two blogs in two days...i must be going crazy!!! but this one talks about thanksgiving...

so as you all know thanksgiving is an american holiday and not celebrated here in jolly old england. well at first i was kinda bummed about this cause i wouldnt be at home and i had to go to school. bummer. so school was normal and blah and then i went home and made some really sweet green bean casserole compliaments of meg for sending over the ingredients for it!!! (thanks again!!!) anyways my study abroad program put on a thanksgiving dinner for all the international students and they provided turkey, ham, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. it was up to bring the rest for our table (we were broken up into tables with 10 people on it). as you all might have thought i brought green bean casserole...which was a huge hit!!! i nailed it, awesome. but there was so many pies, and veggie trays, and more potatoes, corn, just everything you can think of. AND there was a center piece contest (which we all forgot about till like 2 hours before the dinner) anyways i put my most creative powers on it and this is what i came up with.... i made a pilgrim hat (at first i made a top hat cause i thought they were the same thing but then i googles a pilgrim hat and felt very silly for not remembering what they looked like. i personally blame abe lincoln, my fav president, for making the top hat so recognizable...but thats besides the point) that i put on top of an american flag which was attatched to a knife and then taped to plymoth rock (which is actually a cobblestone from prague). so needless to say i thought i was doing pretty good. and i figured if i had forgotten about the centerpiece competition other people would too and i would win. well i was wrong, one of my friends jenna made a last minute center piece, and tons of tables put lot of thought into them, with serious markers and paper mache (<----- is that how you spell that????)

but all in all dinner was good and VERY filling i ate a lot and actually did not feel too good afterwards, but it was a good first thanksgiving away from home. it could of gone horribly wrong...but all in all (except for having to go to school) it was a good one.

and real quick i went into central london today and we (my flatmates and i) went to the imperial war museum to see the holocaust exhibition (<---- by the way the one in washington dc is 1000x better than the one here, so if you ever get a chance you should go) but the one here is still really good. but we did that and then went to platform 9 3/4 at king's cross from harry potter that was pretty funny to see. it was cute they had half a cart being "pushed" through the platform. i guess though when filming the movie they actually did not use the actual king's cross station for the set, they wanted a prettier station (which makes sense its not really that cool). so that was fun to see and, yes we are all 20 and 21 and we are taking our pictures with it, and of course right after we left two little girls ran up to it very excited and we felt our age. oh well.

so that is all i really have to say... and here are some more pictures from prague that i couldnt seem to get to load last time. enjoy.

the first one is a sweatshirt that we found at an asian market (did i talk about this in my last blog? i cant remember...)

this is the picture that i was gonna put up here last time of the statue in old town square but it didnt work...but it does now, so...

its always fun playing on the trams when nobody else is on them this is amaya, me, and mary showing of our sweet skills...

and as you can see i am doing a pretty lame pose but i didnt know what else to do. but this is part of the lennon wall. and no not lenin the communist leader, which is what i thought at first, but a wall dedicated to john lennon. which i thought was cool. here is just one section and yours truly to gaze upon...

