Another week down…mixed feelings :)

Almost another week almost down! Monday Erica and I went to the Imperial War Museum for an assignment (yes it was due at the end of that day :S) but we got it in on time so its all good! And it was the best museum i’ve gone to so far. It was interesting to see exhibits from a country and city where the wars were fought. We hear about the wars in school but its a different sort of feeling when you pass by a building here in London and you can see holes or cracks that were done during the war. They had an exhibit from the perspective of the children living in England at the time of the war and evacution which was very interesting. There was also a trench exhibit set up for visitors to experience what life was like in the trenches during WWI – this was also where i met a member of the Royal Army who just so happened to run the marathon the day before! But that’s another story. Anyway, we finished with the holocust exhibit – what an experience that was! I will never understand… the exhibit was put together very well and it was very very interesting. Before we knew it, we spent over 3 hours in the museum and decided to walk back to Vandon – a lovely 45 mins i believe! It was a great day!

Tuesday – another day at Hoxton Trust. Today we spent the majority of the time working on updating her contact database and trying to figure out how to import Karina’s contacts into the outlook on the other computers…not as easy at it sounds :) It was Kiley’s last day so we went to our favorite “greasy spoon” where we are known as “their American girls” and had lunch. we attempted to make pancakes for dinner…lets just say our first ones were a little questionable as English pancakes are way thinner than they are back home. But after a little experimenting we mastered it!

Wednesday – class day, went to the library for a while to work on papers and then headed back to Vandon. Tonight was the long anticipated Vandon house ladies night out as we will all be heading back to America soon. We went to a place called Tiger Tiger were we received 50% off of everything! There was also a Groovy Wonderland downstairs where they had disco music playing and a cool lit dance floor. It was a fun time and a great opportunity for us all to hang out as a big group a final time!

Thursday – Central classes in the morning and then I met my LMU presentation group at 1 to go over our final presentation – which we went over time by 3 minutes but we rocked it! Only have to finish 2 papers and write a full one and i’m done for good! My group and i went to the Rocket (the student union place) to celebrate and play pool – I won :). It was fun to talk something other than our presentation topic.

Today erica and i decided to go on a walk with the destination of Hyde Park. However, we got distracted by the Royal Navy. We had never seen those uniforms yet so we weren’t sure what was going on or if we were missing something important. So we asked a bobby and said they were going to st. james’ palace. We weren’t sure where  that was so we walked through the park and eventually caught up with them marching down the street and found out where it is – in the same complex where the princes live (or have lived im not really sure). Anyway, we couldn’t go in…some sort of security something or other…lame! anyway we made our way down picadilly and eventually made it to hyde park where we found out there was a 5k race every last friday of the month – we had to register online though so we couldn’t do it. The rest of the afternoon was spent on homework...i know it was as exciting as it sounded :) But it was worth it cuz we watched new moon – 10 girls in the lounge! Fun stuff!

Time is flying!

Wow! What a week! Tuesday was my internship day so Kiley and I worked on a may newsletter that could be sent out to the local residents compared to the trustees and other stakeholders of the Hoxton Trust. During our lunch break, I had my first official cream tea – tea with cakes. We met one of Karina’s friends who talked about the time she had tea with the queen! It was pretty cool and she was obviously very proud of it!

Wednesday and Thursday was class day…lets just say its getting a little monotonous as we have all the material we need to write our final papers :) I guess maybe there’s a little senioritis involved as well!

Then we get to the weekend! It was absolutely beautiful! Friday Jackie, Erica, Benji, Alfonso and I took the train to a small beach town south of London called Brighton. We walked around the town for a while and checked out a few of the boutiques and then headed to the pier. We spent sometime taking some pictures of the view and then made our way down the stone beach to get ourselves some traditional fish and chips and found a spot to chill for the rest of the afternoon. We were a little disappointed it wasn’t warmer but when we got back that night we discovered most of us got a little sunburnt!

Saturday – very productive morning! I worked on my papers and worked on my presentation information. Days are winding down – my final presentation on charity events is this Thursday (say a little prayer for me on that day please:)) It should go pretty well – my only problem is that i have way too much information for the time i’m given. Things could be worse! Then I have to finish my 3 final papers, finish my internship stuff and take a final for my contemporary Britian exam – Time is flying!! Erica and I rewarded our productivity by spending a few hours in Green park soaking in some sunshine!

