my slow goodbye to london...

alright so...lets see where do i start? my time in london is winding down very fast and i dont like it one bit!!! i have really grown to love this city with all of its quirks and different things that are constantly surpring me. as many of you know my mama showed up on 24 may and has been here ever since! we have had a ball. we have been hanging out in london and doing all sorts of things i couldnt do cause i didnt have the money source... haha. also while my mama is here i have exams to still sit for ugh. so on 29 may i had to take my continuity and change in continental europe from 1848-1918 exam. i know that is a long name for a class but thats why i like saying it...i sound so smart. but not the point. anyways i sat for this exam...IN A CHURCH. the exams are really really really intense here you have assigned seats and people are patrolling through the aisles as you take it and you have to raise your hand to do anything (i.e. bathroom, get a drink of water, or hand in your exam). but after my exam i had the lovely chance to run over to clapham junction and pick up MARY!!!!! she just came in from prague (she was studying abroad over there) and she was staying with me for like 36 hours or something like that. so my mama and i grabed mary and we had a really good full day in london together! we went to a pub for lunch, saw some happenings at buckingham, strolled over to camden (no noel or julian...bummer), and then caught a train back to kingston so we could all get ready for WICKED!!! yeah, my third time seeing this musical. but seriously it is my favourite play in the world. i could watch it every other day. no joke, i think its brilliant. after the play i took mary out with some of my flatmates to go to bar eivissa. we had a ball just being stupid and dancing, plus it was student night so that worked out for us! :) the next day my mama and i put mary on a bus headed towards heathrow and we said "see you in the states!". it is so crazy that time is winding down the way it is. it really saddens me.

mary and i front of the gates of canada outside of green park by buckingham palacemy MOST favourite view in all of london, but this is of no news to anyone who i have given a tour to of this place...mary and i being probably way too cool in front of wicked outside of victoria in the west end...

apart from saying goodbye to mary (who i will see shortly) i have had to begin to say goodbye to people that i have become really close with since being here, and that part sucks the most. i had to say goodbye to jason the other night...

me, jenna, cassie, and amaya and jason's goign away party in the lamb (his favourite pub in surbiton) while jason was outside talking to some others...

apart from jason, i had to say goodbye to jenna tonight. that sucked. i had to say goodbye to cassie, and tomorrow morning i have to say goodbye to courtney. it is really weird being the first one going. cause i leave for italy with my family really really really early thursday morning and some people are going to berlin tomorrow and courtney is going to ely to go visit some friends tomorrow. and then i come back from italy for about 1 1/2 and NOBODY WILL BE IN MY FLAT. everyone will be gone, so i have to be in an empty flat packing up all by myself all alone...did i mention all alone? ugh. no fun. but we are back in london (16 june) for my dad's 50th birthday...thats pretty cool.

anyways my sister and my dad showed up on saturday and we have all been having a really good time. we have been seeing all the sights and according to them we have been walking a lot... but it seems the same amount of walking that one would do in any european city... ALOT! :)

we went to the british museum up on tottenham court road. here is where the rosetta stone is at. and this is the giant indoor courtyard's celing inside, and of course it was dedicated to HRH queen elizabeth II.the classic london picture. you got your phone booth, your double decker, and your big ben...hillary and i in trafalgar square next to a fountain...yeah we rock as a teamhillary, dad, and mama on tower bridge right before......

the bridge is a drawbridge and the whole time living here i have never seen it open. but today i did. and funny enough it opened for a pirate ship to go through. something about the king and queen of sweden are doing like a 12 country tour or something and they are bringing this pirate boat everywhere. i dont really know. whatever sweden.big ben and the london eye in what looks like a mean sky...but actally it didnt rain all day and was fairly warm out all day!!!!

and finally i will leave you with this lovely image of the new logo for the london summer olympics in 2012. i think it looks dreadful...but whatever london!!!! i wont have a chance to blog again i dont think until italy. i am sure somewhere along the way i can drop a few lines about my trip to italy with my family...should be interesting travelling with the family!!!!!!

happiness in concert and grass form...

matt berry in all his glory...whata man, whata man!!!!!

ok so, since coming to england i have acquired a taste for certain british things like tea, corny english soap operas (hollyoaks), public transportation, new ways to say 'garage' and 'aluminuim', and ENGLISH COMEDY SHOWS!!!!!!!

so since being here i have become huge fans of the mighty boosh (which is nothing new if you have even glanced at my blog before), the it crowd, snuffbox, and garth marenghi's darkplace. basically everytime i watch these shows i cry because i love them so and they just make me laugh. ok enough of that lets get down of the heart of this blog.

