well really the snowball fight started with me falling for the biggest trick in the book when Tim (a Canadian boy) lobbed a ball way over my head which I decided to watch soar away and then getting pelted by everyone waiting for me to do just that. They were surprised when I fired back and admitted I did not throw like a girl (get ready for summer softball season, Norm, I'm all warmed up!).

Snow angels in April with a bunch of Australians...love it!

Nothing too exciting actually happened in Switzerland but the sheer beauty of the place and the time to just relax and actually feel like I was on vacation was a pleasant change from the go go go of the rest of the trip. I had time to sit in a little Swiss cafe and sip on a cappuccino and sit around and get to know all of the other people on the trip.

After Switzerland we were headed to ITALY...along with the rest of Europe apparently. Who would have thought that traffic delays would be had when traveling into Italy on Good Friday?? Well needless to say our 8 hour drive from Switzerland to Florence took 12 hours and a lot of sitting in traffic but when we finally made it I found myself in the place that I have dreamed of going to for years!

Livin' the Good Life

Okay so since I've got a LOT to catch y'all up on I'm going to do this in pieces (I mean I know that would love to spend hours and hours catching up on my latest adventures but for those of you in a time crunch I'm going to cater to your needs!). When I last left you I was off to explore Europe and explore Europe I did, my passport is now taking a well needed rest for the next 27 days until I fly home (can you believe that?!). Rae and I decided that for us, the best way to travel would be with a group so we joined a company called Topdeck and our tour started in sunny Barcelona. We were met by an energetic groups of people who were excited to see what Europe had to offer. While I have to admit that Barcelona was not my favorite city that we traveled to we did embark on a bike tour that ended up with us sitting on the beach sipping sangria and soaking up the sun, a very enjoyable experience indeed!

Barcelona!

After a long day on a bike (I will admit that I was sore for a good 3 days after the 4 hour ride) we headed to dinner and flamenco show. Well we started to head there until we were 3 blocks from our hotel in our taxi and I realized that I had either left my wallet in my hotel room or had been pick pocketed at some point during our day in the city. Unfortunately our cab driver did not understand the phrase "stop, turn around, we need to go back to the hotel" so we ended up getting him to pull over, paying him, walking back to the hotel (major walk of shame right there!), me running upstairs and seeing my wallet in my pile of clothes and then getting in a new cab and heading back to dinner...oops! Needless to say I did not forget my wallet another time on the trip.

After Barcelona we were headed to Nice, a city on the French Riviera, the home of the rich and famous. On our way into the city we stopped at a perfumery and got a tour on how they make perfume by the most adorable little french lady that was on speed or just really really loving life. The perfume this company makes so wicked expensive and they have a person called "the nose" that mixes the scents to create the perfect scent for your perfume wearing pleasure. To keep their smelling senses in tact the nose can't drink alcohol, smoke, eat spicy food, drink coffee or do anything that could damage their sense of smell. They also have to go to school for 3 years and do a 7 year apprenticeship, talk about some serious education. But the 50 "noses" in the world get paid BIG bucks so maybe it's worth it?! It was really neat to see how they make high end perfume but dang did it smell in there. A girl can only take so much essence of rose until she has to take a step outside!

After our smelly adventure our whole group went out to dinner and then out to an Australian bar in France (don't ask!) called Wayne's Bar where I encountered my first Sex on the Beach cocktail (yum!)  and the band played good sing along music like "Sweet Home Alabama"  and "Benny and the Jets". The tables were actually built for dancing on and it ended up being a really really fun night. The highlight was probably when the band found out that the room was packed with Australians (in an Australian bar, who woulda thought?!) so they started playing all these Australian songs that everyone but the Americans and Canadians in our tour group (that's 5 out of 30 for those of you wondering) and it was hilarious. Those Aussies sure can sing! On the way to dinner we were all walking down the streets admiring all the shops and the scenery and I pointed out to everyone that there were 2 H&M stores on the same street. As I was doing this I turned my head and proceeded to walk straight into a pole with so much force that my arms actually wrapped around it.  Needless to say my chest was a bit sore the next day and for the remainder of the trip I was warned when large metal poles in the street were nearing!


