its been too long since my last post...

so there has been so much going on since i last posted. and the reason why i have not posted anything lately was because i forgot my logon name for this silly thing so i had to reach deep into my mind and remember it.....so i did. anyways this past week mary showed up with her friend sammy from prague. amaya and i went to go pick them up at the airport late last friday, or the 20th whichever way you want to think of it. so we grabbed them and it took as a good couple hours to get home. transportation isnt as good at night...not so frequent. anyways so they were here till early thursday morning, and it was so good to have them here. i felt bad though cause they were on my floor and i know that its not very comfortable, but i tried to make it as comfy as i could. but their time here was spent going into london, going out a few nights, going to hampton court palace, and realzing how expensive it is to live here.
the first day here we spent it just getting them adjusted to hearing english everywhere they went and just lounging around it was nice cause we were all tired from being up so late the night before. and we were gearing up for a big day in london the next day...
our first day in london was really nice minus that the second we got off the train it started to rain. we thought that maybe it would let up, but we were so wrong. we walked around in the rain all day getting soaked but we were seeing the sights... it was a lot of fun taking the girls aroudn and showing them everything. its a lot of fun to be with people when they see big ben or the abbey for the first time. i mean i havent been seeing them for that much longer but still it was exciting to see their reactions. the above picutre is all of in front of the buckingham palace gates. it was a good day to go to the palace becaus the roundabout in front of the palace was closed for the day so we didnt have to dodge in between cars to get a good look.
we also made it over to westminister abbey which we were excited to go into except the day that we chose to go to it it was closed for filming for the 5th harry potter movie. they are using the abbey for the ministry of magic. i thought that was pretty cool even though we didnt see anything cool. they did a good job making it look like the church was closed for service.
since it was raining annoyingly a lot we decided to head into the national gallery in trafalgar square to get dry and look at some van gough and monet. so we did and it was lovely. our day was running short so we headed back to kingston after that. and what do you know the rain started letting up the closer we got back to waterloo train station. whatever london.

the next day was just me, sammy, and mary that went into lodnon and boy did we have a busy day. we started out heading into hyde park and kensington gardens so we could go find the peter pan statue. and today was 1000 times better to be out and about. no rain. yes. so we walked through the park and into the gardens and stumbled right upon the statue. it was so quiet and fairly tucked away. i guess james barrie (the creator of peter pan) had the statue put in in the middle of the night to keep the mystery of peter pan alive. i thought that was cool. so we hung out with peter for a bit and headed on out cause we were hungry!!!! the rest of our day included heading over to tower bridge and then walking along the thames back to the train station. the path is called the queen's walk and its lovely. it has you pass through some old streets of london and the globe theater.

the rest of their days here we spent going shopping (well they did i had school) and going to hampton court palace which is just down the road from my dorm. and just so happens we were wandering around the grounds and found a gate that let us right into the royal gardens behind the palace and next thing you know we are inside the courtyards getting our audio guides. haha. we cheated the system.

ok well i was gonna post more pictures but my computer is being dodgy and not wanting to participate in what i want it to do. so there you a go mary adventure in the form of a blog.

ps. i will post more pictures soon

so you want some pictures do you???

so we are starting out with a lovely view from the bridge i have to cross every morning/afternoon/evening. whenever i want to do anything. this is the view that you would see if you just happened to look to your right at the beginning of the bridge. boats. and i am pretty sure that people in them... well either people live in them or i am seeing smoke come out of there for another reason.



now this fancy bridge has a name but i have no idea what it is. so far every single day that i have been here i have crossed this bridge. i have mixed feelings about it. one time i was crossing it on my way to school and a giant swan was standing on the pedestrian side of the bridge and he was snapping at people. i had to walk so far out of my way to get around him. i would have tackled him if he wasnt the "queen's animal" whatev. you get in big trouble if you harm a swan, but you can kick a duck and nobody looks twice. huh. oh did i mention that this is the thames river????