you can call it praha or you can call it prague and i have been there

so this past weekend my flatmate amaya and i hopped on an easyjet plane and flew to prague to go visit mary and see what was up with eastern europe! mary picked us up at the airport and we jumped on a tram and headed for her house. the tram ride is very bumpy in prague and i almost fell a few times, oh well...live and learn i did. the very first night we went out and saw the city at night, mary first took us to old town square. which is gorgeous. we were out pretty late which gave us a late start but oh well we were ready for sightseeing!!!!!!! we went to the charles bridge and did all that fun stuff and really just walked around a lot on the cobblestone streets. everything was cobblestones, which was really crazy to see cause a lot of them were insanely large and spaced out and it made it VERY hard to walk!!! this picture was taken up in a tower (287 steps up and 287 steps down in a narrow tiny tower on a spiral staircase...needless to say i got kinda dizzy!) in the castle and this is a very prague picture...at least to me. with the red roofs and if you look closely in the left hand corner you can see the charels bridge.
apart from sight seeing (old town square, new town square, the castle, charles bridge) we also tried some czech food (just in case nobody has caught on prague is in the czech republic...not czechaslavakia cause that no longer exists. which i think is a shame cause its a fun word to say!!!!) anyways czech food is what my dad would call a heartattack on a plate. everything is deep fat friend and slapped on bread or with gravy or maybe mayo. needless to say a little fattening...and soooooooooooo good. we tried this one thing it was a hamburger sized thing of cheese deep fat fried with lots of mayo and put on a bun. it sounds so nasty but oh my god it is so tasty...and very cheap. so here is a picture of charles bridge that i would like to take credit for taking but sadly i cant. i googled it, since i didnt get any real good ones. but mary told us that it used to be the only bridge over the river (now there are tons) but when you actually get on the bridge it is crazy busy all the time with tourists and vendors...getting in your away and you cant help but get very annoyed. oh well.
this is a picture of old town square that is really popular(just kidding i couldnt get it too load). i dont remember who is in this statue some very important man that i cant remember the name of and peeople following him. but it really creeped my out cause the fingers of the followers were really long and creeepy and reminded me of a nightmare i used to get when i was little. so i looked once and never looked again. but besides of that statue this is really a gorgeous section of town.
sorry this blog is not very cool and kinda all over the place but i have a headache a little bit and i am tired....i need a nap.but lets have a recap: it was real good to see mary and i will see her again in about a month for christmas in italy, prague was gorgeous and very old, liked the cobblestones for the most part, it was weird not knowing the language, but otherwise it was a blast we all had a lot of fun. its weird though you can tell you are on mainland europe compared to the uk the atmosphere is just different ( i noticed in spain as well) maybe its just that the brits have a little bit of an aire about them. i dont know. ok i just tried to upload pictures and its not letting me do it. so i am getting frustrated...so i am gonna end this blog, sorry if i left any of you hanging and that this is my worst blog ever.

wind, globe theater, rain, wind, parliament, rain, puddles, wet shoes, and more rain (heads up...long one)

ok i admit it i live in london, it rains here. thank you mother nature you prove your point. it rained today off and on and i did not make the correct shoe selection this morning when i went into central london. i am getting pretty good at looking outside when it is overcast and predicting if it is gonna rain or not...but i was way off today. anyways moving...

today was my trip to the globe theater and parliament with my british life and culture class. we had to make our own way into london, which only sucked cause we had to pay for our own train ride and i thought the 80 pounds i had to pay at the beginning of class covered all transportation, but i guess i was wrong. so anyways we had to meet at shakespear's globe theater and we got to go inside and get a tour from a lady all dressed in black. it was pretty cool even though it was not even close to the original one since that one burned down like a century before the great london fire (1666). but our lady told us that the globe that stands today was reconstructed all by hand, no new technology was used to build it, so we are talking all hamemers and stuff like that. and all the wooden pegs in the building (little over 12, 000) are actually not round but an octagon and each individual peg takes over an hour and a half to make. dang. so we went inside and i took a not so good picture, shown below, of the seats inside the globe. the seats that are in the blurry picture are about 15 to 30 pounds, but you can get 5 pound standing in the front "yard" leaning up against the stage and up close like that. only problem is you cant sit, you have to stand, its under the open thatched roof and you arent allowed to use umbrellas and they perform no matter the weather. and each performance is about 3 hours. so yeah. also underneath the globe is a large exhibition about the building and shakespear, its real cool. but i saw this sweet wagon and i wanted to pull it, little did i know that it was not bolted to the ground so i actually did pull it for a sec. i know it is hard to see but my face, i am not actually pulling, that is raw facial acting...the struggle. i know you all see it.
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ok so we had some time to kill before we had to be in parliament so we went to a pub and i had some very yummy fish n' chips. by now the wind was going crazy and blowing small children over the river, we are talking it was strong. after some tea (yeah i went the tea route to try and warm me up)anyways so we made our way to parliament and for those of you who dont know what parliament looks like in london...here you go
anyways we were not allowed to take pictures inside really so i didnt. sorry to make you sad but my words shall be enough. this place is huge and old/new. so there are three colors of parliaement. red, green, and blue. red represents the house of lords. everything is red oriented...like the seats, book, tapastries...things like that. then the house of commons is all in green in the same manner. and then whenever the queen comes to parliament blue carpets are laid out for her to walk on since the queen while in parliament cant walk on anything but blue by tradition. so we got this tour guide all of about 5'5 and very very bald. this man was filled with information and very willing to spill it all over you. so i learned a lot but all i can really remember off the top of my head that i found was interesting was that the chair that the queen sits in in the house of lords is very ornate and gold leafed with 24 carot gold... very intense. here is picture of it and you kinda get the point. so that was very cool and then we went over to the house of commons side which is not ornate and recently rebuilt under winston churchill after the heavy bombing of london during the second world war. churchill had it built very plainly so people would remember the war and not get to caught up in silly superficial things. so they commons is very well...common. and i thought the cool thing was that when ever thse two places are in session whever they refer to the other house they never say house of commons or the house of lords each refers to the other as "the other place" never has eachother's house been spoken in the other. i thought that was kinda cool.