The next day we relaxed around Nice, did a bit of shopping and laying on the beach (the natural beaches here are soft stones, not sand) and then getting ready for our big night out to Monaco! Now me being me and the plain Jane I am didn't bring any dresses or skirts on my European adventure so I was in a bit of a pickle as to what to wear. I needn't have feared because the girls on the trip were like all my lovely AOII sisters and let me raid their closets because apparently Monte Carlo, the most prestigious casino in the world has a dress code, who knew! Fun fact: Monaco is a country where you can buy citizenship and they will reject your application if there is too much controversy attached to your name (Madonna and Michael Jackson have both been denied citizenship) and the citizens of Monaco are not allowed to gamble in the Casinos because they don't pay any taxes. Also, it has a 0% crime rate and is one of the safest places in the world.

Me in my borrowed "Sunday best" on the way to Monaco with the Mediterranean Sea and Nice in the background

!

The drive from Nice to Monaco was basically over the mountains and to the other side. We passed some of the biggest yachts in the world that are harbored there, the place where Grace Kelly died when she accidentally drove off the mountain, and where they do the formula one (I think) race around Monaco. For this last bit our awesome bus driver (a big coach bus mind you) stopped at the start line, revved the engine, got us all cheering and then sped off the starting line (well as fast as the coach bus would allow, but still!).  The casino's themselves were not too busy or exciting since it was a Monday night but not many people get to claim that the first time they gambled was in Monaco so that was pretty neat. I ended up losing 3 euro in the machines and didn't want to lose all of the 5 I put in (traveling on a budget here people!) but when I asked the man at the desk for my remaining 2 euro I at first thought he didn't understand me but then he started laughing at me and handed over my cash. Apparently they don't get many requests for 2 euro in those parts! The next morning we had to get up early to head to Switzerland where I will pick up in my next post!


I'm posting new pictures right after this so check them out on my blog page if you want to! I can't believe how fast the month went by and feel so lucky to have had all these experiences that I am writing about!! I can't believe I'll be home in 26 days, dang! Keep the kind thoughts and prayers coming!


Love from London,


Stacey

Pudding and Pie

Hey all!

So tomorrow I’m off to warm and sunny (fingers crossed) Spain for the start of my 9 day tour of the continent (that’s what Brits call the rest of Europe) then I’m back to Jeans for a day then shooting down to London (I’m such a jet setter these days) to meet the real Queen Mum…Annette Burns! For the past 10 days I’ve been at Jeans (my grandma’s pen friend since they were 12…grandma’s hitting the big 7-0 this year so you do the math on that one) and we have been having a blast, or at least I have! In her generosity Jean has given me a great glimpse of what the real England is like to a real Englander. Here are some highlights of the week for your reading enjoyment!

Last Friday we went to Lincoln where her daughter and family live and also where the Lincoln Cathedral is. We got to Lincoln and I came to realize that said Cathedral is at the top of a very, very large hill and we happened to be at the bottom. Apparently there is a bus that shuttles poor people like us up the hill but it was nowhere to be found so we started the trek. Once we made it up the hill we headed into the Cathedral only to be turned away when we replied that “no, we were not there for the service”. Shut down! But they did tell us that we could go around to the back and see that part so we did and it was worth it. Lincoln Cathedral can hold 2 Westminster Abbey’s inside of it and we stumbled across a very nice and knowledgeable man that gave us all kinds of info. Like do you know the difference between a minster and a cathedral, well you are going to in a second! A cathedral holds a cathedra (clever naming, huh?!) which is where the archbishop sits and a minster can be a cathedral but a minster is also a teaching church so clergy are educated in a minster. Interesting, right? And also the lectern thing that they put the bible on always faces east because that is where Christ will rise from (he will rise with the sun) and the bible rests on an eagle because that is the only bird that can look directly into the sun. The lectern that they have there is from the 1600’s. We learned all kinds of other cool things that I’m sure you will have the joys of hearing when I recount my travel stories to you in person J. All in all a great day that ended with a Chinese buffet and a chocolate fountain, score!

Saturday Jean and I headed to a food festival with Jean’s niece, Jane (ha I just realized that if you switch the letters around you can spell Jean from Jane, I wonder if that is a coincidence…) where we watched a man cut an apple in the shape of a swan, I was tricked into eating pork scratching (crunch pigs skin), I had a taste testing of port, and we saw the worst cooking demonstration known to man. Apparently the guy that knew what he was doing had an accident so he couldn’t be there so his boss was filling in and doing commentary while the students cooked. He didn’t know how to work the stove and the demonstration went downhill from there…but the quail egg I tried was quite tasty! That night Jean arranged for me to go out on the town with her grandson, Ciaran, who is around my age and in the RAF (royal air force) and one of his friends from the RAF. The night was a lot of fun and consisted of the three of us bar hopping, them making fun of my “American English”, me trying to figure out why so many roundabouts are in this country, and a lot of laughs on everyone’s part.

