The Lost Blogs: Adventures with Emily!

My friend Emily and her mom have come over from the states to visit me! Emily has come for the last two weeks of my time here and will be my flying buddy on the journey back! Her mom is here for the first week and then will fly back leaving Emily and I tie up all my loose ends!
One of the best adventures we went on was to Dover Castle. This is my fourth time visiting Dover but only my second time going into the Castle. For those movie buffs out there, Dover Castle was the main filming site for The Other Boleyn Girl. One of the coolest things about Dover Castle are the “Secret Wartime Tunnels” which were used during WWII as a defense against German forces who had taken over France from invading England. But Dover Castle is full of history from all different eras of English history. Another adventure we went on was to Herne Bay which is very different in warm weather then it had been on my previous trips there! We played on the playground and had a grand ol’ time! This week has proved to me, however, that I would not make a very good superhero because it is really hard to live a double life! I have been a tourguide/tourist by day and a collage kid by night! This schedule does not lend itself to much sleep, but I am getting enough and I really want to soak up every minute I has left!!!

On Saturday night we had my going away party (I had it on Saturday even though I don’t leave til the next Thursday because I didn’t want to disrupt my housemates studying for exams). It was a lot of fun and I was glad to have almost every one of my friends abroad there with me to celebrate! Aubrey got me a British flag and a sharpie for everyone at the party to sign so that I could have something to remember everyone by (such a great idea)! It was also fun to have Emily there because she was at both of my going away parties (going away to England and then going away from England)! Now I only have a few days left and I’m starting to feel overwhelmed! I need to pack everything up, clean everything up, turn everything in, all while trying to spend as much time with my friends as possible! It should be an adventure!!!!

The Lost Blogs: Back with the Gang!

These next three blogs are my last blogs and were not posted at the time of these events but I want to finish my blog properly! Once you read them you should see why I did not have time to blog at the time!

Well, I’m back from Germany and starting the last two weeks of my study abroad experience! Its weird, I feel very torn. Part of me is ready to go home. I miss my family and my home and that homesickness is manifesting in strange ways. The other day I had a craving for Eggo waffles, the little round ones. I haven’t eaten those since I was like 7 but I really wanted them! On the other hand, I can’t imagine leaving here! I have been trying to soak up every last minute of my time with my friends here. The weather has been really pretty these past two weeks (let me clarify that by really pretty I mean mostly sunny and upper 60s)! In England you have to take advantage of pretty weather because it doesn’t stick around very long, so everyone has been hanging out on the hill overlooking the cathedral. We take blankets out there and relax in the sunshine! Not only is this a fun, but it’s a great way to meet new people because EVERYONE is out on the lawn! I have met some really good new friends from sitting out on the lawn! Through Will AJ and Lewis I have been introduced to Vicki – a very sweet girl from just outside London, Carly – an energetic and sweet girl from Ireland, Matt – a funny guy from Wales, and Becky – a fashionable and wonderful girl! This group of friends and I (along with my friend Jenna from New York) have been hanging out almost everyday! On Thursday nights we go to Karaoke at K-bar which is a lot of fun because the whole group picks songs to sing together! And on Friday nights we go to Magic Mungos which is a night of cheesy songs and dancing! Its been really bitter sweet getting to know these new friends because I know I will be leaving them in a little over two weeks. I have a feeling we will be keeping in touch though!

Kite surfing and kinder

Tonya and I are now spending about a week in Germany with some family friends of ours. It is really nice to be with a family again! Christiana and Arne are my dad and stepmom's next door neighbors who live about half of the year in Germany and half a year in Florida. Tonya is also the Godmother of Lucas who is the adorable boy in the pictures. He will be turning 2 on Sunday! Leoni is the eldest child and she is 4 almost 5 years old. We arrived in Germany on Tuesday night around 11 at night and Arne and Christiana had kept the fact that we were coming a secret from the kids. So the next morning we rang the door bell to the house and waited for Leoni to come answer the door. I wish I had a picture of her face! She was very surprised to see us and very excited! So we ate breakfast together and then we all piled into the car and went to an island off the coast of Germany to a wind surfing competition! It was really nice to be by the coast and we had a lot of fun! The wind was not strong enough for the competition so we explored a bit and then left. We drove to the other side of the island and had a snack at a local coffee house, which was very nice! Then we came back to the mainland and went to a Greek restaurant for dinner! It was delicious!!! I am really enjoying playing with Lucas and Leoni! They are really sweet children and I love watching them grow! I also enjoy learning two year old German! Lucas likes to repeat words over and over which helps me learn the words! But they do wear me out! Leoni is full of energy and loves to play tag and run around! So on that note, I am going to go to bed so I can be ready for another day of playing hard!