anyways since we were already in london a bunch of us decided to go to dinner since we dont really get to go into central london a lot since its kinda pricey. well we to the underground and we were waiting for a girl to meet up with us and my feet were tired so i sat down in the lobby like area in front of the escalators to the bakerloo line. yeah people looked at me like i was homeless. i didnt think i looked homeless at all. but whatever. i was half expecting people to start throwing pence at me.at least amaya sat with me so i had a flatmate in my homelessness.so from there we went to piccadilly in the rain and found this indian place to eat at and lets just say i was less than impressed and my umbrella was stolen. oh well. well i better go pack now for prague since i leave tomorrow and its already late. great. ok well thats all for now.

its christmas in kingston!!!!

alright so as soon as halloween was over...well actually a before halloween even christmas decorations have been springing up EVERYWHERE!!!! i mean kingston has around 500 shops i believe and people travel from all over to come here since rumor has it its the second largest shopping area in britain. so anyways the decorations are so pretty they have two giant trees put up and they have things hanging all over the streets and window decorations...the only thing that ruins it is all the shoppers. i thought the weekdays were bad, no once saturday hits the place becomes a zoo...so busy you cant even walk comfortable down the street. its very annoying indeed. i took this picture on a monday...not very busy but you can imagine!!!!

also they set up this fun little area right over the only fountain in town that i thought was really cute and fun to watch, but what they put up in the mini town square is wonderful!!! its these tiny vendors that have set up shop in town provided wood huts and they have christmas music pumping through here...its so much fun to walk around in. They have a small bar set up there, roasted chestnuts, grilled sausages, toys, crepes and waffles, cheese wheels the size of a wagon wheel (no joke), and the best part is the candy!!!!! i have to walk past it everyday to go to classes and the gym. they have giant jawbreakers the size of your fist that i used to have my mom buy me when i was little, pounds upon tons of fudge, chewy candy, hard candy, sour candy...just everything you could imagine!!! so far i am doing good on holding out but man...its real hard. this is a side picture of the little area, and that windmill like thing is the bar that has christmas music always pumping out of it. i think i dont mind the fountain being covered up so much...

the good thing is that this week i think on thursday they are lighting up kingston. cause all the decorations they have up are not on at night...but on thursday they are lighting central london (the girl who plays Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter is flipping the switch) and i believe it corresponds with the kingston light up....maybe all the towns do it together, i dont know.
its real strange having so much christmas so soon, i mean back home we wait until after thanksgiving and since we all know i am not going to be having a real thanksgiving this go around ( i have to go to school on thanksgiving for the first time ever in my life...lame). but christmas came fast and furious this year...and i kinda like it!!!! this is a picture of the bentall center that has 4 floors of amazing shopping with the outside of their building all decorated up...

so hopefully everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving cause i am not gonna get the chance to blog again before thanksgiving since i am going to prague to visit mary with amaya till late wednesday night. good thing is though that the study abroad office is putting on a makeshift thanksgiving with a turkey and ham and stuffing i believe...we have to bring the rest. so that should be fun!!!! but i hope everyone has an amazing thanksgiving and watch the macy day parade for me and a football game, huh?

espana...i think so! (ps. this is a long one...)