Monday we headed to Skegness, a seaside town on the east side of England right on the North Sea. The weather was fantastic even though rain was predicted and we enjoyed a day of walking along the beach and people watching. Then came the best part, seaside donuts. Now I don’t really like donuts that much but these were the best donuts that I have ever had. I got to watch them being made and then rolled in sugar. Needless to say they disappeared quite quickly and I will be running some extra miles in the near future after all of the good food that I have been treated to with Jean. The food that they feed us at school is not a true impression of good English food (thank goodness, I would have been a little worried if it had been).

Tuesday was full of laughs as I accompanied Jane (we went with her on Saturday) to her classroom of 11 year olds (year 5 in school over here) and helped out for the afternoon. She had apparently told them about her friend from America that was coming to visit because they all looked at me with wide eyes when I walked into the room.  I was then peppered with questions of whether I knew this person or that person (needless to say I did not know little Johnny’s stepmom, even though she is from America as well), questions of what my favorite color is, what it’s like to live in America (I said not too different from living here and the little boy that asked me said “except you can’t drive manual cars though, right? And you did it on the wrong side”, cheeky little boy!), and told that I could be an actress (my life is now complete!). That afternoon they were painting African shields to go along with their study of Africa and the next afternoon they would be performing African dances. While we had a few mishaps including 3 spilled containers of paint (it wasn’t me!) the afternoon was a lot of fun and I’m excited to enter the field of education in a few years. Actually that’s a lie, I’m half terrified as well but if my students enjoy  my class half as much as Jane’s enjoy hers I’ll be okay.

Wednesday and Thursday were filled with me brushing up on my English history. Wednesday we headed to Chatsworth Manor where the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire live. You can tour their home (parts of it at least) and the grounds. BEAUTIFUL! After that we dashed to the next town over, Bakewell, to pick up a famous Bakewell pudding because I was told that I have to try one. (yummy!) We found a bakery still open and then to my surprise we stopped in a butchers and got a steak and kidney pie (my stomach still quivers a bit at the thought) for tea (dinner). Back at home Jean prepared a dinner of steak and kidney pie, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I was crazy nervous about said pie because it’s not kidney beans that the steak is cooked with, it’s real, live (well it used to be alive) kidney meat. You can tell the kidney meat from the steak because it is oddly smooth looking and supposedly adds a lot of flavor to the dish. It was actually quite tasty when you forgot what you were eating and a plateful of mashed potatoes always puts me in a happy place! Thursday we headed to York and had a lovely day exploring the town, doing a bit of shopping, and trying not to get lost on the highway on the way home! We went in the York Viking museum where we were bombarded with a truckload of little French teenagers running around speaking in French. I got nervous that I was hallucinating and was still in Paris for a second. York is an awesome city and we saw the York Minster which is 4 times the size of Westminster Abbey and has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and has 128 stained glass windows with some dating back to the 1200’s. My home country wasn’t even an idea in 1200, heck, they didn’t even know it existed and they were over here making awesome stained glass! It’s crazy to think about.

Today I have to pack, shoot. I have made myself pretty comfortable in my room at Jean’s so it could be another repeat of my struggles to pack back in January. I’m doing really well and having a splendid time (in case you couldn’t tell) and can’t wait for what the next few weeks will bring and can’t believe that this time next month I’ll be thinking about heading home. If you need to get in contact with me in the next 2 weeks try e-mailing (I’ll try to check it when I can but that doesn’t always happen) or call me on my cell phone (not my American one, mind you!) if it’s important. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. Continue to pray for safe travels in my attempt to see the world!

Love from Lincoln (and all over the Midlands of England),

Stacey

Je t'aime Paris! (I love Paris)

*Disclaimer* I wrote this yesterday (Thursday) so it is a day off...sorry :)

Bonjour!

That’s about the extent of my French even though I just got back from 3 of the most amazing days of my life that so happened to take place in Paris! Looking back it feels surreal. Like when people say “oh have you been to Paris?”, I’ll reply “no but I want to go…oh wait, just kidding, I have been!”. It was one of those crazy once in a lifetime trips and was a great start to my Easter holiday. I did learn something about myself though…my fallback French phrase is “bonjour”. So when I would leave a store, enter a store, want to say thank you, it somehow always managed to come out as “bonjour” which caused several laughs from Konstantina and several red cheeks form me!