the day that my mom came (oh yeah my mama showed up on thursday..she got here fine and yeah!) me and some people had tickets to go see a concert in central london. the guy doing the concert is in basically all 0f my new favourite shows and we were all pretty positive that his friends (all his co-stars in the shows) would show up to support him. WE WERE SO RIGHT!

me and richard ayoade (he is in the it crowd, saboo from mighty boosh, and garth marenghi) he is half norwegian...we totally bonded!!!!! ( and the it crowd is coming over to the states, and he is the only original cast member going with it....)me and rich fulcher!!!! basically the most amazing ever. he is bob fossil and other characters from the mighty boosh and from snuffbox.

these pictures arent the best...but they will have to do. the cast of garth marenghi on screen with matt berry singing in front of them, so brilliant.matt berry is known for his powerful point...and as you can see he is doing it in this picture. the power of the point is unreal. and then there is rich dancing on the other side with no skill at all...and thats what he is known for!

after the show we waited around to see if we could get matt berry to sign our ticket stubs and take a picture...but alas he never came out. he gave us the slip. but that was ok because we had met two other BRILLIANT people...oh yeah. so after the show we bebopped over to trafalgar square because....

THE CITY HAD LAID DOWN SOD IN THE WHOLE SQUARE TO PROMOTE VILLAGE LONDON!!!!!!! it was brilliant! it was so insane to see grass in trafalgar, it made me soooo happy!!!!!!

so we went there and hung out for a bit there were people everywhere just haning out on the grass, we basically thought it was awesome!

hanging out on the grass...looking cool!!!!

trafalgar in the day time. the grass was only there for about 2 days to promote something, they also put a beach in kew gardens....london is genius, crazy...but genius!thought i would throw this one in as well, mama and drury lane. do you know the muffin man?

ok so this blog is all over the place, i know. and i know many (or basically all) dont care that i met these people...but believe you me, my life has been changed!!!!! ok so now my mama is here and she is gonna be hanging out with me until i leave london... thats a long time, good thing that my sister and dad come in a week to take us away to italy for a small tour of the country!!!!!!

ps. i still have 2 exams to sit for, hopefully i have time to study and pass, thank goodness i am on a pass fail system!!!! and mary is coming soon as well, on TUESDAY!!!! yeah oh yeah...and we are gonna go see wicked again with my mama! oh and i saw mary poppins in the west end last night...and i am pretty sure bert winked at me at the end of one of the dance pieces, and he was goooooooood lookin!

school.....school.....school....and wait, yeah.......more school!

things that sum up my life right now:





1.rain
2.school
3. odd sleeping habits
4. the start of a cold
5.school
6.school


basically if you havent caught on. i have a lot of school work that i have to do. classes are over but i have papers to write and finals to take. basically my life for the past week has been trying to write this paper for my politics in the uk class. its only supposed to be 1500 words but for some odd reason i CANT for the life of my write this paper. i end up just blankly staring at my computer screen and next thing i know 5 hours of my life has passed and i have one word on my paper done. its odd. FINALLY yesterday after just looking at my computer for 4 days without any progress i pounded out 1000 words of my paper. so odd. so once i finish up my paper today i am gonna turn it in tomorrow and then i get to begin studying for an exam that i have the day that my mama shows up!

gotta love the fog.... thanks to everyone who thought that i took this picture!!! you are too kind!

anways other than this my life is not exciting at all, i have been having really weird sleeping habits lately that are a hard to shake. ONE night i had too much tea before i went to bed and it made me stay up unitl like 4 in the morning and get up at noon....and now i cant shake that stupid pattern. it only takes one time to do something like that. everytime that i set my alarm to wake up earlier to try and reset myself i sleep through my alarm or hit the off button and not snooze....oh why is this my life???

oh actually this saturday i have a friend coming to visit, his name is alex and i have known him since high schoo. he is a german kid that came to study abroad in bozeman and jessica and i befriended him and now that i am over here he is gonna come visit. if i had been planning better i was gonna go visit him, but knowing me i never got around to it while jessica managed to see him thrice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! goodness, i dropped the ball on that.

ok well i better get back to writing my paper on ireland and the good friday agreement with tony blair!!! hopefully my life gets more interesting and i can inform you all about it!

my time in england is winding down....

howard moon...jazz maverick. basically this is my desktop wallpaper at the moment. all my icons are in the right hand corner in a sort of pyramid style. its pretty brilliant. i thought you would all like an insight into my life...

ok so! as you all now i am finishing my time here in london, tear. but as everything comes to a close i get to celebrate and have fun! i officially ended my classes this past thursday, it was very anti-climatic. but it feels really good to be done with classes, now comes the hard part......

