Home

I am home, safe and sound finally after a long day of traveling yesterday! I have stuffed myself with many of the american junk foods that I have missed already! I suppose this means that this is my last post for my blog so I just wanted to say thanks for reading it this whole semester! I'm writing this post right now with 1,662 blog views so it was a lot more popular than I thought!!

Month 4

Today marks my fourth month abroad! Its crazy how fast the time was gone by since being here and its still a little weird to think about everything I've done - like even though its been 2 months since my trip to Paris but it doesn't seem real yet that I've seen the Eiffel Tower in person! I'm sure it will seem very real once I get home and begin to print out pictures! While I didn't get to see all of Europe, I am still amazed by how much I did see. I've been to 4 different countries (United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Belgium) - unless we just want to go ahead and count Scotland as its own country since they most likely will be as of the coming fall, making it 5 countries. I have seen things I've only dreamed about and tried things I've never imagined (aka snails). I don't plan on this being my last trip out here (I mean come-on, I still have all of Italy to see and lots of pasta to devour!) but I've definitely learned a lot since coming here. 

Kevin headed back to the states today and I am only a few days behind him! By this time Friday I will be back! The first thing I am going to get my hands on when I get back? American Coke, Salted Pretzels, Taco Bell, and Reeses. Or that's what I'm thinking about right now. I know the coke and pretzel part will be a definite though! 

You sound like you're from London!

three post in 24 hours?? lucky readers!

I saw this again on pinterest and realized it was the perfect of the odd differences in word choices between home and here

West Minister Abbey & Camden Market!

Today Kevin & I went to an afternoon service at THE West Minister Abbey. I'd like to think of it as I was attending church basically with the royal family as well as a bunch of famous dead people. Now typically, it would cost 18 pounds (27 US dollars) to get in and tour the church - but being the sneaky people Kevin & I are, we figured we'd just go to the actual church service and get a look at the inside for FREE. However, we didn't get to tour around the whole place :( I was able to sneak a few pictures too!

After the service, Kevin and I headed to the northern part of the city to go to Camden Market. It wasn't entirely what I had expected, but it was still a very neat place to go! We walked around the shops, got a few gifts/souvenirs, ate on some really neat patio seats and enjoyed the sun!

Overall, it has been a pretty successful day! 

Taking a Final in a Different Country

Today was my first of two finals. It was a pretty easy one since it was the Jim Crow American History final (buts lets be honest, neither finals were be what I consider to be hard). However, while the actual test may be easy the set-up of the test was not as pain-free. 

Imagine 350+ students in a giant warehouse that are all taking some test (but not necessarily the same one because there are 5 or more classes assigned to each test period). On top of that since there are multiple test going on, not all of them have the same time-limit. Some kid has a 30 minute test for an education class, another kid has 2 hours for his philosophy test, another gets an hour for his english test, and so forth. Every few minutes students were getting up,shuffling around, or being escorted to the restroom (flash back to standardize test, right?). The room also has assigned seats (yes, assigned seats for all 300+ kids) so this distracting nose is coming at you from all sounds and with it being one giant warehouse the sound students make on one side of the room, can be heard on the other. You can already picture this been a crazy, loud environment, especially for students that are taking their finals.

But that's not all. On top of the sniffling noses and obnoxious coughing, it decides to rain for a brief period of time. So now, there is the not-so-smoothing sound of rain pattering (LOUDLY) on the tin roof of this warehouse. 

Add all these noises and distractions up and you can picture the setting for St. Mary's finals. Beautiful, right?

Changing of the Guards - Video!

Changing of the Guards

Yesterday, Kevin and I went down into Central London and got to watch the Changing of the Guards! It was not the best day to go down because this weekend is a bank holiday weekend (basically a 3 day weekend) so it was VERY crowded, as you'll be able to see in my pictures. Despite the crowds though, Kevin and I were able to hop onto a stone wall thing (there is no really good way to explain what it is haha) and got a great view of the whole thing from there. The event last roughly 45 minutes and they do it  everyday during the warm months and every-other day during the cold months!! I was able to get pictures and videotape most of the event, but in the last 5-10 minutes it began to down pour on us! Despite the 15 minute drizzle, the day was very nice (I still laugh at myself for saying that because it was only 65 degrees and if I was back home I'd be freezing haha).

Here are few pictures from the event! I'll hopefully have some videos up soon too!