                

 My adventure started off early (and by early I mean 4:30 so that’s pretty dang early!) and I did not get a very good night sleep the night before because I had no sheets. Since I was leaving so early the next morning I had to put all of my things in storage the night before which left me with a pillow and a mattress in my 68 degree room…brrrrr! We got to the airport okay, went through security no problem and then I just had to wait for my flight. When I finally boarded the plane I was met by my very unpleasant row mates (the lady kept just staring at me and glaring, I’m still not sure why!) but I slept most of the way so it was alright. When we got to the airport I thought I had a plan all worked out for how I was to get from the Charles de Gaulle airport to downtown Paris where my hostel was located. This plan was foiled when I discovered that the train going to and from the airport was being worked on and was not running that weekend. Shoot! At this point I was tired and just wanted to plop down and shed a few tears with a big bar of chocolate in hand. Since I wanted to make a good first impression on France I refrained and after an hour of walking in delirious circles I figured out I would have to take the airport tram to a bus to a train that would get me where I needed to be! After that little bump in the road it was pretty smooth sailing for the day. It was a lovely 75 degrees and sunny in Paris so who couldn’t be happy with that?! I got all checked into the hostel I was meeting Konstantina at and then headed out to see the sights before I met up with her. Now for those of you that haven’t been to Europe, the streets are NOT in a grid pattern like ours, or any kind of pattern for that matter! So this resulted in my just kind of wandering with a doe eyed expression until I ran into a rather large building that I was at first annoyed with because it was blocking my path to the river Seine. I figured once I got to the river I could get pretty much anywhere with the help of my handy dandy map (shout out to Norman for the map…it saved my life a number of times!). Then as I kept walking to the end of this seemingly never ending building I realized it was the Louvre (the famous art museum) which was basically where I had been heading the whole time! I just walked around a bit, sat in the gardens outside the museum, got kicked of grass I wasn’t supposed to be sitting on by a man yelling in French and had a lovely afternoon! Rewind a bit though, I forgot my struggle to find food. It is a good thing that I do not live in a forest because I would surely die of starvation because it took me an hour and a half to find food. I think I was delirious from hunger because there are food areas all around that area but somehow I missed them all! I finally found a tuna baguette and a coke…best thing EVER! Later that afternoon Konstantina and I met up and decided to find more food. We decided crepes would be our best bet and found a street vendor making them (it’s not that hard because they are everywhere!) and settled on nutella filled crepes. Nutella is a chocolate hazelnut spread that I have become addicted to over here (our apartment will be stocked with it next year, Kaitlin!) so I was most pleased with this dinner!

                On the first Sunday of the month most of the national museums in Paris are free to the public so I decided I would go to the Louvre on Sunday so I wouldn’t have to pay. Konstantina had already been there on a previous trip to the city so she visited another museum and we decided to meet up later. I got up pretty early, (wanted to beat the crowd…and I figured I would get a bit lost walking and I had developed a gimp walk from the massive amount of blisters I had gotten the previous day so I factored this all into my travel time!) got breakfast at the hostel (granola cereal with chocolate bits! and of course a croissant) and headed out. Good thing I checked the weather before I left England and knew it was supposed to rain so I was all ready with my raincoat (yes, I did represent AOII in Paris with my rain jacket!) and umbrella. I found the Louvre and headed to the back of a seemingly never ending line only to see a man holding a sign that I couldn’t read (I think there was a part in English but he was too far away) that said 1:30…my heart sunk because it was 9am and I thought the sign was Disney world style and was telling me when I would be getting into the museum. Fortunately I think it was just a line estimation because I was inside in around 40 minutes. The Louvre itself is an old palace before the monarch of France decided the Louvre was too small (small must be a relative term because it is HUGE) and moved to Versailles which is a few miles outside the of the city. The Louvre is home to the Mona Lisa (small but her eyes really do follow you everywhere!), Napoleon III’s apartments (just think gold and red velvet and French elegance) and a ton of other pieces of art. The sad thing was that most of the descriptions were in French (guess that makes sense, but still annoying when you can’t read French). So I didn’t always know what I was looking at.