EXAMS... but thats another story for another day.

so i guess the real news is that after we finished our classes on friday, may 4th, we took (lack of a better word) booze cruise up and down the thames. it was brilliant. it was a four hour float up to hampton court palace and we turned around somewhere...maybe around teddington and then flipped around and went back past kingston and went up the river farther. it was so much fun! it was almost all the year longers and then a lot of spring semester students. right away we were not fans of the spring semester students, i mean we all felt a strong bit of seniority over them all...and just yeah. and a big bonus was that we were even fed dinner, you cant beat a good plate of fish n'chips! genius.
philip (my instructor from first semester and 1/3 of the study abroad staff), me, and amaya on the yarmouthe belle

jen montague another third of the study abroad staff showing her gangstah side....

us floating by hampton court palace, for anyone that i have taken to hcp you will recognise this as the part that king william of orange had redone from the tudor style by sir christopher wren...and i am a loser. hey anybody watching the tudors on showtime or hbo??? its a goodn'!amaya and myself dancing to YMCA...could we be any cooler? the answer is of course no....you can not be.dancing with the advisors...jen, philip, and amayajen and i doing a brilliant dance move...dont be jealous, its not worth it. you cant recreate this sort of magic!

so anyways the boat trip was a huge success and it gave us a chance to say goodbye to some people and finally be on a boat on the thames cause for about 9 months now i have been totally jealous of everyone else who gets too....now i wont be jealous anymore cause i have done it too!!!!! good for me! anyways sorry this blog is kinda lame but oh well...its better than nothing right?

my next few weeks are gonna be filled with getting a paper written and studying like a fied for my exams before my mama gets here on the 24 may. anyways i hope everyone is enjoying spring!!!!!!!!!

(what a lame ending)

a night with the stars...

ok so i just got back from my holiday going about my business and anyways i have been a bit busy latley. so this past weekend courtney, amaya, jenna, and i gathered up our blankets made some sandwhiches and headed into london to have a picnic in hyde park. we also stopped by harrod's to buy some fun sweets to eat after our sandwhiches. basically its been really nice out and we wanted an excuse for going outside to play about. so when we got to hyde park we found a nice place to sit and people watch. we sat next to the serpertine lake and just chilled and played the "would you rather game" my favourite one that i came up with was... "would you rather have rakes for arms or wheels for legs?" think about it and get back to me.

amaya and i waiting on the train platform to go into waterlooall of us looking really intelligent eating at our picnic! :)

so after that amazing day it was hard to top it but we so did. so on monday in england was st. george's day and london decided to celebrate with trying to beat the world record of the largest coconut orchestra EVER! you might be thinking kathleen, what are you talking about. well think back to monty python and the holy grail. well basically a whole bunch of people gathered in trafalgar square and we signed our name on a register so they could count us all up and we were given coconuts so when the time was right we all clapped them together!!!!

some of the crowd working their coconuts!

so we had a dress rehersal and the cast of monty python and the holy grail on the west end came and coached us through a song from the play and told us when to clap our coconuts together. it was soooooooooooooooooo much fun. nothing like a few thousand people all together clapping coconuts together. and the best part was that it was all FREE!!!! oh yeah. and after we broke the rocord. the previous record had been held in new york with about 1789 people or so with:

oh yeah! when i come back to the states if you all want my autograph thats totally cool. cause i am now officially in the guinness book of work records!!!!! genius!

anyways after the breaking of the record they showed the movie in the square and everyone sat down and it was turned to a giant outdoor festival!!! it was so cool. if you have been to trafalgar square that just invision almost 5000 people sitting on the ground laughing at this movie and using their coconuts in the appropriate places!!!!!! it was brilliant!!!!!

everyone hangin out in trafalgar sqaure waiting for the movie to start...

just a few knights of the round table....

so after the coconut orchestra we ran around the corner and hit up leicester square where the london premier of spiderman III was going on. it was insane. i thought that i had just left a lot of people. but there were so many more at the premier. i was pushed and i was shoved but basically i saw everyone i wanted to see...

not a good picture because my camera is lame BUT the blonde girl with the black backless dress is kirsten dunst...good ole spidey himself, toby mcguire. basically this face is saying "kathleen, run away with me" but i told him no...my heart belongs to his co-star, james franco.