haha. now this picture is of phillip woods. he is my favorite teacher hands down here. he is part of the abroad program so is get to see him a lot. he teaches the british life and culture class, a.k.a my fieldtrip class. and he is just so funny. he makes the funniest jokes and makes fun of people (but in a nice way). and he has that accent. uh i just love him. and the best part is that we were walking to class today and we were walking past a place to park your mopeds and there was phillip putting on his helmet and throwing on his leather driving gloves. it probably doesnt mean much to people reading this but, its amazing. think of your most polite/proper teacher and then throw them on a moped. it was perfect. and he waved at us while driving, which we all know means pure talent driving with one hand.



alright well i should really be getting to bed since i have one busy day tomorrow. ugh i dont even want to think about it. oh well. hope you enjoyed...what 4 pictures? well at least now everyone sorta knows what the surrounding area looks like for me.

*interesting fact* it is now 3 in the morning and i was just outside for about 40 minutes because the fire alarm went off...AGAIN. how annoying. anyways at least this time i wasnt caught in the shower.

oxford, pierce brosnan, and harry potter

well this past weekend i had the wonderful opportunity to go see the pretty town of oxford. it was absolutely beautiful. i went with my class, british life and culture, the one where we take killer fieldtrips. anyways the day that we chose to go was matriculation day for all the students. i am not sure what this means but its a cermony for all the new students where they have to dress up in their robes and wear black and white. its real crazy, they all look so old fashion. anyways so a lot of the colleges were closed but we still got to see a lot of the city.
anyways so we always go about the city with our prof. phillip, who is so cool and he is my favorite ever, on a walking tour and he tells us really interesting things. but we were walking through one part of the city and my flatmate, amaya, and i were walking ahead of the group and we noticed this very dashing man who looked JUST like pierce brosnan. it was so crazy we thought it was just a guy who happened to look like him, cause you know they say that everyone has a twin...BUT NO IT WAS HIM. IT WAS PIERCE BROSNAN!!!! HOW CRAZY IS THAT????
he didnt really look like this picture cause he is not that young anymore but he had some grey hair and we was tall. he is about 6'1 ish. yes mama he was a tall one. so that was pretty cool. my guess he was there to watch a kid go through matriculation...but i dont know. so that was my brush with fame. and it was amazing!!!!!

after pierce and i caught up on the old times my group continued on our walking tour. and the walking tour brought us to christ church which is the main college in oxford. see oxford university is made up of 37 different colleges all with their own different buildings. and most of the colleges you dont see unless you go that particular college since they are usually behind tall walls or hedges. but the ones that you do see always have giant courtyards and they are so pretty. but christ church is not only the biggest college but also the place where they filmed some of the scenes for all the harry potter movies. they filmed some scenes with professor mcgonagall waits where she is waiting for some first years to come up the staircase and then the great hall/dinning hall is at christ church as well. so that was really cool to see both of those!!!!!


but besides that we just tootled around and looked at a lot of really old buildings...but thats what you do when you are in england, you look at old buildings. but anyways that is pretty much my oxford experience. OH WAIT no there is more i also went to the eagle and child pub where c.s. lewis and j.r. tolkein met like every tuesday for like 20 years discussing their work. so that was pretty cool.

looking like swiss miss and reading about politics

ok so i was real bored the other day while i was watching a movie so i gave myself a lesson in french braiding hair. and today i am sporting some pretty sweet french braids if i may say so myself. the only thing is that i look like the swiss miss off the hot chocolate box, and some people may be thinking thats ok cause she always has hot chocolate...well i dont have any hot chocolate at the moment and it just makes me sad, but thats not the point. so moving on

mary comes to visit real soon and i get so excited just thinking about it!!! we are gonna have so much fun. i dont know yet what we are gonna do but that doesnt matter cause it will be fun just be here with somebody from home. even though she is gonna be sleeping on the floor i am gonna try and make it as comfortable as possible...so that way maybe she will want to come back!!!!!