Its elementary, my dear Watson

Tonya arrived last Sunday and we spent three days in London exploring and seeing the sights. It was kind of interesting to be tourist again because now when I go to London I usually just walk around until I go see a show and people watch. But since it was Tonya's first time in London we did the tourist stuff like The Tower of London, Changing of the Guard, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Harrod's. One of the things we did that I had never done before, however, was to go to the Sherlock Holmes museum. The museum is located at 221b Baker Street, which is Sherlock lived in the novels. Tonya is a huge Sherlock fan and I have been known to enjoy some Sherlock mysteries in my day! It was a lot of fun! The museum was in an actual 5 story house and the top floor was all wax statues acting out scenes from the novels. There was no one really in the museum and so Tonya and I had some fun taking pictures with the figures....yes I am a 5 year old child when it comes to museums, but it was a lot of fun and probably the highlight for me! Its also really funny when people come over from the states because they point out differences that I have kind of stopped noticing...like Tonya was fascinated by how small our sink in the hotel was....but that's a normal bathroom sink here. It just reminds me of how I felt when I first got here and how far I've come in my four months. It is really, really nice to have Tonya here and now we are spending a week in Germany with some family friends! I will blog about that very soon! I have three weeks left in my study abroad experience....I'm not sure what to think about that...I miss you all very much and I love you!

All the World's a Stage

On April 23rd Lena, Anna, Daniel, Aubrey and I traveled to London to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform King Lear in The Globe Theater. For those of you who are not Shakespeare nerds, April 23rd is Shakespeare's birthday and it also marks the beginning of the Globe's season. So it was a really big day for Shakespeare fans all over the world. The play opened with traditional music, which I captured on video before the play really started. The play was AMAZING!!! We bought standing tickets and the play lasted about 3 and a half hours. So by the end our feet hurt SO badly, but it was totally worth it (for me at least). The acting was superb, it is the kind of acting that I aspire to be able to achieve someday. This was my first experience seeing King Lear staged and it was a wonderful first experience! At the end of the show the actors did a traditional dance. In the olden days they did a dance at the end of a show to show that no one was really dead and to uplift the audience as they left the theater. After seeing King Lear, which is arguably Shakespeare's most tragic play, I was really glad they chose to keep with tradition because I needed to be uplifted! At the end, as the cast took their bows I looked around and saw the three levels of the audience and it was an amazing feeling that canceled out any soreness from standing! It was an amazing feeling and probably one of my favorites of the plays I have seen so far, and I have seen some amazing plays thus far! I look forward to being able to see a few more plays while I'm here.
That has really been one of my favorite parts of my study abroad experience, being able to travel up to London for a day and see a play. I have really enjoyed every piece of theater I have seen here and learned a lot from each one and this has been a wonderful opportunity to live in a small city but benefit from being so close to a major city! I am now in my last month of my study abroad experience and I am starting to be torn. Some days I can't wait to be back home, back with my family and back to driving and normal food...but other days I can't imagine leaving. I have made some really great friends and memories and I have loved my time here! This last month will be a whirlwind, I have a feeling. I can't wait to see what the next month will bring!