                Next Konstantina and I met up and decided to head up the Champs Elyesses towards the Arc de Triumph. The Champs is filled with shopping and has everything from H&M to Cartier to Louis Vuitton and probably 4 Starbucks (fun fact: Starbucks was pretty much a failure in Melbourne, Australia according to Konstantina, and there are only a couple in the whole city!). We made it to the Arc with no trouble except for the lingering rain of the morning, snapped so pictures and then decided to head to the Sacre Coure, a big church in Paris that is supposed to be beautiful. Now of course this was basically at the other end of the city but it was near(ish) our hostel so we figured we would have to head that way anyways. This little adventure took much longer than expected and I think we went the longest way possible! It took us so long that we decided to stop in a bakery for a little snack/a chance to rest our feet. Great idea on our part because we found this cute little place that had éclairs and macaroons and was pretty cheap and so good! We actually got to sit and watch them make some bread too which was neat. After the bakery we got lost and a police officer must have noticed us standing in one spot but twisting our map and spinning in a circle because he asked us if we needed some help! He pointed us in the right direction and we were off for a pretty easy walk, so we thought. We were wrong. The church is at the top of a 130m (don’t ask me to convert that because I don’t know how! I’m finally getting the temperature conversion down and it’s been almost 3 months!) hill and after 2 days of walking our feet were NOT happy about this!! But the church was totally worth it, in my opinion. They don’t let you take pictures inside which I find of find charming but it had one of the most beautiful painted ceilings that I have ever seen. After spending some time at the church we decided to head back down the hill and find some dinner and then headed back to the hostel. Now this was supposed to be my last night staying in a hostel because I had the genius plan to stay in the airport the next night to save money and since I had an early flight the next morning. Well as this was getting closer and closer I was starting to get a bit nervous about getting to the airport at night because the train ride basically goes through the Paris suburbs and let’s just say they aren’t Geneva, Illinois. I e-mailed mom (love the Plug-Inn hostel for having free internet/computers for you to use!) and she e-mailed me back saying she had just heard from my Grandma and Grandpa that they would generously pay for another night in a hostel for me to keep me off the streets. Wow, God works in cool ways! My hostel was not available for the next night so I booked another one and slept soundly that night!

                Now Monday would be my last full day in Paris. I did some shopping in the morning in our neighborhood which at night was SKETCHY because it was in the Red Light District of Paris and right near the Moulin Rouge, needless to say there was no walking alone at night. During the day the neighborhood was home to the artsy crowd which led to a lot of cool little shops. I saw people lined up to get their baguettes and saw the crepe makers firing up their crepe making things. Then I got on the subway (I’m such a grown up! I even had to do a station transfer!) and met Konstantina for the free tour we were taking. Now I have had these New Europe tours recommended to me by several people and it lived up to its standards. Our tour guide was a bit quirky (but really so I am so I can’t judge) but really loved her city and told us all kind of cool things. I basically decided that my goal for my future history classes is to make them like a walking tour through history because it was SO interesting. After the tour Konstantina and I had plans to go to the Eiffel Tower and luckily the tour ended right near it. Now with both of us traveling on a budget we decided that it was not worth paying three times the price to take an elevator up when we could walk up the 1,600 stairs (it’s not that many, right?!) for less. So we took off our jackets, stretched out our legs (not really, but maybe we should have) and were off! We got to the second landing of the tower to realize that you can’t walk up any further and you have to pay to take a lift up to the very top. We decided that it really wasn’t worth it so after taking in the breath taking views of the city we started the trek down. Once we got down we decided to walk down the park and get some pictures with the tower in the background (tourist alert!). Then we wandered into a supermarket and I nearly bought a baguette (all that bread for only .85 euro!) just to look like I belonged! Then I realized that my awful French would not help my disguise so I opted against the baguette L At this point it was almost time for Konstantina and I to part ways and we realized that we had not taken any pictures together (people probably would not believe that we were traveling together except for the fact that we had all the same pictures in the same places where we would say “I’ll take one of you, you take one of me!”). I headed to my hostel where I was in a room with 2 girls (I think there was a boy but he came in after I was asleep and I left early the next morning) who were from LA and Australia. It was an interesting experience as we had different views on things but they were both still very nice. The next day I was off to the airport (apparently I brought the wrong ticket and the machine wouldn’t let me through when I tried to exit so I just followed a stranger very closely on his ticket…oops!) where I proceeded to totally pass out on the plane and only wake up when we landed in England!

Now I am staying with my grandma’s pen pal, Jean and having a lovely time! Today we went to Sherwood Forest, home of Robin Hood and then had a lovely snack of scones and clotted cream! I feel like a true Brit now! I’ll have more to post later but I’m sure you are getting sick of reading at this point!

Thanks for all the prayers for me during my travels. I’m having a fantastic month thus far and can’t wait for what else is to come! I’ll be home in just over a month (CRAZY!) and can’t wait to see you all! 3 weeks from yesterday and my mommy will be here…yay!!!! Thanks for following and I have tons of pictures for you guys and will post them as soon as I can!

Love from the Louvre,

Stacey

Fun Fact: There is 1 dog to every 5 people in Paris!