Today (Sunday) was the day of the London Marathon – and if you must ask, i decided to be a spectator instead of running the race today – i just wasn’t feeling it when i woke up this morning :) In all seriousness it was one of the coolest events ive been too! It started somewhere in Greenwich and ended right past Buckingham Palace so it was just down the road from Vandon. The first guy to cross the finish line ran it in 2 hours and 5 mins! Craziness!! There were so many runners of all ages and countries. Some were dressed up in costumes like Fred Flinstone, super man, babies, bananas, etc. It was so cool to see how the runners helped each other out. When one of them fell down because their legs gave out, there would be two people right there to help them cross the finish line. It was a lot of fun!

Productive Monday

We had the best weekend in london this past weekend! With the volcano that blew up in iceland, there were (and still are no) flights in or out of the UK and the surrounding countries. We could tell, because the tourist level around buckingham palace was way down! The weather was perfect! We even pulled out the shorts and headed to Green park for a picnic. It’s crazy how the atmosphere and attitude changes when the sun is shining! Erica, Benji, Jackie and I decided to put the end of the semester stress away for the time and just sit in the park and enjoy the rays, read a book or magazine, people watch and just chill!

Today was a very productive day. For one of our assignments for British Experience Seminar (BES) we had to interview someone who lived through WWII and hear their stories and experiences. My friend Sadie and I went to the Chelsea Pensioners and were directed to a man named Bill – an 89 year old veteran who fought in Italy. He went through about 5 cigarettes in the hour we talked with him and told us about his friend Willy who he fought and about how he never got seriously wounded. The thing that surprised me the most was his respect and gratitude for America. Usually, the US gets spit on for some of the actions that have occurred in our history. But Bill had nothing but great things to say about American troops! He said “young people forget about the things that happened, but my generation remembers what really happened – I will always remember.” We had such a great morning with Bill!

Then Erica and I went to Liverpool Street to do a required walk around for one of our journal assignments for the same class – after we finished we somehow ended up on Oxford Street…but it was a very productive day overall!

Spring Break – Europe style!

alright a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks and i am way behind cuz i didn’t take my computer with me :) so this is going to be just a brief overview!

Thursday, April 1:

I pick up my parents from the airport and they have their first experience with London’s underground. We walk through Green park where the london weather gives the van’t hof clan a warm welcome – with a nice downpouring of rain :)

We went to see the musical Wicked (and yes it’s just as good the 2nd time!!)

Friday:

changing of the guards and ALOT of walking around (in the rain mostly) but they still saw the main sites including Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, houses of parliament, london eye, trafalger’s square, pall mall, leicester square and even up regent street a ways. We put on some serious miles!

Saturday:

Did the The Original Bus Tour through London where we saw more of the sites including the cathedral, tower of london, tower bridge, and london bridge. We hopped off at the tower of london for a tour of the. It was used for a palace, fortress, prison and one other thing i can’t remember. There were alot of prisoners who died in this place! We then hopped on a river boat that took us up the Thames, we switched buses and walked a bit to get to Harrods – a massive designer department store like place that had $2000 hand bags and the like! A great place to have a wedding registry :) We then did more walking and found a lovely mexican resturant and finished the evening walking to the london eye for a picturesque light veiwing of the city.

Sunday:

Up way to early to catch our flight. To make matters worse i didn’t realize picadilly line was closed so we got the opportunity to experience the infamous london taxis to the airport! Very fun! Check that off the to do list! We arrived in Rome, got talked into taking some shaddy hotel shuttle service but were glad when the guy actually dropped us off at our hotel and not some random other place! We were supposed to have a city tour that evening and we went to meet the elephant statue as we were told to and waited 1/2 hour in the pouring rain in our bus ponchos for our guide to show up. we got sick of it and left to find a place to eat and went back to our hotel.

Monday:

Our tour guide from the night before contacted us asking where we were – apparantly being on time means nothing in Rome :) but we rescheduled the tour for that night. The rest of the day we mastered the bus service and walked around to the coloseum, the republica, the trevie fountain, and a bunch of other historic places that i can’t pronounce. Everywhere you looked there was something beautiful to see! This is something we don’t get in the US because we are such a young country! But Rome has tons of it and it’s so beautiful! We also had a beautiful day and i thing i even got a little pink! We had our walking tour that evening where our London born guide explained the history and other interesting facts about the places we had seen earlier. We had our first gelato when we were finished and it was phenominal!!