so when you go to kingston university you get this lovely thing called "reading week"! and instead of reading for a week strait i decided to go on a little adventure to valencia spain to visit jessica...and the 3 girls i lived with followed. we had the best time ever!!! we flew in late on sunday and just hung out till monday when we got a chance to see the city by daylight. valencia is so beautiful, its so different than london. like for ONE thing it is so warm you would not think that it was the same week as halloween. especially when back home all i hear about is snow and cold. so it was very nice to not wear a coat when i went outside!!!!
so the first days we ran around and say the city and at night we went out for a little bit. but in spain everything happens so late so usually the nightlife starts around midnight or one. but just us girls went out for a little bit and while we were walking home we came across this body in the street in the good ole leap frog position. since it was 4 in the morning we thought that it was a homeless person so we walked way out of our way to go around this person but as we were walking by we noticed that it was a teenage girl.
so we tried to help her up but it was obvious she was passed out and not responding. so we finally brought her around to moaning and we tried to get her out of the middle of the sidewalk so when we lifted up her head her lip was bleeding and then came the most violent puking i have seen. she ended up throwing up all over herself and wanting to pass out again. we found her purse and found her phone hoping that we could call somebody but nope it was in german and locked. so jessica ran back to grab her phone and her german flatmate so she could talk to her. so we ended up callign the hospital for her and the ambulance came and picked her up. but before they got there she was dry heaving and convulsing. it was horrible to watch but we kept rubbing her back and telling her it would be ok. we never found out what happened to her but the next day jessica went to the hospital to find out something about her but she had already checked herself out. so she must be ok. but it was so scary.
but on a happier note we spent the next day exploring the city some more as well. we saw fountains, ruins, and a lots of spanish speaking people. that night was halloween and jessica, me, and amaya went as the kittens who lost their mittens. we didnt really have anything to make a costume out of except eyeliner so we did what we could.
since we were out real late on halloween we decided that the next day could be relaxing...on the beach. i had never spent november 1st on the beach. so that was real fun and it was my first mediterranean (<---i have always had trouble spelling this word) sea experience. i went swimming in it and let me tell you it was the saltiest body of water i have ever swam in...hands down. so after a few hours there we retired from the beach and went back to jessica's flat to figure out our trip to barcelona.
and figure we did. on thursday we ended up getting on a bus for 4 hours to barcelona. and with return it was only 40 euros which is cheaper than the train which was gonna almost be twice as much. but our bus trip went fast. i crashed for about 80% of it. when we got to barcelona we had to find a hostel but we had a few in mind so we booked it over to one checked in to a room that the 5 of us had to ourselves and went out to see barcelona at night!!!
we had the best time ever. within walking around for 5 minutes we had flyers for free stuff at so many different places. so we started our long journey collecting them. we werent out that late at all (well at least according to the spanish) and we headed back to the hostel around 3 am cause we had to get up to go sight seeing of the city!!!!
we saw so much from gorgeous churches, statues, amazing fountains, street performers, a life size replica of a mammoth it was hard to take it all in. there was this fountain that it looked like it was taken out of a dream
we spent a lot of time there just looking at it. and there were these giants stairs on either side of the fountain so we went up them to see the fountain from the top! so from the top you can see barely through the tree tops but what you can see is a giant mammoth standing in the trees. we raced to go check it out! and it was huge. and i dont really know why it was even there in this park. but we had fun playing on it. around this time we slowly started heading back to our hostel and gathering up our stuff so we could catch out bus outta barcelona at 8. it was a short trip but i was fun. while we were sitting at the bus station waiting i bought this sweet pen...and its on a rope. i totally wore it like a necklace for bascically the rest of the time in spain. i like it. i know it doesnt look cool but you never know when you are gonna need a pen.
so our bus ride back was cold and i didnt not sleep well and i was sitting next to a man whose music was very loud and i could hear it while it was in his ears. i was jamming out without him knowing. but i stopped jamming out when i heard the same pink song 5 times in a row. the remix. but when we arrived back in valencia we all just wanted to crash since it was pretty late and we had had a long day but there was a party going on at jessica's flat so we all tried to be social but for some of us it didnt work.
this brought us to our last day and we all just slept in and went out to lunch downloaded all of our pictures and bid spain goodbye. it was a whirlwind adventure and we all had so much fun. it was so good to see jessica again. so all in all spain was a good one.
ps. and i wore my pen necklace on the plane