Wagwon and World Travels

Wagwon everybody!

Now for those of you wondering wagwon (pronounced wAHguh wAHn) is London slang for "what's going on?", I learned that from my British friends here! So life has been pretty good the past week, fairly uneventful but still good! I turned in my first graded piece of coursework last week- a 3,000 word essay on Soviet Identity in the Twentieth Century (yes, it was just as fascinating as it sounds) so it was a weight off my shoulders to have that done and out of the way. I was in a bit of a funk at the beginning of last week (in case you couldn't tell from the cutting off 3 inches of hair. Obviously I live on the wild side these days!) and wanted to do something fun over the weekend so I decided to channel my 5 year old self (when I was 5 I knocked on our then-next door neighbor's door and said "I hear there is a little girl about my age living here and I would like to meet her" and Amanda and I have been friends ever since!) and call up a friend to meet up over the weekend. Now, this was not just any friend, this was Kyle Walters! Kyle and I used to live next door to each other until his family moved to Arizona and my family moved to Geneva. It had been a few years since we had seen each other and was total chance that we happen to both be studying abroad in England in the same semester only a couple hours away from each other. I e-mailed him and we decided that I would come to Leeds (where he is going to school) on Sunday!

The rest of my week was pretty boring because I was crazy excited for the weekend and my little adventure. It would be my last weekend before Easter holiday starts so I wanted to try to get as much work done as possible. I managed to finish my last essay (4,500 words on Civil Rights and the Cold War, can you say par-tay) on Saturday and was ready for a fantastic Sunday in Leeds. Now for some reason England does daylight savings time 2 weeks after the US so our clocks changed on Sunday morning. I was all worried that I would mess up the time difference and while I didn't do that I did end up sleeping through my 2 alarms I set and waking up 40 minutes later than planned...good thing I get ready fast! I hopped on the bus to the train station, got some tea and a muffin for the trip and was off. I arrived in Leeds with no problems, managed to walk past Kyle in the train station and wander around lost for a few minutes before we found each other, my bad! Kyle gave me the grand tour of the city and the University of Leeds which unlike my university here, is basically right in the city so we could easily walk between the two. We got lunch, coffee, walked around, did a little window shopping and just had a great time catching up on each others lives over a pint of cider. (I still feel SO strange ordering alcohol and no one even thinking twice about it!) It was one of those cool  experiences that you have with people that even though you haven't been around each other for a long time, it still doesn't seem like that much time has past. It was really fun to get to share our similar yet different study abroad experiences and to share the funny things that have happened to us over here. Unfortunately I am a total failure and didn't manage to get a picture of the two of us together (sorry mommy!). I also went for fashion over function in the shoe department and have some nice blisters on my feet as souvenirs of the weekend :/ Oh well, live and learn I suppose! I made it home safe and sound from the train station and felt like such a grown up going by myself to visit someone and all that jazz. All around it was a FANTASTIC day and we have tentative plans to meet up in Nottingham in May which I'm sure will be a blast.

This week my to-do list is a long but not too exciting. I am preparing for my Easter holiday which means that I have to pack up my entire room and completely move out. In the UK apparently they hold conferences at universities and the attendees sleep in our rooms. Warning to whoever is in my room...the bed is one of the most uncomfortable things EVER, sorry about it! Luckily a family friend will be collecting my stuff for me so I don't have to travel with all of it and I will also be staying at her house for part of break. I'm wondering how I am going to get all of my stuff back in my suitcase and have a feeling it's going to be a bit of a struggle to achieve my mom's master packing skills that got me over here! Saturday I'm off to Paris for a long weekend of art, shopping, and hopefully a comfortable-ish bed at the Plugg-Inn hostel with my Australian friend, Konstantina! I'll have really shady internet access for the month of April so if you write to me and I don't respond that's why and below is my travel schedule so you can all keep tabs (and maybe be a little jealous) of where I'll be for the month. I'll be back at school on May 1 and then will have just a few short weeks left here in Nottingham, CRAZY! I literally can't believe that I will be coming home 2 months from yesterday, yikes! On the roller coaster that is study abroad this past week has been so fantastic that I don't really want it to end just yet!

Well that's just about it for now.Thanks for all the cards I've been getting lately (you know who you are :) ) and the thoughts and prayers I know you've all been shooting up for me. I'll try to blog as much as I can next month about my travels but it might just end up being a nice long (and I mean LONG) post at the beginning of May when I get back. And of course I'll take lots of pictures and try to soak up as much of these experiences that I am lucky to be experiencing as I can. It will be a bit of a stressful month with all the traveling but I know I will look back on it years from now with a smile on my face and tell my little grand-kids about how cool of a world traveler their grandma was back in the day!

Love from London (and all kinds of other cool places soon!),

Stacey

Here's my travel schedule:

April 2-5 Paris

April 5-16 Jean's house, a family friend, and possibly some UK day trips

April 16-26 a tour of Barcelona, the French Riviera, Swiss Alps, Venice, Rome

April 27-May 1- London with my MOMMY (yes, we will be attending the royal wedding...my invite is in the mail, I just know it!)