Tuesday:

We checked out of our hotel and headed to the vatican today! This time our guide was a minnesota born girl – burnsville to be exact – who came to rome on a one way ticket and never went back home! She was a lot of fun and definetly knew her stuff! We saw a lot of artwork, the sistine chapel, St. John’s basilica. We even took the 365 (i think) steps to the top of the basilica for a beautiful viewing of the city! We then went back to get our suitcases to board our overnight train to paris. This was an experience in itself. Our train attended didn’t speak english, only italian, spanish german and french. He even came in at 8:30 to tell us it was time for bed but saying “Bed.” We had 2 private room reserved for this extravaganza – little did we know, these two room combined were smaller than our bathroom! There was a lot of family bonding going on :) But it was a great experience and i had a lot of fun!

Wednesday:

Arrive in paris at 9:30 and caught a cab to our hotel. We had to wait a little bit to check in so we went wandering around to find a few very cute shops and boutiques and an excellent pizza place for lunch. We then checked in to our hotel and cleaned up and ventured out again for more exploring – the louvre, concord, eiffel tower – yep saw it all! We also stopped at angelina for their famous hot chocolate! When we were at the eiffel tower to took the lift to the top for an amazing view of paris. We then had a few troubles finding a bus to take us back to our hotel, but a very nice american student helped us figure out what metro to take. Let’s just say London’s underground is way better than paris’!

Thursday:

We walked down to Notre Dame to walk through it and after waiting in line for 45 mins to walk to the towers to see the gargoyles we decided to check out the shopping instead before we boarded our on and off tour of paris. The tour was cold, but because we saw alot of it when we were walking the day before, we didn’t have to get off a lot and we could listen to the history and such too! We also went deeper into the city with this and saw the arch and where a lot of the really good shopping is! We saw the part of paris that i thought we were going to see  - like in movies like Passport to Paris and such, ya know!? we also went through the part of town where moulin rouge is and even were involved in an accident. Some guy in a mini van was trying to go around the bus and clipped the corner of the bus at a standstill. Very interesting! Don’t worry though, no one was hurt! We had an amazing american meal at Hard Rock Cafe (tadd was having a craving for a burger :)) and i was super excited to actually have ranch dressing with my chips!! It was a great day in Paris!

Friday:

Another early morning taxi ride to the train station to board the train to amsterdam. This time, it was only 3 hours and there was a beautiful sunrise to make the morning worth it! We checked into our hotel and did a little research on what there is to do in amsterdam. We took the hotel shuttle back to schipol and took the train into the city. We decided to walk along the canal and see where it took us. We ended up checking out the Ice Bar – a bar made completely of ice. It reminded me of a MN winter – way too cold! But there were some sweet ice sculptures!

Saturday:

We did a city bus tour that took us around the whole city and even got us into the Gassan Diamond factory where i learned alot of the different diamonds and tricks to test the clarity and color! Saw a 2 carot diamond – talk about large! we didn’t get to spend as much time as we would liked because our bus was leaving. But we then boarded another bus for our countryside tour! The best part of holland! We went to a dutch shoe making place, cheese factory, the windmills, the village called Marken and a fishing town that i could definetly go back and spend more time in! So cute!!

Sunday:

Traci and Tadd had to fly out today so we brought them to the airport and then the parents and I went back into amsterdam to walk around somemore. We ended up shopping a bit and then watching the tottenham and portsmouth football match. We then headed back to our hotel for a nice dinner and a full night’s sleep!

Monday:

We flew back to London today and our driver, Barry, picked us up from Gatwich airport and brought us 2 hours to an area called the Cotswolds in England. We stayed at a B&B in a small village. The cotswolds are known because most every house has to be built in the limestone brick but each place is built with its own unique style. Very cute!! Today we just walked the streets and visited the church and had dinner at a local pub.

Tuesday:

Barry picked us up this morning for our 4 hour driving tour of the cotswolds. This is one of the most beautiful places in england!! There’s a lot of sheep and a lot of green grass! It was a great tour and we saw alot of things. If you want more detail of what we saw just email me or talk to my parents :) We headed back to London with another guy Paul who dropped us off at mom and dad’s hotel. We did some last minute shopping on oxford street and finished up with dinner at nandos (the closed thing to b-dubbs i’ve found thus far) We then headed back to vandon and then i walked them back to their hotel, had a pint at a pub and then i took the bus back to vandon. As much fun as travelling europe has been, it was defintely a relief to be back home in london where most people speak our language :) i now can empathise with people who don’t know english – it’s really hard!!

Wednesday:

I met my parents at their hotel and then we went to victoria station to take them back to heathrow airport. After a little confusion we finally to our parting point – hammersmith, where i go one way to class and then go the other to the airport. You’'ll have to ask them how the trip to the airport was – sorry mom and dad :)