after this amaya and i grabbed some dinner so we could kill some time before we ran to picadilly circus to go the stage door to grab daniel radcliffe's autograph cause i still havent gotten it from the time that i went to see equus like oh i dont know...about a month ago. so we get to the stage door and hang out for about an hour and daniel never came out (or any of the other cast members) lame. i guess they dont come out very often. so now i have to go back again sometime and try to get this stupid kid's autograph. BUT all is good cause while we were waiting there none other than james franco (from spiderman III) came to the back stage door to say hey to daniel and we were basically about 3 feet from eachother!!!! :)

he proposed and i said yes....so basically my life is set. see you all at the trevi fountain!!!

so that is my life basically. hanging out with stars, rising to stardom myself. i dont think that my life can hit another high point. i might as well stop blogging now forever cause from now on all my blogs with just be going down hill.

rome in picture format

so after greece us three went to rome. and i feel instead of boring people with stupid details that nobody really cares about i would try blogging in pictures (with captions, silly) and highlighting important parts and maybe a thought i have along the way. mainly the reason for this is because i have a big ambition of maybe doing two blogs tonight...we'll see.

danielle, myself, courtney and in front of the colosseum. we got a great deal on the photo. inside the colosseum...and then what do you know...there i am in front of the colosseum!!!!the trevi fountain. hands down my most FAVOURITE place in all of rome. i seriously could sit here for hours and days and the i could basically die here. it was so pretty. it's so crazy cause its just on the backside of a building, so you are walking down a street and then all of a sudden there is this gorgeous giant fountain!

here i am throwing in a coin. if you throw in one coin you will return to rome. if you throw in three than you are supposed to fall in love in rome. i only threw in one cause my italian isnt good enough. and because the only coins i had were large coins. you better believe i am throwing a twenty in that fountain!

me at the fountain at night with a rose that a kid from the hostel bought me...aww how sweet.the next day we went to the vatican! here i am doing the only cool pose one can do in st peter's square. we were kind morons cause we went on a tuesday and we didnt know this but it was planned that on wednesday the pope was gonna come out and wave his hand. uh oh. our bad. thats ok this way we avoided the crowds!

and i read in the papers today that the pope abolished limbo. can he do that?

we went and saw the sistine chapal and all of michelangelo's stuff. this is a painting that raphael (my favourite ninja turtle) did. it adorned the walls of a former dining room. huh go figure.

we did see the sistine chapel and it was really cool, really giant. i wasnt ready for all that. and by the time that i left my neck was hurting from looking up so much. oh the price you pay to view art.

some of the guards at the vatican....they know they look cool.after we were all vaticaned out we decided to walk home and while we were walking home we watched the clouds roll in, and the next thing we know we are in a freak hail strom. it was insane. but fun.

*also i forgot i saw where pope john paul II is burried. its really pretty. he is burried with all sorts of other popes in sorta a catacombe like basement. but he has flowers all over and a giant white block that has his name in it, and its too bad cause you cant take photos...otherwise i would have one. try googling it if you are really interested. but you probably arent.

are final full day in rome we walked around and wrapped up things he hadnt done yet, so we went to a museum where we saw all sorts of really famous sculptures (or so i was told) the only one i recognised was this one:

the statue of romlus and remus with their mama, the she wolf. i am sure you all know the story. sons of jupiter raised by a she wolf then romlus killed remus to have a great city...hence rome. there is more to it but thats the jist if you are looking at the screen and have no idea what i am talking about.i dont know why i keep putting this photo up, i think probably because its the only picture that i have with my hair down. hm. right now my hair is in hair limbo (not long and not short) but since limbo has been abolished i dont know where my hair is.the best gelato ever (minus festival del gelato...which by the way whenever people told me they just came from florence i would ask if they went to f.d.g or if they were headed that way i told them EXACTLY where it was. a kid at my hostel told me he was going there next, and he had a map of florence so i grabbe a pen and circled the spot for him. i should have gotten his email or something to see if he really went there or not) for 2 euro, AND it came with whip cream!we walked up to a park and saw the view of rome, here i am with rome.

this park was cool cause it had a giant statue dedicated to garibaldi (one of the unifiers of italy) and since i JUST wrote a paper about that before i left for holiday it was all still fresh in my brain and it was just really cool to see that statue.

basically there you go. i spent 3 full days in rome and it was hot. i had a good time i learnt a lot stayed in the best hostel i have had yet. found the place where i am gonna get married (trevi fountain) and it was just a really good way to end my trip!!!! now i have 2 more weeks of school and i am done with classes with only essays and exams to deal with!!!!!!!!!!!!