**If you have any requests of places to go, things to eat, travel advice or anything like that please let me know :)

LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!

A LIttle Video Treat!

So long time no talk! Here is a little video for ya! (I think you have to be in my actual blog to view it FYI). Sorry that you have to crane your neck to see it...I can't figure out how to rotate it : / Enjoy! Love you guys!

Love from London,

Stacey

Peas, Pounds, Psalms

So after my last post about my adventures in London this one has some awfully large shoes to fill but I'll give it the old college try. Side note: That phrase would make NO sense here because the word college does not really exist in the English vocabulary. Here, I am in "uni or university" and if I were to say I am in "school" that would mean the equivalent of high school in the US. Speaking of phrases that don't exist here...

I was at softball on Friday (yay for making friends!) and the club president, Ross, lent his glove to someone. A little while later he asked for it back because he needed it. Now me being me and not really having a filter between my brain and my mouth exclaimed "what an Indian giver". This one got a few interesting stares from the team as they tried to figure out what the crazy American girl was talking about this time (people have a tendency to do that a lot around me!). Finally someone asked what I said so I repeated myself "I called him an Indian giver". The other American girl on the team came over laughing and said "finally, someone who says things that no one understands!". In my opinion it's about time these British kids know how I feel most of the time when they talk about the car park, the pavement, and tea (parking lot, sidewalk, dinner). They still didn't get why I called Ross an Indian giver so I tried to explain. "Well in America you call someone that when they give you something and then take it away." The more I explained it the more I realized that the phrase really doesn't make sense because we took land from the Indians, not the other way around. We finally got that situation all worked out and were off to do some drills. I got paired with a boy name Dan (shout out to Devin because this Dan looks just like your brother Dan!) and he goes "great, I'm stuck with the racist American". It was all in good fun and I didn't mind being on the receiving end of everyone's jokes. It actually felt just like home! :)

Breaking news! I have found the British boy that I want to marry. Now don't worry, I'm not going to marry some British lad and never come home. I will not disclose his name publicly because that would present a REALLY awkward situation if he were to somehow trip across this blog and discover his name in a post. But anyways he is great...too bad he doesn't really know I exist...YET! We did have a conversation today though. It consisted of him asking Rae and I if we had our tickets to the formal dinner our hall is having in a couple weeks and me saying "Yep, thanks!". Yes ladies and gentleman, the conversation says it all...we are meant to be! Well because of that and the fact that our names sound cute together and he because loves Jesus (from what I hear). I'll keep you updated on our non-existent relationship, don't you worry.

The weekend was pretty boring and consisted of my finishing writing the first of 3 papers that I have to write this semester. That is LITERALLY all of the school work that I have til finals. It's been very hard getting down to business with those papers because school here lacks the busy work that I always hated at U of I but find myself missing over here and I don't really feel like I'm in school. It's more like I go listen to old people talk for a couple hours a morning and the call it a day! I'm now writing my second paper and it's on national identity in post-revolutionary Soviet Union...fascinating, right?! Oh, and apparently one of my classes ends next week...too bad it's the class that I feel like I have learned NOTHING in! I'm going to have to go talk to the professor about that one to make sure that I do okay on my final exam in May.

Today marks my half birthday! So 6 months from now I will be turning 21...CRAZY! The school must have known because for dinner we had lasagna (not as good as my mommy's) and PEAS!! Now for those of you that have been to the dining hall with me (cough, cough, Kristen) you know that I am OBSESSED with a good plate of peas and I've been known to take an entire plateful and get weird stares from everyone around me. Now I didn't go to this extreme today because I finally have people to sit with at metals and I didn't want to scare them off but man oh man I enjoyed those peas! Today was also a great day because I won a 20 pound gift card to Amazon.com! I filled out a survey thing and won the prize for filling it out...go me. Note to self and all y'all out there...always fill out a survey that has a potential prize because NO one does it and chances are you will win! This is my second survey win and I think that's a pretty nice record. And speaking of countdowns... 26 days until my spring break starts and 50 days until my mommy is across the pond with me! (I probably counted wrong but still that's SO close!)

The weather here has been exceptionally nice the last couple days with around 45-50 degree days and not a cloud in the sky. I have been taking Psalm 118:24 to heart the last few days and have really been enjoying life. (go ahead...look it up Psalm 118:24, you know you want to know want to. I even made it easy for you, just click on the text...no typing necessary!) I've taken to finding a dry spot on the grass or on a bench, curling up with my Kindle or a book on the Soviet Union and reading for a while to soak up some well needed vitamin D. Tomorrow is Wednesday and at Notts that means no classes in the afternoon because it is sports time. I think that some girls and I are going to go watch our school rugby team play for a while and then I have to do laundry (I'm down to the last of my clothes again!). Good thing Grandma Anne sent me some money last week, she must have known that I needed to clean my clothes!

Well that's about it for my exciting life across the pond. I escaped eating potatoes today, that was quite the feat! Miss you all and can't wait to see you in just about 2 months and 2 weeks (not that I'm counting or anything!). Keep on sending the love and prayers my way :)

Love from London,

Stacey

P.S. I think this might be the my shortest post yet!