In the Land of the Danes

Well I have returned safely from my adventures in Denmark! I am tired but it was a really fun trip and it was so wonderful to see Carrie! Carrie is studying abroad in Aalborg, Denmark which is a beautiful town in the north of Denmark. It was really fun to meet all of her friends from all over the world! She lives in a big building that’s kind of like a dorm with about 50 students. So the first day was spent settling me in and meeting all her friends. The next day we slept in, as college kids are known to do, and then we went for a walk in the countryside! I’ve included some pictures of our walk. Spring is just now budding in Denmark so there were some beautiful flowers that we took pictures of. Also, the path was lined with frogs wearing crown…so we kissed them to see in they would turn into princes! We also found a playground which was AWESOME!!! We played for a little while but then we had to get back to campus because it was CAKE DAY, which is a day where everyone baked a cake and then we ate pieces of lots of different kinds of cakes from different places! It was really fun! The trip was somewhat disrupted by the fact that my tonsillitis came back which was no fun. So one of our days was spent journeying around Aalborg trying to find the doctor’s office and get me a prescription. But we found the doctor and got me some antibiotics, so it was successful! The next day we explored the town of Aalborg and that night we went to see a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest which was thankfully in English and very good! Now I am back in England for a bit and then I will head to Belgium! I am looking forward to it! I love and miss you all!!!

Oh Hail no!

Yes, another England weather story. I am beginning to understand why weather dominates much of the conversations here because it is always doing something new and unexpected. Before leaving for Denmark I spent two nights at my friend Will AJ’s house right outside London. Will’s family lives about 5 minutes walk away from Kew Gardens, which are beautiful English gardens with green houses and a palace. So Will and I decided to go explore the gardens one day while I was staying there. I woke up and looked outside and it was a beautiful day! I was very excited because the weather can really make or break a trip to gardens. So Will and I got ready to go and ate breakfast and set out on our way to the gardens…..it started HAILING while we were walking! Like you could see the line where it started hailing and still see blue sky in the distance....and so we retreated back to his house and played monopoly. Then, about an hour later it was a beautiful day again so we went to the gardens and spent a few hours there perusing the gardens. The weather here baffles me on a daily bases.

But, it was so nice to be in a house again! I didn’t realize how much I miss couches and common areas, but it was really nice to have them again! My house on campus has a kitchen as the common area but there’s no area to stretch out and relax except in each others’ rooms. It was really nice to be with a family and Will’s Mum and Dad were very sweet to play host to me! I hope that I can play host to some of my friends here at some point in the future to repay their kindness!

SNOW!!!!

Well! I did not see this coming! Let me paint you a picture of the past two day's weather in England...yesterday it was upper 50s into the 60s here and sunny, I could wear short sleeves outside and it felt lovely. It was really nice because it was finally starting to feel like spring and I was excited! The I woke up this morning and looked out my window and there were snow flurries! I was astounded, but it was just flurrying nothing was sticking! I enjoyed watching the snow for a while and then sat down at my desk to work on my paper....I worked for about two hours and then went downstairs to make some tea. I looked out my window and my backyard was covered in snow!!!!!!!!! Its crazy!!!!!!!!!! Its also really exciting! The snow offers an excellent study break! Well, I had better get back to that paper! Miss you all!

The Last Week of First Term

Well, I am officially done with attending class until I return to the states! Isn't that crazy? You can be a little jealous if you want....Today marks the first day of Easter Holidays, which means that for the next four weeks we are on break! Almost everyone is traveling or, in the case of the British students, going home. I was supposed to be in Scotland for the next 4 days, but I came down with a case of tonsillitis which prevented me from going....which was very sad. I am feeling better now though and looking forward to the rest of my adventures for the month off. For the next week I will hang around Canterbury and probably travel to London for a day or two. Several of the guys who were in the play with me live in or around London, so I hope to meet up with them! Will AJ, who lives in London, even offered for me to stay at his parents house if I want to make a weekend out of it! Which is really nice! So I am looking forward to playing the next week by ear. On the 12th I leave for Denmark to go visit my friend Carrie Branch! I am very excited to see her and visit her university! I will be there until the 16th and then come back to Canterbury for more time to work on a paper which is due by the end of the month and visiting friends in London. Then, on the 23rd of April (Shakespeare's Birthday) I am going to the Globe Theater to see King Lear!!! I am very excited to see another show in the Globe! We bought standing tickets....which should be interesting since King Lear is quite a long show. The Next day (April 24th) I leave with Lena, Anna, and Daniel to meet Claire in Belgium! We will look around Claire's home country a bit until the 28th! Then Tonya gets here and she and I will play for the next two weeks!!! I am looking forward to that very much!!! So I have a very exciting month ahead of me! I will keep everyone posted on my adventures! I am starting to feel that my time here is picking up speed.....before I know it I will be home! I look forward to cramming as much fun and learning into the next two months as I can! I miss you all!

