Goodbye for now.

In about twenty minutes I will be shutting my computer and not opening it until October. I know- it makes me uneasy too. How sad is that? Anyways the reason is this: We are traveling around for ten days and well it would be a pain and not necessary to lug this little guy around. Liverpool, Bath, Stratford Upon Avon- I will adventures to share when I open this thing again (I should really give it a name...suggestions are welcome).

So goodbye for now.
Farewell my friend, until then.
Stories will be shared.

Edinburgh smells like Bacon and Cheerios.

Welcome to Edinburgh, Scotland
We greet you with smiles.
And introduce you to our new Italian friend we met in our hostel, Guilia (Julia).
We send love to you from us. (Apparently it's good luck to spit on this...we didn't)
And let you know that it is tiring living so far away from the people I love..
But I get by with a little help from my friends.
On this road called life
Distance may separate us
But I think of you

sleeping, models and road pic- photo cred: Jessica Russell

It's been a long time.

So wow. I haven't written here in a long time. Well let's talk about those reasons. This week I had two presentations. One for my theatre and drama in Great Britain class on Tuesday and one for my sociology class this morning. Also this weekend my parents were here! Tack all those things on the massive amount of homework I have anywaysssss and you get me never having time to write my blog. But here I am done with my presentations, aced my theatre 101 final, Shakespeare class canceled tomorrow, and Scotland this weekend!!! What what! I'm excited for that.
Also I had a great time with my parents this weekend, even though I was a bit stressed I wasn't working on homework. We went out to eat and saw Phantom of the Opera the night they got in. So they were pretty tired and kept falling asleep, but it was sooo good. Raul was so amazing. Though I actually liked Christine better in the movie. We went to Cambridge on Saturday and my dad's business partner John and his wife and kids (wife, Susan, son Oliver age 11 and daughter Alice age 7) showed us around. We took a little boat ride on the river that toured the back of like 7 of the main colleges in the University. Cambridge has like 30 colleges within it, the smallest consisting of like 60-70 students to the largest like 15,000 (I think that's what he said, but he could have said 2000..which is a big difference). Oh and the tour guide also showed us a spot where they filmed a Harry Potter scene, but he didn't say which movie and he started out his sentence by saying "and for the children.." I was like "children?!" haha. I'm embarrassing.
Anyways after that we walked around then went to the village we were staying in by John's village. It is called Swayfield and we stayed in a little inn/pub. We had dinner there. It was really fun being able to talk to there little family. I think learning about the culture here is so interesting, especially since I have a class on it.
Sunday morning we took a walk with John and his dog through the country side. So beautiful. Reminded me of Iowa kind of. It was so nice and I really didn't want to go back to school and all the homework I had. But after we visited a little castle and had a small lunch I was back on the train to London. I stayed up till 1am every night since then doing homework, but noowww I feel so relieved!!
Last night we saw a play called Earthquakes In London. It was very much a green peace/the world is going to end if we don't get rid of our carbon footprint. But it was still really good and really well done. I cried. It was definitely powerful and really opened my eyes to how much power the theatre can have as a voice for people. Tonight we go see Henry IV part 1 which I must say I didn't finish reading before we had the quiz and completely guessed on four questions and got them right! ha, man that is good stuff. That and I studied maybe an hour for my theatre 101 final and got a 95%. God loves me. That's all I'm saying. (it's not like I'm lazy-I was working on all my other homework and my presentations).
This morning was great. Got my presentation out of the way. Went on a four mile run with Laurel then did some situps and little stuff. Rinsed off, went to whole foods and made a yummy salad and bought a little bread and grapes, came back and watched the season premiere of Gossip Girl! (ahh chuck!)
Theatre 101 is done now and I don't have Shakespeare class tomorrow so I just started my weekend on a Wednesday morning. That's beautiful.
Oh I have also booked a ticket to Frankfurt and Dublin :D yay for travel time!!
Tomorrow morning I see my parents off as the fly back home :( I really didn't get to hang out with them enough. I feel like seeing them for such a short time kind of makes me miss them more. I hadn't really thought about it enough to miss them before.
Oh well. I have so many adventures to come! And I will try to write them down here more often!!


*picture: random Barclay bank advertising guys outside the tube station. We decided to take a picture with them. They were hilarious and decided to protect us as we crossed the street. One also new of the San Diego Chargers. Impressive I say.

Hampton Court Palace.

Today was a great day. I don't think I go to places enough on our free days. I usually just stay home and do homework all day..which is needed. But today Kinsey, Laurel, Jessica Griffin and I went to Hampton Court Palace and it was so fun! The gardens were definitely the best, but it was also fun to go around and look at the palace because we got to wear cool robes. haha. We went and ate at a eatery in one of the gardens and I had yummy soup, bread, and salad. Then of course we got some ice cream to continue our walk around the gardens and went through the maze (which we defeated quite easily if I say so myself). We also got to look at the Royal Tennis Courts, and saw some royals or friends of royals playing some tennis/squash.
If you ever go to Hampton Court Palace here is my suggestion (actually I think I suggest this for any garden):
Put you head phones in and put on a nice soundtrack on and explore God's wondrous creation.
I started on shuffle with my ipod, and right when I was gonna give up on that and just play it safe with some Gregory Alan Isakov, Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel came on. It was probably the perfect song for the garden we were in at the time.
After some sun bathing in the gardens and exploration we hopped back on the train to London. We went to The Scoop to watch Toad Hall- a little kids play that was free and counted as credit for a class. It was pretty ridiculous. We left early because we didn't want to miss dinner and we BARELY made it. We actually didn't make it, but the lady was nice enough to give us food. We literally ran every time we were not in the tube and ran without stopping (except when we stopped to cross the street) from Earl's Court to Lee Abbey....worked off that ice cream.
Tomorrow we go to Stratford Upon Avon as a group to see Julius Caesar and to eat good things at a tea room!