also i have a presentation to give on thursdays about the inevitable decline of the liberal party in britain. and today i get an email from my prof (who i dont like anyways cause of his st stut t stutter) saying that one of the girls in my group, there are three of us, is sick and wont be able to make it. great....just great. so right now i am sitting here in my braids and reading about politics. not fun. but good news i get to go to oxford this weekend with my class. that should be exicting!!!!!! otherwise i dont really have anything exciting to post, i just felt like i should since i havent in a while. sorry its so lame.

and just because i really need to clean my room here is a picture of our fancy hoover...his name is henry. he really makes cleaning fun!!!

here you go exchange rate...would you like me to put the money on a silver platter for you as well?????

alright i knew the exchange rate was high. i knew it coming over here from the start but this is getting ridiculous. i cannot even believe it. for whatever i buy over here DOUBLE is taken out of my bank account. to of had a suffient amount of money to come over here and live for a year i would have had to have worked 4 or 5 jobs that paid an insane amount of money. it would of been physically impossible. i just wish that we could go back to the barter system. "give you a chicken for that pretty shawl" it would just be so much easier.ugh. oh well my own fault right? not coming more prepared (be a millionaire) to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. but then again i could go get a job but the only job that would work with my school schedule would be work on campus...but nope cant do that because then you get this fun line thrown in your face "we dont rely on students to make our uni run...it doesnt work like it does back in the states"....oh my bad. alright anyways i am done venting about weakness of the american dollar. here is a picture to make up for my frustration....


that is martin my flatmate with his shirt that he bought in england...i told him where montana was...

ancient rocks and switzerland.....

so on saturday i had the wonderful opportunity to go to stonehenge and bath with my class, british life and culture, we left at 8:30 in the morning and met up at penrhyn road campus and all piled on a double decker bus that was so nice i decided it would be nicer than my first house. anyways i totally crashed and fell asleep on the bus( i mean coach) ride to stonehenge. but as i awoke we were out in the middle of nowhere with rock gleaming up ahead.

we got out and (we actually were on the other side of the fence dad) and walked around. on one side we were walking on a small path but then it just ends and you are walking on grass around the rest of it. its just crazy how close you actually get up to it. and what also was weird was that there was a road really close to it. a lot of people pass by stonehenge on their way to work. i just find that a little odd. anyways so we walked around stonehenge went to the food place bought a rock cake ( really clever way to call a scone). so then we got back on the coach JUST IN TIME before it started raining so hard. but thats ok cause we had a 1 1/2 ride to Bath.


so once we got to bath ( i was in group a) i had a walking tour with my group right away. while we were walking around with our teacher...philip woods (who is my favorite teacher EVER!!! minus mr. vandenbos....but that is for another blog) i noticed this boy in a white jacket he was so beautiful!!! i instatly recognized him as a boy from switzerland that i had noticed on the first day of orientation. i dont know his name but i think that him and i are meant to be together for sure. he doesnt know it yet but we are perfect for eachother. so my dad consisted of always trying to figure out where he was in comparison to me. and it seems like he was always close by....hm maybe was he trying to keep me in his sights as well???? lets hope so...or at least think that way!

so bath was beautiful and the roman baths were amazing. we got to take the audio tour of the roman baths and it was really cool. walking from room to room you could feel the heat from the water. this is the only place where there is a natural hotspring in england. there was the main bath, then there was there were other ones too but i dont remember what they were called. bu the little museum that they have there for it is built right over the main courtyard so you go inside and they have it blocked off now but the original courtyard is in the middle of everything and its just sitting there. you cant walk on it but its just strange to think that it used to be outside and ancient romans used to walk around in their togas and go swimming. oh history.
these baths were just crazy. this is the main one right here, the great bath. now a days they are filled with nasty nasty stuff like algae and other gross stuff i think they mentioned that meningitus is floating around there. anyways. so we walked around here and to the other pools and the cool things that the overflow system that the romans had built back in the day (which was a wednesday...fun fact for you haha) still is used today i thought that was pretty fancy. so after a fun adventure in bath and after it rained a lot more we got back onto our fancy coach and headed for home and home included me sitting behind switzerland. i was gonna talk to him but he fell asleep for the whole ride....ugh. oh well good thing i have class with him on wednesday!!!!!!