Tim.....the Satanist

Here is the video of Tim....the Satanist that I promised you! This was one of my favorite parts in the play! I love the kid that plays Tim...the Satanist, he is a very talented actor and a really fun person named Will Parrott! Oh, and this is a video that I stole from Mitch, by the way so he gets credit for it! Though, this one was filmed by Aubrey! The first girl to speak is Jenna who played the dumb blond character....even though she's a very smart and hilarious girl. George is the curly haired guy and he is super sweet and funny! I'm in the background and give Tim...the Satanist his Bacardi and coke! So, here it is!

Pub Comedy!

Last week was absolutely crazy and AMAZINGLY fun!!! March 20-22 was my show! The show was called Pub Comedy and was student written and student produced and so very funny! I played a bartender in the pub named Alice. Alice is the nice girl in the pub and the love interest of the main character. The whole show was set in a pub and had several plot lines and many fantasy sequences. I've included pictures of the whole cast a crew and two of my favorite parts of the play which were a fight between a cowboy and a pirate and the character of Tim the Satanist. I will put up a video of Tim the Satanist that will explain it better than I ever could. (The way that casting turned out all the nice characters in the show had curly hair and all the mean people had strait hair....so on the last night we straightened the curly haired people's hair, and tried to curl the straight haired people, which is why my hair is straight in these pictures.) The show was really wonderful, but the best part was all the fun people I met by doing it! Everyone was so much fun to work with and so dang funny! My experience here would have been really different without this show. And I have made so many wonderful friends through it who have really made this experience so much richer and for that, I am very grateful! It is also nice to know that you can go thousands of miles away and still find your niche. I hang out with theater kids here and feel very much at home, like I'm at the theater department back at UT....only everyone is speaking with a British accent!

Mom's Mark

My mom left yesterday and it was really hard to see her go because it was so WONDERFUL to have her here! Just like with Chelsea, it was so nice to have someone from home here who could meet all my friends! I have heard one of the hardest things about studying abroad is that once you go home people tire easily of hearing too much about your time there because they can't connect with your stories very well. I think that having my friends and mom come visit me will help so much with that problem! But mom really made an impression on everyone and everyone really appreciated having a mother around! She came to rehearsal and performances with me every night she was here and was so helpful, she got a special thank you in the program! Also, two of the guys from my play have a radio show every week and they gave her a shout out and thanked her for helping with the show and played Stacy's Mom in her honor!!! It was awesome! I was very grateful that she could be here for my show, it was a real treat! And besides being awesome behind stage, she introduced tequila to my friends in England. I have included a picture of her explaining the beauty of tequila to Mitch and a picture of Aubrey taking her first shot of tequila! It was amazing to have her here!!! I miss her very much but Emily booked her tickets to see me today and Tonya and Dad might be coming later on, so it has really helped to have that on the horizon! Also, Carrie Branch come to visit this week!!!

Tomorrow I am performing my group performance piece for physical theater. I am a little nervous, but also excited to see everyone else's work and be done with that part of the class! Then on Wednesday I have my last class of the term! I can't believe I'm done with classes already!!! Then Wednesday night Mitch and I are going to see Speed The Play, which is a David Mamet play starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum! I'm so excited!!! Well, I had better get some sleep before my performance tomorrow! I miss you all and I will post some pics of my play soon!

I DO NOT HAVE SPOO!!!

I love living on campus!!! After living off campus last year I forgot how much fun it is to have a bunch of college kids crammed into one building! The other night Mom and I were hanging out in my room not doing much and Mitch and Aubrey came bursting in and we talked for a hour or so about life! It was wonderful! Then, we decided to play a round or two of spoons! Lena, Anna, and Daniel all joined in and we had a wonderful night playing spoons! Mitch was, in fact, the winner because he didn't loose a single round! But everyone had fun and we got pretty silly!
Then, I brought down my i-pod speakers and, as is our usual practice at 1 in the morning, we had a dance party! Mom taught everyone "Blue Commode Water", which is an incredible song written by an old friend of hers. I've included a video of Respect for your viewing pleasure!!! Just goes to show you, all you need is a deck of cards and some spoons to have a great night!

Sushi Night

This post has been a long time coming. Sushi Night actually happened about 2 weeks ago but with all of the visitors, I have had little time to blog because we've been on adventures! But while Chelsea was here she made us sushi and, let me tell you, it was so awesome! It had been far too long since I had sushi and we had so much we couldn't finish it all! Not only was the sushi AMAZING, the process of making it was so much fun! It took almost 2 hours to make the sushi and we (Aubrey, Mitch, Chelsea, and I) had so much fun listening to music and dancing around while we waited
rice to be done. Then everyone was involved in making the sushi in some way, as you can see by the lovely picture of Mitch! It was a night of great friends and great food! It was really nice to have Chelsea here and sushi night was a perfect example of the many nights of fun we had while she was here!
In other news, MY MOM IS HERE NOW!!! When she arrived I'm pretty sure the whole court heard me yelling "MOM'S HERE!". I will try to blog soon about our adventures. Yesterday we went to Whistable but it was rainy and we didn't do much but walk around eat at a yummy cafe. I will take more pictures in the future! It is really nice to have my mom here, and everyone is excited about having a mom in our court. Moms are wonderful to have around!

The Day I Was in Harry Potter!

A lot has happened for me in the last week. Chelsea came to visit me and it was so wonderful to have her here! You forget how nice it is to have a rhythm and a history with someone when you're surrounded by new people, and even though I have had a wonderful time meeting new friends, it was nice to have an old friend here! Besides traveling all over Kent (the county my town is in) we had a lot of fun cooking at home and hanging out in Woody's (the pub for my housing area). Chelsea's flight left early Saturday morning so we spent the night in a hotel on Friday night and then I stayed in London all day Saturday because Mitch and I were going to see Les Mis that night. So Mitch and I were planning on wandering around London for most of the day on Saturday and our first order of business was to visit the Globe theater because it is an amazing place! On our way to the theater we noticed a big group of people looking at a helicopter that was flying over the River Thames but we didn't really know what was going on and the Globe called to us so we walked on past this curious event. On our way back though we had to walk back over the Millennium Bridge but when we got to the foot of the bridge it was blocked off and there were camera crews. We decided to stop and watch for a little while in hopes of seeing someone famous! As we were looking around we saw our first clue: A director's chair with the name David Yeats. Now, most people would not know what that means, but Mitch happens to be a huge Harry Potter movie fan and he knew that David Yeats directed the last Harry Potter movie and is supposed to be directing the 6th Harry Potter movie. We still weren't sure if that's what was going on but our we knew we had found something really exciting. Next we found a sign which said that they were filming on this bridge today and if you didn't want to be in a motion picture you shouldn't walk on the bridge. Well....OF COURSE WE WANT TO BE IN A MOTION PICTURE! So we decided to walk across the bridge and on our way we saw a man holding a boom mic and he was wearing a badge that said HP6....my heart skipped a beat....could it be? Were they really filming for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince? We couldn't believe it...but what else could HP6 stand for?!?!? So we walked across the bridge and then walked back again! We decided to get a picture of the director's chair to commemorate the moment! When we looked at his chair there was a filming schedule laying in it and we stealthily tried to read what they were filming....at the top of the schedule were the words: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE!!!!!! WHAT?!?!?!? You should have seen us....we couldn't contain our excitement. It was too much! So we decided to walk across the bridge like 6 more times to make it into as many frames as possible! We're hoping to give them no choice but to use our footage! So, this November look for us in HARRY POTTER!!!!! Mitch was wearing a bright orange hat and it will be in the scene with a bridge! OMG!!!! The pictures of our faces really captures the moment cause we were just so excited we didn't know what to with ourselves....I still can't believe it totally! Well...no other news I have can compare to that so I will leave you to be jealous! I miss you all very much!

Who's Who 2

Here are some more faces to go with all the names!!! I miss you all very much!

Who's Who

I thought I would create a reference for everyone so that you could match up the faces I mention with a name! I've included pictures of most of the people I've mentioned to people on the phone or in my blog previously! So here they are!!!